[THE SKY IS FALLING.

… Wait, no; it's just an Aoko. ALL THE WAY DOWN FROM THE (very) high ceiling. You might notice that she's wearing a lavender n' black version of this, complete with gadgets.]

Third time lucky…

[ Oh, look; there's an Aoko! Her red outfit is scruffed and torn, with dark patches of old bloodstains worn into the cloth, and she's carrying what can only be described as… a mop-staff. Dark, sleek wood, reinforced with a solid metal core and tipped with the same; it's a well-balanced and dangerous, if you can ignore the hilarity of gosh that sure is a weaponized mop. ]

Hello~?

[ What's she doing? Why, she's poking her nose into everywhere and anywhere, of course! ]

[This would be a Hakuba (in a light set of metal armor) throwing open a door, and slamming it closed behind him. He backs away, a long sword with a diamond blade held at the ready, and the door shakes with the sound of impact, but nothing comes through.]

It's a dark night in the Mansion this evening.

To be fair, it's dark every night, as the area is significantly lacking in any buildings or bright lights other than those that shine from the Mansion itself. But tonight the stars and the sky are obscured by low-scudding clouds pushed by a slow, damp breeze, and the moon is only visible as a hazy, sticky nimbus of white behind them.

The interior of the Mansion feels muffled as well. The lamps are turned low, their glow barely reaching farther than a handful of feet, and in many hallways there's hardly any light at all. The only illumination comes from the occasional occupied room, or a window open to the fitful light of the moon.

Of course, it's well past the twelfth hour, so this is hardly an inconvenience for most of the Mansion's guests. But deep in its darkened recesses a spill of light cuts across an empty hallway, green and flickering. The door it shines from is open a crack, revealing just a glimpse of a small, shadowed room: neat and plain, but crammed to the brim with strange and occasionally menacing knickknacks and minutiae. A faint scratching sound floats out on the light, overlaying the soft glow with an urgent, almost manic intent.

It originates from one Miss Ran Mouri, clad in a red, Victorian dress and sat at an equally Victorian desk, bent low over the pages of a journal. Her work is lit by a single foxfire candle; two greenish wax stubs already sit burnt and depleted before her on the desk. She writes frantically, without pause, filling page after page with tirades delineated in a black, scrawling hand barely recognizable as her own. Her face is drawn, her skin pale against the dark tresses of her hair, but her blue eyes are wild and feverish as they race ahead of her pen.

She does not seem inclined to stop any time soon.



((Feel free to use as a mingle, and to respond with prose or action, whichever you prefer!))

[so after a shower, some rest, and a change of clothes--some mix of orange and some other Kaito's dressing room, he wasn't really picky and he was pretty sure that they wouldn't be missing jeans and a t-shirt. The stained leather jacket and boots as well as long hair tied back by stained green cloth and the scars on his face are pretty much the tells that this would be that Jinx kid from the murdercave.

currently, he's sitting in some sitting room somewhere, quiet and tense, hyperaware of his surroundings.

two bottles of wine, courtesy of the 'Neath-Kaito currently stand near him on a table, a filled glass within reach]

In the aftermath of Christmas, the Mansion is still decked out in its festive finery, inclusive of the trees dotted around everywhere.

Tadashi has found a comfortable spot in the lobby, a big armchair by the fire that he's currently curled up in with a good book.  If you were to get in close enough to read the title, you'd find that he's reading Holmes.

Strangely enough, there's a white fox next to his chair, although it does seem to be asleep right now.

They both seem very relaxed.  Which is, of course, clearly a sign that they want to be bugged and annoyed, right?

K-Kaito? [ Softly, at first, and shaken. She touched the still-wet blood staining her front, touched the ragged tear in her shirt that marked the entry point of the bullet—pressed her hand over her ribs, over her heart, feeling the rise and fall and the steady, rhythmic beating…

And then she threw herself out of the bedroom she'd found herself in. The hallway was deserted; she broke into a run. ]

KAITO! ANSWER ME!

One moment he was on a case - he'd almost figured out the method, and the culprit wasn't going to get away - and the next he was in a hallway somewhere, furnishings completely different from any room in the house or district he'd just been in.

Cautiously, he starts looking around, opening doors and investigating floors.  The look on his face isn't too dissimilar to that of Kudo Shinichi or any of the other high school detectives... apart from the fact that he's over twenty years before their time.

It's Christmas time, so the halls are being decked out with everything the Mansion itself has not already provided - there's tinsel, and fairy lights, and red and green bunting all over the place, alongside more humanly put holly and ivy sprigs at regular intervals, and the trees are all the same size, in sizeable pots with decorations carefully laid out next to them ready to be put on.

Perhaps one of the things one should be more cautious about, however, is the fact that there is now fresh mistletoe over certain doorways.

You can find the perpetrator of this up a ladder, happily putting up more mistletoe which, while normal in every other sense, won't come down once it's been put up there.

It's probably a good thing to watch what you're walking under... and who with!

[OOC: You can have characters finding mistletoe and decorating the trees Akio put out both here and in new threads!   I hope everyone has fun with this.   I'm thinking that anything he puts up like this will last as long as whatever the Mansion does for the Christmas season, and this can apply for anything anyone else does as well, I suppose. :)]

*The first thing about this new arrival is that he's older. Possibly by a good ten years.

He is familiar with being pulled out of one space and plopped into another, so it was hardly surprising to him that he's found himself in another manor.

But the lack of surprise didn't mean he couldn't be cautious. Or angry. He'd just recovered enough from his injuries to be moving around without getting lightheaded, and here he was again away from home and without Kazuha.

He's dressed in light clothes that are easy to move in. A tank top and cargo pants. The tank top is thin enough to show the gauze taped to his chest, as well as numerous scars across his arms and shoulders. There is another thick bandage around his right bicep. Slung around his waist, almost carelessly, is a gun holster, but he's holding the gun in his left hand, keeping it low in order to keep it from being noticed immediately.

He's got a wary look about him, as if he's been through this sort of situation before, and he glances around the parlor he's found himself in before moving to the door and creaking it open. Front hall? Or perhaps another living room. He cases it quickly, checking for life, before moving it.

Heiji does this with every room he passes, stepping swiftly, but quietly down the halls, and slowly tries to piece together where he is.*