[Nightmares, before I forget again]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Steel
[Because we need to pay for lunch. Dex+Larceny]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )
Steel
A city really is a large place. Newcomers tend to have something of an idea of where they’re headed, what they want to do, where they’re going to stay. But those people tend to have had rather more time to organise and plan. For someone who’s just hopped off the back of a train with little idea of where they were going? It takes a while to work things out.
So she had spend the day walking, learning the city. Not so much the alleys and backstreets and other parts that people with more money and sense tended to skirt around – that would come later – but more the general lay of the land. Where the tourists went. Where the wealth suits tended to loiter for sushi and mai tai’s and other pretentious shit. An idea of where one territory started and another ended.
But a girl’s got to eat at some point. Between the number of people milling around and the huge range of places to get something for not all that much money, she thinks this could be somewhere she’ll come to a lot. At least where there are lots of people around and her... well, her lack of morals when it comes to lightening other people’s pockets of cash, her days of eating out of dumpsters may have been left well behind. Never say never, though.
She picks a pho restaurant at random, sliding past a mark who looks promising. Reasonably well-dressed, not-too-tight clothing, a little distracted by his lady friend. He’s already ordered, so hopefully he won’t notice what’s missing too soon. Assuming he even noticed who he’s passed. Steel flips open the wallet at the counter and checks through quickly. Plenty. So she orders a few things that sound interesting – maybe not the cheapest, but she isn’t exactly footing the bill – and picks a table in the corner to sit at while she waits.
So there is what is probably a woman sat at a corner table. Probably, because the clothes are loose and the hood of the battered black hoodie is still pulled up. She leans back in the chair, stretching out her booted legs as she watches the world go by.
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Nope, cannot detect!]
Grace
So, Steel isn't the only one here who's rather nondescript. Grace doesn't hide her face with a hood (it's just tee shirt and jeans today, like all days) but with the way she dresses and the way her hair isn't precisely one color or one style and the way her eyes are not exactly...
Well, she isn't exact. Out of the corner of the eye, you'd have a hard time telling her gender. Only if you really paid attention would you pick up on anything else, and why pay attention to Grace? She herself doesn't look up from her phone to acknowledge the fact that someone interesting just walked into the place, because she doesn't notice.
It's hard to notice something that isn't there.
Grace already has her food, and is working through her bowl of soup (and soup condiments) with relish, rather abandoning nice rules about politeness. And yes, while she eats, she's got her phone out, and is scrolling through some internet thing or other.
Steel
[Awareness?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Steel
It’s unusual for one of their kind to go without notice, but two? Reality has a strange sense of humour at times. Not so far away from each other, two Awakened sit without the slightest awareness of what each other is. One deliberately trying to hide, the other just sliding past without notice.
Well, not exactly without notice. There’s a phone on display and it looks like a pretty new one. A trinket that could fetch a decent price, once she works out who can be trusted and who offers a good price for stolen items. Phones don’t always fetch a great price – they’re too easily turned into bricks once the owner realises – but they can be sold to some unsuspecting idiot if you talk fast enough.
She watches for a moment before she starts to scan the rest of the tables. Her mark from earlier is happily eating, completely oblivious to what had happened. She keeps the wallet tucked away in a pocket, something to be searched through for anything useful later. You never know your luck.
It’s not long before her food arrives: beef noodle soup, with a side of egg rolls and a bottle of Vietnamese beer. Steel pulls back her hood, revealing dyed black hair pulled back into a messy knot. Her face is a little marked – smudged dirt that she hasn’t yet noticed and wiped off – but currently makeup free. Shegrabs one of the rolls with her fingers and bites a lump off, not particularly about what anyone might think of her manners – or lack thereof. She washes it down with a swig of beer, which elicits a grimace. It’s not a good beer.
Grace
The Reddithive blew up today, says her phone. It's a common occurrence. Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity got hacked -- that elicits a chuckle. But what she really focuses on as she chows down on her delishus noodles is:
The Four Fundamental Subspaces of linear algebra, explained. Analyzing it, she finds a typo, and starts anonymously tapping out a response with her thumb, while noodles hang out of her mouth, partially suspended by the large plastic chopsticks in her other hand.
Multitasking, hey?
It might be a little work getting this one to part ways with her phone, is what we're saying. But the meal marches on, and eventually she's gotta get distracted, right?
Steel
So the food is ok, but the beer is crap. There hadn’t been a lot of other choices on the menu, so Steel ’s stuck with lousy booze. Ah well, you make the most of it. She shrugs her shoulders and leans back against the chair again, swirling the nearly-full bottle absent-mindedly in her hand.
Someone in the park had suggested making a wish in the fountain. Wishing might get you what you want, right? Right now, she wants some decent beer. But wishing sure as hell isn’t going to do anything to help. No, there’s always a fight to get what you want. And a fight there is.
[Matter – Straw to Gold. Matter 2. TN5, gonna take some time – no mirrorshades or other Awakened around, nobody to spot what’s going on. Right?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Steel
[And lo, there was bloody good beer.]
Grace
[Perception + Awareness = Do I Notice?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Grace
There is a prickle at the back of Grace's neck -- something devoid of flavor, but there, certainly. Someone or something has just manipulated the fabric of reality somehow, and the realization of this comes as a bit of a surprise. She doesn't put down the phone yet, but she does switch gears. Best to be prepared and all that.
Huh.
Nonchalant-like, she looks around the place.
[Manip+Subt = totally didn't just notice somebody doing magic who I can't sense...]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Steel
[Per+Alert - did somebody's body language just switch gears?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Steel
There’s a subtle shift in the room after she changes the beer into something less suited for cleaning drains into something really rather drinkable. A change in the woman with the noodles hanging out of her mouth, the one who had been so intently reading something or other on her phone. She hadn’t picked up on anything special about her – or anyone else here – or she wouldn’t have even tried that little trick. Careless, careless careless...
It was something in the way that she’d tried to be a little too nonchalant about looking around. No, she was looking for something in particular. She might not know what it was, but Steel didn’t really fancy hanging around to find out whether or not it was her. She doesn’t leave immediately – that would have been way too obvious. She does pull her hood back up, though. Clothes are so less descriptive than faces, and much more easily changed. She takes a sip of the beer and watches first, the remains of the roll disappearing under the hood.
[Man+Sub – totally not watching you]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
[Perception + Alertness = Do I notice you totally not watching? Spending WP because this is curious indeed.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
Well, she doesn't know what happened exactly, but the world hasn't ended, and Thakky hasn't been summoned back onto the material plane or whatever. That is an astonishingly good sign.
There are people here, like there are people anywhere in a large city. A man by the window eats his spring rolls. A person at the corner eats their egg roll (whereas spring rolls with peanut sauce are totally better). A bored waitress watches Vietnamese-language television behind the bar. A family is busy looking over their menus.
Nobody's chanting forgotten words or singing or waving their wand (or their dick) so it's hard to say who could be responsible. Maybe she picked up something from somebody a couple buildings away.
Huh. Weird.
She goes back to her soup. World's not ending today, and whatever changed it went without notice, so. However, she's more alert than she was, and doesn't go back to the internet cozy place where she can relax and not pay attention.
Steel
Things don’t seem quite as bad as she’d first thought. Oh, it could have been a freak occurance – something the woman had read making her unusually attentive, that good old feeling of someone walking over your grave maybe? Naah, too much of a coincidence and she’d definitely been looking for something here.
Thankfully it hadn’t been spotted. She hadn’t been spotted. She was getting fed up of riding the railroads from state to state. It was a lonely existence – occasionally there was some company for a stretch of a journey or other, other vagrants or some rich kid thinking it fun to sleep in a metal box while the train takes the strain. Not that there’s any rush to make contact, either. No, it’ll take time to work out who are good people and who are bad. And whether or not a certain organisation with a fetish for black cars and mirrored shades are operating here.
She picks at her soup a little, at least making it look like she’d tried. There is a puzzle, though. Who is this woman? A threat? Or something else?
Grace
A threat or something else, indeed? The eternal riddle.
When subtle meets subtle, this is the problem. Things are noticed, but not quite enough. If Grace knew what was going through Steel's head right now, she could sympathize. Fucking mirrorshades. As is?
She slurps up some beef like nobody's watching.
Steel
Steel drums her fingers on the table, lost in thought, until she realises that she’s doing it. She picks up the chopsticks and rearranges the food in the bowl again, picking a piece out now and again to maintain the illusion that she had any interest at all in the food.
It could be a coincidence. Stranger things have happened. Or she could be more than she appears.
One way to find out.
[Mind 2, imbuing Resonance. TN5, going slow (-1). Going to rack up some successes for subtlety.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Steel
[Extending]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Steel
[One more for luck]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (1, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Grace
[Awareness = Do I Notice?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[prob not]
Steel
You work with what you have, and you try not to be obvious about it. Two lessons that come with time and experience. She’s careful this time, with the fight. Her hands move into fists under the table and she battles. Her target, the family across the restaurant. A little girl has a stuffed toy of some sort, whatever is the season’s Must Have. Steel doesn’t really keep track of these things, or particularly care. It’s enough that it’s there.
This time she’s more cautious. This is a battle of wills, circling around each other looking for the subtle openings to take rather than a full-on assault. The cuddly toy begins to radiate an emotional resonance. Anger. Again, it’s what she has to hand. The girl turns to her brother, interest lost in the menu, and hits him round the head with the toy.
[So the poor little toy starts to resonate Anger for the scene. 1 succ for the effect, 1 for duration (scene), 5 for subtlety]
Grace
Grace doesn't sense the Work this time. She just notices the result -- the toy, its careening toward the brother in a bright stab of 'Anger'. That, she notices, frowns at -- like she could be frowning at the poor behavior of children. But no, it's not that, is it?
Okay, is that... an Awakened child?
The fuck?
All right, time to see what shit is going down. She goes back to the phone, looks to be typing something again...
[Prime 1, Corr 2 -- Wherefore art thou magick? Diff 5, -1 taking time]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Grace
[Extend -- 3 WP spent]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 4, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Grace
[Extend -- 4 WP spent]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Steel
[Awareness, WP because paying attention this time. 3 spent]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
Jesus Refrigerator Christ. Somebody is going to great and impressive lengths here. Grace can figure out that somebody did something to that toy, it is not the little girl herself, which is... relieving. But figuring out where it came from is like untangling the hugest knot. The code is obfuscated. Carefully done. Hidden.
She doesn't even manage what she's after for long, it's just the vaguest hint that it's that person with a hood...
What the shit? It can't possibly have been to set off a sibling rivalry, so...
Grace gets up, smiles, takes her phone with her, and one spring roll because food, and starts over to Steel's table. We're totally cool here, whoever you are. It's a spring roll, not a gun.
Steel
Shit!
All she was hoping for was a clue that the woman might be awakened, or even just a little sensitive to what they did. She really didn’t expect – didn’t want! – a full-blown searchlight coming from the woman to try to work out what the hell was going on.
A searchlight which seems to have narrowed in on the toy that was supposed to be a distraction, getting more and more intense until it finally followed the threads of the magic back to her. Threads which somehow tie to the bottle of beer on the table. And to something hanging over the hooded figure’s mind. Strangely tasteless threads. Curious, no?
And she’s headed this way.
Shit!
There’s no pretence with the food any more, the remains are abandoned on the table as she stands, the table rocking and the bottle falling and spilling on the floor.. Grace is between her and the exit. Steel begins to walk towards her, towards the exit, tilting her head towards the floor. All the better to try to hide what little of her anonymity she has to hang onto with this woman.
Grace
Grace puts her hands in the air, in the classic sign of 'no weapons here'. Just a spring roll that gets waved around a bit. And she steps out of the way of the woman who obviously did NOT want to be seen putting Anger into a kid's toy.
Anger, that has now spilled over into the boy, who fights his sister for the stuffed animal, and a father who is getting tired of their shit.
"What are you afraid of? Me?" Grace says, not loud or demanding -- just a question, like she's really curious, or incredulous. It might not be Grace in particular that this person flees from, after all.
"Fear is a cage..."
And in the air, that concept is manifest in Grace's winged sensation. She takes up more space than she should, wafts more of the air-conditioned breeze than she should. She roils with freedom from the cage of fear.
Steel
Steel breezes past Grace, a shadow drifting on the breeze of Grace’s wings without even pausing to look up at the woman radiating freedom. Without pausing until the question. What are you afraid of? There’s a hitch, a moment, a fraction of a second where she hesitates. Looking back later, she might consider that this wasn’t a Technocracy agent. Or, if she was, she wasn’t your typical one. A typical agent probably wouldn’t wonder why she was running. It would be obvious.
She looks back now and Grace catches part of her face. The part where it looks like shards of glass have flown up from something and caught her neck and her jawline. She speaks, the words coming with something of a transatlantic accent. Probably English to begin, but softened and altered by time spend in the US.
“There are worse things in life than cages. Don’t try to follow me.” There’s an opening of her hands, a glimpse of something drawn on her palms, and she waves at the toy. The anger there fades – it’s simply a toy again. Although how long it takes the children to settle down again is anyone’s guess.
Grace
"Done. I won't," she replies, and shakes her head. "Was just going to say hi anyway."
Fragile person, this one. Grace goes back to her soup with a shrug and a bit of disappointment in her fellow Willworker. But then, there was a time when Grace herself was so pent up and strung like a wire.
Just, it's kind of sad, isn't it? And a mystery. What's she running from? There's so much out there, so much to fear.
And why the fucking Angry Toy? Who does Angry Toy? This chick.
Fuck it, there's dinner.
Grace looks out the window of the dining establishment and thoughtfully chews on her spring roll. Some of it spills out onto her shirt, and she doesn't care.
Steel
There’s a snort, some kind of vague disbelief as Grace explains why she was walking over. There’s a wry smile, lacking any kind of happiness or amusement whatsoever. “Hi.” And then? She turns back to the door, to leave what had rapidly become a cage since Steel had discovered that she wasn’t the only Awakened in the place.
She may be a mystery, but that’s the way she likes it right now. She wouldn’t call it sad – doesn’t feel sad. But she doesn’t feel safe. She’s too new to the city, to its residents, to know what’s going on. Who can be trusted, who can’t. Who’s Tradition, who’s Technocracy, and who’s neither. To her, they’re all mysteries too. Ones that she’d feel safer uncovering from the shadows.
And isn’t it mysterious that she doesn’t seem to have a reflection in the glass of the front door as she slips through to disappear into city. It’s a big place; they’re not likely to meet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment