#6 Main St.

[kimp]

The kid grabs the beer from Sally and the gum and money from Leo, then pops the top on the beer and drinks it down with a speed that suggests fear of getting caught. After that he lets out a resplendent belch, nods to the group and saunters off into the woods.
At Leo's signal the group moves off towards Main Street. It is a short distance and nothing unusual crops up during the trip.
The town is still small town quiet. Children play here and there in yards, some swinging from the ubiquitous tree swings that hang in front of nearly every house. (Between the clotheslines and the tree swings, someone is making coin off of rope in Whisper Hill. Just saying.). The children swivel their heads to watch as the group passes, one step away from seriously creepy in their intensity. If their movements were synchronized that would cross the line into seriously creepy. But, they aren't doing that... Or are they?
I'm sure they're not. (Don't look)
Birds chirp. Squirrels collect nuts. Bugs buzz. Everything is in its place, doing its thing.
Search as they will, disturb the quiet and the peace and the birds and the squirrels, the group finds nothing. Except more squirrels.
They can approach every house, look under every porch. They can ask the children on their swings. They can even ask the birds or the squirrels or the bugs if they want. They find no evidence of Liberty on Main Street.

Editor’s Note: It occurs to the omnipresent narrator that the group now has the same number as the Scooby Gang. It’s pretty clear who Scooby is, but which one is Daphne?

[Owle Isohos]

"Wait, we were expecting that?" Kelsey asked, her voice dropping to match Leo's volume. She had watched in puzzlement as Liberty managed to get Sally to pay a kid for tricking Sally and the rest of them. She was still trying to figure out how that worked as they went along.

"I thought the plan was what we said it was...did I miss something?"

She peered around Main Street, ducking down to look under porches. As a private investigator, she'd picked up some skill with following tracks, so she spent some time walking around houses, searching for the kind of tracks you'd make scrambling under or out from under a porch. Maybe she'd find some sign - scuff marks in the dirt, snapped twigs by the tree line - or maybe Liberty had covered her trail too well. Either way, she made a good faith effort to check.

[PoeticJustice]

Unlike seemingly everyone else, Alice was visibly annoyed. She looked, for just a second, like that poor boy was going to suffer a terrible and grisly fate at the hands of the angry young woman. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her hands balled in to fists. But then Sally jostled her, probably completely accidentally, and the tension dissipated into nothing. She shook her head and settled down into a routine, pacing. Bottles and notes were handed over and Alice could not help but roll her eyes at Leo's assertion that this was the plan all along.

Kelsey got a smirk that was almost amused and a small headshake followed by a shrug. All part of the game, the game they were playing. Playing and losing. She turned her head up to the faint breeze and listened to something none of the rest of them could hear.

She didn't search. She hung back. Her eyes flicked left and right and her hand rested near where her pistol normally was.

"She's not here," she said finally towards Leo, jerking her head back towards Shadegrove.

[Sally]

"So our fair Town Square is a bit of a bust," Sally says, chomping on his words some, and trying to avoid the kid drinking his beer. "An' this lil' hound-dog's nose has us pointin' towards them there con-do-miniums," he gives a nod towards Alice.

"Mayhap we scout 'em from a distance, then split and circle, leavin' a gap to-ward the main route up? Me an' Alice tryin' to herd her at ya'll. Even if it's a bust again..." his voice drops low, "...it'll be stickin' to the pattern she's ex-pectin' of us, ropin' a dope, so to speak, so she might expect it the time after... when we color outside them lines some and muss up her pro-filin'?"

"That is," Sally says, looking up at the sky to judge the time, "Unless we want to try and pull the ol' switch-a-roo on her straightaway?"

Before putting the plan to their CO, he looks to Madrigus and Kelsey, folks with heads sharper than their trigger fingers. As he hands off the strategy to the strategists, he looks to Alice's frustration and flicks at a stray lock of her hair,

"You gon' remember to play nice with our Sly Blue Fox once we get eyes on her?" he says, grinning some, "I suppose it's an even bigger blessin' Ms. Kelsey de-cided to toss in wit' us, jus' in case they be some blood lettin'," he teases.






[First person to say Jinkies or offer me a Scooby Snack is going to get... who'm I kidding. I'll laugh.]

[PoeticJustice]

Alice mostly ignored the talk of strategy, instead focused on her surroundings. Even the smallest twitch of movement caused her head to snap in that direction... which caused her to be constantly looking left and right. She snorted faintly at any strange looks she got, crossing her arms in front of herself.

The look Sally got when he flicked at her hair suggested that anyone else who attempted such a thing might have gotten their hand removed at the wrist. Instead he just got a somewhat defensive huff, her hip bumping into his, and a headshake.

"I would not strike at someone associated with the Halfway House," she said indignantly. "No matter what else the circumstances. And even if she wasn't..." her voice trailed off and she looked off into space, lost in another space, another time.

She looked down at her hands, fingers splaying, flushing faintly as her eyes widened. A violent headshake, trying to snap herself back into reality.

"Fuck you, Vasily," she muttered under her breath, rolling her shoulders back and cracking her knuckles.

[Sally]

Grinning, Sally cocks his head to look into the middle distance of space that Alice often gazes at, but finding nothing, he turns back to the girl.

As she snaps back to, he drops his hands to where his pistol would normally rest, but rather than doing a phantom-draw, he simply pats the space and looks over his shoulder at her mention of Vasily.

Sticky, sticky fingers on that guy. Once confident that he hadn't had his mostly empty pockets picked, he looks back to Alice,

"Wha' the ol' Hobo King do to get yer goat, Chickadee?" he says, trying to keep a straight face. It wasn't so long ago that a certain sticky-fingered fellow had threatened to stab both of his kidneys, should Ms. White wind up hurt. Back home in Harlan, threatening specific violence in the name of ladylike virtue was as common as Pig Roasts and moonshine. Sure, it wasn't much beyond slugging each other on the playground and pulling pigtails, but it was something familiar, all the same. "We gon' hafta raid ol' #6 an' cause a ruckus?"

As always oblivious to her huffs, Sally glances over to #6 as and says, "I'll be we can git the drop on 'em..."

[PoeticJustice]

She shook her head. "No, nothing like that... Just.... remembering, you know?" she reached up to push some hair away from her face.

Remembering a meeting in the snow, when she was fresh into Quarantine, not yet nearly so... human. Anyone who remembered the holiday party could speak to how far the young woman had come. But back in those first days, when he had chased her out into the streets as the world had threatened to warp and crack.

And then again. How was it that he always seemed to find her?

"People like us gotta stick together."
"I'm not like you."
"Is that so?"

She felt goosebumps rising along her skin and she rubbed her upper arms and shook her head before staring off into space.

[Leo Wilds]

Leo stopped listening to them for a moment and went into deep thought. He knew she'd trick them he followed the trap now it was time to slowly spring their trap. They just had to figure out if shade groove was the correct location or if she was hiding where it all started.

"Hey I need everyone's opinion. Where would be the last place you'd look right now? I know we need to recheck shade but still I'm curious. " He said gesturing to them with his hands.

He knew that there was a trick or two left to bypass at least, but he'd worry about it when the time came.

[PoeticJustice]

A shudder ran through Alice and she visibly composed herself.

"The Nuclear Reactor," she said firmly.

[Sally]

Sally looks into the distance, squinting through the daylight to remember their pre-dawn runs through the cold to that power station. Whisper Hill had looked much different under those thigh-high snow drifts.

"Well, tha's certainly someplace most sane folk would steer clear'a these days..." he cocks his head, glances towards Alice with a grin and says, "Which, I reckon, means we might be on the right track."

Looking to the rest of the group, Sally says, "Ain't none'a ya'll wanted to have kids, right?" He laughs at this, "'Cause it maight be best fer the world if I re-main the last 'a the Lautners..."

He scratches one of his mutton chops, and mutters, "Though, Jolene never did git back ta me 'bout that lil' slip up' 'fore I went to basic..." Sally shakes his head at that. Neither the time, nor place to think about the old days, that short period between County lock up and getting bused down to Parris Island for enlistment.

[That was for you, Gondorf. Keep the hope of another generation alive!]

"So, I'm all fer scopin' out that here nuke-you-lur react-er."