Sepúlveda
Margot hears from Nick Hyde before she hears from her mentor.
When she does hear from her mentor, he writes in all capital letters and berates both her and her fellow apprentice and spams them with emojis. Asks her where she is at six in the morning and says he'll be there in an hour. She has to remind him that she's at home and most civilized places of business don't open until eight. He acquiesces. Agrees to meet her at the same diner where he'd taken her and Ned when he'd been hungover and of a mind to bitch the both of them out.
Ned is either still asleep or hasn't gotten around to responding yet. That is the only mercy the universe has shown Andrés Sepúlveda recently. At least he's only dragging one of them out for a debriefing session. It's harder for them to gang up on them when they're divided.
At any rate he's sitting in his Wrangler in the parking lot wearing aviator shades and drinking out of a brown paper bag when Margot shows up. He rouses himself from his stasis when he sees her wander in. If she's still at the hostess podium he comes wandering in looking like he spent the night in his vehicle. If she isn't... well, he still wanders in looking like he spent the night in his vehicle. He has two days' worth of stubble on his face instead of a full beard and his hair is a hot graying mess. It's all a matter of whether she's sitting down before him or not.
Once they're both seated he scrapes his shades from his face. She gets to be the one to speak first.
Margot
It was a good thing that Margot erred on the side of 'morning person', because her mentor was in the habit of trying to contact her and Ned at ridiculous hours. She convinced him not to come over to her little studio apartment at seven in the morning, and instead suggested proper breakfast and coffee somewhere. More leg room than on her balcony, after all.
This gave Margot time to go through her morning routine, so when Doc spied her walking in Margot looked in much better a state than he-- she slept in her bed and had a shower before she left. Goodness knows what Doc's been up to over the past 48 hours. Her brown hair was down and still damp in places from the shower, and she dressed in a pair of khaki pants, a white T-shirt, and a black zip-up hoodie that was left undone. The Doc would encounter her at the hostess podium, and they would be seated at a table near a window.
A look after removing sunglasses told Margot that she was supposed to be speaking first. So she looked moderately surprised at him (wide eyes, lifted eyebrows) from the other side of the table, then cleared her throat and inquired almost hesitantly (awkwardly).
"Uh... How's the Brandt man?"
Sepúlveda
"You know, if it weren't for the fact they have us listed as hostile entities, we could learn a load from those fuckers."
That doesn't answer the question. That is the answer of someone who is too lost in his research to consider the humanity of the people around him. He takes a breath and with that breath the waitress comes to tend to them. He actually asks for food. He asks for eggs and bacon and toast and when she upsells him to include hash browns he acquiesces. Also asks for a Bloody Maria with a beer back. This is not the same woman who served them last time. She asks him what kind of beer he wants and he says it doesn't matter but when she asks if PBR is okay he says fuck no and asks for Tecate.
At any rate:
"Brandt is doing better than most would be."
Margot
When the waitress asked what Margot would like, she ordered french toast and an orange juice. Once the woman had gone again, Margot was left to look across the table at Sepúlveda with a only somewhat worried stitch between her brows.
"Entire fruits of knowledge could be dredged up with ease, but the tools to get them are usually pretty immorale." Some kind of word of warning, a thought of caution echoed from the back of her mind and through her mouth.
But, about Brandt.
"I don't expect he's well enough to say what they wanted, though." If he was doing better than most, she could only imagine what that meant his current state actually was, and in contrast how 'most' would be instead.
A pause, then: "What now?"
Sepúlveda
The only reason Sepúlveda scowls is this: some part of his soul, his spirit, his Avatar, remembers when the Catholic Church sought out his brethren and branded if not burnt them for speaking of reason. Margot has no notion of how strong his repulsion to religious symbology is. Or why. He doesn't know either. Hasn't had to deal with it yet.
Fun fact: one of Sepúlveda's past lives was burnt at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition for supporting Copernicus in his heliocentric supposition.
What now.
Non sequitur:
"You know Eve's eating from the Tree of Knowledge is literary gaslighting, right? Man hoping to make woman believe she is the origin of sin? The reason for humanity's damnation? Everything is immoral if you spend all day switching words around."
Margot
"Ugh." Margot rolled her eyes at the good doctor.
Fun Fact: Margot grew up going to church. Her mother was vaguely Lutheran in faith, and so they'd attended services every so often in her childhood, sometimes going regularly and other times letting it fall to the wayside for months on end. Stopped going entirely by the time Margot was nine and her brother was refusing because his friends said it was ridiculous (they were kind of right). But that had nothing to do with this conversation right now and that was why she was rolling her eyes.
"I'm not going to pick apart the gray matter of right and wrong with a grown man. There are things that anyone with most of a right mind and good heart knows is wrong."
A glance to her phone. Where the hell was Ned to back her up on this? (Would he, even?)
Sepúlveda
If anyone would back up Margot in a debate against Dr. Sepúlveda, it would be Ned. Ned, however, is still asleep.
In the meantime Margot rolls her eyes and tells him of the duality of right-and-wrong and glances at her phone. He doesn't notice. Their server drops off their beverages and he barely gives her time to walk away before he pounds half his Bloody Maria.
As he prepares to lecture her he rubs the space where his wedding ring used to be. Like the lightness is a rawness for him.
"Listen," he says. "Alexander, I didn't realize until we had him alone, he went through a Seeking while in captivity. That... that is fucked up, Margot, forget minds and hearts, that's what he has to live with, now. You two, I can't tell what you want, but I know you don't want that." The fuck is he trying to say. He glugs his beer. "There is no 'right and wrong.' Just get that shit out of your skull right now. You're--" A beat. He lost his train of thought. His thoughts are in too many places. He glugs again. "You and Edward, you're tired of this student shit."
It's not a question. It's a shot in the dark.
Margot
Her expression became clouded when Sepúlveda began to speak at length about how terrible it was for Alexander to go through his Seeking while enduring captivity by the Technocrats. She wasn't quite sure what it meant, to have to live with that. How could that have permanently changed him? Would it define him as having been a captive now?
These were questions that she didn't get to ask, though, because Doc had moved on and landed with a punctuation sort of statement.
"Of course we're done with it," she said with a frown. "Nobody likes the kid's table."
She'd just let that topic of Right and Wrong slip right under the rug, there.
Sepúlveda
"No shit, but the kids' table exists for a reason. You ever let an eight-year-old sit at the table with the adults? They think everyone gives a shit what they have to say. I have news for you: no one in the world cares what an eight-year-old has to say."
Spoken like someone who has had at least one child who lived to the age of eight.
"I have an idea. It may be the shittiest idea in the world, but you have to understand, it's very very rare for two new-awakened initiates to study under one disciple without any of the three of them subscribing to the same ideology, so if you two want what you want, and I want to see what happens, the worst that could happen is you two end up in a coma for a couple of days."
What the fuck are you talking about, Sepúlveda.
"Are you two ready to go on a Seeking?"
Margot
The disheveled doctor's question dropped like a heavy stone in a deep pond-- plunk! Margot stared at him and sat up straight. Her hands flattened onto the bench seat on either side of her. Looking like they wanted a fellow hand to squeeze but there was plastic bench cover and air.
After enough time for the Doc to probably begin feeling impatient, the girl finally blinked.
"Ned's not even here right now." With a glance to her right. She reached for a coffee that had arrived during her bout of quiet, started putting cream in it (but leaving the sugar the hell alone). As she stirred it in with her spoon, she looked nervously back up at the Doc.
"How do you push someone into a Seeking? You make it sound like a road trip."
Sepúlveda
"Oh, yeah." He's laying on the sarcasm heavy as he can in case she tries to accuse him of sarcasm but isn't sure if that's what he's going for. "A Seeking is like a road trip. Same as eating acid is like spending a day at the beach."
He drops the tone. They're young. They're inexperienced. It's not his fault he's twice their age and has enough experience to have turned plenty of other willworkers to the dark side.
"Margot, you have to decide for yourself you're ready, and then open yourself up to the possibility of failure. Nothing either of you two nematodes have convinced me you're capable of yet. But you two spend all this time together, and I haven't read your diaries lately, so for all I know, you're ready and I just don't know because you've been loudly voicing your opinions on matters that not only don't concern you, but that no one wants to hear your opinions on at all, let alone." Burp. "You know. Loudly."
Ned
"...Alright so explain this to me?"
Ned's first words on arrival. He's dressed in a simple brown coat with thick unkept wool padding on the inside. His hair has been slicked back with some effort, taming it into a reasonable pressure. He's wearing cargo pants and his face has that same set of a frown on it that is normal for Ned in unknown circumstances. He's come in from work, freshly showered (which suggests it might have been a messy shift) and looking at the pair of them with something along the lines of concern. Worry?
Paranoia.
"It went well? And we're not all going to die?"
Sepúlveda
"What is wrong with you two?"
Hard to tell if this is his normal brand of good-natured grousing or if he is genuinely trying to sort them out. The rough state of his physical appearance hasn't alleviated in the time he and Margot have been sitting here. If anything, Ned can pick out a few more sprigs of white among his black hair. His beard, which is now two-almost-three days' worth of salt-colored stubble, has received the brunt of it.
"Of course we're all going to die. Everyone, ever, is going to die. Sit the fuck down, you're still on word-count probation."
Margot
When Ned arrived, he'd find Sepúlveda and Margot in a booth along a large window. Margot blinked up at him upon his arrival, then scooted over to make room for him to sit down. She didn't say anything, looked clearly distracted.
The Doc assured him that they all would die (thank goodness for him), and Margot held her coffee without drinking it immediately. Filled Ned in as he settled in. "The Brandt guy's holed up somewhere safe, and he's 'doing better than most would be'. Doc's here, apparently intact, and thus far nobody else's been hurt." Margot's tone near the end told them precisely how suspicious she found that fact, but she'd since been derailed from that subject.
Because...
"Doc wants to send us through our Seeking."
Sip.
Ned
His fingers suddenly elevate in response to Sepulveda, counting off each word with meticulous, eyes on the ceiling brevity.
"Lightning Guns. Kha'vadi Voodoo Folk, Secret Jailbreak Missions, Zombies, Ghosts....Just in the last month. That is what's wrong with us."
He looks at his fingers. Does a mental head count and then looks at the Doc:
"22..." Shakes his hands/fingers at the Doctor and then moves in to take a seat next to Margot with a quick grin that melts into a serious frown a moment later when returning to the Doc, when Margot mentions the 'Seeking'.
"...When?" Because he didn't have many words left for that particular minute.
Sepúlveda
"You're the ones who still have the words 'I have to' in your vocabularies."
He doesn't even contest the proto-death ray or the pissed-off Dreamspeaker or any of the other litany of sins he and the rest of Awakened society have committed in the last turn of the moon. Could probably argue that those are just excuses. Does not, for a change, look as if he feels like arguing.
His left hand is devoid of its wedding band today. That and the fact that he shaved his face a few days ago is the only significance difference in his appearance. When he taps that finger against his glass of Bloody Whatever, it does not clink. Silence where before there was obnoxious noise makes him stop.
"Listen..." He scratches the back of his head like to recalibrate his thought process. "... I've been making a very real effort to find you two traditions. Or mentors who could initiate you into a tradition. Or... anything! Literally anything besides continuing to assume responsibility for you two spouting off paranoid shit in public. It's not worth the effort. Aside from the fact that you're becoming increasingly resistant to authority, you seem to have--and I don't know where you got this idea!--mistaken other people's concern for your welfare as... as, I don't know, giving a shit what you think. You know why I keep saying no one gives a shit about what you think?"
Their server comes back with Margot's french toast and Andrés's breakfast platter. He promptly pushes the plate of food at Ned and tells her he'll take another beer and another Bloody Whatever. Maria.
Once she's gone:
"Alexander Brandt is a Disparate, did anyone ever tell you that? An Orphan? No cabal, either. So far as I can tell, the only reason anyone in this city gave a shit that the Technocracy had him was... what's the word... starts with an F..."
Margot
Food arrived, and Margot set down her coffee mug and instead took up her fork. Started in on the toast after covering it in more butter than syrup. She'd frowned when the full plate of food was diverted from the Doc to Ned, but didn't cave to the urge to try getting the Doc to eat at least some of what he'd ordered (an old habit from back when she'd nag her tired mom to take time to eat before collapsing in bed, or when she nagged her brother to eat when he was crashing and holed up in his room for days).
"Familiarity," Margot finished for him. She sounded ponderous with the word, like she was trying to force a concept into a part of her vocabulary that was filed under 'F'.
"I met Grace. And William. And from talking with them it seems like there's a community here and they all know him as a friend or ally, even if he is an Orphan with no Cabal. So not only did they care enough to want to go after him, but I've no doubt that he has all kinds of information on them that they don't want the Technocracy to have."
A beat, then:
"So.... If you want us to have Traditions, why are you suggesting we go on a Seeking without them?"
Ned
"...Fascism."
Ned prompts, eyeballing the food pushed in his direction. As an Orderly, he had to get used to eating when it was convenient, not when it was necessary. So when the food comes his way, it doesn't really matter exactly what it is. He begin to dive in with steady, obvious mouthfuls. A few grunts here or there to note he's listening still, but continuing to chew through the meal regardless.
"Doc, I would like to say-" Swallow. Wipe with the back of the hand. "-I appreciate everything you've done for us. All the effort you've put into providing us the information we require for the future. Things could have gone easily in a bad way or direction and it can't be easy trying to sort out a life, an awakening, the Enemy, the supposed other Workers in the city and us on top of it. So Thank you..."
Practical and upfront. Ned doesn't mince it nor does he seem shame-faced or uncomfortable with the admission. He simply goes back to eating what's left of the plate.
"...That said-" Swallow. "-I'm hungry." He eyeballs the half-finished plate, then glances back up again. "For some method to reassure myself. No more hiding under skirts or behind particular words or anything. I'm hungry for the ability to push back and do something for myself."
Margot pipes in with her question about a Seeking without Traditions. To which Ned snorts, but doesn't say anything beyond that. He returns his attention to the food on the plate.
Sepúlveda
Neither of those F-words is the one he was looking for but it doesn't matter.
Some part of the Etherite's brain had barked at him that he needed to eat food when he and Margot sat down. He'd ordered eggs and toast and bacon and let the waitress talk him into hash browns. They don't have his life story. At the rate he's going, he will withhold that information from them as long as is humanly possible. But the fact that he pushes his food at Ned is a tell. He is a father, or was, once. Men have the luxury of taking that cloak off when it gets to be too much. Even the worst mothers remain mothers after a schism.
At I would like to say Sepúlveda seems to be gearing himself up for some sort of an argument. He takes a breath and sits back in his seat. Does look startled when the next thing Ned says is 'I appreciate.' Looking startled turns into a frown. His fingers itch to check the young man's pulse or feel his forehead for fever or, barring that, whip out one of his gadgets to read his life signs from across the table. That frown and the impulse control it provides means he stops listening.
But then they have to be used to the fact that most of the time he's thinking about something else and barely listening to them, by now.
"'Push back'?" he says. "Where's your sense of adventure, Edward? Push forward, not back!"
He's a smart guy. In spite of the thickness of his accent and his occasional lapsing into Spanglish, English is not his second language.
"I don't want or not want anything for you, Margot. When you stumbled into the morgue, however long ago it was, I agreed to take responsibility for you until such a time as I found suitable mentors for you, but you two--"
Their server drops off his second round of drinks. Tops off and delivers coffee to anyone who wants and does not have. Assures herself that the oldest of the three of them does not, in fact, want any food, and then strides off again.
"The fuck was I saying." He drums his fingertips on the table. Goes on before someone can answer for him: "There's no prescription for how long one must remain in a state of scholarship before they're ready to progress. You two are annoying the shit out of me, and I thought, if you thought you were ready, I would explain to you what is a Seeking and what to expect." He flicks his eyebrows and kills off his first beer and sets it to the edge of the table. "If you don't think you're ready, that's... that's cool, I can go back to telling you why this Brandt fellow is a happy-ending version of a cautionary tale about why community is so goddamned important."
Margot
As Ned wolfed down his food and spoke of appreciation and a readiness to be able to stand up for himself, and while the Doc in turn explained what he was trying to get at, Margot quietly ate her french toast. Not nearly as quickly as Ned, but then she didn't just get off a full shift at a hospital. She did raise an eyebrow at the Doc's refusal to order more food for himself and offered to share some french toast. Was probably turned down, and wouldn't press the matter since she knew it'd go nowhere but getting yelled at.
So. Were they ready? Margot glanced at Ned, then at her plate while she thought. She'd stopped eating, and reached up to push her hair back behind one ear. As she did, she caught her reflection in the large window pane. Caught the glimmer of crimson bled into the brown near her temples when she did and set her face with a good attempt at resolve when she looked back across the table at their mentor.
"I've just been waiting to talk to Her for a while now anyways. What do we need to do?"
Sepúlveda
[perc + lol. can he pick up on the fact that she thinks he's going to yell at her if she presses him to eat.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Ned
"Push forward can wait until I've settled my nerves. Right now all I can do is 'see' and 'hear' a whole bunch of new shit that wants to hurt me, kill me, brainwash me or turn me inside out. That's not even counting the stuff that I've heard rumours about but don't know anything beyond 'scary'...so yeah. Push back. Give me some room and then I'll push forward..."
The plate is done now. Ned's sitting back in the booth, burping gently and patting his stomach. He picks up a glass of water that had been left on the table, having refused any further service or offerings from the Waitress when she'd arrived. Then he's sipping down water and settling in place, waiting for the Doc to answer Margot's latest question.
Sepúlveda
When Margot offers a forkful of her french toast to her absentminded mentor, he flinches. Not a proper startle reflex but more a matter of more neurons firing than he was expecting. If she were in a support group for people who live with PTSD she would recognize the brief distance in his eyes. He does not have post-traumatic stress disorder. He is a Mad Scientist. As they mature and gain experience they will learn why that moniker carries its own special breed of meaning comparative to the rest of his tradition. Sons of Ether tend to present as insane on their best days. He takes it a step further.
So:
He eats what she offers him, so long as what she offers him is slight. Then he listens. Margot has been waiting. Ned doesn't want to do anything until his nerves settle.
Their mentor's green eyes flick around the table and hone in on an untouched glass of water. A brief glimmer of self-preservation. He drinks it fast and hard as Ned continues talking. Some of the ice clatters onto the table. He knocks it onto the floor mat.
"I've failed you," he says. No judgement in it. "Edward, correct me if I'm wrong, but your nerves... they won't settle, so long as you're--" Finger quotes. "--'stuck.' You think you're stuck, don't you, there's a piece you're missing and if you can just find it eeeeeeverything will--" Burp. He chases his heartburn with more Bloody Maria. "--everything make sense. What happens if you don't find that piece? You ever think you need to make your own piece?"
'Piece' sounds a lot like 'peace.' Make of that what you will.
Margot
They must look the dysfunctional little family. Maybe this diner would become familiar with them and start making up stories to tell the customers that asked. Margot seemed appeased that the Doc at least at a bite of something, and moreso when he glugged down a glass of water. Went back to finishing her meal and when she had she settled. Didn't lean back into the bench to rest a hand on a suddenly full stomach, but stayed sitting upright. Sipped some water, went back to her coffee.
Doc was speaking of pieces and peaces and remembering the key term puzzle she felt this was more for Ned than her. Her Avatar and paradigm were far more straight-forward. She supposed that if she very much wanted she could go try to find her Goddess-- there had to be some way to project into her realm or to summon her up. Maybe an altar, a knife, and a lamb?
She kept quiet, eyes distant while she considered what power sacrifice could have. Let the fellows continue.
Ned
(Electromagnetic Vision: Forces 1 Diff 3 - 1 for TQuintessence)
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (3) ( success x 1 )
Ned
Ned pauses in his regard, frowning at the Doc's phrasing. Then a lightbulb goes off and he chuckles, briefly but genuinely.
"Pardon, Doc. It isn't that I'm scared of going forward. I just think in order to get unstuck? I have to make sure I've got some room to wiggle. That means getting bigger, better, brighter. I want go do this. Seeking, moving, improving, evolving. I want it more than..." He looks around. Glances at the restaurant. Blanches slightly and then...takes a genuine look at everything. There's maybe a hum...or a whisper...or something distinctly off about the moment that says 'Reality is not as it was a moment ago'. Nothing overt but...Ned is looking around. Scanning, less than studying, now.
"...The entire world is made of up these lattices. Parts that bump and thump and slap at one another. Shapes in desperate need of being filled or fitted or keyed together and half the time..." He's staring now across at a table, where some obese fellow is sitting, scarfing down whole reams of coronary concern.
"...Half the time folks are blind to just how wrong they're getting it." He sounds almost...angry. Frustrated? Irritible definitely.
"Like watching a bunch of zombies try to put together a jig saw."
He blinks, like he's shaking away some vision or reverie. Returns his attention to the Doc, with a few careful blinks.
"So yeah. I'm ready. I'm paranoia, nervous and twitchy and ready to start doing something about that."
A pause. Then he's scrubbing at his eyes, jawing around some tension that slowly begins to bleed out of his sinuses.
Sepúlveda
Andrés Sepúlveda has his moments of lucid understanding.
They may have trouble accepting that he was ever an apprentice himself, let alone that he was unsure of his place in the world or his purpose or what have you. But he told them himself when he explained Essences and the Avatar and the Traditions: his avatar drives him towards constant change. He has an innate acceptance of whatever the universe throws at him. They though. He could tell that they are both Primordial Essences. Their Avatars are connected to the core of the universe. The oldest awarenesses, and aware in an age in the midst of revolution.
No wonder they're so fucking paranoid.
"You gotta put a lid on that, man," he says to Ned. "Everything in the world is not out to get you, and--not to dwell! I said we weren't going to dwell! But the day you met Oni, that shit would've gone a loooooot smoother if you weren't so in-her-face about how little you trust other people. You have to trust other people sometimes! Not... obviously never trust someone you can't, you know, throw, but... the majority of people, or situations... just life, man, you can't go through life thinking everything is a threat. It's not. Frank Herbert, yeah? Fear is the mind killer?"
He kills his Bloody Maria.
"I have an idea. I'm not pushing you to anything. If you both think you're ready, I'll help you seek out your Avatars, and they will challenge you. That's... Seeking! It's right there in the name. It's not up to anyone else. If your Avatar thinks you're ready, you... you change. You better. You can pursue higher enlightenment."
Ned
"...And if we fail to change? Bad things or just...we get an 'F' and try next Semester?"
Sepúlveda
He actually considers an answer to this question. They can both see his green eyes aim towards the ceiling and his breath catch in his lungs as he makes himself think before blurting out the answer.
"No, you'll be fucked up for a bit."
Margot
"That's the nature of jumping, though," Margot added finally, having otherwise maintained her quiet.
"You take the leap. If you make it, you get everything that's up on that higher platform. The greener grass, bigger space, higher vantage point. If you miss.... well, hopefully your legs heal."
She looked like she wished she had a Bloody Mary to kill after making that analogy. Instead, she sufficed for finishing her glass of water and concluding:
"I'm ready."
Sepúlveda
Luckily their server really wants to do her job and do it well. She probably has kids at home. Wants to move out of her house and take them with her. That's the aura she carries with her. Sepúlveda considers his students with a baleful expression and then considers how many times they've fucked up. Orders three shots of tequila and another Bloody Maria with another beer back. If either of them want more coffee this is their time to ask for it.
She leaves. She won't be gone long. They are not busy at eight in the fucking morning.
Margot is ready.
"Good," he says. Then, to Ned: "What about you, asshole?"
Ned
"Yeah. I want to learn how to taser a guy with nothing but my pinky."
He wiggles the finger at the Doc and then folds his hands on the table infront of him.
"That is. I'm ready."
Sepúlveda
"I'm not gonna teach you that."
Often Sepúlveda speaks without thinking. That he thinks as much as he does only means that those moments of verbal filter failure mean some errant thought has slipped through. Not teaching Ned to zap people with his unadorned finger is a testament to his paradigm. They've both seen how useless he is without his instruments. Technomancy is not for everyone.
Huge sigh.
"Come to the..." Wait. Frown. "No, I'm getting evicted. That won't work." Never mind. Here's the waitress with their shots and his drink. He asks for the check. Pushes the extraneous shots in front of his students. "Drink this. I'll pick you up on Monday. Monday? Monday."
Down goes his shot. His esophagus grew accustomed to the burn and lack of relief decades ago.
"Bring clean underwear."
Margot
"You're getting evicted?" Margot looked and sounded surprised, a little worried (typical), sympathetic. A clear 'oh no!' there in her tone. But the worry abated as soon as she realized he probably had a back up plan. That and he was a doctor, wasn't he? Medical examiners had to make enough money that this wouldn't be any kind of a crisis for him.
Plus, they were Magick. He could get applications for places to live approved regardless.
Here, drink this. Margot looked down at the shot like it were a burden, sighed, and picked it up anyways. Down the hatch it went, and she set the glass delicately back on the table while she worked through the burn that she wasn't nearly as accustomed to.
Ned
"That figures."
Ned offers without a hint of sarcasm. After the debacle with the Kha'vadi (Ned still can't seem to pinpoint her name despite having been reminded several times now by the Doctor himself), and the Doc's other experiments, he had wondered how the landlord would ever explain allowing the Doc to remain.
C'est La Vie.
Ned picks up the shot. Years of college before all this Awakened nonsense had occurred, had made him forcefully aware of the burn. Perhaps even masochistically comfortable with it. Then again, the shiver and the wince he displays after downing it might also take into account his Awakening.
Sepúlveda
"Alright. Listen to me."
They are nowhere near on his level. He would never ask that of him. He's an alcoholic. He did not become one because his life has been pleasant and quiet. Perhaps this has been the source of his confusion regarding their paranoia. They've heard him rant about their lack of experience and fear of the furtherance of such before. Their fear is alien to him. Same as he, in his entirety, is alien to them.
"If you're going to go on a Seeking, you have to be prepared for the explosion of understanding that awaits you, if you do succeed. You're not going through it in captivity. You two, you're..." Sigh. He takes a swallow of beverage. Four deep and he's starting to slow down. "I think, in time, you two will be pillars of the community, and bastions of knowledge, and you will be able to guide those less able than you both are."
Later they will realize this is the statement of a man who is capable of dialing into possible futures. They have not yet seen his propensity for looking in either directiont through time. He hasn't wanted them to see it. Yet his resonance is one of augury. Portent. Foresight.
"In the meantime... Monday. We're going on a fucking field trip. Don't... don't amp yourselves up, over it, it's either going to blow your fucking minds or you'll be too fucked up to remember anything. I'm going to the bar."
As he slides to the end of his bench a thought grabs him.
"Oh! Oh, right! Brandt!" That halts him. The waitress plants a checkbook at the edge of the table. He ignores it for now. "He had a Seeking in captivity. First of all: DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS?" They don't. Dial it down, Doc. "Second of all: his resonance. His... his fingerprint, the mark he leaves on the world after he's changed it. It augments, usually. You go through a Seeking, some other crazy... worldview-altering event, and it just tacks on. His changed."
This explains the rumpled sleep-deprived aura surrounding him. The jangling of the Life Sphere keeping him awake. He's stumbled on something game-changing.
"It took a fucking Cultist getting high and deciding to scry through time to realize he was missing. That's how little connectivity Brandt had with the rest of the reality deviants here. That's what I want your takeaway from this to be. Paranoia, fine, it kept our ancestors alive while they were figuring out how to bang a spark out of flint, but it's 2015." 2016, Doc. "Whatever. Accept the help others extend to you. You don't know shit, and I don't know if you noticed, but Doctor Sepúlveda isn't the most well-liked person in Denver Country."
Ned
"....Being right, doesn't have anything to do with being Liked."
Ned's counter argument isn't so much an arguement as an...adhering to the rules of 'Few Words per minute'. He offers a nod and a shrug before picking up his glass of water and downing the rest of it. When the Doc heads off to the bar, he glances across at Margot with a perked brow.
"...Are you actually ready?"
Margot
A grave still settled over Margot and she sat stiffly on the bench when the Doc said that he forsaw them (in a way) as being pillars in the community of Mages here. Bastions of knowledge and what have you. She looked like she was adjusting to the weight of that settling onto her shoulders, trying to find a way to hold it for now while she figured out what to do with it.
Doc wasn't well liked. Margot made a face that said she couldn't disagree and shrugged with a well, what do you do to the gesture. "So what," she said. Who needs to be well liked?
Then Ned was addressing her instead of Doc, asking if she was actually ready. She looked moderately surprised and met her fellow Apprentice's eye. Searched to find his answer to his own question there-- the flint of resolve, the anxiousness of waiting at the starting line. If he was ready, then...
She nodded firmly. "Yeah. Yeah, it's time."
Ned
Margot would find Ned...calm. Perhaps a touch anticipatory but he's frowning per usual.
"I'm not going to be there, you know that right? Not the entire time, I don't think. Different paths and tracks and all that to get to where we need to go. We'll run this as close as possible though until it's time but...yeah. You and Her...gotta have a one on one at some point."
Sepúlveda
"I'm going to the bar."
Bar Bar opens at eight in the morning. He isn't telling them they have to go anywhere else. All he's saying is he's getting the fuck out of here presumably to drink more and reconsider his life choices.
They are his life choices. At least temporally. If either of them have picked up on the fact that Margot reminds him, if not physically then temperamentally, of his daughter, then that means he has been keeping that shit tamped down as best as anyone would expect.
"Go home, smoke some weed, meditate..." He doesn't know what the fuck. "... do whatever you gotta do to not be paranoid pieces of shit for a few days."
Margot
The Doc was going to head off to the bar. Maybe he'd come back. That gave Ned and Margot a moment to level.
Margot found Ned calm, and Ned would find Margot... well, not nearly as nervous as he probably expected her to be. In a strange moment of almost zen, found wedged between the anxiety and excitement for what was to come, apprehension and anticipation, she just grinned when he made it clear that they couldn't keep on the same path on this forever.
"Well, yeah," she said. "I didn't really think that Andraste would have much to say to you. You have your own Avatar to go find and try figuring out."
At this junction the Doc clarified that he was going to get out of the diner and go to the bar instead. He left his advice to them-- go home, relax, smoke some weed and do whatever it was they needed to relax. She nodded to the Doc and raised her hand to him in farewell. "Thanks, Doc. See you Monday."
And he was on his way. Back to Ned and what they were talking about. She returned her gaze to him and pulled one corner of her mouth into a small smile again. "So we walk together until the road forks. When that time comes, you go left and I go right and then we meet at the end."
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