Callum

Hydra
One of the worst things about sickness is the way it makes the victim feel powerless.  It robs them of any sense of control over that which is most basic and fundamental - their own body.  Maybe Grace will have been feeling a little bit of that powerlessness during the past week, feeling the virus take hold and spread through her body.  Growing weaker and more helpless every day.  And with it, feeling the hope for improvement slipping slowly and steadily away.

She was not getting better.  Maybe she never would.  Maybe this is how she was going to die, wasted and alone in a pool of her own blood.

Today she was faring no better than yesterday, but at least there were no new symptoms to contend with.  Given the way things had been progressing, who knew what the hell she had to look forward to tomorrow.  No wonder she'd grown desperate enough to burn her own flesh with a candle.  One could go mad like this... sitting and waiting for a cure that might never come.

At least Whitney had been there with her.  It was better not to be alone all the time, even if the Euthanatos couldn't do much to ease her suffering.  But Whitney was gone now, leaving Grace alone in her apartment with nothing but morbid thoughts to keep her company.

The blood in her cough had been bad today.  At times she would breath in and feel the liquid bubbling in her chest and realize that this was her own body breaking down.

Dying.

Maybe she was resting, or maybe she was doing what she could to keep herself distracted.  Whatever she was doing, at some point late on Sunday evening, she'd be interrupted by the sound of the door buzzer.

Grace Evans
Grace expects it to be Whitney, even though the girl's been gone only a little while. Maybe she forgot something? In any case, sweat-stained sheets and a laptop are tossed aside with the unremarkable strength of a sick person, and she stumbled out of bed.

She doesn't exactly run to the door. It's hard to breathe. She takes it slow, makes it to the console on the wall, and hits the intercom. "Whitney?" she asks, in wretched scraping voice.

She clears her throat, covering her mouth with a bit of tissue. She does that every time now, just in case. The bloody tissue pile has increased so much that Whitney had to go out for more, and also for some Gatorade and such. So very important to keep up the fluids. At least it might buy her some time.

Hydra
The person - the man - on the other end didn't introduce himself.  He didn't offer a name or a reason for his visit.  What he said was this:

"It's called the Hydra virus, and if you don't do something to slow it down, you'll be dead by the end of the week.  I can help keep you alive.  Will you let me in?"

Such a message was no doubt hopeful and suspicious all at once.  And here Grace was, relatively powerless to protect herself.  But then, if whoever had given her the virus had wanted to kill her quickly, no doubt they would have taken a different tactic from the get-go.

Grace Evans
Dead by the end of the week. Okay, calm down. Breathing heavy isn't going to help...

In the excitement, she had another coughing fit, and snapped that tissue up to her mouth. When she recovered, she pushed the button again. "Who are you?"

He said dead by the end of the week, not dead right now. She can stand the time to ask some questions.

Hydra
The man had an unusual voice, soft and raspy and ethereal.  It was difficult to make out his exact words over the intercom.

"My name's Callum.  Callum Grey.  You don't know me or my colleagues, but we're tracking the people who gave this thing to you."  There was a long pause before he said, "We shouldn't be having this conversation on the intercom."

Grace Evans
Well, no shit. However, she hadn't set up a hidden camera in her apartment for nothing. Something like this had been... expected.

Option one, he was bad, and about to do something terrible to her. In that case, Whitney would be back soon, and there might just be video evidence of what transpired, so... at least the others would have warning.
Option two, he was what he said, and in that case, right on.

She buzzed him in. Silently. And then, it was back off to bed, because the air on her sheened skin felt like it was going to freeze her solid.

When Callum arrives, he'll find that she lives in the smallest apartment this complex offers. It's built for one, with a tiny kitchen off to the side of the one main room, and one bedroom. It also looks less than lived in. There's nothing on the walls, no paint, no paintings, no rugs on the floor. Furniture is mismatched, and looks to have been chosen for utility rather than looks.

She'd prefer to view it as lacking distractions. But it seems more like an apartment into which someone has not yet moved in.

Hydra
When Callum arrived at the door, he knocked once, briefly, then turned the latch himself.  As he stepped inside, he scanned the space slowly with his eyes, taking in the layout of the apartment as though he half-expected something horrible to jump out and maim him.

The man's appearance fit his voice.  He was tall and willowy, with exceptionally pale, freckled skin.  His shoulder-length red hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his clothes were plain and colorless: grey jeans and a white buttoned shirt.  He carried his jacket underneath one arm.

The guy looked young.  Probably early twenties, and closer to Grace's age than she might have expected.  When he saw her, he shut the door behind himself and walked over to the bed.

"Grace Evans, I assume?"

He pulled a small, unlabeled prescription bottle out of his jacket pocket and set it down beside her.  "These are immunosuppressants.  You should take one daily.  It'll slow down the cycle."

As though suddenly remembering his bedside manner, he added, a little awkwardly, "How um... how are you feeling?"

Grace Evans
She was back in bed by the time he arrived, and busy getting comfortable again. She just nods at his question of her name, not even asking how he found her, or her name. She supposes he has ways.

She takes the bottle, and puts it on the little table by her bedside, now a bit crowded with drink cup, tissues, and a plate of half-eaten food (banana and yogurt) that she has yet to work her way through. The nausea is... well...

"I'm drowning in my own blood, throwing up blood, my temperature is through the roof, and I can't keep food down. It's not going well. But then, you probably knew that."

She looks up at him with those tired (but tirelessly curious) eyes and asks, "How did you know that?"

Hydra
If Callum was any kind of doctor (med student, more likely,) he was probably one of those doctors who knew the human body inside-out but never really knew what to do with the actual human.  His reaction to Grace's declaration of her deteriorating state was little more than a nod, and he crouched down beside her bed, not to comfort her, but to look her over with a clinical and cautiously curious gaze.

Like he was more interested in the disease than her.  But he'd come to help (presumably,) so maybe a bit of social awkwardness was forgivable.

He didn't answer her question right away.  Perhaps he was weighing in his mind just how much information he wanted to give away.  "I knew the person who made the virus."

Someone actually made this thing.  Intentionally.  One had to wonder what sort of person ever could or would create something like this.

"The people who gave this thing to you.  They're... I guess the antiquated term would be witch-hunters.  They've got resources, but they're young and stupid and they don't understand what they're playing with.  This thing isn't just some virus that someone cooked up in a military lab.  It's a fucking masterwork."  After a moment he seemed to realize how horrific that probably sounded to Grace, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck, changing his tone to one slightly more sympathetic.  "You need to be in a hospital.  I've got a place... we set it up out in the mountains.  Nobody knows we're there.  You and your friends are in real danger.  Not just from the hunters.  If the technocrats find out you've been infected with this, you and everyone you've come into contact with will be neutralized.  They're not going to bother trying to cure you.  But I will."

Grace Evans
"I don't trust you. I figured the makers of this thing might try to come and make sure that their targets got what was coming... maybe after a few days, wait until we're all too weak to fight?

And now you say, you have a place in the mountains that I need..." her rapid-fire talk in rasped voice was caught in her throat, and proceeded to have another coughing fit. She grabbed the almost-empty box of tissues by the side of her bed almost like it was an instinct by now.

"That I need to go to. Can you understand why I might be a little uneasy about that?" She just kept right on going, like the coughing spell never happened.

The bloody tissue gets thrown to the waste bin, again with almost instinctual accuracy.

"Who are you, who are you with... just... how can I trust you? I want to. God I want this to be real, but you're going to have to do more than words."

[Perception + Awarepathy = Are you for real?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace Evans
[Ahh it should have been 7, but same result anyway]

Hydra
[Manip+Subterfuge]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Hydra
Grace was right, of course.  She really had no way of knowing if this man was trustworthy.  Maybe he was on her side, or maybe he was part of those who'd infected her.  Maybe he was something else entirely.

When she asked for proof, Callum pursed his lips and looked at the ground.  When he looked up again, he met her gaze with an unblinking intensity.  "If I do nothing, you'll die, so if that was what I wanted, then I've already won.  So maybe you come with me and die anyway.  Or maybe you come and live another few weeks and help us find a cure for the next people that get infected with this thing.  Or maybe you come and we save your life.  Far as I can tell, those are the options."

A moment later, he sighed, releasing some of his coiled energy.  "If it helps, I don't trust you either.  You might be weak, but you still have the advantage.  You're... what you are.  And I'm human."  He his arms out to the side as though in surrender.  "My friends and I.  We're not with anyone, but we used to be.  That's over now, and that's all I'm going to say."

Hydra
As far as Grace could tell, Callum wasn't lying.  He had his suspicious behaviors, certainly.  But the words that came out of his mouth felt like the truth.  If it seemed perhaps that he was too good to be true, well, maybe that just meant that he was a man with a complicated past.  Or maybe he was what she feared him to be, and he was just a very good storyteller.  Whatever the truth, ultimately she had no way of being certain, but it certainly felt as though he meant what he'd said.

Hydra
[Edit: "he held his arms out to the side"]

Grace Evans
"I am... what I am? I didn't really have a choice in the matter, okay? It just happened to me out of the blue in July, and I'm not so advantaged compared to you. I am human, Callum. I never stopped being human just because... because..."

The hacking cough returned again, and again she covered it with a tissue.

"Because I see the world a bit differently."

She made a little movement for her phone, picked it up off that crowded side-table. "There's others who are sick you know? And another friend of mine will be up here soon. If she needs to hide from the Technocracy too, from being in contact with me, then she should come with."

Whatever Callum makes of that movement, whether he thinks that Grace is about to fry him with a heat ray or just call somebody, she doesn't really care. The others need to know. And she wants guidance.

Hydra
Callum seemed fairly unresponsive to Grace's argument for her humanity, perhaps out of skepticism, though neither did he try to argue.  Whatever his thoughts on the matter, they would remain ambiguous.  But he seemed to understand that Grace needed time to process what he'd offered.

"Look, you don't have to come now.  I'll give you my number, and you can think it over.  Call your friends if you need to.  But decide quickly, because none of you have much time left."

He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and grabbed the nearest pen, scribbling down a phone number and the initials "CG."

"Have a good night, Grace.  I'll show myself out."  He handed her the slip of paper and managed a thin smile, not so much disingenuous as perhaps lacking in hope.  Then he walked to the door, nodded, and left.
Leaving Grace alone with her thoughts.

Grace Evans
"Wait.. Wait!" she managed, raising that raspy voice to where she could be heard while he turned to leave.
If he stopped, she'd pull up on her elbows, like this is something important. "Is any of your people a woman who wears a hooded... a hood?"

She's not going to say anything about the bloody field, or the blood hydra... the strange visions her friends have been having. But that woman, from Whitney's description, telling her she needed to hurry...

Hydra
Callum stopped on his way out, blinking as he looked at Grace.  As though he wasn't entirely sure if her question wasn't just some fevered outburst.  But he answered all the same.  "There are women working with us.  I'm sure at least one of them has a hooded jacket.  Why?"

Grace Evans
"Nothing.... a dream," she lied. "Sorry."

With that, she returned to her cell phone.

Hydra
Grace picked up her phone, and Callum gave her an odd look, but said nothing.  By the time she looked up again, he'd be gone.

Best Friends for Life. Or Death. Whatever.

Whitney
Must have taken Whitney a few days to think to check Ginger. Grace posted on the 15th and it is not until today, the 17th, that the apprentice's phone pings with a text message:

!! im coming over

Grace
Grace is not well, and this fact leaks over her spare apartment in little ways. The bed is messy, and damp with sweat.  A pile of bloody tissues lies in the trash can right by her bed, and a stain on her pillowcase reveals evidence of a nosebleed that must have started before she was aware enough to stop it with those tissues.

Grace herself is in bed with her laptop in her PJs in the middle of the day, wearing fuzzy socks to complete the ensemble, and it, too is a little damp, a little messy. She's shivering, with a blanket pulled around her, having a chill. But the work is too important to stop and sleep.

It's in this state that her phone pings, and she groans. It's going to take effort to get to the dang thing, and why did she leave it in the bag all the way over there? The laptop and blanket are shoved aside, and her shivering worsens in their absence. But now is not the time to ignore messages. Slowly, she walks, with aching body over to the phone to check it, and...

No, don't come over. Please. I don't know if this is contagious.

Whitney
Grace has seen Whitney's phone and knows it is an easily-replaced little pay-as-you-go. The technology has come a long way in the last decade. She can knock out a text message just as fast as someone with a high-tech smartphone can but Grace can still all but hear the pause as the Death Mage considers her options.

never going to find out if u dont sneeze on anyone

Grace
Grace shuffles her way back into bed where it's sufficiently warm to cancel out some of her shivering at least. It's now cold from where she's sweat in the sheets, leaving a Grace-shaped dark spot. Well... only one thing to do, and that's re-warm it.

It shouldn't take long. Despite the shivering, she's actually very very warm indeed.

But when she gets settled, and checks her phone, she just blinks. With cold fingers, she types back a response:

That's not funny. This could be fatal for all I know, I don't want anyone else exposed.

Whitney
The next two texts come rapid. Like the first is a rhetorical, or she already knows the answer and catches herself before Grace can waste the energy refuting her.

no friendly docs visited yet?

And then:

be me figuring what killed u if fatal. rather help now. dont be a jerk.

Grace
Grace can text with the best of them, especially on a smartphone keyboard. full words, no misspellings here. And Whitney gets a bunch of wordy texts back-to-back.

Sid said she'd talk with someone she knows, but I haven't heard anything yet.

And you know, *I* think a jerk would be begging you to come and help without caring what it does to you. But that's me.

Just... If you're going to be that adamant about it. Let's be careful okay? Can you go to the store and pick up a few things? Like, masks and gloves and hand sanitizer -- that kind of thing.

Whitney
too bad i left my biohazard suit @ home. be there in 30.

If she doesn't have the decency not to joke with someone who's suffering a blistering high fever and nosebleeds at least Whitney has the courtesy not to commit to code sensitive information in conversation with someone whose paranoia is not unfounded. That is the last Grace hears from her for half an hour.

Then the doorbell sounds.

Grace
Whitney hears a groan coming from the other side of the door, followed by, "Whitney... this is so highly inadvisable..."

It takes her a while full of shuffling steps to get to the door. Which doesn't open right away. "You know, this could be what they're counting on. That my friends come by, get infected--"

Grace is then interrupted by a cough. That too is worrisome. Coughing means expelling virii into to the air perhaps. Not cool.

Whitney
Coughing means all sorts of things. Not all viruses prefer to travel via respiration but they sure as hell take advantage of it. More than that it can mean the structures of her lungs are inflamed or the lungs themselves are filling with fluid. Whitney isn't a doctor.  Death Mages aren't exactly known for their propensity for saving lives.

Grace doesn't know a whole hell of a lot about Whitney's Tradition so they're both in luck.

She doesn't open the door right away and Whitney is standing with her hand over the peephole so she doesn't get the third degree before Grace can even open the door.

"Well then they're, like, stupid. I don't get sick. Let me in, it's cold out here."

Grace
What to do about this? Grace would not be able to stand herself if she got Whitney sick. But there is the Euthanatos being all 'don't be a jerk' and all.

Whitney hears a thump on the door as Grace leans her head against it abruptly. "Making it hard for me, Whitney."

A few seconds later, a defeated Grace unlocks the door, and starts shuffling back to bed. If Whitney wants to come in, she can do so on her own. The last thing Grace wants to do is open the door, and cough in her friend's face. Bleh.

The trek is tiring, and it's gotten her shivering again in the relatively cooler air. Her apartment's not cold, but Grace feels like this is the Arctic in her hands and feet -- the Sahara in her head and chest. Her body responds with sweat and shivering, the telltale signs of fever.

Once she's gotten a ways, if Whitney hasn't already opened the door, she'll at least say, "It's unlocked" over her shoulder.

Whitney
At the head-bang and the clunking of the tumblers within the lock Whitney takes a breath. Puts on her game face. The sound of rattling and bag-crinkling comes as she lets herself into the apartment and she does stop by the front door to don the protective gear. Rustling as she puts on a face mask and a theatric snap as she puts on exam gloves.

Once the door is shut she locks it and says, "I can't believe there aren't any, like, Verbena in the city. Are th--"

A beat. By now she's moved to find Grace whether she's only a few meters from the door or whether she's retreated back to bed and Grace can see the girl's hazel eyes widen above the white of the mask.

"Oh my god. You look..." A sharp inhalation. A crinkling around her eyes. Sharp incline in her tone. "... NOT that bad! You're gonna be fine. We can fix this. Are you drinking?"

Grace
Grace makes it back to the bed, wraps herself back up in cold sheets and the heavy blanket she was going to use in the winter. It'll probably get thrown off as soon as her feet warm, and her teeth stop chattering. Then, her whole body just turns hot again, and it's time to shed all.

She looks highly relieved at Whitney's gear. "So you did bother to protect yourself, good. Thanks."

"And yeah, I mean... I'm trying to keep up the fluid levels, cause I seem to be losing --" another coughing fit, this one a bit worse-sounding than before. Raspy, like this isn't just a clearing of the throat. "So much of it."
She gestures to the big plastic cup by her bed, the thing full of half-melted ice-water.

"It's not so bad, really... just the fever, and I feel terrible. And it's horribly fast. And it's probably escalating exponentially," she says, trying to put on the brave smiley face.

Whitney
Grace thanks the Euthanatos for donning protective gear and her eyes crinkle again. No other sign of a smile for her jaws and nose are covered. She does not carry the entirety of her bag into the room with her so she doesn't drag germs out on it but that means Whitney has to come into the bedroom carrying her foci out where Grace can see them and if she's apprehensive at the sight of Whitney approaching with a switchblade and a Zippo and a bowl no one will blame her.

"Exponentially?" she asks as she sits at the edge of Grace's bed. "I saw that word in my SAT book earlier. You're not impressing anyone with your fever vocabulary."

She sets down the lighter and rests the blade across her lap, closed. The bowl beside her. It's half-filled with water.

"So like, I want to try to identify the virus. If it is a virus. You're in chaos and that's not bad, you know, sometimes that happens, but if it's not supposed to happen I can see that and we can slow it down." A beat. "I need some of your blood though."

Grace
"I am one step ahead of you there. It's not anything you'll find in a book, I'll tell you that. This was created. You know the old story of the hydra? Cut off one head, and two more appear? That's what it's doing. My immune system goes after it, and it doesn't die, it just multiplies. I've been watching it. Morbid though that is, I know..."

Grace's voice is going raspy like that cough, a touch on the rough side, like it must hurt. But if it does, she's not acknowledging that. "And that's exponential growth. Multiplicative. For your SAT vocab lesson of the day."

She's not really paying much attention to the girl, her eyes half-lidded, finally getting a bit warmer, so her teeth stop chattering. It feels, comfy. Or at least, as comfy as she's going to get. Whitney says that she needs some blood, and Grace snorts. "There's plenty in the wastebasket. Stuff's been coming out of my nose off and on."

Whitney
"Oh, ew."

Not to the matter of her nose bleeding. That information showed up on Ginger earlier. The thought of fishing into the wastebasket for old oxidized blood off of a piece of facial tissue though. That's what solicits the grossed-out noise.

"No, that won't work for what I'm doing. You're still alive. It needs to be fresh."

Oh that's reassuring. She moves from the bed to the floor and sets the bowl before her intended sitting-spot but kneels for now. Reaches for the switchblade and holds out her gloved hand for Grace's.

"Unless you can get nosebleeds on command."

Grace
"No... not so --" Grace gets cut off again, just as she was trying to respond. The hand she was about to give to Whitney goes up to her mouth, just as another strained coughing fit starts. This time, it's again, worse. And in the center of her chest there exists this pressure. Like someone's squeezing out her lungs with that one final horrible cough.

When it finally ends, the taste of iron is on her tongue, and she pulls her hand back and kind of stares at it. Well... That's new.

"Will this do?" she asks and extends her hand, her voice gravelly from the cough, and her hand spattered with blood.

Whitney
"Oh, my god."

Maybe one day they'll look back on this and laugh. Whitney isn't laughing right now though. Her eyes above the mask are briefly horrified but she knows Grace only let her over here in the first place because she said she was going to help and it's not like she hasn't seen and possibly been the cause of someone coughing up blood and for the last time before anyway.

"It's not Ebola, is it?"

Doesn't matter. She flicks out the knife's blade and holds it out flat-side so Grace can wipe it onto the gleaming metal. Whitney doesn't chant or pop a pill or let her eyes roll back into her head the way someone of a more earthen persuasion might but some pagan influence leaks through as she picks up her lighter and sets fire to the blade and the blood on the blade and lets the singed fluid weep from the metal into the water.

Holds her hand over the bowl and takes on the monkish stillness of a student deep into her reading.

[i'm going to come up with a name for this rote later.
arete 2: entropy/forces/life/time, basically divining the ass out of this thing.
i think this is vulgar? -1 for unique focus, -1 for taking time. going to be an extension coming up.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 6) ( success x 2 )

Whitney
[EXTENSION pt. 1, +1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Whitney
[fuck it let's just keep doing things]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 4) ( fail )

Grace
"Well, it's not ebola. This was created. But they probably got some ideas from hemorrhagic fever," Grace says, all odd, logical coldness... for now.

She wipes her hand on Whitney's knife, being careful not to be messy about it. She's still uncertain how this stuff is spread. Better to be on the clean side than spatter blood everywhere.

Whitney performs the ritual, and Grace again wonders how that is supposed to work... But that thought is pushed away for the moment, replaced with what will she find? It's rather tense, waiting while Whitney concentrates. She can't talk, doesn't want to distract...

Whitney
The singed blood drips into the bowl of water and it forms a pattern but not an intentional one. When Whitney dips the knife into the water and stirs slow and stares at that pattern it is no more intentional than the original. Her eyes above the mask are clear and intelligent and she does not make a sound as she Works. In time she sets the knife beside the bowl and puts her splayed hand back over the surface of the water.

Grace can see when the effect takes hold and a vision comes to the younger woman. She takes a sharp breath like something from the bowl has made its way into her skull and her eyes do not exactly roll back to join it but they lose their clarity and their cognizance and she sways where the kneels. Breathes heavier but not faster.

When she comes back to the present it is not with a jolt or a gasp. Nothing so sudden. She blinks and takes her hand away from the bowl.

"Oh," she says. She frowns and her throat works as she swallows. "Okay, so, like... if someone decides burning down a lab is a good idea, you're probably gonna die. In the fire." Whitney sits down on the floor and crosses her legs at the ankles. "You know anybody who like, runs around wearing a hood? Like, a woman?"

Grace
"Whitney, you're not making any sense. I'm going to die in a fire, if someone burns down a lab... somewhere else?"

She leans her head back down on her pillow with a whumph. "I don't know anyone who runs around wearing a hood. There was a woman at the Starbucks, she was wearing a yellow dress, though, no hood. I think she was responsible for the attack. Name's Katie. Or at least, that's the name she gave."

"What did you see?"

Whitney
"If I tell you it might just make things worse."

Whatever she saw has not driven spikes of cold dread into Whitney. Or if it has she is making an effort to keep her voice at its normal levels of sun-drenched Southern Californian ennui. She cannot touch her hair or scrub her face or engage in any other fidgeting that might compromise the integrity of her equipment.

"But I saw a woman wearing a hood saying you had to hurry. Which is like... 'No way, you think?' And I saw a field and a lot of blood and..." She clears her throat and looks up from her focal point on the edge of the mattress to Grace's face. "Whoever designed this bug designed it to kill whoever got it. We need to find this Katie person."

Grace
Grace's hands clench into fists under the sheets, and her eyes graze the ceiling instead of Whitney. "If you tell me what?"

"Don't do this to me, don't withhold what I need to know," Grace says, and it's a pleading thing, raspy with her irritated throat.

"I wish I could find her. 'Katie' is probably a pseudonym. And it's so common a name, I don't think..." she trails off. "I've got a plan in case they come back to the apartment to collect data on their experiment though. Myself as bait, you see." She points to the cabinet in the corner, "Got a camera there. If they show up, at least... there will be evidence."

Whitney
"You think they need to come back to watch you?"

It's a rhetorical question. She's incredulous. Whitney isn't a chela and she isn't a teacher. She's young compared to many of the other women in this city. Sometimes she forgets just because Grace is older doesn't mean she knows what the hell is going on.

"If whoever did this is like, targeting Awakened people, they're probably Awakened too. Or they're..." Her eyes flick away for a moment as she thinks. "What if they can see what's happening to you through the virus? Like, it's a focus for them, or something."

Grace
Grace is very new. But still, this should have occurred to her. She knows how surveillance via 'magic' works. Or at least, she's seen it done. She closes her eyes, rubs them with the hand that isn't all bloody.

"If they are. If I were better at this... I could trace their spying eyes back to the source. But I'm no Gadfly. Shit."

Whitney
"You will get better at this. This so isn't going to kill you."

Anything will sound convincing if you say it like you don't have any fucks left to give. It has to be some sort of mathematical theorem: the less you sound like you care what people think the more likely they are to believe you. Or something. Whitney probably just doesn't want to see Grace die. Friends generally don't like seeing their friends suffer before they go.

"Does Lena know how to scry? Or Sera or Sid?" If she sounds clairvoyant, she isn't. She's just hurling out names of everyone she knows. "Maybe they can like, trace it back for you." She sounds apologetic as she adds, "I never learned that sphere. This is like, a sign."

Grace
"They can trace it back for themselves. They're all infected," she says. "I'm worried about everyone else too. I thought it was just Lena and I, and then Sera and Sid got attacked. Who's next? Everybody?"

She opens her eyes again, looks Whitney in the eye, like 'you know something'...

[Perception + Awareness = You're hiding something, aren't you?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Whitney
[manip + subt: psh, NO. bitch gets to reroll 10s.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Whitney
"I don't know. Maybe they only need to attack one person to infect everybody."

Have fun trying to sleep without having nightmares tonight, kids.

The Euthanatos girl sighs and eases herself back onto her knees now that she's done disseminating what she saw in her divination. The knife and the lighter go into the trash can with the sullied facial tissue and whatever else Grace has tossed into it in the last few days and Whitney takes up the bowl in her hands and gets to her feet.

"Do you want me to stay with you?"

Grace
It would be nice not to have to face death alone. But there's nice, and then there's practical, and as much as it hurts to say no to such an offer... "Whitney, maybe you're right. Maybe what they're trying to do is get people like you to come and get themselves infected, and spread it around. I don't want to make it easy on them.

But of course, if that were the case, the question remains: why robot wasps? Why make it that obvious? Why not make a disease with a long incubation period, and really get it to go everywhere?"

"The whys of this are really bugging me. If I could figure out the reason for these decisions, I'd feel better..." Though why that would be the case is a mystery to most. Grace just plain feels better when she knows.

"Anyway... I can't tell you to leave, but I would rather you stay safe. The longer you're here, the less likely that is."

Whitney
Whitney stands still for a moment as she considers this. With the bowl she found in Grace's kitchen in her hands, wearing her street clothes along with her BSI, she looks like some honey-blond nightmare hospital orderly come to check on her.

It would be one thing if Grace insisted she was fine and would be fine if Whitney left but she doesn't. They're onto the next thing.

"If you're getting worse I don't want to leave you here by yourself. Either it's super contagious and I've already caught it anyway, or I'll be okay as long as you don't cough blood on me."

Grace
"Well... What if it's only a little contagious, and..." she sighs. Whitney doesn't strike her as someone who can be reasonably talked out of things. "We just keep trying to out-altruism each other, don't we?" She smirks. It's a thing. Grace can't keep from making a joke, even now.

"I'm not going to throw you out of my apartment. But I will put it on the record that I think this is a really bad idea."

Whitney
"The record totally shows you think this is a really bad idea. I don't care. I want to win this altruism-off."

So they're just going to keep joking until Grace drowns in a pool of her own blood. Fantastic. In the meantime Whitney tries to smile at her through the mask and it crinkles her eyes but the apprentice can't see her teeth or the fear inside her and she won't see it until the Euthanatos feels it safe to take off the mask.

She finds a chair to drag into Grace's room so she can sit with her while she's still awake. If she thinks the rest of the night she keeps her thoughts to herself. But she won't leave the room again while Grace is awake to do anything other than refill her water glass.

Grace
Grace will continue to get worse. The coughing continues, more and more blood comes. She can feel it after a while, the internal pressure of fluid on the inside, but she doesn't tell Whitney that. Whitney probably knows anyway.

With someone else there, its easier not to fall into morbid thoughts (strange, when that someone else is a Euthanatos) but still, falling asleep is hard. Grace keeps imagining the worst, and resolutely does not sleep, until the sickly-weakness makes that little death too difficult to resist.

At some time during the night, perhaps when Whitney goes to refill the water, Grace will thank her. And it will be obvious that this 'thank you' means so much more than just refilling the glass. For everything, she means. And some day, if she makes it, Grace will have a debt to pay.

Outbreak

Outbreak
The Starbucks (one of a few) on 16th Street Mall was busy enough for a Tuesday evening.  The weather outside was brisk and scented with the telltale signs of autumn (cool air and crisp leaves and the occasional whiff of apple or pumpkin spice in a passing pedestrian's beverage,) just precisely the sort of night that tended to prompt people to crave a warm drink and pleasant company.  Inside the coffee shop, a line of customers waited to place their order at the counter, while those who'd already been served had found places to sit and read or chat with friends at the various tables.  This particular Starbucks had a plush booth in front of the window, and a family of five had taken up residence there as the parents occupied themselves with making sure their children didn't spill their hot chocolate or make too big a mess of their pastries.

All in all, the mood was one of pleasant liveliness when Grace and Lena arrived.

Grace Evans
"Lena, are you addicted to Starbucks in particular, or something?" Grace asks as they seem to be dragged magnetically toward the place. "I mean, caffeine and I have a long and happy relationship, but Starbucks? By the way, that pumpkin spice stuff tastes like chicken, and that's just weird to taste in coffee."

It's been noted before that Lena has no particular dislike of this establishment -- much to Grace's dismay. The place is like the symbol of cookie-cutter mediocrity and the spreading goo of Capitalism run amok.

Lena Reilly
"Oh god, you never get the pumpkin spice."  She wrinkles her nose, amused at Grace's comment and her reticence toward Starbucks.  She gets it...she really does.  A lot of people aren't fans of the coffee chain, but let's face it; there's a reason why they're as popular as they are.  The DJ walks along at Grace's side, a jacket over her usual T-Shirt and jeans in order to compensate for cooler temperatures.  She takes no offense obviously at Grace's disdain of the coffee place, understanding fully even if she doesn't agree.

"No, I'm not addicted to Starbucks specifically, for the record."  She chuckles and shrugs.  "But they're always nearby and say what you want about them...they're consistent.  By no means are they the best coffee on the planet but I always know what I'm getting.  I love my little out of the way places when I can get to them, but there's a certain comfort in knowing there's always an Americano within a few minutes away, you know what I mean?"

She opens the door, holding it for Grace before she slips inside after.  Mediocre or not, the place always smelled of coffee and she does appreciate that...even if the music drives her batty.

Grace Evans
"No, that is not a comfort, Lena! That is scary!" says Grace, but with a smile that says she's probably mostly kidding. Even so, Grace bows to peer pressure and steps inside. Maybe they can manage not to completely screw up chai?

Today (if you really need to know) Grace is celebrating a holy day of sorts. And she's chosen to celebrate by wearing a t-shirt that reads: 'That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show.' over the picture of woman who appears to be in 1800's clothing and style. Though since it's turned chilly lately, she has her grey turtleneck jacket almost covering up the tribute tee.

She's also chosen to celebrate by promising by the end of the week to have some feat or another accomplished in the name of that woman: Ada, Countess of Lovelace.

Lena Reilly
"There's something to be said here about resistance being futile here," she says with a grin, and she moves in behind Grace.  She's comfortable enough with the Virtual Adept to be close to her, though she still doesn't ever purposely touch her.  Grace isn't alone in Lena reacting to her that way though; she's friendly and in just about every way seems like a warm, caring friend.  Except that one.  (Well, and the not really offering up anything about her past.  But we're talking about the good parts, not the bad.)

She takes a deep breath, walking up to the counter and ordering like a pro because, frankly, she pretty much is.  After all, being incredibly caffeinated is practically a part of her job.  (Not that she wouldn't be if she changed vocations.)  She smiles at the person behind the counter, orders a Venti Americano with an extra shot and whatever Grace wants.  Hey, if she's dragging Grace to the enemy, she's gonna pay for whatever the woman gets.

Outbreak
There were three people in line ahead of the pair by the time Grace and Lena stepped through the door and settled in to wait their turn (chatting as they did about the merits and flaws of cookie-cutter coffee chains.)  But the line pushed forward at an efficient pace, and it wasn't long before the pair were able to place their orders.  The kid behind the counter looked about nineteen (probably a college freshman) but he seemed competent enough.  He took their orders with a polite smile and rung them up at the register before waving them along to wait while the barista assembled their drinks.  There wasn't much that was notable about the affair.  Names were called, and soon enough one of those names was Lena.

Of course, the question of where to sit would prove a bit problematic, as it seemed that most of the tables were occupied, but a bit of searching would find one in the back corner, empty but for a discarded newspaper that the previous occupant had left behind.  Taking up residence at the neighboring tables were an older man typing diligently on his laptop, a couple of twenty-somethings on a date (which seemed to be going well,) and a pretty girl in a yellow dress who was delicately making her way through a piece of cheesecake.

The girl made eye contact for a moment and paused mid-bite.  Then she smiled a bit, the way people do when they meet the gaze of someone they don't know, and returned her attention to her food.

Grace Evans
[Perception + Awareness = Because chai is here, and its time to relax and look around]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Outbreak
[It would appear that there is nothing immediately notable about the coffee shop or its occupants tonight.  Grace is unable to sense any hint of resonance besides that of Lena's and her own, and there does not appear to be any weaving of effects in the area.]

Lena Reilly
This is the part that she hates about Starbucks...when it's one of those pseudo-busier times and people get bunched together.  Don't get her wrong; Lena is actually better in crowds than she is with people.  One of these days one of these Awakened people will actually go see her when she spins and they'll see a Lena they've never seen before; that's because a crowd she can get lost in, especially when she hears the Lakashim strongly.  Groups of people become individuals and they feel less connected to her, more distinct.  That's harder.

She looks around with a little bit of a frown, though it brightens (at least briefly) when she meets the gaze of the girl in the yellow dress.  It's a brief look from Lena; she doesn't linger on beauty the way that some Cultists do.  And then she's looking at Grace, letting her guide the way on this one.

"Where you wanna sit?"

Grace Evans
Grace is so much like Lena. So different too. But she will never be the one to reach out her hand for an introduction, she will never ever hug anyone, she would rather talk about the future than the past.

Lena makes for a comfortable friendship. It's like she knows in that way that doesn't require words.

Also, Grace totally lets Lena pay for the chai latte. Free stuff rocks! Even if it's corporate free stuff.

"So, you been up to anything interesting lately? In the, you know, music arena?" Grace says, stirring the spiced tea, as though stirring it with a mundane coffee stirrer would have the same effect as Patience's light-wand-thingy. What was that she'd said? Destroying the deviant molecules? Yeah. Pretend to do that. Maybe the placebo effect will actually make it taste better.

Grace Evans
"Well, there is that one place in the back," Grace offered.

Lena Reilly
"Perfect," she says with a smile, though really it's not.  Perfect is just a word you say that means That will suffice and in truth, there are a few things wrong with it as far as Lena is concerned.  But then there are probably a few things wrong with it as far as Grace is concerned, such as It's In A Starbucks.  So the Ecstatic can't let beggars be choosers, and she moves to head that way and take a seat.

"I'm mostly just doing my thing, really," she says in response to the question about her music.  "Ive been experimenting a lot with some new sounds...I'm sick to death of dubstep beats but that's all anyone seems interested in.  I'm trying to blend in some trance and ambient stuff with a hip-hop sensibility at this point.  Sort of a chillwave, Lorde-meets-Portishead if Chuck Inglish or Mike Will Made It was producing it with a little Aphex Twin sensibility thrown in."

She gives a slight shrug as she sits down, pushes the newspaper off to the side.  "It's a work in progress, really.  There's a serious dearth of good samples right now that I can work with to hit that sound unless I go with the same people that everyone else does, you know?  And those are good for attention-grabbing, but if I'm gonna keep my edge I need to keep looking for my own thing until someone else finds it."

Grace Evans
Grace just kind of nods, making her way over to the back seat with Lena, as though she knows what half of those words and performers mean, which she emphatically does not.

"That's um.. It sounds impressive! I would like to see one of your shows someday, you know. Ahh, I know two musicians now, and I have yet to hear either you or Sera. I am so... wrong," Grace says, and sits down across from Lena at the table.

Outbreak
Grace and Lena settled in at their table, doing their best (as one does in these situations) to ignore the close proximity of strangers around them.  The man and the flirting couple seemed oblivious to their presence, as did most of the rest of the people in the shop, wrapped up as they were in their own lives.  Across the room, one of the kids shrieked with laughter, and her mother leaned over to quiet her to a polite volume.

The girl in the yellow dress looked up when this happened, her eyes fixed on the family with a subtly pained expression, as though the sound bothered her.

A few moments later, she looked at Grace, leaned over and said, "Sorry to interrupt, but is that an Ada Lovelace t-shirt?"

Grace Evans
Grace looked up a bit, a kind of 'omg what?' look on her face at first, having been prodded out of her determinedly-ignoring-everyone-else shell. This was followed by a massive grin. Well, somebody knew the reason for the season. "Yes! It is! It's Ada Lovelace day today, so I just thought -- of course I am wearing this today."

"Also, Hi! Nice to meet someone who knows about Ada out in the wild," Grace says to the woman in yellow, all smiles at this point. She can put on a friendly face, even though it might take a bit of initial panic.

Lena Reilly
She takes the shriek from the kid across the Starbucks with stride.  Lena is guarded but generally she's not jumpy as a rule, and she understands that kids can be unruly.

Instead her attention is focused on the young woman who leaned over and asked about Grace's Ada Lovelace shirt.  She smiles a little, watching them converse.  She doesn't have a lot to add to that conversation...which is not to say that she doesn't know who Ada Lovelace is, mind.  It's just...well.  It would be like Grace interjecting her thoughts on music into a conversation between Lena and another deejay.  At best she could offer surface information and so instead, she busies herself with her caffeine-charged drink.  Ahh, caffeine.

Outbreak
The girl, she had an ageless quality to her.  Willowy build and youthful features marked only subtly with hints of age.  But her manner and appearance were elegant and composed in the way one might expect of a young professional: her dress, hair and makeup perfectly put together.  She was, by all accounts, lovely and luminous - with one exception.  When she shifted in her chair and leaned over to get Grace's attention, her left arm came into view.  The skin there was pink and shiny and textured with grafts and scarring.  (Burn damage, from the look of it.)

She smiled at Grace's response to her question, edging her chair a little bit closer so that she wouldn't have to lean in to be heard.  "As a fellow woman in science, I would be pretty lax if I didn't take the opportunity to celebrate her achievements," the girl replied.  "Though I'm a biologist, myself.  Computer history is something I've only studied in passing."  After a pause, she reached out to offer her hand.

"I'm Katie."

Outbreak
[Edit: "reached out to offer her hand to each in turn."]

Grace Evans
Ugh. The handshaking ritual. But which one? The one holding the cup of chai would be hot and possibly sweaty, but that's the one necessary... Grace hesitates, puts down her chai, wipes her hand off on her jeans, and finally shakes hands rather awkwardly.

It's just not her thing.

"Unfortunately there's not a lot of data on Lovelace. She was kind of reclusive, you know. Plenty on Babbage, but man, we know more about Ada from his perspective than we do from hers. Still, a complete visionary, really. You know, Lena, she was the first person to surmise that computers would be able to translate data into music? Babbage just thought of all the wonderful tables full of numbers he would be able to make," Grace says... and this is much more obviously her thing.

Lena Reilly
Like Grace, handshaking is not Lena's thing.  But it's a formality she can understand, and while she doesn't always feel comfortable with it she can do it in order to make other people not feel comfortable.  "Hey, Katie," she says with a pleasant enough smile, her grip light and brief before she slips her hand away.  "I'm Lena...nice to meet you."  It's a warm pleasantry, a bit of politeness to the girl that Grace has found a common hero in.

She smiles when Grace mentions the historical woman's influence on computers and music.  "Oh yeah?"  She grins then, raises her cup to her lips.  "Well, remind me to toast one to her one of these days.  I owe her my career."  And life's work, but who's counting?

Outbreak
There was a change that occurred when Katie shook Grace and Lena's hands.  Like that moment in a movie when the action slows and the camera swings around to a new angle and suddenly it's like you're watching a completely different scene.  Katie's grip lingered in each of their grasps, and though the edges of her smile remained, the warmth of it faded.  Grace neglected to offer her name in return, but Katie didn't ask after it.  (Perhaps it didn't really matter.)  Her hand was warm and a little sweaty, and if either grace or Lena looked for it, they'd feel a tell-tale thrum of a quickened pulse.

The music changed, and in the brief interlude it seemed as though the ambient noise had quieted to a low murmur.

Then one of the kids shrieked again, and Katie winced as she dropped Lena's hand.  Her bright eyes glimmered with veiled emotion as she turned away.

"She was an amazing woman, truly."  Katie glanced down at her mostly-empty plate and pushed herself to a standing position, brushing her hands down over her skirt.  "It was nice meeting you two.  I hope you have a good evening."

There was a lingering glance and a soft nod.  "Happy Ada Lovelace day."

Then she gathered her dishes and deposited them on the tray atop the nearest trash bin before making her way outside.

Grace Evans
Grace watched the woman pack up, and... well, it was a little disappointing that. She could talk about computing history all night, and not be sad for it. Strange to just spark up a conversation about Ada Lovelace, and then leave. But hey, people are busy right?

"Happy Ada Lovelace day back, sorry we couldn't talk more!"

Grace turned to Lena, "Well, she was nice. A bit strange though." Pot. Kettle. Hah.

[Wits + Alertness = ST Demanded It]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6) ( fail )

Lena Reilly
Grace watches the woman pack up and is disappointed that she can't talk more about computers and such.  Lena, for her part, pulls her hand away even quicker than the brief hold that she'd intended.  It's instinctual for her, born from a fear that's been held for quite a while now when she senses someone is fevery or their immune system is overrun.  She doesn't freak out and run, but she does lean back slightly and the smile that she offers is a bit...strained, to say the least.

"Nice to meet you, Katie."  For once, she doesn't sound quite like she means it.  She looks to Grace and the smile remains in that same form.  "Yeah, I suppose so."

[Wits+Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Outbreak
It was only a minute or two after the girl left when Grace and Lena would both feel a sudden, sharp sting on the backs of their necks.  Grace, perhaps caught up in her thoughts, was slow to react, and in the midst of her surprise, she knocked over her chai - spilling the hot drink across the table and into her lap.  By the time her hand reached her neck, whatever had stung her was gone, leaving only a tiny red lump of irritated tissue in its wake.

Lena, though.  She was already on the alert, and when her hand shot up to her neck she felt a brittle crunch of something tiny and metal beneath her hand.  She managed to jump out of the way of the spill, and perhaps in the midst of the chaos she might not get a chance to really look at what she'd caught.  But when she did, she'd find this:

It was a bug, but not a living one.  This was some sort of tiny robotic wasp, now crushed and mangled, with a needle as its stinger.

Grace Evans
Chai goes flying everywhere, and soon there's pain not only in Grace's neck, but her lap too. Fucking Starbucks found a way to ruin her chai, didn't it? "Ah! Shit!.... The hell?"

Instead of immediately rushing to get napkins however, there is that sting.. she prodded at the back of her neck, looked up at Lena in confusion. One sting she would have passed off as an insect. But two, at the same time, in the same place?

The words 'What's going on here?' remain unspoken however, a look is all she'll manage before heading over to the counter to get enough napkins to clean up.

Lena Reilly
Maybe it's because she was already paranoid.  Maybe her uncanny sense of situational awareness happened to come into play.  Maybe it was even just luck.  Whatever the reason, she's faster and she's to her feet, out of the way of the spilled chai tea and reacting quickly when she feels that sharp piercing on her neck.

She cries out, reaches back on instinct and smashes her hand against the source of the pain...strikes paydirt.  She pulls her hand down slowly, looking in her hand and thanking the gods for not the first time in her life that she's not allergic to bees and going into anaphylactic sho--

She stars at the think in her hand, blinking a couple of times as if she doesn't honestly get it.  She does, but she is just...dumbfounded.  "Oh, Jesus Fuck."

And now she's touching.  As Grace goes to clean up, Lena grabs the Virtual Adept by the arm.  "We need to go, now."  She isn't waiting around for permission this time.  She's paled considerably from the idea that they may be under attack of some kind and she's even (GASP!) leaving her coffee behind as she pulls Grace along with her.

Outbreak
Whatever it was that Grace and Lena had been stung (injected?) with, they didn't seem to feel any immediate effects.  Perhaps through stress and paranoia they might attribute their body's boost of adrenaline (and its accompanying symptoms) to some unknown drug or poison - but if so, the correlation would be imagined.  In truth, there was no immediate physical response to the stings, aside from the pain and redness at the site of the injury - not at all unlike the reaction one might have to a vaccination.

And if Lena was worried that more of those tiny robotic creations might descend upon the unsuspecting Sleepers in the coffee shop, this fear at least would remain unfounded.  All around them, life continued as normal.  None of the other people jumped up in surprise, except for the man with his laptop, who glanced up and quickly shifted his feet out of the way of the pooling chai on the floor.  As Lena began to usher Grace out of the shop, one of the employees trotted over with a roll of paper towels and a spray-bottle of some sort of cleaning solution, smiling in reassurance.

"Oh, it's alright.  Happens all the time."  (She assumed, of course, that their agitation was due to the spill.)

Grace Evans
Lena's serious, and Grace gets the idea that yes, leaving now -- even with chai all over her jeans, making her look like she's gone and pissed herself -- is a really good plan. Quickly, quickly now, to the exit...

It's the kind of sensible plan Grace might come up with herself, and she doesn't need much pulling along, really. But she does want to know, "What is it? What do we do?" Her words are quickened with adrenaline and hushed.

She gives a strained smile to the employee with the paper towels -- oh no, nothing terrible happening here, ha ha -- all the while making her way to the exit, hyper-aware of Lena's grasp on her arm. Outside the Starbucks, away from the crowd, Grace repeats herself with a, "What's going on?" under her breath.

Lena Reilly
Lena is usually the reassuring one who offers smiles and assures that things will be okay.  She would normally be apologizing to the poor employee who has to clean up the mess that they were leaving behind or at least offering her own smile of gratitude for the woman who is working a job that not enough people have respect for.

She doesn't this time.

Instead she largely ignores the woman, rushes out of the Starbucks and starts walking down the street with her attention toward the sky.  Luckily no other assaults come, but it doesn't put the Ecstatic at ease one bit.  As she walks along at a brisk pace, she opens her hand and shows Grace the little robotic wasp with the needle stinger that rests in her cupped palm.

"I think we just got attacked by someone.  And I don't know what it is, but we need to figure it out and quickly."  There's an edge to her tone, an urgency of fear crackling under the surface of her voice.  Biological attacks strike deep at her emotional core and she's very shaken at the moment.

Grace Evans
"Holy shit... that's a..." she doesn't finish the thought. Of course it's a robot. Lena can see as much. "Do you think it was that woman? Katie?"

"Come on, we can get to my car... I'll do some diagnosis, okay?"

At least, that is Grace's plan, and she's sticking to it. Whatever happened to them, she hopes the code will show it.

When she gets to the old red Toyota, she immediately pulls out her laptop and begins to work, setting the thing up and preparing to code.

[Life 1 -- What The Heck Did That Stinger Do? -- Spending WP]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace Evans
[Extending, because... Spending WP]

Grace Evans
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lena Reilly
"I know what I think of when I see robot bees," she mutters under her breath, looking back over her shoulder.  The remnants of the creature is stuck into her pocket and she moves along with Grace to the other's car.  Paranoid would be a kind way to describe what the Ecstatic is feeling like right now.

Once they're to the car she slides into the backseat.  While Grace starts scanning with her laptop, Lena goes a much less technological route; she pulls her feet up, crossing her arms into lotus position and shuts her eyes.
Focus, clear your mind.  Find your heartbeat, find the Lakashim.  It will guide you to the truth.

[[Life 1, scanning self.  WP spent, Quint to lower difficulty because Lena is paranoid about her health.  Will be extending.]]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Lena Reilly
[[Extended roll, also spending Quintessence, no WP]]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace Evans
Lena meditates, and Grace does a bit of meditation herself. It's a different kind, mind you, but the silencing of active mind, the stillness to the outside known in the jargon as 'hack mode' settles over her as the code streams across the screen of her laptop. Lena doesn't seem to be bothered by the clacking of fingers over keys, thank goodness, because that noise and the blank pauses of single-minded concentration fills the car afterward.

She starts with herself. It's easier, the baseline recordings she already has, so one needs only to run a diff. Okay, so usually this is done on text files to see the difference between them, and now she's doing it to her own body's representation in the universal code, but you know... Whatever works.

And then, eyes darting, face slack, staring into the streaming, sliding code, she shifted her attention to the other human reading in the vicinity. More difficult this, but with the gleaned data from her own pattern as a guide... yes. This could work...

Outbreak
Lena and Grace had the same idea: to find out what it was they'd just been injected with.  And though they went about their effects in very different ways, in the end the result was the same.

Their bodies were in the same condition they'd been in an hour ago - apart from the very minor trauma at the injection site.  There was no poison or chemical substance coursing through their veins; no detectable damage or alteration to their patterns.

But something was happening.  Their immune systems were in a hyper-active state, white blood cells attacking some tiny, microscopic foreign bodies in their blood-stream.  The evidence was plain enough to anyone who knew anything about basic human biology.  They'd been exposed to a disease.  A virus.  But no matter the insight their careful scanning could give them, there was no clear answer to be had regarding the exact nature of the viral cells.  Neither of them were disease pathologists, and even if they had been - this thing... it was not a virus that they would find in any case file or textbook.  Its effects were completely unknown.  Perhaps it would prove relatively innocuous, but given the manner in which they'd been infected...
The odds were not good.

And here was the really, truly alarming bit.  Those foreign cells... the ones their immune system managed to destroy - they were multiplying.  Splitting as they died to produce two new living cells.

(Like a hydra.)

Grace Evans
"Oh... my God..."  Grace mumbles into her screen when it dawns on her what is happening. Well... There are some ways to stop one's immune system. Too bad they're mostly fatal, because you'd be... uh... without an immune system.

But it's like she just wants to tell her white blood cells that they are so not helping right now.

"Lena, we're sick... The more our bodies fight it, the worse it's going to get... Whatever it does." Her voice is amazingly calm, like she's just listing a factoid. "No idea what it's going to do. I'm going to get the info up on Ginger, but... We should probably stay away from people," she sighs, some emotion finally seeping in there. Shit... what is this thing going to do?

Lena Reilly
"Take me home, Grace."

There's no panic at this moment, no wailing or raging or freaking out.  That'll come later.  She's in the calm moment of realization when you have just been hit with a crisis and you're thinking clearly.  There's a serenity there, albeit weighted with a tinge of horror, as she uncrosses her legs, leans back on the seat and looks out the window.

"Not to the chantry.  My apartment isn't far from here.  I need to go there."  Several moments pass, before she answers the question Grace asked.  "I don't know what it's going to do.  Whatever it is, it's not good."

Outbreak
Ultimately they were left with just as many questions as answers.  Grace and Lena didn't know who'd made the wasps, or why they'd been targeted.  They didn't know what this virus was going to do to them, or how likely it was to spread to and infect other people they might come into contact with.

At least one of those questions would certainly be answered, given time.  Perhaps it was better that they didn't know.  The answer would not help them sleep.

16th Street felt unusually quiet and still around them.  Back inside the Starbucks, people chatted and laughed as if it were an utterly normal fall evening.

(Funny how calm things could be at the beginning of something terrible.)

Grace Evans
Grace nods, finds her keys, realizes she still has the laptop on and in her lap, and puts it in the passenger seat for now...

Shakily, she manages to drive, though utterly distracted. Maybe it's just the mental effect of knowing what's going on underneath, but she feels the back of her neck again... and her skin crawls with the thought of those replicating cells.

Lena gets dropped off, and Grace tries to be reassuring as the other woman leaves, "Hey... ah... maybe it'll all work out." But you know, not even Grace really believes that. Whatever it is, it's not good, indeed. Then it's off to her own place, to what end though?

Starbucks is 'The Man', Don't You Get It?

Lena Reilly
Lena likes coffee.

Okay, that's an understatement.  Lena lives for coffee.  I'm serious.  Have you ever seen her without some kind of caffeinated drink in her hand?  Probably not.  It doesn't happen, pretty much ever unless she's set it down and it's within reaching distance.  If you ever wanna see someone go from zero to "ragingly pissy" in nothing flat, take the girl's caffeine away for a day or so.  It's not a pretty sight.

And thus, we have her sitting outside a Starbucks downtown, her laptop open while a quad venti latte sits half-finished next to an empty double macchiato.  She's got one headphone in her ear and the other one faintly thrums with an electronic beat as she works, looking over her mixing program and trying to figure out just the right beat.

Of course, she is aware still.  The girl has some level of situational awareness, and a larger sense of situational Awareness.  So the pretty-enough thing in a black Fall Out Boy tank top underneath the jacket, worn blue jeans and calf-high boots isn't completely oblivious even as she works.

[[Pre-emptive magedar! Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Kalen
[Nightmares]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

Kalen
[And, do we notice Lena?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Kalen
Kalen also likes coffee.  He'd prefer not Starbucks coffee, perhaps, but he has learned to take what he can get.  And there have been times when he didn't have access to ridiculous imported espresso.  He knows how to make do.  This is, still, at least a step up from the sludge languishing in convenience store pots left on burners.

And so, into the Starbucks he goes.  He pauses for a second and scans the place slowly.  Once he spots her, Lena gets a wave, and then he proceeds to order coffee.  He leans into the counter while he waits, fingertips tapping lightly over the head of his cane.

Garrett Franklin
Garrett is still new to Denver, though he's been here before on tour, for a day here, a weekend there.  It's not enough, though, that time here and there with little time to do more than sign books and have dinner with other academics.  So here he is, on a day off (for whatever reason a college professor might have a Tuesday off), exploring this area that's fairly close to the apartment he shares with his son.

There are Starbucks everywhere.  And, though Garrett's not particularly fond of their coffee there's something to be said for being able to get the same drink consistently no matter where one is in the world.  So while Lena is outside with her drink and her laptop, Garrett is inside ordering a chaider - which is to say hot chai in apple cider - which he then takes back out to enjoy whatever weather this new city is currently offering him.  So he steps outside and there's scholarship, and renewal, and subtlety, and stability that rolls out from him in waves.  As he's coming out, there's Kalen going in, and he stops the younger Hermetic briefly.

"Hey.  Want to sit outside?"

Because of course he takes it as a matter of course when they run into each other, when mages begin to converge.  It hasn't been a surprise to him for many years.

[Awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lena Reilly
Blame it on the (alcohol?) (uh, no.) caffeine and the music flowing through her ears, but for whatever reason Lena's on high alert at the moment.  Which means that she's been watching Garrett through the window since the moment he stepped within her senses, keeping her attention pinned more on him than on what she's doing.  New people who ping her radar are always something to be cognizant of, especially since she started spending most of her time at the Chantry and thus she's not just risking herself.  It's possible Garrett didn't notice the set of eyes on him, though he of course sensed her presence, that withering pulse that emenates from her like a chillwave beat with a touch of entropy in it.  Either way, she's been watching him from her table outside while he orders his drink.

And then she senses Kalen coming close, that double helping of a storm.  That probably doesn't help matters much, though this one is at least familiar to her.  She looks from her observation of Garrett over at him as he waves, gives a faint smile and an upward tilt of her chin before she turns to--

See that they know each other, which neither helps nor hurts her assessment of the situation.  She leans back, withdrawing a cigarette from her jacket and lighting up as she takes the earbud out and sits to observe for the moment.

Oh Lena.  This is why you don't have many friends.

Kalen
Of course Kalen agrees to sitting outside, and before long he is back out to join Garrett.  He sets his coffee down, then settles carefully into one of the patio chairs.  They are not nearly as comfortable as the chairs inside, but outside is where things are happening.  People are walking.  And that DJ is out there too, which interests Kalen at least a little.

"How are you?"  He asks Garrett, holding eye-contact long enough to ask the question before turning to give Lena a quick smile and a you-should-join-us look.  And then he returns his attention to Garrett.

Garrett Franklin
The table Garrett chooses is near enough to Lena for easy conversation but far enough for comfort as well - so Kalen's smile is easy to send and receive, as is the smile Garrett gives her in response.  He's amiable, this older gentleman, and has little trouble making new friends (most of the time.  Sid is weird, to him), or meeting new people.  He's not shy, in the slightest.

"I'm good, how about you?  Doing better?"

Better than the last time they were together, when Garrett was basically making sure Kalen remembered to do things other than lounge on the couch for half a day - and of course Garrett knows he is, but there's still tones of concerned older relative there.  Not quite fatherly, but too close to be much else.  And during this, at some point, Lena gets a smile and a nod, polite, friendly.

Lena Reilly
She's quiet for a moment as they interact, pausing to let them do so as she closes down some programs on the laptop, saves her work.  Just the pleasantries so far, she notes.  But obviously they know each other, or of each other at the very least.  And so that interests her, makes her want to know more.  She's a guarded one, this Cultist, but she's also someone who seeks to know the world around her and that only comes with perspective.

Finally she shuts the laptop down and closes it, tapping ash into a tray on the table and setting the cigarette in it.  She picks up the hyper-caffeinated drink for a swallow and then looks at the two, putting up a little smile.  She has too much stuff to move without seeming like she really, really wants to, and she's not one to concede ground that easily anyway.  So she leans over a bit and raises an eyebrow, smiling.

"Fancy running into you here, Kalen.  Are you going to introduce me, or...?"  Her attention turns toward Garrett then.

Kalen
"Yeah, I'm good now."  He smiles, warmer and slightly longer than Lena is used to seeing.  "Thanks."
And then Lena is coming over and he looks up and the smile changes into something more polite, his expression ever-so-slightly more guarded.  But the smile doesn't disappear.

"Of course," he says to Lena.  "Have a seat if you'd like.  This is Garrett Franklin, he's recently arrived to Denver to teach all the college students.  He taught me for awhile, years ago, so I know they're lucky to have him."  Is that actual affection in his tone?  It sounds like it.  "Garrett, this is Lena.  She's a DJ and I'm sure she is incredibly talented but I haven't quite managed to catch any of her sets yet."  He glances up at Lena.  "For which I do apologize.  I've been distracted."

Garrett Franklin
"Ah. the DJ you mentioned.  It's a pleasure to meet you, Lena," Garrett says as he offers a hand for shaking; it's a smooth, relatively soft hand with fingertips calloused not from guitar strings but from computer (or possibly typewriter, at some point early on) keys - if, of course, Lena takes it.  Easy talking distance means slightly awkward shaking distance, but the forty-something professor (who is dressed in jeans and a white ringer shirt with a thought bubble over the word 'oxymoron' - and inside the thought bubble the words 'social science'.

"Maybe we should go together.  If it's an all-ages show, we can invite Jacob.  Though."  This next is wry and amused, but not the bitter sort of wry - Garrett is a goofball, and in general pretty happy-go-lucky.  "If I try to tell him it's a cool, fun thing, he'll know it's the opposite, no matter what it is."  There's a pause, and then, "Jacob's my son.  He's sixteen."

Lena Reilly
She's a bit curious at this person who, more than anyone she's seen him with, Kalen seems comfortable around.  She guards herself, but it's the longing sort of guardedness of someone who wants to know more of people even if she doesn't venture close enough to the sun for her own wax wings to melt.

But then Kalen introduces them and it's a little clearer...it's someone from Kalen's past.  A mentor of sorts, and that allows her to make some assumptions that may or may not be accurate.  She regards Garrett with a friendly-enough smile that turns into a faint grin when Kalen says he hasn't managed to catch her shows because he's been distracted.

"Yeah, that's what they all say.  You'd think we're not all just layabouts or something."  The comment is tinted with humor, generally good-natured.  She nods to the the older Hermetic and reaches over to accept the handshake.  "Nice to meet you Garrett.  And yes, you should.  I do try and get at least one all-ages appearance in a weekend.  I always hated it when I would go out clubbing as a teenager and all we had was some kind of terrible pre-mixed house crap.  I'll give Kalen my schedule for the next few weeks, I'm all set up through Halloween."

She leans back so she can take a drag off the cigarette and then stubs it out before looking back.  "You're teaching at one of the schools, then?  Right on.  I kind of regret not going to college sometimes, just for the experience at least.  But what I do isn't something you get better at with classes; it's all about learning through experience."

Kalen
Kalen laughs, leaning back into the obnoxious metal patio chair and laughing.  "Don't say things like that around Garrett, it's dangerous.  The next thing you know, you will somehow be enrolled in school and learning a new language while simultaneously being roped into horizon-broadening trips around the world."  He grins.  "Okay, on second thought, do.  It's a good time."

His attention strays back to Garrett.  "I'll just tell him I'm going with you and he wouldn't like it anyway.  And then he will do that, 'fuck off, Kalen, he's my father not yours' thing that he does, and I'll yell back at him, and we'll be fine, but you'll make that frown you make when neither of us is matching your definition of civil, and then we'll all go see Lena."  The corners of his mouth keep trying not to flick up into a smile, but he can't quite manage a proper bored and disinterested tone with Garrett.  Even an affected one just for show.

Garrett Franklin
"That . . . sounds about right, actually.  When did I get so predictable, hmm?  Once upon a time, I was a wild man.  Back when I had to walk twenty miles to school, up hill both ways, barefoot.  While hiding from the dinosaurs."  Yes, he's joking.  No, he doesn't think he's old, nor is he neurotic about his age.  As far as mages go, Garrett is downright well-adjusted.

"And, while Kalen exaggerates, I am quite the advocate for higher education.  If you find yourself interested, feel free to let me know - I'll see what we can do to get you in the classes you want.  And also, new languages and trips around the world are fun, thank you very much."

It's light banter, so much amusement and pleasure just to be where he is, in the company he is.  He's a relatively simple man, all things concerned.

Lena Reilly
She chuckles a little at the banter between the two, though she shakes her head when Garrett offers to help get her in classes.  It's amicable enough and even friendly for the moment, despite the polite refusal suggested in the motion.

"I appreciate that, but no.  The only thing that I really feel like I missed out on is the college life experience, and I'm very well past that at this point.  If I ever get the desire to try out a dorm though, I'll let you know."
She sips her gaze between them a moment, her weight leaning forward on her elbows which in turn rest on her knees.  "So have you made the rounds of meeting people yet?"

Kalen
"In the snow," Kalen leans in and mutters to Garrett, just loudly enough for Lena to hear.  "On account of it still being the ice ages or something."  He settles back again after that to let Garrett answer Lena.

He watches them both a little, and the people passing by them on the street, and the cars and the...well, Kalen watches everything.  Even right now, when he's as relaxed as Lena has ever seen him and he's playing with Garrett.  Even a passing helicopter gets a quick evaluation glance.  Even so, he's still drinking his coffee, and there is still a slight lingering smile, so whatever else he may be doing, he does seem to be happy enough here.

Garrett Franklin
"Right, right, how could I forget the snow!"  It's overblown dramatics, of course, and an interesting thing about his face is that it's nearly rubber-like in the expressions it makes.  Also, when he's playing like this, it's impossible to catch him blinking.

So there's Lena asking about who he's met, or rather if he's met anyone, and Garrett thinks for a moment before saying, "Not anyone with full introductions or anything.  But I met Sid, briefly, and Trent, but that's it.  I haven't been out and about that much, yet - between getting settled in at the new university and getting my son settled into his new school and dealing with his acting out, I haven't been out and about that much.  So you're one of the first few, and already I think this meeting is going better than that other one."  And Garrett was no less congenial then than he is now - he'd just been presented with something curious, then, a case study of sorts, and hadn't been able to resist the impulse to learn more.  Now, as far as he can tell, everything is on the table.

Lena Reilly
She smiles when Garrett mentions Sid; the fondness there is obvious from the Ecstatic.  Trent gets vague recognition but nothing more than that; she's heard about him in association with the business with the film, and she knows his Tradition, but hasn't learned much eyong that.

"I get that," she says with a nod.  "When I first got here I largely kept to myself while I settled in, and that was only partly because I'd not met anyone yet.  Even after I met Sid I kept myself to the sidelines for..."  She purses her lips, and then shrugs and smiles.  "Well, far too long actually.  I've only in the last month or so gotten around to getting involved."

A quick glance goes to Kalen then.  He was there when she spoke with Shoshannah about becoming more invested in the mages of Denver, after all.  It's a brief look at best; she's still not in any way sure about the younger Hermetic for reasons that are kept entirely her own.  And then she's got her gaze back on Garrett.  "So yeah, it's still a work in progress for me."

Kalen
"Well, I can introduce you to Grace, but other than than that about everyone here you've already met or I don't really know or they don't like me."  He huffs a little, smile melting into a smirk.  "Imagine that."

A real smile comes back though, when he looks back at Garrett instead of at everything in the world in general.  "I bet they like you better if I don't introduce you though.  Guilt by association and all."  If people not being into hanging out with him actually bothers him, there is certainly no indication.  "I was always a results person more than anything.  And with what we do, or at least what I do...c'est la vie...."  He shrugs.

Patience Mason
[Per+Aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Patience Mason
[Drive]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Garrett Franklin
"They'd like you better if you weren't so intent on remaining aggressively closed off, I bet," Garrett returns, and it's in those same nearly paternal tones with which he'd asked if Kalen was doing better; there's concern, and care, and more than that.  However these two met, it's pretty obvious that they know each other quite well now.

"But really, everything's a work in progress.  If there was nothing new to learn and no knowledge or understanding to refine, what would be the point?"

Lena Reilly
Kalen's comment about people not liking him draws a quick look, but she leaves it there because he's good-natured about it.  Lena's one of those people who are on the fence of course, but on the fence is different than 'don't like.'  And more to the point, Kalen gives a little explanation that, if not much into it, at least gives her a little insight.  She understands 'results person.'  Some people just aren't the most open and she gets that.

And then, Garrett accuses those people who don't like Kalen of remaining aggressively closed off and that draws a raised eyebrow and a stifled chuckle.  "I'm sorry," she says, and she seems to mean it.  "I'm honestly not trying to start an argument here.  But at least to my knowledge, the people who are...not entirely sure about Kalen or have issues with him do so because..."

She looks to Kalen now, because she doesn't want to talk about him like he's not there.  "Well, because you're rather aggressively closed off yourself.  Which I'm not judging, really.  We all have our reasons.  I'm just pointing it out because--well, I don't even know, maybe someone's said it.  But if not, at some point it's gotta be said."

Patience Mason
Starbucks was about as mundane as one could get, with its unified branding image, its beverages which changed in quality only because of the skill of the barista making it. One would think that such place would be anathema to the awakened mind.

Wether this was true or not was a moot issue as several magi stood just beyond the realm of coffee and treats enjoying the warm desert air. Patience for her part rarely went to such coffee houses, be it out of preference or simple convenience it didn't matter. But passing by such places? Well that was all but impossible to avoid. The Etherite's presence is first telegraphed by the complex whine and rumble of an engine. The machine which she rode was much like its rider, it seemed to have been made for another time, for an era now long past or not yet upon us.

Long and sleek the motorcycle which came into view spoke of an art deco ascetic with a paint job of deepest blue and trimmed with chrome, the seat was wide and comfortable, made of a well worn leather that spoke of continual, and loving use. The rider herself wore riding leathers, a pair of knee high leather boots with a solid heel, and a leather jacket reminiscent of an old barnstormer's jacket.

She cut through traffic quickly, efficiently, and as she did so the tingle of the awakened presence drew those ocean blue eyes to the small group next to the starbucks. She didn't even cut the throttle as she cut through a perfectly sized space of traffic void, and into the outer lane, the bike sliding into nearest parking space in the similarly smooth motion. That done, the engine fell into silence as Patience cut the power and leaned back in the seat, her eye's falling on the others as a small, polite smile crossed her lips.

Lena Reilly
[[Delete everything out of that post after the first paragraph.  I hate the font size of the chat and didn't read the post right.]]

Kalen
[[Well.  It's not like I haven't done that already today.  :)]]

Kalen
"Garrett," Kalen says, and his voice is gentle, but there is just a hint of a warning in it.  "You know what I used to do.  It's not just me.  I don't make anything easy, but even if I'd come rolling into this town with another face I think we'd still be here.  Or close enough to here.  And what woul-"

He breaks into a sudden, grin when he sees Patience, the warning note completely vanishing from his tone and his eyes losing that slightly narrowed look.  "Hey, Firefly.  How've you been?"

Garrett Franklin
"Kalen," Garrett says, and there's no warning there but there is a raised eyebrow; he's fatherly and easy-going 98.75% of the time (unless you ask his actual son, in which case you'd get an entirely different assessment), though there are a few things that will get that step back and raised eyebrow.

He is Hermetic, after all.  And Quaesitor, at that.

But it's all let go with the new arrival, who gets a smile as friendly and open as the one Garrett gave Lena upon their meeting, which is only different from the smile Kalen gets in that it's not so familiar, bordering on intimate.  "Hello, Miss."

Lena Reilly
Patience MasonShe's quiet for that moment, as she seems to get a brief inside into Kalen and it intrigues her.  The question of what he used to do, Garrett's raised brow...it's all pieces of the puzzle that Lena can't help but start to try to put together, sizing and comparing with the other jagged pieces she has to see what fits where and what image is starting to emerge.  She's a discerning sort, similar to Garrett albeit perhaps a bit less direct.

But those pieces are thrown back into the shadows and she just gets a glimpse before Patience shows up, and hyper-aware (at the moment) Lena snaps her attention over to that woman with a sudden, enthusiastic smile.  The Ecstatic quite likes the strange woman, this much is clear, and she rises as Patience walks over with a warm expression.

"Hey, you.  It's nice to see you.  You're looking good.  How're you doing?"

Patience Mason
The helmet Patience wore was old and made of a flexible leather with expanded pockets around the ears. In normal circumstances one might wonder how the hell someone would be crazy enough to wear such flimsy protection while riding a motorcycle, but Patience was of the Son's of Ether, and that could mean her helmet might well take a tank shell before giving...one never does know.

She'd managed to draw her helmet from her head as they began their greetings, her dirty blonde hair falling about her face in a messy mane of helmet hair, no victory rolls toda. [it just wouldnt fit, no matter how much bigger on the inside she made that helmet]. She slid one leather bound leg over the side of the motorcycle and rose to her full height, made slightly higher by the extra bit of heel on her boots.

"Appropriately sociological and intro-cultural affirmation's and verbalized activation's to your individualized personages." She said casually with a wave of a leather glove before she moved to pull it free with her other hand. This freed appendage is held out to Garett, the singular new face in the group whom Patience had yet to meet, and the polite smile became a little warmer, her eyes open in interest as she took in this new factor in her existence.

"My parentologically assigned index assisted by heritological factor's is Patience Mason, this is a direct acknowledgement of your ratification and indexing as an individualized personage within the concurrent temporo-reality stream as actualized by my noospheric field." She said warmly, apparently pleased.

She then turned her gaze to Kalen with a nod, if perhaps a quizzical look upon her features as she replied. "The negatively aligned temporal framework within the active stream has been nominally utilized and existed within Kalen." She said pleasantly, before the confusion returned and she inquired. "Please extrapolate and identify the use of the laymen index for Insecta Coleoptera Lampyridae." She looks over her shoulder as if to examine her back before looking at Kalen once more. "The gluteus maximus of this biological structure has not initiated a chemical reaction with which to produce sufficient lumen's with which to attract appropriate nutrient items or replicative co-organisms."

She looks at Lena and returns that warm expression before inquiring. "Lena, this bio-physical structure continues to operate and facilitate actuality of the noospheric field within nominal ranges given for known frotean anomalies, however at this particular temporal juncture would you assist in deriving the meaning of Kalen's verbalized statement?" She asks, tilting her head back to Kalen curiously.

Kalen
And Kalen, who spends most of his time trying so very hard not to look like he care about things pays real attention to Patience.  He has to, after all.  It pulls some of his focus off of evaluating everything around them for threats, but that seems to make him calmer instead of more anxious.

His head tilts a little and he can't help but smile when Patience is so baffled by her new nickname and then she speaks in all the puzzles and it may be the best thing that has happened to him all day.  "Because you have that glow," Kalen says to Patience.  "And because I find your presence is something I'm fond of.  So you get another Name from me.  I'm sorry if it confuses you."

Garrett Franklin
"My parentologically assigned index assisted by heritological factors is Garrett Franklin.  It's a pleasure to drift into your noospheric field, Miss Mason."  This is given easily as Garrett rises to shake Patience's hand; he's considerably older than his companions, Garrett is, clearly in his 40s as he is.

"Kalen Names people - usually only people he likes.  Consider yourself fortunate, Miss Mason."  And he says it genuinely; he clearly holds the younger man in high esteem.  As he's saying this, he's adjusting chairs so Patience can join them if she so desires - it's polite and gentlemanly, as Garrett tends to be.

Lena Reilly
She was ready to answer if neither Kalen nor Garrett did, but they both contribute in a way that should give the agestuck woman a satisfactory answer.  And so she settles back down, taking out another cigarette.  She really, really shouldn't smoke but you have to allow her a few vices; so many others have been cut out throughout the years, except in special situations or emergencies.

"Oh, you only get nicknames if Kalen likes you?  Explains why I'm still Lena, I guess."  She says it with a little grin, no serious hurt behind it.  Patience's presence is like that of Sid's or Shoshannah's; it relaxes Lena.  Those three are like her version of Kalen's Garrett, basically.  She lights up and leans back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other.

Patience Mason
Kalen offers his own answer to her inquiry, and then to her delight she receives collaborative information from Garrett and Lena, which only verified the initial statement and the etherite gave out a gentle chuckle as she nodded. She watched as Garrett made space and she nodded her thanks, but turned her gaze towards the coffee shop with obvious interest.

"Such factor's and data were within the established internalized thesis. However extrapolative interrogation and collative acumen was necessary to come to a suitable conclusive reading beyond 80.531 percent." She turned bodily towards the shop then and stepped towards it, a finger raised to the door as she said.

"Allow several temporal units to pass until the re-materialization of my bio-physical structure, at this temporal juncture complex carbohydrates are a suitable nutrient derivative to augment and fuel this bio-structure." She said, stepping past them all and into the store.

[Sorry guys, lifes getting in the way and imma put Patience in limbo [starbucks] until i can come back, which hopefully wont be to horribly long. :( ]

Kalen
"I also have to know something about you.  So there is that," he says to Lena.  "Sometimes I just don't know."  It's hard to tell if that is an offer of general supplemental information or pointed supplemental information.

He nods to Patience.  "Of course."

Garrett Franklin
And there's Garrett's phone giving off the TARDIS vworp sound - he pulls it out, checks it, sighs.  "My son," he says, giving attention back to his companions just in time to give Patience a little wave as she goes in to get her drink.  "Apparently, we have no food in the house and I have to go pick up the Chinese he ordered.  "it was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Reilly - I'm sure we'll see each other again soon.  "Come over if you're hungry, Kalen.  Jacob always orders too much."

And with that, Garrett's up and heading out, giving polite nods, waves, and the like.

Lena Reilly
"Ahh," she says to Kalen, nodding a little with a faint smile.  "Well, any time you wanna quid pro quo, feel free."

It's a friendly enough statement, but a pointed one too.  If he's not going to trust them with details about his life, she's not willing to do the same.  Trust engenders trust.

Kalen
"Some other time," he says to Lena.  "And, perhaps more notably, some other place.  It was good to see you."  He rises and heads off with a small smile and a wave.

Lena Reilly
She watches Kalen head off for a moment, then smiles and shakes her head slightly.  Some other time, he says.  She rather doubts that.  She knows people with walls and she knows delaying tactics.
Still, he may surprise her.  You never know.

Kalen gone, she looks back to her laptop and flips it back open, opening up her email to look over her latest samples for remixes as sent by fellow DJs while she takes a drag of her cigarette.

Patience Mason
Patience took a while, it was easily a good fifteen minutes before she returned from her adventure into the Starbucks, and when she returns she seems slightly flustered, her lips are drawn slightly downward as she approached the table and found it to be largely empty. This admittedly surprises her, and as she approaches the table with a small coffee cup in hand she inclines her head and asks.

"What relativistic abberation in the socio-cultural allignment and dissertation actualized and imparted the departure and movation of the individuals indexed as Kalen and Garett?" She inquires, seating herself in the chair that Garett had pulled out for her and looked about curiously.

Lena Reilly
She looks up from the computer screen, chin resting on her propped-up hand, and smiles to Patience when she comes over, babbling in that way that isn't babble at all.  Lena, for whatever reason, finds herself surpremely comfortable around the other and when she asks her question there's the usual focused look as she translates in her head, gets the meaning of what Patience is saying.

She's got it figured out (like she often does) by the time the unaging Etherite finishes speaking.  "Oh, Garrett had something come up involving his kid, and Kalen..."

She sighs, looking over her shoulder as if she could spy Kalen leaving, even though he's been gone for a few minutes now.

"Kalen was being Kalen.  There is something seriously not right about that boy."

That boy, saiid the twenty-four year-old.  But Lena's lived enough for more than a couple lifetimes, and when you're on borrowed time everyone seems young.

Patience Mason
Lena was aged and wise by dint of experience, and Patience...well Patience existed within an entirely different scale of age and time. You very rarely come across the like of her, even in the community of magi as it was. Regardless of this Lena calls Kalen a boy, and Patience smiles, a gentle laugh escaping her lips as she responds in her way.

"Every individualized personage that I has ever been actualized and indexed by my noospheric field would by temporal relativistic framework be classified as a pre-pubescent youth." She held her cup in her hands for a few moments before setting it on the table and reclining in the metal chair, crossing her leather bound legs gracefully and taking in the area about them as she undid her coat, pulling on the big brass buttons to let some air in.

"Thus far I have encountered little aberrant or negatively aligned socio-noospheric defects or idiosyncrasies in the aforementioned personage, would you be willing and capable of divulging and extrapolating upon your verbal dissemination Lena?" She inquires, ever curious despite her age.

Grace Evans
[Awareness! I need a reason for Grace to appear in a Starbucks!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lena Reilly
Patience's observation that they're all old compared to her draws a bit of a grin and a chuckle, before she leans back and presses Send on an email.  The Ecstatic finds amusement there, and she nods to concede the point.

"In this life, sure.  That all gets fuzzy when we go beyond that....but I'll give you that one."

She sighs a little bit and puts the smoke back between her lips, drawing the carcinogenic smoke deep into her lungs and exhaling it through her nose as she considers Patience's question about Kalen.  There's a moment where she hesitates, like she doesn't know how much she wants to say.  There's risk in revealing things like this because it tells people about who you are, something the Ecstatic has largely avoided.  But she gives in to the question and shrugs, ashing into the tray at her table.

"I don't..."  A pause as she aborts that line of thought, and then she starts again.  "Kalen is someone who holds onto who he is very tightly.  And I'm not talking about who he was.  I don't mean stories of his past, though there's that too...I don't mind that.  But he is very, very careful about not giving a shit about anything."
She gives a light shrug, taking another drag of smoke.  "I have problems trusting people like that.  And I don't like the way he treats one of my friends, either."

Grace Evans
Grace is not here for coffee. It is a Starbucks. This kind of place sucks the soul out of you, she thinks. As Gadfly would say it, this is how they get you -- the preservatives.

And the network of coffee shops so thick there's one on every corner. How convenient. How unnerving. It's a symbol, yes? And not of the mermaid with a split tail variety, but one of hegemony. Like how that mermaid became less and less female, less and less subversive as the brand took shape to conquer the world in caffeinated capital.

No, Grace is on her bike, on her way home from somewhere else when she feels it. Lena comes through first, that rhythmic wilted something, followed by another, less familiar presence. And, well, there they were, right? The two sitting there, one she recognizes as Patience (but the name "Robot-Voice-Woman" admittedly comes to mind first) and then Lena, and it would be rude not to stop, right?

Even though this is the Coffeeshop of the Beast. Ugh.

She walks her bike up to the outdoor tables, and lays it against the wall of the building. "Hey guys! Girls! Whatever... Ah, what's up?"

Patience Mason
Patience listens to Lena's words as she pulls the lid off the top of her coffee cup and gives it a sniff, her nose wrinkles a little with each intake of air, and then in the end those full lips turn downward a little. But instead of going into the store to grab some sugar or milk, maybe some of that artificial sweetener [heaven forfend] she reaches into her pocket and pulls out what might look like an elaborate wand, made of a machined metal and furnished with lacquered wood the thing is finely crafted and about an inch thick and five inches long. She nods as Lena spoke and once again frowned slightly when Lena spoke of the way he treated someone.

"Further extrapolation would exemplify and articulate this intrinsic defect within his socio-noospheric reflection. As this individual has yet to actualize any negative data utilizing all available relativistic sensory input. His nominal demeanour has been that of the standardized status of pleasant, attentive and interested." She stated in a 'please do go on' sort of tone as she pointed the wand into the cup, placing the tip as close to the black substance as she dared.

"Activating meta-scientific apparati, please be actual." She said as she rotated a tiny silver ring near her finger, and a solid beam of light could be seen stabbing into the drink, and she made to stir it as if the wand were a stir stick.

It was at this point she looked up and nodded to Grace as she arrived, a friendly look upon her features as she stated.

"At this temporal juncture Lena is verbally disseminating fact's and data points relevent to the personage indexed as Kalen, in addition I am concurrently utilizing this device to isolate, and neutralize all undesirable and non nutrient baring deviant molecules."

[Arete]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )

Patience Mason
[Extend for funs]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 8) ( success x 1 )

Lena Reilly
Starbucks may be the Coffeeshop of the Beast, but it's still a source of caffeine.  In Lena's eyes, that makes the chain a necessary evil in the world.  After all, you can only do so many energy drinks in order to get her favored drug of choice and it offers a place to sit down and work...and the Ecstatic doesn't worry too terribly much about her mixes getting spied on by the Technocracy.

She looks up, noting Grace before she gets close due to her hyper-awareness at the moment.  The deejay gives a bright smile and waves as Grace walks her bike up.  "Hey, you.  Fancy seeing you here.  How's it going?"

She smiles a little bit when Patience explains (in her own inimitable way) what exactly is up.  The use of the Effect pings off of the Ecstatic's consciousness and she looks at the little beam of light in the cup curiously.  "Wow...interesting."  They all have their different ways of doing what they do, and Lena finds some interest in seeing how Patience works her magic.

"What Patience said," Lena says to Grace, and then stubs out her cigarette and gestures to a chair at the table.  "How about you?  Everything going well?"

She glances back at the unaging woman then and gives a light shrug.  "He's not a bad guy, I don't think.  He just...has one of those personalities that I react poorly to.  I'll get over it, he'll relax a little bit or we'll get into a shouting match that blows off a ton of steam.  I don't dislike him, I just..."

She shrugs.  "It's my issues as much as it is his, I suppose."

Grace Evans
Grace kind of does a 'woo' look at Patience's stabby light wand thingy. "Well, I would't want to be a nondesirable deviant molecule right now, I am thinking."

"Hmm, and why are we gossiping about Kalen?" she asks, swinging a chair out like she was already invited to do so. Listens, as Lena goes and talks about the guy, and then goes a bit silent. Digs a bit into the table with her fingernail. Looks over Patience's wand again, you know... not really there.

'Cause Kalen's a friend. And that's a bit uncomfortable. What to say?

"He's a bit standoffish at first, I know..."

Patience Mason
"As previously disseminated, I as an individualized personage have encountered no such negative behavioural cue's or attributes, however It is through thorough understanding of an individual through multiple test groups and data quotients that one is able to ascertain a more efficient psychological and sociological profile of the afformentioned individual." She shrugs, as if she meant nothing by it.

She finished working her magic on the coffee and tucked the wand/laser away as she took a moment to sniff the coffee once more. It was then that she smiled and picked it up, taking a careful sip of the drink as she considered the others, Grace in particular in this moment.

"What data are you able to contribute to ascertain and actualize a more thorough and effective profile?"

Lena Reilly
She looks a little apologetic at Grace when she seems uncomfortable with the topic.  The last thing she wants is to put people in a difficult position and Grace's reaction, her question and comment suggest that going further down this road of conversation will put her in that very spot.  So she shakes her hand and then smiles.

"We weren't, really.  Kalen was here and left, Patience picked up on my wierdness about him and asked about why I felt that way.  I was just explaining my own personal thoughts and reactions to him, not anything about him or anyone else."  She smiles, very faintly.  "It's fine, like I said, it's a me thing.  I have trust issues that he spikes up.  Not much more than that."

Then Patience asks Grace what she knows about Kalen that may help her form a more detailed picture, and she shakes her head.  "Probably best to change the topic.  I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable."  A sigh, and she smiles.  "What's new with you guys?"

Grace Evans
Grace glances over at Lena, and the first thing she wants to say, she doesn't. Kalen's teaching her how to shoot, and that's new, right?

"I... ah... not much I can say really," she responds in code. They're outside in public, after all. Going on about business wouldn't be right. "But you know, schoolwork. I'm definitely busy."

Patience Mason
The topic derails, it seems discussing Kalen was no longer a viable topic, and Patience sits there for a few moments finding the knowledge she had gleened to be considerably less then she had hoped. She taps a finger against the side of her coffee cup and quirks a lip contemplatively before she looks towards Lena and offers a casual shrug, a sure sign that not a whole lot was up.

"I have been utilizing available temporal units to process, plan, manufacture and maintain the Aurora." She says, a small smile creeping up onto her lips. "Projections based upon the current rate of raw materiel acquisition and the available temporal units to this individualized personage indiciate an estimated ten solar rotations before the Aurora is ready for movation beyond the immediate geographical locality of the landmass I have acquired propertiorial rights too."

She looks over at Grace then and inquires. "Have you ascertained any further forward movation within your chosen and active thesis?"

Serafi­ne
Perception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Serafi­ne
So it is eightish on a Tuesday night and that means Sera has been up for maaaaybe four or five hours.  So, noonish for her.  That means it is legal to start drinking, though she may well have started when she woke up.  A bit of whiskey mixed into her Darjeeling while she eased her way out of an acid hangover and waited for Dan to descend and cook her some French toast with that loaf of brioche Dee brought home from the bakery.  They don't get good bakery stuff on the weekends these days because Dee's always traveling right now for Derby playoffs and Derby matches and Derby things, and it is a good thing they have only been sort-of working lately, or they might actually be gigging on the weekends, instead of just spottily during the week.

--

But, eightish.  Well past twilight now though there is a glimmer of sunlight against the spread of the western mountains, visible in places where the downtown core cuts away, at intersections, in parks, giving a straight shot over the low-rise sprawl to, yeah, those fucking mountains.  Two people outside with their arms flung around each other, and they both look way cooler than you ever thought you could.  Dan's wearing skinny black denim and a t-shirt from their old band and a beanie over his blond hair and a black hoodie, unzipped, the cuffs shoved up his forearms to reveal his tattoos.  He is tall, well over six feet, and he has an arm slung over Sera's shoulders.

Sera is wearing a short red cocktail dress with spaghetti straps over black thigh-high tights that have that torn-to-pieces look because it is awesome.  Instead of spike heels, combat boots.  They have a bit of a platform, maybe two extra inches, but nowhere close to her usual magickal five or six extra inches.  They are out walking, see.  She has her arm around his waist and her hand tucked into the back pocket of his jeans and they're talking about something, sharing the intimate laughter of old friends along with a silver flask and you may think they are just passing by but,

you would be wrong.  Sera felt them all from a half-fucking-mile away.

He holds the Starbucks door open and she slips under his arm and in they come.  Headed in a pretty direct line past the counter toward the three other mages.

Lena Reilly
[[They're outside. =) ]]

Serafi­ne
(delete last line!)

Lena Reilly
The conversation tapers off without Kalen to talk about, and that just makes Lena feel a bit more uncomfortable.  She listens to the two women's responses--Grace has school, Patience has been working on that project which is rather crucially important to her.  Lena is an Ecstatic and as such has an innate sense of time; still, she has to do a little thinking to connect ten solar rotations to the right period of time.
"Oh, cool.  Is that...more or less time that you had initially thought?"

She goes a little quiet after that, letting the Etherite and Virtual Adept talk about their schooling.  It's a topic that Lena had broached in regard to herself with others before either of them had arrived; she never attended school herself, but kind of wishes she'd had the college life experience.  Outside of that, she doesn't regret not going.

And then her attention shifts as she notes Sera's presence.  As hyper-aware as the red dress-wearing Ecstatic is, the jeans/tank top/jacket-wearing one is equally so and they sense each other right away.  So she's looking down the street as Sera and the guy she's arm-in-arm with come up, already raising a hand to wave well before most would note someone recognizable.  She waits quietly for her Traditionmate to arrive, offering both her and Dan nods.

"Hey, you.  And hi."  The first to Sera, who she knows (if not closely yet), and the second to Dan who she hasn't yet met.

Grace Evans
"Ahh, it goes slowly, Patience. There's also classes to go to and homework to do, and..." Oh who is she kidding? The mental programming makes that fairly easy. One half of the brain focuses on class, the other half does homework, and she can read twice as fast now and still understand it. "Well, actually, it's not that. There is just a lot more going on."

A lot more sleeping, for one. Though that feels, to her, like sloth itself. To be honest, she's a bit down on herself for not making much progress in that particular area, and is making excuses.

"I have given some thought to what you said, but I still think it wouldn't work, for the same reason I had before. I'm a graduate student in computer science. At some point, someone would straight out ask where I managed to become a biologist of all things, and how I knew what to put in the sim, and therein lies the problem. I can't say. I cheat. That's all there is to it."

Grace does not feel Sera coming from a mile away, or even a half-mile. But she does feel the addition of that resonance, yes. That drawing, aching sensation. And it draws her gaze straight to the lady in red, even if she has to twist her head to do so.

Patience Mason
Patience listens to Grace as she explains her situation and Patience understands, at least in some manner she does. So she offers one little piece of advice. "Acquiring appropriate source data and expertise to assist in correlation of the afformentioned data would be considered standard practice for such thesis actualization would it not?"

She makes this offer in a round about way before looking up to Sera as she approaches, a warm smile upon her lips as she nods to the woman the man with her. "I must depart from this locality at this juncture, however Sera, it is with mathematical certainty that my noospheric field actualizes your concurrent and continued nominal status." She rose then, looking to Lena and Grace.

"Similar statements are at this juncture transferable and impressionable upon your personages as well." Smiles offered to each of them as she starts to put on that leather helmet of her's and offering her seat to either Sera or her fellow.

But then she's on her way, moving towards her art deco motorcycle just a few feet away.

[Sorry guys, gotta crash here thanks for the scene!]

Serafi­ne
Sera's the one with the flask in hand now.  She is halfway through the motion of capping it.  Or uncapping it.  One or the other, and it requires two hands so as the pair of them amble up to the outdoor table where the other magi have congregated, well, Dan has his arm around Sera's shoulders, and both her hands are occupied.  Sera tips the flask outward towards the other women, offering it around.

"Hey!"  to Lena, and

"Graaaaaacie," to Grace, reaching out to touch her somehow.  Ruffle her hair maybe, and

"Chica," to Patience, "you are the fucking limit."  With the bemused and ironic but deep affection of someone for the world's largest ball of string, or the monorail to nowhere, or or or -

--
She is not sober, Sera. It is more than booze.
--

"This is Dan,"  Grace and Dan have met, so the introduction is for Lena and Patience.  "He's Cool."
Then she looks up at Dan, just beaming.  Like she invented starlight, or at least the Irish car bomb.
"That.  Is the robot-talking lady."

Lena Reilly
Lena gives a smile and a little wiggle of the fingers when Sera introduces Dan, the expression friendly.  A friend of Sera's is a good start as far as she's concerned, doubly so if Grace knows them.  "Hey.  Nice to meet you."  She amiably waves off the offer of the flask and instead reaches out to tap the nearly-empty quad latte next to her laptop.

"I've already gotten semi-close to needing another one, hon.  And I try not to combine my vices," she says with a half-grin.  Says the girl who is always on caffeine and yet smokes.  "At least, not too terribly much."
She leans back, gesturing to the open seat vacated by Patience (and the one next to it).  "Join us.  How're things with you?  We don't hang out nearly enough, you know that?"  She's just naturally more at ease around members of her Tradition (not surprisingly, of course).

Grace Evans
Patience says, 'So, get help from a biologist,' or... well, you know. That's what it translates to, and Grace just can't imagine how that might work. Having to work so closely with someone, and having to skirt around certain issues, and lead and hint and goad them in the right direction? It could work. It could also be a total disaster.

Unless that biologist were also Awakened... hmm.

Just then, her thoughts are muddled by a 'Graaaaaaacie' and a hair ruffling, and suddenly Grace is sporting the oddest looking startle-smile. "Hey, it's Sera..."

Sera's having Fun, this much is obvious. The flask is declined, but this is done with that weird smile of discomfort mixed with impatience at that discomfort. It's like the smile is Grace's attempt to not be wigged out by that shuffling of hair.

"Yeah, sit with us!"

Serafi­ne
"I always combine my vices," Sera's laughter is rich and only mildly self mocking and her statement is clearly one thousand percent true.  She is combining vices as we speak and will pile vice on vice on vice until the world spins away from her like a pendulum gone mad and all she can do is hold on tight. "Don't I?"  Lifting her straight brows to Dan for confirmation.  He drops a kiss onto her brow.  The affection in that kiss is quite nearly fraternal.  "It's what makes life worth living.

"And I'm always around.  'Cept when I'm not, but," a flashing grin as she takes another pull from the flash.  " - our door's almost always open.  You're welcome pretty much anytime.

"We're on our way to a show, but we can hang a bit," when Lena offers seats, and Grace adds in an enthusiastic second.  "What the fuck is up with y'all?"

Lena Reilly
Lena smiles, basking a bit in the warmth of Sera's glow.  It's not a feeling that she exudes on her own and her vice-combining days are well-behind her, but she always finds some level of warm, almost reminiscent comfort in seeing it in other Ecstatics.  It's a window back into something she enjoyed, albeit before she actually Awakened.  Even before Lena was able to do magic, she was a born Cultist.

"Same old, same old really."  She runs a hand over her scalp, little finger and thumb scooping up her hair and straightening, flattening against her head to get it in order.  "I'm the dullest DJ of all time.  Mostly hanging out at the house on the weekdays and helping Shoshannah with stuff during the week, working on the weekends.  But dull isn't the worst thing in the world, as much as I might have said otherwise once."

"What about you?"  She tilts her head a little to the right, curiously.  "What show are you off to?"

Grace Evans
Truth be told, there are many things going on in Grace's life. Her plants, her sim, her new programming techniques, the business with the movie, the guns... None of it is light conversation. Some of it would be dangerous to overhear. Some of it she knows would be completely incomprehensible to Sera. So, she kind of waves her head back and forth, and her eyes dart around like she's trying to think of what to say.

"Oh, you know, stuff."

Yesss. Perfect. Stuff.

"Hey, are you going to that Halloween party? Shoshannah seems so excited about it. Well, for Shoshannah it's like, exciteorama."

Serafi­ne
Same old, same old, returns Lena.

Stufffff!  says Grace.

Sera has by now capped the flask and tucked it back into an inner pocket of her leather jacket.  She shoots this glance at Dan, and then looks back at the two of them.  "Jesus Christ, you need to come party with me sometime.  Stuff and Same old - "

She does not quantify her days and nights, though.  Does not really answer the what have you need up to questions because they can read that in her skin and her eyes, the blown pupils and the odor of whiskey on her breath and beyond that - well -

beyond that she just doesn't say.

Dan is the one who answers Lena's question about the show.  "Melissa Wyatt.  She's a singer songwriter.  I'm producing her EP."  See, some people in that household actually work.  "She's a great guitarist, and does some interesting things with rhythm and found-sound, without going off the deep end.  So, just trying to support a friend."

"I guess so?"  Sera to Grace, about the party.  A little dubiously, though.  " - I mean, it's at the house, right?"

The chantry she means.  "So it's just us?"

Lena Reilly
The DJ squints a moment in thought after Dan mentions the name.  "That...sounds familiar, I think."  Lena's in music, after all.  It's a completely different style of music of course, but we're talking about a local music community and since she arrived in Denver Lena's done a lot to get herself insinuated into the scene.  "One of the other deejays had mentioned her, I think.  That's awesome though.  If you and her want, I would love to do some a remix for the club.  Might help get her some visibility."

She nods a little bit to Sera when she asks if it'll be at the 'house.'  "Yeah, we're getting it all decorated up already, both for the party and in general.  It looks pretty amazing, Shoshannah's done some great work with it."

And then a grin.  "And I'm always down to party, to a degree anyway.  There are some limits on how far I can really get my party on anymore, I'm afraid.  But yeah, other than that, anytime."

Grace Evans
The others have their world, of gigs and music and partying (which is different, Grace thinks, than attending a party, exactly) and the apprentice thinks it sure is a shame that Patience had to leave so soon. So, if they're going to talk parties, Halloween is a better topic than the kind Sera means.

"That girl really goes all out with the deco. I like it, though," she says, and that's a rare compliment from her. Decoration is meaningless to her. Usually. Function before form and all that.

"I'm going to go. Don't know what I'm going to wear yet, but I have some ideas..."

Serafi­ne
"You should let me dress you up," Sera says to Grace.  "Or just come raid my fucking closet.  Jesus Christ, you should go as me that would be fucking awesome."

"I'll mention it to her," Dan says, with a quick grin and a faint shrug to Lena.  "I don't know how well suited her stuff is to nightclubs?  But what the hell.  It might work, you know?"  Then, to Sera, " - hey, we're gonna be late.  We need to get a move on."

Then Sera's standing, telling Lena that they'll get together soon, though one expects that Sera... has no limits.  In a way that is both brilliant and bloody frightening, at the self-same time.

Soon enough the duo are off down the street, waving a farewell as they go.

Lena Reilly
She grins a little at Dan's response.  "You'd be surprised what genres and sounds I can make sound good in a club."

And then Sera and Dan are taking off and she waves to them, saying she'll see them later before she looks to Grace.

"Whatever you dress up as, it'll be fine.  The point is dressing up.  Honoring the old ways and all that, even if its via the new ways."  She recognizes the irony of mentioning 'the old ways' to Grace, but does so anyway because...well, because she does.

Grace Evans
"Oh I like dressing up for Halloween," she says, a little weirded out by Sera's proclamation that she should 'go as her'. Oh wow. Uh. Priority interrupt.

"Maybe not, you know, like that..." she says, and coughs a little, like 'I didn't say that, really, I did not'.

"Oh, I don't mean it like that. Just, it works for Sera. Doesn't work for me." And there is the extremely uncomfortable Grace again. God, where is someone with whom to talk science or math or something...

Lena Reilly
She grins a little bit and shakes her head.  "Oh hon, don't even worry about it.  We can't all be Sera."  That grin evens out to something a bit more serious, reflecting.  "Hell, I can't even be Sera anymore.  But you just gotta be you, there's no fault in that."

And with that, they make some small talk until going their separate ways, to meet again!