[Handwritten | Notepad]

[gobybessie]

I ran into one of our dear aliens, Badri, a while back. He was eating Happy Meal, so it seems that continues to be an odd theme. In the library, of all places. The audacity.

He told me a few interesting tidbits that I thought you might like to hear. I'll break them down.

• Turns out his friend Geoff has been subtly manipulating everyone. If anyone's ever had a passing thought that they trust him unusually easily, that's because you probably are. Badri said it's not mind control as such, but "suggestion," although I'm not entirely sure what that is. However, if we know about it we might be able to resist it, so perhaps we could come to see him in a different light. Who knows?

• Badri's power is mental too. Supposedly completely harmless, although I don't know what makes him say that. For those of you who missed that, someone on the network got to see him use it to kill a pidgeon, supposedly by accident. He said he didn't know it would be smart enough to get scared to death. I don't know about you but this doesn't sound like something "harmless" to me.

• There are more of them, but this definitely didn't come as a surprise. I already thought as much. They're called "the children," but that was all I could get from him on that point.

video; backdated to the 11th

[alilyinthemoonslight]

[Lily looks... disturbed, to say the absolute least.]

So, the "Numbered Special Commissioned Group" contacted us today, and we've got a... potential problem.

We know that there have been lights appearing over multiple new locations lately. One of them was Lapland, which Winter and I briefly visited around Christmas. [It was cold.]

Nothing much seemed out of the ordinary then, but now? Now we've got a problem.

Since around the time of the lights appearing, children from Lapland and the surrounding area have started to disappear. There's no ransom, and no clue why. However... two preschoolers who were hidden away at the time were able to tell the authorities something: They saw an old man with a beard they're saying looked like Santa Claus, and his helper, was...

[She purses her lips.] Ever seen "How The Grinch Stole Christmas?" Him.

[She shrugs; they've encountered weirder, right? But she still looks immensely bothered. The involvement of children is assuredly doing that.]

Here's where we come in: They want our help. Numbered help. This is clearly connected to us in some way, and those of us with the NSCG have at least proven cooperative, so I guess that helps. We're to be there by the 13th, in Rovaniemi, and they'll take us upstate from there to begin searching and investigation. We're told to bring friends, so...

Please. Come with us. Help us. If we can save those kids... [Or even if they can't, and they can just discover the cause, which makes her shudder.] We've got to do whatever we can. We have the power to, right? We have to do something.