Arianna
The only way that Arianna Giametti and Andrés Sepulveda seem likely to colocalize is in establishments that are purveyors of fine (or cheap, cheap works too) alcohol. They are about as unlikely drinking buddies as ever the Awakened world has seen: he with the sense of cold foreboding wrapped around his pattern, and she with the sense of starlight wreathed around her. And today she has been drinking enough that her hands and words seem inexorably tied, and she is explaining to him something, as the door to said drinking establishment swings wide, something in one of those expressive languages, languages of the heart, romantic, some call them, she is saying something that requires large and sweeping gestures, and Italian is close enough to Spanish anyway.
What they are talking about doesn't matter much. The obvious sense of camaraderie and mischief to her, the easy way she seems to make very bad ideas seem logical and well within the bounds of reason? The absolutely impeccable quality of her dress, aspects of her appearance; this easy and uninhibited sense of privilege and wealth? Those are important. Those are critical.
It turns out, she is telling him about a recipe. It could be magical; or it could be a secret family pasta sauce. Her hands still a little, come up to wrap a pashmina around her neck against the cold of the Denver winter. Because it is Spring; and therefore there is a blizzard.
Andrés
[DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: jamie has 90 minutes on her laptop battery and will have company in 15-45 minutes so her posts will not be top-notch]
Many airports and European bistros have instances where travelers from Spain and Italy have run into each other and had entire conversations without either having previously learned the other's tongue.
Mexican-Spanish is not his mother tongue. It was his mother's tongue and his father's tongue but his father was barely around and his mother -- well. Arianna has none of this information. She does know that he speaks Spanish with an immigrant's fluency and can understand about half of what she says when she lapses into Italian. A match made in Hell.
If she has not smacked it off yet, he has his arm around her waist. Not tight, not possessive, but like he, five-foot-six in his shoes, needs her for balance. He's wearing most of a suit. The tie is gone. He hasn't shaved his face since Saturday. His glasses are on his face. His wedding band is gone.
"Anyone!" he is saying. "Anyone who denies the change of the climate, they have never been to the United States!"
Arianna
She mostly understands him when he speaks; probably a fair bit better than he understands her, and so it brings the conversation back to English more than her tipsy multi-lingual tendencies would otherwise prefer.
"Tell me again, about this Climate Change -- and why, if you have done the proper cantrips; if you have the associated research; why would it be denied? Change is inevitable, right, this is how your English saying goes?"
There is a flush to her cheeks, a rosy-warmth and healthy looking thing. It is partly alcohol, and partly amusement. She hasn't shoved him off of her, rather slipped an arm around his shoulder, steadying him further. Or steadying herself off of him. Ari is taller by an inch; she is immeasurably more put together.
It is a small miracle that they are not debating the finer points of Hermeticism as they wander-weave down the street, in search of the next pub on tonight's ill-advised crawl.
Grace
She's bought her plant materials today. Those are stuck in the back of her car, waiting for the chance to be used. But then, she found herself in the general area of a number of bars. It's a good plan, right? Drunken hydroponic gardening? She can always get Kalen to drive her home. Or, possibly, just undrunk herself.
So, she walks into the place, and... finds that Andrés is here, by the way the cold slither goes down her neck. Fantastic.
No, it's good to see him, not... You know... I mean, hopefully he's not...
She walks up, squinting a bit, and then relieved once she actually gets a good look. She's got on her usual red (sharp-looking) coat, with jeans underneath. Accidentally fashionable, at best, Grace only teally cares that she's clothed.
"Oh, hey. Dr. Sepúlveda. Nice to see you not naked. Who's this? Also, it's denied somewhat because people don't understand the difference between seasonal changes and climate changes. Fucking senators throwing snowballs to 'prove' it's not happening..."
Andrés
"Gracia! Ignorance! Ignorance throws the snowballs!"
He neither releases Arianna nor addresses the part of her sentence that has to do with his prior nakedness. He does however speak with the hand that isn't latched onto the Hermetic's hip.
"Le presento a Arianna," he says. "Arianna, le presento a Gracia." Lightbulb! He isn't just trying to be a dick! He has a thick accent and is drunk half the time! "If you want to give each other your..." A flailing yet cyclical hand motion. "... your whatevers. Persuasions. What is the w--TRADITIONS. Yes. Do it. I'm not."
Arianna
Here Arianna is, enjoying the company of commoners, arm looped around the shoulders of a most unlikely friend, dripping with the sense of starlight, tripping over the toes of her multitude of languages. She is almost comfortable in how they discuss these pedestrian things like the fate of the global ecology when...
... Grace wanders up. Ari's eyes flicker over to her quickly; to the sound of a new and unfamiliar voice. There is a slick of quicksilver to them, something mercurial and unfathomable but clever, but quick, and all together too inviting. Sharp red, bright white, and what can only be assumed to be shades of what was black -- they are at least a complementary tangle of outerwear, if not resonances. The corner of her mouth curls, slightly, at some inward joke.
"Naked..." A look to Andres, and then, in something close to Spanish, she says, "You didn't seem to be the sort." Mirth here; approval or perhaps cleverly covered disdain. It is difficult to tell just now. Hard to see around the teasing in her eyes.
"It is a pleasure, Grace, to make your acquaintance," and though the words are formal, they are tinged with her mood and her slight inebriation. There is a playful pass at curtsey here, one that isn't going to drop the good doctor on his ass. She has manners, after all, however occluded they may be at most times.
Grace
Arionna's curtsey. Grace tries to mirror it, with a frown of concentration on her face. She was named Grace, but the name never suited her.
"Arianna. Nice to meet you. Also, yeah. He didn't really look like he had too much of a problem with it either..."
Grace though. A blush comes to her face just talking about it. She shakes her head.
"I guess not too many people can say The Union desperately wanted to make their clothes disappear. It's, you know, bragging rights."
Of a sort.
"I'm with the Elites. You? I've heard the name Arianna around.
Margot
Let us not worry about what Margot was doing prior to this moment. Let people presume what they will about the time of a 19-year-old girl and what she may dedicate it to (they're probably wrong anyways). What does matter is that this here was a hot spot tonight, a veritable leyline where Fates and paths crossed over into a patch of concrete and brick in front of a bar in the heart of Downtown Denver.
She was wearing a pair of black boots laced up the ankle, into which a pair of snug gray jeans were tucked. A heavy brown jacket warded off the chill from the last breath of winter-- accustomed though she may be to chilliness due in whole to her mentor's resonance, she was still human bodied and susceptible. She had her hands in her pockets and her hair down, left for the wind to tug and pull however it pleased when it whispered.
Ahoy! Up ahead! A zap in the air, a chill, a sparkle, a whoosh. Margot slowed and stopped several yards away, frowning, hesitating, hovering.
Grace, who walked away upset when she saw her last. The Doc, with his arm around the waist of a pretty stranger in a dress. He looked properly toasted, so did she. Her nose wrinkled and she hovered, unsure of if she wanted to come and play.
But that resonance, though.... They would notice, it was like having a battlefield full of carrion and sticky red crawling up behind you.
Arianna
Grace blushes. It draws a little more of Arianna's attention her way. This could be a good thing; it could be a very very bad thing. But these are not her usual circles, and so her usual games are held at bay, but only just so. When Grace says 'the Elites' one of Ari's eyebrows arches just so, lofted a measured amount.
"The Elites? I thought you were a faery race of nightmares made up just to scare good little Apprentices within the Order into behaving just so, lest their wands be taken away and fashioned in ... to...those memory things." Well, this is where it falls apart. She has likely never held a thumb drive in her life -- not one that livedto tell the tale.
This, though, with the curl of mischeif sharply intact.
"Though do tell, as I am always curious: from whom have you learned my name?" Oh yes, now, her Hermetic is showing. The grammar; the grammar always gives them away.
Andrés
"It is a popular name," says Sepúlveda.
What else is he supposed to say. He's on the sidewalk with his arm around the waist of an attractive woman who has her arm around his shoulder. Yeah it's well-known he was going to break into the Amaranthine Laboratories and retrieve Alexander Brandt. Yeah it's not so well-known that he contracted clothing-eating nanites and spent three days holed up in an invisible van outside the motel Serafíne the Cultist had cordoned off in case of cases like this.
And then here comes his apprentice.
It has nothing to do with the fact that something goes off in his pocket. It isn't his cellphone. It's blocky and weird and may or may not resemble something Grace saw in the back of the "ambulance" in which she first witnessed Sepúlveda's nudity.
"Shit," he says when he pulls the device out of his pocket. "I gotta go."
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Arianna
((ACK! Why double roll, why?))
Margot
[[ Variety is the spice of life? ]]
Grace
"I could take your wand and turn it into a stick-insect robot," she says, a fake-cruel little grin on her face.
"Or, a wifi hotspot," she says, with a horrible evil laugh.
But when he freaks out and starts the other way, Grace looks around, a little alarmed that perhaps Dr. Sepúlveda has seen one of the Technocrats he ran into at the lab. But, it's just Margot. She looks at the Apprentice, quite confused, before looking back at the doctor...
Who's disappeared.
"Huh. I uh, heard your name from Silas."
God, but Dr. Sepúlveda is weird.
Margot
Well, there went the Doc. We'll say that he blew right past Margot when he bailed out after a quick look at some device (not his phone, though) that was produced from his suit pocket. When he'd passed Margot there was some brief exchange of words-- Margot looking displeased (wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, quickly shaking her head and muttering back to him). After a certain point Andrés must have decided that he didn't have the time or it wasn't worth the hassle, because he made a gesture of 'whatever' with his hands and continued past.
Some parting words, though, had Margot looking over at Arianna and Grace. If at that moment either looked her way as well, she pushed a closed-lipped forced smile onto her face and lifted a hand to wave; the wave looked far more genuine than the smile. Some people are just poor in their social graces.
She started walking again, along the same path she'd been on, which was now a direct approach of the other two Mages. Her hands went in her pockets, and in another show of amazing social finesse she greeted the pair upon proximity with a simple:
"Hey."
Arianna
Sepulveda departs, leaving Ari to stand on her own and mark this: she has practice at being inebriated and socially adept. There are aspects of being slightly toasted that make this easier, that keep that smile and the warmth in her eyes despite the grim resonance coming up behind them.
Have you ever heard of monsters? Do you know them to be true? Margot feels like monsters and this woman, in her dress and her white coat, in the wake of Andres abandoning her, she seems utterly unmoved by it. As if the monsters trapped in Margot breast are not that dark, and not that unknowable. She is at ease with them; she may even know their Names.
At an appropriate time, perhaps coupled with the doc's departure, she casts a look over to the source of that sticky, dark and --
See this? A flash of teeth. Polite. Genteel. So, absolutely, politically correct: a little laugh. "Oh, yes. That would be a good one." This, then, with so many unspoken undercurrents.
"Though I would advise against it." It is only the thinnest shadow of a warning; a blade seen on edge; only at its thinnest point. It gives no sense of the sharpness of the thing; that is kept caged.
And this brings Margot, and her closed-lipped smile, and her caged expression, and her hesitance forward. "Good evening," says Ari; it is pleasant and warm. That sense of mischeif has been walked back a little bit. It is colder here, without the doctor beside her--isn't that saying something?
Arianna
((Edit:
I could take your wand...
*And her attention snaps back to Grace. See this? ... (and so forth...)
I don't know how I lost that in copy/pasting!))
Grace
Grace gets that. If anyone were to take her instruments, she'd be pissed too. Still, it gives her an idea...
She pulls her phone out if her pocket.
"Hey, Margot. What's his problem?"
The last time Grace said anything to Margot it was to tell her to fuck off. This seems to have been forgotten. Mostly.
She then proceeds to tap away at her phone's screen. Mercurial Elites, man.
Arianna
So you've heard that stereotype, right, about how technology really doesn't get along with wizards? How their cars don't quite run right. How they eschew modern conveniences in favor Older, Truer methods.
This is especially true with Arianna. She is well and truly cursed. Not that she minds it; technology is querrelsome at best. But she does the Elite the favor of stepping a little further from her when Grace pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing away. So it will be less her fault when it starts behaving... poorly.
Margot
Arianna's warmth in her greeting wasn't missed. In fact, it was apparent the impact it had on the little witch. She appeared relieved, like she was worried that there was going to be some kind of a what do you want? replacing the 'good evening' that actually came. The tension in her brow lessened, forehead smoothed and eyes relaxed.
Then came Grace's greeting and question combination. That relief doubled up enough that Margot actually let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and her shoulders stopped being so square and rounded down to rest. It was good to know that grudges weren't being held over how tense their last encounter was. That she wasn't being held necessarily responsible (yet) for how her Mentor behaved was nice too, though the question did have her glancing back over her shoulder to where the Doc had disappeared.
"Not a problem exactly. Some project or another." She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though to say 'what can you do?'. He was a Mad Scientist after all. She was figuring out that the emphasis on Mad and Science in that title was equal but different between words. She looked to Arianna and smiled a little-- this one far less tense than the close-lipped thing she'd provided when approaching. "The Doc said you know Pen and Nick, and that I should come say hi. I'm Margot."
Yeah, Grace just said that.
Arianna
It's fair, this expectation Margot has of her. In different circumstances, that greeting may be just what she gets from the Initiate Exemptus. But not at an establishment that peddles pleasures; not outside of more strictured social circumstances. Tonight Arianna is downright pleasant. She is practically polite. She has not led anyone astray or into mayhem.
"They are among my dearest friends," she says, confirming this for Margot readily. As readily as she had completely glossed over mention of Silas. Take that as you will. "Are you both known to them?"
This, then, ties the three of them together in one question. It cements the thing. And three points make a circle, so they are cast together in it; they are made immanent and full of omens. Then for Margot: "A pleasure. Please, call me Arianna."
Grace
"Oh, you...." she starts. The cussing is cut out. "You do too know how to do that..."
She's talking all right. To her phone. Frowning at it. Finally smacks it, like it had a head and she was slapping it.
Suddenly there is a burst of something sharp in the air. She's done playing nice with Mr. Phone.
[Entropy 3: Debugging. Obviously, her phone is possessed. The only cure is some nice, regular, orderliness. And violent smacking. Diff 5 - 1, taking her time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Grace was busy with her phone. Something sharp snapped at the air and Margot eyed her and the device she was holding suspiciously. A keen edge, if you will, stinging and biting. She knew that some used their technology for their Magick and Grace was among them.
As opposed to ask questions, Margot felt out the air to make sure she wouldn't get caught in a backlash somehow, then returned her attention to Arianna.
"Nice to meet you, Arianna."
Were they both known to them? Margot glanced to Grace, then shrugged. She couldn't speak for the Elitist's familiarity with the Chakravanti-Hermetic couple She could speak to her own, though.
"Yeah, the Doc had a dinner party and had Ned and I over to meet them. We're in touch now, here and there." She paused, then added for context: "Dr. Sepulveda is my mentor." Left out Ned, though. Sorry buddy.
Arianna
There is a crackle of energy in the air around her, the hallmarks of working magics and, unlike Margot, it draws up something ever-ready and precise in Arianna. Her shoulders square, and her chin lifts. Even tipsy, even a little off-her-guard, her attention is cast wide before narrowing back to the Elite at her side.
"Is everything alright?" she asks Grace. It is clear spoken; it is sharp-eyed. But there is no obvious sense of danger, and so Arianna's hand strays to a pocket, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her wand, but she does not draw it out in public. Mark, though, that she is ready. She is able.
This tension remains, uneasiness, between them as she casts her attention back to Margot. She is surprised at something the girl has said, reaches for the appropriate words to touch upon it. "I... am surprised to hear he is your Master. I would have marked you for an Older ilk; a greener sort."
Grace
"I've... Met both of them, a couple times," Grace says, absentmindedly, well after the question was asked.
But then Arianna said something else, didn't she?
"Oh. My phone. It's acting up. Like, the touch screen isn't... Touching or something. I think..."
She smacks it again.
"I think I fixed it..."
Arianna
"Oh," she says. Just this. And the singing tension drops out of her shoulders; sluices; moves away is if it were never there. And there is mirth to the corners of her eyes again -- one could imagine it amuses her when, yet again, the older ways are proven to be more stable things, to hold more gravitas. In truth, it is just the stay of some unknown altercation that pleases her.
After all, this is a city on the brink of War. This is a place where an unaffiliated Apprentice was taken, reclaimed again, and they are still awaiting the retribution.
"I'm glad it's better now." That seems like an appropriate thing to say, doesn't it? That's practically pleasant. It saves her from making some sort of patently false assertion about how friends of Nick and Pen were her friends too, or some other platitude. Arianna doesn't deal in platitudes.
Grace
Her phone is amusing Grace now. Taps get followed by mischevous grins.
Somebody's up to something.
"Oh, yes. It's great," she says. "In fact, I have just made 'Arionna's Wand' into a wifi hotspot."
A grin. This time above her phone screen. At Arionna.
"I'm joking! Joking!"
Margot
"Master?"
Margot sounded incredibly offended by the word-- not insulted by Arianna directly as much as appauled at the notion of referring to him, or anyone really, as master. She stared at the pretty Italian woman with disbelief. But then--
"Oh. Hermetic." Already wide eyes widened further with realization, and the girl relaxed.
Then she realized there was another question hanging in the air. Forgot for a moment, because she was distracted watching Grace and her phone. Stared for a moment, then remembered that Arianna had spoken further of Traditions.
"No, no no. I'm not into Science like that. I'm studying ecology, but gizmos and chemistry sets?" She shook her head and waved her hand. "I don't have a Tradition yet." She glanced around. Nobody was passing near, nobody had exited the bar to bombard them yet. She wasn't worried about being overheard really. What, would the Technocrats have a stake out in every part of the city? Wouldn't being around Grace basically automatically ward her by proximity? She couldn't doubt that Grace kept a Ward up about herself, especially these days.
"I think I may look into the Verbenas.... Penelope actually said she'd ask a friend to meet me." The Doc was right-- community was key, wasn't it?
Margot
[[ Sorry for the occasional delay, by the way! I've got a baby about sooo, heh, you know. :) ]]
Arianna
For Grace: If looks could kill is a stupid saying among willworkers. Looks could, in fact, kill. Looks could flay a mind down to its vestigal redundancies and fail to built it back again. Looks could steal air from lungs; they could turn veins to ice. Looks, man, they're powerful things. So there is delicacy in the Look that Arianna gives Grace; it is measured; it is precisely as warning as she wants it to be without going further into coldness.
"You are quite clever."
This may not be a compliment.
"Oh. You are the apprentice for whom Thane is visiting," Arianna says, stringing quite a few things overheard into something more solidified. This brokers a true smile, a thing that touches her eyes. "I am indebted to you, then. Because we do miss him, and you have given him good reason to venture out this far."
Grace
"I really did though," a huff of a laugh. If Arianna wants to throw fireballs at her, Grace can take it. In fact, all the serious business the woman keeps putting on her face have only served to egg Grace on more.
"I named my phone 'Arionna's Wand' and turned it into a wifi hotspot."
Because, you know, doing what you're explicitly warned not to do, getting around things by using cheap tricks? It's all a good hacker ever does. Even if the result thus achieved is kind of silly...
"And, I am very clever. It is good of you to notice that. Who's Thane?"
Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Are these two goading each other or what?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Arianna
[Manip + Subter (cunning): Nah, we cool. I'm just a Hermetic.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
Arianna
((ACK! Not re-rolls. Double 10s. I am such a M20 newb.))
Grace
[Grace just seems like she's having fun for the sake of having fun. There are some things she takes seriously, like the lives and freedom of people (as Margot has seen). Other people's possessions just don't seem to be on that list.]
Arianna
The serious business face is what is keeping Arianna from being an outright ass and asking, in a jovial and friendly tone, for Grace to let her see: how cool! Because she is so very good at being cunning, and also at being mean. And then getting her wizardly cooties all over the Elite's tech. This abrupt and perturbed outward seeming is the lesser of the available escalation tactics. Nobody's instruments are well and truly called into danger.
Yet.
Grace's smugness is met with a briefer smile. And here, then, Arianna's own phone, something anachronistic, and bulky, something that flips and doesn't touch, comes out of her pocket. Things are typed, keys pressed. It goes back into her pocket.
It does not remain in view as long as Grace's tech. It would be unfair to call Arianna's phone "tech" this many years after its debut. The question of Thane's providence, then, is returned to.
"A friend of mine, and Nicholas's and Pen's, who shall be visiting for a brief while." She says this plainly. So that Grace, distracted as she is with Arianna's Wand (the phone [not the true one]), might still take it up this time. "And will likely speak with Margot her about her mystical inclinations."
Margot
While Arianna gave stern looks and Grace grinned and continued to play (Circuit Coyote), Margot was quiet. She looked between the two of them, like she was anxious of tension that may begin to flicker-flicker-flint. She'd seen a pair of Mages in a fight with one another before, and the aftermath made her puke in her mentor's toilet. She didn't want to be here if it was going to happen again.
But nothing came of it, and Arianna had addresse her with thanks for bringing Thane back out. Claimed that Margot herself was a very good reason for him to visit. The Apprentice looked thoughtful while there was filling in on Thane's identity going on.
"...Recruitment's that important, is it?" She piped up quietly, and glanced between Arianna and Grace both. Perhaps a question she sought bouth their views on.
Arianna
"Recruitment?"
This draws a furrow to Arianna's brow for a moment, and for a moment she cares not at all what the Elite has named her phone, or whether Naming is sufficient sympathetic magic to link the named thing to the true thing and thus influence the flow of Ars Essentiae between them -- because that would be impolite. And rude, even by Hermetic standards. And would make Nick unhappy with her. A different sort of unhappy with her than he has sometimes been. It would be counterproductive, however satisfying.
And no, Margot, there will be no great awakened throw down in mystical Denver Downtown. At least, if there was, Arianna with her stern looks would not be the one to start it.
"I... I would speak to you about this in a more controlled environment, but, and please understand, Margot, that I am being brief not in dismissiveness but of necessity -- Choosing the minds with which you will align yourself is more precious and important than 'recruitment' may belie. It is choosing the framework upon which you hang your Works, your world view, and ultimately your greatest accomplishments and challenges. You are choosing the shoulders of the giants upon which you will stand as you move forward in your enlightenment. Do not let any Tradition claim you that you would not proudly claim for yourself, but also do not belittle or diminish the danger in remaining apart."
This for the apprentice; this for the one who will claim Thane's attention and possibly join his Tradition. Every single syllable of this is spoken without slurring; it is imperative; it is crystal clear and shining. For Arianna is also luminous, and the Order has been a shining City on the Hill to many in its millenia of leadership.
Grace
"Oh, that's cool!" Grace says, to Arianna's reply. Honestly, Margot needs more than just Andrés Sepúlveda in her life.
But, to Arianna's words, she shakes her head. "I don't really think 'recruitment' is nearly as important as just having people you can talk to about your... mystical inclinations. Hell, when I Awakened, I had a bunch of people -- none of them technically minded -- who I leaned on a lot to figure out how to deal. There's a lot of commonalities in what we do, when you get down to it.
"You might find if you want to have that in your life, joining up under a banner is the way to go. You might also not. I know a lot of Disparates in the city who adamantly want to go their own way, and there's nothing wrong with that. A bit more dangerous, yeah. Perhaps. But we're Mages," she says, gets down to a more serious tone herself. "There is no fear we can't conquer."
Arianna
"It is more than a bit more dangerous," Arianna says, on the heels of Grace's opinion. This, too, is clear cut and definitive. "But Grace is right: the choice is yours." It is ominous when she says it that way; it gives the thing the proper weight.
"Keep in mind, though: not all places are so... generous... to Disparates."
Grace
"Then, those places are corrupt. And I wouldn't go anywhere near them anyway, Disparate or no."
Ahh, happy shiny conflict.
"There's a word for people who care about other people's labels. That word is: 'bigot'."
Arianna
"So you have a label then, for these other labellers of people?" Arianna asks. Her mouth twists wrily, eyebrow arched and challenging. It is a dark and dangerous thing. She has honed her skills in this game against a Tytalan. It shows.
Margot
The advice that she received was soaked up like a sponge. Margot listened raptly to Arianna, for she was well-spoken and serious and impactful, and her words felt like they carried heavy weight. She listened to Grace, of whom she's heard in almost every conversation that revolved around the magickal community in this city. Grace said this, Grace set this up, Grace dismantled this and found this and fixed this. Margot bore this in mind, and also noted a similarity there-- she knew a lot of people, but none of them seemed to match up with what she felt herself to be.
Then, some back and forth about the pros and cons of Traditions and Orphans and bigots and bigoted bigot callers and--
"I'm a witch."
Margot cut in, over their back and forth. Glanced between the two, almost sharply (scoldingly, a budding emergence of what Mage she would become when her connection to her Avatar was stronger, no doubt-- when her confidence and Power were given time to grow), and continued on.
"Ned and I, we've talked about this. We'll find Traditions, it's unsafe to do otherwise. I've seen what happens. I--," But her phone started ringing in her pocket. She glanced down at the screen, then sighed and explained: "It's the Doc, will you excuse me?"
She stepped away. A brief conversation later (tense back and forth for perhaps a minute or less), Margot sighed and pocketed her phone. Returned to the others and explained: "I guess the Doc's gonna get his assistant tonight after all. Thanks for, y'know, your time and stuff you two." An awkward pause, for an awkward girl, then-- "'Bye."
And away went Margot Travers, briskly up the sidewalk from whence she came.
April 5, 2016
March 20th, 2016 - Ready [Doc, Ned]
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."
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."
March 17th, 2016 - Snooping Around [William, ST'd by Heather]
the devil
okay! Step 1: Time 2 (WTF happened yesterday?). Diff 5 -1 (taking his sweet assed time)
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )
the devil
Derp deedooo, extending.
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 8) ( success x 1 )
the devil
aaaand one more
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 5) ( success x 1 )
the devil
Step 2: Time2/Entropy 1 ("On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this?")
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
the devil
That bad, huh?
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 4) ( fail )
the devil
SERIOUSLY BRO
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
the devil
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 7) ( success x 1 )
the devil
I'd say time has successfully been scried.
the devil
(do a shot and then on to Round 3: USING THE INTERNET TO GOOGLE PEOPLE) Int 3+ computers 1: I can totally computer. Diff 7, because using official databases is hard
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 4, 5) ( fail )
the devil
(It was then that Margot realized a valuable lesson- once you join the Order of Hermes, you immediately forget how to use a computer.)
Margot
[Move over and let the girl try. Intelligence 4 + Computers 1]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
okay! Step 1: Time 2 (WTF happened yesterday?). Diff 5 -1 (taking his sweet assed time)
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )
the devil
Derp deedooo, extending.
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 8) ( success x 1 )
the devil
aaaand one more
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 5) ( success x 1 )
the devil
Step 2: Time2/Entropy 1 ("On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this?")
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
the devil
That bad, huh?
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 4) ( fail )
the devil
SERIOUSLY BRO
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
the devil
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 7) ( success x 1 )
the devil
I'd say time has successfully been scried.
the devil
(do a shot and then on to Round 3: USING THE INTERNET TO GOOGLE PEOPLE) Int 3+ computers 1: I can totally computer. Diff 7, because using official databases is hard
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 4, 5) ( fail )
the devil
(It was then that Margot realized a valuable lesson- once you join the Order of Hermes, you immediately forget how to use a computer.)
Margot
[Move over and let the girl try. Intelligence 4 + Computers 1]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
WilliamThe lead up tot his was pretty unremarkable. They carpooled to get to the place in question in Santa Fe. Will had his watch in hand and seemed... a bit spaced out. Walked a path along the area in what seemed to have been a very cleaned up area. Margot might have talked to wa waitress, or someone who had been around that day but even if she didn't the denizens of the arts district seemed more interested in getting drunk than talking about the grisly facts of what goes down in their area.
It doesn't happen often, gunshots- that is. This is colorado. You end up with passive stoners, not hard crime. Not shoot outs and drug hits and whatever was going on there. It's a high traffick enough area that it was hard to tell if the people who witnessed the whole thing were hanging out or just quiet. Not a drip of blood to be seen though.
When it's all said and done, Will seems content to go wherever they are going to step three- investigating in a mundane sense. It involved laptops and bottomless french fries. Will came up with nothing.
Margot, however, did happen to come up with a few things. The first of it all seemed easy enough, finding out about Jake and how he knew these people. It seemed unlikely, or at least odd, that he would work with these people. Jake Hendricks was twenty-one, got off probation last year for possession of a controlled substance and a couple misdemeanor charges coming out of being eighteen. A few reckless driving charges on top of that- kid liked to drive fast. He had the same probation officer as one of the men they had looked up- Orion Willis. Another person with priors for possession of a controlled substance, but a few more violent crimes under his belt, spent some time in jail for armed robbery.
There's something interesting about Saints' Rebellion, that Margot seems to find. The gang itsself, and all the names she finds, don't seem to lie across ethnic boundaries as most gangs do. A few leaked crime scene photos from up in Aurora of a particularly brutal-looking home invasion. A copy of a note with names and important pipeces blocked out that looked more like a religious manifesto than that of a gang pushing drugs in an area. And ye shall walk the road of a sinner (unintelligible scratched out writing) miracles revealed. Given that the unintelligible bit came up because it was stapled to a human torso.
DEnver PD tried to get the invasion linked to Orion Willis (the only readily confirmed member of the Saints), but all attempts have come up empty.
MargotFrench fries, laptops, watches and beer. It was St. Patrick's Day and they were crowded in at all sides by the people that thronged the Santa Fe neighborhood. But Magick wasn't easy to do from a distance, not for them at least. They needed to return to the crowded scene of the crime, and took advantage of the free wifi to conduct research while they were there.
Impatience flashed across Margot's face when William floundered with finding information on the names and key terms from the pages of the book, and she swiveled the laptop toward her with lightning-quick fingers and began a much more successful scouring of the internet. Leave it to The Brain to pull details from the Web.
As she continued to look upon the screen, a more concerned cast came over her features. At a certain point she stopped reading about possession and trafficking and robbery offenses and instead moved on to making out the oddly sanctified text that was apparently pinned onto a human torso. At a certain point, when she was finished with french fries and beer and research, she closed the laptop and looked to William. "Let's go talk."
So they loaded into the car and drove to Washington Park, because it was big and easy to find a place where the grass rolled and the street lamps didn't quite touch because the sidewalks were spaced so far between, and the tree leaves could cast shadows to help people ignore them even better. A cooler and blanket were pulled from the trunk of the car and carried on out to one such place on the grass, between a couple of trees and able to view a pond. The cooler had some more drinks in it, but also food. Margot went for a tupperware of cantelope and popped the lid off while sitting cross-legged on the blanket.
"The Saints' Rebellion takes their name very seriously. They leave nigh-religious rants printed out and pinned to the bodies of their victims."
WilliamThis was a close second for the most functional picnic that he has ever had, and oddly enough (or not so oddly enough, it was William) both of these things had to do with drugs and the societal implications therein. He was really starting to wonder if his life was turning into a DARE PSA, but then again he'd been pretty flean for awhie. Taking shit loses tis fun when you figure out that you can magick your way into the same reactions or, well, you could explore the universe and find out that the entirety of the outer realms are a lot like a bad trip.
They have a view of the pond, but he stays precisely where he is and doesn't skip merrily on his way to go dive into the thing. One, it's cold and two it's dangerous and he could be just fine with not acknowledging that water is a thing that he has to ever be in ever (no matter how hard he may be working on becoming okay with the fact that his impending demise isn't going to end up coming from a three foot puddle. (it's deeper than three feet, you know) SHHH Don't tell him that!)
He plopped, deposited a messenger bag and put his pocketwatch down beside them where he could see it. Tools laid bare.
"So, is it like the Westborough Baptist Church kind of rants or is it more apocalypse preacher-styled rants?"
Margot"Well, the note I saw specifically spoke of sinners and miracles."
There was fruit, a couple of protein-packed bars, some raddishes to offer as far as food went, some water to go along with anything else to drink too. She went after the raddishes next and crunched one while looking thoughtfully down at the watch on the blanket.
"I don't understand how it connects to trafficking drugs. I didn't see anything about them being connected to an actual church either. So maybe it's just that this one guy is crazy? But then the others wouldn't be allowing him to represent them like this, so I don't know." Crunch.
"What did you see, when you looked back?"
WilliamAs an interesting fact, it would seem that William? Actually really seems to like raddishes. Has been merrily chewing on one while she's talking and takes the opportunity to go for cantaloupe while she's going to the actual vegetable.
What did he see?
"So, Jake rounds the corner, we talk, he keeps going and looks like he's meeting up with his journalist friend," he starts, exhales and continues on along, "She's in the picture but not too close. Some guy comes out of one of the bars, starts to cross the street- shots are fired, but they aren't at him, first two are in the air- third pegs a fuckin' waitress in the shoulder. People scatter, there's a shit ton of confusion and some big guy-"
William goes back to the book, flips through the pages before he gets to the picture of Orion Willis and points it out "-this guy, pulls him into the back seat of a Meals on Wheels van. Plate number is QUE seven forty seven, but it expired two months ago. Van just fuckin' sits there until the cops show up, and then it drives off. It's like the gun shots were a diversion for the whole snatch-and-grab thing."
A second.
"Most likely results of our current path of study ends up with that reporter chick Vanessa Truong reporting that an unidentified pair of bodies were found on the shores of Sloan's Lake."
Margot"But that hasn't happened yet...," Margot clarified. It was most likely to happen, a glimpse at probability and outcomes in the future, based on what intentions were in place at the time William was making his look. Margot bit her lower lip thoughtfully, then leaned over to tap a finger on Orion's picture as well.
"He's the one that cops were trying to pin that invasion on-- the one with the religious note that was left? The book's right, he's not to be fucked with. I wouldn't be surprised if he likes killing." She wrinkled her nose, stared at the picture for a moment more, then straightened up again and fished in the cooler for some water to drink.
"...if that Vanessa woman was near, she would've had to have seen what happened. If she's a reporter she probably got the plates and is tracking the van and trying to figure this out too." Her lips pressed together, like she was sitting on her next sentence because she was reluctant to spit it out. Ultimately, though, she would. Her gaze swung up onto William's and she looked hopeful and apologetic both (about to ask him to do something).
"Could you talk to her? I'm just not... really very good with people overall. That's what your House does, though, isn't it?"
William"I have no problem going and talking to her; I figure I can come up with some reason to talk to a TV reporter, shouldn't be too hard," no, he was not going to cause a five car pile up. William drives of motorcycle. That would hurt. A lot.
"You wanna figure out what all this weird pseudoreligious BS has to do with street gangs? I mean, what, are they a gang having turf issues? Are they a religious group who is pushing drugs, what the fuck it's like the universe can't figure out what it wants to do with this," he half grumbles, but his heart isn't in it. He seems a little eager to keep on the move and keep up with this.
"We still handing this off to the cops?"
Margot"I don't know..." That, as to whether they should pass this off to the cops. She'd seemed very eager to do so yesterday, but something was just not sitting right with her. She rubbed her chin, popped another piece of cantelope into her mouth, and rocked back some on the blanket.
"When religion starts to mesh with things that it wouldn't ordinarily, that makes me wonder how... ordinary this all could be. If this is going to turn out to be something that's going to need Magickal influence to..." To what? Stop the bad guys? She stopped short there, scowling at herself and wondering since when she got any kind of a bee in her bonnet to stop drug dealers from doing what they do. Sure, her brother should be a big one-armed reason on his own, but she really just wanted to withdraw from all of that didn't she?
But there was something just not right about handing something supernaturally influenced off to human cops who wouldn't be anywhere near equipped to deal with it.
"Let me look into it further. Try and figure out what Saints' Rebellion really is. If it's mundane, then the cops can have everything and I'm out before somebody notices us snooping around at all."
It doesn't happen often, gunshots- that is. This is colorado. You end up with passive stoners, not hard crime. Not shoot outs and drug hits and whatever was going on there. It's a high traffick enough area that it was hard to tell if the people who witnessed the whole thing were hanging out or just quiet. Not a drip of blood to be seen though.
When it's all said and done, Will seems content to go wherever they are going to step three- investigating in a mundane sense. It involved laptops and bottomless french fries. Will came up with nothing.
Margot, however, did happen to come up with a few things. The first of it all seemed easy enough, finding out about Jake and how he knew these people. It seemed unlikely, or at least odd, that he would work with these people. Jake Hendricks was twenty-one, got off probation last year for possession of a controlled substance and a couple misdemeanor charges coming out of being eighteen. A few reckless driving charges on top of that- kid liked to drive fast. He had the same probation officer as one of the men they had looked up- Orion Willis. Another person with priors for possession of a controlled substance, but a few more violent crimes under his belt, spent some time in jail for armed robbery.
There's something interesting about Saints' Rebellion, that Margot seems to find. The gang itsself, and all the names she finds, don't seem to lie across ethnic boundaries as most gangs do. A few leaked crime scene photos from up in Aurora of a particularly brutal-looking home invasion. A copy of a note with names and important pipeces blocked out that looked more like a religious manifesto than that of a gang pushing drugs in an area. And ye shall walk the road of a sinner (unintelligible scratched out writing) miracles revealed. Given that the unintelligible bit came up because it was stapled to a human torso.
DEnver PD tried to get the invasion linked to Orion Willis (the only readily confirmed member of the Saints), but all attempts have come up empty.
MargotFrench fries, laptops, watches and beer. It was St. Patrick's Day and they were crowded in at all sides by the people that thronged the Santa Fe neighborhood. But Magick wasn't easy to do from a distance, not for them at least. They needed to return to the crowded scene of the crime, and took advantage of the free wifi to conduct research while they were there.
Impatience flashed across Margot's face when William floundered with finding information on the names and key terms from the pages of the book, and she swiveled the laptop toward her with lightning-quick fingers and began a much more successful scouring of the internet. Leave it to The Brain to pull details from the Web.
As she continued to look upon the screen, a more concerned cast came over her features. At a certain point she stopped reading about possession and trafficking and robbery offenses and instead moved on to making out the oddly sanctified text that was apparently pinned onto a human torso. At a certain point, when she was finished with french fries and beer and research, she closed the laptop and looked to William. "Let's go talk."
So they loaded into the car and drove to Washington Park, because it was big and easy to find a place where the grass rolled and the street lamps didn't quite touch because the sidewalks were spaced so far between, and the tree leaves could cast shadows to help people ignore them even better. A cooler and blanket were pulled from the trunk of the car and carried on out to one such place on the grass, between a couple of trees and able to view a pond. The cooler had some more drinks in it, but also food. Margot went for a tupperware of cantelope and popped the lid off while sitting cross-legged on the blanket.
"The Saints' Rebellion takes their name very seriously. They leave nigh-religious rants printed out and pinned to the bodies of their victims."
WilliamThis was a close second for the most functional picnic that he has ever had, and oddly enough (or not so oddly enough, it was William) both of these things had to do with drugs and the societal implications therein. He was really starting to wonder if his life was turning into a DARE PSA, but then again he'd been pretty flean for awhie. Taking shit loses tis fun when you figure out that you can magick your way into the same reactions or, well, you could explore the universe and find out that the entirety of the outer realms are a lot like a bad trip.
They have a view of the pond, but he stays precisely where he is and doesn't skip merrily on his way to go dive into the thing. One, it's cold and two it's dangerous and he could be just fine with not acknowledging that water is a thing that he has to ever be in ever (no matter how hard he may be working on becoming okay with the fact that his impending demise isn't going to end up coming from a three foot puddle. (it's deeper than three feet, you know) SHHH Don't tell him that!)
He plopped, deposited a messenger bag and put his pocketwatch down beside them where he could see it. Tools laid bare.
"So, is it like the Westborough Baptist Church kind of rants or is it more apocalypse preacher-styled rants?"
Margot"Well, the note I saw specifically spoke of sinners and miracles."
There was fruit, a couple of protein-packed bars, some raddishes to offer as far as food went, some water to go along with anything else to drink too. She went after the raddishes next and crunched one while looking thoughtfully down at the watch on the blanket.
"I don't understand how it connects to trafficking drugs. I didn't see anything about them being connected to an actual church either. So maybe it's just that this one guy is crazy? But then the others wouldn't be allowing him to represent them like this, so I don't know." Crunch.
"What did you see, when you looked back?"
WilliamAs an interesting fact, it would seem that William? Actually really seems to like raddishes. Has been merrily chewing on one while she's talking and takes the opportunity to go for cantaloupe while she's going to the actual vegetable.
What did he see?
"So, Jake rounds the corner, we talk, he keeps going and looks like he's meeting up with his journalist friend," he starts, exhales and continues on along, "She's in the picture but not too close. Some guy comes out of one of the bars, starts to cross the street- shots are fired, but they aren't at him, first two are in the air- third pegs a fuckin' waitress in the shoulder. People scatter, there's a shit ton of confusion and some big guy-"
William goes back to the book, flips through the pages before he gets to the picture of Orion Willis and points it out "-this guy, pulls him into the back seat of a Meals on Wheels van. Plate number is QUE seven forty seven, but it expired two months ago. Van just fuckin' sits there until the cops show up, and then it drives off. It's like the gun shots were a diversion for the whole snatch-and-grab thing."
A second.
"Most likely results of our current path of study ends up with that reporter chick Vanessa Truong reporting that an unidentified pair of bodies were found on the shores of Sloan's Lake."
Margot"But that hasn't happened yet...," Margot clarified. It was most likely to happen, a glimpse at probability and outcomes in the future, based on what intentions were in place at the time William was making his look. Margot bit her lower lip thoughtfully, then leaned over to tap a finger on Orion's picture as well.
"He's the one that cops were trying to pin that invasion on-- the one with the religious note that was left? The book's right, he's not to be fucked with. I wouldn't be surprised if he likes killing." She wrinkled her nose, stared at the picture for a moment more, then straightened up again and fished in the cooler for some water to drink.
"...if that Vanessa woman was near, she would've had to have seen what happened. If she's a reporter she probably got the plates and is tracking the van and trying to figure this out too." Her lips pressed together, like she was sitting on her next sentence because she was reluctant to spit it out. Ultimately, though, she would. Her gaze swung up onto William's and she looked hopeful and apologetic both (about to ask him to do something).
"Could you talk to her? I'm just not... really very good with people overall. That's what your House does, though, isn't it?"
William"I have no problem going and talking to her; I figure I can come up with some reason to talk to a TV reporter, shouldn't be too hard," no, he was not going to cause a five car pile up. William drives of motorcycle. That would hurt. A lot.
"You wanna figure out what all this weird pseudoreligious BS has to do with street gangs? I mean, what, are they a gang having turf issues? Are they a religious group who is pushing drugs, what the fuck it's like the universe can't figure out what it wants to do with this," he half grumbles, but his heart isn't in it. He seems a little eager to keep on the move and keep up with this.
"We still handing this off to the cops?"
Margot"I don't know..." That, as to whether they should pass this off to the cops. She'd seemed very eager to do so yesterday, but something was just not sitting right with her. She rubbed her chin, popped another piece of cantelope into her mouth, and rocked back some on the blanket.
"When religion starts to mesh with things that it wouldn't ordinarily, that makes me wonder how... ordinary this all could be. If this is going to turn out to be something that's going to need Magickal influence to..." To what? Stop the bad guys? She stopped short there, scowling at herself and wondering since when she got any kind of a bee in her bonnet to stop drug dealers from doing what they do. Sure, her brother should be a big one-armed reason on his own, but she really just wanted to withdraw from all of that didn't she?
But there was something just not right about handing something supernaturally influenced off to human cops who wouldn't be anywhere near equipped to deal with it.
"Let me look into it further. Try and figure out what Saints' Rebellion really is. If it's mundane, then the cops can have everything and I'm out before somebody notices us snooping around at all."
March 17th, 2016 - Baring Souls [Nick]
Margot Travers
At the beginning of the week, Nicholas Hyde found a voicemail on his cellphone. Margot's quick-spoken voice sounded hushed and hurried, like she was trying to avoid being overheard by making this brief.
"Hey, Nick, it's Margot. I'm, uh... This is awkward, but you said you were a counselor? Well, the Doc.. That is to say, I was wondering if maybe we could talk? I have insurance through the university, I don't want to be presumptive of your time or anything." A pause just long enough to be awkward, maybe long enough for Margot to smack herself in the forehead before she finished up. "Please let me know. Thanks."
Nick got back to her, agreed to meet her and suggested Washington Park as a nice open space. Thursday'd work out best.
They met at a landmark that was easy to find, a bright patch of flowers well manicured and cared for in beautiful, colorful patterns with walkways between them. Margot was lurking near a patch of lavender, apparently counting bees and robins. The temperature was chillier today than it had been recently, so she was dressed in a brown jacket and gray beanie cap. Jeans and brown sneakers, she seemed almost like she was purposefully dressed in the blandest colors possible. Urban camoflauge, an reremarkable blending in that had nothing to do with supernatural flair.
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas is versed in the Art of Time magick, and so perhaps a part of him one way or another always knew this day would come. An Awakened member of the community has called him: You said you were a counselor?
Truth be told, Nick is surprised it has taken this long. But they're a willful lot, magi. It isn't a surprise that the call has come from an apprentice.
He had agreed to meet Margot, assuring her all the while that she was not a burden and was not being presumptive of his time. Today will find him meeting her in the park where she lingers by a patch of flowers, their soft violet hues a contrast to the budding growth of young Spring. Soon it will snow, and it will kill off some of the flowers that have just begun to break through the soil. So it goes.
Nick is wearing a puffy green jacket today (the color is coincidental; he has been avoiding the drunken throngs of people throughout downtown) and a pair of brown corduroys. His hair is beginning to grow wild, dark crown of curls as it is, and he has not as yet made any recent attempt to tame it with shears. He has his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he sights her and wanders up. His feet make no sound, would not even if he were not treading through soft grass, and so he is careful that his voice foretells his coming before he is anywhere near her. "Hello, Margot."
Margot Travers
Soft footsteps and a greeting before proximity spoke of Nick's practice with cases like Margot's. She'd straightened up a little (as opposed to startling, like she'd done last time), and turned her head to look for and toward him. It helped that she was expecting him this time, too. When her eyes found his face she smiled. The expression was genuine, she liked Nick, his presence was a welcome one.
"Hey, Nick. Thanks for meeting me."
Her hands stayed in her pockets, but she turned her shoulders so she was more faced toward the other Mage. Eyes cast over the hue of his jacket, then she grinned a lopsided grin and pulled her jacket zipper down, tugged a lapel out. Her shirt underneath was shamrock green.
"Going out tonight, have to make sure nobody has an excuse to come pinching. How are you?"
Nicholas Hyde
"Glad that I'm not covering for the emergency department this weekend." There is a touch of wry in his tone here, though he doesn't necessarily expect her to laugh: this is the sort of gallows hospital humor that sometimes follows people outside of work, when they do the sort of work he does.
He, too, has smiled upon greeting. Nick is the sort of man who finds it easy to reflect the emotions of those around him, who perhaps even takes them on to some extent. It can't be entirely avoided. Regardless: he does seem happy to see Margot as well, and there's this little tilt to his brows that indicates some concern even before they've begun to speak. Her voice message, after all, was a little worrying.
"Do you want to go sit somewhere? Might as well enjoy the ground while it's dry." A rare enough thing during this time of the year.
Margot Travers
"Sure, or we can walk-and-talk like this is a political drama." She wasn't quite perceptive enough yet to readily recognize the small tilt of concern to his brown, and so held her grin up just a little while longer before turning and beginning to walk. Regardless, they'd need to go elsewhere, so she began walking, figuring he would be doing so as well.
With the initial bit of friendly greeting out of the way, and with a few moments to pass for Margot's hoisted grin to slip away as well, the girl's expression fell solemn instead. She was thinking of how to approach what they were there to talk about, and thinking over the content itself was distressing enough without really knowing how to present it.
So she started with a story.
"When we were having this talk, Doc and Ned and I, Doc told me that I should just learn how to 'fix it'. That I'm a witch and it'll be easy. I think that he might have forgotten quite what being on my level is like, having been able to change things as much as he does for as long as he has. I think that would take... ah... quite some time."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot indicates that she would prefer to walk, and so Nick easily falls into step beside her, and without question. There is a certain part of his demeanor that seems tailored to put her at ease, which she might notice if she were perceptive enough yet. He walks along with his hands still in his pockets, his gaze on the trail ahead.
He doesn't prompt her, yet, as she seems to mull over just what it is she wants to talk to him about. There is this look he gives her out of the corner of his eye occasionally where he notes that her smile has faded, that there are little tells that indicate some distress - what can he see? And if she had gone quiet much longer he might indeed have laid out some sort of launching pad for her.
Instead he listens. His left hand wiggles occasionally inside its pocket as he spins his wedding ring around his finger with the ball of his thumb, though this ceases once she has finished.
"What does he think you should be able to fix?"
Margot Travers
As they walked, they passed a bench. Nick let her lead, and Margot chose to keep on walking. She went at a comfortable pace, slow to him perhaps on account of her stature and shorter legs. Took her time and kept her eyes on the path ahead.
She also took her time answering Nick's question. Not so much that he may feel like he'd have to prompt her or switch gears, though.
"Last week Doc called Ned and I over because he was hearing this knocking sound-- it was following him around the house. I can sense Spirits, and he cannot, so he wanted me to see if I could feel what was happening. I sensed another Mage. Turns out he'd pissed off a Dreamspeaker and she came through the Gauntlet to get the jump on him in his lab
When I heard her screaming at him and him yelling back, it panicked me. Badly. Ned had to.. get me back upstairs. Help me breathe and calm down and had to leave me there to go help Doc."
Her chin tucked into her jacket when a breeze picked up, and she chuckled a low little chuckle. "Turns out Ned was not well equipped to de-escalate the situation. This Shaman had the upper hand and Ned was antagonizing her. Turns out he's almost as bad with people as Doc is. Doc got hurt. Things could'a gone badly. I.. I pulled it together and got the situation calmed down and everything worked out and we're all okay but...
"But I can't jam up like that. Not with everything that we have to be on the look out for, not with everything that we meddle with."
Nicholas Hyde
There are a lot of questions to ask here. Nick has so many questions. He swallows all of them for the time being, piles them up inside him and sorts through them to find out which will be the most helpful here. After all: Margot has come to him with a problem.
He is not the sort of man who will overlook that to pry information from her, to use her vulnerability to gather power. He could be, but he's not.
There is a silence that passes between them after Margot finishes, and in that silence Nick's eyes have wandered on ahead, have roved from the bench to a little spray of daisies that they pass. His hand leaves his pockets long enough to catch the petals of one of them, and he runs his finger over the little plant before releasing it and letting it spring back into place unharmed. Then his hand returns to his pocket.
"That sounds like a lot of responsibility that you're taking on for what happened. It also sounds like, as an apprentice, with a lot of this very new to you, you had a very normal reaction. Andrés told you that you freezing up is something that needs to be fixed?"
Margot Travers
"No, it's not just freezing up as in not knowing what to do. It was..."
Margot watched Nick touch the flowers that they passed without causing them injury, frowned and kept eyes on the daisies while they sprang and bounced back into place. Looked forward again and tried again to better describe.
"I got confused. It felt like when I Awakened, and I thought that I was with my mother and brother again. I hid under a blanket and did breathing exercises before I could even bring myself to get back to the staircase. He said that he's seen it before, that it gets worse. Post traumatic stress disorder, I've done some reading, I think that's what he's talking about."
She looked at her sneakers and watched them consume the dirt path beneath them, mouth pursed closed and tight. Because she knew that next came the part where she explained what happened to her family.
Nicholas Hyde
There is, perhaps, a part of Nicholas that had known this about her, or suspected, long before she told him. He is not a mind reader, but he excels at picking up on contextual clues and piecing them together; he's a clever man. This has been observed about him before. So in this sidelong look he gives Margot, there is no surprise.
She's done some reading, and this is no surprise either. In spite of the topic, there is this little half smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth as they walk together. It is perhaps a little fond, this thoughtful thing. It is gone by the time she finishes speaking, though, by the time the muscles around her mouth tighten.
"So it brought a lot of things back for you, it sounds like. What sorts of things are you understanding about yourself from what you're reading? I'd like to make sure we're on the same page."
Margot Travers
The bookish quality that little Margot Travers had about her seemed to be endearing her to any number of potential mentor figures. When Doc first sat her and Ned down for a serious explanation of what they were in for she'd produced a pencil and notebook, and the Doc had to put forth a concentrated effort to avoid looking too pleased with her. The fact that she'd gone to the trouble of researching the subject herself, as opposed to tip-toeing around and waiting for somebody else to tell her what it was and what exactly to do with it, caused Nick to smile despite the weight of the subject at hand.
What did she understand from that reading? For the first time since they started walking-and-talking she looked directly at him, apparently confused by the question and seeking clarification.
After a moment she tried, though, sounding cautious like she wasn't certain if she was answering right. "That... I'm at risk around stuff that reminds me of what happened. And hearing the Doc fighting with that Shaman lady, the shouting and all must've brought me back. And it can keep compounding and complicating if I keep denying it and avoiding it."
She moved a hand from her pocket to tuck loose hair out of her face and back under her wool cap again. "I also think that I need to finish some unfinished business. Maybe closing the final chapter on that story will help."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot appears to be seeking clarification, and to what she says he only nods. He keeps even with her as they walk, even though his legs are longer and he likely has to slow his pace to accommodate her. "It sounds like you have a good understanding of what's going on then. Do you want to talk about what happened, before?"
Another sidelong glance to her. "You don't have to, if you don't want to."
Margot Travers
[Well, Margot, how willing are you to talk?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Margot Travers
A sidelong look was met with a look in kind-- Nick'd find wide hazel eyes staring right back at him. Perhaps evaluating his visage and determing if it was trustworthy enough to lay this on the line with.
Well, she'd come this far. And this was what she was here for. And if you never stepped off the ledge you'd never learn to swim again.
So Margot took a breath, looked forward, curled her hands into fists in her pockets, and started.
"I grew up in Portland, Maine, with my mom and my brother. And my brother sucks, like, a lot. He's been into meth and heroin and shit since he was like 14 or 15 years old. And this one night last summer..." There. It was starting already. She felt a swelling in her throat and a skip in her heart and breath. She paused, took a breath, and pressed on. "Luke hadn't been home for two and a half months and then came back in a huff. Tearing up his room, wanting to know where mom was, accusing her of taking something." She snorted with angry disdain. "He thought she found some stash of drugs he was holding and when she came home from work he got into a fight with her about it. He was high as fuck on something and it was intense so I went outside to call the cops and... and he.. and she..."
She stopped walking now and was staring forward-down. Tears stung her eyes and she took a breath again but pushed on, even if it did all come out as a rush, because this was difficult and she felt like something were gripping her heart and squeezing it tight and it made her want to leap and kick and bound away like a terrified red rabbit but she could do no such thing. Disciples of Warrior Goddesses didn't run away from scary shit in their past. They faced it.
"I heard a scream and when I came back in Luke was choking her and he smashed her head on the counter and she died I saw the life leave her and everything came down and in and exploded and now Luke only has one arm and I brought mom's body back to life but it's just her body and it's in some fucking institute upstate and I just fucking ran away from them."
Nicholas Hyde
People bare their souls to Nick on a regular basis. He knows things about other people that their mothers don't know, that their spouses don't know, that they've never spoken of to another human being. This is the first time Margot has told anyone this, or at least he suspects this intuitively in how the words tumble out of her.
He has turned his head in full toward her, and he is still walking but only to keep pace with her. He would've stopped otherwise, and he slows his own pace gradually because he would prefer to be facing her right now. The first thing he says is, "Is it okay if I touch you?" And when she gives assent, he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, curving it over the blade, this solid firm bracing pressure. In front of her, so she can see it and anticipate it.
He will let a silence pass again as he gathers his thoughts, because this never gets easier, being with other people in the thousand small ways that they die. He squeezes her shoulder once.
"What happened to you and your mother is terrible." Her brother, too, but: everything in its time. His tone communicates what his words cannot possibly, the weight of all of it. "Margot, you know that none of that was your fault, right? Not any of that, and not staying upstairs while Andrés was fighting with that shaman."
Margot Travers
The hand on her shoulder was accepted, and though the very nature of human touch while soul-bearing made her want to weep Margot swallowed her tears, steeled her resolved, and took another breath.
"I know that." Because she did. She knew it and she meant it. She looked up at Nicholas and, miraculously, those owl-like eyes hadn't spilled tears just yet (though it wasn't a far cry from happening).
"But there's an apprentice that was kidnapped and tormented by the Technocracy in this city. Me and my friend, we're apprentices too. And there's Mauraders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts and any other number of things that go bump, things that are bound to happen doing what we do. What happens if I'm in a situation where if I shut down and start seeing my mom--" That stung. She pumped the brakes, tried again.
"I don't want to make myself anymore vulnerable than I already am by the nature of being me right now."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's hazel eyes meet hers, and there are a lot of people who would have trouble maintaining eye contact like he does while someone else is obviously so close to crying. He does not look away, though he does pull in a long breath that swells his chest; and then release.
"It's brave of you to tell me this, and I know you're going to keep being brave. If you shut down and start seeing your mom, we'll figure it out." And if he too is afraid of Marauders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts, well, she wouldn't know. She can't know yet that those things only become more terrifying as the stakes get higher. Nicholas is being The Adult today.
There is another little squeeze of her shoulder, and though his eyes had wandered for a moment, here they find hers again. "Margot," and here there is a slight smile, something wistful, "I know you're a smart woman, so tell me honestly - when you look at Andrés, do you think he 'fixed it'? Do you think this is something that you can magick away?"
Margot Travers
The question that Nick posed had Margot looking thoughtfully at him. It solemned her up some, and maybe that was intentional. Speaking of the current, the here and now. The people that were not her Mother and Brother, but rather her Mentor and Fellow.
When she replied, her answer seemed well thought out, deliberately phrased. "I don't believe that the advice the Doc gave me is any advice that he has taken for himself. But then, I don't know what the Doc would be fixing for himself like I would be trying to fix me." Then her words loosened some, because she was speaking less about the Doc (revealing fewer details about him, for they were his details and not hers).
"That said, I think Magick utilized by the right person could 'magick it away', but I don't think that the Doc or I are the right people." She paused, and cast a glance back up to Nick. Considered him for a moment, then cleared her throat and rolled her shoulder under his hand to request that it be moved. Turned to start walking again. "I don't think that's exactly your style either. Seems contrary to what you do for a living."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot suggests that this sort of use of the Art of Mind is contrary to what he does for a living, and Nick draws in a breath, and as he considers his eyes fall somewhere down and to the right. Toward the flowers, perhaps, though - no, if she follows his gaze she'll find it directed nowhere specific. "I don't believe in fixing people because I don't believe people are broken. This is...grief is normal, and natural. It's our refusal to accept pain as a part of life and death that makes us suffer."
A beat. He has bitten the inside of his cheek, thoughtful. His hand had fallen away after her shoulder rolled beneath it, and now he is walking with her again. "I understand what you're saying to me. And I think figuring out how to not shut down in bad situations is a good idea. If you wanted to learn the Art of Mind yourself, learning to shape yourself that way would be a good way to start. Magi that I know who are advanced in that Art say they began by figuring out what they could change."
His hands have been tucked back into his pockets. His footfalls next to her are still without sound. "I think it would also be helpful for you to keep talking with someone, and because I don't have the appropriate distance from the situation it would be unethical for it to be me. I know Sleepwalkers who do what I do and would understand the aspects related to magick, though."
Margot Travers
"I don't know..." There was a clear tone of uncertainty when it came to the Mind sphere. For reasons that she herself didn't quite get (something about it not really meshing with her paradigm, no doubt) she didn't really feel like she would be reaching into the minds of people around her or steeling her own, much like how she didn't see herself messing around in the river of Time.
But for talking with people, she nodded in agreement. That one seemed like much more of a no brainer.
"..wait, there are Sleepers who know about Magick?"
And the conversation may take a turn from there. Margot would be very curious to know about consors and Sleepwalkers who aided Mages and things of that nature. When their visit and walk around the park came to a close she would thank him sincerely and a couple of times over while they were saying goodbye. Probably got a name and phone number out of him for somebody else to begin visiting too.
Tragically, when Margot Travers and Nicholas Hyde parted ways, the young Apprentice had given no warning of her plans for misadventure for the evening (tracing shooting victims and interfering in drug wars of the city's underbelly). Perhaps he could have been a voice of reason and stopped her.
At the beginning of the week, Nicholas Hyde found a voicemail on his cellphone. Margot's quick-spoken voice sounded hushed and hurried, like she was trying to avoid being overheard by making this brief.
"Hey, Nick, it's Margot. I'm, uh... This is awkward, but you said you were a counselor? Well, the Doc.. That is to say, I was wondering if maybe we could talk? I have insurance through the university, I don't want to be presumptive of your time or anything." A pause just long enough to be awkward, maybe long enough for Margot to smack herself in the forehead before she finished up. "Please let me know. Thanks."
Nick got back to her, agreed to meet her and suggested Washington Park as a nice open space. Thursday'd work out best.
They met at a landmark that was easy to find, a bright patch of flowers well manicured and cared for in beautiful, colorful patterns with walkways between them. Margot was lurking near a patch of lavender, apparently counting bees and robins. The temperature was chillier today than it had been recently, so she was dressed in a brown jacket and gray beanie cap. Jeans and brown sneakers, she seemed almost like she was purposefully dressed in the blandest colors possible. Urban camoflauge, an reremarkable blending in that had nothing to do with supernatural flair.
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas is versed in the Art of Time magick, and so perhaps a part of him one way or another always knew this day would come. An Awakened member of the community has called him: You said you were a counselor?
Truth be told, Nick is surprised it has taken this long. But they're a willful lot, magi. It isn't a surprise that the call has come from an apprentice.
He had agreed to meet Margot, assuring her all the while that she was not a burden and was not being presumptive of his time. Today will find him meeting her in the park where she lingers by a patch of flowers, their soft violet hues a contrast to the budding growth of young Spring. Soon it will snow, and it will kill off some of the flowers that have just begun to break through the soil. So it goes.
Nick is wearing a puffy green jacket today (the color is coincidental; he has been avoiding the drunken throngs of people throughout downtown) and a pair of brown corduroys. His hair is beginning to grow wild, dark crown of curls as it is, and he has not as yet made any recent attempt to tame it with shears. He has his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he sights her and wanders up. His feet make no sound, would not even if he were not treading through soft grass, and so he is careful that his voice foretells his coming before he is anywhere near her. "Hello, Margot."
Margot Travers
Soft footsteps and a greeting before proximity spoke of Nick's practice with cases like Margot's. She'd straightened up a little (as opposed to startling, like she'd done last time), and turned her head to look for and toward him. It helped that she was expecting him this time, too. When her eyes found his face she smiled. The expression was genuine, she liked Nick, his presence was a welcome one.
"Hey, Nick. Thanks for meeting me."
Her hands stayed in her pockets, but she turned her shoulders so she was more faced toward the other Mage. Eyes cast over the hue of his jacket, then she grinned a lopsided grin and pulled her jacket zipper down, tugged a lapel out. Her shirt underneath was shamrock green.
"Going out tonight, have to make sure nobody has an excuse to come pinching. How are you?"
Nicholas Hyde
"Glad that I'm not covering for the emergency department this weekend." There is a touch of wry in his tone here, though he doesn't necessarily expect her to laugh: this is the sort of gallows hospital humor that sometimes follows people outside of work, when they do the sort of work he does.
He, too, has smiled upon greeting. Nick is the sort of man who finds it easy to reflect the emotions of those around him, who perhaps even takes them on to some extent. It can't be entirely avoided. Regardless: he does seem happy to see Margot as well, and there's this little tilt to his brows that indicates some concern even before they've begun to speak. Her voice message, after all, was a little worrying.
"Do you want to go sit somewhere? Might as well enjoy the ground while it's dry." A rare enough thing during this time of the year.
Margot Travers
"Sure, or we can walk-and-talk like this is a political drama." She wasn't quite perceptive enough yet to readily recognize the small tilt of concern to his brown, and so held her grin up just a little while longer before turning and beginning to walk. Regardless, they'd need to go elsewhere, so she began walking, figuring he would be doing so as well.
With the initial bit of friendly greeting out of the way, and with a few moments to pass for Margot's hoisted grin to slip away as well, the girl's expression fell solemn instead. She was thinking of how to approach what they were there to talk about, and thinking over the content itself was distressing enough without really knowing how to present it.
So she started with a story.
"When we were having this talk, Doc and Ned and I, Doc told me that I should just learn how to 'fix it'. That I'm a witch and it'll be easy. I think that he might have forgotten quite what being on my level is like, having been able to change things as much as he does for as long as he has. I think that would take... ah... quite some time."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot indicates that she would prefer to walk, and so Nick easily falls into step beside her, and without question. There is a certain part of his demeanor that seems tailored to put her at ease, which she might notice if she were perceptive enough yet. He walks along with his hands still in his pockets, his gaze on the trail ahead.
He doesn't prompt her, yet, as she seems to mull over just what it is she wants to talk to him about. There is this look he gives her out of the corner of his eye occasionally where he notes that her smile has faded, that there are little tells that indicate some distress - what can he see? And if she had gone quiet much longer he might indeed have laid out some sort of launching pad for her.
Instead he listens. His left hand wiggles occasionally inside its pocket as he spins his wedding ring around his finger with the ball of his thumb, though this ceases once she has finished.
"What does he think you should be able to fix?"
Margot Travers
As they walked, they passed a bench. Nick let her lead, and Margot chose to keep on walking. She went at a comfortable pace, slow to him perhaps on account of her stature and shorter legs. Took her time and kept her eyes on the path ahead.
She also took her time answering Nick's question. Not so much that he may feel like he'd have to prompt her or switch gears, though.
"Last week Doc called Ned and I over because he was hearing this knocking sound-- it was following him around the house. I can sense Spirits, and he cannot, so he wanted me to see if I could feel what was happening. I sensed another Mage. Turns out he'd pissed off a Dreamspeaker and she came through the Gauntlet to get the jump on him in his lab
When I heard her screaming at him and him yelling back, it panicked me. Badly. Ned had to.. get me back upstairs. Help me breathe and calm down and had to leave me there to go help Doc."
Her chin tucked into her jacket when a breeze picked up, and she chuckled a low little chuckle. "Turns out Ned was not well equipped to de-escalate the situation. This Shaman had the upper hand and Ned was antagonizing her. Turns out he's almost as bad with people as Doc is. Doc got hurt. Things could'a gone badly. I.. I pulled it together and got the situation calmed down and everything worked out and we're all okay but...
"But I can't jam up like that. Not with everything that we have to be on the look out for, not with everything that we meddle with."
Nicholas Hyde
There are a lot of questions to ask here. Nick has so many questions. He swallows all of them for the time being, piles them up inside him and sorts through them to find out which will be the most helpful here. After all: Margot has come to him with a problem.
He is not the sort of man who will overlook that to pry information from her, to use her vulnerability to gather power. He could be, but he's not.
There is a silence that passes between them after Margot finishes, and in that silence Nick's eyes have wandered on ahead, have roved from the bench to a little spray of daisies that they pass. His hand leaves his pockets long enough to catch the petals of one of them, and he runs his finger over the little plant before releasing it and letting it spring back into place unharmed. Then his hand returns to his pocket.
"That sounds like a lot of responsibility that you're taking on for what happened. It also sounds like, as an apprentice, with a lot of this very new to you, you had a very normal reaction. Andrés told you that you freezing up is something that needs to be fixed?"
Margot Travers
"No, it's not just freezing up as in not knowing what to do. It was..."
Margot watched Nick touch the flowers that they passed without causing them injury, frowned and kept eyes on the daisies while they sprang and bounced back into place. Looked forward again and tried again to better describe.
"I got confused. It felt like when I Awakened, and I thought that I was with my mother and brother again. I hid under a blanket and did breathing exercises before I could even bring myself to get back to the staircase. He said that he's seen it before, that it gets worse. Post traumatic stress disorder, I've done some reading, I think that's what he's talking about."
She looked at her sneakers and watched them consume the dirt path beneath them, mouth pursed closed and tight. Because she knew that next came the part where she explained what happened to her family.
Nicholas Hyde
There is, perhaps, a part of Nicholas that had known this about her, or suspected, long before she told him. He is not a mind reader, but he excels at picking up on contextual clues and piecing them together; he's a clever man. This has been observed about him before. So in this sidelong look he gives Margot, there is no surprise.
She's done some reading, and this is no surprise either. In spite of the topic, there is this little half smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth as they walk together. It is perhaps a little fond, this thoughtful thing. It is gone by the time she finishes speaking, though, by the time the muscles around her mouth tighten.
"So it brought a lot of things back for you, it sounds like. What sorts of things are you understanding about yourself from what you're reading? I'd like to make sure we're on the same page."
Margot Travers
The bookish quality that little Margot Travers had about her seemed to be endearing her to any number of potential mentor figures. When Doc first sat her and Ned down for a serious explanation of what they were in for she'd produced a pencil and notebook, and the Doc had to put forth a concentrated effort to avoid looking too pleased with her. The fact that she'd gone to the trouble of researching the subject herself, as opposed to tip-toeing around and waiting for somebody else to tell her what it was and what exactly to do with it, caused Nick to smile despite the weight of the subject at hand.
What did she understand from that reading? For the first time since they started walking-and-talking she looked directly at him, apparently confused by the question and seeking clarification.
After a moment she tried, though, sounding cautious like she wasn't certain if she was answering right. "That... I'm at risk around stuff that reminds me of what happened. And hearing the Doc fighting with that Shaman lady, the shouting and all must've brought me back. And it can keep compounding and complicating if I keep denying it and avoiding it."
She moved a hand from her pocket to tuck loose hair out of her face and back under her wool cap again. "I also think that I need to finish some unfinished business. Maybe closing the final chapter on that story will help."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot appears to be seeking clarification, and to what she says he only nods. He keeps even with her as they walk, even though his legs are longer and he likely has to slow his pace to accommodate her. "It sounds like you have a good understanding of what's going on then. Do you want to talk about what happened, before?"
Another sidelong glance to her. "You don't have to, if you don't want to."
Margot Travers
[Well, Margot, how willing are you to talk?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Margot Travers
A sidelong look was met with a look in kind-- Nick'd find wide hazel eyes staring right back at him. Perhaps evaluating his visage and determing if it was trustworthy enough to lay this on the line with.
Well, she'd come this far. And this was what she was here for. And if you never stepped off the ledge you'd never learn to swim again.
So Margot took a breath, looked forward, curled her hands into fists in her pockets, and started.
"I grew up in Portland, Maine, with my mom and my brother. And my brother sucks, like, a lot. He's been into meth and heroin and shit since he was like 14 or 15 years old. And this one night last summer..." There. It was starting already. She felt a swelling in her throat and a skip in her heart and breath. She paused, took a breath, and pressed on. "Luke hadn't been home for two and a half months and then came back in a huff. Tearing up his room, wanting to know where mom was, accusing her of taking something." She snorted with angry disdain. "He thought she found some stash of drugs he was holding and when she came home from work he got into a fight with her about it. He was high as fuck on something and it was intense so I went outside to call the cops and... and he.. and she..."
She stopped walking now and was staring forward-down. Tears stung her eyes and she took a breath again but pushed on, even if it did all come out as a rush, because this was difficult and she felt like something were gripping her heart and squeezing it tight and it made her want to leap and kick and bound away like a terrified red rabbit but she could do no such thing. Disciples of Warrior Goddesses didn't run away from scary shit in their past. They faced it.
"I heard a scream and when I came back in Luke was choking her and he smashed her head on the counter and she died I saw the life leave her and everything came down and in and exploded and now Luke only has one arm and I brought mom's body back to life but it's just her body and it's in some fucking institute upstate and I just fucking ran away from them."
Nicholas Hyde
People bare their souls to Nick on a regular basis. He knows things about other people that their mothers don't know, that their spouses don't know, that they've never spoken of to another human being. This is the first time Margot has told anyone this, or at least he suspects this intuitively in how the words tumble out of her.
He has turned his head in full toward her, and he is still walking but only to keep pace with her. He would've stopped otherwise, and he slows his own pace gradually because he would prefer to be facing her right now. The first thing he says is, "Is it okay if I touch you?" And when she gives assent, he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, curving it over the blade, this solid firm bracing pressure. In front of her, so she can see it and anticipate it.
He will let a silence pass again as he gathers his thoughts, because this never gets easier, being with other people in the thousand small ways that they die. He squeezes her shoulder once.
"What happened to you and your mother is terrible." Her brother, too, but: everything in its time. His tone communicates what his words cannot possibly, the weight of all of it. "Margot, you know that none of that was your fault, right? Not any of that, and not staying upstairs while Andrés was fighting with that shaman."
Margot Travers
The hand on her shoulder was accepted, and though the very nature of human touch while soul-bearing made her want to weep Margot swallowed her tears, steeled her resolved, and took another breath.
"I know that." Because she did. She knew it and she meant it. She looked up at Nicholas and, miraculously, those owl-like eyes hadn't spilled tears just yet (though it wasn't a far cry from happening).
"But there's an apprentice that was kidnapped and tormented by the Technocracy in this city. Me and my friend, we're apprentices too. And there's Mauraders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts and any other number of things that go bump, things that are bound to happen doing what we do. What happens if I'm in a situation where if I shut down and start seeing my mom--" That stung. She pumped the brakes, tried again.
"I don't want to make myself anymore vulnerable than I already am by the nature of being me right now."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's hazel eyes meet hers, and there are a lot of people who would have trouble maintaining eye contact like he does while someone else is obviously so close to crying. He does not look away, though he does pull in a long breath that swells his chest; and then release.
"It's brave of you to tell me this, and I know you're going to keep being brave. If you shut down and start seeing your mom, we'll figure it out." And if he too is afraid of Marauders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts, well, she wouldn't know. She can't know yet that those things only become more terrifying as the stakes get higher. Nicholas is being The Adult today.
There is another little squeeze of her shoulder, and though his eyes had wandered for a moment, here they find hers again. "Margot," and here there is a slight smile, something wistful, "I know you're a smart woman, so tell me honestly - when you look at Andrés, do you think he 'fixed it'? Do you think this is something that you can magick away?"
Margot Travers
The question that Nick posed had Margot looking thoughtfully at him. It solemned her up some, and maybe that was intentional. Speaking of the current, the here and now. The people that were not her Mother and Brother, but rather her Mentor and Fellow.
When she replied, her answer seemed well thought out, deliberately phrased. "I don't believe that the advice the Doc gave me is any advice that he has taken for himself. But then, I don't know what the Doc would be fixing for himself like I would be trying to fix me." Then her words loosened some, because she was speaking less about the Doc (revealing fewer details about him, for they were his details and not hers).
"That said, I think Magick utilized by the right person could 'magick it away', but I don't think that the Doc or I are the right people." She paused, and cast a glance back up to Nick. Considered him for a moment, then cleared her throat and rolled her shoulder under his hand to request that it be moved. Turned to start walking again. "I don't think that's exactly your style either. Seems contrary to what you do for a living."
Nicholas Hyde
Margot suggests that this sort of use of the Art of Mind is contrary to what he does for a living, and Nick draws in a breath, and as he considers his eyes fall somewhere down and to the right. Toward the flowers, perhaps, though - no, if she follows his gaze she'll find it directed nowhere specific. "I don't believe in fixing people because I don't believe people are broken. This is...grief is normal, and natural. It's our refusal to accept pain as a part of life and death that makes us suffer."
A beat. He has bitten the inside of his cheek, thoughtful. His hand had fallen away after her shoulder rolled beneath it, and now he is walking with her again. "I understand what you're saying to me. And I think figuring out how to not shut down in bad situations is a good idea. If you wanted to learn the Art of Mind yourself, learning to shape yourself that way would be a good way to start. Magi that I know who are advanced in that Art say they began by figuring out what they could change."
His hands have been tucked back into his pockets. His footfalls next to her are still without sound. "I think it would also be helpful for you to keep talking with someone, and because I don't have the appropriate distance from the situation it would be unethical for it to be me. I know Sleepwalkers who do what I do and would understand the aspects related to magick, though."
Margot Travers
"I don't know..." There was a clear tone of uncertainty when it came to the Mind sphere. For reasons that she herself didn't quite get (something about it not really meshing with her paradigm, no doubt) she didn't really feel like she would be reaching into the minds of people around her or steeling her own, much like how she didn't see herself messing around in the river of Time.
But for talking with people, she nodded in agreement. That one seemed like much more of a no brainer.
"..wait, there are Sleepers who know about Magick?"
And the conversation may take a turn from there. Margot would be very curious to know about consors and Sleepwalkers who aided Mages and things of that nature. When their visit and walk around the park came to a close she would thank him sincerely and a couple of times over while they were saying goodbye. Probably got a name and phone number out of him for somebody else to begin visiting too.
Tragically, when Margot Travers and Nicholas Hyde parted ways, the young Apprentice had given no warning of her plans for misadventure for the evening (tracing shooting victims and interfering in drug wars of the city's underbelly). Perhaps he could have been a voice of reason and stopped her.
March 16th, 2016 - Drug Wars, Conclusion
Margot
Let the record show that even when she was fleeing gunshots that probably had something to do with a book full of sensitive information that was riding along in her passenger seat, Margot Travers did not drive like a reckless maniac. She kept checking the rear view mirror, but besides that did little more wrong than occasionally drive five miles over the speed limit. She didn't talk, didn't bother to turn on the radio, and this kept on until she was a good twenty blocks south and another twenty blocks east from where the incident had occurred. A residential neighborhood with quaint brick bungalows and well cared for yards and tall trees that were beginning to bud with spring. There was a small corner park with a stretch of grass and plot of sand with play equipment, where a woman and her two young children were playing on the swing.
The park was so small that it offered no parking lot, so Margot pulled her car up against the curb, under a tall cottonwood tree, and parked it. Killed the engine and took the keys from the ignition and undid her belt, but didn't leave her seat. Dropped the keys in a cup holder instead and sat back, hands in her lap, staring out the windshield.
Then, quietly, to William:
"I think your friend wasn't supposed to be giving Vanessa this information..."
William
He's quiet for the car ride. He's quiet, sure, but he's also buckled in and is keeping his eyes on the road and behind them and seems to be the sort of wound tight that comes from trying to figure out whether or not things are going to get very, very bad very quickly. as though the fact that Santa Fe errupted into gunshots was not the sound of something going bad.
After awhile he stopped trying to keep track of the loopy trail that Margot was driving them on. He, inevitably, does take the book out. Doesn't look sure if he wants to open it just yet but he does anyway- starts folding over the corners of pages that would have pictures shoved into them so he could actually look at the pages themselves.
Unbuckles. Sits still.
"Dude, if someone killed him just now they were being nice," William replies.
Margot
William's reply earned him a raised eyebrow and a look of confusion. She couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not, and if he was she clearly didn't think that this was an appropriate situation in which to do so.
Her eyes fell away from his after a moment and to the book in his lap. She frowned and muttered into the shared space of the car.
"...do we go to the cops?"
William
He looked serious. He looked like he was being completely serious, like death would have been a courtesy in comparison to what could be happening. William doesn't explain, looks back at the book when she asks if they should go to the cops. Runs a hand through his hair-
"We should," he started, "but not before we make copies of this. Jake's a young guy with a drug habit and priors, do you think that people are really going to care too much if some gang wiped him off the face of the planet?" Said as though this was slightly more personal than it seemed.
"I think we should turn this over to the cops, yeah, but I also think that this information gets in the hands of that reporter. There had to be a reason he was willing to give it to a journalist and not the cops- cops should be able to offer some kind of actual protection."
Margot
At first Margot was pretty sure that he was going to agree with them handing things over to the cops and leaving it there, but then he went on to suggest that they make copies first. This has Margot widening her eyes at him and dragging her fingers through her hair but stopping partway so she looked a little manic, sitting there with her elbows out and hands in her hair.
"Why on--," but he was explaining. Jake was young, not very far up the food chain in the world, so his death wouldn't be investigated very well. He wanted to make sure that some information made it to the cops, but that some of it made it to the reporter as well. A deep breath was taken, then blown out slowly from between her lips. The petite witch settled back in her seat, hands still upon her head, and spoke in a stunned sounding voice.
"This is Denver, not Gotham. It's not like the cops are corrupt and going to be in on this drug trafficking ring or anything. So I don't see why a reporter getting the details would be any more important than the cops getting them." A pause, then:
"I'm sorry about your Jake friend. ...What do you think they'd do to him that's worse than gun him down in the street for running off with a bunch of details, though?"
William
[Int+streetwise: because I totally know underworld culture, NBD]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
William
"Aside from standard questionable methods of extracting information and damage control? If he walked off with a lot of vital information, Saints' Resistance hasto send a message because you don't want people getting the idea that they can mess with you. Notes said that Sureños and La eMe don't fuck with him- they're kind of a big fucking deal
"The whole torture and murder thing is pretty standard. Trevor Jackson case, from... two years ago? Two and a half? Failed to ante up a percentage of his sales profits to the Sureños and PD is still looking for the rest of the body," a pause, "it's not that they don't want to help people, or that the police are incapable, it's that there is so much of a backlog of casework that things go cold unless you have the ability to actually put pressure on people.
"The threat of media coverage makes people move. We don't have to give this stuff to Vanessa Truong, if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that."
Margot
Judging by how carefully Margot listened, she had never heard any of this information before. Her head was turned so one ear was aimed toward him more than the other, and her hands moved from her head at last, though hair was tucked behind that one aimed ear on the way down again. Her brows stitched together in the middle with concentration while she tried to remember the gang names and their significance. She expected they'd be coming up again.
When it came back to her, whether she wanted to hand information to the reporter, she cast her gaze William's way once more. This time it was because she was surprised by his last statement-- if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that.
A little suspicious too, somewhere under the surface, because nobody ever said that to Apprentices except other Apprentices and this guy had a Tradition and everything all worked out. They weren't exactly standing on the same level.
"...I don't know, man, we're wizards. What can you do? Can you check... the strands of fate, or whatever, to see if that's a bad idea?" She realized she had no idea what this guy's paradigm was or how he did his Craft. This may be a lesson learned, either good or bad.
William
"Could check to see what the most probable future is," he said, then has to think about it a little more, "it gets messy, because the future is malleable, the best we can get is a very likely future given the current variables at this point in time."
"If you wanna drive me back to Santa Fe at some point, I could check and see what happened at the place where all the gunshots happened. If he's dead we've got more of a window of opportunity than if some shit went down and he's not dead. I'd have to actually be there, though."
That is, he couldn't Work from a distance, couldn't do much more beyond what is immediately within arm's reach and Santa Fe was quite a ways off.
"Could check and see what the local life on the other side of the gauntlet saw. Light posts and concrete and rats make fucking fantastic witnesses," again, serious.
Margot
"Well, we're not going back there now," Margot said definitely. The place would be swarming with cops and she had no desire to get sucked in as an on-the-scene witness, even if they had done nothing wrong and were planning to go to the police at some point anyway. She could imagine that the people responsible for the shooting could still have eyes hanging about, and those eyes didn't need to know her face or license plate number after she delivered that unique little book stuffed with info into the gloves of an officer on the scene. She had enough people to be paranoid without having to add drug dealers to the list.
....oh, no, it's probably too late for that already, regardless. Well shit.
She dipped her fingers into the cup holder to retrieve her keys and put them in the ignition again, but only to trigger the battery so she could roll her window down. She was worried about sticking around Santa Fe, but not so paranoid that she believed her voice would be carried like a whisper on the wind to some spy here at a residential park. An elbow hitched out the open window and she started combing her free set of fingers through her hair with a heavy sigh.
"...If Jake was such a low level fellow, I wonder how he managed to get a hold of so much information... especially all these pictures." Eyes had wandered to the book again, expression a thoughtful scowl.
"Tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day, I'm sure there's gonna be a ton of bar crawls happening here. That might be the best chance to blend into a crowd and go unnoticed if either of us has to go back there sooner or later. I'm just... entry level, I can only sense things, I can't..." He knew, he'd understand. Apprentices. "...but if you want to look back and talk to spirits, and if you need somebody to keep watch when you do..." She looked at him solemnly. She really couldn't possibly be twenty-one years old yet, no matter what her driver's license said, but already she had resigned herselfy to a duty to the weird and dangerous. She was a Witch, those two things were almost specifically her elements. It was clear, in her expression, that she didn't want to be wrapped up in this, would have much rather her table been skipped and that she go home tonight to a relaxing bath. That she planned on reading and studying and maybe even enjoying herself a little tomorrow, not finding out how people died in relation to gang wars.
...but she was already here holding her hand of cards and so was he. She'd be there playing support tomorrow too.
William
They can't go back, they were not going back. Definitive and he didn't argue with her; he could tell a good idea when he heard one. She rolls up the windows, and he's looking at the pages of the book again. Wonders what they're going to do with it. Wonders what's going to happen and who is taking it home and-
"Cool... we head out there tomorrow, see what's going on, and... uh... fuck if I know? Drink? Have green beer? Spend the rest of the day in the police station because we have to give information up?"
"Sounds like a good plan. Meet at my place and we can carpool?"
Margot
"Sounds like a plan," said Margot, even though she hated the very words as they came out of her mouth. They sounded like something somebody she had to answer to was going to overhear and cuff her in the back of the head for someday, when they used Time and Correspondance to look back on the decision that knocked the first domino down in a chain of Very Poor Choices.
All the same, she turned the engine and rolled them away from the park. Maybe she could squeeze in that relaxing bath tonight after all. Relaxation was something she was really going to need if she was going to spend St. Patrick's Day solving crime mysteries.
Let the record show that even when she was fleeing gunshots that probably had something to do with a book full of sensitive information that was riding along in her passenger seat, Margot Travers did not drive like a reckless maniac. She kept checking the rear view mirror, but besides that did little more wrong than occasionally drive five miles over the speed limit. She didn't talk, didn't bother to turn on the radio, and this kept on until she was a good twenty blocks south and another twenty blocks east from where the incident had occurred. A residential neighborhood with quaint brick bungalows and well cared for yards and tall trees that were beginning to bud with spring. There was a small corner park with a stretch of grass and plot of sand with play equipment, where a woman and her two young children were playing on the swing.
The park was so small that it offered no parking lot, so Margot pulled her car up against the curb, under a tall cottonwood tree, and parked it. Killed the engine and took the keys from the ignition and undid her belt, but didn't leave her seat. Dropped the keys in a cup holder instead and sat back, hands in her lap, staring out the windshield.
Then, quietly, to William:
"I think your friend wasn't supposed to be giving Vanessa this information..."
William
He's quiet for the car ride. He's quiet, sure, but he's also buckled in and is keeping his eyes on the road and behind them and seems to be the sort of wound tight that comes from trying to figure out whether or not things are going to get very, very bad very quickly. as though the fact that Santa Fe errupted into gunshots was not the sound of something going bad.
After awhile he stopped trying to keep track of the loopy trail that Margot was driving them on. He, inevitably, does take the book out. Doesn't look sure if he wants to open it just yet but he does anyway- starts folding over the corners of pages that would have pictures shoved into them so he could actually look at the pages themselves.
Unbuckles. Sits still.
"Dude, if someone killed him just now they were being nice," William replies.
Margot
William's reply earned him a raised eyebrow and a look of confusion. She couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not, and if he was she clearly didn't think that this was an appropriate situation in which to do so.
Her eyes fell away from his after a moment and to the book in his lap. She frowned and muttered into the shared space of the car.
"...do we go to the cops?"
William
He looked serious. He looked like he was being completely serious, like death would have been a courtesy in comparison to what could be happening. William doesn't explain, looks back at the book when she asks if they should go to the cops. Runs a hand through his hair-
"We should," he started, "but not before we make copies of this. Jake's a young guy with a drug habit and priors, do you think that people are really going to care too much if some gang wiped him off the face of the planet?" Said as though this was slightly more personal than it seemed.
"I think we should turn this over to the cops, yeah, but I also think that this information gets in the hands of that reporter. There had to be a reason he was willing to give it to a journalist and not the cops- cops should be able to offer some kind of actual protection."
Margot
At first Margot was pretty sure that he was going to agree with them handing things over to the cops and leaving it there, but then he went on to suggest that they make copies first. This has Margot widening her eyes at him and dragging her fingers through her hair but stopping partway so she looked a little manic, sitting there with her elbows out and hands in her hair.
"Why on--," but he was explaining. Jake was young, not very far up the food chain in the world, so his death wouldn't be investigated very well. He wanted to make sure that some information made it to the cops, but that some of it made it to the reporter as well. A deep breath was taken, then blown out slowly from between her lips. The petite witch settled back in her seat, hands still upon her head, and spoke in a stunned sounding voice.
"This is Denver, not Gotham. It's not like the cops are corrupt and going to be in on this drug trafficking ring or anything. So I don't see why a reporter getting the details would be any more important than the cops getting them." A pause, then:
"I'm sorry about your Jake friend. ...What do you think they'd do to him that's worse than gun him down in the street for running off with a bunch of details, though?"
William
[Int+streetwise: because I totally know underworld culture, NBD]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
William
"Aside from standard questionable methods of extracting information and damage control? If he walked off with a lot of vital information, Saints' Resistance hasto send a message because you don't want people getting the idea that they can mess with you. Notes said that Sureños and La eMe don't fuck with him- they're kind of a big fucking deal
"The whole torture and murder thing is pretty standard. Trevor Jackson case, from... two years ago? Two and a half? Failed to ante up a percentage of his sales profits to the Sureños and PD is still looking for the rest of the body," a pause, "it's not that they don't want to help people, or that the police are incapable, it's that there is so much of a backlog of casework that things go cold unless you have the ability to actually put pressure on people.
"The threat of media coverage makes people move. We don't have to give this stuff to Vanessa Truong, if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that."
Margot
Judging by how carefully Margot listened, she had never heard any of this information before. Her head was turned so one ear was aimed toward him more than the other, and her hands moved from her head at last, though hair was tucked behind that one aimed ear on the way down again. Her brows stitched together in the middle with concentration while she tried to remember the gang names and their significance. She expected they'd be coming up again.
When it came back to her, whether she wanted to hand information to the reporter, she cast her gaze William's way once more. This time it was because she was surprised by his last statement-- if you think it's a bad call I trust you on that.
A little suspicious too, somewhere under the surface, because nobody ever said that to Apprentices except other Apprentices and this guy had a Tradition and everything all worked out. They weren't exactly standing on the same level.
"...I don't know, man, we're wizards. What can you do? Can you check... the strands of fate, or whatever, to see if that's a bad idea?" She realized she had no idea what this guy's paradigm was or how he did his Craft. This may be a lesson learned, either good or bad.
William
"Could check to see what the most probable future is," he said, then has to think about it a little more, "it gets messy, because the future is malleable, the best we can get is a very likely future given the current variables at this point in time."
"If you wanna drive me back to Santa Fe at some point, I could check and see what happened at the place where all the gunshots happened. If he's dead we've got more of a window of opportunity than if some shit went down and he's not dead. I'd have to actually be there, though."
That is, he couldn't Work from a distance, couldn't do much more beyond what is immediately within arm's reach and Santa Fe was quite a ways off.
"Could check and see what the local life on the other side of the gauntlet saw. Light posts and concrete and rats make fucking fantastic witnesses," again, serious.
Margot
"Well, we're not going back there now," Margot said definitely. The place would be swarming with cops and she had no desire to get sucked in as an on-the-scene witness, even if they had done nothing wrong and were planning to go to the police at some point anyway. She could imagine that the people responsible for the shooting could still have eyes hanging about, and those eyes didn't need to know her face or license plate number after she delivered that unique little book stuffed with info into the gloves of an officer on the scene. She had enough people to be paranoid without having to add drug dealers to the list.
....oh, no, it's probably too late for that already, regardless. Well shit.
She dipped her fingers into the cup holder to retrieve her keys and put them in the ignition again, but only to trigger the battery so she could roll her window down. She was worried about sticking around Santa Fe, but not so paranoid that she believed her voice would be carried like a whisper on the wind to some spy here at a residential park. An elbow hitched out the open window and she started combing her free set of fingers through her hair with a heavy sigh.
"...If Jake was such a low level fellow, I wonder how he managed to get a hold of so much information... especially all these pictures." Eyes had wandered to the book again, expression a thoughtful scowl.
"Tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day, I'm sure there's gonna be a ton of bar crawls happening here. That might be the best chance to blend into a crowd and go unnoticed if either of us has to go back there sooner or later. I'm just... entry level, I can only sense things, I can't..." He knew, he'd understand. Apprentices. "...but if you want to look back and talk to spirits, and if you need somebody to keep watch when you do..." She looked at him solemnly. She really couldn't possibly be twenty-one years old yet, no matter what her driver's license said, but already she had resigned herselfy to a duty to the weird and dangerous. She was a Witch, those two things were almost specifically her elements. It was clear, in her expression, that she didn't want to be wrapped up in this, would have much rather her table been skipped and that she go home tonight to a relaxing bath. That she planned on reading and studying and maybe even enjoying herself a little tomorrow, not finding out how people died in relation to gang wars.
...but she was already here holding her hand of cards and so was he. She'd be there playing support tomorrow too.
William
They can't go back, they were not going back. Definitive and he didn't argue with her; he could tell a good idea when he heard one. She rolls up the windows, and he's looking at the pages of the book again. Wonders what they're going to do with it. Wonders what's going to happen and who is taking it home and-
"Cool... we head out there tomorrow, see what's going on, and... uh... fuck if I know? Drink? Have green beer? Spend the rest of the day in the police station because we have to give information up?"
"Sounds like a good plan. Meet at my place and we can carpool?"
Margot
"Sounds like a plan," said Margot, even though she hated the very words as they came out of her mouth. They sounded like something somebody she had to answer to was going to overhear and cuff her in the back of the head for someday, when they used Time and Correspondance to look back on the decision that knocked the first domino down in a chain of Very Poor Choices.
All the same, she turned the engine and rolled them away from the park. Maybe she could squeeze in that relaxing bath tonight after all. Relaxation was something she was really going to need if she was going to spend St. Patrick's Day solving crime mysteries.
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