2020-09-03 - Lost at Sea

The afternoon progresses as afternoons are wont to do. On the Vagabond and on the boats surrounding her at the pier, everything breathes the kind of sleepy peace that permeates most late summers' day at the marina. Many of the boats and yachts are out to sea, their owners enjoying the weather. Many are not, but the season is not yet drawing near its end, and their owners are not yet working on preparing them for winter. It is quiet here, barring the occasional cry of seagulls and somebody's radio, further out, blaring out talk radio -- thankfully too far away for the words to be made out. It's a beautiful day of clear blue skies and tourists coming and going all over the beach and piers.

Ravn Abildgaard is sitting comfortably in the open area at the back end of his boat, contemplating what to do exactly with a camera tripod, a lens cap, and a broken telelens. They lie on the seat in front of him in a see-through plastic bag and he is starting to consider just heaving the whole bag overboard and getting on with his life. Some people think too much before acting.

Maggi had been out picking up so local newly deceased sea creatures to have the Pourhouse cooks fry in whatever kind of non allergen friendly oil they used there. Given the weather her hair is piled atop her head with several ear piercings visible. A pair of dark denim shorts has white flames stitched to the back pockets. Her midriff is exposed in a Wednesday Adams crop top complete with black well worn doc martens. She is pulling a child sized black wagon with a fishy smelling cooler when she spots Ravn on his boat. She gives a congenial wave in his direction. "Ahoy Casanova!" Large ebony cat eye sunglasses are pushed atop her mass of hair as she comes closer without any form of invitation.

His reverie broken, Ravn looks up and then flashes a brilliant smile at the bar tender slash parapsychologist slash fellow serial killer investigator (it's the kind of town where you really need more than one line per entry in your phone list). "Hello! Come on board if you like, I promise that her days as a floating pot love shack are in the past." He pats the woodwork of the sail boat affectionately. "Been out shopping? I have a fridge if you need that food stored out of reach of somebody."

Somebody, as it happens to be, is a black cat sitting at the prow of the boat. She looks the new arrival over with curious yellow-green eyes and then starts to stare intently at the bag. Somebody knows that food comes in bags.

This somebody has immediately captured Maggi's black heart and made it grow three times it's size in her chest. Her tone shifts to the cooing one may do at a small child one holds very dear. "The precious creature can have whatever they want!" Was this food for the bar? Yes. Would Leon be a little miffed that she spent part of the bar's food budget on feeding a cat? Yes. Was making this magnificent creature a happy kitty more important than all of that? Also yes. She opens up the container and takes out a fish which she sets down near her as she boards his boat in the hopes the feline would grace her with proximity. "Such a beautiful hunter! Yes you are!"

It was doubtful anyone had seen Maggi this affectionate towards anyone other than Queso, and this included Leon. She seemed enraptured.

The afternoon being nice was, besides the obvious yacht and sailing business, good for local trades as well. One of those docked fourth-five footers down the way actually had a pair of workman about, occasionally making trips down the pier and back to retrieve parts for the engine they were working on. They’d been at it about an hour, and seemed to know what was about them, which then would seem out of place when one of them calls:

“Hey Josh, where’d you put that fifteen millimeter? I was just using it!”
Josh, for his part, seemed confused, having been leaning over the stern to check the exhaust port near the waterline.
”I didn’t touch it.”

You expect some salty sea breeze and the occasional fishy smell when on the water, but the strangely cloying scent of something dank, like mildew, seems to waft on the breeze today. Was that another cat a few boats over?

Kitty Pryde, at least, has made a new friend; because in her world, anyone who feeds her is obviously and clearly the best human ever (and the rest of them are irrelevant). The black stray seems skittish, though -- she will not be touched, and she doesn't go for the offered fish until indeed, the human lets go of it.

"I suspect that someone's hit or kicked her," Ravn says, watching the little show. "She turned up a week ago and well... Declared ownership. I'm still getting her into a carrier at some point to be neutralised and vaccinated, though."

And indeed, with the inherent worry of all cat owners, he tosses a glance below deck; did the cat actually pee in a corner? Something here smells like a cat peed in a corner.

Maggi understands this aloof distrust, having spent a fair portion of her own interactions with humans in a similar state. Icy eyes look on in awe at the creature as it skittishly observes it's prize. "Who could ever hurt such a bewitching little creature? You are absolute royalty! Yes you are!" The cat was in her eyes the most people of all of them, deserving the most attention. Maggi then catches wind of the stench and looks up at the fokelorist.

"How do you deal with the smells of the sea out here Casanova?" She wrinkles her pale nose as a gust wafts a generous whiff in their direction.

"I don't mean to alarm you," Ravn murmurs while glancing at the other boat and wondering what the hell happened and whether someone is trying to be funny. "But I think we're about get rammed if I don't -- "

Less talking, more doing.

He gets to his feet and moves to the side of the Vagabond, ready to stop the other boat from impacting if its lose rope does indeed cause it to swing around in a pendulum motion for a collission with the other moored boats of the pier. The bay is big enough and the pull of the ocean strong enough that it might gather some momentum. "Watch out, over there!" He calls out. "You're coming loose!"

The cat doesn't care. There's fish. Lady, please leave that bag of fish here, yeeeep.

Maggi now notices that something is off in how the boat moves. She herself does not know much about boats and how they should work so the specifics of the stern thingy are lost on her, but the danger is visible. "Uhhhh I mean if it crashes I can fix your Vagabond but I don't know much I can do in water..." She looks rather panicked, a sad thing considering how happy the cat is.

"Casanova, are there pieces I can weld to stop it?" Think faster Madsen... If only she had payed attention the one time her dad took her fishing...

"Easy now." Ravn doesn't sound like he expects the two of them to be re-enacting Titanic any moment soon. "Even if we do collide it'll be at low speed and the paint job will be the only casualty. All they've got to do is loosen the stern line, take her out and back in. See the engine at the back? These are sail boats but they have motors. It's only going to be an issue if the owner didn't give them the key."

He heads back under deck to look for a spare rope. Because from the clutter and mess over there, he's not guessing those two even know where their extra coils of rope are stowed.

As intelligent as Maggi is capable of being, when it comes to topics she doesn't care for her brain turns into netting rather than a strainer. "No offense, I got 'motors' out of that. I'm kind of the worst at a lot of outdoors stuff. That's Leon's area."

She is still watching the other boat with some anxiety. More than anything she just wants to go back to looking at his cat. "So what happens now if they don't have the key?"

Ravn emerges from under deck again, carrying a coil of bright neon blue nylon rope. "Then we take the Vagabond out to them and tow her in. Rule number one of sailing, you don't leave another sailor in trouble."

He glances at the parapsychologist, then reaches over to pat her very briefly on the arm with a gloved hand. "It's fine. I know manure hits the fan all the time in this town but this is just a regular sailing accident. At least our part of it is -- I don't know what the hell they did with their rope over there."

Oh they absolutely have the key, but why aren’t they starting it up? Well not that the folks on the Vagabond would know, but a boat engine doesn’t run so well with the head cover off. Which it was, since they were working on it. For their part, at least they spent enough time on boats to know that they needed to get the boat pulled toward the pier so that one of them could dismount and reattach the bow.

Which would probably be easier if the bow wasn’t starting to list left, Maggi notices... about 20 seconds before Josh seems to stagger as the boat wasn’t quite the yaw it should have been.

”Oh fuck...”

"Is it supposed to be going that direction?" Maggi says before Josh staggers about. The most she knew for the moment was that things kept going wrong..."Oh shit it's just like the bus debacle! That nearly killed some people. Uhhh...Make sure anything you really need is on your person Ravn." Wait was that the day her jacket had gone missing. Suddenly she was leaning over the side of the Vagabond yelling at the water directly. "Give me back my jacket fuckers!" To Josh and his compatriot, and possibly even Ravn she looked crazy. At least the foreigner had enough experience with the strange that this might be acceptable. Might

"The hell you're not going to ram my boat," Ravn murmurs and more leaps than walks to the prow of the Vagabond. Quickly undoing his own boat's mooring he moves back to the aft and does the same there and then -- back to the prow again, and pushing her off from the pier to drift away from it on a straight course -- a maneuver that really required two people but perhaps he decided that now was not the time to give Maggi a crash course in seamanship (protip: It's never really the time when a woman is busy yelling at the ocean).

The direction of the waves is sidewards and the Vagabond would soon swing around if left to her own devices. Fortunately, she is not. Ravn lets her drift, towards the embarrassing mess that the other two men call a boat, positioning himself on her side so that when they do indeed come close, he can use his booted foot as a bumper. Thank the powers that be it's not a day of strong winds.

"Bloody hell," Ravn murmurs, though whether it is towards the absolute nautical disaster he's looking at, towards Maggi and her personal crusade against all things aquatic, or indeed towards Bunny and Herschel insinuating that he himself might be something as mundane as a trust fund kid --

He keeps his position, letting the Vagabond stay adrift for now, trying to make some kind of assessment of what the hell just happened (and what to do about the woman swearing down Neptune). Boats don't just spring a leak because they feel like it -- and the other boat is going down entirely too fast for something that hasn't just had a head-on collission with an underwater rock. Given that underwater rocks don't generally sneak into marinas and pounce on boats -- granted, this is Gray Harbor, they might, at that. Ravn studies the other boat intently, caring not quite as much about the two idiots on the pier; they are safe, but the idea of just letting the other boat sink pains him. She's a fine boat and... it's such a bloody mess, getting a wreck out of a marina. "Did you see anything unusual?" he calls out to Maggi.

Maggi is now flipping off rich people like the town goody two shoes totally does. Without knowing what was wrong with the disaster ship, she couldn't fix anything about it. Feeling vindicated by her gesture Maggi turns back to the person doing all the actual work and not just inciting others and yelling at unknown beings. "No, that's kind of the point though. It creates chaos, Last time it was the middle of town. Pretty sure it's why my jacket is missing, never lost it in ten years."

People in the water? They were fine! They did this to themselves. Rich people? Fuck ummm. Boat? Lost cause.

"You want something to drink?" There was nothing else when could do so she might as well get to a place where she could explain more details about the last time it happened.

The Dane manages to bite back the laughter that bubbles up in him at Maggi's outburst. On some level he agrees with her sentiments -- and if he'd been raised, indeed, in a different social strata that he actually was, he might well have joined her in flipping Bunny and Herschel the bird, as the British say. Managing nonetheless to keep a straight face -- who knows if Bunny plays enough tennis to have a good aim with her coffee cup? -- he calls back to the blonde, "There's beer in the fridge under deck if you want. Bring one for me? I'll just stay here until we're clear, then we can drop anchor and find out what the hell is going on. What do you mean, it creates chaos?"

"What the..."

So eloquent. Ravn suddenly seems to understand what Maggi was indeed talking about a moment ago. Something here is literally swiping things. For a moment he's not certain whether to be curious or insulted -- swiping things is his thing. He stays where he is, because that big yacht over there may tip and go down in an unexpected direction and if that happens, at least he wants to see it coming. This is why I got a smaller boat, he tells himself. This, and of course, one of those big bloody floating mansions would have lead everyone in this town to think I'm some kind of bored millionaire.

"Maggi," he calls out. "Stay alert. Something just swiped -- your fish."

Although, the Dane is not half as offended about all of this as his cat is. Kitty Pryde just lost her dinner. Kitty Pryde is Kitty Bloody Furious.

Maggi returns with a Heineken and some IPA from a local micro-brewery that even she had never heard of. Two black fingernail hands hold out one of each held out. "Alright so I am totally trying this IPA to see if I am willing to stock it." She looks around assessing the situation.

She looks at the cat in suspicion. "I would have given you anything you wanted little one!" She nods in a 'this is pretty par for the course' way. "It's taking things like sewer pieces and bus breaks, nearly drowned two people, almost caused an entire bus crash. Stefhan thought they were cats, pretty sure they are not."

She looks back at the floating wad of cash. "Bet they are Addington's or something...wealth divide in this town is pretty steep."

"She's mad that your fish literally just hopped overboard on its own," Ravn says and looks at the water where the container disappeared. "Not even a splash, either." Then he looks back at the sinking boat and decides that there is distance enough between them now that it's safe to drop anchor and let the Vagabond swing around. Sure, that'll block any other boats from going in and out of the pier area right now but -- so will the boat that's a little busy sinking. He loosens the anchor mechanism and, with a little splash, the boat's anchor descends.

"Mm, no, I doubt it," he murmurs in response. "Those lovely two you just flipped off aren't that rich. The really pretentious boats don't lie at pier where the rest of us mortals might look at them. Do you have any idea what these things are? Pretty sure what they did over there was steal the valves or stoppers -- yachts like that have compartments -- you don't want a technical lecture. Steal the right piece of hardware, big boat goes glub." The Dane's tone isn't condescending as much as it carries a tone of, Let's get this sorted before we're next.

Maggi struggles with an internal battle somewhere between sustaining littering and ‘how much did we like that cooler anyway’. She decides that without the fish it can stay in it’s watery grave. She takes a swig of beer deciding not to stock this particular brew, but she would finish it.

Maggi raises the bottle in reverence. “Goodbye boat, we knew ye...not at all!” She does not pour any out into the water because that is a waste of beer. “Oh Casanova, once you are sure you aren’t going to sink...firstly, I suggest insurance if you don’t have it. Just in case they take something. Second, our friend Squidward was talking to another man about occult type things. Wrote his info down on a barbershop business card. Maybe look over the wallet again?” She was only able to be so apathetic to the circumstances because the only other option was to become a stress case. This was just how her home was. Maggi took the ‘Don’t cry over inexplicably abducted fish’ approach of ‘this is fine’. She was in fact impressed every day she went into work and the bar wasn’t burned down.

If cats could cry, someone would be crying. Cats can, however, not, and hence Kitty Pryde resorts to prowling the railing, glaring at the ocean and the gently bobbing cooler with an expression that promises clawy death to fish thieves.

Ravn, on the other hand, watches the yacht sink. There is something inherently sad about it; he does not consider a boat to be a living creature, but at the same time, a sunken boat is a dead boat. It can be craned out, absolutely, but the cost of repairing the damage to her interior... Or she might be hauled across the seafloor to the beach, in which case her hull will be done for. Either way, odds are that she will end up on a garbage heap somewhere, and her owners will indeed be bugging their insurance company for money to replace her.

He glances away, back at Maggi, as she speaks. "The wallet? I had to turn that in to the police on the scene. I took pictures of everything in it first, though. The barber shop business card was full of cuneiform script. Maybe we should take a second look at those pictures. Did you and Leon actually go take a look at the place, get a haircut, read things?"

Odd how talking about a murder can feel less... disturbing than watching a yacht die. But not half as odd as the idea that there might be invisible fish and coat thieves lurking in the water beneath his feet. Gray Harbor -- not for the fragile of mind, indeed.

Sometimes when you yell into the abyss, the abyss looks back. In this case, the abyss is just a metaphor for the spindly, twig-thin hand that seems to reach over the edge of the bow. The hand was just getting purchase, pulling a bulbous head into view, the tops of watery, intelligent eyes coming into view. Unfortunately for whatever this little creature was, it really was no bigger than a cat.

And a cat just happened to be stalking the rail nearby.

In that perfectly iconic hissing snarl that can only come from an irate and attacking feline, Kitty Pryde pounces on that hand, claws out, scrabbling and swatting, catching the thing across the face. It's face drops back out of view almost immediately, letting out a bubbling shrieking, ear-piercingly high-pitched. Its fingers still clutch the edge of the boat, the rest of its head and body out of view, but Kitty Pryde was still leaning over the edge, swatting, letting this little shit know exactly who was captain of this vessel.

The scent of mildew was clear and rank in the air, it could be little doubt where it was coming from.

Maggi's talents did not lie in the realm of the physical, but these things brought out her guttural human instincts, such as one being surprised by a spider. Having finished the beer and seeing this demonic being, she chucks the bottle across the boat where it hits...absolutely nothing. Well not nothing. It hits the boat, but Maggi is such a poor shot there isn't even enough force for it to break. She swears until she notices the success of Kitty Pryde, for whom she cheers as though she is watching wrestling. "Kick its ass!"

Surely the fancy yacht would only find this as further evidence that Maggi was addled in some way. She did not at this time answer Ravn's questions, there were more immediate circumstances at foot. Speaking of foot the midnight feline had a mean swipe. Maggi jeers as though she were the assailant pointing. "That is for my jacket you rude son of a bitch!" The smell is somewhat lost on her as she watches karma unfold.

The thought of catching the -- what the hell is that, some kind of nisse? -- creature flashes through Ravn's mind and is promptly dismissed. Much as he would love to get his hands on it; getting below deck, grabbing a blanket or jacket, and getting out aft to toss it over the creature before it manages to disappear back in the water -- supernatural speed would be required. Instead, his hand quickly dips into a blazer pocket to produce his Hello Kitty-protected cell.

Can you photograph Harry Potter house elves?

One way to find out. He certainly gives it a shot. At least it'll be interesting to see what's in those photos later -- besides one very angry cat. The Dane can't quite bring himself to berate Maggi for throwing bottles at it because honestly? That'd have been his next reaction too. Hideous creature.

Maggi cringes, snapped back from visions of revenge by her own clumsiness as the glass hits the boat with a ding. "Sorry! Sorry!" She says to Ravn looking embarrassed and biting her lip. "I can uh fix that..." Maggi's eye's seem to glint with a bit of azure flame to them before she closes them in concentration. The boat is now as freshly painted as it had been previously, no noticeable damage. Leon would have gotten on her for using powers so frivolously, but she was somewhat mortified and did it mostly out of social panic. Ravn seemed to really like boats. She gives Ravn a grimace and a thumbs up which is almost comical, her iris' having returned to normal.

"You get a shot of it?" She asks, changing the subject.

Ravn looks at his cell, then shakes his head. "Unfortunately not. Great picture of angry Kitty, though. And uh... you have an interesting eye colour when you do that. It's fine. Hey, look at it this way -- we're on the boat that is still afloat."

He turns to look back at the water where the other boat very pointedly is not anymore. "I think getting back to dock might take a little effort, though -- are you up for trying, or should we just declare defeat and go borrow one of the visitor berths? I'm pretty sure the marina won't make a fuss -- at least not the kind of fuss they're going to make at those two guys who just... sank a boat."

Uggggg effort...but she was on the boat so she couldn't very well say no honestly. "Sounds great." Maggi utters flatly. To be fair this was her normal amount of enthusiasm for anything that was not in her wheelhouse. Kitty Pryde was looking at her in her mind with something akin to respect at that response, though it may be imagined. "Also umm...thanks?" He hadn't exactly payed her a compliment but, he hadn't exactly not. What could she say, the fire was part of her. "Instructions whenever you're ready, but don't expect great things, you saw the bottle." Maggie is shuffling a little where she stands.

Ravn laughs softly and shakes his head. "No, no. Not complicated. Just, basically, get up in front and tell me if we're about to hit the wreck down there. I'll sneak us in past it at a pace of about minus two knots per hour. The alternative is swimming ashore and I think at least Kitty will subject me to the house elf treatment too if I suggest it."

He heads aft and looks at Maggi, a little more carefully. "Are you all right? You saw it too, didn't you? Little monster right out of Harry Potter, vanished back into the water without any kind of splash, like it was never there? After, uh, very nearly paying the ultimate price for losing Kitty her second or third lunch today?"

Maggi moves towards the front of the boat and looks over in relief, not physical effort required. She had forgotten her doctors note stating a severe allergy to such things. She nods towards him in reassurance. "Ya, I call them trash monsters. They smell god awful and ruin everything. Kind of like children." She was watching the water carefully, but still speaking. "Little to the right."

Kitty was a hero who deserved fourth fish if she liked. Maggi made a note to bring some by to their savior. "Your cat is a goddamn national treasure by the way."

"Trash monsters." Ravn tastes the word even as he pulls up the anchor and then inserts the key to turn the Vagabond's engine on. It rumbles gently. "The smell certainly is a give-away. And that... thing... stole your jacket. And hides in the sea. I kind of want to laugh at this -- I'm sure the owner of that other boat will not be laughing, though. And I have a feeling that if the creature had not made the mistake of pissing off a certain national treasure, we might not be laughing now, either."

The Vagabond inches a bit to the right and creeeeeeeps towards the pier. There is a wreck down there, just below where you can quite see it properly, and the last thing Ravn wants is to hit it. He ignores Bunny and Herschel's stares from that other yacht, the floating wad of cash one. "Do you have any idea what to do about them? You said they -- stole a bus, was that it?"

"You're clear." She states, now looking up from the water toward him and cocking her head. "Close about the bus, they stole breaks. So the bus couldn't stop. They also stole a sewer valve thing. People were almost drowned, electrocuted, in car crashes. It's like a shitty rube goldberg machine. Cause and effect." Maggi sticks out her tongue at the bougie yachters. "Trash monsters are apparently kleptos? Dunno. They have invoked my ire."

"Well, yeah -- stealing small things isn't quite as funny if it gets people killed." Ravn shuts the engine off and lets inertia do its thing. The Vagabond glides towards the pier at a stately speed. "I'm pretty certain I wouldn't be laughing if I suddenly found myself in a lead role in a Speed reboot. I guess this one goes on the Gray Harbor is Bizarre file for now -- if all we know is that they steal things and smell horrible."

Bump.

The collission with the pier, if one can indeed use such a strong term, reverberates gently through the fiberglass of the boat. Ravn wanders up to secure her lines properly before looking up at Maggi again. "So -- barbershop. Did you and Leon go? I'm a bit at a loss on that one too. Paper says they found another body. This is just... Gray Harbor, is it? Did you ever agree on what your bar is called?"