Silverware clinked against gold dishes like wind chimes. All of Liz's favorite places created the feel of artificial nature without stepping outside. Sunlight and greenery were hard to come by with how industrial the city became in the last decade. Tea wouldn't have been her first choice to pair with tiramisu, but it was the best way to protect her white gloves. In the far corner of the room, some of her fellow debutantes were huddled around a phone like they were in some common cafe.

"Utterly distasteful." She shook her head, prepared to ignore them for the rest of the evening.

"I'll say." A purple haired witch was at her table. The contents of Liz's cup flew up into the air and spattered inelegantly all over the table cloth. She nearly fell out of her chair to boot. "It's been a while since I spooked one of you guys, I kind of miss it." Blair leaned against her hands, a long black tail lazily waved back and forth behind her. "It's a shame your sister couldn't join the tea party." On her fingers she counted down from five.

"I don't know how you go into this place, but no one's going to give you a cent." Four. "You're making people uncomfortable, just leave." Three. "Security!" Two. "Yes, right there. That's the little urchin. Get her out of my sight." Blair ate a fork full of Liz's cake. "Just wait until my sister gets her hands on you-" Just as Blair's fork hit the plate; Liz's expression softened. "Blair?"

"That's me!" Blair batted her eyes at the demonic security guards that had come in to 'talk' with her. "I lost my invitation it seems." She pushed away from the table and swung around to Liz's side. "We'll be going now." With Liz's hand in her own they barreled out of the dining room down a crowded hall of service workers. There were more spells in her arsenal here, so Blair was able to freeze the workers in place as they ran by.

"Wait, what about-"

"Four of the others have already been captured." They rounded through the kitchen. Chefs and waiters of all sorts scrambled to protect their food from the intruders. "But I figured of everyone, accidentally running into you would be the hardest to do, so I came here first." The kitchen let out onto the roof. A thick layer of grey clouds filtered out the city into pleasant twinkling lights. She conjured up a large smiling pumpkin for them to ride down on. "It's perfectly safe." Lingering on the rooftop, Liz looked down at the diamonds encrusting her belt. "What's wrong?"

If she had the means, she'd never have chosen to fight or be a death scythe. The only thing that pushed her into dangerous lines of work was keeping Patty safe. Here, it was the opposite. She'd been sitting up in a gilded cage while everyone else was down there at the mercy of an unfair system of her sister's design. Blair flicked her nose.

"Don't rot in your head." Blair warned. "Logical inconsistencies are the only way to break you from a hypnosis spell. If you keep stewing in your own head, you'll be able to rationalize any dumb old thing the book tries to tell you." After digging around in the inner workings of Gluttony, she'd become very familiar with the magic at play here. "The fact I was able to shake you out of it with one sentence is a good thing. Don't sweat it." Liz nodded and boarded the pumpkin. "Hold onto something. We're kind of in a hurry."

That was the only warning she got before the pumpkin rocketed down toward the city below. She fought to get ahold of a pumpkin leaf so she wouldn't be left to fall at her own pace. Hand over hand she pulled herself back onto the spongy orange platform. With a horrendous glare and streaked makeup, her shouts of outrage were swallowed up by the howling wind. Still, the sight alone made Blair laugh.

For a magical book, the process of getting arrested was long and boring. There were tons of questions, Soul had tried to use the name he picked out for the DWMA, but it only drew out the process longer as officials demanded for him to produce identification out of nowhere to prove he really existed. A not so kind reminder that he'd yet to fork over the money to legally change his name on the outside. Or maybe he had, the finer details about where they'd come from had gotten fuzzier.

They also took his finger prints and his picture from different angles with specific rules about what expressions he was allowed to make. The longer he was separated from his friends the more inconsistent his answers became. Thankfully, his captors chalked it up to youthful inattention and not a genuine lack of knowing what they had been thinking. Something about being on television and impressing their other friends, wherever they were. Hopefully it was worth it.

The uniforms they were given to change into were eye-bleeding pink, except for Maka, who was gifted a particularly putrid shade of orange. It seemed there were not enough juvenile prisoners to justify separating the sexes, though that didn't stop a few jabs about about Maka's boyish attitude from coming to mind. For once, Soul thought better than to actually comment on it. He'd just seen her run a car into a building, he hated to think what she would do with her bare hands.

"You have a visitor." A pair of guards approached them in the holding cell. With their masks, it was hard to identify who to make eye contact with and which one of them the supposed visitor was here for. They all tried to rise to their feet at the same time. "Just the one." It was hardly helpful instruction. After a long silence, the three huddled around for a quick game of rock, paper, scissors to see who would get to leave first, Kilik won. There were no objections when he approached the guards. He left Soul and Maka with a wink and a smile before disappearing around the corner with a guard at either side.

Thunder had taken to sitting on Maka's lap as they waited. She watched helplessly as Soul paced back and forth. Until Kilik reported back, there was no telling how many of their friends had seen the broadcast. It was on his sixth or seventh lap around the room when he caught sight of blonde hair and boot-cut slacks from the other side of the bars.

"Patty?" He rushed up to the bars, his head angled to try and get a better view. She had paused, her head tilted ever so slightly toward the holding cell. "Patty, over here!" He thanked his lucky stars for all of ten seconds until she turned and he saw the badge proudly pinned to her chest. Not a hint of recognition was in her eyes as she broke away from her original path to meet him at the jail cell.

"Well?" She raised a brow with a deadpanned stare. "I'm listening."

"Patty, it's us." Maka ignored how Thunder's fingers curled into her cotton jumpsuit. She may be able to see souls, but only Thunder could see how the hypnosis spell curled around Patty like parasite. No wonder Fire had been so worried when he saw her last. It looked almost like it was suffocating it's host.

"Maybe if you were alone," Patty used her baton to nudge Soul's fingers off the bars, "you'd feel more like talking." She turned sharply. With a snap of her fingers, a demon approached her and saluted with reverence. "Prepare an interrogation room." She ignored the outraged shouts of her friends and proceeded deeper into the compound.

Kilik was taken to a small room with a plexiglass window that faced out into an open lobby. The guards instructed him on how to use the phone and gave him space to sit down. On the other side of the glass sat Black Star. His scars had reopened into gauze covered gashes. The cheap, burgundy clothes he wore sported a dated pattern not uncommon for inpatients at a hospital. He already had the phone in hand when Kilik sat down.

"You look like shit." Kilik said unhelpfully.

"Thanks," Black Star rolled his eyes, "I feel like shit. Though I don't see you winning a best dressed competition anytime soon." He'd seen them all over the news and cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. If there was ever a place to get away with mayhem it was here. Things just kept getting in the way, like now, where his injuries made him move at a snail's pace. "This doesn't count as you getting on tv before me." He said instead. For a fleeting moment, Kilik had a shit eating grin on his face. Then he saw the red blossoms peak through the upper layer of gauze.

"Dude, what the hell happened to you?"

"It's..." His eyes furrowed shut as he sorted through the false narrative the book had tried to push on him. It was easy to forget with Kim's healing spells how close he'd been to loosing against Mifune. There was an overwhelming sense of helplessness that had followed waking up in the hospital not once, but twice. "It's nothing new." The injuries weren't fake, but the state they were in was. "I'm more worried about Tsubaki." He'd recognized the fighting style of the kishen egg instantly. In the time it took him to get here, four more of his friends had gotten captured. The confused look Kilik was giving him was not reassuring. "Isn't she in there with you?"

"No." Black Star cursed in response. On the one hand it was convenient everyone was slowly congregating in one place, it was how to get them all back out that was stumping him.

"I don't suppose you found the exit before getting arrested?" He had his head in his hands, afraid he already knew the answer.

"No." As far as Kilik was concerned, the plan had worked. "Once the cavalry arrives, we'll bust out of here and make a run for it." All he received in return was a long drawn out sigh. "Hey, I don't hear you coming up with anything better. As far as we were concerned, your ass was invisible."

"I. Know." He also knew, it was mighty convenient for the book if he was physically unable to come to Tsubaki's rescue. The others too, but they clearly were capable of making their own decisions, even if they were bad ones. "Is there anyone else I can talk to?"

"Maka, and Soul are here." Kilik said.

"Someone who's in charge, dumbass." In a remarkable imitation of a melting icecream, Black Star leaned against the counter for support. "Or your lawyers, anyone that could actually help get you out of there."

"...Maka and I both have our weapons." Kilik said slowly. "Why would we need the help of some npc?" Black Star set the phone down on the counter so he could lean back in his chair and stare up at the ceiling. It was incredibly easy to forget that the rules here probably shouldn't apply to them, especially when what he really wanted to do was curl up in a dark corner and sleep for a few hours. "We got things under control, but we'll keep an eye out for Tsubaki."

"That's-" The guards came to collect Kilik. "Whatever you do, don't kill any Kishen eggs." Before Black Star could explain it would be a little more difficult than keeping an eye out for her, Kilik was out of sight.

Soul knew from police dramas that the large pane mirror acted as a window to whoever was on the other side. With his hands cuffed to the table, he couldn't test to see if Lord Death would answer if he tried to call. In walked Patty with a pointed glare, though it softened into a smile when she sat down across from him.

"I think we both know this wasn't your idea." She said. "You seem like a good kid."

"We're the same age." He held his tongue. For whatever reason, simply seeing them hadn't been enough to wake her up. Not knowing how many demons were watching made it all the more difficult. The last thing he needed was for her to be conveniently called away should he say outright why they actually were there.

"It seems so." Patty flipped through papers on a clip board. "I'm curious what you thought would happen after you stole the car?" He glared at her. "Excuse me, after your friend stole the car." They all would probably get asked the same questions to see if they'd give different answers. It wasn't like they had much to loose at the moment.

"We'd get on the tv where all our friends could see us." He emphasized the 'all', but still Patty regarded him as a stranger. "Maybe get a cool mugshot while we were at it." He knew the guards gave Kilik a hard time for smiling when they went to take the picture. It seemed like a reflex for the meister to light up on camera. "I don't suppose your sister's on the force as well."

"Why would she be?" Patty leaned back in her chair like a snake poised to strike. He was genuinely surprised she wasn't here, given how much Liz complained about going on missions. Putting her in a role where she'd constantly be dealing with conflict seemed like the perfect thing to inspire self-hatred.

"I just assumed of the two of you, she'd be the one on the force and you'd be..." Patty raised an eyebrow as he wracked his brain for an answer. She seemed to like combat training well enough to spar with tests instead of filling them out. Most situations people would find dangerous or annoying she'd just laugh off. "Working in an office I guess." It was the most mind-numbing thing he could think of.

"Well you wouldn't be the first." She said. "She could have been an officer but she chose not to." At the first opportunity, Liz had quit to go seek a cushier way to spend her time. She'd tried to convince Patty to be interested in the same thing, but the older they got, the harder it was to make herself happy doing those things. It should be natural for them to split off into different directions, but for whatever reason the idea had always unsettled her. Even though she was perfectly capable maintaining order in the city alone.

"You should consider yourself lucky." She flipped through his file. "I'm the nice one." Somehow, he seriously doubted that. "If you just wanted to talk to me about my sister, you chose a poor way to do so." He was used to experiencing a clenched jaw at the mention of an older sibling, not seeing it. It never occurred to him that Liz would be a sore subject with how the two always were together. "What are you doing hanging around with a recruiter and that beagle? Doesn't seem like the three of you would normally be in the same circles, especially with a grade schooler." He wasn't entirely sure which was which.

"We saw the kishen egg getting captured on the news." He said instead. If bringing up Liz wouldn't jog her memory, maybe something more recent would. "It seemed like a pretty braincelless thing to do." With the ferocity of a whip, she slapped the clipboard down on the table.

"I know what I'm doing!" Her finger dug into the paper and caused it to crease. "People from here don't have blanks in their records. You all had to come from somewhere." She was so close to figuring it out. The shred of hope in his eyes made her stomach churn. "There has to be a way out of here, and I'm going to find it with or without your help."

She snatched up her paper work and stormed out of the room. Everyone in her department had told her this would be a waste of time. She'd heard the jeers behind her back and caught the looks of pity. All of them thought she was just a weapon in over her head, but she'd show them she deserved to be here.