The Future Will Change

With their trust placed in Twilight--and Spike’s--intuition, Aidon would follow the directions given to them by their masked friend. But one thing was eluding them about the clue…

“...a ‘Death License?’” Aidon muttered as he drove and grumbled under his breath. “I don’t get what that means at all.”

Next to him, Luna would try her best to figure it out. “Well a license for death…could it have something to do with a job involving the deceased maybe?”

“A funeral organizer?” Aidon mused.

“I was thinking of something a bit darker,” Luna went on as her tail wagged with a hidden sense of intrigue. “Such as…a crematorium.”

“...” Aidon gave a small shudder, but she had a point. Such a thing would fit the description of a ‘death license’ after all. “I see. But now we just need to figure out what sort of event with a lot of people would involve a dead body like that? Any funerals happening today, Luna?”

Luna took out her phone and started to scroll through her news feed. “Let’s see…”

Meanwhile…

As they were driving, the blue oni woman named Aoife had been eyeing their vehicle from afar with a nervous frown on her face.

“...Dammit all. If they find out, they could be toast. What to do…” she groaned to herself before getting up to follow them by leaping and running through back alleys. But as she hopped along, she noticed some of the police cars driving along the roads without their sirens on. This confused the oni since she didn’t often see them driving in a particular direction.

Aoife chose to tail the police cars and keep an eye on them. On the one hand, it was possible she was overreacting since patrols were commonplace. On the other, she didn’t want to rule out any suspicious behavior.

And as it turned out, she’d be rewarded for her persistence.

Soon enough, some of the police cars would park near the local cemetery and crematorium. Aoife had perched herself upon one of the trees nearby and noticed that Eris was in one of the patrol cars.

“It’s that captain lady again,” she instantly recognized the woman’s face. “But why in Queen’s tails is she all the bloody way out here? Unless…no…” Aoife checked her Anomaly Compass once more. The result was a hard twitch from the needle that pointed directly at Eris’ cop car.

“...my arse,” she grumbled to herself as she clutched her compass hard enough to crack the glass of the overlay. “So it’s her. She’s the real deal. I bet she’s been my target this whole time.”

But before Aoife could act, she watched as Eris’ patrol car pulled off.towards the crematorium area of the cemetery. The oni woman could already sense how out of place this was, noting the peculiarity of the vehicle’s movement.

Meanwhile, with Luna and Aidon…

As they got closer to the rear end of the cemetery, Aidon would slow his car to a stop as he noted the sheer amount of people that were present and well-dressed as if a funeral had just happened.

“...this might be a private affair,” he muttered to Luna as he parked a few yards away from the procession, “Let’s try not to disturb them if we can help it.”

“You’re right. Though…this is a rather large gathering of people,” Luna added with a curious wag of her tail as she continued scrolling through her phone. “I wonder what this could…ah!”

Aidon looked over, “Did you find something, Luna?”

Luna showed him her phone which detailed the recent death of a social media influencer. “...I think this might be our target’s target.”

“Hm…that’s a rather long list of challenge names,” Aidon squinted at the screen and shook his head. Since he wasn’t familiar with that genre of online content, he had no attachment to this individual. “But this could very well be the large group of people our ‘friend’ is after.”

Similarly, Luna wasn’t aware of this person’s identity either. All she was concerned about was figuring out when and where the masked menace would activate the curse from. “That’s right,” she replied as she looked around, “Since there are no televisions around, it’s likely that the Anima Curse will be activated from everyone’s phones instead.”