Catch a Star

Daria Xela Matthewson; November 8, 2009

PERSONAL ACTION:

Goal: Figure out what happened to Cassandra and whether or not she is still alive.

I'm calling up everyone I know who knows Cassandra and asking them when they last saw her and/or contacted her and if they have any idea where she might be or what might have happened to her. This includes her out of town friends, the Danger Bullets. I'm also calling Cassandra's phone occasionally.

Influence Response:

Cassandra's phone goes to voice mail immediately, and she doesn't seem to be returning you calls.

You head to her haven, where formerly you, her and the professor talked philosophy and bullsh*t amidst a continuous barrage of video games, and find that her housemate, the long-suffering Mike Meeks (underground trans-dimensional lesbian demon erotica comic book artist extraordinaire) has been getting a lot of people asking about her. He lets you in though, half-recognizing you as being one of the people in Cass's inner circle, and offers you a PBR while he tries to mull out the details of whatever the f*ck has just happened. He seems just about as baffled as you.

"She left two Friday's ago... came in covered in glitter and wearing a red dress and a long jacket. Her face was a little bloody and she told me it was seriously just a nose bleed. I believed her... looking back, this is likely because I'm an idiot.

Anyhow, she took a bunch of old things I think Pangloss gave her... pressed rose, old pulp novel, stuff like that, and vacuumed the living room again. She pulled the same sort of stunt when she and the prof broke up back in September. Set everything (including my mini-vac!) on fire in the barrel out back, smiled and giggled and said she had to go catch a star or something weird.?

"Not that... you know, she ever said anything that wasn't weird."

He sighs.

"I really don't know why they think it was her in that car - but there it is. Something was certainly up, and I'm not really that sure I want to accept that she's gone. Suicide wasn't her style.... but then again I suppose nobody ever really expects that sh*t."

He swallows some more beer a little forlornly, and shows you where Cassandra stashed her stuff, if you ask. You find many still semi-folded hippie skirts and protest tees, in addition to a standard assortment of toiletries and stuff that one might keep around to look human. There are also a few old comics, a pair of groucho glasses and a Crackerjack decoder ring. He also lets you check the barrel out back, where you unsurprisingly find mostly ashes, in addition to the gutted plastic skeletons of two rather crappy looking dirt devils. If you sift around in the grime a bit, you can feel out fragments of not entirely burnt paper, plastic, or wood; the long coils that form the backs to spiral bound notebooks; and what seems to be the metal shell of what used to be a fairly nice fountain pen.

You slide Meeks some beer money and condolences, and move on from the ex-haven, calling up Kiki Vociferous in Seattle to get in touch with any members of the illustrious Danger Bullets that might have a lead on where their glorious leader scampered off to. Keeks is completely in the dark. She hadn't even known Cassandra was missing, although she was suspicious over the communications lag of the last month. Still, until your call, she thought things were peachy and that the next shipment was a week and a half away.

She says she'll ask around, and gives you a list of people down in Staten who were apparently on Cassandra's end of the operations. While none of them prove extraordinarily useful in the search for Cassandra, you realize that you now have an effective PING on a small Underworld network.

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