OPEN TO ALL

[skeletonenigma]

Characters: Skulduggery Pleasant and YOU (but specific starters for Captain Amelia, fellow turtle-parents Hawke and Akito, and Monet)
Date: Catch-all for April before the bombings and console crash events
Location: Throughout Keeliai
Situation: Various! These will include futzing with unused consoles, discovering the turtle baby, and also intercepting kedan informants. But Skulduggery’s going to be all over the Shell throughout the month, so feel free to chime in with your own.
Warnings/Rating: None for the moment. Well, there’s some lock-picking.

I usually start with prose, but I’ll adapt to any style. If you want a specific starter, PM me at Amaraq!

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A Bazaar (Monet)

[skeletonenigma]

If there was one thing Keeliai knew how to do well, it was bustling marketplaces. This one vaguely reminded Skulduggery of a seventeenth-century bazaar he’d been to once. None of the stores were inside buildings, and none of the wares were under lock and key. The kedan shopkeepers seemed less concerned with theft, and more concerned with crowding as many shoppers around their stall as possible. The sun was just beginning to set, so the paper lanterns were lit and swaying about in the slight breeze blowing in from the Turtle’s edge.

Skulduggery, for his part, was just observing. He didn’t need any of the food or obscure artifacts being sold. He’d already found a kedan seamstress, a small blue woman living in the Earth Sector, who’d agreed to tailor him a new suit. The lack of any sort of dry-cleaning was annoying, but he’d live. Of more concern to him were the spare clothes he’d found to wear in the meantime, which wasn’t so much a suit as a traditional Chinese changshan. And it felt odd.

One of the kedan outside a clothing store selling more of what Skulduggery was reluctantly wearing caught his attention. Not because she was furtive, or standing apart from the surge of the crowd; a good third of the kedan in any given place were like that. It was more that she clearly wasn’t interested in the clothes, and yet hadn't moved for five minutes.

The most likely explanation was that she was waiting for someone. Skulduggery didn’t have much else to do, so he wandered over to the stall and started looking at the jackets, watching her out of the corner of his nonexistent eye.

[superieure]

Monet, by and large, kept away from the marketplaces. She could see and hear it perfectly well from her apartment, she felt no need to wander down there and blend in with the populace, even though she could, easily. Instead, she wandered through the boutique areas, always listening, never buying.

She'd come down today to meet with a contact. Aware that she stood out even on her best days, she dressed down, looking simply like a rich Foreigner come here to browse. She made her way through the fruits, artefacts, and finally, upon getting to clothes, found the young kedan lounging at the end of a corner. Conspicuous, yes, but hiding in plain sight.

She looks over a dress, and her contact comes over, whispering something as they both examine the garment.

[skeletonenigma]

And there she was. A fellow Foreigner, not a kedan, although she definitely knew her way around. She was also much better at being inconspicuous then her kedan partner. Skulduggery might not have given either of them a second glance, if he hadn't already been watching the kedan for the last five minutes.

The kedan conspired with each other all the time. That was normal. Subtle whispers as Foreigners walked by were practically expected. But a kedan conspiring with a Foreigner? Skulduggery wasn't aware of that happening before, beyond a potential for mutual benefits or volunteerism. This one looked like an informant.

He stepped closer to try and hear what was being said, and when that didn't work, he caught the newer woman's eye and gestured to the dress. "I wouldn't, if I were you. The seller's been giving higher and higher prices the more people ask. Apparently, it stopped being worth it over an hour ago."