They force a frown “Awh, why so coy?” They then set the body down again, clearly semi-fatigued “Maybe we could do a help me help you arrangement”
The notion of an arrangement is exactly what makes Taisto nervous, but he isn’t one to back down so easily. Instead, he questions the offer. “And what kind of arrangement would that be?”
He completely ignores the absolute tree of a man standing next to him, and pretends for a moment that he doesn’t exist so that Taisto can steer this conversation in the direction he wants while Arthur-Oliver’s manager gets yelled at beyond the fourth wall.
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“You tell me what you’ve found, and I help you find out what you want” They shrug “Seems like a win-win”
Setting down the body, Taisto and A-O can see the person’s features a little more clearly. The one now lying down on the ground anyway.
She has a bushy, purple tail, akin to that of a wild wolf, and something suspicious sticking out of her head… are those ears? You can see streaks of brown in her purple hair.
That’s definitely a lady though. And is that dried blood on her hands? Her forehead was bandaged up however.
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Taisto narrows his eyes. “What makes you think we’ve found anything worth noting? What if I told you that, up to this point, we haven’t found anything other than a room full of corpses with bullets in their skulls?” he counters. He’s not lying; after all, they’re standing right in front of the door.
His attention shifts to the body as the stranger sets it on the ground again, and he takes in the details as he scans her up and down. This… he’s seen someone like this before, hasn’t he? On his midnight pizza delivery rounds, he’s positive.
Turning back to the stranger, Taisto heaves a sigh. He still wasn’t ready to trust this person, but considering the wolf lady was still breathing, it was rather unlikely her attacker would keep her alive like this. “What’s the story here?” he interrogated, motioning at the unconscious body. “You said this place is a death trap, but we aren’t dead yet, and neither is she. What’s this hotel hiding?”
He reaches into his pocket, his hand resting on the small metal ball they found in Room Four. He rolls it around a couple times between his fingers before deciding to take a chance, and holds it out to the stranger to examine if they want.
“Then I’d ask how many corpses.” They shrug before moving closer to take the metal ball and while looking at it answer the other questions “I found her uncon in a room bleeding from their forehead, i bandaged it up and figuring they might be of use, have been lugging them around. And for the death trap part, there are more than those corpses, there are cultists who worship a god and I suspect the cultist are behind their current state.”
They clear their throat before commenting “The hell is this supposed to be”
“Four,” Taisto answers as he hands over the metal ball.
He mulls over the information he’s just been given; it’s suspicious but not condemning. Choosing to believe it until a contradiction arises, he frowns as more questions come to mind.
“The hell is this supposed to be?”
A simple shrug is the response from Taisto. “Hell if I know. We found it in the room with the corpses.”
“Four?” They seem to be confused “Then where did the fourth come from?” They keep looking at the metal ball before slipping it in the pocket of their coat “Well, I figure we aren’t gonna get much from staying in one place huh?”
Kumo brings her hand behind her head and scratches it.
“Well unusual is a wide term.”
She paused for a second looking downwards
“There was a thing I saw when I, or it woke me up is closer to the truth. I saw a monochrome person and I think they where trying to talk to me.”
“…Somethin’ strange goin on in this town. Yulan, come on, we’re leaving. I’d suggest you follow us out of here, lady. It’s not safe here.” Daigo tosses his cigarette on the ground in front of him and extinguishes it underfoot as he begins walking down the old stairwell that Kumo came from.
Until this point in the conversation, Arthur-Oliver had been entirely - and surprisingly - as silent as a statue, warily standing to the side of Taisto as he examined the figure in front of him. As he considered the suspicious stranger, and considering the strange nature of this hotel, he decided it wasn’t worth interrogating them yet, or shoving them into a pair of handcuffs Arthur-Oliver didn’t possess.
Despite them being caught carrying a ‘person’, and practically all-but-confessing to a mass murder.
“Then where did the fourth come from?”
There was a way of talking to people, particularly criminals on the wrong side of the law. Arthur-Oliver didn’t have a chance to practice that particular branch of his skill often, but he still had it, albeit if rusty. Nobody considered themselves to be in the wrong, the villain of their own story. Or at least, nobody who actually was. Which was why, with a polite and friendly tone, Arthur-Oliver said somewhat cheerfully, “good enough for me. I’m Arthur-Oliver, and your name is…?” He trailed off, waiting for them to fill in the blank. He specifically didn’t introduce Taisto, since if he hadn’t done so yet, he may not have wanted to.
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“There is no name of which I am worthy to be referred to other than Koral. So if it pleases you, refer to me as such” They pocket they metal ball and then stare down Arthur-Oliver “Now why are you in this deathtrap?”
“I work here,” Arthur-Oliver replied with a smile. “Not in the Hotel, but the building it replaced.” It didn’t occur to him that perhaps the Gateway Hotel manifested in different locations for different people.
“Then what do you do for work?” Koral smiles, finally, perhaps someone they can have a true contest with
Ah. A tricky question, one Arthur-Oliver refused to lie about. He didn’t mind omitting facts, however. “Mostly desk work, sometimes I get to talk to people, help them out.”