As she made her way out of Garvesh’s pawnshop, walking through the back alley in the other direction than she had entered, she noticed two new things. The first was the presence of a stranger approaching from the direction she was headed. The second was that, amidst the posters and ads, old and new, she could make out Yao’s talisman patterns, ever so briefly before her eyes slipped off them. Only by “glancing over them” could she actually get a good look, something made possible only by the modifications to her eyes. Without knowing they were there, without knowing how they looked or how they subtly deflected one’s perception, and without her specific type of ocular enhancement, they were undetectable. She didn’t stop to inspect any particular talisman, lest the stranger happen to enter the alley and notice — it just so happened she was curious as to how many there were. For each one that could be seen, there were dozens more completely concealed, clusters of protective talismans leveraged against the potential of one being detected. The stranger finally passed into the alleyway as she neared the exit. It was a tall, narrow figure, wearing loose trousers bound down at the calves and a loose jacket, with their hands wrapped in bandages. They wore a a turban and a scarf, leaving only a slit of their face exposed. Eyes with black sclera and white irises stared back at her, subtly refracted through a thin protective shell. What at first seemed to be the pure-white of Inax skin around the stranger’s eyes was, at second glance, chitin. Krahe didn’t get the sense of an evoy from the stranger, but the shape was far too lithe to be a herculean, so she figured it was a mothman or some other, fourth type of insectoid. Despite this, she couldn’t help but feel an unsettling sense of familiarity when their gazes met, even for just a brief moment. She stopped after their paths crossed, turning around to see the stranger had done the same.
“Have we met?” Krahe asked.
“I thought the same. It appears I was mistaken,” the stranger replied in a polite, but deadpan and clipped manner. A man, by the sound of it.
“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Cabral, would it?” she raised an eyebrow, inwardly readying herself for a confrontation.
After what may have perhaps been an attempt to remember if he knew someone by that name, or perhaps a consideration whether to even answer, the stranger shook his head.
“Afraid not. Sorry.”
No signs of lying. No tenseness. Nothing. Krahe moved on, lighting a cigarette. The thread of arrha smoke trailed in her path, and, by pure coincidence, a gust of wind blew it into the alley, right under the nose of the white-chitinned stranger. To most, it was a sweetish, mint-like aroma. To evoy, it burned like a whiff of Bubba's Anus Prolapser Sauce. Just as he was about to step into the stairwell, the scent struck him. He shuddered for a moment, but moved on. It wasn’t unpleasant to him, but just a whiff struck him as a deep breath from a jar of menthol cream might strike a human. This was all unknown to Krahe, of course — she might have perhaps spied on him if she had Barzai on hand, but she didn’t care enough to double-check if a random stranger was a weird-looking evoy based on his reaction to arrha smoke.
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As was her habit, Krahe didn’t make directly for her destination, this being the safehouse where she’d been shot. She meandered for a short time beforehand, and upon her arrival, she found the safehouse to be empty. There was an unfamiliar scent, but besides that, the place was immaculate, nearly identical to how she remembered it. Even the window was the same. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t just the same. Even the scratches matched. Inspecting yet closer still, Krahe realized that, somehow, the scratches on the window were parts of a grand overarching warding system, and that one of its leverage points laid in that window — it was “otherwise perfect concealment” leveraged against “someone can just look through the window.” She decided against tugging on that thread, lest she drive herself mad by trying to figure out how you would even start with such an abstract design, and why you would think it a good idea.
Deciding to wait until evening to see if Casus showed up, she went over the collection of memslates Garvesh had functionally given her. They were of a distinct make, unlike the memslates she had been using and encountering — besides being made of a black-blue alloy, they were also slightly rectangular so they stuck out a bit out of her square-slotted eyebox. Mass-produced, to be sure.
The first and second memslates were straightforward action films. One was in an urban setting, while the other was more of a western. There was honestly nothing notable to these. They were entertaining and well made, with convincing combat effects and good choreography, but that was where it ended. The third one stood out for its fixation on environmental destruction and firearms. A single gunshot would send wood splinters exploding out of the wall. There was a scene where the protagonist rode a gurney down a stairway while firing off atropals left and right, throwing away three pairs of four-barreled guns in the process. This was the only place where the film’s effects faltered — the atropals were far too weak.
Then, came the fourth. It was more of a series, with episodes being about thirty-five minutes long each. At first, it seemed like no more than a simple toy-commercial — giant mechs piloted by teenagers to fight equally giant monsters. The action then gave way to insufferable teenage melodrama that kept going in circles to the extent she became convinced she could subtly hear, behind the soundtrack, the sound of the director bending over backwards to huff the farts straight out of his own asshole. Krahe groaned when the realization dawned on her that there was a reason this felt familiar. It was, for all intents and purposes, Zastreon’s version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Krahe had been, without her consent, made thoroughly familiar with the series due to its persistent prevalence as a cultural touchstone in certain online circles, even centuries after its official completion. She considered destroying the memslate out of petty spite, but left it be.
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