<strong>Tuesday 13th August 10:23<br/><br/>Back room of the King's Head Pub<br/><br/>Bran</strong><br/><br/><br/>"Neither.  To the best of our knowledge at least.  It's regular aquarium water and the fish is from a pet shop in Durham actually.  But it works with every fish we've tried.  Although, admittedly, we haven't really studied it in any particular depth."<br/><br/>As she's talking, Ronald starts sending and receiving texts and the "bing bong" of his text received noise cuts in every so often.<br/><br/>"You need to make the cut yourself.  It will show you the name and face of anyone who has put a long term effect on you.  If there is noone it shows a female face and some hieroglyphs, we're not sure why.  It does that for newborns as well, so we think its universal.<br/><br/>"And sometimes it doesn't work.  We're not sure why, but then later it will work again with exactly the same conditions."  She gives a little exasperated shrug.  "I'd love to say I am sure there are good reasons for it being like that, but truthfully I'm not."  She takes a cloth from behind the bar and begins cleaning the knife.  As she does so, Ronald scrawls something on a sheet of paper, folds it and holds it out to her.  She takes it off him and reads through with a quick nod.  "Although it does look like we've found your friends.  Or fellow victims at least.  If you wish we can arrange a taxi to take you to them, on us of course.  You will still have time to perform the ritual before it arrives, but neither the taxi nor the ritual are being forced on you Bran."  She slowly and deliberately places the knife within your reach as your phone beeps with another received text.<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Tuesday 13th August 10:38<br/><br/>Alley at the side of McDonalds, Northumberland Street<br/><br/>Miyo, Norm, Chris</strong><br/><br/>"That's a good question, a really good question"  The lit cigarette stays in his hand as he gesticulates, adding a very small amount of danger to the sweeps of his hand.  "Ask a hundred people and you'll get a hundred answers.  Hell, you'll probably get a hundred and ten because some of the early lot will have changed their mind by the time you get to the end, you know what I mean?<br/><br/>"If you want to know what I think it's this.  This is all a fuck up.  So Waheguru speaks one word and everything comes in to being.  Man, whats the chances of getting that right first time?  This is a practise universe man, a first draft.  But I don't know for sure.<br/><br/>"And you" the burning end of the cigarette turns to Miyo.  "You're spot on right.  A lot of mojo an awful lot."  He laughs and takes a drag from the cigarette.  "Man, I'm the worst teacher in the world aren't I.  You gotta bear with me, this is all exciting.  I know its shitty for you guys, your shop going missing, but its pretty exciting for me.<br/><br/>"Alright.  So there's these things that don't work properly.  Angers one, Tannen would tell you cities are another, but I don't quite understand his point.  And they build up, like, like static electricity, you know?  Like, a build up of friction, because these things are opposites, they're contradictions.  Like, is anger a good thing or a bad thing, man?  All the other emotions are one or the other, its good to be happy, bad to be miserable.  But anger's neither.  Or both.  And people just shrug and go ah well, that's just the way it is.<br/><br/>"But have you ever just had a really awful day?  And you can feel this rage building up in you and then you shout at some guy who cut you up in the car or a bus that's running late?  And it feels so good man, like you've just..." he's clearly about to say something but catches sight of Miyo and pauses, before finishing "like you've just gone to the toilet when you really needed to.  But you never have a feeling of happiness building up in you do you, or misery?  Or anything like that.  Not building up and forming a tension.  Sure, people can be generally one or the other but there's no pressure building up.  And that's because anger is a contradiction, its two different things that have been accidentally given the same emotion.<br/><br/>"And people build this up all the time, this tension.  But they release it again because they don't know what they're doing.  But if you do know, you can control how its released, man.  You can focus that shit.<br/><br/>"That's what mojo is.  This built up tension inside you from, like, from constantly exposing yourself to one of these little holes in the way the world works."<br/><br/>He takes another long drag.  "I don't know how well I'm putting this man.  But its like matter and antimatter together.  They explode, because they're opposites put together.  And so when most people build up a bit of anger it explodes out of them.  But you can learn to build up, like, a containment system or a power plant or something, contain that energy and put it where you want.  That's what mojo is, and disappearing a building will have taken a shit load of it.<br/><br/>"So what that means is some cunt went to a load of effort to build up enough energy to do that.  And I reckon I can find out why."  His pocket beeps but he ignores it, talking quickly and intensely.  "But I'm not carrying enough so I need to charge up.  "Random magic, man.  It's expensive shit."<br/><br/><hr/><br/><strong>Tuesday 13th August 10:23<br/><br/>Between Unit 16 and Unit 18, Fergusons Street<br/><br/>Nova</strong><br/><br/>"Nova, hey?"  He's typing on his phone again and doesn't look up.  "Parents were hippies?  Not that it matters.  I'm not feeling particularly lucky either today, in fact you could say I'm having a fucking awful day.  And it started off so well.  Woke up between...well, honestly you wouldn't believe me if I told you who I woke up with this morning.  And now no fucker can see me except you.  So you'll forgive me if I fucking follow you around.  Meant to have an interview at three, big things.  Good things. But that's all fucked now."<br/><br/>You think he's going to start crying again but he shakes his head and continues.<br/><br/>"So I'm emailing some guy" he waves his phone around in case it wasn't clear how "who might know something.  Gonna try to meet up with him.  You in?"