Kill A Mouse In Three Easy Steps [Antonetta, Alex]

She hated this place, she loathed this place. It did not matter if the architecture was fine or even if it was pretty. This place was like a stain on this planet to her for one sole reason that made her blood boil and her have to consciously keep from grounding her teeth together in frustration while she worked. The only solution she had was to place herself entirely into her work, immerse herself and for a moment put aside her identity as Antonetta Ovide.

Her dramatis personae if you will. She was not here to painfully commit sororicide, or subvert this organisation to do her mother's will. No small amount of resources had been committed to ensure that her false identity was air tight, even though she looked like Antonetta Ovide there was no background check that her current identity couldn't fool. Birth certificates, legal documents, entire work histories all commited as evidence that secured the existence of her as someone else.It didn't matter anyway, she'd be gone in a couple of days anyway. One way or another.

"Excuse me, sorry to interrupt you. I'm Alina. I was just wondering if you know where..."

Taking a pause from the red silhouette that stood taller than her, she shifted her attention down to gaze at the device that looked like a phone. She needed a terminal or some kind of entry point, perhaps if she could hack some of the local networks quietly then she might be able to look for clues as to where her mouse of a sister was hiding.

"This place is."

She finished, raising up the phone so that the red-head could get a better look at the map displayed on it but no directions. Weird but Antonetta was happy to act like she was a technological dunce, she knew exactly where she was and wanted to go but information was sometimes dangled right in front of your nose if you looked. Could this person know anything about Arlette and Alastair?

Admittedly, this was quite foolish in her head. She was asking this person because they had the exact same hair colour as Alastair. It wasn't a common colour and so she hoped that they might be related. If they were then she had somewhere to start.

"Huh?"

Alex had just been on her way home from a quick run to the store, and she'd almost totally missed when someone actually tried to catch her attention. Thankfully, she wasn't that absent minded, and besides, she loved to help people!

"Oh, nice to meet you Alina! I'm Alex! Um... Lemme see..."

Studying the map for quite some time, hoping that maybe she could eventually piece together where the location was, she eventually gave an apologetic grin as she shook her head.

"Nope! I'm not super good at readin' maps or anything like that. But I can help you find it! I don't want you getting lost, this city's pretty big so it can be scary if you can't find your way while you're alone!"

Taking the lady's hand without actually asking, she continued to smile quite brightly, pointing off in one particular direction as she started to walk.

"What're you looking for here, anyway?"

Oh. This was not an adult woman as she had assumed by the fact that she was... Well, bigger than her in all areas. It was jarring almost when what was clearly a young girl took her hand and began to lead her off. Something that almost caused her to trip by the fact Alex had bested her at her own game for a brief moment, if she was less trained she might've fainted or teared up at the memories of grabbing at her sisters' and dragging them along to try and get them to do something.

Rarely did it ever work well to just grab them and begin leading them somewhere though.

"Oh, hahaha. That's okay dear."

She felt a little put off talking to this giantess of a teenager like she was a little kid but it was exactly what she gave off the impression, this girl was pretty interesting if she had taken a bit more time to think about it. She did not though. There was a reason for her being here and Antonetta hoped that Alex would be a step in the right direction to resolve it.

"I'm looking for an old friend, his name's Alastair. I got a new phone recently which is really hard to figure out, lost his contact details and I'm not sure where he lives since the last time I saw him was in Europe. I just saw your brilliant red hair and it looks just like his so I was wondering if you were related to him by chance?"

A bit of a gamble, Antonetta really didn't need this girl screwing up her plans but it would all work out fine. She'd make sure of that, as rash as it was everything about her approach to this mission was wrong and off. Plauged by emotions of betrayal and misery on top of Arlette knowing how she operated. This meant she had to do things differently.

"Oh, I have a lot of trouble with phones too! They're super complicated sometimes, so that totally makes sense."

Alex's thoughts had focused mostly on the mention of difficulties with technology, if only because that was the more immediately relatable thing for someone like her. It was pretty hard to try and figure out how to send Nanna a message sometimes, but she'd kinda gotten it mostly handled by now. She was a pretty smart cookie sometimes!

"Alastair... Oh! Yeah, I know a Mr. Alastair with red hair! Um, I'm not sure if he's the same one you're lookin' for though."

Even a girl of her intellect wasn't quite so foolish as to just assume that the two of them were the exact same person, though she naturally wanted to be as helpful as possible.

"You do?"

Antonetta was a little bit surprised that fortune favoured her right now, not that she would also jump to the conclusion that it was the same Alastair. Based on the information she was able to acquire of Alastair he had sisters but they were quincy and this girl was... not that. How unfortunate but it was a start.

"Well, my Alastair has long red hair just like your's and he's really nice. His full name's Alastair Eisfluch. Is that sounding like your one?"

She tried to lean into the young girl's attitude. Talking a bit more playfully and childish herself, painfully reminding her of the way that she'd try and do it to be the cute, unassuming little sister that was always eager to support and dote upon her elders. How far away that dream was now and empty she felt as a result. It made her nauseous just to think about.

"Oh, that definitely sounds like Mr. Alastair! He's super nice, he's friends with...my best best friend, hehee."

Alex's face turned a faint shade of pink as she said that, not entirely used to speaking about Inanna in those terms. But she was naturally happy that the two of them had taken that step! Anyway, she didn't want to get distracted.

"He comes by my house sometimes to have tea with my best best friend's mom and stuff, or for work things. I can take you there if you want! It'd probably be easier to see him when him and Ms. Ninsianna are having their meetings and stuff anyway, right?"

Even as she said that, Alex was still walking in a direction that wasn't actually toward her house, still at least primarily focused on going where she figured the map probably was showing.

Best, best friend? What did that mean? Well it didn't matter, what was more curious was the additional information Alex was forthcoming about. So he was involved with the Albedochiffren Director? Well this complicated but Antonetta was not keen to go straight into a lion's den, she wanted Arlette.

How to draw her out? She idly pondered using the little girl she was chatting to now. It was leverage but for the wrong person if she were trying to antagonise Ninsianna then it would align a lot easier for her but she imagined that Alastair wasn't actually that attached to this girl beyond her being someone needing protection.

"I suppose it would but I'm not really interested in meeting this Ms. Ninsianna person. Really I think I might get nervous in front of someone like that, she's supposed to be real important around here. Right?"

So they continued to wander a little bit. Antonetta's frustration growing a little more while thinking about Arlette, it felt like every turn of this mission was looking for a different way to twist at her, eroding the person she had so happily been before. A kid that was having the reality of the world dawning.

"Oh, yeah! She's super important I think, like some big boss or something like that. I'm not sure, I've never really asked or anything, but she does come home kinda late sometimes from working so much so I think she's probably really busy."

As the two walked over a bridge over one of the lagoons that dotted the ringed floating city, Alex stopped for a moment and looked down at the water, her eyes brightening as she did so.

"Oh oh, the fish are here! They've been super shy ever since that Ichigo guy came, I was worried they might not come back! They're my friends, so I was worried about all of them, but its good to see they're okay. Do you like animals, Alina?"

The sparkle in her gaze remained even as she began leading the way once more, the strength hiding in her youthful body rather apparent even as she innocently pulled this new friend along on their journey.

Antonetta paused next to the goliath of a girl while she looked into the water below, she wasn't really prepared for that question and the mention of animals made her think of her cats. She liked them, she liked them a lot and it made her sad to remember Eliane killing her last cat before she came to the City of Lights.

It was a necessary step to avoid bringing anything that might connect her to Antonetta and her fullbring was already problematic. She had already got a stray though and laid claim to him. Right now he was off doing some snooping for her. Two cats were better than one to kill a mouse after all.

"I do."

Then they were off again and Antonetta's gaze lingered on the girl's own hold of her wrist. The fullbringer offering a slight resistance just to gently try and gauge the strength which could easily be assumed that she was struggling to keep up with the bigger girl who was so full of energy. Just how much could Alex tug her along.

Alex certainly wasn't some unfathomably strong monster or anything like that, but her strength was at least enough to make it so that Antonetta's little resistance wasn't terribly noticeable. A combination of her strength and her excitement at Antonetta's answer made it totally unnoticeable to her.

"You do?? That's good! I like animals a lot, I've always liked fish but I really really like lots of different kinds. When I was traveling a lot I would always make friends with the kitties in alleys and stuff, they were a lot nicer than the dogs usually."

Not that she had anything against all dogs or anything, far from it. Alex was a cheery enough sort that she liked pretty much any animal, and treated a particularly mean individual as an outlier, nothing more.