Midday Nightmare [Geata/Anonymous]

Azoth had suspected it before, but this confirmed it: Anonymous could read her mind. That’s how he’d figured out what he had of her powers. How deep, and how much more about her he had gleaned, she was unsure. But it meant she had to be careful what she thought about - if she was, indeed, capable of doing so.

She did not attempt to hide the fact that she still very much disagreed with Anonymous’s simple and naive view of the king and his power. Nor did she attempt to hide her miffedness that the case of an event such of this would be a non-problem for her. She could simply detect the mines out in the water they crossed, directly in front of them, as Anonymous had said the ship was locked, and deactivate any that were in the path of the ship.

“The ship is clearly the knight on the left.” Azoth stated. If the name of the ship and the dot on the grid didn’t make it obvious enough. Her first thought was to move across the board in the pattern of the knight, but any kind of sane crossing of the board would take less than six moves to complete, even with the two given coordinate parts, D and 5, taken into consideration. Next, she wondered to the positions of the pieces as had been set up on the original chess set. There were indeed pieces at D and 5, but the pieces were scattered and not all would be a danger to a ship traveling in a straight line. Further, the knight couldn’t move to hit any of them on its initial turn.

Azoth sighed. It didn’t all line up correctly. Anonymous’s ‘hint’, she assumed it to be, was of little use. Still, she spoke it aloud, in case Geata might be able to make something of it. “You already the a back.” She mumbled. Who knew.

Her next best guess was if the ship was going straight, all of the threatening bombs had to be on that line or else they wouldn’t be considered a threat. She could assume the straight line it’s traveling in is the hypotenuse of the knight’s usual movement. If that could pass through the row 5 and the column D… Mentally drawing herself a picture of the board, she found it did. First, the knight could move to C3, followed by D5, then E7 before being off the bounds of the board. It bothered her that D and 5 intersected to be the same point, but given the status of the ship, she still had to assume this was correct.

Those three points, C3, D5, and E7 could be confirmed to be squares the ship would pass through and thus points of the bombs. The corner of D4 was also hit, so perhaps that was a point as well? Acting off that assumption, C2 and E6 were also likely to contain bombs. The order was likely to be the order by which the ship passed through them, making the pattern C2, C3, D4, D5, E6, E7. Pragmatically because she couldn’t reach them but personally because she felt like spiting Anonymous just a little, Azoth formed small cubes of metal to land on the buttons in that order.

Geata cared not for hearing Anonymous's voice in his head, but there really wasn't anything he could do about it. Especially since it was clue enough to give Geata an idea. "Have heard answer" was all that was needed, but Azoth adding what she had apparently heard was confirmation. If they had heard the answer already, and there clearly wasn't an answer in the explanation of the "riddle", then it must have been given before. There wasn't anything in the last riddle, except possibly the order, and he doubted the fake Azoth from earlier had said anything considering how the game hadn't even been accepted yet. Which would leave either the attack (which would have been horribly unfair, even for what was going on), during Anon's temper tantrum (which was also doubtful considering how he was thinking they would leave), or during the introduction of the game. And the only thing that would've been even close to an answer was...

Suddenly, Anonymous was laughing and walls were burning and Geata realized Azoth had done something again. Something wrong. Having already guessed at the answer, the masked super didn't pay attention to a word that was being said. Instead, he took the time to actually take note of the pedestals positions. Assuming the order was the order of power, Geata mumbled the coordinates to Azoth, half in case he forgot the actual positions, half to make sure he remembered them.

When they were brought back to the room, he wasted no time discussing. Azoth didn't bother to ask him his thoughts on her answer, he wasn't about to waste his breath doing the same considering how they were apparently on a deadline now. First he pressed B3, then D4, followed by F3, D2, G5, and finally A5. Might it be the wrong order? He was willing to admit it could be, but it made sense to him.

Azoth’s brow tightened. That… didn’t make any sense. She’d already thought of that possibility and ruled it out due to other factors, yet that was the answer? It made her head hurt. She was unsure if Geata was simply more reckless than her or was operating on a similar mindset as Anonymous, but, her answer wrong or not, she was glad he was at least getting them right. Though, Anonymous’s continual jabs at her inability to solve his unfair puzzles was annoying to say the least. But, if that’s what he wanted to think of her, so be it. He could underestimate her all he wanted.

In part because she chose the last one and in part because she didn’t really want to play this game (even if she as doing so and would continue to do so anyway), she did not immediately pick the next peice.

“Do you want to select the next one?” She asked flatly.

Anonymous then smiled as soon as Geata pressed the button; he snapped his finger and changed the scenery around them into a different place. Soon both Azoth and Geata found themselves standing in front of a deadend neighborhood with five houses standing before them. If they looked at each other, they’ll see the both of them are wearing a police uniform. Behind them are the patrol car and a long street with people and building appeared behind the police’s yellow tape.

Anonymous then approached them in his usual clothe behind the crowd as some of the photographer taking picture of them. Once he made it through the yellow tape, he pulled out a small notepad:

“Well, I did what you asked and interview everyone here about the perp, it isn’t much but I’m sure you two can handle it.” he then cleared his throat as he began to read from the notepad:

“So here’s the situation: the Emerald City Bank got a break in, and the perpetrator got away with one of the safe-deposit box containing eight pawns pieces made of pure solid gold. We managed to track him back to the neighborhood right before you,” he pointed to the five identical houses before them as he continued, “Unfortunately, this is where our trail gone cold. We only have one search warrant prepare; if we got the wrong house, by the time we get a new warrant, the perpetrator would get away and we might never find him again, so please choose carefully.

Now, from what I managed to gather from those folks back there, they said that they saw our perp running down this street with the safe-deposit box, so we are certain one of them is the guy. We know that each house belonged to five different ethnicity people, they decorated their interior wall in different color, drink different type of beverages, own different pets and work different type of job. Here’s the list of what they are,”

He then handed Azoth a piece of notepaper with many words written on them in a list:

• Colors: red, blue, yellow, green, white
  
• Ethnicities: Caucasian, African American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic
• Beverage: milk, tea, coffee, water, wine
• Jobs: pawnshop owner, actress, priest, night-security, construction worker
• Pets: cat, dog, fish, bird, hamster

“Now don’t worry, from our investigation we found out the perpetrator was the pawnshop owner, but since he had a bogus home address and such, we have no information on him. We know that one of them is the pawnshop owner, that much is certain, so we just need to find out which house is the pawnshop owner live and you’ll get those gold pawns back. From what I’ve gathered, here’s what we know”

He then gave another piece of note with a list written on them:

1. The Native American has a huge fish collection
2. The African-American is the night-security guard
3. The Hispanic live right next to the house with blue wall
4. The Asian drink tea
5. The green-wall owner drinks coffee
6. The bird owner is the construction worker
7. The hamster-owner live next door to the guy who drink water
8. The yellow-wall house owner loves cats
9. The guy with his pet hamster live next to the priest
10. The guy lives in the middle drink milk
11. The Hispanic live on the house address 1
12. The house with green wall is directly to the left of the white wall
13. The Caucasian lives in a house with red wall
14. The dog-lover love his wine
15. The actress live next to the cat’s owner

“Well, that’s all I got for you. You better hurry; we only have about thirty minutes before the perp got away from us once again.”

And just like that, the front window of the patrol car turned into a big digital clock that started to count down from 30 minutes.

Anonymous clapped his hand as soon as she handed him the paper; the code pattern that he saw in her head really looked as if she had a super computer inside her head. Another good thing to notice is that her power seems to require an actual physical object in her hand, seeing how she’s unable to activate her power from his illusion notepaper. This could explain how she’s able to tell an illusion appeared before her by examine if she can get any physical data on them with her power. Thus, if he want to completely fool her with his power, he need to turn his illusion into real thing. But that’ll be a topic for another time, there’s still thing he need to deal with.

“See?” Anonymous said to Azoth, “now this is what I’m expecting a Keeper to be. It’s seems that your mind are not open to all possibilities, thus you only able to solve thing logically rather than using your imagination. But hey, that lecture will be for another time.”

He snapped his finger and return them all back to the chess board, where there’re now six pawns pieces appeared on their side of the board.

“Well, since you got what left of your pawns back, I hope you don’t mind me taking the other pieces that you haven’t gotten back yet as a penalty for your wrong answer. Who am I kidding? Of course you don’t mind. Three down, three more to go, and time is ticking, so choose your next piece.”

There always came a point at which Azoth began to tune out the insults. Proud mob bosses she needed the assistance of, aristocrats she needed the favor of, despite them seeing her as little more than a child in a nice dress. It was either she made someone regret they’d ever spoke to her in the first place or she set it aside. Recently the prior had been gaining in its employment, but the present situation required the later. She told herself again, it was fine if Anonymous underestimated her. Good, even, and a compliment from Geata went a long way to making it more palatable. She smiled slightly and nodded.

Azoth stood. Still fearing distance and separation from Geata, she surveyed the remaining three pieces from a distance; tower, bishop, and queen. She had no particular inkling towards one or another, but no reason to stop to make a careful decision. Her choice was made almost at random. A small cube of metal formed above and fell on the bishop.