Lost and Found [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 23-30.3.19
Characters: Open

---

It starts slowly, one by one: Items are being returned to people. Specifically, they are delivered to their mailboxes.

The items are very varied, and either pushed through the letter slot in the door or, if they're too big, just left on the doorstep: A wallet that was stolen last year, a coin that was dropped into the sea last week, or a toy that was left on a bus, a time capsule buried in the ground, an unwanted present purposefully forgotten at the train station. The only thing that they have in common that they are never perishables. It's all non-food items.

All items that are being returned must have vanished within the Mossgate Echo Boundary, but they can have vanished long before the person whom they are returned to gained their first echo/got access to the network.

They appear throughout the week, and then abruptly stop the evening before Mother's Day.

Comments

[scarsolderthanyou]

First things first, then. He joins scent-man in a crouch before the boy. "What's your name, son?"

[saveournpcs]

The boy ducks his head even further, looking first at the younger, then at the older man, and then hiccups: "Benjamin."

The man nods. "And you came here with your mum and dad and your little sister, but then you looked at a dog and then they were gone, right?"

The little boy nods.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Sam wracks his brain. Benjamin. With a little sister. With that color hair and... hrm. "I think I know who his parents are," he says after a pause. "Benjamin Wheeler, right? I saw them on my way over." Or, well, he smelled them. He has a much better memory for smells than faces, these days, which is funny given how much less time he's had the sense of smell than anything else in his life.

[saveournpcs]

The boy nods at his last name being brought up, and the strange man looks very relieved and pleased. He offers the boy a hand.

"Then let us get you back to them, young gentleman." He turns to Sam. "Do you have their mobile phone number?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"No, but I--" He pauses, remembers Benjamin's grandfather died a couple years back so even if he still has that cell number it won't do them much good, and starts again, "No, but I know where they're at. Come on, kiddo. Or would you feel better waiting here while I got them for you?"

Benjamin might not know him, after all, and he doesn't know what kind of stranger-danger rules have been trained into him.

[saveournpcs]

The boy flounders, and the stranger looks between them with faint confusion, clearly feeling like he's missing some key puzzle piece in this interaction, before he offers: "...We could wait here while you," this is directed at Sam, "catch them?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Sure." Sam pauses and points at the stranger. "You don't go anywhere. I want to talk to you."

Then he's off, ambling back the way he came. He'll be back a few minutes later with a frantic-looking woman, Benjamin's mother.

[saveournpcs]

The man doesn't go anywhere - he's too busy trying to calm the boy down, and by the time that Sam returns with the mother, Benjamin has mostly calmed down. The man watches the reunion with a smile, pleased that child and parent are back with one another and the situation has found such a fortunate end.

"I'm glad you knew the family, that made reuniting the child with his parent so much easier," he remarks to Sam.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I know a lot of people in this town. I knew Benjamin's grandfather before he died." He shakes his head, then turns back to the stranger. "I don't know you, though. I'm Sam." He's starting off more polite, this time, than he was with Mr. Evil. This guy has been relatively okay, so far... no messing with bombs. Only people.

[saveournpcs]

"I'm Mr Helpful." The man returns the polite tone, gives a friendly smile, and offers a hand for a handshake.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Sam pauses, hesitating just a moment, before putting his hand into Mr. Helpful's for a brief shake. "Uh, you don't happen to know a Mr. Neutral and a Mr. Evil, do you?" Because the naming convention seems pretty, uh, obvious there.

[saveournpcs]

He hesitates for a moment, looking a bit uncomfortable. Then he sighs, and nods with a mildly disapproving expression. "...I am aware of them, yes."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Did you guys all pick out your own names?" Sam has to ask. "Because they're kinda... interesting. Unusual, you might say."

[saveournpcs]

"Oh, no." He chuckles and shakes his head. "I would never think of picking a name other than the one I've always had. That just would not feel connected to myself.

...

Did you pick your own name?" There is a faint confusion, like he's trying to figure out if there's another source to the question than the one Sam gave, because it just doesn't seem sufficient to him.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"My parents picked my name," Sam shrugs. "But I can't imagine anybody's parents naming them 'Mr. Helpful' or 'Mr. Evil'. Kids would make fun of them, and anybody, nobody wants to call their kid 'mister' unless they're in trouble."

[saveournpcs]

He shakes his head. "Nobody has ever made fun of me for it.

Did your parents not try to pick a name that would suit your well? That is what my name is."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I was a baby, they didn't know what I would be like," Sam says. Was this guy never a baby? A child? "Where are you from? I don't recognize you, so you must not be from around here."

[saveournpcs]

Another shake of his head. "I'm not from around here, no. I only arrived a few months ago. I'm glad I came, though. It's beautiful here.

...You don't seem to be from around here, either, are you? Your speech sounds a bit different."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I'm from New York, across the pond there, as they call it." He nods at the ocean they're on the edge of. Wrong edge, but still. "It's a nice place. Here, not New York. What brought you here?"

[saveournpcs]

"Oh, I am looking for someone. Or perhaps looking after someone... it is rather complicated." He shakes his head. "In a way that's fortunate though, since it brought me here. I have never before lived at the seaside. Have you?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I've lived all over. I've lived here for a couple decades now, so I'm pretty used to it," Sam says. "Who are you looking for? Maybe I can help out."

[saveournpcs]

"A man with no hair and a scar here," he indicates a line from his right eye down over the side of his chin, ending at his jaw. "I haven't been able to find him yet, but I have good reason to believe that he is somewhere around here."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Oh, yeah, he's here somewhere. And tends to disappear at just the wrong times. That's Mr. Evil, you said you knew him. He set off a bomb here a while ago, and left us all coal at Christmas," Sam says, a bit grumpily. "Though I'm less annoyed about the coal than I am about all the things you delivered to my doorstep this morning."

[saveournpcs]

A painfully startled expression falls onto the man's face, much like a child that carefully plucked flowers to make a bouquet for their mother and can't understand why the mother is angry that the prized front garden flower bed was diminished.

"Why?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Because I got rid of those things on purpose," Sam explains. "I didn't want them back. They belonged to my wife, and seeing them again was...." He pauses, grimaces, and finishes, "Not easy."