<div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><strong>The Fuchsia Fox and an Artifact Absent</strong></span></div><br/><div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/rrbvOfC.png)</div><strong>NAME:</strong>Nerissa<br/><strong>DAY:</strong>December 26th, 2018 |<br/><strong>LOCATION:</strong>The Pawnhouse Zaisan<br/><strong>TAGGING:</strong>Toshiro<br/><strong>EXTRA:</strong><br/><strong>WEARING:</strong><br/><br/><hr/><br/>Nerissa glanced at Toshiro’s hand on hers. That was probably the best he could do to show his sympathy, so she smiled appreciating the gesture. “I do hope that you are right… I feel like I attract the wrong kind of people and at the same time I’m completely blind to the ones I should go for. If I wouldn’t offer my help when it’s needed many of the things I use to say would be just empty words. I try to live by words.” The fox demon said with a small smile.<br/><br/>When Toshiro squeezed her hand again it started to amuse the girl and she reached out to squeeze his hand back. “It’s okay. No one got hurt… I mean that neither I or Az got hurt.” She couldn’t say the same from the poor souls who intruded into her home. “I trust too that Az is doing his best to find out what their motive was. So far it’s a big mystery. They… kind of died too fast to ask any questions from them.” Nera wasn’t completely honest. After some time she had remembered one event which might be connected to the unexpected ambush. But she hadn’t told about it when she should have and if she told now… it might raise doubts, directed at her. Nerissa was afraid that those doubts might ruin what she had now, so she chose to stay quiet.<br/><br/>“I’m great at sneaking! I’m a small fox, so I’m silent and hard to spot. You do realize that your plan sounds crazy? Well… If everything goes wrong, I will do my best to save what is left of your hide. I have practised sword fighting and shooting, so… Maybe it’s enough to give us a chance to escape if nothing else.” Toshiro didn’t look like a fierce warrior, and now he was in such a miserable condition that even a small child could kick his butt. Nera felt like responsibility weighed heavy on her small shoulders.<br/><br/>“You are right. We could use this time to try to locate the statue.” The fox demon got out of the car without waiting for Toshiro to open the door for her. She grabbed her handbag with her and opened the back of the car. The baton barely fitted into a pocket of her jacket. On another pocket she slipped a pistol, and another pistol she placed in a pocket of Toshiro’s hoodie. “Just in case,” Nera explained before locking the car. Now they were armed, and hopefully that would be a precaution. Nerissa wanted to take a shotgun with her, but concealing such a big gun was basically impossible.<br/><br/>Nera looked up at Toshiro when he offered her his arm. “Are you making this look like a date on purpose?” She didn’t know his motive behind this polite gesture, but she assumed that the poor being just tried to be friendly. His speech still showed how upset he was. Nerissa wrapped her arm around his and leaned against him intimately. “Let’s try to locate the statue. It will help us if we know in which part of the shop it is. How about we start from the alley?” The fox demon asked and nodded her head in the general direction of the alley in question. It was a narrow alley between two buildings, filled mostly with trash and some small critters rustling under garbage in hopes of finding something worth eating.<br/><br/>“Do you play mahjong? Looks like there is a mahjong parlor upstairs of the pawnshop.” There was a yellow faded sign right above the pawnshop, and in it stood a name of a mahjong parlor. “We could check the alley and then go play some… Do you think you can use the compass without others noticing? If the parlor is right on top of the pawnshop we might get accurate readings of the statue’s location.”<br/><br/>The fox demon wrinkled her nose when they stepped on the alley. It stank. Badly. She circled around a pool of something. She didn’t even want to guess what it was and as she walked around the suspicious pool of some kind of liquid something sticky got stuck on the sole of her shoe. “Oh… This really is a bad area…” The demoness murmured and tried wiping the sole clean against the ground. The alley ended up in a deadend, but while they were there they could notice a backdoor into the building. On the other side of the building wasn’t an alley because the next building was built right next to the one where the pawnshop was. “I wonder if that takes right in the pawnshop or on some hallway…” Nerissa wondered aloud while looking at the door. “Can you pick locks? If not… I think that ventilation shaft might lead into the store. If we can stop the propel I could check where the shaft leads...” The shaft was too small for her to crawl in it in her human form, but she wouldn’t have a problem doing that in her fox form. The only problem would be that if the shaft did a 90 degree turn or it was blocked at the other end so she couldn't force it open.<br/>