imeeji_frontstage | Pest Control: Start!

Who: Who indeed?
Where: Where indeed?
When: When—Day 259

[ Today's rainy day may be a respite from the summer's heat, but the clouds that herald the weather are darker than one might expect—pitch-black and foreboding, they seem to be bringing in more than just rain. . .

Incidentally, whether you decide to spend today inside or enjoy the rain outside, you might see a brightly colored something hopping around. Does it have four legs? Two? Is it a stray cat, perhaps? Whatever it is, it's laughing at you.

It darts around the periphery of your vision as though to taunt you, fast-moving blurs of glaring color, before suddenly coming into view—along with something recognizable. The creature itself could be anything: humanoid or animal-like, with devil wings or forked tails, but that might not be important to you, because right now it's holding something important to you. It isn't necessarily the most important thing to you, but it does carry some sort of emotional significance or necessity—or maybe just something you were about to use or that meal you were just about to eat—and if it's not a something that it's carrying, then maybe it's a someone. Hey, what the fuck?

Before you can really react, the creature snickers and scampers away with your belongings, running into the rain. . . but not without dropping a little bomb, similar to what an AlcheME!'s smokebomb might look like. In an instant, it sets off, leaving you covered in glitter and with a new (relatively harmless) change—purple hair, animal ears, tiny helium balloon voice, or anything else to the tune of an AlcheME! potion's status effect. Just like an AlcheME! potion, the effect will wear off anywhere from 10 minutes from now to a week from now, but are you going to take this lying down? That thing just took your shit and prank bombed you!

If you do end up chasing after it, you'll find a growing stack of Precious Belongings™ in the park, which has now been transformed into a mud moat and maze. Various effect bombs have been planted in the area as traps, just waiting for you to set them off.

If you don't end up chasing after it (or, hell, even if you do) you'll see another creature—certainly not the same one although looking very similar to the first one you saw—attempting to do the same thing, either to you or someone else, or maybe attempting to sneak into your dorm so it can rifle through your stuff.

Attempting to catch the creature is a crapshoot, but if you manage to do it—whether with your hands or with a net or you know, just killing it—the creature explodes into a puff of dark smoke before dispersing, maybe even dropping something else along the way. Before you know it though, there'll be another one trying to prank you . . .

What's going on? Who turned AlcheME! into actual goblins?? If that's not AlcheME!, then what the fuck is happening??? Who's responsible for this???? And, most importantly, how do you fix it????? ]

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