Now there's a cautionary tale, if I've ever seen one. Poor two-left-footed girl convinced herself watching her step was for chumps when she could leave the spirit world after a grand total of 11 seconds. But, all it took was one spectral malefactor to leave her potentially locked in that world for good when she could have avoided it with a bit more care. This is why dying is never worth it, not even once. That's my one bit of free advice, it could save your life one day.
Oh well, she's got an entire afterlife to dwell on her mistakes and we've only got 48 hours to fix them. Let's do some cop's job for him, shall we?
When it felt like the train lag wasn't kicking my ass anymore, I got out of my room to see Lupin the Third and Lulu the Theurgist do the same. Lulu joined me as I walked downstairs to the Maintenance Hub, and I just as quickly left her as I went down to the basement. I might have caught whisperings from some of you about some loot in the Smuggler's Hideout, and when I took a peek, sure enough...
THREE, count 'em,
THREE treasure chests! Sure, sure, any one of them could have had enough gold and jewels to earn me an instant retirement, but think about the office storage potential of the chests themselves! They've been jacking up the prices for shelves and bins at Staples, you know!
They were each encased in a block of ice, and I
could have melted all three of them, but I figured I only had the room to take one home with me, so...middle, it is. So, when all's said and done, I had to go over to the Cinder Mine to chip off a piece of red-hot coal with my sledgehammer, bring it over to the hideout with a pair of tongs, and dump the rock onto one of the icy prisons to let it melt. It was going to be a while, sure, but I was content to dream of the maaaany tax records I could keep in that chest until then.
I meet again with Lulu at the bottom of the stairs, who was carrying some documents and a glowing, maybe radioactive tube. Counting myself lucky that I remembered my anti-radioactivity supplement pills this morning, we climbed the stairs together, and at the top I saw...
HIM! Lee Chaolan, at last! I had been working up some theories on the spirit-hunting possibilities of Violet System's Combots for quite some time (Exorcots? Supernaturots??), so I was striking gold to run into him here, in all the paranormal conferences in all the world. So, we did what any two businessmen would do at a chance meeting like this: We shook hands. We exchanged business cards. And we locked eyes and formed a psychic connection with one another over
the oceans of fucking money we could make. Or, at least, that's what it felt like on my end. Networking, gives you the tingles.
After we went our separate ways, my next task was to head to the Garage to grab myself a nice two-foot wrench to protect my-IIII mean patch up any leaks I happen upon. I mean, I needed to be ready in a building that probably had maintenance last done on it half a century ago, shit could happen at any time. Flow, even. Plumbing contingencies aside, a prospective client messaged me earlier requesting a certain blueprint from the Drafting Studio, so I attended to that, all the while dealing with that nosy Lulu following me into the room.
I left after her, figuring I still needed to do a more thorough examination of the Graveyard. What struck me as odd was that most of the tombstones were completely smooth, not even any inscriptions on them...as if they were just there for the decor. Even a cheap haunted attraction at an amusement park would have bothered with some boring crap like "Here lies Disemboweled Diana". I went over to the mausoleum to see if there was anything worth bothering with about that, and as I was peeking through a crack, that bony busybody Vigil came by to warn me to not go in without his permission or something like that. Whatever, respecting their customs is a key element of human-spirit relations, just gotta be sure he's not looking when I go grave-digging.
Figuring I'd make a nice vegetable soup later, I walked around to the Garden to fetch some crops, and afterwards went over to the Workshop to grab some tools, as per my client's request. While I was there, I was being stared at by....
Yeesh,
Albina. And I thought I've acquired a getting-spooked immunity at this point. Reminded me of that one
Dim Souls boss that took 6 hours for me to beat....
Something about her gaze took away the rest of my energy for the night, so I went to bed, praying that her mask didn't have the eyeholes necessary for her to remember my face and hunt me down like a rabbit.
....Wait,
I forgot to come back to the treasure in the HideoUT SON OF A
BITCH