An invitation to a party appears on various university billboards inviting people to the Kappa Alpha Frat house located in the mostly finished Castle Commonwealth mall on the edge of town. The notice instructs people to follow the access road at 67 Lost Nation drive and enter through the back door and promises that signs will be posted to guide people to the party itself.
"I am not so sure we should be splitting up," Tamaris says.
Rex makes a quiet sound.
"Or, Rex could stay here with you, and I'll go with our new friends?"
Joss makes a gesture that is probably assent but mostly 'stop distracting me'.
"Alright then," Zahn seems a little reluctant to split up himself. "We can walk at least a little ways further down the corridor."
"I think we'll be OK." Alice agrees. They start walking. There are a few restaurant type places, some clothing stores and a variety of smaller specialty stores in one bit of miscellany or another. After they've been walking a couple minutes a bike store will come into view.
"Well," she says. "At least that makes the bike racks make a little bit more sense, I guess?" She does not look entirely thrilled at the prospect of physical exertion.
"That is true," Tamaris agrees with a slight grimace. Then she considers. "Do they have any of those little wagon things you sometimes see cyclists dragging around with them? That would make transporting things much easier." (Liking the idea of physical exertion or not, she's still going to look for solutions.)
"I can't see any from here but we can go check." As it turns out, they do have cargo hauling trailers; they're about one square meter.
"Well, at least they exist," Tamaris says. "Just so you understand, physical exertion, so not my thing. Joss and Rex are definitely your guys for that."
She grins slightly. "Yes, I'm totally a spoiled rich girl, get the jokes over with now." There's something slightly dangerous in her eyes however.
Tamaris relaxes slightly, her eyes going warm. "Quite. Well. We've failed to find a map, but have found bikes, and a method of transporting stuff if we need to. Unless...I dunno, is there like a cycle-route map? I dunno. Seems unlikely." She goes to have a look anyway.
There are in fact a map pamphlets in a rack on the back wall of the shop. They show what might be paths and a hexagon in a different color and nothing else inside a weirdly shaped almost hexagon puzzle piece shape.
"Well..." Tamaris pulls a few out, holding two out to Alice and Zahn. "So, they like hexagons, and maps that have very little of anything actually useful. Or I might just be bad at reading them."
She sighs slightly and shakes her head. "Think we should head back to the others?"
"Just from the number of paths it looks like this place is really big. Aside from that yeah, it doesn't look too useful. It might be good for ensuring that we've explored everywhere I guess?"
"Smart plan," Tamaris says and produces a pen, quite possibly out of thin air. She frowns at the map in her hands and jots something down before holding out the pen. "I have spares," she says. "Back to Rex and Joss?"
"You never know when you're going to need a pen," Tamaris says brightly, heading back in the direction they'd come from. "Besides, it's useful for making notes about where we've been and what's actually there. Keeping yourself organised is important." She nods as though that explains everything.
"You're welcome," Tamaris says, smiling. After that, she seems happy to continue their way back in silence for now.
Joss is swearing at something she's working on. Apparently completely unaware of-
Her head snaps around, eyes narrowing at Tamaris. "You've changed," she says. Then shakes her head and goes back to the things in her hand. "Nearly done here."
Rex emerges from somewhere near the back of the store. "Welcome back," he says. "Find anything useful?"
"Bikes are good," Rex declares, hugs Tamaris (if he inhales slightly deeper than is perhaps normal, it's not blatantly obvious).