[Near the end of the last mingle] The Hunt is Almost Ready

[scarsolderthanyou]

I've caught the scent of whoever is sabotaging things, and if anyone else wants to help me track them down, you're welcome to try. Only problem is, I don't know how to share it with you people. I'd just show you where it is, but it's so faint I think most of you probably wouldn't be able to find it.

Those of you who can actually smell things, anyway, since I know some of you can't.

So. I know it's possible to share it, but I don't know how. Anybody able to teach me the trick of it?

Comments

[scarsolderthanyou]

Well, I'm right here, I haven't left the place I found it yet, so that's fine.

[He considers the explanation, frowning on the other end, not that Laughs can see it.]

That's going to be a pain. I don't really do the opening up thing much. And what I smell might overwhelm a lot of people.

[finalizes]

Once you have figured out how to do the steaming at all, you can work on limiting it and only streaming single scents, or only sounds, or things like that.

But it's easier if you concentrate on the streaming at first, and not on separating what you want and don't want to stream.

Like how when you start walking, you first focus on the getting to your feet and taking a step, and only later on the direction into which you want to walk.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Right. Well, since I'm mostly sure you can handle it, I'm going to take this private and just try sending what I'm hearing and smelling to you. That all right?

[He has no psychic protections, but he does know how to send to just one person, at least.]

[finalizes]

That is fine.

[He is curious now.]

[scarsolderthanyou]

[There's a moment while Stone struggles with the idea of sending along everything he's sensing, opening himself up that way, but after that moment it all just breaks loose.

Like a werewolf, he has the senses of a predator. Unlike a werewolf, he is over five hundred years old, and every year that passed made those senses more acute; he's been known to track a single person through a city of hundreds of thousands by scent, and his distance vision outpaces all of his own species (already known for being very far-sighted). The feed Laughs gets is, at first, a riotous jumble: of footsteps, fabric swishing, smells along a wide spectrum that he'd recognize from the theater but even stronger and more full of detail, and a slightly blurred and strangely off-kilter up-close view of the piano in question. Sight appears the only sense not particularly enhanced, but then, he's half-blind. That's probably not surprising. It's a mess, because Stone is focused on the network, not sorting his senses out.]

Are you getting it? I'm trying to send.

[finalizes]

[Laughs-at-the-Storm is very glad at this moment to have a Gift that enhances his wolf senses far beyond any natural measure, so that the sensual information that he gets from Stone might be overwhelming, but not something that he hasn't learned to deal with before.

Yeah, he knows why he doesn't use that Gift in wolf form (or now, Ashina homid form) very often.]

I'm getting it. You got it.

The next step will be trying to put it in order - not yet singling something out, just trying to establish some kind of sorting of your impressions. Like picking fighting cubs out of the brawling bundle and setting them back down apart from one another.

[scarsolderthanyou]

[There's a mental sort of snort.]

I already know how to do that. It's called filtering, I learned how to do it centuries ago to keep from going insane from everything.

[And he starts narrowing things down, rather swiftly for a mess like that. First he filters out most of the sounds, focusing instead on his own breathing. The rest grows distant, still there but not overwhelming. Sight doesn't require any fixing, just a concerted effort to ignore the slight movement of the curtains; his vision, while not great close up, is very focused on movement, and has a dim blind spot to his right, where his bad eye is.

Then, the important part, he starts filtering out the scents: his own, the piano itself, the people just outside the room in the hall, then the layers of scents on the piano itself. There are probably half a dozen that have been laid on the piano since the sabotage, and he has to sort each one out and mentally set it aside, until what Laughs can smell most strongly is a faint and faded mix of cotton and copper.]

There. That. Is that focused enough for you to find the scent again?

[finalizes]

It is.

I think it should work for others, too, I'd say.

[Assuming they have a good sense of scent, but that's obviously already assumed here.]

[scarsolderthanyou]

Good. Let's see if we can track it down, then.

[The livestream cuts off, there, and Stone adds tacked onto the end,]

Thanks for the help.

[finalizes]

You're welcome.