Commence planning [https://img.comicfury.com/comics/205/43704a1607923197b3654f235852985.png]

Hmm. "I should probably figure out where I'm sleeping tonight. ...But it's not even 8:30 yet, I could probably squeeze in some video work. I don't want to rely on, uh... mushroom hunting in the woods for money. ...We need to start planning what we're going to do tomorrow, too. We need to talk to Maria, and Marlow... we need to figure out our approach for the dungeon, and maybe think about seeing if I can talk to Franklin--"

"You're worried about way, way too much shit at once," Kate remarks. "Like, we don't even know what's gonna happen tomorrow--the harder we plan, the harder our plans could get fucked."

"We need SOME kind of plan, though," you reply. "We have too much shit to juggle to just... wing it, and also I need to worry about money now. ...I've been having to worry about money."

"When was the last time you ate?," Cici asks.

. . .

"I don't remember."

Cici looks at Kate, who immediately calls out to the bus. "Cherry, we're goin' to Plaire's house."

There's a brief pause before Cici adds, "Did anybody get a picture of that possum?"

"I did," says Cherry.

The three of you crowd around one of the bus' screens as it lights up, showing the (blurry, slightly distorted) footage from one of her exterior cameras. Featured is, indeed, the monstrous creature you encountered earlier, recorded when it was hissing at Cherry's headlights.

"Oh, shit," Kate begins, "Plaire, you didn't say it was a mutant."

Cici shrugs, and smiles a little. "I kinda assumed when she said how big it was. ...That IS a big possum, though!"

"I didn't even think about it," you mutter. "...I don't think I've ever seen an opossum that wasn't mutated, like, up close. Even in Addersfield they all had... weird growths, or extra eyes, or dangly limbs. That weirded me out a lot less than it being FUCKING COLOSSAL did."

"Opossums are pretty tough!" Cici states. "They're almost immune to a lot of diseases and stuff, like rabies--maybe they're better at surviving mutations 'cuz of it. I dunno, I'm not a doctor! ...They don't normally get that big around here, though."

"Good," Kate laughs, "they'd be taking over. The fuck are we doing to the possums."

You arrive home without incident, and thank the bus upon exiting.

While you update the journal on your computer (and discover that, at some point, you did just randomly type Y ARD with no additional context, thanks for that Past Plaire) Cici cooks up some kind of rice dish, and Kate does a lot of texting. Cici and Kate also clean up a bit, though you don't realize that they're doing so until you're all meeting back up in the living room to eat (and in Kate's case, smoke).

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"So here's what I'M thinkin'," Cici begins. "We split up duties tomorrow--I can prob'ly get in to see Franklin after work since I know some folks in the station. Kate has history with Marlow, so she's in a better position to fill him in and see if we can borrow his stuff. She works in the evening, so she'll have to do that before she goes to work. Plaire, YOU can talk to Maria if you feel up to it."

Kate points an accusatory finger at Cici. "When I said Plaire shouldn't be worrying about tomorrow I meant everybody. Fucker."

Cici shrugs. "You shoulda specified!"

... "What am I supposed to do with the rest of tomorrow, then?"

This time it's Kate that shrugs. "Work on your videos. Read a book. I dunno, whatever nerds do."

"You HAVE to be in all the dungeon stuff," Cici says, "but you DON'T have to do everything else. You gotta relax, too! Work on you things."

. . .

Kate leans forward. "I've been thinking about that, actually. ...The dream shit."

"Oh, of course," you say with a slight smile, "you tell US not to worry about anything so you can get a head start on it."

Kate gives you and Cici the finger, then continues. "I wanna see what happens when Plaire's not here."

"...What?"

Kate takes a drag of her level. "With Plaire here, she enters as herself, one extra person goes in as an accomplice. What happens if Plaire's not here? If I sleep in the house by myself, does nothing happen? Do I go in by myself as an accomplice? Plaire, you want to take the night off--I skipped the dream stuff last night so I'm still fresh. You need a place to sleep, so we can just... like... trade. You sleep at my place, I sleep at your place."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Hmm.

"I also wanted to test if the heart counter will go down if none of us go in," you point out. "I don't know what it represents, but I need to figure it out if we're CAUSING it to deplete, or if it's ticking down on its own regardless--it would make a pretty huge impact on scheduling this whole thing."

"And I'm not letting you do the dungeon by yourself," Cici states firmly. "There's no reason ANY of us should anymore. If something happens we should have somebody with us! There's too many weird deaths and all this memory crap for us to take that kinda risk. I don't want us wakin' up and forgetting you were in the house or something."

. . .

Kate leans back, grimacing. "Fuck, that's a thought. We still don't know what caused the witches to get half-forgotted."

"We don't know what FULL-forgotted looks like," you add. "'Cuz... y'know. We'd have forgotten." You hesitate before adding, "There could have been four of us at one point."

"Fuuuck," Kate exclaims, laughing like she's trying not to. "Don't even SAY that shit. That's dark even for me."

"It's silly anyway," Cici states. "We'd remember if something happened to one of us."

"Would we though?," Kate asks.

You cross your arms, mulling it over further. "We still don't know if Marlow never learned the old librarian's name, or if he knew it at some point and forgot it. ...And the witches had access to magic, maybe even defenses against that sort of memoryholing. If what happened to them happened to one of us..."

"To be fair," Kate begins, "we still don't know if what happened to them was the house or the feds doin' a cover-up. The house can do memory shit, as we know from the back yard--but that could be a coincidence."

Cici squints. "What are the odds of that, though? Everybody AND this house all just happen to have unrelated... uh... amnesia guns?"

Kate gives a wide shrug. "We're in the fucking magic zone now, I don't know what's normal. Maybe memory shit's like the first thing they teach at Wizard School. Federal agents altering memories is like, the third bullet point on any list of conspiracy theories about 'em."

You give a smaller shrug. "Magic houses or... well, magical anything being able to wipe memories WOULD go a long way to explaining how they've kept hidden for so long. Look--if we assume the house itself memoryholed the witches, then we have to accept the possibility that we've already lost friends to the house and we don't even realize it because the house memoryholed them, and that we too could wake up tomorrow Damnatio Memoriae. I'm not a big fan.

If we assume the feds memoryholed the witches, then we assume the feds memoryholed the witches. Feds are bad, we already know this."

Kate looks like she'll be the first to ask, but then Cici sneaks it in. "...Damnatio Memoriae?"

"Latin for condemnation of memory," you state. "When ancient societies would remove a person's name from any official documentation, scrub all evidence they existed, and enforce harsh penalties for mentioning the person's name. Basically, to write someone out of history. ... I may be splitting hairs and still looking at everything like a video game, but so far the house has only used its memory shit to hide parts of itself. What killed the witches was likely inside the dream, not the physical house; what hid the aftermath, I think, is the group of government agents who showed up later."

Cici nods. "...Makes sense, I guess. Which is ALL the more reason for none of us to go in there by ourselves!"

There's a moment of pause, where you briefly pace,

gears turning around the fleeting thoughts of history and government,

when suddenly you have an idea.

"Wait." You stop. "...Rill Parsons is opposed to the police force. Right? One of the things I've heard about her is that she's been defunding and firing cops. The police are essentially working for or with MondolGroup, who Parsons is also not too big on."

"...Yeah?," Kate replies. "That about sums it up. Why?"

You take a breath. "What's to stop Rill Parsons from declaring Ninelives a sanctuary city, where customs get full human rights? Fire the old cops, hire Deedee, who from what I understand would be a better cop than all the current cops combined, and start actually getting shit done in this town."

Cici chuckles.

Kate takes a long, slow drag. "I..." she begins, "don't know jack fuck-all about sanctuary cities."

Pffft

"If we DO turn Ninelives into a sanctuary city for customs," she adds, "we should turn it into like... one of the regular style sanctuary cities, too. I mean, at that point, fuck it. Write NO RULES on the water tower."

"Yeah I have no idea how any of that stuff works," Cici also admits.

You smile, and nod. "Alright, so the next conversation with the mayor is probably on me, then."