D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 1967 Real Steel
Chapter 1967: Chapter 1967 Real Steel
— Kat —
Steel had shown up… and then immediately whisked them away back to his house. Charle’s was left behind and all he asked was that once the case was either closed, or relevant for him, that Steel shared the details. A reasonable request in Kat’s mind. Still, it did mean they were power walking through the city for a while. Steel tried not to seem concerned but it was clear people recognised him AND recognised that something was going down. Apparently… he did this sort of thing often. Rushing too a scene without looking like he was rushing.
At least they were polite enough just to openly gawk for a bit instead of following along to see what the fuss was all about. When they got to the house, it was to Lily’s shadows stretching along the ground and essentially showing them away. They didn’t see Hedera following the path, but Lily was sat right in front of a cupboard that probably was meant for sheets and whatnot.
Steel glanced down at the familiar then back up at Kat who gave him a nod. Then… he paused at the door. “Should we get Hedera for this?” asked Steel. [She’s asleep again.]
“Apparently Hedera is back asleep. We can wake her if you want?” offered Kat.
Steel glanced down at Lily, then back to Kat, before settling on the door. “That can wait at least a bit. Just… you can clearly understand your familiar perfectly, yes?” Kat nodded. “More than normal?” Kat nodded, again. “Alright in that case hopefully the story you get from her makes some sense…”
Kat almost laughed. She’s given a full answer to Charles after all. Steel just hadn’t wanted to hear much more than ’someone tried to break into his house’ before leaving and that was fair enough. Plus, speaking openly about it on the street really wasn’t a good idea.
Steel shook his head, “Give me a quick rundown, then we’ll investigate to see if I recognise how they got in through my windows, before checking the culprit,”
“Um… there were actually two but,” Steel’s gaze shot up to Kat. “Look, this is what happened…” Kat then proceeded to, once again, retell what had happened though unlike with Charles were a few, minor, details were cut out, for Steel’s ’quick’ explanation she cut out huge chunks of the specifics to get through it all in about three minutes of explaining.
Steel nodded along the whole time, and as Kat clearly got to the end he started to head for the window. Lily hadn’t shut it just in case it was important to look at… though she had kept her ears out for anyone approaching from that direction just in case. Steel bent down to look at the window and well… to Kat it all seemed normal.
“Um, so… what are you looking for here?” asked Kat.
“I’m trying to examine the enchantments to see if we have another group of thieves able to get through them without setting off alarms… but I’m not certain that’s what happened here,” answered Steel.
“Do you mind explaining that more as you work?” asked Kat.
“I suppose so. I’m not sure you’ll get much use out of the information, but I can. Essentially, I’m trying to work out what’s allowed them to get through here… and I think it wasn’t the enchantments breaking. The enchantments here, now I look at them properly, just stop someone from opening the window from the outside.
“What they did, at least on preliminary inspection, was use a magically charged hook to unlock the windows and then ’push’ them open and the enchantment read them as being ’inside’ because of that. It’s… actually a rather annoying thing to realise because I bet there are a lot of homes with such protections, and bypass secrets like that don’t stay secret for too long,” sighed Steel.
“Wait… this seems like something that really should’ve been thought of before. I mean… even I know you can use a bit of bent wire to unlock things like that, and I’ve never purposefully looked into sneaky stuff,” answered Kat.
Steel nodded, “Yes, that’s why the mana charged part is important. It’s not REALLY enough mana to make it seem like a person, in fact they can’t put too much in or slipping it through the wards would trigger other things… but the ’being inside’ detection isn’t very robust. There is just enough mana to make it seem like there’s a person opening it from the inside you see,”
“And it can’t tell it’s not a person?” asked Kat.
“That’s much harder to do then you’d think… or at least so the experts tell me. Mostly they use little tricks like ’at least X amount of mana’ to count as a person, and you can’t have it too low or people at Rank 0 don’t count as ’people’ and that creates a whole different set of issues…”
“Wouldn’t monsters be an issue then?” asked Kat.
“Yes… but also no. Monsters have… slightly different… look I’m just repeating what I’ve said but apparently they have different ’frequencies’ of mana and you can detect that easy enough but that might just be nonsense. Plus, we don’t get a lot of monsters here. It was one of the main reasons we did after all,” explained Steel.
“And this hasn’t come up before? The trick for breaking in that is,” asked Kat.
“Perhaps,” shrugged Steel. “As I said, it’s not one I recognise and these have a habit of getting out, but that doesn’t mean they never happened before. It can be a cycle. An easy exploit in a ward system leads to people upgrading the wards, which leads to the trick not working and being forgotten… and leads to people forgetting why they made this or that change to the wards. So to make it cheaper, or more efficient in some way they change it again… opening up the vulnerability,”
“And you think that happened here?” asked Kat.
Steel shrugged and stepped back from the window. “Not necessarily. These are old wards I never bothered to update because I don’t really ’live’ here so much as I occasionally visit and use it as a place to sleep for the night. It might be different if I ever did get married or even had someone I was interested in but that’s never been the case…”
“Have you considered you’re asexual?” asked Kat, knowing it might’ve helped someone point it out to her.
Steel shook his head, “A strange word… I hadn’t realised you were translating our conversation somehow but it gets the point across. As for your question, no certainly not. I find people attractive plenty I just haven’t found anyone I’d actually want to spend my life with long term,”
“Ah, just thought’ I’d raise the possibility,” explained Kat.
“It’s no problem. It was worth considering, just obviously wrong once I think about it. Still, as I was saying. No reason to update the wards if the place doesn’t get serious use. Which of course, is why I’m not freaking out too much. It’s possible that they noticed the mostly empty but furnished house and wanted to take a chance… it’s the fact they might be looking for other things that worries me…” Steel sighed.
Kat nodded as they returned to Lily watching the closet. Steel carefully opened it and Lily shifted her shadows to capture anyone that might fly out… but instead the thief just sort of rolled out unconscious. Mask next to them, but off of course. Steel shifted around the thief a few times mostly focused on their face.
“I don’t recognise them. Not a major surprise… but they do seem a little familiar. I’m not sure if I’ve seen them scouting the place once or twice, I’m familiar with a family member… or if I’ve just seen a lot of faces in my line of work. Frankly, I don’t know where to go from here. The risk that this was targeted at me specifically is too high to just take this to the guard post and allow t hem to sort things out properly…
“But I have no desire to make a complete farce of this investigation. The fact that I’m taking on this case when it’s my house is already a little questionable but as I mentioned it’s not my home so the same level of commitment isn’t quite there… and there’s not really anyone above me to go to…”
“You could try taking her to a different guard post? One further away and likely clean? Or Charles and his guards?” offered Kat.
Steel nodded. “The first I think. Charles’ team isn’t really designed for investigating quite like this and it might still be seen as an overreach if I sent him there. I… I think I do know where to take her, even though it’s a slight risk…”
“And why is that?” sighed Kat.
“It’s a bit of a story… but I do suppose I can tell you along the way,” answered Steel.
