"It's going to look rather odd on the security cam footage when they see an officer of the law pointing their gun at a neighbor"
Mallory got a chill from fingers to fingers. She wasn't sure if this meant another tenant here had been possessed, or if that this person actually lived here. Neither option had particularly pleasant implications.
She dropped her weapon and the woman smiled "When you were in the Defense Force* you made a bit of a name for yourself. Excellent in combat, a reconnaissance, infiltration, and scouting expert, adept at solving problems, resourceful, high marks on performance tests... but I'm really not here to flatter you." She motioned toward Mallory's mailbox, letters** literally poking out from under the door.

"Tonight is a bad night for me, but I'm  quite eager to continue this conversation. I've left an invitation for you. I hope you can make it. A skilled operative was required and you were my first pick"

Knowing that her double wasn't about to do anything that would reveal details about herself, Mallory grabbed her letters and left. With a time limit and a long work day, there wouldn't be time to try to get security cam footage unless she wanted to miss her last opportunity to meet the only suspect in the case.

The day at the office had been grueling. Persistent mental fog, anxiety, lethargy... Clearly her work was going to suffer until this was settled. Had it not been for the Mystic's poultice, she likely wouldn't have gotten anything done at all. She took another look at the letter; just some coordinates, pointing to a playground. It lay in the middle of the relative no-mans-land between the city and the suburbs. If this was going to be a private affair, it was certainly an ideal location.
She grabbed her standard equipment, plus a smoke screen bomb and a long muzzle pistol*** that she had used on DF scouting missions, just in case her date happened to bring along any friends... like, you know, a sniper.
9 years in the business of confrontation and  overtly dangerous scenarios had taught her that being over-prepared was basically impossible.

As she approached the playground she could make out the figure of the woman from last night, same coat, and still wearing Mallory's face. She could also see, as expected, they wouldn't be alone.
Squatting next to the woman was a wretched looking, humanoid silhouette, with visible yellow eyes, a toothy grin, and a long tongue the same color as the rest of its featureless, shadow body.

The woman turned toward Mallory and the creature rose up, alert, or perhaps excited.

* Because of the nature of what constitutes a state in this multi-galactic society, and due to the inefficiency of transporting large amounts of personnel and machinery even just between planets, conflict on the scale of a single earth society is actually quite rare. As a result, militaries primarily take the form of Defense Forces, which operate locally with central, planetary management. DFs deal mostly with terrorism, organized crime, piracy, anti-establishment militant groups, and natural, planetary threats such as asteroids. (DFs can be mobilized to deal with despotic leaders, but this is a very rare occurrence.)

** If you think there's some continuity of humanity where everything becomes completely paperless, I admire your optimism.

*** Used by DF scouts due to its higher accuracy for long-range shooting, customization options, ability to easily switch between lethal and non-lethal ammunition, and durability as a melee weapon. It is issued with the intent to relieve scouts from carrying multiple or heavy weapons when more efficient movement over long distances is required, but it is commonly used with or as a side piece, due of its slow rate of fire.

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Ah, we're nearing the end of this saga! Someone asked if I've had this all planned out from the beginning and the answer is, nope, I had actually intended the first entry about Mallory to be the only one and do a new character vignette each week, but I like this thing where I have to consider continuity and react to my own decisions. Before I went down the path of music, I really thought I was going to pursue life as a character designer and writer for games, but that was mostly because I didn't yet know how to write the music I made up.

Anyway, I wanted to only write the text part for where the song comes in, which is actually just where Mallory grabs her stuff and it cuts to approaching the playground, with the second half of the song actually accounting for events that are in the beginning of next week's installment, but it felt really silly to go from "there's a woman with the heroine's face in her apartment" to "the heroine arms herself and approaches a playground in the middle of nowhere"

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Instrumentation: Roland XV-5080 (horns, strings, flute, timpani), Korg X5DR (choir), Yamaha MU50 (trumpet), Emu XL-1 (swell/bass), Automat1beta(swell/bass), modular synth for the kinda glassy thing at the end (I won't go through the whole patching, but the sound itself is Make Noise Telharmonic being filtered by Mutable Instruments Ripples), Roland JP8080 (that searing, vibrato-y saw lead), EXS24 (sine wave, sampled orchestra hit, timpani, and Logic's factory orchestral percussion, because I haven't found a good library to replace it still... recommendations seriously welcome!!)

Tags: long ass text, week 6 2018, View by:Catthew O.