Margot
Santa Fe Arts District was unsurprisingly popular with the college-aged group that lived in the city for the University and not much else. Even less surprising was how many cafes and bistros could be found among the bars, venues, and tattoo shops here. The day was warm, with clouds that passed every so often to interrupt the sun. Many students happily took advantage of the mild day to go out for late lunch and drinks with their friends.
Margot didn't have a lot of friends, and those she did have were rather intense. She, instead, went out alone.
One cafe along Santa Fe had a nice patio set up, so Margot set herself up out here. She had her brown hair down around her shoulders, tucked behind ears as usual, and had a suggestion of pink on her nose and cheeks that had little to do with blushing for once, and more to do with how long she'd been at that table so far today with the sun making regular visits. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses, a black long-sleeved shirt to help soak up the warmth from the sky, a pair of simple blue jeans and a pair of equally simple (if not a little beaten up) black sneakers. She sat with a backpack by her chair legs, a cup of coffee and cream in front of her, and a paperback book that looked like it had seen better days. Something about Legends of the Oceans on the cover.
She'd been there undisturbed long enough that she actually looked relaxed for the first time in a while.
Which, of course, could never last for long.
Denver
It was a pretty day. It was the kind of day that people coudl go out and do whatever it was that they wanted to do and, in a popular part of town, it was easy for people to feel at once part of something larger and that they were given a sense of anonymity. The waitresses and waiters here fill drinks and talk about veganism and their selection of craft beers but, for the most part, people exist int heir own little bubbles. People exist, and in this ever-so-tragically hip crowd, you could spot an outsider from fifty paces.
Margot is not an outsider. She actually fits in here as some piece of human scenery that most people happen to be when they are alone and enjoying themselves and do not give the impression that they need a herd of people coming up to them and doing whatever it is that they are want to do.
The problem with Margot not being an outsider, of course, is that Margot is not given the benefit of being an other and therefore unapproachable. That, or the person down the street was not interested in people's social mores. Sees a person who is alone and makes a direct route to that person. He wasn't a bad looking young man, skin wasn't quite as sallow as it had been before. BUt he was young and his hair was dark and his clothing was nondescript. Jeans, tee shirt, hoodie.
Backpack.
Heavy backpack.
Meanders with purpose in Margot's direction.
Margot
[Perception 3 + Alertness 1]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Margot
Somewhere up the street there's a young fellow with dark hair and a heavy backpack. He was walking purposefully toward her, but Margot was pretty consumed in this particular chapter of her book.
She'd glanced up when turning pages, glimpsed the man walking up-- noticed that his face wasn't unpleasant and he was carrying a large backpack and he was coming this way. She presumed that he was just going to come into the cafe to get a drink and unload a bunch of books to study and do college work (like so many others) while he drank.
Back to the book.
Denver
Margot doesn't think anything of it, and he seemed like maybe he was just going to pass on through. Seemed like he was going to keep on moving but he stops- all blue-eyed and nervous and he taps, tentatively, on her table. Like he's knocking and expecting to be let in.
She's spent time around people who are high, who are coming down. Knows what it looks like when people are jonesing for something and this guy? Maybe he was hurting for it last week but he sure as shit isn't jittery because he's high now. He's jittery because he's nervous, doesn't try to make a scene or anything of the sort. The young man clears his throat-
"Hey, uh," oh god, please say he isn't going to ask her for a lighter.
"Can you do me a favor?"
Margot
Tap-tap-tap
Hazel eyes skipped up from the page of the book to the man now standing beside her table. Eyebrows soon hopped up as well, questioning and curious about what the man standing beside her table could possibly want.
He cleared his throat and opened a request uncomfortably--hey, uh... could she do him a favor?
There was a sadly familiar tick to the fingers on the table, how they snatched together when they were done tapping the table, or how his arms swung perhaps, or how hands were tucked away so they wouldn't betray him. How his eyes looked, how the light caught in them. The open question on her face closed like a crumpling of a paper bag, and her jaw clenched down on a disapproval and tension bourne of what she recognized within him.
She sounded very much like she wanted him to just go away when she asked:
"What is it?"
Denver
[Manip+Sub: I am totally good at lying?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Probably]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Denver
He clears his throat, is taking his backpack off while he's about to start talking and he sounds relieved that she's even humoring him.
There are a number of things that he could have been pulling out of the bag and he didn't seem like he wanted to rob her but, seriously, given the number of books in that loaded down backpack it was a distinct possibility that he was going to hold her up and take the book and flee away, except for the fact that he was a little too scrawny and Margot could probably take him.
"I've got a friend I was supposed to meet, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it. So, if you see her- could you give her this?" and from that bag there is a book that is produced. One of those Reader's Digest condensed books that has the highlights of four well-known classics. 1978's edition, specifically. Ivy green cover.
"She's kinda taller? Thin? Vietnamese? Her name's Vanessa, if that helps."
He seems sincere, even if he does look nervous.
Margot
Margot wasn't always a suspicious creature. She lived a pretty secluded life up until recently, all things considered. Her hometown was a city, but it wasn't an incredibly large one, and not especially rife with crime. Of course, she was learning that she had many reasons to be suspicious of many things, and was spending a lot of time with one of the most paranoid people in the city, but...
He seemed sincere. This seemed harmless. It was just a book, and she didn't even need to touch it. Just analyzed it from over the cover of her own book, like she were looking down her nose at a piece of suspect meat to make sure it was safe to even humor before tasting.
"...I suppose. Just leave it there, I guess."
And she nodded her head at the edge of the wire-mesh table where he was hovering.
Denver
She supposes, and he looks relieved, leaves the book there. Puts a hand on it to make sure it was nice and closed and he was content to immediately head on his way. Down the walkway and going about as quickly as he could, "thankyousomuchthismeanssomuchtome-" and then he was on his way.
Margot
Not unlike an owl, Margot's head turned to follow after the man until he rounded a bend and was out of sight. Then her gaze was left to turn onto the book that was left on her table. Her dark brows hunkered down in the middle with thoughts of nothing promising.
You see, if there wasn't anything untrustworthy about this hand-off, then the man would have simply left the book with a barista rather than trust it with some young girl at the table along the sidewalk. The risk of snooping... well...
Margot closed her own book and set it down on the table directly in front of her. Took the spoon that she'd been using to stir her coffee and stuck it in her mouth to clean the coffee from it, then held on to the spoon's spade so she could use the handle like a want to knock the book open and flip the pages about without actually having to touch them.
Like she thought the book would make her fingers stink a terrible stench that would never leave them.
Denver
Margot watches him head along the way, and out of eyeshot.
She opens up the book ever-so-carefully. There is a bit of relief to know that the book hasn't been hollowed out and filled with cocaine or that the book isn't stuffed with hundred dollar bills that she is supposed to pick up because someone left their drug money. No, when she opens the book she sees things written in the margins. Hurried handwriting.
Flips again and she comes across a picture. Flips and comes across another photo. Somewhere towards the back an envelope seems to be stuffed full of them, printed out in notecard size from a Walgreens. There are some polaroids.
There's a folded up letter stuffed somewhere in the section about the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
William
About the same time that William is rounding the corner he seems to pass by the young man who dropped off the book. Brows raise in recognition and he lingers. The young man looks uncomfortable, but they do seem familiar.
The darker haired one doesn't seem like he doesn't know Will. Or that being around him is an uncomfortable experience, only that he needs to be somewhere and that somewhere wasn't here. Whatever they talk about at the distance makes Will look a little concerned, then back to his standard flippant and unphased. They keep on talking before the young man with the dark hair bails.
Will shrugs, continues on his way which happens to be in Margot's direction.
Margot
It was hard to say if Margot would have actually preferred to have found a bag of cocaine or was of hundred dollar bills stuffed inside the book's cover. The problem would have been more obvious, more mundane, easier to solve.
Instead: pictures. Lots of them. The furrow to her brow changed, less disgust and more distrust. Soon, concentration as well, for she'd pulled the book closer with the spoon wand and held the pages open to read some of the margin-scrawl, to inspect some of the pictures.
Didn't even feel the Storm rolling in (Mr. Holmes).
William
Across the margins she finds a few notes- one corresponding with a picture that had come with it:
Marcus- Middle Supply. A taller man, dark hair, clean cut. Hard gaze. Ethnically ambiguous, looks like he works out.
He then lists coordinates and street names. Saints' Resistance. Sureños & La eMe don't fuck with him.
Another section-
V.- hope this helps.
There are lists of supply chains, what is being sold in what part of town. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that seems particularly intense or experimental.
Margot
Not entirely sure of what she was looking at here, but Margot wasn't familiar with this sort of thing. Something less obvious than a bag of drugs right in front of her was slipping through her grasp of understanding.
William was about to pass the patio, and Margot glanced up again at this point. She'd spied him speaking with the man at the edge of the sidewalk, before he'd vanished from sight. Watched the exchange before looking back to the book. Now that he was nearer, though...
"Where do you know that guy from?"
Margot's voice piped up when William was near enough to hear her. If he hadn't noticed her before, it's her intro line to surprise him with. If he had, it's simply her way of cutting to the chase. We'll call it a to-the-point 'greeting'.
William
He hadn't noticed. Maybe he was headed her way, but he was distracted. William's world was loud. There are a dozen other things that he notices when he's walking through places. The sound of cars pulling out. The clink of glasses in the distance, the smell of wet dog and hummus and the sound of someone crying over some manhole or somewhere that he couldn't see but he knew it was there and just presumed it was there and there are points in his life that he can't be sure if what he's experiencing is a hallucination or if it has always been real.
Chooses to believe that it's all real. Chooses to believe that reality is fundamentally different for him. Conviction makes it so.
Blinks and looks at Margot- "Jake?"
Yes, William, the only guy you talked to while you were walking.
"We met at a house party. He's not so bad. Gets Hella embarrassed when you play Cards Against Humanity with him. Haven't seen him since that shit at the speedway went down," he stopped for a second, and then went on to explain, "awhile back, like in November, there was a robbery and a murder at this speedway where he worked. Then one of his dumbass friends got killed trying to break into some chick's house. They apparently all worked together at one point."
"That race track was shady as fuck."
Margot
While William was talking, Margot glanced back over her shoulder again. Down the sidewalk, up the sidewalk, hunting for some tall thin Vietnamese looking girl that might happen to come by looking for the book. When assured that this person wasn't going to appear behind her like a harpy with claws grasping angrily for the violated privacy, Margot gestured for him to come nearer. Tapped the book with the spoon wand a couple of times to indicate it.
"Well, looks like he's still shady as fuck. Look what he decided to drop off here and ask me to see into the right hands."
William
HIs eyes track down to the piece of paper, over the margins and at the details of what is there. His eyes narrow for a second and he whips out his phone. Is looking at the cross streets and trying to plot them via Google Maps and little digital pin pricks via app.
"Holy shit," he mutters to himself. Flips through a couple more pages, "what is he, some kind of informant or something?"
A beat.
"Who's V?"
Margot
"That appears to be the case."
While William was busy looking through the pages of the book, Margot took time to begin packing up her own belongings. The book that she had been reading was tucked into her backpack, and her hands slipped over her pants pockets to make sure her wallet and phone and keys all in her possession. He was curious to know who V was, and she shook her head. Re-emerged from being leaned down under the table's edge and looked at William with rathr serious gaze.
"V is Vanessa-- the girl who he wanted me to make sure got this book." She had her lips pressed close together and was scowling up and down the street again. Looked like she very much wanted to get up and leave, but wasn't sure that it was the best idea.
"I didn't wake up today wanting to get involved in drug trafficking and gang turfs, William. Your friend is shitty."
William
Vanessa.
He thinks.
Stops.
"Holy shit, he is an informant. Vanessa Truong is a journalist, she was the lady that covered the break in- it was some human interest piece. She does the news on channel... fuck... she was on ABC last time I saw."
Which was about the time that gunshots went off, somewhere around that corner that Jake had rounded.
Margot
[PTSD: Margot I'm sorry this is your life]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Margot
She hasn't been living in Denver long enough to recognize television newscasters. She didn't even own a television-- she had a beat-up laptop, sure, but Margot was of a new generation. Her news came from the internet-- social media sites and actual news sites alike. So Vanessa Truong didn't ring any bells, but the fact that she was a recognizable figure in the city-- someone on camera almost every day, that was odd indeed.
She looked like she was trying to fit together a pattern in a puzzle when there weren't nearly enough pieces on the table just yet. Opened her mouth to ask a qustion, but was interrupted by--
POP! POP!-POP!
Some people out on cafe and restaurant patios screamed and ducked, others just jumped and looked around in confusion. Margot flinched, shoulders jerking up to her shoulders and hands raising along a path to clap over her ears. They didn't make it, though, and instead she grabbed hold of her backpack and scooped it up. Stood quickly but paused to look at William with wide, scared eyes. Run? they said.
Those eyes flicked to the book in his hand, then back to him. Another question-- what to do with it?
William
Three shots in short succession. Tires screeching, people scattering, fabric rustling, he knows chaos. PIcks up any number of things but doesn't pick out much more because his brain is screaming at him and his hands are still on the book and Margot's eyes are wide and scared and he closes the book quickly, looks from her to the table to make sure all of its contents are gathered up and-
Nods once, gets up and is taking the book, taking her things, taking her hand if she'd let him and making a break for cover or somewhere that isn't here
"Where are you parked?"
Damned if he doesn't sound like a southerner when he's on edge.
Margot
They looked at the book and at each other. He nodded, and Margot nodded along with him half a second later. Take the book. Turn it in to the right people. That was the right thing to do, right? But those gunshots, she had very little doubt in her mind that they were coincidental. Gunshots weren't just fired off all the time in the Santa Fe district of Denver. Jake might not be breathing anymore, and whoever fired those shots may come here looking for a drop-off point that they already knew in advance.
As that dawned on her, color slipped from Margot's face. Maybe this is what prompted William to offer a hand to her, she looked like she could use the reassurance. Sure enough, she accepted the gesture and grasped hands with him while they ducked quickly out of the patio area.
Where was she parked?
"This way," Margot said, and tugged William's hand to guide him along with her as she ran around the side of the cafe through a narrow alley into the small parking lot in the back. William's legs were longer than hers by far, he could no doubt outstride her, but Margot was fast. There was no need to worry about slowing down on her behalf.
Margot's car was a little four-door sedan, nothing new or impressive but well cared for and in reliable condition. Easy to overlook. Great for situations like this. It's almost like she knew she'd need to make a getaway one day.
William
[Per+alert: because being vigilant is important]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Margot
[Oh I suppose... Per + Alert]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
William
He bails. Takes her hand and runs with her and, truth be told, Margot is way faster than he is. Sure, he can run like he's going to do it for the next five years and not stop, but he wasn't an athlete in high school. The most rigorous activity William does is hiking followed by adventurous sex. Only one of those activities benefits from you being fast. In short, they both seemed to keep pretty good pace together.
So he follows her lead, is keeping an eye on things, and they both seem to be doing a pretty good job of making sure that they are headed on the right path and that nobody is actually following them. There's a lot of chaos. People are calling the cops, paramedics. Someone is probably doing CPR or something that people do in emergency situations.
He's trying to shove the book into his bag while he's moving, because there is no reason walking around with it in plain sight.
William
Margot notices the standard fare going on outside. Yes, people are fleeing. Yes, the paramedics are being called. For now, her exit is clear, and it looks like it's going to be clear. Nobody is following.
Margot
So far, Margot saw nothing that would prevent them from escaping. So she let go of William's hand and rushed around to the driver's side door of her car. Stuck the key in the door and twisted twice to unlock all the doors on the vehicle-- that way William could climb in just as promptly.
There wasn't much conversation to be had while all this was going on. Though nobody seemed to be following them, adrenaline was pumping her heart hard and fast and she was focused on just getting them the hell out of there.
Unless prevented from doing so, she would hop into the car and wait only long enough for William to get his door closed before she'd start backing up from her space and maneuvering her vehicle on out of the lot.
March 17, 2016
March 13th, 2016 - More Hiking [Ned]
Margot
Well, today was the day. The Doc told Ned and Margot yesterday morning that a Verbenae they'd never met and he were going to be infiltrating an Technocrat-run building to rescue the Orphan Brandt. Margot was an anxious thing by nature, but her Awakening and everything following after (being orphaned, relocating without family, Magick, et cetera) did nothing to help. She woke up an hour and a half before the sun and couldn't get back to sleep, and only after the 8 o' clock hour rolled around would she reach out to Ned.
Let's go somewhere, this tiny apartment is going to smother me at this rate.
So they travelled. It wasn't easy to sell Ned on long car trips but in this situation Margot had some cards stacked in her favor already (Ned's paranoia, to be precise). She always made a point of careful defensive driving while Ned rode passenger to make it up to him.
They were going to the Rocky Mountain National Park-- as far as anyone could be concerned if they were going that far north already they may as well just go all out. The National Forests website suggested one trail in particular, so it was this trailhead they'd find themselves beginning their ascent. Margot was a prepared enough hiker and had provisions in her pack, sturdy jeans and old dusty hiking boots and a jacket and flannel with a wool cap to keep her head and ears warm. Before they got started, swigged some water while surveying the empty parking lot in which she'd parked.
"....You don't suppose we have to worry about Trolls or Werewolves or anything like that out here?"
Classic Apprentice.
Ned
Water (for days if needed), food (protein bars, fruit in tupperware, trailmix), a small first aid kit (sewing kit included), a thermal blanket, a canteen, two different knives (Hunting and Collapsible), A 300 ft of 100 pound test-weight rope.
Ned's paranoia was indeed at a bit of a high point. They'd come out into the Park entrance and he'd been relatively quiet throughout the car ride. Part because of...well, obvious reasons. Part because...well other obvious reasons, really. He'd stuffed his backpack, a heavy duty thing filled with several hiking essentials and necessities into the back of Margot's car and taken it out again when they'd arrived.
The trail was a solid one. Said to be popular and worth the effort for scenic views and challenge rating for the young and physical.
They'd been on this trail for all of fifteen minutes when Margot stopped him with a question he hadn't considered.
Ned turns around slowly to regard her with rather fierce eyes and a slowly shaking head that told her all she needed to know about how he suddenly felt.
"...Trolls we'll hear from miles off, I think. Werewolves-" Ned looks out into the forestry surrounding them, with it's depth and comforts for the wild and menacing. "-I figure are better than getting Men-in-Blacked back in the city." Then he's turning back up the trail and walking again. Carefully scanning as he goes, mind you, but walking still.
Margot
"Depends on the kind of Troll, doesn't it?"
Ned had looked fierce in considering the dangers they could face, and Margot had nodded agreement before he turned and started walking again. She'd mused the previous thought out loud a minute later, sounding casually thoughtful. "I mean, Scandanavian Troll stories are pretty different from the Billy Goat Gruff Southern Euro concept of a Troll."
As for his view on their odds with Werweolves as opposed to the Technocracy, that was less debatable. She was pretty sure that a Werewolf wouldn't be as interested in her and Ned out on a hiking trail where people came regularly, now that he mentioned it. But the Technocrats, and the mention of, had Margot quietly letting her mind wander to the mission happening concurrent to this time.
"...When you talked about getting out of the city, if Doc doesn't.... doesn't make it back... Were you being serious? Like, is that your plan, going off the grid?"
Ned
"I suppose ti does."
A few more steps and Margot is pontificating again about Trolls.
"That sounds right."
Can you tell he's trying not to think about it?
They march up the length of the trail with careful, measured steps. Onward toward some fabled peak where they can look down over the cityscape and it's wondrous majesty or some such nonsense mundanes and humans espouse about on tumblr.
"Off the grid implies I'm skilled enough to live that way. I'm not. I was just implying that maybe it would be worth it to move to another city or even a smaller one, to ensure life would be difficult for the Techies trying to keep track or tabs on us. If...they happen to be doing so. I can't imagine a pair of fuck-up apprentices are high on their list of objectives and having our names in their data banks or whatever, would mean they could probably track us down wherever, whenever."
A pause. In steps and speech. He pulls out the canteen to sup some water out of it before handing it back toward her. Then he's digging around for a protein bar. He forgot to have breakfast before they left.
"It's the safest bet of, unsafe escape options and bets that we have available to us. That said, Doc was pretty sure and confident he'd be ok and that they could do things. I think right now our easiest, safest and most practical bet is improving our game. Upping our value and harm factor so if anything does happen and we get into trouble we aren't depending on the Doc to protect us..." A murmur, waiting to get the Canteen back, Protein bar in hand.
"...Kind of like what happened in the basement." A sigh, head shaking. "Fucking forcefields." And he's back up the trail again.
Margot
Margot accepted the canteen gratefully. She wasn't complaining or out of breath, but there were bright patches on her cheeks already. Remember, Margot's only lived at this high of an elevation for several months. She was used to living at sea level her whole life before.
After taking a drink, she shook her head at him for calling them fuck-ups and wiped water from her upper lip on her sleeve in the crook of her elbow. When she spoke it wasn't to chastise him for dragging her down along with him in his kicking himself. Rather:
"I worry they'd be especially interested in Apprentices. Not because we amount to being big thorns in their sides, but because they could theoretically still nip us in the bud. Kind of like recruiting-- if they could convince us before we get any solid ideas in our heads that their way of Order and Not Letting Humanity Eat Us Alive before we started to fear and hate them, that would be a much better investment of time than ignoring us and preparing to fight us after we're powerful enough to be big blips on their radar.
"...But I do think we should get better at this game before they have a chance to even try."
Margot's pack was adjusted on her back, hands came to rest grasping the straps where they rested in front of her chest, and onward they went with Margot dutifully keeping up with Ned's pace.
"I have some thoughts on what could be done in the future, once we've... y'know, broken on through to the other side, so to speak. Until then it gets really rudimentary. Looking for weaknesses and exploiting them, taking advantage of trajectories, things of that nature."
Ned
"True."
It's all he says of the Technocrats coming and snatching them up all boogieman style. He's continuing up the trail with measured steps. Not too fast, but not slow either. A pace to challenge, but not to exhaust. Get the blood moving and keep the head clear. Think to move.
"Getting better is priority one at this point. Anything else and we're risking more circumstances like that Kha'vadi woman. The Doc's already proven vulnerable when he doesn't have his gadgets with him and proof shown we're going to be in trouble whenever one of us takes an injury. Pain and discomfort are heavy distractions...for..."
He pauses, eyes narrowing. Then:
"Huh."
He looks down at his hands and then around at Margot, brows cinched together.
"Pain is a registration from the body, telling you that something is wrong. A reception of information. An alarm system as it were. You have to hear...or in this case...feel the Alarm going off to know it's there. To be debilitated."
He stares down at her, stepping off to the side, backpack down and on a tree stump with care not to simply drop it. Then he looks at her and holds out his arm, wrist up.
"Hit me."
Margot
Silent agreement answered Ned, for Margot was more occupied with huffing her way through a particularly steep portion of the trail before it started to level out a bit more for them. It was around that point that Ned stopped with a thought occurring to him. Margot stopped as well and looked at him curiously when he set his pack down on the ground.
She didn't follow suit just yet, kept her pack on and stood on the trail watching him at first. Then he offered his wrist in the space between them and told her to hit him.
She stared at the wrist skeptically, then up at him with a pinch to her eyebrows that spoke of a moment of trouble with the request. But she was a Blood Witch, so who was she to judge? His choice of words, though... There were other ways to cause pain.
With much less effort than hauling off and hitting, Margot instead calmly reached out and pinched the shit out of the thin of his skin.
Ned
(Life 1: Pain is a Sensation. So Kill the Perception. Diff 4 - 1 for Tools (Pain))
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )
Ned
"...Margot, pinching is....what are we, four?"
He shakes his hand out a moment after the pinch, eyeballing the area she'd nipped with a sigh. Then he's pulling his other hand up to hover over the area, staring at the skin or something beyond it:
(Bright Lights of fervent red, blooming around veins and over tendon and muscle. A hazy puddle that flits amid the orange of life and purple of exertion from the hike. He pushes the colour to fit into the orange, until they are indistinguishable. The blooms remain, but it's all orange now. As if invisible)
"Hmmm...can't feel it." He slaps his arm a couple of times. "Or those..." He glances up at Margot with a perked brow and half a grin. "Pain is reception and Perception. You can advance your senses to read other things but obscure them as well to ensure certain things aren't perceivable. Like pain for life. I imagine this is a bit crude, mind you but-...ohhh there it is."
It's a few seconds later, when the effect finally fades and the bloom of red begins to subside into flesh and clothing once more. Ned glances down at his arm and shakes it a bit.
"...Didn't last too long but it was there. Could do in a pinch. Life sphere. Sort of Artificial Adrenaline punch to the system."
Margot
Are we four? Margot blushed furiously and looked a proper bit insulted, but held her teeth and lips closed and dropped her eyes to watch his hand hover over the angry little mark left behind.
He said he couldn't feel it, and she furrowed her brow doubtfully at him. Heard him out anyways. Then her expression turned to a big wide open understanding. You can accentuate your senses, so why not obscure them? Reel it in instead of cast it out.
"That never occurred to me," she muttered. All at once she was imagining other ways to ignore things she knew-- things like Spirits and Life and Forces. He spoke of an artificial adrenaline and she nodded her head in agreement.
"Ignoring pain that you're feeling sounds dangerous, like a good way to make whatever you're hurt with way worse. But adrenaline... If adrenaline was pumping already and we could amplify that..." She huffed a breath and looked back up the trail. Out over the view of what they'd already climbed thus far.
"...Although that might cause burnout. Or torn muscles or something like that." She didn't work in a hospital, she only knew what she'd picked up reading when it came to medicine.
Ned
"Fiddling with our perceptions in anyway will expose us to that level of possible harm. Until we've got access to our better selves, I think that's all we'll have to make use of. I turn on night-vision with Forces and a bright light is going to be a whole lot of pain and suffering but I'll still be able to see in the dark. Though it's true. Any prolonged state of injury is going to come with worse and worse complications later if you continue to ignore it and ignoring pain doesn't mean you can still walk on a cut hamstring but...it's good to know we've got an option."
He leans down to pick up the back pack again, hefting it onto his shoulder. He's dressed in a simple light hoodie and a pair of track pants, rolled up to the knee. It wasn't the warmest of days but it was hardly cold either. The wind was keeping off from the forest around. He had a jacket in the pack regardless. Ned turned to keep moving up the trail, puffing his cheeks out as he went.
"Improving anything doesn't mean we're adept at making use of those perceptions. We're not built for X-ray vision or sonar hearing or anything so trying to sort out what it means is going to be tricky. Likewise, Ignoring thnigs like sensations or other elements could result in some unpleasant drawbacks. A lot of side-effects that come with Apprentice level shit..." A frown, but no more than that.
"...Being able to 'edit' out certain elements of life though. Or even just reduce what you take in to the exception of other stuff. Whispered conversations or isolating a particular instrument in a band."
Margot
"All nifty tricks, really, but when it comes down to it I agree with you: this Apprentice level is bullshit." By this point Margot was rolling up her sleeves to her elbows and had doffed her wool cap to tuck it into an outer pocket on her backpack. She combed fingers through her hair enough to kill the static in it, then tucked behind her ears. She hesitated on the distance of the hike at first, she'd always been a short-distance competitor in track. Her legs would ache for the better part of the week but getting out of the city's immediate vicinity was certainly worth it. She hoped the lake they'd get to see at the top of the climb would be worth it as well.
"These are all things that sound incredibly helpful, but then we remember that we're going up against people that can't only do the same thing, but they can do it better as well as things that are way more impossible for us. Like force fields. Or that body melding fuckery that the Shaman woman did."
Margot marched and scowled at the path several feet before her boots as she went. "I'm getting very tired of being outpaced and being treated like a kid."
Ned
"Takes patience and studying. Just think of it like being in Uni. Teachers telling you you're an idiot and saying 'read the material' all the time. It sucks but at least you can rely on their arrogance and over-confidence to give you a chance. Learn to accept that's how they're going to see us and hope they overstep once or twice so you can stick a knife in..."
He's murmuring. Climbing around a fallen tree and offering a hand out for Margot to take should she accept it.
"My one big gripe aboutt he Doc is his reliant on his Tools. He's a scientist and that means not coming out of the lab enough to take a look at the world around him. I'm sure he's travelled and led the sort of life that people are envious of or disparaging about, but the Kha'vadi woman just...walked right into his 'secure' lab and was able to put him on his ass. If he had any physical training that might have been avoidable. If he just wasnt using it because you know...Magic-" Ned says the word with a bit of a laugh behind it "-then I think it ignores the practicality of using what we can already do...to ensure success and survival."
Onward up the trail. The sun was beginning to peak over the crest of jutting evergreens. The lake was around here somewhere. Ned was puffing a little though. Three days worth of water was more to carry than he'd expected.
"...I also think...being treated like kids, was probably what made the Traditions like they are. Arrogant, bi-polar and prone to mistrust. Accept that they're going to see you that way and learn to work around it. Only way we're going to avoid ending up the same."
Margot
Margot rolled her eyes-- yeah, time and studying, of course. But she didn't disagree. "Yeah, I know. It's how I finally figured out the Correspondance thing, after all. I'm just..."
She reached for a branch to use as leverage over the fallen tree but missed it just by the fingertips. Oh, the shortfalls of life when you were about five feet tall. Ned's hand was accepted after all, and up over the tree she went.
"...just impatient with it, I suppose."
Margot's puffing was on the same level as Ned's, perhaps more, but she didn't complain or look overheated. Just meant she wasn't talking quite as much while they continued to trek. Finally, at the point of their next break (wherever that may be), Margot tugged her backpack off her shoulder and set it on the ground. Crouched down to unzip and dig. "I think that's just the trouble with his Tradition in particular. They think of it as Science, not as Magic, and so they need their technology to make the Science happen. Someone who views themselves as an actual Wizard may have an easier time flinging curses out of their sleeves."
A ziplock of trail mix was freed from her pack. She took a handful for herself to munch and offered the baggie to Ned next.
"I think.... I know that I could use blood for most things, and that's pretty much on tap. But for other things I don't think it'll work the same." She paused, thoughtfully, then mused: "I think I could use water. It's present in a lot of the rituals I've read about. Has a lot to do with purifying and healing though."
Ned
"...Really, most of these tools have their vulnerabilities and advantages. It's our beliefs that tie us up. You're not very fond of aggression or even capable of violence a lot of the time-" Frank sort of throwback to her problems. He moves on though before one can delve too deeply "-but access to blood, through violence inflicted or having been inflicted on, makes you more dangerous and capable. War Goddess sort of sets you up to take advantage of a situation that's gotten bloody."
He pauses, having sat down on a nearby rock, his own backpack pulled open to reveal the over-prepared goodies. He pulls out the canteen and several packets of coloured protein, flavoured to be fruity, and his own bag of trail mix. A tupperware of fruit alongside of it opened and laid out beside them both so they can get in a decent meal.
"Works the same for me. As does Pain. More hurt I get the more likely I'll be able to Solve something more readily. Trauama suits well to ensuring preparedness, it would seem."
A pause. Munching on a bit of pineapple.
"...But that's the point. Doc's limited by his tradition. They all are presumably. You heard what he said at the table. The Traditions are a bunch that can barely bring themselves to believe in science or the facts surrounding the modern world. Ass backwards for those who can shape reality. Makes me think half of what we're doing is going to suck on both ends, Techies or Trads but...going alone exposes us to being hurt or harmed by both a lot more if this Brandt fellow is any indication."
He munches thoughtfully on some almonds.
Margot
Well, while they were unloading for a proper meal... Margot's line of thinking was about the same, for there were more protein bars and some trail mix that she added to the spread. The fresh fruit was a particular surprise, it wouldn't occur to her as something obvious to bring on a hike. She helped herself to a piece of that as a priority.
"....I talked to Penelope about traditions. We came out on a hike not long ago too. She said that she could get me in touch with a Verbena that she used to run in a cabal with." She took a drink, then busied herself with unwrapping a bar. Looked deliberately at her fingers while she did.
"She said something about there being holy days and an 'Ordeal' with a capital 'O' that has to be passed to be initiated in and... And I don't know. I used to go to church and now that I'm following a Goddess it just doesn't seem right to observe anyone else's religion but Hers anymore."
The wrapper was tucked away into her bag, and she looked over at Ned with a frown. "The protection and community of a tradition would be nice, but all of it feels a little bit like brainwash. Shouldn't we and our Avatars determine what's what, and not what somebody else has written down as tradition ages before us?"
Ned
"Penelope's a propaganda machine." Ned says it bluntly. Without any sort of description or leeway. He's munching on a slice of apple while he says it.
"She sells the line well and doesn't seem interested in just 'drafting' folks but I get the feeling her fervor for it is bent around the fact they lost a War a while ago. Not a battle but a series of battles that led upto a full on War. Part of me wants to admit that sort of thing could not have happened without us noticing but then...Wars are done with WMD and when we're talking about reality being bent...well...sky's the limit on what a Worker might consider to be a WMD..."
The canteen is shaken, the protein powder and it's fruity tastes lifted to be supped at and swallowed with a test swish or two. Ned winces slightly and then shrugs, capping the contents and setting them back in the bag.
"I'm not into being brainwashed. The Doc was right about that. We're probably not going to end up at the same pep rally but I think membership doesn't exclude us from one another. We'll have to make sure that there's no attempt to keep us separate is all and ensure that any Teachings by a Tradition come second to the Doc and our own Investigative processes."
Everything's getting piled back into his bag (with one last offer of fruit toward Margot) in preparation for reaching the summit. He's back on his feet and waiting for her briefly before leading the way up the trail again.
Margot
Initially there was an almost defensive flare in Margot when it came to Ned's assessment of Penelope. But it was simple and blunt and without resentment, and when she thought about it it wasn't far off the mark (from an outside perspective anyways) either. For traditions, she watched him thoughtfully when he spoke of separate pep rallies. Wondered where they'd ultimately land, when they finally figured out the places they'd stand on the playing board of Mages.
"You're right. I'll see what this Thane guy has to say."
The piece of fruit offered was happily plucked up and munched, and Margot went along with gathering everything up, shouldering her pack, and continuing the hike.
After time, steep ascents, and much sweating and sun on their backs later they'd come to the view that the websites raved about. Bluebird Lake, and the mountain slope and valley and ridges surrounding. The sky was blue this high up and reflected mirror-like on the lake's surface. When they got near enough the lake's edge, Margot collected some water in an empty tin bottle she'd brought along with and stowed it away for later use in trying out Magick.
The view was worth spending time on, but ultimately the clock would remind them it was time to go. Nice as it was to shake the city and ponder paradigms together, they'd have to go back sometime. There was work, Work, jobs and school, and news of the Doctor to await once their cell phones could pick up reception again.
Well, today was the day. The Doc told Ned and Margot yesterday morning that a Verbenae they'd never met and he were going to be infiltrating an Technocrat-run building to rescue the Orphan Brandt. Margot was an anxious thing by nature, but her Awakening and everything following after (being orphaned, relocating without family, Magick, et cetera) did nothing to help. She woke up an hour and a half before the sun and couldn't get back to sleep, and only after the 8 o' clock hour rolled around would she reach out to Ned.
Let's go somewhere, this tiny apartment is going to smother me at this rate.
So they travelled. It wasn't easy to sell Ned on long car trips but in this situation Margot had some cards stacked in her favor already (Ned's paranoia, to be precise). She always made a point of careful defensive driving while Ned rode passenger to make it up to him.
They were going to the Rocky Mountain National Park-- as far as anyone could be concerned if they were going that far north already they may as well just go all out. The National Forests website suggested one trail in particular, so it was this trailhead they'd find themselves beginning their ascent. Margot was a prepared enough hiker and had provisions in her pack, sturdy jeans and old dusty hiking boots and a jacket and flannel with a wool cap to keep her head and ears warm. Before they got started, swigged some water while surveying the empty parking lot in which she'd parked.
"....You don't suppose we have to worry about Trolls or Werewolves or anything like that out here?"
Classic Apprentice.
Ned
Water (for days if needed), food (protein bars, fruit in tupperware, trailmix), a small first aid kit (sewing kit included), a thermal blanket, a canteen, two different knives (Hunting and Collapsible), A 300 ft of 100 pound test-weight rope.
Ned's paranoia was indeed at a bit of a high point. They'd come out into the Park entrance and he'd been relatively quiet throughout the car ride. Part because of...well, obvious reasons. Part because...well other obvious reasons, really. He'd stuffed his backpack, a heavy duty thing filled with several hiking essentials and necessities into the back of Margot's car and taken it out again when they'd arrived.
The trail was a solid one. Said to be popular and worth the effort for scenic views and challenge rating for the young and physical.
They'd been on this trail for all of fifteen minutes when Margot stopped him with a question he hadn't considered.
Ned turns around slowly to regard her with rather fierce eyes and a slowly shaking head that told her all she needed to know about how he suddenly felt.
"...Trolls we'll hear from miles off, I think. Werewolves-" Ned looks out into the forestry surrounding them, with it's depth and comforts for the wild and menacing. "-I figure are better than getting Men-in-Blacked back in the city." Then he's turning back up the trail and walking again. Carefully scanning as he goes, mind you, but walking still.
Margot
"Depends on the kind of Troll, doesn't it?"
Ned had looked fierce in considering the dangers they could face, and Margot had nodded agreement before he turned and started walking again. She'd mused the previous thought out loud a minute later, sounding casually thoughtful. "I mean, Scandanavian Troll stories are pretty different from the Billy Goat Gruff Southern Euro concept of a Troll."
As for his view on their odds with Werweolves as opposed to the Technocracy, that was less debatable. She was pretty sure that a Werewolf wouldn't be as interested in her and Ned out on a hiking trail where people came regularly, now that he mentioned it. But the Technocrats, and the mention of, had Margot quietly letting her mind wander to the mission happening concurrent to this time.
"...When you talked about getting out of the city, if Doc doesn't.... doesn't make it back... Were you being serious? Like, is that your plan, going off the grid?"
Ned
"I suppose ti does."
A few more steps and Margot is pontificating again about Trolls.
"That sounds right."
Can you tell he's trying not to think about it?
They march up the length of the trail with careful, measured steps. Onward toward some fabled peak where they can look down over the cityscape and it's wondrous majesty or some such nonsense mundanes and humans espouse about on tumblr.
"Off the grid implies I'm skilled enough to live that way. I'm not. I was just implying that maybe it would be worth it to move to another city or even a smaller one, to ensure life would be difficult for the Techies trying to keep track or tabs on us. If...they happen to be doing so. I can't imagine a pair of fuck-up apprentices are high on their list of objectives and having our names in their data banks or whatever, would mean they could probably track us down wherever, whenever."
A pause. In steps and speech. He pulls out the canteen to sup some water out of it before handing it back toward her. Then he's digging around for a protein bar. He forgot to have breakfast before they left.
"It's the safest bet of, unsafe escape options and bets that we have available to us. That said, Doc was pretty sure and confident he'd be ok and that they could do things. I think right now our easiest, safest and most practical bet is improving our game. Upping our value and harm factor so if anything does happen and we get into trouble we aren't depending on the Doc to protect us..." A murmur, waiting to get the Canteen back, Protein bar in hand.
"...Kind of like what happened in the basement." A sigh, head shaking. "Fucking forcefields." And he's back up the trail again.
Margot
Margot accepted the canteen gratefully. She wasn't complaining or out of breath, but there were bright patches on her cheeks already. Remember, Margot's only lived at this high of an elevation for several months. She was used to living at sea level her whole life before.
After taking a drink, she shook her head at him for calling them fuck-ups and wiped water from her upper lip on her sleeve in the crook of her elbow. When she spoke it wasn't to chastise him for dragging her down along with him in his kicking himself. Rather:
"I worry they'd be especially interested in Apprentices. Not because we amount to being big thorns in their sides, but because they could theoretically still nip us in the bud. Kind of like recruiting-- if they could convince us before we get any solid ideas in our heads that their way of Order and Not Letting Humanity Eat Us Alive before we started to fear and hate them, that would be a much better investment of time than ignoring us and preparing to fight us after we're powerful enough to be big blips on their radar.
"...But I do think we should get better at this game before they have a chance to even try."
Margot's pack was adjusted on her back, hands came to rest grasping the straps where they rested in front of her chest, and onward they went with Margot dutifully keeping up with Ned's pace.
"I have some thoughts on what could be done in the future, once we've... y'know, broken on through to the other side, so to speak. Until then it gets really rudimentary. Looking for weaknesses and exploiting them, taking advantage of trajectories, things of that nature."
Ned
"True."
It's all he says of the Technocrats coming and snatching them up all boogieman style. He's continuing up the trail with measured steps. Not too fast, but not slow either. A pace to challenge, but not to exhaust. Get the blood moving and keep the head clear. Think to move.
"Getting better is priority one at this point. Anything else and we're risking more circumstances like that Kha'vadi woman. The Doc's already proven vulnerable when he doesn't have his gadgets with him and proof shown we're going to be in trouble whenever one of us takes an injury. Pain and discomfort are heavy distractions...for..."
He pauses, eyes narrowing. Then:
"Huh."
He looks down at his hands and then around at Margot, brows cinched together.
"Pain is a registration from the body, telling you that something is wrong. A reception of information. An alarm system as it were. You have to hear...or in this case...feel the Alarm going off to know it's there. To be debilitated."
He stares down at her, stepping off to the side, backpack down and on a tree stump with care not to simply drop it. Then he looks at her and holds out his arm, wrist up.
"Hit me."
Margot
Silent agreement answered Ned, for Margot was more occupied with huffing her way through a particularly steep portion of the trail before it started to level out a bit more for them. It was around that point that Ned stopped with a thought occurring to him. Margot stopped as well and looked at him curiously when he set his pack down on the ground.
She didn't follow suit just yet, kept her pack on and stood on the trail watching him at first. Then he offered his wrist in the space between them and told her to hit him.
She stared at the wrist skeptically, then up at him with a pinch to her eyebrows that spoke of a moment of trouble with the request. But she was a Blood Witch, so who was she to judge? His choice of words, though... There were other ways to cause pain.
With much less effort than hauling off and hitting, Margot instead calmly reached out and pinched the shit out of the thin of his skin.
Ned
(Life 1: Pain is a Sensation. So Kill the Perception. Diff 4 - 1 for Tools (Pain))
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )
Ned
"...Margot, pinching is....what are we, four?"
He shakes his hand out a moment after the pinch, eyeballing the area she'd nipped with a sigh. Then he's pulling his other hand up to hover over the area, staring at the skin or something beyond it:
(Bright Lights of fervent red, blooming around veins and over tendon and muscle. A hazy puddle that flits amid the orange of life and purple of exertion from the hike. He pushes the colour to fit into the orange, until they are indistinguishable. The blooms remain, but it's all orange now. As if invisible)
"Hmmm...can't feel it." He slaps his arm a couple of times. "Or those..." He glances up at Margot with a perked brow and half a grin. "Pain is reception and Perception. You can advance your senses to read other things but obscure them as well to ensure certain things aren't perceivable. Like pain for life. I imagine this is a bit crude, mind you but-...ohhh there it is."
It's a few seconds later, when the effect finally fades and the bloom of red begins to subside into flesh and clothing once more. Ned glances down at his arm and shakes it a bit.
"...Didn't last too long but it was there. Could do in a pinch. Life sphere. Sort of Artificial Adrenaline punch to the system."
Margot
Are we four? Margot blushed furiously and looked a proper bit insulted, but held her teeth and lips closed and dropped her eyes to watch his hand hover over the angry little mark left behind.
He said he couldn't feel it, and she furrowed her brow doubtfully at him. Heard him out anyways. Then her expression turned to a big wide open understanding. You can accentuate your senses, so why not obscure them? Reel it in instead of cast it out.
"That never occurred to me," she muttered. All at once she was imagining other ways to ignore things she knew-- things like Spirits and Life and Forces. He spoke of an artificial adrenaline and she nodded her head in agreement.
"Ignoring pain that you're feeling sounds dangerous, like a good way to make whatever you're hurt with way worse. But adrenaline... If adrenaline was pumping already and we could amplify that..." She huffed a breath and looked back up the trail. Out over the view of what they'd already climbed thus far.
"...Although that might cause burnout. Or torn muscles or something like that." She didn't work in a hospital, she only knew what she'd picked up reading when it came to medicine.
Ned
"Fiddling with our perceptions in anyway will expose us to that level of possible harm. Until we've got access to our better selves, I think that's all we'll have to make use of. I turn on night-vision with Forces and a bright light is going to be a whole lot of pain and suffering but I'll still be able to see in the dark. Though it's true. Any prolonged state of injury is going to come with worse and worse complications later if you continue to ignore it and ignoring pain doesn't mean you can still walk on a cut hamstring but...it's good to know we've got an option."
He leans down to pick up the back pack again, hefting it onto his shoulder. He's dressed in a simple light hoodie and a pair of track pants, rolled up to the knee. It wasn't the warmest of days but it was hardly cold either. The wind was keeping off from the forest around. He had a jacket in the pack regardless. Ned turned to keep moving up the trail, puffing his cheeks out as he went.
"Improving anything doesn't mean we're adept at making use of those perceptions. We're not built for X-ray vision or sonar hearing or anything so trying to sort out what it means is going to be tricky. Likewise, Ignoring thnigs like sensations or other elements could result in some unpleasant drawbacks. A lot of side-effects that come with Apprentice level shit..." A frown, but no more than that.
"...Being able to 'edit' out certain elements of life though. Or even just reduce what you take in to the exception of other stuff. Whispered conversations or isolating a particular instrument in a band."
Margot
"All nifty tricks, really, but when it comes down to it I agree with you: this Apprentice level is bullshit." By this point Margot was rolling up her sleeves to her elbows and had doffed her wool cap to tuck it into an outer pocket on her backpack. She combed fingers through her hair enough to kill the static in it, then tucked behind her ears. She hesitated on the distance of the hike at first, she'd always been a short-distance competitor in track. Her legs would ache for the better part of the week but getting out of the city's immediate vicinity was certainly worth it. She hoped the lake they'd get to see at the top of the climb would be worth it as well.
"These are all things that sound incredibly helpful, but then we remember that we're going up against people that can't only do the same thing, but they can do it better as well as things that are way more impossible for us. Like force fields. Or that body melding fuckery that the Shaman woman did."
Margot marched and scowled at the path several feet before her boots as she went. "I'm getting very tired of being outpaced and being treated like a kid."
Ned
"Takes patience and studying. Just think of it like being in Uni. Teachers telling you you're an idiot and saying 'read the material' all the time. It sucks but at least you can rely on their arrogance and over-confidence to give you a chance. Learn to accept that's how they're going to see us and hope they overstep once or twice so you can stick a knife in..."
He's murmuring. Climbing around a fallen tree and offering a hand out for Margot to take should she accept it.
"My one big gripe aboutt he Doc is his reliant on his Tools. He's a scientist and that means not coming out of the lab enough to take a look at the world around him. I'm sure he's travelled and led the sort of life that people are envious of or disparaging about, but the Kha'vadi woman just...walked right into his 'secure' lab and was able to put him on his ass. If he had any physical training that might have been avoidable. If he just wasnt using it because you know...Magic-" Ned says the word with a bit of a laugh behind it "-then I think it ignores the practicality of using what we can already do...to ensure success and survival."
Onward up the trail. The sun was beginning to peak over the crest of jutting evergreens. The lake was around here somewhere. Ned was puffing a little though. Three days worth of water was more to carry than he'd expected.
"...I also think...being treated like kids, was probably what made the Traditions like they are. Arrogant, bi-polar and prone to mistrust. Accept that they're going to see you that way and learn to work around it. Only way we're going to avoid ending up the same."
Margot
Margot rolled her eyes-- yeah, time and studying, of course. But she didn't disagree. "Yeah, I know. It's how I finally figured out the Correspondance thing, after all. I'm just..."
She reached for a branch to use as leverage over the fallen tree but missed it just by the fingertips. Oh, the shortfalls of life when you were about five feet tall. Ned's hand was accepted after all, and up over the tree she went.
"...just impatient with it, I suppose."
Margot's puffing was on the same level as Ned's, perhaps more, but she didn't complain or look overheated. Just meant she wasn't talking quite as much while they continued to trek. Finally, at the point of their next break (wherever that may be), Margot tugged her backpack off her shoulder and set it on the ground. Crouched down to unzip and dig. "I think that's just the trouble with his Tradition in particular. They think of it as Science, not as Magic, and so they need their technology to make the Science happen. Someone who views themselves as an actual Wizard may have an easier time flinging curses out of their sleeves."
A ziplock of trail mix was freed from her pack. She took a handful for herself to munch and offered the baggie to Ned next.
"I think.... I know that I could use blood for most things, and that's pretty much on tap. But for other things I don't think it'll work the same." She paused, thoughtfully, then mused: "I think I could use water. It's present in a lot of the rituals I've read about. Has a lot to do with purifying and healing though."
Ned
"...Really, most of these tools have their vulnerabilities and advantages. It's our beliefs that tie us up. You're not very fond of aggression or even capable of violence a lot of the time-" Frank sort of throwback to her problems. He moves on though before one can delve too deeply "-but access to blood, through violence inflicted or having been inflicted on, makes you more dangerous and capable. War Goddess sort of sets you up to take advantage of a situation that's gotten bloody."
He pauses, having sat down on a nearby rock, his own backpack pulled open to reveal the over-prepared goodies. He pulls out the canteen and several packets of coloured protein, flavoured to be fruity, and his own bag of trail mix. A tupperware of fruit alongside of it opened and laid out beside them both so they can get in a decent meal.
"Works the same for me. As does Pain. More hurt I get the more likely I'll be able to Solve something more readily. Trauama suits well to ensuring preparedness, it would seem."
A pause. Munching on a bit of pineapple.
"...But that's the point. Doc's limited by his tradition. They all are presumably. You heard what he said at the table. The Traditions are a bunch that can barely bring themselves to believe in science or the facts surrounding the modern world. Ass backwards for those who can shape reality. Makes me think half of what we're doing is going to suck on both ends, Techies or Trads but...going alone exposes us to being hurt or harmed by both a lot more if this Brandt fellow is any indication."
He munches thoughtfully on some almonds.
Margot
Well, while they were unloading for a proper meal... Margot's line of thinking was about the same, for there were more protein bars and some trail mix that she added to the spread. The fresh fruit was a particular surprise, it wouldn't occur to her as something obvious to bring on a hike. She helped herself to a piece of that as a priority.
"....I talked to Penelope about traditions. We came out on a hike not long ago too. She said that she could get me in touch with a Verbena that she used to run in a cabal with." She took a drink, then busied herself with unwrapping a bar. Looked deliberately at her fingers while she did.
"She said something about there being holy days and an 'Ordeal' with a capital 'O' that has to be passed to be initiated in and... And I don't know. I used to go to church and now that I'm following a Goddess it just doesn't seem right to observe anyone else's religion but Hers anymore."
The wrapper was tucked away into her bag, and she looked over at Ned with a frown. "The protection and community of a tradition would be nice, but all of it feels a little bit like brainwash. Shouldn't we and our Avatars determine what's what, and not what somebody else has written down as tradition ages before us?"
Ned
"Penelope's a propaganda machine." Ned says it bluntly. Without any sort of description or leeway. He's munching on a slice of apple while he says it.
"She sells the line well and doesn't seem interested in just 'drafting' folks but I get the feeling her fervor for it is bent around the fact they lost a War a while ago. Not a battle but a series of battles that led upto a full on War. Part of me wants to admit that sort of thing could not have happened without us noticing but then...Wars are done with WMD and when we're talking about reality being bent...well...sky's the limit on what a Worker might consider to be a WMD..."
The canteen is shaken, the protein powder and it's fruity tastes lifted to be supped at and swallowed with a test swish or two. Ned winces slightly and then shrugs, capping the contents and setting them back in the bag.
"I'm not into being brainwashed. The Doc was right about that. We're probably not going to end up at the same pep rally but I think membership doesn't exclude us from one another. We'll have to make sure that there's no attempt to keep us separate is all and ensure that any Teachings by a Tradition come second to the Doc and our own Investigative processes."
Everything's getting piled back into his bag (with one last offer of fruit toward Margot) in preparation for reaching the summit. He's back on his feet and waiting for her briefly before leading the way up the trail again.
Margot
Initially there was an almost defensive flare in Margot when it came to Ned's assessment of Penelope. But it was simple and blunt and without resentment, and when she thought about it it wasn't far off the mark (from an outside perspective anyways) either. For traditions, she watched him thoughtfully when he spoke of separate pep rallies. Wondered where they'd ultimately land, when they finally figured out the places they'd stand on the playing board of Mages.
"You're right. I'll see what this Thane guy has to say."
The piece of fruit offered was happily plucked up and munched, and Margot went along with gathering everything up, shouldering her pack, and continuing the hike.
After time, steep ascents, and much sweating and sun on their backs later they'd come to the view that the websites raved about. Bluebird Lake, and the mountain slope and valley and ridges surrounding. The sky was blue this high up and reflected mirror-like on the lake's surface. When they got near enough the lake's edge, Margot collected some water in an empty tin bottle she'd brought along with and stowed it away for later use in trying out Magick.
The view was worth spending time on, but ultimately the clock would remind them it was time to go. Nice as it was to shake the city and ponder paradigms together, they'd have to go back sometime. There was work, Work, jobs and school, and news of the Doctor to await once their cell phones could pick up reception again.
March 12th, 2016 - Food for Thought [Doc, Ned]
Dr. Sepúlveda
Call it the morning after a Kha'vadi the kids had neither met nor ever heard of let herself into Dr. Sepúlveda's basement and found her vengeance interrupted by the two students who are now occupying precarious places on the Etherite's shit list.
He woke up on the couch with no recollection of having fallen asleep there and stumbled back down into the basement to find the lab trashed and his devices all out of order. Hangovers are not an impediment for a fellow who can cure them with a swig of a concoction he slaps together in a test tube. He wasn't looking for his chemistry set. He was looking for one of the radar-type devices. The one that lets him look back in time to see what happened when he was mentally checked out.
It's barely dawn when he pulls up first outside of Ned's apartment and then Margot's student housing. They're awakened first by the blaring of a Jeep Wrangler's horn. Obnoxious blaring. It would be obnoxious in the afternoon but on a Saturday morning when everyone in the fucking world is still asleep it's not only obnoxious to them but to everyone within a two-block radius.
He interrupts both of them to send a text that says:
Get the fuck out here, I have a hangover and a bone to pick with you.
He doesn't use emojis this time. Thanks, Hangover.
---
Flash forward to eight o'clock. They are not the only ones in the restaurant but they are the least happy-looking group. Sepúlveda ordered a Bloody Maria with a beer back and told the waitress to keep them coming. He had not taken pains to explain a damned thing in the car and now that they're seated he's the first one to speak.
"Let's not dwell," he says. "If either of you fuck-ups have any questions, I'll take... three of them. Total. And before you say anything, let me say this: Margot, you need to keep your shit together in situations where people are screaming and breaking things. Ned... just... you're limited to a hundred forty characters until further notice."
Ned
"Waffles."
It's the first thing out of his mouth when he goes to meet up with the Doc downstairs. He doesn't send back replies to texts or even make much of a fuss when the Doc pulls up with the world's worst hangover. He just says it once, climbs into the Jeep and off they go to pick up the other 'Fuck up'. Ned nods, with a small wave toward Margot, taking the back seat comfortably enough when she meets up with them. Then away they go.
* * * *
"Cafe Mocha." Is Ned's drink order and he's already reaching for the Menu, scrolling through it's contents in search of the fabled Belgium Waffela that is purported to roam these parts. Bacon, home fries, eggs and orange juice for a teaser. It's the order he shovels off to the waitress when she arrived and handed off his menu without much more than that.
Then he's listening. First to the placement of questions to be asked, then to the Reprimand. His face screws up slightly and his eyes flick upward as if considering the honest allowance of those characters. It's a moment longer, his wool coat draped over his chair, jeans and a simple black sweater, serving as attire, that the older Apprentice seems to cluck his tongue and turn to regard Margot with a perked brow and a suggestive air.
You first
Margot
The day before had no doubt been exhausting for everyone involved. Margot stuck around until the Doc was conscious and well enough to assure her that he would be fine and that she should get the hell out of there. She went back to her studio apartment and stayed there. Spent a very long time out on her balcony considering everything that had occurred.
She was not sound asleep when the Doc rolled up outside her apartment, but had actually stepped out of the building around the same time that the text buzzed in her pocket, searching curiously for the source of the blaring horn. She was dressed in a pair of running shorts, tall socks, sneakers, and a sweatshirt with her hair in a ponytail-- about to go out for a jog, apparently. She'd have looked confusedly in through the Jeep's window, asked if she had time to go inside and change, was no doubt assured that the answer was 'no', and climbed in the passenger seat (as Ned was already in the back) and they were off.
At the restaurant she had water and coffee and took it with cream but no sugar. Would order something cheap and simple (eggs, bacon, toast, thank you very much) when the time for that came, and ducked her head like she could shift attention off herself in a party of three when the Doc told her that she had to learn to keep her shit together. Glanced away and put her mug to her lips to stem whatever apology might otherwise try to fall from them.
They had three questions, apparently, and Ned offered for her to go first. She looked at him owl-eyed over her coffee, then at the Doc. She took a dozen seconds to think about it before finally putting her mug down on the table's edge in front of her (still cradling it with both hands).
"What's the bone you wanted to pick?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
What's the bone.
As heavy as Sepúlveda drinks, neither of them has ever seen him drunk, let alone hungover. Yesterday he was suffering from a concussion and the effects of Paradox backlash and whatever else the Kha'vadi had done to him. Today the intelligence is back in his eyes but they're bloodshot behind his glasses and his hair is still damp from a shower and he's wearing a wrinkled patterned polo shirt that looks like it fell out of the 1950s and corduroys.
No one passing by will mistake either of them for his biological children but their table does have the look of a dysfunctional family meeting. Maybe he's their academic advisor. An uncle or something.
He scrubs his face at the first question and groans.
"I just told you," he says. "I just told you what's the bone." Down comes his hand. He looks her right in the eye and decides to reel it in before he upsets her to the point of tears. "Look. I can appreciate that what happened to you, before, in Boston, that this was... a trauma. And trauma, you know, it actually changes the way the pathways in your brain function, you become a, a, a less functional person, it can become a disorder if you let it. Trust me. I know. Not the way you know, okay, I have no way of knowing what it is you have to live with... but you do have to live. Okay? And in those moments, when shit is blowing up, and you're... freaking the fuck out, reliving shit that happened last year, that's... that can't happen again. You understand what I'm saying?"
Ned
"...Is she still a threat?"
Ned had counted the characters. Mentally insured himself against potential reprimand for going over the limit. Or at least, he'd maintained the level of degrees necessary between now and waffles, he would require, to minimize the Doc's 'lesson' to as brief as possible. The question comes off at the tail end of their drinks arriving, caffeine and alcohol coming in to save the day and give them all some breathing room between 'functional' and 'freshly woken the fuck up'.
Ned's Mocha has whip cream. He scoops out a finger of it and pops it in his mouth then picks up the cupi.
Sip.
Margot
Margot had jumped a little when the hand came down on the table, but when he stared into her face she looked mildly surprised as opposed to upset or on the verge of tears. Still, he reeled it in and her shoulders relaxed and her grasp on her mug did too.
When her finished her expression soured up with displeasure and disagreement and argument. Mouth scrunched and brow knitted to some degree each, but all she did was mutter darkly: "Okay, sure, I'll just get right on that."
Hopefully he'd skip over to Ned's question about Oni still being a threat and leave that alone for a minute and let her drink some more coffee.
Dr. Sepúlveda
[intelligence + empathy: you're being sarcastic aren't you.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Margot
[Not contesting. Sullen teenagers are GREAT at sarcasm.]
Dr. Sepúlveda
"She wasn't a threat before. She was a pissed-off medicine-woman who had a very good reason to be pissed off, and you were waving a phone in her face and threatening to call in the fucking Hermetics. You should write her a thank you note, you know, thanking her for not setting your hair on fire."
Margot isn't getting off easy.
"You should get right on that! Do you LIKE having panic attacks and hiding under blankets? Because it didn't look like you were having a very good time upstairs while Edward was pissing her off even more than she was already pissed off."
Ned
"Doc does not consider wrists being fused or concussions or lab invasions, threatening. Neither should we. Check"
More Mocha. More whip cream. Ned's watchful as Margot receives a dressing down about her behaviour during the moment.
"Also would prefer rational reactions to unknown assailants." Ned's staring now, at the Doc, a bit more flat than one might reasonably expect. It was his turn to be sarcastic.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda sighs a long-suffering sigh and halves his Bloody Maria.
Margot
"Of course I don't like it!" Not shouting, but speaking tersely instead. She didn't like drawing more attention to their table than what they already did, between the cocktail of discomfort that their Resonance created and the fact that relations were difficult to disect here as well. She put the coffee down and left it there for now, pressed her hands down on the tops of her thighs and scowled across the table at her mentor.
"I'll talk to Nick, then. Ask him to help. Beyond that I don't know what the hell you want me to do because I can't just fucking turn it off."
Ned sipped his sweet drink and ate the whipped cream from it while dolloping up some sarcasm of his own. Margot glanced briefly to him, huffed, and looked angrily down at her plate.
Ned
"In the interest of future problems arising..."
Their food arrives and Ned shuts up for a minute to eyeball the Waffles and generous breakfast. It's almost like he forgets what they were talking about when the food is put infront of him as he reaches for the Maple syruip and begins to lather it on generously.
"Would you like to tell us about any other threats that come arrive unannounced into your life? Or other vulnerabilities you have that could put us in immediate danger?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
... I can't just fucking turn it off.
"Yes, you fucking can. You're a fucking witch. Learn how to control your fucking emotions. I can teach you how to control your fucking emotions. It's not difficult."
He's not drying to be funny. It's a callous thing to say, sure, but he'd set the tone for the day with his text message and besides it's a callback to something she'd said to him the last time they got into a proper argument. This is amping up to eclipse that proper argument. At least they both have an ally this time. It's easier to argue with him when there's two of them.
Which brings them back to Ned's question. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Their server comes over to drop off the kids' food and ask if they need anything else. Sepúlveda wants to know if the Bloody Maria can come in a pitcher. She laughs and says 'sure' and asks if he wants another beer and he says 'might as well' and then she's off again. He kills his drink and chases it with beer. Does not eat the celery or the olives or any of the other nonsense garnishing it.
"Edward," he says, "my vulnerability, in that scenario, was my fucking apprentice running in and making things worse. I would've had it somewhat under control if you hadn't come barreling downstairs. Yes. I would very much prefer you to approach life, in general, let alone situations where I've just been bitch-slapped by Paradox, in a rational fashion." A beat. "I'm a fucking Scientist, dummy, what do you think I'm going to say? 'Oh yeah sure come tear-assing in the next time something goes tits-up and start running off at the mouth even though you have no idea what the fuck is going on.'"
A pause. The waitress drops off his pitcher and his beer. The mood at the table becomes apparent to her now. She scoots off without asking how their food is or if they need anything else.
This is their chance to interrupt.
Margot
"It is too difficult, Doc!"
The poor waitress, to have to serve a table so rife with sarcasm and anger and frustration. The food was dropped off, the Doc had drinks refilled. Margot clenched her jaw and held her words when the woman was hovering around them, but soon as she was gone again Margot was back at it in a whisper-shout.
"I'm a fucking witch, but I've only been one for half a fucking year, and most of that time was me running away wondering what the fuck just happened. It's possible, but that doesn't make it easy. Jesus Christ, Doc."
But, Margot, take a breath. She swallowed and looked down at her plate. Two eggs (over easy), wheat toast, two strips of bacon. She started to construct a sandwich out of the fixings on her plate even though her appetite was dwindling as quickly as her ire was growing.
Ned
Ned claps the Table beside his plate, utensils fluttering about. They were beginning to make a scene, but I doubt any of them (save Margot perhaps) seemed to care.
"Pardon but when you get dragged out of the laboratory you expressly told us would electrocute us if we tried to go inside, by a woman we've never seen before, who's obviously hurt you in some way and you without any of your fancy instruments on hand that allow you to 'work' properly my first instinct isn't to step back and say "He's a fucking scientist...let's see if he can invent his way out of this one' then sit back and observe calmly while taking notes..."
He'd leaned forward across the table to stare the Doc in the eye. Different reactions, these two. The character limit had been abandoned as had the Mocha and his meal for the moment.
"Lack of information breeds reflexive reactions. That scenario I went into Orderly mode just like Margot went into panic mode. Both of which you're very familiar with. The fact we didn't have any info. except what to be scared of and the one thing to be dependent on, was getting his ass dragged around by the hair in a concussive state, sort of lends itself to "Deal with it on your own terms"...Which we did. Marvelous as that turned out..."
A piece of bacon vanishes into his mouth. Crunches loudly, adding some brittleness to the table's pressurized discomfort.
"We're not scientists. You're gonna have to get used to that. Someone tries hurting one of you, much less succeeds, you're fucking right I'm doing anything I can take the attention off the hurt party."
Kind of like this moment. A brief glance at Margot.
"Chewing helps with stress." He rips a part of his Belgium waffle off the plate and stuffs it into his mouth, syrup, a bit of home fries and all.
Dr. Sepúlveda
[forces 2: go go gadget noise-muffler!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
For the sake of not having a time fracture in the midst of the scene, he gives her a Look that says they'll get back to her fatalistic outlook after he's done addressing Ned's question.
Which provokes an outburst. When Ned slaps the table, his mentor sighs again and, affect flat, shifts in his seat to pull the little noise machine out of his hip pocket and clap it down in the middle of the table. Aside from that movement, he doesn't have any outward reaction. They've seen their mentor effusive and hyperactive and contemplative. Even attempting to be helpful, before, on rare good days.
They may now be beginning to sort out that his patience is tied into whether he's actively suffering from Paradox backlash. He has attempted to heal himself because the episode is having its death throes. If he botches an effect now it will send all the Paradox that did not discharge yesterday slamming into him.
He pours another glass of Bloody Maria and settles in for a rant.
"I," he says, "am older than you, and smarter than you, and more experienced than you. I'm not going to get used to shit. Your only job, as apprentices, is to pull your heads out of your asses and figure your shit out so you can be present during scary situations without making them worse. Thus far, neither of you has demonstrated the ability to do that, so..." Glug. "Here we are."
He draws a breath. Rubs his temple. It won't alleviate his headache but his hands are slowly ceasing their shaking. Thank you, calories and sugar.
"Just... shut up, and eat your food, and let me tell you something. We can get back to yelling at each other when I'm done."
Dr. Sepúlveda
[Er, "has not attempted to heal himself," that should say. I'm sure there are other typos. *magic wand*]
Margot
The slapping of further hands on the table had silverware scattering and people looking over at them with mixed aggravation and concern and curiosity. Margot slipped down lower in her seat like she could just disappear from the public eye. Thankfully, The Doc had his sound barrier machine and partway through Ned's rant silence swallowed them up and blocked out the muffled murmer (or conspicuous lack thereof) of the restaurant around them.
Advice and a glance from Ned: Chew on something and it'll help with the stress.
She cast a brief glance up at The Doc when he advised them that he was smarter and older than them and they needed to shut up. She frowned like she wanted to find a reason not to, but ultimately picked up her self-constructed sandwich and bit into it. Maybe chewing would help.
Ned
"...Apprentices grow up. You need colleagues and this isn't the way to get them."
It's Neds end point, before the Doc has a chance to tell them to shut up. He has something to say. This gives Ned the opportunity to inhale half of his plate. He's famished. Obviously the previous day's efforts and his own eating habits left him minimally nourished and he's taking this opportunity to devour the meal, the plate and the mocha as quickly as possible.
He's listening, mind you.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda opens his mouth to retort and points at Ned and then catches himself before he can say something incriminating. Points at him a few more times and then flicks his eyebrows.
"Shut up."
Now that that's out of the way:
"Tomorrow," he says. "Tomorrow?"
He consults his right wrist in a move they've seen him execute before. He does not wear a wrist watch and yet he's somehow attuned to time even in its absence. A tic that reminds him of his latent awareness.
"Tomorrow, a Verbena woman you haven't met yet, Kiara, Kiara and I are going to a location whose address I'm not going to tell you, because... whatever. Because you don't need to have that information in your coconuts. We are going to retrieve from this location, which is a building operated by the Technocratic Union, an Orphan apprentice whose name is escaping me at the moment. It's not important. I've never met him. He got himself taken into custody trying to be a fucking hero, and now everyone else is all bent out of shape about him getting arrested, even though he's a cop and getting assimilated into the Union is probably the best thing that could ever happen to him, and we have to go get him."
He puts another good-sized dent in his second Bloody Maria and stifles a burp in his fist.
"I'm telling you this because there is a... ehhhhh?... three-point-six-six-six-six-six-six-six-et-cetera-et-cetera-percent chance someone is going to do something to fuck this up, and I'm either going to get captured or killed, and I figured I should tell you now so you could absorb this information and get all the histrionics out of your system before I go to meet Kiara."
Margot
an Orphan apprentice whose name is escaping me at this moment
"Brandt," Margot offered in a dull and unenthused tone between small and deliberate bites of her sandwich. Making herself eat. Even if she was aggravated, she couldn't just sit by and not plug in missing information if she could.
As for the rest? Margot was surprisingly... unaffected. She scowled darkly and glared at the a pattern of wrinkles on the Doc's shirt but that was about it. The last time they talked about this Margot yelled at him then hit him with the cold shoulder. Looks like the cold shoulder was going to be her continued plan of attack in this.
Ned
"....That's stupid."
....What? That's it. Ned pauses eating. Says those two words. Then continues eating. Down three quarters of a plate.
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Yeah no shit it's stupid. That's what happens in a democracy, Edward. People get to have their stupidity taken seriously and put to vote."
Margot
"And then the Revolution."
Margot muttered and abandoned the rest of her food on her plate. There wasn't much there in the first place but by now she'd eaten about half of it. Went back to her luke warm coffee and picked it up. "And then War." She took a sip and scowled.
"What happens if you guys even pull this off, Doc? Has the Democracy thought through that far? Like, what the repercussions are of taking this guy back from the Technocracy? I mean, is he really worth their retribution?"
Ned
"...Pardon but-" He swallows, takes a moment to adjust himself so that he doesn't choke and then leans over the table to stare at the Doctor.
"Did you not just get finished telling us that you were a Scientist and older and wiser and all that nonsense? If I'm telling you it's stupid and you agree...then why in the utter shit fuck are you still doing it and please-" He holds up a hand. Motions at the Doc and then around at the table "-spare me the 'take one for the team' mentality here and actually give me valid reasons as to why this fellow who "would be better off in the damn Union" deserves a potential suicide mission rescue on the word and back of a bunch of other fucking mages who have such stupid opinions in the first place?"
He levels a hand at Margot, while still talking to the Doc.
"This idiot goes and gets himself tagged and you guys do rescue him. That puts all of us at risk if you manage to get him back...nevermind the very real risk of getting yourself and captured and all the details you've got in your head, available to them as well. What are you gift basketing this entire affair? Or did the lot of you just decide that losing one war wasn't enough?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
He weathers the first wave of complaint-riddled questioning with boredom staining his features.
"Let the record show that Margot previously expressed disgust at the idea the traditionalists would leave this guy to rot in Technocratic custody."
The second wave provokes him to kill his Bloody Maria, then put a dent in his beer and pour another drink. Some of his color seems to be coming back. His eyes are still bloodshot but only sleep will do anything about that.
"Do either of you know how many of our fellow traditionalists have any exposure to the Technocratic Union? Or how many of them are capable of technomancy? To most of them it's a fucking alien paradigm, and they shit themselves if you even whisper the word 'Technocrat' around them. Eeeeeeveryone wants to--" Stifled burp. "--to bitch about the infraction, you know, the impediment of freedom and autonomy and blah blah blah, but nobody wants to do anything about it, and even if they are capable of it... Grace was going to 'hack the shit' out of the Technocracy to get him back. We're dealing with stupid assholes, kids. I can go in, grab him, and walk back out without tripping a security alarm or clamming up if a mirrorshade starts talking in technobabble." A beat. "And we have ID badges and doctored transfer orders. Okay? We're not kicking in the door and shooting everyone we see. On paper, it'll look legit."
Margot
"Which sounds awesome until you put together the fact that Alexander Brand is going to go missing. He's not ending up at another facility, they're not going to check in some dummy that's going to pass for him to keep them busy forever. The point that we're trying to make is that no matter how smoothly this goes, whether you and this Kiara and the prisoner walk out of there alive without tripping alarms or suspicions, at some point they are going to work it out, and then we have to deal with their reaction."
Margot was speaking through clenched teeth. She'd listened to Ned and nodded quietly here and there with agreement. Ignored Doc's comment about what her previous take on the situation was entirely, and now looked to be remaining at the table as though bolted by a physical manifestation of her own stubborn loyalty. The plate was left with utensils on it, the coffee cup pushed away as well. She held a hand around her water glass because she told herself she needed to down it before she stood up but didn't make any moves to actually drink it yet. Just stared hard at the Doc from across the table just as Ned did.
"You say the rest of them are idiots. But the Technocracy did kidnap this guy. I'd have the same feelings about the Order of Hermes if they were the ones abducting people and doing god-knows-what with them. I'd still be worried about what they were going to do when they lost the person they wanted to have."
A pause, then a scowl.
"What if they fucking track him back to us?"
Ned
"....This fellow got himself captured. He's also presumably got some information about the other mages here in the city? Any of the members on this 'heist' group of yours know him personally?" He pauses, thumbing at himself over his plate. "This is me not pointing out you're going to use Technomancy to try and fool the Group that specializes in Technomancy and how utterly ludicrous that sounds....I'm not pointing that out right now...instead?"
He lifts his arm, syrup having gotten on the cuff. He pushes his plate to one side and then leans on the table again.
"Instead, I'm going to ask how well you know the individuals you're going with. How well your own work will interact with theirs? How much you trust any of them or this fellow who's name you can't remember? Or how much you trust that everyone involved in this situation beyond yourself, will not ultimately fuck around with your carefully laid plans and leave you spitting dust while they pull their 'dear dear hack the planet worthy friend' out?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Somewhere after Margot's interjection, he rummages for his cigarettes and dumps the ice and other nonsense out of his now-emptied Bloody Maria into the pitcher. He's appropriating it for an ashtray. No one is going to tell him not to. He is too unnerving and besides: it's not like the health inspector has been here recently.
"Where did you two get the idea that you have any say in this, let alone that I give a shit about what you think? Listen: I'm the most capable person in this city, alright, I'm confident in my fucking ability to talk to security and medical personnel without tipping off, I'm confident no one is going to follow up on the fucking transfer order and you're worrying for no reason. I trust Penelope and Gracia about as far as I can throw them, and I trust Kiara because Eloise was Verbena--" Has he said her name out loud yet? He hasn't. "--and, hey, if it were one of you, I'd beat the shit out of anyone who asked me why I was going in after you, and I wouldn't have farted around as much as everyone else farted around, because you have no idea what Room 101 is like, and as paranoid as you two little shits are, you're never going to, which you should thank whatever higher power you subscribe to because plenty of Orphans end up getting scooped up by them, and the Technocratic Union is where individual thought and creativity go to fucking die. My plans aren't careful. Or... laid. Okay? I don't have a plan. I don't need one. You two don't feel the need to trust me and/or not question every other fucking word that comes out of my mouth. We're even."
He drains his beer and fills the glass with his liquid breakfast.
Margot
At first it looked like Margot was getting ready for another round of firing shots right back across the table. Maybe if she and Ned tore this plan enough holes it would fall apart and the Doc would no longer have to go in on this potential death mission.
But...
If it were one of you...
The tension and readiness to her posture slumped, like sails in which the wind had suddenly died. She chewed at the inside of her lip and cast a glance over to the side of Ned's face, gauging his reaction as well. Back to Sepúlveda while he poured more breakfast booze into his glass. Then, speaking in a voice that was a smothered fire compared to the heated insistence she had before:
"....Just.... please come back."
Ned
"...Fine."
Ned says it. Firmly. If he's come to any conclusion about this life it's that rolling with punches is a learned effort and you have to be ready to do so at a moment's notice. Sometimes literally, but more often then not at the behest of Andres fucking Sepulveda. His hands are on the table and he's staring for a moment, before reaching out to take his plate back and drag it infront of him. Fork, knife and appetite return with slow and calculated movements.
"What happens to us if you don't come back?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Jesus Christ, you two realize every single traditionalist in the city knows you're my apprentices, right? There's a--" He stubs out his cigarette and burps under his breath. "--a fucking... a waiting list, for people who want to take you under their wing and undo all the damage I've done. Don't listen to them. They're well-intentioned but they'll want to indoctrinate you into their traditions and you two, you don't... any tradition one of you would join, the other would not be suited for. Stick together and--"
A beat.
"Fuck both of you. I'm going to come back." To Margot: "Did you get enough to eat?"
Margot
The information that a list of traditionalists was waiting for the opportunity to sweep either of them up and indoctrinate them for their own numbers sat odd in Margot's mind. That made it sound like the traditions were desperate for numbers. Hadn't Pen referred to them as being borderline religious? In some cases, the Verbenae, it was a religion in a way. She said something about holy days, as she recalled.
A glance to Ned at her right. She had to agree, she wasn't entirely sure she could see Ned subscribing to any tradition at all, but he certainly didn't seem the devout enough sort to worship a diety or observe holy days or customs.
if you want to be one of the Verbenae, you have to actually spend time with somebody who is part of that Tradition.
He paused and dismissed the possibility of his death during the mission with a 'fuck you', and while Margot may have ordinarily chuckled she didn't seem to have much humor left in her bones right now. Instead, she looked down and dutifully picked up a piece of bacon from her plate. Nibbled at it and thought quietly aloud.
"I never considered not joining a tradition. I didn't think you could be much of a witch without being a part of the Witching Tradition, you know?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"I'm sorry," says Sepúlveda, "I stopped listening after 'I didn't think.'"
Ned
"We're apprentices. Last I checked, that was part and parcel to the whole schtick.."
Ned offers from behind his mug of Mocha. Then he sets it down and stares skeptically at the Doc.
"...You've spent the better part of this conversation telling us how much of a Fuck up each of them probably will be, including the sentence that was meant to reassure us that they're our best option. So thanks for that..."
Ned is cutting up the last of his Belgium waffle, brows pinched together in obvious thought.
"I'll find Nick. He's at least a listener." A glance at Margot, still frowning. "...Push comes to shove we'll get out of the city and wait until Margot's Spirit game is strong enough to come find you in the Afterlife so we can continue to annoy you with weird questions and paranoid delusions...."
He gobbles down the piece of Waffle he was cutting, eyes lifting to regard the Doc matter-of-factly.
"Food for Thought incase you were thinking of not coming back...."
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Alright. Good talk."
Sorry, Margot's abandonment issues. Doc is leaving a third of a pitcher of drink on the table and picking up both the noise muffler and the check. (Or: will pick up the check on his way out. He has to go to the register since their server is not going back over there unless someone summons her.) He stands and both coughs and burps before making sure he has his car keys. Then a thought occurs to him and he fishes his wallet out of his back pocket and tosses two twenty-dollar bills down. For cab fare for both of them.
"Later!"
Call it the morning after a Kha'vadi the kids had neither met nor ever heard of let herself into Dr. Sepúlveda's basement and found her vengeance interrupted by the two students who are now occupying precarious places on the Etherite's shit list.
He woke up on the couch with no recollection of having fallen asleep there and stumbled back down into the basement to find the lab trashed and his devices all out of order. Hangovers are not an impediment for a fellow who can cure them with a swig of a concoction he slaps together in a test tube. He wasn't looking for his chemistry set. He was looking for one of the radar-type devices. The one that lets him look back in time to see what happened when he was mentally checked out.
It's barely dawn when he pulls up first outside of Ned's apartment and then Margot's student housing. They're awakened first by the blaring of a Jeep Wrangler's horn. Obnoxious blaring. It would be obnoxious in the afternoon but on a Saturday morning when everyone in the fucking world is still asleep it's not only obnoxious to them but to everyone within a two-block radius.
He interrupts both of them to send a text that says:
Get the fuck out here, I have a hangover and a bone to pick with you.
He doesn't use emojis this time. Thanks, Hangover.
---
Flash forward to eight o'clock. They are not the only ones in the restaurant but they are the least happy-looking group. Sepúlveda ordered a Bloody Maria with a beer back and told the waitress to keep them coming. He had not taken pains to explain a damned thing in the car and now that they're seated he's the first one to speak.
"Let's not dwell," he says. "If either of you fuck-ups have any questions, I'll take... three of them. Total. And before you say anything, let me say this: Margot, you need to keep your shit together in situations where people are screaming and breaking things. Ned... just... you're limited to a hundred forty characters until further notice."
Ned
"Waffles."
It's the first thing out of his mouth when he goes to meet up with the Doc downstairs. He doesn't send back replies to texts or even make much of a fuss when the Doc pulls up with the world's worst hangover. He just says it once, climbs into the Jeep and off they go to pick up the other 'Fuck up'. Ned nods, with a small wave toward Margot, taking the back seat comfortably enough when she meets up with them. Then away they go.
* * * *
"Cafe Mocha." Is Ned's drink order and he's already reaching for the Menu, scrolling through it's contents in search of the fabled Belgium Waffela that is purported to roam these parts. Bacon, home fries, eggs and orange juice for a teaser. It's the order he shovels off to the waitress when she arrived and handed off his menu without much more than that.
Then he's listening. First to the placement of questions to be asked, then to the Reprimand. His face screws up slightly and his eyes flick upward as if considering the honest allowance of those characters. It's a moment longer, his wool coat draped over his chair, jeans and a simple black sweater, serving as attire, that the older Apprentice seems to cluck his tongue and turn to regard Margot with a perked brow and a suggestive air.
You first
Margot
The day before had no doubt been exhausting for everyone involved. Margot stuck around until the Doc was conscious and well enough to assure her that he would be fine and that she should get the hell out of there. She went back to her studio apartment and stayed there. Spent a very long time out on her balcony considering everything that had occurred.
She was not sound asleep when the Doc rolled up outside her apartment, but had actually stepped out of the building around the same time that the text buzzed in her pocket, searching curiously for the source of the blaring horn. She was dressed in a pair of running shorts, tall socks, sneakers, and a sweatshirt with her hair in a ponytail-- about to go out for a jog, apparently. She'd have looked confusedly in through the Jeep's window, asked if she had time to go inside and change, was no doubt assured that the answer was 'no', and climbed in the passenger seat (as Ned was already in the back) and they were off.
At the restaurant she had water and coffee and took it with cream but no sugar. Would order something cheap and simple (eggs, bacon, toast, thank you very much) when the time for that came, and ducked her head like she could shift attention off herself in a party of three when the Doc told her that she had to learn to keep her shit together. Glanced away and put her mug to her lips to stem whatever apology might otherwise try to fall from them.
They had three questions, apparently, and Ned offered for her to go first. She looked at him owl-eyed over her coffee, then at the Doc. She took a dozen seconds to think about it before finally putting her mug down on the table's edge in front of her (still cradling it with both hands).
"What's the bone you wanted to pick?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
What's the bone.
As heavy as Sepúlveda drinks, neither of them has ever seen him drunk, let alone hungover. Yesterday he was suffering from a concussion and the effects of Paradox backlash and whatever else the Kha'vadi had done to him. Today the intelligence is back in his eyes but they're bloodshot behind his glasses and his hair is still damp from a shower and he's wearing a wrinkled patterned polo shirt that looks like it fell out of the 1950s and corduroys.
No one passing by will mistake either of them for his biological children but their table does have the look of a dysfunctional family meeting. Maybe he's their academic advisor. An uncle or something.
He scrubs his face at the first question and groans.
"I just told you," he says. "I just told you what's the bone." Down comes his hand. He looks her right in the eye and decides to reel it in before he upsets her to the point of tears. "Look. I can appreciate that what happened to you, before, in Boston, that this was... a trauma. And trauma, you know, it actually changes the way the pathways in your brain function, you become a, a, a less functional person, it can become a disorder if you let it. Trust me. I know. Not the way you know, okay, I have no way of knowing what it is you have to live with... but you do have to live. Okay? And in those moments, when shit is blowing up, and you're... freaking the fuck out, reliving shit that happened last year, that's... that can't happen again. You understand what I'm saying?"
Ned
"...Is she still a threat?"
Ned had counted the characters. Mentally insured himself against potential reprimand for going over the limit. Or at least, he'd maintained the level of degrees necessary between now and waffles, he would require, to minimize the Doc's 'lesson' to as brief as possible. The question comes off at the tail end of their drinks arriving, caffeine and alcohol coming in to save the day and give them all some breathing room between 'functional' and 'freshly woken the fuck up'.
Ned's Mocha has whip cream. He scoops out a finger of it and pops it in his mouth then picks up the cupi.
Sip.
Margot
Margot had jumped a little when the hand came down on the table, but when he stared into her face she looked mildly surprised as opposed to upset or on the verge of tears. Still, he reeled it in and her shoulders relaxed and her grasp on her mug did too.
When her finished her expression soured up with displeasure and disagreement and argument. Mouth scrunched and brow knitted to some degree each, but all she did was mutter darkly: "Okay, sure, I'll just get right on that."
Hopefully he'd skip over to Ned's question about Oni still being a threat and leave that alone for a minute and let her drink some more coffee.
Dr. Sepúlveda
[intelligence + empathy: you're being sarcastic aren't you.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Margot
[Not contesting. Sullen teenagers are GREAT at sarcasm.]
Dr. Sepúlveda
"She wasn't a threat before. She was a pissed-off medicine-woman who had a very good reason to be pissed off, and you were waving a phone in her face and threatening to call in the fucking Hermetics. You should write her a thank you note, you know, thanking her for not setting your hair on fire."
Margot isn't getting off easy.
"You should get right on that! Do you LIKE having panic attacks and hiding under blankets? Because it didn't look like you were having a very good time upstairs while Edward was pissing her off even more than she was already pissed off."
Ned
"Doc does not consider wrists being fused or concussions or lab invasions, threatening. Neither should we. Check"
More Mocha. More whip cream. Ned's watchful as Margot receives a dressing down about her behaviour during the moment.
"Also would prefer rational reactions to unknown assailants." Ned's staring now, at the Doc, a bit more flat than one might reasonably expect. It was his turn to be sarcastic.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda sighs a long-suffering sigh and halves his Bloody Maria.
Margot
"Of course I don't like it!" Not shouting, but speaking tersely instead. She didn't like drawing more attention to their table than what they already did, between the cocktail of discomfort that their Resonance created and the fact that relations were difficult to disect here as well. She put the coffee down and left it there for now, pressed her hands down on the tops of her thighs and scowled across the table at her mentor.
"I'll talk to Nick, then. Ask him to help. Beyond that I don't know what the hell you want me to do because I can't just fucking turn it off."
Ned sipped his sweet drink and ate the whipped cream from it while dolloping up some sarcasm of his own. Margot glanced briefly to him, huffed, and looked angrily down at her plate.
Ned
"In the interest of future problems arising..."
Their food arrives and Ned shuts up for a minute to eyeball the Waffles and generous breakfast. It's almost like he forgets what they were talking about when the food is put infront of him as he reaches for the Maple syruip and begins to lather it on generously.
"Would you like to tell us about any other threats that come arrive unannounced into your life? Or other vulnerabilities you have that could put us in immediate danger?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
... I can't just fucking turn it off.
"Yes, you fucking can. You're a fucking witch. Learn how to control your fucking emotions. I can teach you how to control your fucking emotions. It's not difficult."
He's not drying to be funny. It's a callous thing to say, sure, but he'd set the tone for the day with his text message and besides it's a callback to something she'd said to him the last time they got into a proper argument. This is amping up to eclipse that proper argument. At least they both have an ally this time. It's easier to argue with him when there's two of them.
Which brings them back to Ned's question. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Their server comes over to drop off the kids' food and ask if they need anything else. Sepúlveda wants to know if the Bloody Maria can come in a pitcher. She laughs and says 'sure' and asks if he wants another beer and he says 'might as well' and then she's off again. He kills his drink and chases it with beer. Does not eat the celery or the olives or any of the other nonsense garnishing it.
"Edward," he says, "my vulnerability, in that scenario, was my fucking apprentice running in and making things worse. I would've had it somewhat under control if you hadn't come barreling downstairs. Yes. I would very much prefer you to approach life, in general, let alone situations where I've just been bitch-slapped by Paradox, in a rational fashion." A beat. "I'm a fucking Scientist, dummy, what do you think I'm going to say? 'Oh yeah sure come tear-assing in the next time something goes tits-up and start running off at the mouth even though you have no idea what the fuck is going on.'"
A pause. The waitress drops off his pitcher and his beer. The mood at the table becomes apparent to her now. She scoots off without asking how their food is or if they need anything else.
This is their chance to interrupt.
Margot
"It is too difficult, Doc!"
The poor waitress, to have to serve a table so rife with sarcasm and anger and frustration. The food was dropped off, the Doc had drinks refilled. Margot clenched her jaw and held her words when the woman was hovering around them, but soon as she was gone again Margot was back at it in a whisper-shout.
"I'm a fucking witch, but I've only been one for half a fucking year, and most of that time was me running away wondering what the fuck just happened. It's possible, but that doesn't make it easy. Jesus Christ, Doc."
But, Margot, take a breath. She swallowed and looked down at her plate. Two eggs (over easy), wheat toast, two strips of bacon. She started to construct a sandwich out of the fixings on her plate even though her appetite was dwindling as quickly as her ire was growing.
Ned
Ned claps the Table beside his plate, utensils fluttering about. They were beginning to make a scene, but I doubt any of them (save Margot perhaps) seemed to care.
"Pardon but when you get dragged out of the laboratory you expressly told us would electrocute us if we tried to go inside, by a woman we've never seen before, who's obviously hurt you in some way and you without any of your fancy instruments on hand that allow you to 'work' properly my first instinct isn't to step back and say "He's a fucking scientist...let's see if he can invent his way out of this one' then sit back and observe calmly while taking notes..."
He'd leaned forward across the table to stare the Doc in the eye. Different reactions, these two. The character limit had been abandoned as had the Mocha and his meal for the moment.
"Lack of information breeds reflexive reactions. That scenario I went into Orderly mode just like Margot went into panic mode. Both of which you're very familiar with. The fact we didn't have any info. except what to be scared of and the one thing to be dependent on, was getting his ass dragged around by the hair in a concussive state, sort of lends itself to "Deal with it on your own terms"...Which we did. Marvelous as that turned out..."
A piece of bacon vanishes into his mouth. Crunches loudly, adding some brittleness to the table's pressurized discomfort.
"We're not scientists. You're gonna have to get used to that. Someone tries hurting one of you, much less succeeds, you're fucking right I'm doing anything I can take the attention off the hurt party."
Kind of like this moment. A brief glance at Margot.
"Chewing helps with stress." He rips a part of his Belgium waffle off the plate and stuffs it into his mouth, syrup, a bit of home fries and all.
Dr. Sepúlveda
[forces 2: go go gadget noise-muffler!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
For the sake of not having a time fracture in the midst of the scene, he gives her a Look that says they'll get back to her fatalistic outlook after he's done addressing Ned's question.
Which provokes an outburst. When Ned slaps the table, his mentor sighs again and, affect flat, shifts in his seat to pull the little noise machine out of his hip pocket and clap it down in the middle of the table. Aside from that movement, he doesn't have any outward reaction. They've seen their mentor effusive and hyperactive and contemplative. Even attempting to be helpful, before, on rare good days.
They may now be beginning to sort out that his patience is tied into whether he's actively suffering from Paradox backlash. He has attempted to heal himself because the episode is having its death throes. If he botches an effect now it will send all the Paradox that did not discharge yesterday slamming into him.
He pours another glass of Bloody Maria and settles in for a rant.
"I," he says, "am older than you, and smarter than you, and more experienced than you. I'm not going to get used to shit. Your only job, as apprentices, is to pull your heads out of your asses and figure your shit out so you can be present during scary situations without making them worse. Thus far, neither of you has demonstrated the ability to do that, so..." Glug. "Here we are."
He draws a breath. Rubs his temple. It won't alleviate his headache but his hands are slowly ceasing their shaking. Thank you, calories and sugar.
"Just... shut up, and eat your food, and let me tell you something. We can get back to yelling at each other when I'm done."
Dr. Sepúlveda
[Er, "has not attempted to heal himself," that should say. I'm sure there are other typos. *magic wand*]
Margot
The slapping of further hands on the table had silverware scattering and people looking over at them with mixed aggravation and concern and curiosity. Margot slipped down lower in her seat like she could just disappear from the public eye. Thankfully, The Doc had his sound barrier machine and partway through Ned's rant silence swallowed them up and blocked out the muffled murmer (or conspicuous lack thereof) of the restaurant around them.
Advice and a glance from Ned: Chew on something and it'll help with the stress.
She cast a brief glance up at The Doc when he advised them that he was smarter and older than them and they needed to shut up. She frowned like she wanted to find a reason not to, but ultimately picked up her self-constructed sandwich and bit into it. Maybe chewing would help.
Ned
"...Apprentices grow up. You need colleagues and this isn't the way to get them."
It's Neds end point, before the Doc has a chance to tell them to shut up. He has something to say. This gives Ned the opportunity to inhale half of his plate. He's famished. Obviously the previous day's efforts and his own eating habits left him minimally nourished and he's taking this opportunity to devour the meal, the plate and the mocha as quickly as possible.
He's listening, mind you.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda opens his mouth to retort and points at Ned and then catches himself before he can say something incriminating. Points at him a few more times and then flicks his eyebrows.
"Shut up."
Now that that's out of the way:
"Tomorrow," he says. "Tomorrow?"
He consults his right wrist in a move they've seen him execute before. He does not wear a wrist watch and yet he's somehow attuned to time even in its absence. A tic that reminds him of his latent awareness.
"Tomorrow, a Verbena woman you haven't met yet, Kiara, Kiara and I are going to a location whose address I'm not going to tell you, because... whatever. Because you don't need to have that information in your coconuts. We are going to retrieve from this location, which is a building operated by the Technocratic Union, an Orphan apprentice whose name is escaping me at the moment. It's not important. I've never met him. He got himself taken into custody trying to be a fucking hero, and now everyone else is all bent out of shape about him getting arrested, even though he's a cop and getting assimilated into the Union is probably the best thing that could ever happen to him, and we have to go get him."
He puts another good-sized dent in his second Bloody Maria and stifles a burp in his fist.
"I'm telling you this because there is a... ehhhhh?... three-point-six-six-six-six-six-six-six-et-cetera-et-cetera-percent chance someone is going to do something to fuck this up, and I'm either going to get captured or killed, and I figured I should tell you now so you could absorb this information and get all the histrionics out of your system before I go to meet Kiara."
Margot
an Orphan apprentice whose name is escaping me at this moment
"Brandt," Margot offered in a dull and unenthused tone between small and deliberate bites of her sandwich. Making herself eat. Even if she was aggravated, she couldn't just sit by and not plug in missing information if she could.
As for the rest? Margot was surprisingly... unaffected. She scowled darkly and glared at the a pattern of wrinkles on the Doc's shirt but that was about it. The last time they talked about this Margot yelled at him then hit him with the cold shoulder. Looks like the cold shoulder was going to be her continued plan of attack in this.
Ned
"....That's stupid."
....What? That's it. Ned pauses eating. Says those two words. Then continues eating. Down three quarters of a plate.
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Yeah no shit it's stupid. That's what happens in a democracy, Edward. People get to have their stupidity taken seriously and put to vote."
Margot
"And then the Revolution."
Margot muttered and abandoned the rest of her food on her plate. There wasn't much there in the first place but by now she'd eaten about half of it. Went back to her luke warm coffee and picked it up. "And then War." She took a sip and scowled.
"What happens if you guys even pull this off, Doc? Has the Democracy thought through that far? Like, what the repercussions are of taking this guy back from the Technocracy? I mean, is he really worth their retribution?"
Ned
"...Pardon but-" He swallows, takes a moment to adjust himself so that he doesn't choke and then leans over the table to stare at the Doctor.
"Did you not just get finished telling us that you were a Scientist and older and wiser and all that nonsense? If I'm telling you it's stupid and you agree...then why in the utter shit fuck are you still doing it and please-" He holds up a hand. Motions at the Doc and then around at the table "-spare me the 'take one for the team' mentality here and actually give me valid reasons as to why this fellow who "would be better off in the damn Union" deserves a potential suicide mission rescue on the word and back of a bunch of other fucking mages who have such stupid opinions in the first place?"
He levels a hand at Margot, while still talking to the Doc.
"This idiot goes and gets himself tagged and you guys do rescue him. That puts all of us at risk if you manage to get him back...nevermind the very real risk of getting yourself and captured and all the details you've got in your head, available to them as well. What are you gift basketing this entire affair? Or did the lot of you just decide that losing one war wasn't enough?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
He weathers the first wave of complaint-riddled questioning with boredom staining his features.
"Let the record show that Margot previously expressed disgust at the idea the traditionalists would leave this guy to rot in Technocratic custody."
The second wave provokes him to kill his Bloody Maria, then put a dent in his beer and pour another drink. Some of his color seems to be coming back. His eyes are still bloodshot but only sleep will do anything about that.
"Do either of you know how many of our fellow traditionalists have any exposure to the Technocratic Union? Or how many of them are capable of technomancy? To most of them it's a fucking alien paradigm, and they shit themselves if you even whisper the word 'Technocrat' around them. Eeeeeeveryone wants to--" Stifled burp. "--to bitch about the infraction, you know, the impediment of freedom and autonomy and blah blah blah, but nobody wants to do anything about it, and even if they are capable of it... Grace was going to 'hack the shit' out of the Technocracy to get him back. We're dealing with stupid assholes, kids. I can go in, grab him, and walk back out without tripping a security alarm or clamming up if a mirrorshade starts talking in technobabble." A beat. "And we have ID badges and doctored transfer orders. Okay? We're not kicking in the door and shooting everyone we see. On paper, it'll look legit."
Margot
"Which sounds awesome until you put together the fact that Alexander Brand is going to go missing. He's not ending up at another facility, they're not going to check in some dummy that's going to pass for him to keep them busy forever. The point that we're trying to make is that no matter how smoothly this goes, whether you and this Kiara and the prisoner walk out of there alive without tripping alarms or suspicions, at some point they are going to work it out, and then we have to deal with their reaction."
Margot was speaking through clenched teeth. She'd listened to Ned and nodded quietly here and there with agreement. Ignored Doc's comment about what her previous take on the situation was entirely, and now looked to be remaining at the table as though bolted by a physical manifestation of her own stubborn loyalty. The plate was left with utensils on it, the coffee cup pushed away as well. She held a hand around her water glass because she told herself she needed to down it before she stood up but didn't make any moves to actually drink it yet. Just stared hard at the Doc from across the table just as Ned did.
"You say the rest of them are idiots. But the Technocracy did kidnap this guy. I'd have the same feelings about the Order of Hermes if they were the ones abducting people and doing god-knows-what with them. I'd still be worried about what they were going to do when they lost the person they wanted to have."
A pause, then a scowl.
"What if they fucking track him back to us?"
Ned
"....This fellow got himself captured. He's also presumably got some information about the other mages here in the city? Any of the members on this 'heist' group of yours know him personally?" He pauses, thumbing at himself over his plate. "This is me not pointing out you're going to use Technomancy to try and fool the Group that specializes in Technomancy and how utterly ludicrous that sounds....I'm not pointing that out right now...instead?"
He lifts his arm, syrup having gotten on the cuff. He pushes his plate to one side and then leans on the table again.
"Instead, I'm going to ask how well you know the individuals you're going with. How well your own work will interact with theirs? How much you trust any of them or this fellow who's name you can't remember? Or how much you trust that everyone involved in this situation beyond yourself, will not ultimately fuck around with your carefully laid plans and leave you spitting dust while they pull their 'dear dear hack the planet worthy friend' out?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Somewhere after Margot's interjection, he rummages for his cigarettes and dumps the ice and other nonsense out of his now-emptied Bloody Maria into the pitcher. He's appropriating it for an ashtray. No one is going to tell him not to. He is too unnerving and besides: it's not like the health inspector has been here recently.
"Where did you two get the idea that you have any say in this, let alone that I give a shit about what you think? Listen: I'm the most capable person in this city, alright, I'm confident in my fucking ability to talk to security and medical personnel without tipping off, I'm confident no one is going to follow up on the fucking transfer order and you're worrying for no reason. I trust Penelope and Gracia about as far as I can throw them, and I trust Kiara because Eloise was Verbena--" Has he said her name out loud yet? He hasn't. "--and, hey, if it were one of you, I'd beat the shit out of anyone who asked me why I was going in after you, and I wouldn't have farted around as much as everyone else farted around, because you have no idea what Room 101 is like, and as paranoid as you two little shits are, you're never going to, which you should thank whatever higher power you subscribe to because plenty of Orphans end up getting scooped up by them, and the Technocratic Union is where individual thought and creativity go to fucking die. My plans aren't careful. Or... laid. Okay? I don't have a plan. I don't need one. You two don't feel the need to trust me and/or not question every other fucking word that comes out of my mouth. We're even."
He drains his beer and fills the glass with his liquid breakfast.
Margot
At first it looked like Margot was getting ready for another round of firing shots right back across the table. Maybe if she and Ned tore this plan enough holes it would fall apart and the Doc would no longer have to go in on this potential death mission.
But...
If it were one of you...
The tension and readiness to her posture slumped, like sails in which the wind had suddenly died. She chewed at the inside of her lip and cast a glance over to the side of Ned's face, gauging his reaction as well. Back to Sepúlveda while he poured more breakfast booze into his glass. Then, speaking in a voice that was a smothered fire compared to the heated insistence she had before:
"....Just.... please come back."
Ned
"...Fine."
Ned says it. Firmly. If he's come to any conclusion about this life it's that rolling with punches is a learned effort and you have to be ready to do so at a moment's notice. Sometimes literally, but more often then not at the behest of Andres fucking Sepulveda. His hands are on the table and he's staring for a moment, before reaching out to take his plate back and drag it infront of him. Fork, knife and appetite return with slow and calculated movements.
"What happens to us if you don't come back?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Jesus Christ, you two realize every single traditionalist in the city knows you're my apprentices, right? There's a--" He stubs out his cigarette and burps under his breath. "--a fucking... a waiting list, for people who want to take you under their wing and undo all the damage I've done. Don't listen to them. They're well-intentioned but they'll want to indoctrinate you into their traditions and you two, you don't... any tradition one of you would join, the other would not be suited for. Stick together and--"
A beat.
"Fuck both of you. I'm going to come back." To Margot: "Did you get enough to eat?"
Margot
The information that a list of traditionalists was waiting for the opportunity to sweep either of them up and indoctrinate them for their own numbers sat odd in Margot's mind. That made it sound like the traditions were desperate for numbers. Hadn't Pen referred to them as being borderline religious? In some cases, the Verbenae, it was a religion in a way. She said something about holy days, as she recalled.
A glance to Ned at her right. She had to agree, she wasn't entirely sure she could see Ned subscribing to any tradition at all, but he certainly didn't seem the devout enough sort to worship a diety or observe holy days or customs.
if you want to be one of the Verbenae, you have to actually spend time with somebody who is part of that Tradition.
He paused and dismissed the possibility of his death during the mission with a 'fuck you', and while Margot may have ordinarily chuckled she didn't seem to have much humor left in her bones right now. Instead, she looked down and dutifully picked up a piece of bacon from her plate. Nibbled at it and thought quietly aloud.
"I never considered not joining a tradition. I didn't think you could be much of a witch without being a part of the Witching Tradition, you know?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"I'm sorry," says Sepúlveda, "I stopped listening after 'I didn't think.'"
Ned
"We're apprentices. Last I checked, that was part and parcel to the whole schtick.."
Ned offers from behind his mug of Mocha. Then he sets it down and stares skeptically at the Doc.
"...You've spent the better part of this conversation telling us how much of a Fuck up each of them probably will be, including the sentence that was meant to reassure us that they're our best option. So thanks for that..."
Ned is cutting up the last of his Belgium waffle, brows pinched together in obvious thought.
"I'll find Nick. He's at least a listener." A glance at Margot, still frowning. "...Push comes to shove we'll get out of the city and wait until Margot's Spirit game is strong enough to come find you in the Afterlife so we can continue to annoy you with weird questions and paranoid delusions...."
He gobbles down the piece of Waffle he was cutting, eyes lifting to regard the Doc matter-of-factly.
"Food for Thought incase you were thinking of not coming back...."
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Alright. Good talk."
Sorry, Margot's abandonment issues. Doc is leaving a third of a pitcher of drink on the table and picking up both the noise muffler and the check. (Or: will pick up the check on his way out. He has to go to the register since their server is not going back over there unless someone summons her.) He stands and both coughs and burps before making sure he has his car keys. Then a thought occurs to him and he fishes his wallet out of his back pocket and tosses two twenty-dollar bills down. For cab fare for both of them.
"Later!"
March 11th, 2016 - Catalyst [Doc, Ned, ST'd by jamie]
Dr. Sepúlveda
Someone somewhere has to have written a handbook for apprentices, if not detailing the laws of reality then at least how to function now that the laws of reality have shifted. The Hollow Ones took up the effort sometime during the Ascension War, and if the two of them had any interest in the Digital Web they may have heard this story already. The Internet is a dark place full of faceless individuals warping reality with keystrokes. They don't have a handbook though. Not even a pamphlet with numbers to call in case of Paradox backlash or Marauder attack.
Or what to do when the lunatic who has taken you on as a student ropes you into a group text at two in the afternoon on a Friday with nebulous instructions:
If you aren't both at the house in 20 minutes I'm coming to collect you. There's a Situation.
Followed by fifteen iterations of the Stonehenge emoji.
That is the last they hear from him before they report to the house. Unless they don't report to the house. Then they're going to hear a horn blaring outside their residences an hour after the text message appeared.
Time is not on his side when he's in a fucking hurry.
Ned
Define Situation.
Ned's response comes across quickly, mere minutes after the Doc's has been sent. Followed of course by the rapidfire flutterings of several others.
Situation as in: bring some power tools and some elbow grease?
Situation as in: Bring a gun and a body bag?
Situation as in: Cake? Is there cake?
Situation as in: Are we going to War?
Regardless of the answers, Ned would arrive at the Doc's place sometime between 5 and 15 minutes from the initial response (bus schedules were a thing apparently), dressed in his simple wool coat, a pair of slacker jeans and a thick hoodie for comfort. His head is draped in the black toque (beenie) commonly associated with sailors and his cheeks and chin are beginning to grow a small layer of uniform stubble. He'd knock on the door, a frown on his features, shivering slightly in the wind-choked cold.
"...I'm hoping this is about cake."
Margot
Margot had been sitting in the middle of her English class when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. The device was fished from her pocket and glanced at from where it barely peeked out near her hip.
The message she found jolted her, and was read three more times to make sure she wasn't missing or misreading something. Then, with a quiet curse under her breath, she hastily packed her things into her backpack and left the classroom with a small apology and her head ducked. The nice thing about college was the professors wouldn't stop you if you needed to leave and go someplace, not like how a high school teacher would.
Twenty minutes was unrealistic from where Margot was. She had a very stressful drive between campus and the Doctor's house, with her phone buzzing distractedly in her pocket each time Ned fished for more details about what kind of a situation they were going into. When the clock struck the twenty minute mark in her dashboard she was still several blocks away.
Five minutes late, Margot's car pulled up to the curb out front and she hopped out of the driver's seat and hurried her way to the front door. Ned was there first, probably would've been invited in (or maybe they were waiting out front for her to arrive?). Whether Margot greeted them at the front door, or whether she knocked and found somebody answering to allow her in, she appeared the same:
Stressed, worried, pink in the cheek and bright in the eye. She was wearing a heavy red hooded sweatshirt with the University of Denver's logo on the left breast and splashed across the back as well, a pair of jeans, and brown riding boots that zipped up to her knees. She didn't carry anything with her, belongings left in the car no doubt, but she sounded breathless and concerned.
"What's going on?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Unfortunately for Ned, the Doc is standing outside smoking a cigarette when he completes the trek to complete the final leg of his bus journey. His front lawn is desolate for belonging to a man who is capable of manipulating Life Patterns. Patches of dirty snow where the threat of spring has not yet melted it all away into the hibernating lawn. A dormant fruit tree stripped of its leaves. A garden hose the previous owners abandoned and did not bother to loop back up proper. It lies in a rusting heap behind the Etherite as Ned wrestles with the gate and asks him about cake again.
The Doc had not responded to any of the flurry of texts that preceded his own. He scowls into the wind and considers the question while taking another drag off his cigarette. The weather being what it is he is outside with only a cardigan and fingerless gloves offering him protection from the elements.
"Forget about cake, Edward." He isn't going to explain what's going on until Margot gets here. "This is about Science. We're going to do science shit today."
A beat. He pulls out his cell phone and considers the time. Didn't need to but it gives him a second to consider also that Margot and Ned did not arrive together.
"Actually, I should run to the store while we wait for Margot. I thought I would have to come peel you two away from whatever boring thing you were doing, this threw a big shoe into my cogs. Come on."
The Doc lives a klik away from a liquor store. By the time they go and come back (if Ned accompanies him; he's more than welcome to sit out on the front porch until the Doc gets back, but going inside to wait isn't an option) Margot has arrived and is knocking on the door.
What's going on.
As he's shifting the brown paper bag to his right arm and opening the unlocked front door:
"So, I've told you already I have no training in the Spirit Sphere, yeah?" He may have. He barely knows where he is half the time, let alone what he's already told anyone. "So, this morning, I am getting ready to leave, and I hear--"
They hear it too. Not as if on cue but as if the return of noise and presence in the house has triggered this. A pounding in the walls right by their heads. Insistent and almost frantic but not hard.
"--that. Do you hear that? All over the house, following me, like it's doing now, only whatever it is isn't showing up on any of my scanners--" He deposits the brown bag on the dining room table and starts rooting around in it as the pounding continues on the wall behind the fireplace. "--which has led me to deduce that either I've gone into a Quiet episode, which--" Canned laugh. Out comes a bottle of red wine. He continues talking as he moves into the kitchen, taking the insistent pounding with him. "--is very possible, ooooorrrrrr the fucking Gauntlet is preventing me from seeing what is happening, the fucking Gauntlet being the membrane between our world and the spirit world, remember, I know dick about the spirit world, and I figured in either case, the best course of action would be to invite you two to deal the situation."
They have been hoping for an opportunity to use their instruments.
Margot
Once they were inside and the knocking started up, Margot jumped a little as the sound had startled her. Not loud, but persistent and frantic. She pressed a hand into her chest to help slow the sudden uptick in her heart's pace and scowled thoughtful and concerned, staring at the wall where the sound came from as the doctor spoke. The Doc moved further into the house, taking his explanation and the haunting rapping noise along with him. Margot glanced briefly to Ned, then followed the Doc on in to continue to listen to him speak.
When he'd finished, the apprentices were quiet. Ned had looked at Margot expectantly-- apparently she was the only one here who had any insight into the spirit world at all. She glanced between them, then looked to the wall where the sound was now coming from-- a space beside the fridge. After a second of analyzing her brows knitted together into a frown and she reached deep into her pants pocket.
"All it's doing is knocking around, Doc. How long has this been going on?" And, regardless of the answer, she'd continue: "It's harmless right now. Not exactly 'be here in twenty minutes or I'm coming to you' level of urgent-- I had to come from campus."
As she griped, she freed from her pocket a small brown glass vial with a black rubber droplet for a lid. Either of them could take an easy guess at what was kept inside. Shaking the small tincture as she moved, Margot stood between the Doc and the wall and removed the dropper from its glass home. Certainly enough, the bright red of blood was to be found within. Filing it was a grim chore, one could imagine. A few drops of scarlet were scattered along the palm and fingers of her left hand, which she then pressed to the wall. Sensing, feeling, reaching for whatever might be behind.
----------------
Quither @ 8:49PM
EVERYHING IS SHINY AND CHROME!
Margot @ 8:49PM
[Arete 1: Prime/Spirit 1, Coincidental diff 4, -1 diff for Blood Tool]
Roll: 1 d10 TN3 (8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ned
He didn't bother going with the Doc to the store. He had arrived with something like impatience and a touch of hesitation about everything and seemed ill-suited to diminishing that with a walk about. So the Doc goes off to retrieve his 'medicine' and Ned remains behind to wait for Margot's arrival. The other Apprentice arrives and Ned offers a quick smile and a nod. The Doc is coming back before he has a chance to explain that he doesn't know anything.
Then the door is being unlocked.
And the knocking begins.
and Ned is immediately looking at Margot as the Doc begins to explain things, a brow perked in question. He'd continue to stare at her, when she offered her piece to the Doc and then glanced in his direction.
Your bag. Not mine.
Followed of course by Margot plucking out a small vial and going about her version of 'business'. Ned's not idle. He's already moving around the Kitchen, eyeballing drawers and the counter space for the impressive store-bought knife set the Doc might have for cutting, dicing and preparing the meals he inevitably throws into his magic oven for preparation's sake.
Ned would be aiming for the small, triangle shaped pairing knife, avoiding the big flash of the bread knife or the butcher knife in favour of something faster and more manageable.
"Last time she and I did this, I had a golf club. That didn't work as well. Last time, it possessed some bodies and attacked us...and the knife makes me feel better." It was what he'd offer the Doc, just incase Sepulveda's penchant for pointing out their eccentricities got the better of him in this unknown circumstance.
Dr. Sepúlveda
<i>How long has this been going on?</i>
"I just told you. This morning. Pay attention."
The wine cork yelps as he yanks it free. The cork goes into the trash and the wine goes into a pint glass. Before he sets down the bottle he points its neck at the budding Witch.
"Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Margot, campus isn't so far and you weren't learning anything anyway."
There is a knife block. All of the knives are sharp as the day they came off the assembly line and the Doc does nothing to impede Ned's rummaging. Doesn't even do much besides sip his wine until Ned explains what he's doing.
"What the shit, Edward? No no no no, no knives, knives make a mess. You want a weapon I'll go get a weapon. You two... keep... doing whatever it is you're doing."
When he swoops down the basement stairs pint glass in hand the knocking ceases but does not follow him. Margot can feel the humming of a resonance on the other side of the wall. The Gauntlet, to be specific. Whoever - or whatever - it is has been using Correspondence, Forces, and Spirit magic to produce a sound to penetrate the barriers. Its resonance feels like daybreak after a long darkness.
After a moment of consideration the knock comes again but the cadence and timbre change. Both apprentices can hear the essence of a question in it.
Margot
The Doc popped his wine open and began to glug it into a glass. He cautioned her about bullshitting-- it wasn't that big of an inconvenience getting here. She was hardly paying attention, though. Soon as her blood-sticky fingers pressed onto the paint of the wall her focus slipped away from listening to what the two others were saying. She was busy trying to interpret the humming twanging bright shiny question feeling she was getting from each <i>knock knock knock<i/>.
By the time she started blinking herself back to focus, the Doc had already gone down into the basement and left the apprentices in the kitchen.
"I don't think it's a--," she turned her head to look back, but stopped when she realized that Sepulveda had gone. "Where'd he go?"
After the answer (basement, fetching a weapon, you know, that stuff), Margot went on. She could at least explain to Ned what she was thinking.
"It's not a ghost. I don't think. I think it's one of Us, a witch or Worker or something. They feel really... bright. They're reaching through Space and the Gauntlet to reach out." The knocking had changed, and Margot had noticed it. As she finished speaking her eyebrows were quirked up with thought and curiosity, and her head was tipped to interpret and follow the sound.
"Hear that? Maybe it's an S.O.S.?"
Ned
"Basement."
Ned fires back at Margot as the knocking ceases with the Doc's departure. He's staring after their Mentor when he vanishes, the knife still clutched in hand and then around at the walls. It's only when the Doc has safely climbed out of earshot that Ned moves a bit closer to Margot, brow perked.
"Seems to be following him specifically. Does that mean whoever it is, knows the Doc? Doesn't seem to be paying you or I any attention."
A pause.
"The Doc's also not the most..." He struggles for a word for a moment before shrugging. "He's an asshole at the best of times. I imagine anyone caught in the outlying landscapes of the beyond, might not necessarily feel so kindly about him. So is this smart?"
Also: Given their last run in with potential entities from the beyond...he didn't have any Golf Clubs this time.
Margot
Ned edged nearer, and Margot looked over to him, curious as well as a little on edge. She eyed the knife in his hand for a moment, then looked back up to him. Listened to his theory.
"You have a point," she agreed, then looked down at her left hand-- the one with blood on it. She rubbed her fingertips together, feeling the tackiness of the drying blood. Moved to the sink and began to wash the red from her hands.
"Is what smart? Helping the Doc?" She made a sarcastic sound, kind of a snort, and flicked her fingers dry once she was finished washing them. Turned off the tap and hunted for a towel to dry with.
"Of course not. But we have to anyways. He's our Doc. With all that he's done for us, crotchety and eccentric though he may be?" She made a bit of a face and hung the towel on the oven-contraption's handle. Straightened it anxiously while she added: "I mean, if we don't help, who will?"
Ned
"You're assuming that we can help."
Ned's marching around the younger Apprentice, eyeballing their surroundings. Part of him was focusing on escape routes, while other parts were setting up barricades with the various furnishings throughout the Doc's home. He could envision blocking off the kitchen with the Dining room contents, but moving the table into place would take some time. Might be better to pre-emptively-
"I'm not suggesting we don't, but I am curious as to who or what could possibly want to come through and talk to him or at least interact somehow. If this is a threat and it's capable of not just communicating but moving across the boundary between worlds...well that means you're our only real defense against any potential issues someone like that could bring up." He glances at her, a brow perked.
"All I'm saying is, there are a lot of factors here that could go really wrong and us being here? Doesn't alleviate many of them beyond well-" He holds up his dinky little knife which, after all's said and done, is looking a lot more simple and pathetic by now.
Margot
While Ned prowled about the first level of the house, considering kitchen and dining space and their potential for fortitude, Margot stayed still. She remained in the kitchen, leaned back against the counter with her hands in the stomach pocket of her hoodie and her ankles crossed casually. Her eyes followed Ned while he marched about.
"There's a lot we can't do. If we dwell on that then we're going to start worrying more about our limitations than our abilities. Maybe we can't help <i>much</i>, but..."
She furrowed her brow and leaned to the side, craning her neck to peer toward the basement. Was the knocking still happening? What on earth was the Doc looking for again?
"At least I can say for sure that it's Magic, like us. Branded magic. It's a some<i>one</i>, not a some<i>thing</i>. Didn't know that before, so that's helping."
She straightened up again and looked at Ned. Down to the knife in his hand, then back to his face. "I know this will sound weird coming from me, but maybe it doesn't have to be a fight?"
Ned
"That's fatalistic."
One might be tempted to laugh at that, coming from Ned but then, he's a pragmatic man, not a doomsayer. He's marching throughout the house, trying to put two and two together on what bits and pieces they can use to indeed, barricade and fortify.
"We're not going to be able to help the Doc do or perform as Awakened, but Horror movie rules apply. Something terrifying coming through from the other world...we try as many different things on it, that could potentially hurt, harm or fuck-up something that's part of this reality. That's a lot of options available...even if we're not the best potentials for making use of them."
Ned points at the stove.
"We've got Gas...Electric? Explosions are plausible. Enough sharp edges to make a pin-cushion out of anything with a body or vital organs. Corners, walls and furniture for hiding and moving around. A pretty good idea as to the Doc's house layout if we need to make an escape." A pause, hand rising to scratch at his head. "Only thing I'm worried about is the neighbours hearing and calling the police but I suppose that's not gonna be helped one way or another."
Another pause, frowning.
"In fact, they might just be inured to living next door to the Doc by now."
Dr. Sepúlveda
That knocking hadn't ceased so much as it had moved on from the kitchen. Or away from their hearing. They distract themselves as their mentor imagines they distract themselves most nights: by speculating and speaking about possibilities.
The neighbors could hear a commotion and think they might need to intervene. That is a legitimate concern.
As if to serve as punctuation to Ned's suppositions something glass crashes and shatters on the floor downstairs. Then someone starts yelling. It isn't their mentor. Not at the moment they register said commotion, anyway.
"YOU SON OF A BITCH" says a woman they've never met before.
If they had a bet riding on whether Dr. Sepúlveda had soundproofed his lab, whoever had money on "lol no" would be cashing in about now.
Margot
The determined march to plot and map the house in the event of an attack took Ned out of shared space for a minute here or there, but the house wasn't big enough to get lost in. She could still hear him around the bends, through doorways and archways while she remained in the kitchen. At a point he circled back, after all, and used the stove as an example while ticking off the many ways this house could be used to kill them. If he paid attention he could see the exact moment where Margot switched from following on suspended belief to skepticism winning over. He concluded that the neighbors might be too numb after living next to the doctor for so long to call the cops, and Margot stared at him with her head tipped to the side, expression incredulous.
She'd opened her mouth to start telling him how out of hand that was getting, but the crashing cut her off. Her eyes widened, posture stiffened, much like a deer who caught scent of a hunter in the wind. Then came the shouting-- a female voice, unfamiliar, calling the doctor something that was mean but she couldn't disagree with Ned on the fact that he likely deserved it.
Ned had a small knife. Margot had nothing but her hands and feet. But she still pushed away from the counter and darted out of the kitchen, to the basement door where she'd take the stairs two at a time running down.
Unless, of course, Ned found it prudent to stop her.
Ned
He did.
A hand reached out to grab her by the shoulder, pull back sharply in an effort to stall her rush down the stairs. It was easy to get wrapped up in the 'Someone's in trouble!' mentality, but that didn't forgive the fact Anger + Reality altering powers = Potential shitstorm below. Before Margot makes it to the doorway, he's caught her and is shaking his head, finger up by his lips in an attempt to keep her quiet.
"Slow. Take it slow. You go rushing down there....either of us do and it could spook whoever it is, into unloading something unpleasant. Crowded someone who is panicked is a surefire way for us to get turned into getting set on fire, turned into primordial soup or a dingo or something...just take it slow, one step at a time and we'll give them a chance to settle themselves down or let the anger burn out a bit."
Life as an orderly gave Ned a bit of prudence where circumstances like this were concerned. Sure they could hurt themselves. One another. Both for all they knew, but two down or harmed was better than all four, when the Cops arrived due to Reasons and Explosions!
Ned leans out to check the knifes in the block, releasing Margot's shoulder in the process. He thumbs through the bunch, before deciding on one of the smaller vegetable cutting knives. He hands the pairing knife, the smaller of the two, off to Margot with a nod and than turns the knife he has around so the blade is running along his forearm, barely visible when he lowers his hand by his side. He moves to begin going down the steps at a slow and measured pace, careful to try and make as little noise as possible.
Dr. Sepúlveda
After that initial outburst the argument they can hear beyond The Door Through Which They Have Been Expressly Banned From Passing devolves a bit. Stays in English for a few exchanges most of which involve the Witch calling the Scientist names while the Scientist voices half-assed petitions for calmness.
Then there's another crash and unless Margot or Ned speak Spanish they cannot decipher what exactly the two are hollering at each other about. The Witch speaks with a Dominican accent while Sepúlveda speaks with a thick Mexican one. It makes it difficult to follow even if one has studied Spanish.
By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs silence has descended upon the house. It's a breath-held silence but a silence all the same. The door to the Etherite's laboratory remains closed and ominous.
Margot
She was a quick thing, Margot. Ned had seen her hustle before. He was getting to know her, though, and saw her intent written all over her face before she even moved. She was going to go charging in, and sure enough she shifted to move. Anticipating this, he caught her shoulder before she could zip her way out of the room astoundingly <i>quick</i> as she was known for being elsewhere in Smalltown, USA.
Slow down. Take it easy, don't get us killed.
Margot stared at him for a second with wide eyes, but stilled all the same. Drew in a deep breath, then a second one (both trembling ever-so slightly on the draw in and whoosh out). Ned started walking forward, and Margot followed suit not far behind him with slow, soft steps.
But the shouting downstairs was loud, and she could make out the words on the other side of the kitchen wall-- name calling and flared-up defensive pleading for calm. Forgettable dialogue, really, it was all the same regardless of who was shouting at who over what. Behind him, Ned could hear Margot's breathing-- shaking and quivering audibly, like she was trying to stave off a panic attack, or perhaps an asthma attack? Had he ever seen her carrying an inhaler?
Then the yelling switched over to Spanish-- indistinguishable and passionate. Something else smashed, and Margot gave a startled cry aloud-- strangled shouting of fear and dismay.
The shaking spread from her voice to her limbs, and she stopped walking after Ned. Stood still in the middle of the dining room instead with her eyes closed tight and brought her hands over her ears to cover them up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and dripping onto the front of her hoodie, and she shook her head as if continuing to deny the anxiety and stress of the shouting would actually make it stop.
Margot @ 1:58PM
[PTSD!]
Roll: 5 d10 TN9 (3, 3, 4, 6, 7) ( fail )
jamie @ 1:58PM
[in a move no one saw coming...]
Ned
"Go back up upstairs. Drink some water. Count to ten. Slow, deep breaths. Do not come back down here. I'll call up when it's ok or when we're coming up."
A series of sharp and static responses, carefully placed with co-ordinated touches to shoulders, hands and arms. Assurances that she isn't alone at the moment and that reality is still here. Brief flashes of Ned's eyes infront of hers, on the stairs. Gentle nudges. Pushes. Insistent if tender, toward the light at the top of the stairs and the kitchen there. Somewhere along the way, she would be relieved if the Knife he'd given her. Somewhere along the way, his voice would drown out any further shouting that might occur. He's careful and breathing loudly, as if to give her own lungs a rhythm to follow.
"Breath slowly. In one-" Inhale "-Out one-" Exhale "-In one-" Inhale "-Out one-" Exhale. "Upstairs. Sit down. Glass of water. Breathe."
Ned @ 3:06PM
(Expression 2 + Charisma 2: Calm down and go back upstairs, Margot)
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
* * * * *
"Doc!"
From the other side of the 'Electro-door'. Ned's voice is clear and concise. Practiced and even.
"Gimme an indication everything is clear and ok inside or I'm calling the Police."
Of course, his phone is in his hands and he's eyeballing the screen.Thumb hovering over a button.
Margot
It's tough to say whether the Doc and his 'guest' would be able to hear Ned and Margot in the stairwell. A silence had descended upon the basement and laboratory around the time that Ned got her turned around and was ushering forward momentum back up to the first floor.
<i>Do not come back down here</i>
"But she's going to--!"
<i>No, she's not.</i>
"But he'll kill her! He'll--"
<i>No, you're here now. Breathe.</i>
The scene was a familiar one to an orderly-- any number of people must have come through the hospital doors in similar states. It gave Ned an advantage in knowing what to do and say, that he should be firm but gentle and persist in getting her away from the fighting and crashing that clearly triggered this panic. Up the stairs and toward the kitchen. Glass of water. Breathe. Breathe.
She wouldn't go back downstairs (barring massive crashing or screaming or signs of extreme danger that would require stalwart heroism), but instead settled to wait in the living room under a blanket dredged up from anywhere.
Dr. Sepúlveda
While Ned is talking Margot down from the edge of a panic attack:
The woman neither of them has seen before has been waiting for the Etherite to head into his laboratory ever since she first began making herself known to him but for whatever reason he was staying clear of it until he wasn't alone in the house. Seems counterintuitive that a technomancer's lair would have created a weak spot in the Gauntlet but it's a place of power and a place of Quintessence whether or not he wants to concede that it is indeed a place where magic happens.
In the silence there's a standoff. They've talked themselves into stillness and the stillness affords them time to stare at each other both of them sure the other one can kill them if they are a hair slower and then he reaches for something she doesn't recognize. Anything in the laboratory could be a weapon in the hands of a Mad Scientist and she isn't going to afford him the opportunity to use any of them.
It's difficult for her to Work in here but as much as Sepúlveda wants to talk shit about magick they have this in common: what she does is not magick. It's Medicine. So when she curses him with nothing more than words those words carry strength.
Reality appears to have her back in this fight. He drops the device he was reaching for and a short series of bangs and crashes follows in its wake.
<i>Doc!</i>
It isn't the young man's mentor who answers his ultimatum.
A moment that feels like a pressure change as whatever energies normally running through the door stop running. A taste of atmosphere. Maybe Ned's ears pop. Then the door opens.
Out steps a tall dark-skinned young woman who isn't much older than Ned is. Soon as she sees him a flash of fury brightens her already-bright green eyes. Her resonance suggests healing power but nothing about her appearance supports such an intent. Her skirt is torn and stained at the knees and her blouse is streaked with the remnants of slash marks. She wears her black hair in braided knots about her scalp, and silver hoops through her nose and ears. Wraiths have eyes like hers but wraiths cannot take corporeal form unless they are quite powerful.
Tattoos adorn her skin too many places to catalogue considering she's dragging Sepúlveda out of the laboratory by one wrist. He puts up no fight. Whatever happened in there stunned him but he is not unconscious. Separating a Mad Scientist from his tools is the surest way to cripple him but she wasn't counting on this particular Mad Scientist having a cabal. Or students. Or... well.
"You call the police," she says, husk-voiced and it's hard to tell if she always sounds like this or if it's the result of her ordeal, "and I swear on all you hold dear, I will burn this place to the fucking ground." Her eyes flick around the basement and locate a pipe in the corner. She continues dragging the Etherite. "This doesn't concern them."
Ned
"You don't get to decide that."
It's Ned's immediate response. The first thing out of his mouth when she emerges through the 'No-no Door' (Sorry Margot). He tries to keep his tone calm and rational, low enough that it doesn't spook or startle any possible reaction from upstairs (Margot coming down here crying and potentially screaming, would be about as good for the situation as a bullet). At the same time, he's making his intentions fairly clear.
Ned gauges the space between him and the door when it swings open. A solid ten feet. He keeps that distance measured when she emerges, backing up and swinging around to follow her gaze where it leads. He takes a glance himself, at the pipe, a frown leaping onto his features before cutting back to her quickly (never take your eyes off the patient for longer than it takes to blink).
"Different time, different world than you're immediately used to. That means whatever beef you have with the Doc and it's considerable, I have no doubt...you need to take a check on just what you're doing and just where you are..."
A pause, eyes darting around the basement as if he's looking for something...or someone.
"Because last I checked, intrusions like yours bring consequences and you didn't bother checking to see that he had others in the house when you came over. Or the fact that there are others connected to him as well. The Police are my passive attempt to get you to at least consider that we should talk about this...You do anything hasty and unpleasant beyond just calling him or me names and suddenly I have to press the other button that gets a half dozen others the Doc's acquainted with over here in that quick sort of way that Corr makes little problem about...and then you can explain to a few Hermetics of House Flambeau, just what the hell you did and why they should care that you lit up the Doc's house with a Gauntlet breach while the Techies are watching us like hawks..."
It wasn't...technically a lie. It was just a summary of information Ned has put together, brandished by paranoia and accumulated over weeks of misinformed half-truths. It sounded plausible though, yeah? At least to someone fresh on this side of the world.
Ned's holding the knife. Incase she doesn't go for it, but he is brandishing the phone, thumb hovering over the touch screen, eyes locked on hers, bodily between her and the pipe she's been eyeballing.
Dr. Sepúlveda
<i>and you didn't bother checking to see that he had others in the house when you came over</i>
By the time Ned has reached this point she has dragged Sepúlveda clear across the room to the pipe she was eying and he has started to regain his senses. From where he stands, the Disparate can see the Etherite's eyes are open and he's attempting to discern what the hell is going on but he is not reacting as he would have normally.
Ned has seen his share of concussions in a hospital setting. The disconnect and the grogginess are apparent right away. No physical injury presents itself but the Doc is presenting like someone with a bruised brain. Beyond that: he's silent. In someone as hyperactive as Sepúlveda that's a pretty solid indication that he's not feeling all that great.
The woman's nostrils flare as he makes his threat. Her chest works to maintain calmness as he continues on. Eye contact does not bother her. Her eyes scream green fire back at him.
"Boy," she says in a voice gone sepulchral, "you press ANY button, we're really gonna have a problem."
They already have a problem. She's yanking Sepúlveda up by both wrists and trussing them behind the pipe like she's going to handcuff him.
<b>catalyst</b>
INITS + 6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
<b>Ned</b>
Initiative! (7 +...)
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
<b>catalyst</b>
That was for Rhianna. This is for Doc + 6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Doc +16
Rhianna + 11
Ned + 10
Declares!
<b>Ned</b>
(Split action:
1) Blind Rihanna with Iphone Flashlight
2) Body slam (WP)
<b>catalyst</b>
Rhianna: Arrest the Flight of Arrows rote
Doc: "GET TO THE CHOPPA"
Rhianna Rote: Arete 3 and yadda yadda modifiers and what
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
<b>Ned</b>
(Ned bouncing: Damage = 3 yards + 3 Ned's Strength, Bashing)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )
<b>Ned</b>
He charges. The glimmer of the forcefield that suddenly blooms is brief, perhaps almost non-existent but the Young Apprentice seems to pause out of reflex. Enough that smacking into it, is more of a narrow scrape that sends him shying off to one side, rather than ricocheting off with the bloody nose or a broken bone. He pinwheels slightly, the flashlight on his phone strobing the basement...
....The phone begins to play 'The Trooper' by some errant flutter of fingers, clicking exposed touchscreen buttons, as Ned comes to a halt on one knee, cursing rather loudly, adrenaline on surge. Then he's dive bombing for the 'No-No door', clutching at his phone and hoping for a slide into second and (briefly) out of line of sight.
<b>catalyst</b>
DOC-Grapple
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Should be 2 suxx, that was diff 6 not diff 5
<b>catalyst</b>
RHIANNA - Grapple
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Rhianna- Life dice!
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
<b>catalyst</b>
Doc Stamina Check
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
<b>Ned</b>
(Forces 1 + Matter 1: Reverse Engineering Visualization. Diff 1 + 3 - 1 for Tools (Touching the shit out of various handheld instruments. WP down to 3)
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Margot
Downstairs, a solo Apprentice dealt with a situation outside what he would reasonably be able to handle on his own. His mentor was stunned, some strange woman having thrown up a kind of force field about herself that stopped Ned's bodily throwing himself toward her. Maybe he'd hoped to tackle her into the wall? He might not have thought the plan out much further than <i>forward!</i>. Things weren't going very well, and some back up could really be helpful.
Upstairs, Margot stood in the kitchen with the blanket over her head and around her shoulders, scrubbing her own bloody handprint from the doctor's kitchen wall. She was breathing and counting in her head. Thinking of trees. The ocean. Sunbathing. Unable to hear anything happening down below, she'd continued what Ned had left her with. Spied the handprint while by the fridge with her glass of water. Sipped, gone to cleaning.
Downstairs: <i>"Fucking damnit!"</i>
Margot looked sharply and immediately to the door to the basement. Was that Ned? Eyes wide, she wavered there in the kitchen. He said he'd come upstairs or call to her, but things didn't sound good.
A waver on the spot, then a decision: Why would he know that he had what was happening below them under control?
<i>Breathe in (one), breathe out (two)</i>. A gulp, and Margot stepped toward the basement, leaving the blanket on the floor behind her when she stepped away.
The basement stairs creaked, and upon them appeared little Margot Travers, no longer shaking but pale and wide-eyed and very much resembling a rabbit who suspects a fox. Finding the woman and Doctor on the other side of the basement had what little color was left in her face washing away even further, and unable to stop the words from falling out of her mouth she cried out, sounding miserable and scared and shrill: "What are you doing?!"
Margot @ 4:57PM
[WP: How together can you pull your shit, kid?]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Tithe @ 4:58PM
[Witness.]
Dr. Sepúlveda
To answer Margot's question:
The stranger had removed what looked like diamond dust from a pouch in her pocket and thrown it at Ned to form a barrier between herself and the kids. Then she had returned to the task of binding Sepúlveda so he would be unable to use his hands.
If she were binding him with twine it would be one thing. But after sitting on his legs so he wouldn't squirm as much, she crossed his wrists one over the other behind the pipe and molded the bones together.
Suffice to say that shit hurt. Sepúlveda has the dregs of his wits left about him though and other than a few unhappy noises he does not scream. That's all he needs is for Margot to have a nervous collapse on the basement floor.
The stranger gets to her feet and leaves Sepúlveda sweating and panting behind her. Turns her furious gaze to the girl and swallows down her reflexive response.
"He and I have unfinished business," she says.
"What part of 'stay in the car' don't you two understand?" Sepúlveda asks.
Ned
"Are you a Nephandi?"
It's the first word from Ned that Margot will have heard since arriving on the stairs. A quick back and forth crossfire of questions from the Apprentices at opposing ends of the basement entrances. Ned wasn't visible but the open door carried his voice out into the basement space easily enough. They can hear his sneakers squeaking on the Doc's laboratory floor, the sound the occasional mechanical piece being disturbed or pushed around.
"...Or are you one of these Tradition mages were keep hearing about? The ones who are supposed to be working together to do something about the state of the world?"
If it sounds sarcastic, that's because it is. Ned's opinion of the traditions was rapidly declining with time and he'd only been awakened for a few months now. More rattling of mechanical things, more sneaker squeaking.
Margot
The woman had been crouched down by the Doc, but stood up to look at her, stare right back when she answered.
Through the open door to the Doc's lab (Margot would <i>never</i> call it a No-No Door, no matter how much Ned pushed it), she heard sneakers squeaking about and things tussling about. Ned shouting out to the woman and demanding to know what she was. Her head turned, eyes hopping quickly to the door. Relief, to hear him moving about and speaking clearly. Ned was okay, at least, but Doc... Margot was watching him now, the sweat beading on his forehead and face twisted up with pain. She chewed on her lip anxiously, but finished walking down the stairs all the same.
Once on the same level, she gradually edged toward the Lab door. Her breathing was visible in her chest and her shoulders, the wild fret clear in her wild eyes. Where the force field bent diamond-barely-there-visible in the air she wouldn't go near, but she didn't seem worried about analyzing it for weak spots or making any efforts to challenge or get around it. She was far more concerned with the people behind it.
"Doc...,?" she said, still sounding miserable. Checking in on him-- <i>are you okay? who is this? what's going on?</i>
Dr. Sepúlveda
When their mentor groans now it's a sound born from a combination of physical pain and visceral reaction to Ned's questioning. He coughs and tests the shackles the woman has made of his wrists and coughs again. Lets his head thunk against the pipe.
<I>Doc...? </I>
"She's not... holy shit this is unpleasant. 'Nephandi' is... is plural, Edward, you want to ask if she's a--"
"SHUT UP." He shuts up. Doesn't go completely silent as he's breathing hard and shifting around on the floor in an attempt to alleviate the pain in his arms but he does stop talking. The stranger goes on, "No, I'm not a fucking Nephanda. I'm a so-cha of Kha'vadi, and this MANIAC--" She points a finger at Sepúlveda. "--trapped me in the Deep Umbra when one if his bloody EXPERIMENTS backfired."
"It didn't back--" Okay wriggling his fingers makes it worse good to know. "--backfire. I was interrupt--"
"SHUT. UP." He shuts up. She turns to address Ned whether he's visible or not. "Your Flambeau friends have no sway here, boy. This is between me and him."
Margot
Ned wanted to know if the woman was a Nephandi (Nephandus, Nephanda, whatever), and he got part of his answer before he began shouting out through the doorway again. Margot cringed, visibly-- the woman would see her startle and cringe and lift her hands as though to clamp them over her hands. But she stopped herself halfway, took a deep breath, and kept it together. It nearly came crumbling around again, the startled spike of stress and adrenaline stabbing in her chest made her feel like her breath was going to squeeze right out of her lungs and never come back. But nobody was charging, strangling, or attacking. The Doc was in a rough state but the woman hadn't killed him yet and if she wanted him dead then he certainly would be by now. Maybe she and Ned would be already too?
Speaking of Ned--
He gets to complaining about the 'Between him and me' thing before it was Margot's turn to interrupt, swinging her head and shoulders through the doorway into the lab and shouting back in a voice that cried exasperation.
"Ned! Jesus Christ, <i>please!</i>"
A moment, a pause to find him in the room and see what he was doing. To watch him knock something over and break it.
Closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and looked back out to where the woman and the Doc were. Didn't demand answers from her any further than Ned has done for the both of them, but watched and hoped the temper she had for the Doc was less of an inferno for a couple of kids.
Margot @ 3:11PM
[The Scene Where Margot Just Keeps PTSD Checking]
Roll: 5 d10 TN9 (1, 3, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Jesus Christ," Sepúlveda says, "will everybody just c--" Ow. "--calm down?"
The Witch who is currently holding their mentor hostage has one eyebrow raised as if she can't wrap her brain around the scene into which she's walked. Clearly thought the kids would stay upstairs and not run to intervene. Or else was acting on impulse more than anything else. Angry shamans make mistakes too.
"I told them."
"You told them what?" the stranger asks in a taut tone.
"What a... Dreamspeaker is."
"Motherfucker--" Now is not the time for arguing about semantics. She sighs hard and asks, "These your apprentices?"
Cough. "Yep."
"You know, I would have called first, BUT I AIN'T GOT NO CELLPHONE RECEPTION IN THE FUCKING SHADOWLANDS."
"If you two don't go back upstairs..."
Silence stretches on for more than a few seconds. Both of the stranger's eyebrows are aloft now.
"'If they don't go back upstairs...?'"
"What?"
"What's gonna happen if they don't go back upstairs."
"If who doesn't go back upstairs?"
Her nostrils flare. From the looks of it, leaving his ass tied up behind the forcefield is beginning to sound pretty appealing.
Ned
Meanwhile...
"I told you to stay upstairs, for fuck's sake..." It begins as a shout and cuts out into a heated whisper, halfway through "told". Ned is standing a good six feet from the door to the laboratory, hands clutching several differences of which there are no manuals or distinct visual impressions on what they could possibly do. There's more broken glass on the floor beside one of the Doc's counters and several other gadgets and doo-dads sitting on the counter top that have been piled up in some sort of assembly line effort. Ned might have just decided to try each one in succession until he ran out? Or was turned into a primordial goo of some sort, whichever came first.
"Also: Jesus? Really? You remember you're a witch now, yeah?" A bit of sarcasm, something like a gun with a flat, broad dish for a barrel and a weird spring grenade looking thing with a cylindrical keyboard where the fingertips would go in either hand, Ned steps forward to stare Margot in the eye, brows furrowed and pinched together.
"There isn't anything-" He pauses, hands sagging at his sides "-I doubt there's anything we can do about this situation but unless she fixes what she did to the Doc, it's going to be one hell of an unpleasant afternoon."
Followed of course, by a louder conversational tone, past Margot's shoulder.
"Unless of course, Ms. Vengeance wants to try civility for a change? Or you know, pretending at being human for a wee bit?"
Margot
The mess that Margot found in the lab almost shocked her enough to knock her out of the stress of the situation at hand. There was a lot of disbelief happening-- disbelief at the state of things behind Doc's lab door, at the mess on the floor and the number of contraptions that were strewn about on different surfaces after being tested and discarded. At the number of devices Ned was holding onto, as though he could somehow make use of <i>something</i> in here.
Margot stayed in the lab's doorway, but when Ned yell-whispered and stepped forward toward her she cast a half-glance back at the Disciples by the pipes, then stepped further into the lab, briefly out of sight of the other two. Right into Ned's stare and scowl and sarcasm.
"What does that even--," she started, looking at him with a knit of insult to her brow, but soon cut herself off and shook her head. He was calling past her and out into the basement anyways. The last bit had the little witch making half-strangled gestures in the air between them, though, and hissing in an undertone: "Holy shit, so you're going to keep <i>insulting</i> her?!"
"Just..." Frustration in her hands and the lines of her face, but she calms them both enough to gesture for calm. Downward patting on empty space in the air. Just bring it down a notch.
Another breath, and she called out as though to replace the question with her own.
"Were you going to kill him?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"No." A straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Voice raised because she's still angry and the kids are still in the other room. "But now I'm starting to consider it."
"They're always like this," Sepúlveda says. "You should... you should see them at the... grocery store. Just... boundless paranoia... I don't know how the boy-child rides the bus, with all the germs and Marauders and homeless p--"
"I will zip your mouth shut if you don't stop talking."
He considers his options.
Ned
He rears back a bit when Margot threatens him with strangulation before turning around to slap one of the devices back down on the table. The gun stays in his left hand, while he regards Margot with an 'are you nuts?' sort of expression.
But he's listening when she speaks. Snorts at the 'No' and then snorts again, with the barest hint of mirth at 'germs and marauders and- I will zip your mouth shut;. Followed of course by a sudden thinning of humour and a stare at Margot.
He motions at her, without saying anything, muttering under his breath the entire time. He's not setting foot outside of the laboratory though, it would seem.
Margot
There was a small staredown happening between Apprentices between the Doc's trashed Laboratory, through a half-foot of height and several feet of space. Varying in intensity, mind you, but Margot just kept eyes on Ned to watch him, his reaction to the situation around them. She's done this in moments before, when she was more inclined to follow the lead of someone older and more experienced than her. Now, though, it could very well be that she was making sure he didn't give her a good reason to follow through with the plan weaving in her mind; a decision made that if Ned were to start shouting snide and challenging through the door again then she would dart out and slam the door along with her. Who knows? Maybe she could hold the door closed on him long enough to talk things out with the hostage-taking woman.
Thankfully it didn't come anywhere near to that. Quite the contrary, he gestured for her to go ahead and take the reins. <i>Alright, we'll try your way.</i>
Her expression softened considerably. "Thank you," she breathed her relief into words, then turned and (after brief hesitation, a gulp of breath) walked out of the lab and back out into the open basement room. As she went, she held her hands up in front of her palms out to show she wasn't carrying anything along with her. Not over her head, she wasn't that dramatic at least.
"Can... Can I convince you to give him back? Please?"
Margot @ 4:34PM
[Ugh girl you need more social dice. Charisma + Expression, WP]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Dr. Sepúlveda
A Nephanda would have turned both of them inside out before continuing on with whatever nefarious plan she had for her captive.
This woman may be angry and a bit Wyld-touched from spending so much time in the Umbra but she isn't completely insane. Or else Margot's plan was just crazy enough to work.
The small girl-apprentice comes out of the lab and asks for their mentor back. The stranger looks down at him and draws a deep breath in through her nose. From where she stands Margot can see the color has drained from Sepúlveda's skin. Diaphoresis is not a good look for anyone but his eyes are unfocused on top of it. Between paradox and punitive magick he has had his ass thoroughly handed to him.
So she lets go the breath and says, "Fine."
A moment of silence and then the jingling of her Forces barrier giving way. Her first concession. Uncuffing him is going to take more work than just dropping an effect.
Ned
"...Keep it going, Clinton."
Ned offers from the doorway, in Margot's direction. He's fetched up against the framework, staring at Margot, hand still clutching the piece of obscure equipment that he'd made his 'weapon of choice' (even if that weapon amounted to little more than a sometimes pointy bit of mecha that he could maybe throw accurately enough to bean the Disciple woman). He's in observation mode, the only clear indication anything was wrong before being the steady, purposeful attempts at breathing that he's doing. In and out. In and out. Meditative exercises.
Margot
<i>Fine</i>.
For half a second Margot thought her legs might give out from under her. Was it really that easy? Fine, and that was it?
When she heard Ned behind her she glanced back, found him in the doorframe, watchful and cautious but simply watchful for now. Support. Back-up, for whatever good that may be. She smiled weak and fleeting, then looked back forward. With a quiet and oddly pleasant jingling noise the holding shimmer in the air finally gave way. Margot jerked a little like her first impulse was to bolt forward-- moved a so far as a single quick step before she caught herself and stopped. Swallowed hard, and eased forward a little further.
She eyed the Doc warily, worry evident all over visage. She grasped her hands in tight fists at her sides and edged forward a couple of steps. Swallowed back the urge to be sick at the grotesque situation that bound the Doc's arms behind him.
"...Will it be hard for him to recover...?"
Cautiously asked, hoping for reassurance clearly.
Dr. Sepúlveda
"<I>Him?</I>"
The stranger crouched down next to her captive and grabs him by the lower jaw to turn his head towards her. Like the thought hadn't yet occurred to her that Paradox may have trounced him hard enough to render her choice of restraint excessive.
Aside from scowling a bit at the manhandling, Sepúlveda keeps his mouth shut.
She releases him harder than she needs to and reaches into the medicine bag inside her skirt. Finds a length of what looks like cloth bandage and removes it.
"Physically, he'll be fine. There's no helping him mentally." She begins to wind the bandage around Sepúlveda's wrists. It causes him pain. He shouts in protest. She doesn't care. "But you must know that already."
Ned
"....And yet...."
Ned mutters, hand rising to scrub at his own face, draw down his own features. Still breathing. Still Margot's show.
Margot
The girl was pale in the face and wore a rather grim set to her mouth. She had realized her hands were anxious fists and brought them together behind her back. Ned could see her fingers intertwine and squeeze tight at the small of her back.
Doc shouted, and Margot looked quick and nervous at him. But she had to trust in this woman. Did, to an extent. Enough that she didn't fear that she was going to suddenly go back to angry tirade and start melding all of them into the floor. The Doc was in pain of course, but Margot did nothing to intervene.
Any method she may have for unbinding wrists couldn't be any better, after all.
"Sure," she agreed softly and without commitment. Clearly the student was in no mood to shit talk her mentor just this moment, but in less of a mood to argue with this Umbra-dweller.
"I'm.. uh, sorry. For whatever happened. It sounds tough, being lost on the Other Side."
Dr. Sepúlveda
"You have no idea."
This to the matter of being lost. Her expression is a different sort of grim than Margot's is. Healing is a more difficult task than wounding and she does not have the success she had had binding him.
Aside from a huff from her and a hissing from him the extent of her difficulty remains occluded. She keeps moving her fingers over the bandages like she can pry the bones apart if she's gentle enough.
"The Verbenae used to keep paths open," she says. "Guide back those who were too far gone. They don't have enough people to keep the paths lit, and many of them have closed. Or been overtaken. Spirits are hungrier the further you go. The longer you're there the harder it is to come back. You stay too long, you won't come back at all."
[1 suxx on a healing roll with non-jove dice]
Ned
Ned is watching. He doesn't interrupt the pow wow between the two women in Sepulveda's life for better and worse. Instead he dips back into the laboratory to out the device down and...well, take a look around. There were very rare moments when you got a moment to consider another person from this particular perspective. Away from their insecurities and intentions (for better or worse). Ned remains by the door but scans the room. He looks at the scene of initial disturbance for how exactly their intruder had gotten into the Lab without using the door.
That led him down the path of potential other defensive breaches that left this house exposed to...well anything really. He and paranoia alone could probably account for half the world coming down on them just in that initial scan.
He comes back out into the basement proper a minute later, divested of all mechanisms to continue watching what is going on with the ladies and the Doc. His face is a pinched together flush of brows and vague stoicism. Par for the course.
Margot
A hushed stillness possessed the would-be witch. She even held her breath, which she realized after a dozen seconds and made herself breathe again. There was a lot of that tonight. She stood a few feet away now, watching over the nameless Shaman's shoulder while she worked to undo the damage done. Margot's face had been all shades of pale tonight, but watching this she looked almost gray. Sick and tense and twisted up in her stomach with understanding of what was happening to Doc's wrists.
But <i>intrigued</i>. She couldn't look away. There were important lessons to be learned here.
(<i>watch, child, get your stomach used to this</i>)
As she watched, she listened as well. The story of the paths through the Umbra and how they were shutting down had her attention shifting from hands at work to the side of the woman's face. Picturing that face pulled back into a snarl of focus and effort against some tremendous push to break free through one of these unlit paths.
Ned's steps leaving the lab drew Margot's attention back to him. She looked at him with that same surprised worry that she'd been wearing pretty much all afternoon now.
Back to the Shaman. A nervous puff of breath was exhaled, and with it a soft voice. "You made it," she reminded her. Almost like a reassurance, or a steady offer. <i>You're here now, not there. It's over.</i>
Then, silence. Watching her work now with baited breath. Please let her be able to fix this.
Dr. Sepúlveda
By their nature laboratories are sterile secluded places. Sepúlveda is not by nature a fastidious creature. To the contrary: he's a fucking mess. He smokes and drinks and will screw anything capable of giving consent. During one of their group study sessions he remarked on the fact that Entropy was going to totally change the way he mops the floor with other motherfuckers when he plays poker.
But he keeps his workspace clean. Or did, anyway, before the Kha'vadi woman ripped a hole in the Gauntlet and let herself through.
He had had a partner all his life. His wife had always kept him safe. That wedding band he wears has not yet supplied a story for Mr. Gaites but Ned is a quick enough young man to figure out his mentor has no defenses against dimensional invaders because he has devoted his life to other Spheres. This space is safe so long as Sepúlveda is around to keep it safe but the woman in the other room is capable of manipulating Forces and he was in the middle of modifying one of his devices when she came through.
Everything in the room is metal or glass. It's a small room. What devices Ned has found have been cobbled together from obsolete or outdated equipment. Remote controls and cellphones and random gadgets one can order out of a catalogue or purchase from a pawn shop. The initial crash they heard came from the intruder swiping a microscope onto the floor. When Sepúlveda fell he dropped a device and knocked over a small table upon which had rested beakers and slides. There's a scorch mark on the ceiling that may or may not have been there already.
To say nothing of the severed arm in the sink.
--
When Ned comes back out he sees the stranger scowling as she tries without success to fix her Work. This time she outright fails.
Sepúlveda shouts again and tries to pull away from her but he's pretty well restrained. He grinds the heels of his shoes into the floor and grits his teeth so he won't make too much of a scene in front of Margot.
"And you want to blame what happened on me," he says when he gets his breath back. Bitches in Spanish for a few seconds.
Meanwhile the stranger yanks the bandage from his wrists and presses it to her nose. Which has started bleeding. She reaches out to try and lay hands on his wrists again but he squirms in spite of the pain squirming provokes. Another sigh and she gets to her feet.
"Your arrogance, I blame," she says. "Your arrogance and your nearsightedness. What do you want to do, stay there and rot?"
Whatever revenge she had hoped to take on him was squashed by the apprentices' presence. She can't even set the place on fire in good conscience. This seems a suitable enough substitute. He's shackled by his own wrists and cannot access any of his instruments and has only two scared inexperienced students to assist him.
"Nobody's gonna rot," he says more for the kids' sake than anyone else's. "The kid's right. You made it... you made it back. Write a sad poem in your journal and move on."
The Kha'vadi turns to leave. If Ned intends to stop her this is his opportunity. Meanwhile Sepúlveda coughs and blinks like that will do anything for the fog enveloping his brain.
"Margot, listen: upstairs in the bathroom, under the sink." Jesus Christ the human nervous system is poorly designed. "There's a black bag. Bring it back down here. Try not to..." Ow. "Try not to vomit, if you vomit I'm going to vomit."
Ned
"We're not done."
Ned steps infront of her. They had all had their little pow wow and interaction, shared their feelings and offered their sighs and grunts and displeasures at one another and Ned had stood by watching the entire thing. He'd had to cover his mouth and look down rather fiercely at the 'Write a sad poem...' bit from the Doc, but beyond that his attention seemed rooted in waiting for something.
...That something was the woman attempting to leave.
Ned's moving toward the stairwell, when she stands up straight, seemingly done dealing with the Doc and his attitude. He's by the stairs when she begins to walk/storm away and he's staring her in the face when she reaches the first step, which he's backed up onto for a little height advantage.
"You and the Doc had business. You sorted that business, for better or ill. I'd say that business is concluded now given you're looking to get as far away from him as possible, yeah? I'd like a word then."
Margot
The woman couldn't unbind the doctor's wrists. She took the bandage away and Margot turned her eyes away quickly. She was interested in looking when the bandages covered things up, but found the actual image of wrists fused together too much to handle without at least breaking away to digest the initial shock. When she looked back, the Shaman was soaking a nosebleed with the bandages and standing. Margot's eyes widened, as they did, and she looked on in dismay as the woman stood and walked away. Margot made no move to stop her.
Ned did.
Still looking full of fret, now worried about what the woman might do to Ned if he got under her skin any further, Margot stood beside The Doc and squeezed-and-worried her fingers together.
<i>Go get my bag and don't vomit</i>, was the request from the Doctor. Margot looked down at him, swallowed hard (maybe even swallowed back the urge to vomit), and nodded.
"Hang in there, Doc," she half-pleaded, then moved for the stairs. Hovered for half a second behind the woman, then tried to move past her and Ned both with an "Excuse me,".
If allowed past, on up the stairs for the bag she went.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda blows out a breath but does not respond to Margot's missive. Hang in there. Sure. Like the fucking kitten poster every brain dead office resource manager has on their wall. He closes his eyes and resigns himself to sitting here on the floor with wrists on fire until she returns.
For her part, the Kha'vadi does excuse Margot.
As for Ned he can tell by looking at her that she is not in the mood for any more bullshit this afternoon. Her nose is still bleeding but blood is one of her instruments. Pissing her off would not be advisable.
"What is it?" she asks as a matter of course. He said 'a' word. She is not a literal creature but she will lose her patience if the brokered brevity turns into another monologue.
Ned
Ned allows Margot past the stairwell, moving off to one side, body turned sideways to allow for significant room. He doesn't move back into the Woman's path, however, offering her a step up the stairs as if this was indication that the conversation they were about to have shouldn't necessarily impede her need to be away from the Doc's general vicinity. The Doc was an asshole. His apprentices knew this. They were still his apprentices which means they had probably come to accept this fact about him comfortably and willingly.
"We've never met your type before and you've had experiences that we've...run into a few times and I doubt we're going to get much chance to run into any more of you anytime soon so... New mage to Seasoned...What's a Kha'vadi and Why?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
The woman looks at Ned as if he's lost his damned mind. But then she considers the fact that they're stuck with Andy Sepúlveda as their mentor. Sure as shit she isn't going to try to take them with her. First of all they're white. Second of all they're probably destined to be as crazy as he is. His breed of crazy is contagious. Effusive enthusiasm for pursuits which do not consider human life to be a resource worth preserving.
Another sigh.
"'Those whose vision shapes the world,'" she says. "The Society of Dreams. We're a tradition of medicine-people. I chose this Path because I feel harmony with the World Spirit, and because Its voice spoke to me when I was ready to hear it." She grits her teeth. "I should have listened, when it warned me of the sickness in your mentor. His is a destructive Path. There's your word."
She's intent to leave on that note.
Ned
"...Seems to be a pretty standard attitude with every tradition we've met so far."
Ned's only response as she blows past him and on up the stairs. He doesn't follow, but continues to talk to her retreating back.
"Could use a bit more detail though...especially if you want to ensure there aren't just going to be two more of Him in the world once he's done mentoring us..." He's stopping at the bottom of the stairs to wait and see if she stops near the top at all. If she continues on, he'll snort and call it done, turning to eyeball the Doc on the ground. He's frowning and contemplating in both cases.
Dr. Sepúlveda
She does stop at the top of the stairs. Not because she's deciding whether she wants to stand here and talk to Ned any further or not. She absolutely does not. Rather, she's debating whether he's using the threat of two future Mad Scientists coming out of this arrangement as leverage to keep her here longer.
And whether Sepúlveda has any lighter fluid stashed anywhere.
She is not a death-dealer though. She is a healer. She has already made a mess of the Scientist. One could argue he deserved it.
"You make your own choices," she says. "He's made his. We're done here."
With that, she steps out the backdoor and into the sunlight. Behind him on the floor Sepúlveda is breathing slow but not easy. Occasionally a leg moves. If the kids weren't here his assurance that no one was going to rot might have been an empty one. From where Ned stands he looks pretty fucked.
Margot
Maybe Margot passed the Shaman on her way through the upstairs portion of the house. Maybe she took a second to puke in the toilet upstairs away from where the Doc would see before grabbing the bag. Maybe she pep-talked herself in the mirror.
Whatever.
Ultimately, Ned would be standing and looking at the Doc, who was sweat-drenched and in and out of consciousness with a leg sometimes twitching, when Margot came thumping down the stairs once more. She didn't ask if the woman was gone, didn't wonder at this moment what Ned had to say to her. Rather, she knelt down beside Doc and set the bag down next to her legs. Opened it up and then started tapping Doc on the chest with her fingers.
"Doc. Doc. Wake up. Tell me what to do."
Ned
"...Well. So far, cynicism is winning the day, Doc."
Ned offers from his place, eyeballing the fused wrists with careful examination. The lady having left, makes him nervous but the adrenaline keeps that in check for the most part. Half of him just wants to curl up somewhere and give a bit of leeway to the paranoia in his head. Maybe try to cut the pipe out and give the Doc a chance to pull himself free. The other half of him wants to go and find some form of blunt object in the doc's Lab and manually break the bones apart so that the doc has at least one limb to maybe fix himself with.
Or possibly severe one arm so he can attach the one he's got in his Lab sink somehow.
Ned crouches down by the Doc as Margot comes down the stairs again, bag in hand and he glances back at her with a, what could be considered, worried frown on his face. He offers her a weak but encouraging smile, eyes trailing back to their wounded mentor.
"We may need to call Nick." He's a Doctor, right? A healer type? Or is he just a mental healer type? Fuck's sake...
Dr. Sepúlveda
With the tapping he scowls and opens his eyes. Tries to move his arms and then remembers oh right that Dreamspeaker he pissed off last year was here.
"We're not calling Nick," he says. "He's a counselor, not a... not a doctor. One of you... in the bag, you have the black bag? There's a vial, a big vial, with... pink shit in it. Fill a syringe with... eh... ten cc's and jab it in my arm somewhere. A muscle. Jab it in a muscle. And make sure you get all the... the air bubbles out, I don't want an embolism today."
Margot
No smiles back to greet Ned, but rather a grim thinning of her lips as Margot pressed them more firmly together. She was looking at Doc's wrists, no longer looking like she was going to puke but now instead hovering somewhere around wanting to cry. Her lower lip alternated between setting hard like steel and quivering dangerously. At no point did she actually go to pieces again, though. She kept her breath and shook her head at Ned when he suggested they call Nick
"He's not a--"
But Doc was already on it. She got into the bag as he asked and discovered the vial and syringe. She was staring at them, one in either hand, while the Doc started talking about jabbing muscles and not giving him embolisms. It was around that point that she held them both up and out to Ned. He worked in a hospital, after all.
Ned
Ned's accepting of the syringe and vial without much in the way of question or concern. He'd been forced to provide any number of emergency injections (usually during the abundant short staffing moments his hospital often found themselves in), mostly in the form of a sedative.
He tips the small vial upside down, pushing the needle carefully through the rubber bottom and filling the interior with the pinkish goo. A few moments and the vial is handed back over to Margot, followed by several flicks of the syringe contents by a finger. He pushes the plunger to clear the air and then glances down at the Doc's left arm.
It's a moment of searching, prodding before Ned finds the bicep, the biggest muscle bunch he can locate by his science knowledge and jabs the needle in quickly. The contents empty with a push of the plunger and he slips the needle free a few moments later.
"...Is this the part where you tell us we're going to have to break the bones so you can work properly?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda is making a valiant effort to hold his shit together as Ned rummages past his layers to get at his biceps. Flinches and breathes out hard as the needle finds muscle and skips across bone and breathes in again as Ned shoots the goo in. He has to concentrate to make it do its job. Then the kid asks him if he's going to have to break a bone.
He's still sweating and shaking with pain. It's working well and working fast.
"You break anything I'll tear your fucking nuts off," he snaps.
A moment later his wrists separate. He flexes his fingers. Then he hauls off and punches Ned in the solar plexus.
"Fuck!" he says. Like he's been holding that outburst in this whole time. Swipes a hand down his face before clapping it on the side of Margot's face. "You're a good kid, Margot."
Margot
Hands far more familiar with needles went through the instructions the Doc had provided, and Margot just stayed put as morale support and an extra set of hands when needed. The vial was accepted back and tucked into the bag, then hands folded together and were clamped between her legs to keep them from fidgeting or grabbing. She wanted to help move clothes aside to get Ned at the Doc's arm. She wanted to do <i>something</i> to help alleviate the pain that the Doc was clearly struggling with. But for this, at this moment, Margot wasn't much further help.
She watched with baited breath while the Doc sweated and shivered and tried to urge the concoction in his muscles to move through his body, into his wrists and do their Work.
His hands were freed at last! Margot hissed a quiet 'yes!' of relief-- thank god that worked. Then he punched at Ned's chest and she startled, leaned back as though worried that she was going to catch an errant elbow in her proximity to the outburst. She was looking at Ned and how he'd handle the blow when the Doc's hand clapped to the side of her face, catching her attention and drawing it back. She blinked at him a few times, then let out an odd laugh of nervous relief. Part of the relief was that she found herself laughing instead of crying. Initially she wasn't sure which was going to happen.
The Doc would find his hand caught in both of Margot's, and she took it away from her face but kept it near enough for her to examine it. Thumbs found the bones in his wrist and tested gently. Everything in its place? <i>Amazing</i>. And thank goodness.
"Who <i>was</i> that?"
Ned
"Kid."
It's the first word out of his mouth after the punch. Let's be clear. Ned's reality is paranoia and no small amount of reflexive shying. There is a very real layer of pragmatic decision making he does on my occasions. Dealing with fallout from crazed mages is...slowly becoming one of them.
He reads back at the punch, a tap that strikes the muscle regulating his breathing and has him reflexively moving into a guard position in his feet and several paces back.
"Cause that's what we are. Kids."
The guard drops a moment later though there is a sense of wild attentiveness, sharpened wits about him now. Again while he stares at the Doctor.
"...You punch like an old man. About what I'd expect though..."
And then he dusts himself off eyes flicking down to Margot.
"You together now?"
Margot
<i>You together now?</i>
Margot cast a sharp glance up at Ned from where she still knelt down on the floor. Her mother wasn't the lecturing sort, having been far too busy working many hours at many jobs to make ends meet. Still, though, the girl had a sense that she may expect an earful if she answered yet. All the same...
"Yes." Then, after promptly abandoning her inspection of the Doc's recovered hand and a glance away, down, elsewhere really. "I'm sorry about that."
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda lets Margot inspect his wrist. His eyes are still clouded and he is still unstuck from time. Hard to tell if he would submit to this if he were still in his right mind. He watches her with his concussed gaze and he hears her question and he hears Ned's admonition. Weathers them both and draws a breath moves his limbs like he's preparing to stand but he cannot coordinate the effort and so he abandons it.
"What'd I--" Burp. He really wants to lie down and go to sleep. Damn you two. "--tell you about apologizing."
He can't curl up and sleep. He has an apprentice on either side of him. Damn it.
"Oni..." His eyes are drifting closed now that pain is not wracking them open. "Oni and I... it doesn't matter."
Sleep sounds pretty good about now. Too bad his apprentices are his apprentices.
[[ Scene fades from here-- Ned goes immediately home and Margot sticks around long enough to make sure the Doc gets some sleep-- he wakes up after like 20 minutes or so to tell her to go the hell away, which she does. ]]
Someone somewhere has to have written a handbook for apprentices, if not detailing the laws of reality then at least how to function now that the laws of reality have shifted. The Hollow Ones took up the effort sometime during the Ascension War, and if the two of them had any interest in the Digital Web they may have heard this story already. The Internet is a dark place full of faceless individuals warping reality with keystrokes. They don't have a handbook though. Not even a pamphlet with numbers to call in case of Paradox backlash or Marauder attack.
Or what to do when the lunatic who has taken you on as a student ropes you into a group text at two in the afternoon on a Friday with nebulous instructions:
If you aren't both at the house in 20 minutes I'm coming to collect you. There's a Situation.
Followed by fifteen iterations of the Stonehenge emoji.
That is the last they hear from him before they report to the house. Unless they don't report to the house. Then they're going to hear a horn blaring outside their residences an hour after the text message appeared.
Time is not on his side when he's in a fucking hurry.
Ned
Define Situation.
Ned's response comes across quickly, mere minutes after the Doc's has been sent. Followed of course by the rapidfire flutterings of several others.
Situation as in: bring some power tools and some elbow grease?
Situation as in: Bring a gun and a body bag?
Situation as in: Cake? Is there cake?
Situation as in: Are we going to War?
Regardless of the answers, Ned would arrive at the Doc's place sometime between 5 and 15 minutes from the initial response (bus schedules were a thing apparently), dressed in his simple wool coat, a pair of slacker jeans and a thick hoodie for comfort. His head is draped in the black toque (beenie) commonly associated with sailors and his cheeks and chin are beginning to grow a small layer of uniform stubble. He'd knock on the door, a frown on his features, shivering slightly in the wind-choked cold.
"...I'm hoping this is about cake."
Margot
Margot had been sitting in the middle of her English class when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. The device was fished from her pocket and glanced at from where it barely peeked out near her hip.
The message she found jolted her, and was read three more times to make sure she wasn't missing or misreading something. Then, with a quiet curse under her breath, she hastily packed her things into her backpack and left the classroom with a small apology and her head ducked. The nice thing about college was the professors wouldn't stop you if you needed to leave and go someplace, not like how a high school teacher would.
Twenty minutes was unrealistic from where Margot was. She had a very stressful drive between campus and the Doctor's house, with her phone buzzing distractedly in her pocket each time Ned fished for more details about what kind of a situation they were going into. When the clock struck the twenty minute mark in her dashboard she was still several blocks away.
Five minutes late, Margot's car pulled up to the curb out front and she hopped out of the driver's seat and hurried her way to the front door. Ned was there first, probably would've been invited in (or maybe they were waiting out front for her to arrive?). Whether Margot greeted them at the front door, or whether she knocked and found somebody answering to allow her in, she appeared the same:
Stressed, worried, pink in the cheek and bright in the eye. She was wearing a heavy red hooded sweatshirt with the University of Denver's logo on the left breast and splashed across the back as well, a pair of jeans, and brown riding boots that zipped up to her knees. She didn't carry anything with her, belongings left in the car no doubt, but she sounded breathless and concerned.
"What's going on?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Unfortunately for Ned, the Doc is standing outside smoking a cigarette when he completes the trek to complete the final leg of his bus journey. His front lawn is desolate for belonging to a man who is capable of manipulating Life Patterns. Patches of dirty snow where the threat of spring has not yet melted it all away into the hibernating lawn. A dormant fruit tree stripped of its leaves. A garden hose the previous owners abandoned and did not bother to loop back up proper. It lies in a rusting heap behind the Etherite as Ned wrestles with the gate and asks him about cake again.
The Doc had not responded to any of the flurry of texts that preceded his own. He scowls into the wind and considers the question while taking another drag off his cigarette. The weather being what it is he is outside with only a cardigan and fingerless gloves offering him protection from the elements.
"Forget about cake, Edward." He isn't going to explain what's going on until Margot gets here. "This is about Science. We're going to do science shit today."
A beat. He pulls out his cell phone and considers the time. Didn't need to but it gives him a second to consider also that Margot and Ned did not arrive together.
"Actually, I should run to the store while we wait for Margot. I thought I would have to come peel you two away from whatever boring thing you were doing, this threw a big shoe into my cogs. Come on."
The Doc lives a klik away from a liquor store. By the time they go and come back (if Ned accompanies him; he's more than welcome to sit out on the front porch until the Doc gets back, but going inside to wait isn't an option) Margot has arrived and is knocking on the door.
What's going on.
As he's shifting the brown paper bag to his right arm and opening the unlocked front door:
"So, I've told you already I have no training in the Spirit Sphere, yeah?" He may have. He barely knows where he is half the time, let alone what he's already told anyone. "So, this morning, I am getting ready to leave, and I hear--"
They hear it too. Not as if on cue but as if the return of noise and presence in the house has triggered this. A pounding in the walls right by their heads. Insistent and almost frantic but not hard.
"--that. Do you hear that? All over the house, following me, like it's doing now, only whatever it is isn't showing up on any of my scanners--" He deposits the brown bag on the dining room table and starts rooting around in it as the pounding continues on the wall behind the fireplace. "--which has led me to deduce that either I've gone into a Quiet episode, which--" Canned laugh. Out comes a bottle of red wine. He continues talking as he moves into the kitchen, taking the insistent pounding with him. "--is very possible, ooooorrrrrr the fucking Gauntlet is preventing me from seeing what is happening, the fucking Gauntlet being the membrane between our world and the spirit world, remember, I know dick about the spirit world, and I figured in either case, the best course of action would be to invite you two to deal the situation."
They have been hoping for an opportunity to use their instruments.
Margot
Once they were inside and the knocking started up, Margot jumped a little as the sound had startled her. Not loud, but persistent and frantic. She pressed a hand into her chest to help slow the sudden uptick in her heart's pace and scowled thoughtful and concerned, staring at the wall where the sound came from as the doctor spoke. The Doc moved further into the house, taking his explanation and the haunting rapping noise along with him. Margot glanced briefly to Ned, then followed the Doc on in to continue to listen to him speak.
When he'd finished, the apprentices were quiet. Ned had looked at Margot expectantly-- apparently she was the only one here who had any insight into the spirit world at all. She glanced between them, then looked to the wall where the sound was now coming from-- a space beside the fridge. After a second of analyzing her brows knitted together into a frown and she reached deep into her pants pocket.
"All it's doing is knocking around, Doc. How long has this been going on?" And, regardless of the answer, she'd continue: "It's harmless right now. Not exactly 'be here in twenty minutes or I'm coming to you' level of urgent-- I had to come from campus."
As she griped, she freed from her pocket a small brown glass vial with a black rubber droplet for a lid. Either of them could take an easy guess at what was kept inside. Shaking the small tincture as she moved, Margot stood between the Doc and the wall and removed the dropper from its glass home. Certainly enough, the bright red of blood was to be found within. Filing it was a grim chore, one could imagine. A few drops of scarlet were scattered along the palm and fingers of her left hand, which she then pressed to the wall. Sensing, feeling, reaching for whatever might be behind.
----------------
Quither @ 8:49PM
EVERYHING IS SHINY AND CHROME!
Margot @ 8:49PM
[Arete 1: Prime/Spirit 1, Coincidental diff 4, -1 diff for Blood Tool]
Roll: 1 d10 TN3 (8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Ned
He didn't bother going with the Doc to the store. He had arrived with something like impatience and a touch of hesitation about everything and seemed ill-suited to diminishing that with a walk about. So the Doc goes off to retrieve his 'medicine' and Ned remains behind to wait for Margot's arrival. The other Apprentice arrives and Ned offers a quick smile and a nod. The Doc is coming back before he has a chance to explain that he doesn't know anything.
Then the door is being unlocked.
And the knocking begins.
and Ned is immediately looking at Margot as the Doc begins to explain things, a brow perked in question. He'd continue to stare at her, when she offered her piece to the Doc and then glanced in his direction.
Your bag. Not mine.
Followed of course by Margot plucking out a small vial and going about her version of 'business'. Ned's not idle. He's already moving around the Kitchen, eyeballing drawers and the counter space for the impressive store-bought knife set the Doc might have for cutting, dicing and preparing the meals he inevitably throws into his magic oven for preparation's sake.
Ned would be aiming for the small, triangle shaped pairing knife, avoiding the big flash of the bread knife or the butcher knife in favour of something faster and more manageable.
"Last time she and I did this, I had a golf club. That didn't work as well. Last time, it possessed some bodies and attacked us...and the knife makes me feel better." It was what he'd offer the Doc, just incase Sepulveda's penchant for pointing out their eccentricities got the better of him in this unknown circumstance.
Dr. Sepúlveda
<i>How long has this been going on?</i>
"I just told you. This morning. Pay attention."
The wine cork yelps as he yanks it free. The cork goes into the trash and the wine goes into a pint glass. Before he sets down the bottle he points its neck at the budding Witch.
"Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Margot, campus isn't so far and you weren't learning anything anyway."
There is a knife block. All of the knives are sharp as the day they came off the assembly line and the Doc does nothing to impede Ned's rummaging. Doesn't even do much besides sip his wine until Ned explains what he's doing.
"What the shit, Edward? No no no no, no knives, knives make a mess. You want a weapon I'll go get a weapon. You two... keep... doing whatever it is you're doing."
When he swoops down the basement stairs pint glass in hand the knocking ceases but does not follow him. Margot can feel the humming of a resonance on the other side of the wall. The Gauntlet, to be specific. Whoever - or whatever - it is has been using Correspondence, Forces, and Spirit magic to produce a sound to penetrate the barriers. Its resonance feels like daybreak after a long darkness.
After a moment of consideration the knock comes again but the cadence and timbre change. Both apprentices can hear the essence of a question in it.
Margot
The Doc popped his wine open and began to glug it into a glass. He cautioned her about bullshitting-- it wasn't that big of an inconvenience getting here. She was hardly paying attention, though. Soon as her blood-sticky fingers pressed onto the paint of the wall her focus slipped away from listening to what the two others were saying. She was busy trying to interpret the humming twanging bright shiny question feeling she was getting from each <i>knock knock knock<i/>.
By the time she started blinking herself back to focus, the Doc had already gone down into the basement and left the apprentices in the kitchen.
"I don't think it's a--," she turned her head to look back, but stopped when she realized that Sepulveda had gone. "Where'd he go?"
After the answer (basement, fetching a weapon, you know, that stuff), Margot went on. She could at least explain to Ned what she was thinking.
"It's not a ghost. I don't think. I think it's one of Us, a witch or Worker or something. They feel really... bright. They're reaching through Space and the Gauntlet to reach out." The knocking had changed, and Margot had noticed it. As she finished speaking her eyebrows were quirked up with thought and curiosity, and her head was tipped to interpret and follow the sound.
"Hear that? Maybe it's an S.O.S.?"
Ned
"Basement."
Ned fires back at Margot as the knocking ceases with the Doc's departure. He's staring after their Mentor when he vanishes, the knife still clutched in hand and then around at the walls. It's only when the Doc has safely climbed out of earshot that Ned moves a bit closer to Margot, brow perked.
"Seems to be following him specifically. Does that mean whoever it is, knows the Doc? Doesn't seem to be paying you or I any attention."
A pause.
"The Doc's also not the most..." He struggles for a word for a moment before shrugging. "He's an asshole at the best of times. I imagine anyone caught in the outlying landscapes of the beyond, might not necessarily feel so kindly about him. So is this smart?"
Also: Given their last run in with potential entities from the beyond...he didn't have any Golf Clubs this time.
Margot
Ned edged nearer, and Margot looked over to him, curious as well as a little on edge. She eyed the knife in his hand for a moment, then looked back up to him. Listened to his theory.
"You have a point," she agreed, then looked down at her left hand-- the one with blood on it. She rubbed her fingertips together, feeling the tackiness of the drying blood. Moved to the sink and began to wash the red from her hands.
"Is what smart? Helping the Doc?" She made a sarcastic sound, kind of a snort, and flicked her fingers dry once she was finished washing them. Turned off the tap and hunted for a towel to dry with.
"Of course not. But we have to anyways. He's our Doc. With all that he's done for us, crotchety and eccentric though he may be?" She made a bit of a face and hung the towel on the oven-contraption's handle. Straightened it anxiously while she added: "I mean, if we don't help, who will?"
Ned
"You're assuming that we can help."
Ned's marching around the younger Apprentice, eyeballing their surroundings. Part of him was focusing on escape routes, while other parts were setting up barricades with the various furnishings throughout the Doc's home. He could envision blocking off the kitchen with the Dining room contents, but moving the table into place would take some time. Might be better to pre-emptively-
"I'm not suggesting we don't, but I am curious as to who or what could possibly want to come through and talk to him or at least interact somehow. If this is a threat and it's capable of not just communicating but moving across the boundary between worlds...well that means you're our only real defense against any potential issues someone like that could bring up." He glances at her, a brow perked.
"All I'm saying is, there are a lot of factors here that could go really wrong and us being here? Doesn't alleviate many of them beyond well-" He holds up his dinky little knife which, after all's said and done, is looking a lot more simple and pathetic by now.
Margot
While Ned prowled about the first level of the house, considering kitchen and dining space and their potential for fortitude, Margot stayed still. She remained in the kitchen, leaned back against the counter with her hands in the stomach pocket of her hoodie and her ankles crossed casually. Her eyes followed Ned while he marched about.
"There's a lot we can't do. If we dwell on that then we're going to start worrying more about our limitations than our abilities. Maybe we can't help <i>much</i>, but..."
She furrowed her brow and leaned to the side, craning her neck to peer toward the basement. Was the knocking still happening? What on earth was the Doc looking for again?
"At least I can say for sure that it's Magic, like us. Branded magic. It's a some<i>one</i>, not a some<i>thing</i>. Didn't know that before, so that's helping."
She straightened up again and looked at Ned. Down to the knife in his hand, then back to his face. "I know this will sound weird coming from me, but maybe it doesn't have to be a fight?"
Ned
"That's fatalistic."
One might be tempted to laugh at that, coming from Ned but then, he's a pragmatic man, not a doomsayer. He's marching throughout the house, trying to put two and two together on what bits and pieces they can use to indeed, barricade and fortify.
"We're not going to be able to help the Doc do or perform as Awakened, but Horror movie rules apply. Something terrifying coming through from the other world...we try as many different things on it, that could potentially hurt, harm or fuck-up something that's part of this reality. That's a lot of options available...even if we're not the best potentials for making use of them."
Ned points at the stove.
"We've got Gas...Electric? Explosions are plausible. Enough sharp edges to make a pin-cushion out of anything with a body or vital organs. Corners, walls and furniture for hiding and moving around. A pretty good idea as to the Doc's house layout if we need to make an escape." A pause, hand rising to scratch at his head. "Only thing I'm worried about is the neighbours hearing and calling the police but I suppose that's not gonna be helped one way or another."
Another pause, frowning.
"In fact, they might just be inured to living next door to the Doc by now."
Dr. Sepúlveda
That knocking hadn't ceased so much as it had moved on from the kitchen. Or away from their hearing. They distract themselves as their mentor imagines they distract themselves most nights: by speculating and speaking about possibilities.
The neighbors could hear a commotion and think they might need to intervene. That is a legitimate concern.
As if to serve as punctuation to Ned's suppositions something glass crashes and shatters on the floor downstairs. Then someone starts yelling. It isn't their mentor. Not at the moment they register said commotion, anyway.
"YOU SON OF A BITCH" says a woman they've never met before.
If they had a bet riding on whether Dr. Sepúlveda had soundproofed his lab, whoever had money on "lol no" would be cashing in about now.
Margot
The determined march to plot and map the house in the event of an attack took Ned out of shared space for a minute here or there, but the house wasn't big enough to get lost in. She could still hear him around the bends, through doorways and archways while she remained in the kitchen. At a point he circled back, after all, and used the stove as an example while ticking off the many ways this house could be used to kill them. If he paid attention he could see the exact moment where Margot switched from following on suspended belief to skepticism winning over. He concluded that the neighbors might be too numb after living next to the doctor for so long to call the cops, and Margot stared at him with her head tipped to the side, expression incredulous.
She'd opened her mouth to start telling him how out of hand that was getting, but the crashing cut her off. Her eyes widened, posture stiffened, much like a deer who caught scent of a hunter in the wind. Then came the shouting-- a female voice, unfamiliar, calling the doctor something that was mean but she couldn't disagree with Ned on the fact that he likely deserved it.
Ned had a small knife. Margot had nothing but her hands and feet. But she still pushed away from the counter and darted out of the kitchen, to the basement door where she'd take the stairs two at a time running down.
Unless, of course, Ned found it prudent to stop her.
Ned
He did.
A hand reached out to grab her by the shoulder, pull back sharply in an effort to stall her rush down the stairs. It was easy to get wrapped up in the 'Someone's in trouble!' mentality, but that didn't forgive the fact Anger + Reality altering powers = Potential shitstorm below. Before Margot makes it to the doorway, he's caught her and is shaking his head, finger up by his lips in an attempt to keep her quiet.
"Slow. Take it slow. You go rushing down there....either of us do and it could spook whoever it is, into unloading something unpleasant. Crowded someone who is panicked is a surefire way for us to get turned into getting set on fire, turned into primordial soup or a dingo or something...just take it slow, one step at a time and we'll give them a chance to settle themselves down or let the anger burn out a bit."
Life as an orderly gave Ned a bit of prudence where circumstances like this were concerned. Sure they could hurt themselves. One another. Both for all they knew, but two down or harmed was better than all four, when the Cops arrived due to Reasons and Explosions!
Ned leans out to check the knifes in the block, releasing Margot's shoulder in the process. He thumbs through the bunch, before deciding on one of the smaller vegetable cutting knives. He hands the pairing knife, the smaller of the two, off to Margot with a nod and than turns the knife he has around so the blade is running along his forearm, barely visible when he lowers his hand by his side. He moves to begin going down the steps at a slow and measured pace, careful to try and make as little noise as possible.
Dr. Sepúlveda
After that initial outburst the argument they can hear beyond The Door Through Which They Have Been Expressly Banned From Passing devolves a bit. Stays in English for a few exchanges most of which involve the Witch calling the Scientist names while the Scientist voices half-assed petitions for calmness.
Then there's another crash and unless Margot or Ned speak Spanish they cannot decipher what exactly the two are hollering at each other about. The Witch speaks with a Dominican accent while Sepúlveda speaks with a thick Mexican one. It makes it difficult to follow even if one has studied Spanish.
By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs silence has descended upon the house. It's a breath-held silence but a silence all the same. The door to the Etherite's laboratory remains closed and ominous.
Margot
She was a quick thing, Margot. Ned had seen her hustle before. He was getting to know her, though, and saw her intent written all over her face before she even moved. She was going to go charging in, and sure enough she shifted to move. Anticipating this, he caught her shoulder before she could zip her way out of the room astoundingly <i>quick</i> as she was known for being elsewhere in Smalltown, USA.
Slow down. Take it easy, don't get us killed.
Margot stared at him for a second with wide eyes, but stilled all the same. Drew in a deep breath, then a second one (both trembling ever-so slightly on the draw in and whoosh out). Ned started walking forward, and Margot followed suit not far behind him with slow, soft steps.
But the shouting downstairs was loud, and she could make out the words on the other side of the kitchen wall-- name calling and flared-up defensive pleading for calm. Forgettable dialogue, really, it was all the same regardless of who was shouting at who over what. Behind him, Ned could hear Margot's breathing-- shaking and quivering audibly, like she was trying to stave off a panic attack, or perhaps an asthma attack? Had he ever seen her carrying an inhaler?
Then the yelling switched over to Spanish-- indistinguishable and passionate. Something else smashed, and Margot gave a startled cry aloud-- strangled shouting of fear and dismay.
The shaking spread from her voice to her limbs, and she stopped walking after Ned. Stood still in the middle of the dining room instead with her eyes closed tight and brought her hands over her ears to cover them up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and dripping onto the front of her hoodie, and she shook her head as if continuing to deny the anxiety and stress of the shouting would actually make it stop.
Margot @ 1:58PM
[PTSD!]
Roll: 5 d10 TN9 (3, 3, 4, 6, 7) ( fail )
jamie @ 1:58PM
[in a move no one saw coming...]
Ned
"Go back up upstairs. Drink some water. Count to ten. Slow, deep breaths. Do not come back down here. I'll call up when it's ok or when we're coming up."
A series of sharp and static responses, carefully placed with co-ordinated touches to shoulders, hands and arms. Assurances that she isn't alone at the moment and that reality is still here. Brief flashes of Ned's eyes infront of hers, on the stairs. Gentle nudges. Pushes. Insistent if tender, toward the light at the top of the stairs and the kitchen there. Somewhere along the way, she would be relieved if the Knife he'd given her. Somewhere along the way, his voice would drown out any further shouting that might occur. He's careful and breathing loudly, as if to give her own lungs a rhythm to follow.
"Breath slowly. In one-" Inhale "-Out one-" Exhale "-In one-" Inhale "-Out one-" Exhale. "Upstairs. Sit down. Glass of water. Breathe."
Ned @ 3:06PM
(Expression 2 + Charisma 2: Calm down and go back upstairs, Margot)
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
* * * * *
"Doc!"
From the other side of the 'Electro-door'. Ned's voice is clear and concise. Practiced and even.
"Gimme an indication everything is clear and ok inside or I'm calling the Police."
Of course, his phone is in his hands and he's eyeballing the screen.Thumb hovering over a button.
Margot
It's tough to say whether the Doc and his 'guest' would be able to hear Ned and Margot in the stairwell. A silence had descended upon the basement and laboratory around the time that Ned got her turned around and was ushering forward momentum back up to the first floor.
<i>Do not come back down here</i>
"But she's going to--!"
<i>No, she's not.</i>
"But he'll kill her! He'll--"
<i>No, you're here now. Breathe.</i>
The scene was a familiar one to an orderly-- any number of people must have come through the hospital doors in similar states. It gave Ned an advantage in knowing what to do and say, that he should be firm but gentle and persist in getting her away from the fighting and crashing that clearly triggered this panic. Up the stairs and toward the kitchen. Glass of water. Breathe. Breathe.
She wouldn't go back downstairs (barring massive crashing or screaming or signs of extreme danger that would require stalwart heroism), but instead settled to wait in the living room under a blanket dredged up from anywhere.
Dr. Sepúlveda
While Ned is talking Margot down from the edge of a panic attack:
The woman neither of them has seen before has been waiting for the Etherite to head into his laboratory ever since she first began making herself known to him but for whatever reason he was staying clear of it until he wasn't alone in the house. Seems counterintuitive that a technomancer's lair would have created a weak spot in the Gauntlet but it's a place of power and a place of Quintessence whether or not he wants to concede that it is indeed a place where magic happens.
In the silence there's a standoff. They've talked themselves into stillness and the stillness affords them time to stare at each other both of them sure the other one can kill them if they are a hair slower and then he reaches for something she doesn't recognize. Anything in the laboratory could be a weapon in the hands of a Mad Scientist and she isn't going to afford him the opportunity to use any of them.
It's difficult for her to Work in here but as much as Sepúlveda wants to talk shit about magick they have this in common: what she does is not magick. It's Medicine. So when she curses him with nothing more than words those words carry strength.
Reality appears to have her back in this fight. He drops the device he was reaching for and a short series of bangs and crashes follows in its wake.
<i>Doc!</i>
It isn't the young man's mentor who answers his ultimatum.
A moment that feels like a pressure change as whatever energies normally running through the door stop running. A taste of atmosphere. Maybe Ned's ears pop. Then the door opens.
Out steps a tall dark-skinned young woman who isn't much older than Ned is. Soon as she sees him a flash of fury brightens her already-bright green eyes. Her resonance suggests healing power but nothing about her appearance supports such an intent. Her skirt is torn and stained at the knees and her blouse is streaked with the remnants of slash marks. She wears her black hair in braided knots about her scalp, and silver hoops through her nose and ears. Wraiths have eyes like hers but wraiths cannot take corporeal form unless they are quite powerful.
Tattoos adorn her skin too many places to catalogue considering she's dragging Sepúlveda out of the laboratory by one wrist. He puts up no fight. Whatever happened in there stunned him but he is not unconscious. Separating a Mad Scientist from his tools is the surest way to cripple him but she wasn't counting on this particular Mad Scientist having a cabal. Or students. Or... well.
"You call the police," she says, husk-voiced and it's hard to tell if she always sounds like this or if it's the result of her ordeal, "and I swear on all you hold dear, I will burn this place to the fucking ground." Her eyes flick around the basement and locate a pipe in the corner. She continues dragging the Etherite. "This doesn't concern them."
Ned
"You don't get to decide that."
It's Ned's immediate response. The first thing out of his mouth when she emerges through the 'No-no Door' (Sorry Margot). He tries to keep his tone calm and rational, low enough that it doesn't spook or startle any possible reaction from upstairs (Margot coming down here crying and potentially screaming, would be about as good for the situation as a bullet). At the same time, he's making his intentions fairly clear.
Ned gauges the space between him and the door when it swings open. A solid ten feet. He keeps that distance measured when she emerges, backing up and swinging around to follow her gaze where it leads. He takes a glance himself, at the pipe, a frown leaping onto his features before cutting back to her quickly (never take your eyes off the patient for longer than it takes to blink).
"Different time, different world than you're immediately used to. That means whatever beef you have with the Doc and it's considerable, I have no doubt...you need to take a check on just what you're doing and just where you are..."
A pause, eyes darting around the basement as if he's looking for something...or someone.
"Because last I checked, intrusions like yours bring consequences and you didn't bother checking to see that he had others in the house when you came over. Or the fact that there are others connected to him as well. The Police are my passive attempt to get you to at least consider that we should talk about this...You do anything hasty and unpleasant beyond just calling him or me names and suddenly I have to press the other button that gets a half dozen others the Doc's acquainted with over here in that quick sort of way that Corr makes little problem about...and then you can explain to a few Hermetics of House Flambeau, just what the hell you did and why they should care that you lit up the Doc's house with a Gauntlet breach while the Techies are watching us like hawks..."
It wasn't...technically a lie. It was just a summary of information Ned has put together, brandished by paranoia and accumulated over weeks of misinformed half-truths. It sounded plausible though, yeah? At least to someone fresh on this side of the world.
Ned's holding the knife. Incase she doesn't go for it, but he is brandishing the phone, thumb hovering over the touch screen, eyes locked on hers, bodily between her and the pipe she's been eyeballing.
Dr. Sepúlveda
<i>and you didn't bother checking to see that he had others in the house when you came over</i>
By the time Ned has reached this point she has dragged Sepúlveda clear across the room to the pipe she was eying and he has started to regain his senses. From where he stands, the Disparate can see the Etherite's eyes are open and he's attempting to discern what the hell is going on but he is not reacting as he would have normally.
Ned has seen his share of concussions in a hospital setting. The disconnect and the grogginess are apparent right away. No physical injury presents itself but the Doc is presenting like someone with a bruised brain. Beyond that: he's silent. In someone as hyperactive as Sepúlveda that's a pretty solid indication that he's not feeling all that great.
The woman's nostrils flare as he makes his threat. Her chest works to maintain calmness as he continues on. Eye contact does not bother her. Her eyes scream green fire back at him.
"Boy," she says in a voice gone sepulchral, "you press ANY button, we're really gonna have a problem."
They already have a problem. She's yanking Sepúlveda up by both wrists and trussing them behind the pipe like she's going to handcuff him.
<b>catalyst</b>
INITS + 6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
<b>Ned</b>
Initiative! (7 +...)
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
<b>catalyst</b>
That was for Rhianna. This is for Doc + 6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Doc +16
Rhianna + 11
Ned + 10
Declares!
<b>Ned</b>
(Split action:
1) Blind Rihanna with Iphone Flashlight
2) Body slam (WP)
<b>catalyst</b>
Rhianna: Arrest the Flight of Arrows rote
Doc: "GET TO THE CHOPPA"
Rhianna Rote: Arete 3 and yadda yadda modifiers and what
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
<b>Ned</b>
(Ned bouncing: Damage = 3 yards + 3 Ned's Strength, Bashing)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )
<b>Ned</b>
He charges. The glimmer of the forcefield that suddenly blooms is brief, perhaps almost non-existent but the Young Apprentice seems to pause out of reflex. Enough that smacking into it, is more of a narrow scrape that sends him shying off to one side, rather than ricocheting off with the bloody nose or a broken bone. He pinwheels slightly, the flashlight on his phone strobing the basement...
....The phone begins to play 'The Trooper' by some errant flutter of fingers, clicking exposed touchscreen buttons, as Ned comes to a halt on one knee, cursing rather loudly, adrenaline on surge. Then he's dive bombing for the 'No-No door', clutching at his phone and hoping for a slide into second and (briefly) out of line of sight.
<b>catalyst</b>
DOC-Grapple
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Should be 2 suxx, that was diff 6 not diff 5
<b>catalyst</b>
RHIANNA - Grapple
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
<b>catalyst</b>
Rhianna- Life dice!
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
<b>catalyst</b>
Doc Stamina Check
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
<b>Ned</b>
(Forces 1 + Matter 1: Reverse Engineering Visualization. Diff 1 + 3 - 1 for Tools (Touching the shit out of various handheld instruments. WP down to 3)
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Margot
Downstairs, a solo Apprentice dealt with a situation outside what he would reasonably be able to handle on his own. His mentor was stunned, some strange woman having thrown up a kind of force field about herself that stopped Ned's bodily throwing himself toward her. Maybe he'd hoped to tackle her into the wall? He might not have thought the plan out much further than <i>forward!</i>. Things weren't going very well, and some back up could really be helpful.
Upstairs, Margot stood in the kitchen with the blanket over her head and around her shoulders, scrubbing her own bloody handprint from the doctor's kitchen wall. She was breathing and counting in her head. Thinking of trees. The ocean. Sunbathing. Unable to hear anything happening down below, she'd continued what Ned had left her with. Spied the handprint while by the fridge with her glass of water. Sipped, gone to cleaning.
Downstairs: <i>"Fucking damnit!"</i>
Margot looked sharply and immediately to the door to the basement. Was that Ned? Eyes wide, she wavered there in the kitchen. He said he'd come upstairs or call to her, but things didn't sound good.
A waver on the spot, then a decision: Why would he know that he had what was happening below them under control?
<i>Breathe in (one), breathe out (two)</i>. A gulp, and Margot stepped toward the basement, leaving the blanket on the floor behind her when she stepped away.
The basement stairs creaked, and upon them appeared little Margot Travers, no longer shaking but pale and wide-eyed and very much resembling a rabbit who suspects a fox. Finding the woman and Doctor on the other side of the basement had what little color was left in her face washing away even further, and unable to stop the words from falling out of her mouth she cried out, sounding miserable and scared and shrill: "What are you doing?!"
Margot @ 4:57PM
[WP: How together can you pull your shit, kid?]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Tithe @ 4:58PM
[Witness.]
Dr. Sepúlveda
To answer Margot's question:
The stranger had removed what looked like diamond dust from a pouch in her pocket and thrown it at Ned to form a barrier between herself and the kids. Then she had returned to the task of binding Sepúlveda so he would be unable to use his hands.
If she were binding him with twine it would be one thing. But after sitting on his legs so he wouldn't squirm as much, she crossed his wrists one over the other behind the pipe and molded the bones together.
Suffice to say that shit hurt. Sepúlveda has the dregs of his wits left about him though and other than a few unhappy noises he does not scream. That's all he needs is for Margot to have a nervous collapse on the basement floor.
The stranger gets to her feet and leaves Sepúlveda sweating and panting behind her. Turns her furious gaze to the girl and swallows down her reflexive response.
"He and I have unfinished business," she says.
"What part of 'stay in the car' don't you two understand?" Sepúlveda asks.
Ned
"Are you a Nephandi?"
It's the first word from Ned that Margot will have heard since arriving on the stairs. A quick back and forth crossfire of questions from the Apprentices at opposing ends of the basement entrances. Ned wasn't visible but the open door carried his voice out into the basement space easily enough. They can hear his sneakers squeaking on the Doc's laboratory floor, the sound the occasional mechanical piece being disturbed or pushed around.
"...Or are you one of these Tradition mages were keep hearing about? The ones who are supposed to be working together to do something about the state of the world?"
If it sounds sarcastic, that's because it is. Ned's opinion of the traditions was rapidly declining with time and he'd only been awakened for a few months now. More rattling of mechanical things, more sneaker squeaking.
Margot
The woman had been crouched down by the Doc, but stood up to look at her, stare right back when she answered.
Through the open door to the Doc's lab (Margot would <i>never</i> call it a No-No Door, no matter how much Ned pushed it), she heard sneakers squeaking about and things tussling about. Ned shouting out to the woman and demanding to know what she was. Her head turned, eyes hopping quickly to the door. Relief, to hear him moving about and speaking clearly. Ned was okay, at least, but Doc... Margot was watching him now, the sweat beading on his forehead and face twisted up with pain. She chewed on her lip anxiously, but finished walking down the stairs all the same.
Once on the same level, she gradually edged toward the Lab door. Her breathing was visible in her chest and her shoulders, the wild fret clear in her wild eyes. Where the force field bent diamond-barely-there-visible in the air she wouldn't go near, but she didn't seem worried about analyzing it for weak spots or making any efforts to challenge or get around it. She was far more concerned with the people behind it.
"Doc...,?" she said, still sounding miserable. Checking in on him-- <i>are you okay? who is this? what's going on?</i>
Dr. Sepúlveda
When their mentor groans now it's a sound born from a combination of physical pain and visceral reaction to Ned's questioning. He coughs and tests the shackles the woman has made of his wrists and coughs again. Lets his head thunk against the pipe.
<I>Doc...? </I>
"She's not... holy shit this is unpleasant. 'Nephandi' is... is plural, Edward, you want to ask if she's a--"
"SHUT UP." He shuts up. Doesn't go completely silent as he's breathing hard and shifting around on the floor in an attempt to alleviate the pain in his arms but he does stop talking. The stranger goes on, "No, I'm not a fucking Nephanda. I'm a so-cha of Kha'vadi, and this MANIAC--" She points a finger at Sepúlveda. "--trapped me in the Deep Umbra when one if his bloody EXPERIMENTS backfired."
"It didn't back--" Okay wriggling his fingers makes it worse good to know. "--backfire. I was interrupt--"
"SHUT. UP." He shuts up. She turns to address Ned whether he's visible or not. "Your Flambeau friends have no sway here, boy. This is between me and him."
Margot
Ned wanted to know if the woman was a Nephandi (Nephandus, Nephanda, whatever), and he got part of his answer before he began shouting out through the doorway again. Margot cringed, visibly-- the woman would see her startle and cringe and lift her hands as though to clamp them over her hands. But she stopped herself halfway, took a deep breath, and kept it together. It nearly came crumbling around again, the startled spike of stress and adrenaline stabbing in her chest made her feel like her breath was going to squeeze right out of her lungs and never come back. But nobody was charging, strangling, or attacking. The Doc was in a rough state but the woman hadn't killed him yet and if she wanted him dead then he certainly would be by now. Maybe she and Ned would be already too?
Speaking of Ned--
He gets to complaining about the 'Between him and me' thing before it was Margot's turn to interrupt, swinging her head and shoulders through the doorway into the lab and shouting back in a voice that cried exasperation.
"Ned! Jesus Christ, <i>please!</i>"
A moment, a pause to find him in the room and see what he was doing. To watch him knock something over and break it.
Closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and looked back out to where the woman and the Doc were. Didn't demand answers from her any further than Ned has done for the both of them, but watched and hoped the temper she had for the Doc was less of an inferno for a couple of kids.
Margot @ 3:11PM
[The Scene Where Margot Just Keeps PTSD Checking]
Roll: 5 d10 TN9 (1, 3, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Jesus Christ," Sepúlveda says, "will everybody just c--" Ow. "--calm down?"
The Witch who is currently holding their mentor hostage has one eyebrow raised as if she can't wrap her brain around the scene into which she's walked. Clearly thought the kids would stay upstairs and not run to intervene. Or else was acting on impulse more than anything else. Angry shamans make mistakes too.
"I told them."
"You told them what?" the stranger asks in a taut tone.
"What a... Dreamspeaker is."
"Motherfucker--" Now is not the time for arguing about semantics. She sighs hard and asks, "These your apprentices?"
Cough. "Yep."
"You know, I would have called first, BUT I AIN'T GOT NO CELLPHONE RECEPTION IN THE FUCKING SHADOWLANDS."
"If you two don't go back upstairs..."
Silence stretches on for more than a few seconds. Both of the stranger's eyebrows are aloft now.
"'If they don't go back upstairs...?'"
"What?"
"What's gonna happen if they don't go back upstairs."
"If who doesn't go back upstairs?"
Her nostrils flare. From the looks of it, leaving his ass tied up behind the forcefield is beginning to sound pretty appealing.
Ned
Meanwhile...
"I told you to stay upstairs, for fuck's sake..." It begins as a shout and cuts out into a heated whisper, halfway through "told". Ned is standing a good six feet from the door to the laboratory, hands clutching several differences of which there are no manuals or distinct visual impressions on what they could possibly do. There's more broken glass on the floor beside one of the Doc's counters and several other gadgets and doo-dads sitting on the counter top that have been piled up in some sort of assembly line effort. Ned might have just decided to try each one in succession until he ran out? Or was turned into a primordial goo of some sort, whichever came first.
"Also: Jesus? Really? You remember you're a witch now, yeah?" A bit of sarcasm, something like a gun with a flat, broad dish for a barrel and a weird spring grenade looking thing with a cylindrical keyboard where the fingertips would go in either hand, Ned steps forward to stare Margot in the eye, brows furrowed and pinched together.
"There isn't anything-" He pauses, hands sagging at his sides "-I doubt there's anything we can do about this situation but unless she fixes what she did to the Doc, it's going to be one hell of an unpleasant afternoon."
Followed of course, by a louder conversational tone, past Margot's shoulder.
"Unless of course, Ms. Vengeance wants to try civility for a change? Or you know, pretending at being human for a wee bit?"
Margot
The mess that Margot found in the lab almost shocked her enough to knock her out of the stress of the situation at hand. There was a lot of disbelief happening-- disbelief at the state of things behind Doc's lab door, at the mess on the floor and the number of contraptions that were strewn about on different surfaces after being tested and discarded. At the number of devices Ned was holding onto, as though he could somehow make use of <i>something</i> in here.
Margot stayed in the lab's doorway, but when Ned yell-whispered and stepped forward toward her she cast a half-glance back at the Disciples by the pipes, then stepped further into the lab, briefly out of sight of the other two. Right into Ned's stare and scowl and sarcasm.
"What does that even--," she started, looking at him with a knit of insult to her brow, but soon cut herself off and shook her head. He was calling past her and out into the basement anyways. The last bit had the little witch making half-strangled gestures in the air between them, though, and hissing in an undertone: "Holy shit, so you're going to keep <i>insulting</i> her?!"
"Just..." Frustration in her hands and the lines of her face, but she calms them both enough to gesture for calm. Downward patting on empty space in the air. Just bring it down a notch.
Another breath, and she called out as though to replace the question with her own.
"Were you going to kill him?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
"No." A straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Voice raised because she's still angry and the kids are still in the other room. "But now I'm starting to consider it."
"They're always like this," Sepúlveda says. "You should... you should see them at the... grocery store. Just... boundless paranoia... I don't know how the boy-child rides the bus, with all the germs and Marauders and homeless p--"
"I will zip your mouth shut if you don't stop talking."
He considers his options.
Ned
He rears back a bit when Margot threatens him with strangulation before turning around to slap one of the devices back down on the table. The gun stays in his left hand, while he regards Margot with an 'are you nuts?' sort of expression.
But he's listening when she speaks. Snorts at the 'No' and then snorts again, with the barest hint of mirth at 'germs and marauders and- I will zip your mouth shut;. Followed of course by a sudden thinning of humour and a stare at Margot.
He motions at her, without saying anything, muttering under his breath the entire time. He's not setting foot outside of the laboratory though, it would seem.
Margot
There was a small staredown happening between Apprentices between the Doc's trashed Laboratory, through a half-foot of height and several feet of space. Varying in intensity, mind you, but Margot just kept eyes on Ned to watch him, his reaction to the situation around them. She's done this in moments before, when she was more inclined to follow the lead of someone older and more experienced than her. Now, though, it could very well be that she was making sure he didn't give her a good reason to follow through with the plan weaving in her mind; a decision made that if Ned were to start shouting snide and challenging through the door again then she would dart out and slam the door along with her. Who knows? Maybe she could hold the door closed on him long enough to talk things out with the hostage-taking woman.
Thankfully it didn't come anywhere near to that. Quite the contrary, he gestured for her to go ahead and take the reins. <i>Alright, we'll try your way.</i>
Her expression softened considerably. "Thank you," she breathed her relief into words, then turned and (after brief hesitation, a gulp of breath) walked out of the lab and back out into the open basement room. As she went, she held her hands up in front of her palms out to show she wasn't carrying anything along with her. Not over her head, she wasn't that dramatic at least.
"Can... Can I convince you to give him back? Please?"
Margot @ 4:34PM
[Ugh girl you need more social dice. Charisma + Expression, WP]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Dr. Sepúlveda
A Nephanda would have turned both of them inside out before continuing on with whatever nefarious plan she had for her captive.
This woman may be angry and a bit Wyld-touched from spending so much time in the Umbra but she isn't completely insane. Or else Margot's plan was just crazy enough to work.
The small girl-apprentice comes out of the lab and asks for their mentor back. The stranger looks down at him and draws a deep breath in through her nose. From where she stands Margot can see the color has drained from Sepúlveda's skin. Diaphoresis is not a good look for anyone but his eyes are unfocused on top of it. Between paradox and punitive magick he has had his ass thoroughly handed to him.
So she lets go the breath and says, "Fine."
A moment of silence and then the jingling of her Forces barrier giving way. Her first concession. Uncuffing him is going to take more work than just dropping an effect.
Ned
"...Keep it going, Clinton."
Ned offers from the doorway, in Margot's direction. He's fetched up against the framework, staring at Margot, hand still clutching the piece of obscure equipment that he'd made his 'weapon of choice' (even if that weapon amounted to little more than a sometimes pointy bit of mecha that he could maybe throw accurately enough to bean the Disciple woman). He's in observation mode, the only clear indication anything was wrong before being the steady, purposeful attempts at breathing that he's doing. In and out. In and out. Meditative exercises.
Margot
<i>Fine</i>.
For half a second Margot thought her legs might give out from under her. Was it really that easy? Fine, and that was it?
When she heard Ned behind her she glanced back, found him in the doorframe, watchful and cautious but simply watchful for now. Support. Back-up, for whatever good that may be. She smiled weak and fleeting, then looked back forward. With a quiet and oddly pleasant jingling noise the holding shimmer in the air finally gave way. Margot jerked a little like her first impulse was to bolt forward-- moved a so far as a single quick step before she caught herself and stopped. Swallowed hard, and eased forward a little further.
She eyed the Doc warily, worry evident all over visage. She grasped her hands in tight fists at her sides and edged forward a couple of steps. Swallowed back the urge to be sick at the grotesque situation that bound the Doc's arms behind him.
"...Will it be hard for him to recover...?"
Cautiously asked, hoping for reassurance clearly.
Dr. Sepúlveda
"<I>Him?</I>"
The stranger crouched down next to her captive and grabs him by the lower jaw to turn his head towards her. Like the thought hadn't yet occurred to her that Paradox may have trounced him hard enough to render her choice of restraint excessive.
Aside from scowling a bit at the manhandling, Sepúlveda keeps his mouth shut.
She releases him harder than she needs to and reaches into the medicine bag inside her skirt. Finds a length of what looks like cloth bandage and removes it.
"Physically, he'll be fine. There's no helping him mentally." She begins to wind the bandage around Sepúlveda's wrists. It causes him pain. He shouts in protest. She doesn't care. "But you must know that already."
Ned
"....And yet...."
Ned mutters, hand rising to scrub at his own face, draw down his own features. Still breathing. Still Margot's show.
Margot
The girl was pale in the face and wore a rather grim set to her mouth. She had realized her hands were anxious fists and brought them together behind her back. Ned could see her fingers intertwine and squeeze tight at the small of her back.
Doc shouted, and Margot looked quick and nervous at him. But she had to trust in this woman. Did, to an extent. Enough that she didn't fear that she was going to suddenly go back to angry tirade and start melding all of them into the floor. The Doc was in pain of course, but Margot did nothing to intervene.
Any method she may have for unbinding wrists couldn't be any better, after all.
"Sure," she agreed softly and without commitment. Clearly the student was in no mood to shit talk her mentor just this moment, but in less of a mood to argue with this Umbra-dweller.
"I'm.. uh, sorry. For whatever happened. It sounds tough, being lost on the Other Side."
Dr. Sepúlveda
"You have no idea."
This to the matter of being lost. Her expression is a different sort of grim than Margot's is. Healing is a more difficult task than wounding and she does not have the success she had had binding him.
Aside from a huff from her and a hissing from him the extent of her difficulty remains occluded. She keeps moving her fingers over the bandages like she can pry the bones apart if she's gentle enough.
"The Verbenae used to keep paths open," she says. "Guide back those who were too far gone. They don't have enough people to keep the paths lit, and many of them have closed. Or been overtaken. Spirits are hungrier the further you go. The longer you're there the harder it is to come back. You stay too long, you won't come back at all."
[1 suxx on a healing roll with non-jove dice]
Ned
Ned is watching. He doesn't interrupt the pow wow between the two women in Sepulveda's life for better and worse. Instead he dips back into the laboratory to out the device down and...well, take a look around. There were very rare moments when you got a moment to consider another person from this particular perspective. Away from their insecurities and intentions (for better or worse). Ned remains by the door but scans the room. He looks at the scene of initial disturbance for how exactly their intruder had gotten into the Lab without using the door.
That led him down the path of potential other defensive breaches that left this house exposed to...well anything really. He and paranoia alone could probably account for half the world coming down on them just in that initial scan.
He comes back out into the basement proper a minute later, divested of all mechanisms to continue watching what is going on with the ladies and the Doc. His face is a pinched together flush of brows and vague stoicism. Par for the course.
Margot
A hushed stillness possessed the would-be witch. She even held her breath, which she realized after a dozen seconds and made herself breathe again. There was a lot of that tonight. She stood a few feet away now, watching over the nameless Shaman's shoulder while she worked to undo the damage done. Margot's face had been all shades of pale tonight, but watching this she looked almost gray. Sick and tense and twisted up in her stomach with understanding of what was happening to Doc's wrists.
But <i>intrigued</i>. She couldn't look away. There were important lessons to be learned here.
(<i>watch, child, get your stomach used to this</i>)
As she watched, she listened as well. The story of the paths through the Umbra and how they were shutting down had her attention shifting from hands at work to the side of the woman's face. Picturing that face pulled back into a snarl of focus and effort against some tremendous push to break free through one of these unlit paths.
Ned's steps leaving the lab drew Margot's attention back to him. She looked at him with that same surprised worry that she'd been wearing pretty much all afternoon now.
Back to the Shaman. A nervous puff of breath was exhaled, and with it a soft voice. "You made it," she reminded her. Almost like a reassurance, or a steady offer. <i>You're here now, not there. It's over.</i>
Then, silence. Watching her work now with baited breath. Please let her be able to fix this.
Dr. Sepúlveda
By their nature laboratories are sterile secluded places. Sepúlveda is not by nature a fastidious creature. To the contrary: he's a fucking mess. He smokes and drinks and will screw anything capable of giving consent. During one of their group study sessions he remarked on the fact that Entropy was going to totally change the way he mops the floor with other motherfuckers when he plays poker.
But he keeps his workspace clean. Or did, anyway, before the Kha'vadi woman ripped a hole in the Gauntlet and let herself through.
He had had a partner all his life. His wife had always kept him safe. That wedding band he wears has not yet supplied a story for Mr. Gaites but Ned is a quick enough young man to figure out his mentor has no defenses against dimensional invaders because he has devoted his life to other Spheres. This space is safe so long as Sepúlveda is around to keep it safe but the woman in the other room is capable of manipulating Forces and he was in the middle of modifying one of his devices when she came through.
Everything in the room is metal or glass. It's a small room. What devices Ned has found have been cobbled together from obsolete or outdated equipment. Remote controls and cellphones and random gadgets one can order out of a catalogue or purchase from a pawn shop. The initial crash they heard came from the intruder swiping a microscope onto the floor. When Sepúlveda fell he dropped a device and knocked over a small table upon which had rested beakers and slides. There's a scorch mark on the ceiling that may or may not have been there already.
To say nothing of the severed arm in the sink.
--
When Ned comes back out he sees the stranger scowling as she tries without success to fix her Work. This time she outright fails.
Sepúlveda shouts again and tries to pull away from her but he's pretty well restrained. He grinds the heels of his shoes into the floor and grits his teeth so he won't make too much of a scene in front of Margot.
"And you want to blame what happened on me," he says when he gets his breath back. Bitches in Spanish for a few seconds.
Meanwhile the stranger yanks the bandage from his wrists and presses it to her nose. Which has started bleeding. She reaches out to try and lay hands on his wrists again but he squirms in spite of the pain squirming provokes. Another sigh and she gets to her feet.
"Your arrogance, I blame," she says. "Your arrogance and your nearsightedness. What do you want to do, stay there and rot?"
Whatever revenge she had hoped to take on him was squashed by the apprentices' presence. She can't even set the place on fire in good conscience. This seems a suitable enough substitute. He's shackled by his own wrists and cannot access any of his instruments and has only two scared inexperienced students to assist him.
"Nobody's gonna rot," he says more for the kids' sake than anyone else's. "The kid's right. You made it... you made it back. Write a sad poem in your journal and move on."
The Kha'vadi turns to leave. If Ned intends to stop her this is his opportunity. Meanwhile Sepúlveda coughs and blinks like that will do anything for the fog enveloping his brain.
"Margot, listen: upstairs in the bathroom, under the sink." Jesus Christ the human nervous system is poorly designed. "There's a black bag. Bring it back down here. Try not to..." Ow. "Try not to vomit, if you vomit I'm going to vomit."
Ned
"We're not done."
Ned steps infront of her. They had all had their little pow wow and interaction, shared their feelings and offered their sighs and grunts and displeasures at one another and Ned had stood by watching the entire thing. He'd had to cover his mouth and look down rather fiercely at the 'Write a sad poem...' bit from the Doc, but beyond that his attention seemed rooted in waiting for something.
...That something was the woman attempting to leave.
Ned's moving toward the stairwell, when she stands up straight, seemingly done dealing with the Doc and his attitude. He's by the stairs when she begins to walk/storm away and he's staring her in the face when she reaches the first step, which he's backed up onto for a little height advantage.
"You and the Doc had business. You sorted that business, for better or ill. I'd say that business is concluded now given you're looking to get as far away from him as possible, yeah? I'd like a word then."
Margot
The woman couldn't unbind the doctor's wrists. She took the bandage away and Margot turned her eyes away quickly. She was interested in looking when the bandages covered things up, but found the actual image of wrists fused together too much to handle without at least breaking away to digest the initial shock. When she looked back, the Shaman was soaking a nosebleed with the bandages and standing. Margot's eyes widened, as they did, and she looked on in dismay as the woman stood and walked away. Margot made no move to stop her.
Ned did.
Still looking full of fret, now worried about what the woman might do to Ned if he got under her skin any further, Margot stood beside The Doc and squeezed-and-worried her fingers together.
<i>Go get my bag and don't vomit</i>, was the request from the Doctor. Margot looked down at him, swallowed hard (maybe even swallowed back the urge to vomit), and nodded.
"Hang in there, Doc," she half-pleaded, then moved for the stairs. Hovered for half a second behind the woman, then tried to move past her and Ned both with an "Excuse me,".
If allowed past, on up the stairs for the bag she went.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda blows out a breath but does not respond to Margot's missive. Hang in there. Sure. Like the fucking kitten poster every brain dead office resource manager has on their wall. He closes his eyes and resigns himself to sitting here on the floor with wrists on fire until she returns.
For her part, the Kha'vadi does excuse Margot.
As for Ned he can tell by looking at her that she is not in the mood for any more bullshit this afternoon. Her nose is still bleeding but blood is one of her instruments. Pissing her off would not be advisable.
"What is it?" she asks as a matter of course. He said 'a' word. She is not a literal creature but she will lose her patience if the brokered brevity turns into another monologue.
Ned
Ned allows Margot past the stairwell, moving off to one side, body turned sideways to allow for significant room. He doesn't move back into the Woman's path, however, offering her a step up the stairs as if this was indication that the conversation they were about to have shouldn't necessarily impede her need to be away from the Doc's general vicinity. The Doc was an asshole. His apprentices knew this. They were still his apprentices which means they had probably come to accept this fact about him comfortably and willingly.
"We've never met your type before and you've had experiences that we've...run into a few times and I doubt we're going to get much chance to run into any more of you anytime soon so... New mage to Seasoned...What's a Kha'vadi and Why?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
The woman looks at Ned as if he's lost his damned mind. But then she considers the fact that they're stuck with Andy Sepúlveda as their mentor. Sure as shit she isn't going to try to take them with her. First of all they're white. Second of all they're probably destined to be as crazy as he is. His breed of crazy is contagious. Effusive enthusiasm for pursuits which do not consider human life to be a resource worth preserving.
Another sigh.
"'Those whose vision shapes the world,'" she says. "The Society of Dreams. We're a tradition of medicine-people. I chose this Path because I feel harmony with the World Spirit, and because Its voice spoke to me when I was ready to hear it." She grits her teeth. "I should have listened, when it warned me of the sickness in your mentor. His is a destructive Path. There's your word."
She's intent to leave on that note.
Ned
"...Seems to be a pretty standard attitude with every tradition we've met so far."
Ned's only response as she blows past him and on up the stairs. He doesn't follow, but continues to talk to her retreating back.
"Could use a bit more detail though...especially if you want to ensure there aren't just going to be two more of Him in the world once he's done mentoring us..." He's stopping at the bottom of the stairs to wait and see if she stops near the top at all. If she continues on, he'll snort and call it done, turning to eyeball the Doc on the ground. He's frowning and contemplating in both cases.
Dr. Sepúlveda
She does stop at the top of the stairs. Not because she's deciding whether she wants to stand here and talk to Ned any further or not. She absolutely does not. Rather, she's debating whether he's using the threat of two future Mad Scientists coming out of this arrangement as leverage to keep her here longer.
And whether Sepúlveda has any lighter fluid stashed anywhere.
She is not a death-dealer though. She is a healer. She has already made a mess of the Scientist. One could argue he deserved it.
"You make your own choices," she says. "He's made his. We're done here."
With that, she steps out the backdoor and into the sunlight. Behind him on the floor Sepúlveda is breathing slow but not easy. Occasionally a leg moves. If the kids weren't here his assurance that no one was going to rot might have been an empty one. From where Ned stands he looks pretty fucked.
Margot
Maybe Margot passed the Shaman on her way through the upstairs portion of the house. Maybe she took a second to puke in the toilet upstairs away from where the Doc would see before grabbing the bag. Maybe she pep-talked herself in the mirror.
Whatever.
Ultimately, Ned would be standing and looking at the Doc, who was sweat-drenched and in and out of consciousness with a leg sometimes twitching, when Margot came thumping down the stairs once more. She didn't ask if the woman was gone, didn't wonder at this moment what Ned had to say to her. Rather, she knelt down beside Doc and set the bag down next to her legs. Opened it up and then started tapping Doc on the chest with her fingers.
"Doc. Doc. Wake up. Tell me what to do."
Ned
"...Well. So far, cynicism is winning the day, Doc."
Ned offers from his place, eyeballing the fused wrists with careful examination. The lady having left, makes him nervous but the adrenaline keeps that in check for the most part. Half of him just wants to curl up somewhere and give a bit of leeway to the paranoia in his head. Maybe try to cut the pipe out and give the Doc a chance to pull himself free. The other half of him wants to go and find some form of blunt object in the doc's Lab and manually break the bones apart so that the doc has at least one limb to maybe fix himself with.
Or possibly severe one arm so he can attach the one he's got in his Lab sink somehow.
Ned crouches down by the Doc as Margot comes down the stairs again, bag in hand and he glances back at her with a, what could be considered, worried frown on his face. He offers her a weak but encouraging smile, eyes trailing back to their wounded mentor.
"We may need to call Nick." He's a Doctor, right? A healer type? Or is he just a mental healer type? Fuck's sake...
Dr. Sepúlveda
With the tapping he scowls and opens his eyes. Tries to move his arms and then remembers oh right that Dreamspeaker he pissed off last year was here.
"We're not calling Nick," he says. "He's a counselor, not a... not a doctor. One of you... in the bag, you have the black bag? There's a vial, a big vial, with... pink shit in it. Fill a syringe with... eh... ten cc's and jab it in my arm somewhere. A muscle. Jab it in a muscle. And make sure you get all the... the air bubbles out, I don't want an embolism today."
Margot
No smiles back to greet Ned, but rather a grim thinning of her lips as Margot pressed them more firmly together. She was looking at Doc's wrists, no longer looking like she was going to puke but now instead hovering somewhere around wanting to cry. Her lower lip alternated between setting hard like steel and quivering dangerously. At no point did she actually go to pieces again, though. She kept her breath and shook her head at Ned when he suggested they call Nick
"He's not a--"
But Doc was already on it. She got into the bag as he asked and discovered the vial and syringe. She was staring at them, one in either hand, while the Doc started talking about jabbing muscles and not giving him embolisms. It was around that point that she held them both up and out to Ned. He worked in a hospital, after all.
Ned
Ned's accepting of the syringe and vial without much in the way of question or concern. He'd been forced to provide any number of emergency injections (usually during the abundant short staffing moments his hospital often found themselves in), mostly in the form of a sedative.
He tips the small vial upside down, pushing the needle carefully through the rubber bottom and filling the interior with the pinkish goo. A few moments and the vial is handed back over to Margot, followed by several flicks of the syringe contents by a finger. He pushes the plunger to clear the air and then glances down at the Doc's left arm.
It's a moment of searching, prodding before Ned finds the bicep, the biggest muscle bunch he can locate by his science knowledge and jabs the needle in quickly. The contents empty with a push of the plunger and he slips the needle free a few moments later.
"...Is this the part where you tell us we're going to have to break the bones so you can work properly?"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda is making a valiant effort to hold his shit together as Ned rummages past his layers to get at his biceps. Flinches and breathes out hard as the needle finds muscle and skips across bone and breathes in again as Ned shoots the goo in. He has to concentrate to make it do its job. Then the kid asks him if he's going to have to break a bone.
He's still sweating and shaking with pain. It's working well and working fast.
"You break anything I'll tear your fucking nuts off," he snaps.
A moment later his wrists separate. He flexes his fingers. Then he hauls off and punches Ned in the solar plexus.
"Fuck!" he says. Like he's been holding that outburst in this whole time. Swipes a hand down his face before clapping it on the side of Margot's face. "You're a good kid, Margot."
Margot
Hands far more familiar with needles went through the instructions the Doc had provided, and Margot just stayed put as morale support and an extra set of hands when needed. The vial was accepted back and tucked into the bag, then hands folded together and were clamped between her legs to keep them from fidgeting or grabbing. She wanted to help move clothes aside to get Ned at the Doc's arm. She wanted to do <i>something</i> to help alleviate the pain that the Doc was clearly struggling with. But for this, at this moment, Margot wasn't much further help.
She watched with baited breath while the Doc sweated and shivered and tried to urge the concoction in his muscles to move through his body, into his wrists and do their Work.
His hands were freed at last! Margot hissed a quiet 'yes!' of relief-- thank god that worked. Then he punched at Ned's chest and she startled, leaned back as though worried that she was going to catch an errant elbow in her proximity to the outburst. She was looking at Ned and how he'd handle the blow when the Doc's hand clapped to the side of her face, catching her attention and drawing it back. She blinked at him a few times, then let out an odd laugh of nervous relief. Part of the relief was that she found herself laughing instead of crying. Initially she wasn't sure which was going to happen.
The Doc would find his hand caught in both of Margot's, and she took it away from her face but kept it near enough for her to examine it. Thumbs found the bones in his wrist and tested gently. Everything in its place? <i>Amazing</i>. And thank goodness.
"Who <i>was</i> that?"
Ned
"Kid."
It's the first word out of his mouth after the punch. Let's be clear. Ned's reality is paranoia and no small amount of reflexive shying. There is a very real layer of pragmatic decision making he does on my occasions. Dealing with fallout from crazed mages is...slowly becoming one of them.
He reads back at the punch, a tap that strikes the muscle regulating his breathing and has him reflexively moving into a guard position in his feet and several paces back.
"Cause that's what we are. Kids."
The guard drops a moment later though there is a sense of wild attentiveness, sharpened wits about him now. Again while he stares at the Doctor.
"...You punch like an old man. About what I'd expect though..."
And then he dusts himself off eyes flicking down to Margot.
"You together now?"
Margot
<i>You together now?</i>
Margot cast a sharp glance up at Ned from where she still knelt down on the floor. Her mother wasn't the lecturing sort, having been far too busy working many hours at many jobs to make ends meet. Still, though, the girl had a sense that she may expect an earful if she answered yet. All the same...
"Yes." Then, after promptly abandoning her inspection of the Doc's recovered hand and a glance away, down, elsewhere really. "I'm sorry about that."
Dr. Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda lets Margot inspect his wrist. His eyes are still clouded and he is still unstuck from time. Hard to tell if he would submit to this if he were still in his right mind. He watches her with his concussed gaze and he hears her question and he hears Ned's admonition. Weathers them both and draws a breath moves his limbs like he's preparing to stand but he cannot coordinate the effort and so he abandons it.
"What'd I--" Burp. He really wants to lie down and go to sleep. Damn you two. "--tell you about apologizing."
He can't curl up and sleep. He has an apprentice on either side of him. Damn it.
"Oni..." His eyes are drifting closed now that pain is not wracking them open. "Oni and I... it doesn't matter."
Sleep sounds pretty good about now. Too bad his apprentices are his apprentices.
[[ Scene fades from here-- Ned goes immediately home and Margot sticks around long enough to make sure the Doc gets some sleep-- he wakes up after like 20 minutes or so to tell her to go the hell away, which she does. ]]
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