Grace
Grace doesn't always just hole up in her room. Sometimes, she goes to relax in the library, all befitted with its marble lion (Kalen's idea) and its giant book digitizing machine (Grace's idea). It is a place where Grace and Kalen's separate sensibilities met, and then went wild. There are physical books here, plenty of them -- and all of them accessible via a computer in the corner, too. It has indexes and is searchable, and Grace loves that part. Other people like the tactile pleasure of turning pages, or the smells -- she understands that, to a point.
So, she's relaxing in Grace-fashion, her legs hanging off the armrest of a leather couch as she lounges on her back, her Kindle propped up on her chest, and a cat threatening to insert herself between Kindle and face because human bodies are warm.
Samir
As far as houseguests go worse have existed in the history of the world but Sam was less a houseguest the last week and more a patient. Maybe he thought himself a prisoner. They haven't spoken much. What little they did speak no one would blame Grace if she felt as if she were speaking to a lunatic and not to her friend.
He isn't exactly wrapped tight on a good day anyway but Sam has warm amber-brown eyes that tend to have some measure of intelligence in them even when he is anxious. The eyes of a Mage in Quiet are faraway if they are not blank and Sam has been as faraway as a Mage can be without entering into a Mindscape. When he has been lucid he has been scared.
This has not been a fun week. She has not seen much of him since Sera came by the other night. They've passed each other by at least. He has been going to the bathroom and rummaging through the kitchen to feed himself. He has been sleeping a lot. Grace hasn't caught him trying to leave the warehouse again.
This afternoon is a beautiful one and neither of them are outside. Grace is alone with her thoughts for quite some time and then a knock sounds on the door. It's the little red dot.
Grace
"You go get the door," she says, to Pomegranate, who responds by bashing her head into the side of the Kindle. Cats -- what are they good for? Being cute. Okay, maybe that.
She twists her head around and yells at the door: "It's open!"
Grace is dressed the same today as she pretty much always is. Jeans, a faded black t-shirt with a picture of mountains on it in white, socks. Her hair is a mess that she hasn't bothered with fixing.
Samir
This is the first time he's put his own clean clothes back on since Elijah washed them. He's been running around barefoot with his hair an increasingly tangled mess in athletic pants and a t-shirt that don't belong to him since then. He's even laced up his wine-colored boots and climbed back into his jacket.
He must have found a hair tie in the bathroom somewhere. It's a good sign that he's trying to appear presentable. He's showered again and restrained his hair and now here he is opening the library door and leaning half-in.
Sheepish isn't quite the word for how he looks. Embarrassed isn't either. This wasn't his fault but he has no clear recollection of the last week other than bits and flashes. Some memory of screaming and locking himself in a room he had previously torn apart.
"Hey," he says. Voice a bit hoarse. Hovers in the doorway to try and gauge her mood before he comes barging in.
Grace
"Hey! Come in," Grace says. Pomegranate looks up to register the fact that the door is open, and proceeds to walk across Grace's chest to plop down on the floor and peek out. Is the door staying open? If so, there is territory to check on.
"You look better," Grace says, from her upside-down vantage point on the couch. "I was hoping you would, after Sera's visit."
With that, she rights herself, swinging her legs around to sit on the couch like a normal person, so they can have an actual conversation.
Samir
That cat is always trying to escape. Sam sees her land on the floor and if he had been planning on just hovering in the doorway when he knocked he abandons that plan now. Steps sideways across the threshold and pushes the door shut behind him.
Grace was hoping he would look better.
Oh. Sera was here. Sam doesn't remember that. Grace can tell from looking at Sam that he doesn't remember that. He opens his mouth to relay this to her but in the end he decides Grace wouldn't lie to him and doesn't let the question fly out into the air. Progress. A few days ago he was convinced she was brainwashed and trying to poison him.
"Yeah," he says. Tucks his hands into his pockets and leans back against the door. "I, ah..." Frown. He didn't realize he'd felt poorly when he was feeling poorly. It's as if it happened to someone else. As if he was stumbling around in a blackout this whole time. "I don't really..." The frown somehow deepens. "I went into Quiet, after what happened in the park. Didn't I."
Grace
Cats are always trying to escape, until they are trying to come back in. The closed door is an affront to their need to be everywhere. And when it closes again, Pomegranate gives him a look. A squint of the eyes, and then a devoted huffiness as she turns and walks away.
"Quiet?" Grace asks, like that much is news to her. "What's that?"
She honestly doesn't know, thus far she hasn't seen another.
Samir
"I don't..."
He hasn't shaved his face in a week and a half. Samir has a boyish countenance that looks as if it couldn't sprout so much as peach fuzz but it's coming in black and thick along his jaws. Maybe he doesn't trust himself with a razor yet or didn't want to dirty the ones he found in the bathroom. Now that he's stood in front of her he rubs the new growth on his jaw and flinches with the scritching of hair beneath his fingernails.
Alternate possibility: mirrors aren't working for him. Or he still won't look in a mirror. He's better but he isn't free.
"I mean, it happens to me sometimes, but I don't... I don't know what it is or why it happens. Someone explained it to me once, said I'm susceptible to it, but..." Sigh. "Do you know what a Marauder is?"
Grace
"I've heard of them," she says. "Very little."
She's heard of insane Mages, at least. It's partly why she wanted so much to get him off the street.
"You didn't do anything though. You haven't attacked anybody," she says, and hopes it gives him some relief.
Samir
Some relief but the fact that she has to tell him that doesn't bring him anything but chagrin. His mind is so calm that he can't even begin to feel a flicker of terror at his own divorce from reality.
"Grace..." Even tone and pain in his eyes even if he is whole in body and whole enough in mind to even have this conversation. He keeps his hands in his pockets. "I can't remember anything. I don't know what day it is..." His eyes flick around the library for emphasis. He's lucid. "Until this morning I didn't even know where I was. Whatever I have to do to keep this from happening again, I--"
A brief flicker of distraction. He's still in Quiet. He's still hallucinating. He knows they aren't real though. In a few days they'll be gone.
"I'll do it. I'm so sorry."
Grace
"Don't be sorry. You didn't do this. I heard about the thing that attacked you -- if anything needs to be sorry, it's the dipshits who made that thing," Grace says, finality to her voice.
She slips the Kindle onto the coffee table in front of her couch, and pulls one of her legs up into her lap.
"Once, I had this thing... Technocratic virus. It made me hallucinate horrible things. I relied on a lot of people to get me through that -- physically, mentally, you know. Having to do that is hard, you don't want to be a burden. I know. You just have to, until you're well enough to help them back. None of us get through life without scars. The ones who want to help you are all aware of that."
Samir
This is the part where they would hug if either of them were the sort of person to enjoy or even seek out physical contact with another person. Sam has to be stoned in order to tolerate physical contact let alone enjoy it. He gets lonely the same as anyone else does and even if he wasn't aware of it he has to know on some primordial level that Grace was with him the entire time he was shackled by madness.
He stays where he is. He does not want to hug her. He wants to go home as much as he can call home Home and rethink his life.
But he listens as he stays where he is. Listens and does not let his mind wander. Sympathy glints in his eyes. Grace has already told him about the Technocratic virus but it was through email and she was not explicit about the impact that it had on her.
Doesn't matter. Grace helped him because she wanted to.
"Okay," he says. If he sounds choked up it's because he is. He is also exhausted. If he wasn't at his best a few days ago he at least was unaware of it. "Thank you."
Grace
Her eyes crinkle back up into a smile. She is, honestly, very happy to see him being all coherent and cleaned up. "You're very welcome. It's also Sunday afternoon, the 30th."
Just so you know the time, Samir.
"You want some waffles? I got this vegan waffle mix at the store, I don't know how good it is -- but no eggs!"
Waffles without butter and whipped cream sound terrible. Maybe peanut butter? Hmm... It's a thought she chases while her eyes go wandering.
Samir
Samir frowns again. Why the fuck is she buying vegan waffle mix? Does he want to ask? He doesn't want to ask. He kind of wants to ask. He can assume. He had to have said something in the fog of his insanity to make her think he doesn't eat meat.
Then he remembers the smell. The strings of fur and skin hung from a once-woman's mouth. A shiver cuts its way up his spine and Sam stops leaning against the wall.
"Sure," he says. A faux-enthusiastic across-the-chest pump of his fist. There's a reason people mistake him for a Mad Scientist sometimes. "For science!" Heh.
Grace
There was quite a while after her bout with near-fatal illness that she didn't eat anything reminding her of skin, blood, viscera. Waffles are pretty safe, unless you use strawberry preserves.
She gets up off the couch, stretches with a yawn (and her hair is still kind of stuck in the position of 'laying on the couch').
"Waffles it is then. I've got a shitload of things to put on them. And we can have coffee, and it will be great."
Samir
"Oh, shit. You have coffee?"
Yes. He is tired. Coffee will fix just about anything though and now that he's thinking about coffee he gets to thinking about all the other illicit substances his body is screaming for that he can't remember ingesting last:
"If you give me coffee--" Does he have cigarettes? He pats his pockets. Relief. They're where he left them. "--I'm gonna want a cigarette." A beat. He pulls open the door and holds it for her to go ahead of him. "Is it seriously the thirtieth? What the fuck..."
Grace
Grace about snorts at him. "Do we have coffee. Fuck, man," she says, and goes for the door. Pomegranate is suddently interested again, having amused herself by ignoring everybody for their horribleness. She meows, a command. Out of the way. Open doors are my doors.
Grace doesn't bother with the cat's wishes, and walks through the door, sticking her tongue out at the cat once in the hallway. Pomegranate sits there, staring, and then licks her paw.
"We have like, a ridiculous amount of coffee, and a whole array of junk to put in your coffee. Kalen has found out the best French presses to use after careful trial and error. This is like, coffee Heaven."
With that, she makes her way toward the kitchen, with her promises of coffee and waffles.
"Oh, and let the cat out, or I think she'll piss in my shoes to make a point or something."
Samir
After everything Grace is done for him the least he can do is open the door so the fucking cat won't take a leak in her sandals.
Sam startles as if the request has caught him off-guard but he does pause once the other Mercurial Elite has passed over the threshold. Leaves the door ajar so the furry little shit can get out. Coffee and waffles are the best way to come back to normalcy he could think of and he didn't even think of it himself.
He won't be staying here tonight. He knows he's welcome anytime and he may very well stop by again after he's gotten back on an even keel. Though he helps cook the waffles and make the coffee and sticks around enough to get an update on what's been going on in the world eventually the desire for nicotine and solitude win out over anything else.
At the door he does not hug her. He does not even shake her hand. Sam gives Grace a nod and a ghost of a smile and then the little red dot continues on towards its apartment. Grateful and fading at once. She can't keep an eye on him forever.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Calling in backup
Grace
It's been a shitty few days. But for someone else in the place, it's been a whole lot shittier.
Grace doesn't understand Quiet. She's never been through it, never seen anyone go through it. The closest she's come has been suffering from a Technocratic virus meant to torture its victims as much as possible through hallucinatory horror. So she has sympathy when Samir takes apart his bed or spends the day cleaning furiously. She's always there with food, cutting through his bullshit to make him eat. Thinks this might have been something the monster did to him.
She couldn't really leave the office the day before yesterday. He was more out of it than usual, and somebody had to make sure he wouldn't bolt out and start wandering the streets again, muttering about that woman who tried to put government mind-control agents in his food.
Not that he'd get too far, because Grace hasn't yet shut down her monitoring program.
Yesterday, though, he wouldn't eat. Wouldn't do anything. His little red dot on her map of Denver didn't move.
Today, the dot is on the move again. And Grace is on her phone in the kitchen, calling Sera. The only time he's been halfway coherent was after she helped him get there.
Sera, your phone is ringing.
Serafíne
The creature sounds - well - sleepy when she answers. Like she was drowsing on a blanket spread out beneath the late summer sun, or maybe - just maybe - rolling over amidst the rich tangle of her fluffy white duvet and crisp sheets. This lazy, back-of-her-throat sound as her mouth more-or-less finds the right spot on her iPhone for talking. That's all luck.
"Grace. 'Sup?
Grace
"Hey, Sera. It's about Samir -- I don't know if you know him? The guy from the... a few days ago? Things aren't really improving," she says, glancing at the plate she made up with all of Samir's favorites.
"He's not eating. Or drinking. I really don't want to take him to the hospital, but eventually, you know, people get dehydrated... I don't really know what to do."
She's avoiding saying all the reasons he's giving for not eating. And of course, she doesn't want to take him to the hospital for Reasons. That's not even close to an option.
"He seemed to do better with you."
Because, you know, you have that magic touch, there, Sera.
Serafíne
"Mmmph."
Something something in the background. Music. A window rattling open, perhaps, the assertion of exterior noise, the hum of some insistent insect. The world is so alive, and beneath it this susurrant huskhuskhusk. That's the comforter, trailing along the floor behind her. Unwinding.
"Where are you?" Then: "Where's that?"
And then:
"Okay. Be there soon."
--
A half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes later, a van pulls up to a certain address in another section of town. The passenger's door opens, and rather spare young woman in a short pink sundress covered in bumble bees. Thigh-high fishnets held up by visible garters encase her legs, right down to her well-worn black combat boots. Damp curls fragrant around her shoulders, a thermos full of whiskey-spiked Darjeeling in hand, she hangs out long enough for her companion - tall, blond, beared, lanky - to park and circle the van and come up alongside her.
Together, they head toward the closest door-like thing they see.
Grace
[Awareness! Can we sense the approach of a Sera?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace lets Sera know the address -- a place West of Denver proper, on the outskirts of town.
The Warehouse sits beside the Office, a two-story building. Neither look like much from the outside, which is probably the point. A horribly faded image of a cow decorates the side of the Warehouse, which might lead one to believe that this place was attached to a dairy business at one point. It is not, anymore. For one thing, dairies don't generally have need for such thick doors, with what appear to be biometric locks.
Grace is expecting visitors, and she can feel the mesmerizing presence of Sera filtering in through all the other resonant signatures here. It doesn't take her long to appear at the door to the Office, opening it with a crunching noise.
"Hey, Sera. Dan," she says, keeps the door open for them -- but not too much. Persimmon, one of Kalen's Bengal cats is eyeing the door like it is a portal into a strange new world.
Serafíne
The door opens. There they are, the pair of them. Sera has her head tipped back - gleaming sunglasses obscure her eyes - but she is sort of looking over the frames at Dan, who has a tattooed hand on her shoulder and is laughing, or maybe smirking, just a bit at something Our Sera said.
He glances up, inhales as the door opens, and - nah. Doesn't say anything except, "Grace," which serves as a stand-in greeting for the two of them because Sera kinda waves her thermos of tea.
In through the door and they are both looking around because the place is so - well - unusual and the technological locks honestly kinda freak Sera out so good thing she doesn't really notice-notice them.
"Interesting place," Dan to Grace, as he steps in behind Sera. "Kinda feel like I'm entering the lair of a Bond villain. Or at least the movie-set of the lair of a Bond villain."
Sera, for her part, lofts one of her straight dark brows over the rim of her oversized glasses. Fixes them on Dan, briefly, then back at Grace. "Where is he?"
Samir, she means. Of course.
Samir
Yesterday the dot had no more energy than a slug. Even a slug is possessed of a sense of self-preservation. All living creatures have within them such a drive but Samir is trapped in a reality that doesn't match the reality his friends know. The other day Sam was able to claw his way back to some semblance of sanity. He isn't having wild visual hallucinations or hearing so much noise that he can't concentrate anymore but Sam doesn't know how long he's going to be like this. Quiet doesn't come with an instruction manual.
Today Sam is tired. Call it a bout of despair. His only options are to fight off the madness for a few hours and be incapable of doing so much as hauling himself out of bed for the rest of the next day or to lock himself in his room so Grace doesn't keep trying to get him to ingest whatever mind-control substance the government or the Technocracy maybe it's the Technocracy maybe it's some other entity he hasn't thought of yet but the voices are angry with him and if they can't get him to do what they want him to do one way they'll find another.
So he went with Option B.
The dot is upright and active. Thus far it hasn't moved from its place on Grace's map of Denver.
Grace
"The Bond villain's totally Kalen," Grace says, nods at him. Inside the place, it looks (and feels) more like a Hermetic's lair, with the resonance of Kalen and Elijah seeped into the pores of the wood. Kalen likes his interiors beautiful and decorated, with deep, jewel-tones on the walls, and paintings, maps, objects plenty. If Sera ever makes it to the library, she will find a rather large marble lion statue -- it is that kind of place.
"He has locked himself in his room. I'll show you," she says to Sera's question, and turns to go up the stairs.
Serafíne
So, jewel tones, paintings, rich warm woods, libraries with enormous marbles statues hidden away behind a concrete facade with a fading dancing cow, thick doors and biometric locks.
Definitely Bond villain. The vibe only deepens the further they get inside.
Dan gives Grace a quick little - something. Grin? Grimace? Something between? through the beard and falls into step behind Sera as they head up the stairs. She's being pretty quiet, keeps pace, doesn't take off the sunglasses, makes all the turns and follows all the paths.
Upstairs, the hallway: "You have a key right?" Sera, quiet. "Lock-picking's not exactly one of my skills."
Grace
Grace looks like she's just coming to think of the idea of a key. Of course, Sera needs to get in. Samir's locked the door. That all makes sense. Part of the reason why she gave Samir a room that locked in the first place was to give him a sense of security. That's going to get violated now, isn't it?
"Key. Right. I do, hold on..." she says, and darts down the hallway, slipping her finger on a fingerprint-reader, which opens the vault-like door to her own office. The Bond villain vibe does not decrease. At all.
Soon, though, she's returning with a keyring of note. There's keys to their servers, to the freeze-dried goods larder, to the gun range, to a few other offices -- and Samir's room. She holds out the right one to Sera.
"I don't think he'll want me to be the one opening that door. He's been... unhappy with me today I think."
Samir
Oh good. Voices out in the hallway. Just what a guy who's already having auditory hallucinations and delusions concerning the intentions of the person who's been providing him with shelter wants to hear in a moment like this.
The door is already locked. On their side the girls can hear a rustling and then a very near thumping. (The audience can see Sam flying up from where he'd been sitting on the floor and grabbing a computer chair and then wedging it underneath the doorknob.)
He's breathing fast. He's scared.
Grace wasn't taking I'm not hungry for an answer earlier. They must have gotten to her already. He doesn't know who's with her and he doesn't particularly want to find out either.
Serafíne
"It's really good of you to watch out for him, Grace," Dan tells her when she returns with the key, remarking on the fact that Samir might be - unhappy with her. One of his hands is on Sera's spare shoulder, beneath her damp curls. The other is on her opposite bicep. They're close.
Sera accepts the key from Grace's hand. Well, first trades-off the thermos full of whiskey-laden tea, then accepts the key. She takes this neat little breath, watching Grace or a beat, or two, or even three longer than is necessary, then exhales, long and quiet. Wry.
"Grace," she says, still-quiet, frowning a bit, thoughtful. Glances down at the keys as she turns them over in-hand, then back up. "You know that's not about you, right? Right now. Whatever he's feeling. He's unmoored right now, that's all. Don't take it to heart. I'm sure he'll thank you for everything, when he's better."
--
Doesn't say anything more, Sera. Turns over the keys.
Opens the door.
--
Tries to, anyway. It only goes so far. Gets stuck and Sera tries to push it harder and it is Dan who stops her pushing Pulls her back a bit, a gentle pressure on her spine. Bends over and kisses her on the crown of her head, murmurs something into her ear.
It's not like a closed door will keep her from doing magick. It makes it harder, though.
--
"Samir, it's Sera. I wanna help, but you need to let me in. It's harder from out here. Please open the door."
Grace
"Oh, I'm very aware that's all about his... you know," Grace says. "I think he's afraid of me is all."
She takes the thermos, steps back, gives Dan this look: a bit of exasperation, though not at anyone in particular. More, this situation. It's frustrating. The door sticks, and Grace doesn't speak anymore. She just looks up at the ceiling, like it might have some answers.
There is a thing that might have some answers, might it not? She fishes for her cell phone in her jeans pocket, pulls it out.
Samir
"Ah, fuck..."
The muffled exclamation sounds almost mournful. Like this is worse than he thought it was so much as he can claim to be thinking part of his problem is his brain is always on and it's always overthinking but if his brain were the thing misfiring right now it'd be an easy fix. It's not his brain. It's his Avatar or the cosmos or the code. Something.
A moment of silent contemplation. Shut the fuck up. Think. Where the hell am I. Are there more of them? Does it matter? It doesn't matter. How the fuck does this window--
Oh there it goes.
A latch pops.
Serafíne
Sera listens. Closes her eyes behind those glasses and breathes out something like a sigh.
"I don't think there's anything we can do, Grace. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna go."
Nudges Dan with her right shoulder and hands the keys back to Grace, then turns around and heads back down the stairs.
Grace
She looks up from her phone (still showing Samir inside his room) when Sera speaks, her eyebrows almost meeting in the middle of her forehead. "Okay. I'll keep an eye on him, I guess."
She breathes out a sigh, and looks around -- at the door, at Sera, at Dan. "Well, thanks for coming, anyway. Any time you want to come by and play laser tag, or... our library is open to anyone, so..."
But, hey, maybe now's not the time.
"Just, yeah. If anything changes, I'll let you know."
Samir
[i am so sorry grace. soak roll per rules on p. 439 in M20.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
There's no more noise from inside the room after that.
Grace's computer screen can tell her more than the closed door can. She's not looking at it now but when she does she'll see the dot is moving at a decent clip. That drop down to the ground didn't hurt him at all. Truly the universe looks out for the young and the crazy.
Serafíne
Time 3. Rewind. Difficulty: 8 -1 (focus) -1 (resonance: liminal)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Ditto. +1 (extending) -1 (quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(Again, Damnit.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Per + Empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
Stop.
They're walking away and Grace is saying something about fucking laser tag, her brows drawn together over her eyes, and outside there's more than the latch opening there is the rattle of a window in its casement and maybe the sudden drop of a body -
- no -
nothing hits the ground. No one heads downstairs. The seconds are peeling themselves backwards and apart and there is something about this that is so inherently wrong it feels like unsplitting a broken-atom, like pushing ink back into the nib of a pen. Just a wrench and shaking her hands areshaking her hands are shaking as she reaches out to take the keys from Grace's hand and Grace is saying or maybe thinking that Sera should be the one to open the door because Samir is maybe a little bit afraid of her right now and Sera is looking at the keys in her hand and gives Grace a quirky little frown, pushes the keys back into her hand.
"On second thought, he locked the door. Let's not barge in. Let's go back downstairs?"
So: noise outside. Grace's voice, others. Keys yes, but none in the lock.
Footsteps shuffling in recessional.
Dan's giving Sera a suspicious look but that might be the suggestion of restraint over the keys or something.
Grace
Time unhooks itself, starts rolling back. A few seconds go by, the other direction. Surely the universe won't miss them. Right?
For all Grace is aware, the lingering presence of Sera goes and makes her feel as though between-worlds in a sudden burst of Working that lingers -- without a trace of what actually changed -- right as she hands the keys over, trying to explain why she shouldn't be the one to open the door.
Sera's pushing the keys back on to her. Yes, let's go back downstairs. Grace didn't really want to open that door in the first place.
"Sure. There's a room with some couches down there," she says, gives Sera's shaking hands a little look. Wonders what changed her mind.
But then, she turns and walks down the hall again. Samir's sanctum of solitude won't be breached just yet.
Samir
They both know him better than they might think they do. He hasn't changed. It's the reality surrounding him that's changed. Samir is locked inside his own thin cocoon of paradox more than he can say to be locked inside that room but he is still in there somewhere.
They both know even if he has never admitted to it that Samir suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. On a bad day he doesn't like to touch things other people have touched and he doesn't want to touch other people and he'll hole up in his own apartment. They've lost track of him for weeks already because he won't reach out when he's having a bad time and it's so easy to forget about him anyway. Even on good days he seems distracted by his own thoughts.
This is a bad day. With mood swings and voices whispering in his ear.
He is sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. The window is closed. The door is locked but not barred. There are two voices out in the corridor. He breathes slow and waits until he hears footsteps retreat down the corridor. Then he crawls underneath the reassembled bed and wraps his arms around his ribs and closes his eyes.
Serafíne
Downstairs, they find the couches Grace mentioned. Sera can feel the faint jangle of broken reality behind her eyes, at the back of her skull, held off, waiting. So she closes her eyes and doesn't really think about it.
She's good that that, Sera. Not thinking about the Thing Behind Her when she wants to avoid instead of simply deny reality.
Dan sits in the corner of the couch. Sera sits beside him, sort of curls up against him. Rests her sharp little chin on his chest. Grace might offer them something to eat - that happens here sometimes, or so we hear, but if so Sera waves it off. Unscrews the lid on her thermos and takes a sip of her whiskey-laced tea.
Then gulps it down like a shot.
Does another like that.
"Tell me what that room looks like, Grace. While I Work. It'll help me imagine it."
Correspondence 2: to establish the link through which she can cast. Is this vulgar too? -1 (focus) -1 (time)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
(Extending:
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
They do pass a kitchen on their way downstairs. There is a cake on the table inside, and some cookies. They are vegan carob cookies, because Samir used "I'm a vegetarian" as an excuse not to eat once. Now, the taste of those atrocious cookies might be what's caused him to believe them to be full of mind-control goo. Carob kind of has that lingering aftertaste.
But they pass it, and Grace offers a cookie (because she wants to find somebody else who likes them other than Elijah) and gets told no. And they continue.
"Well, depending on whether he's disassembled his bed again, there *is* a bed in there. Or at least parts of one. It's a rectangular room. Like, about four hundred square feet? And the walls are green. Tile floors, with some of Kalen's Persian rugs on them, because it's all tile and he might want to go barefoot. Um... there's a window? It faces West."
There's other things too. A painting on the wall that Grace only barely recalls, and a couch (because this place sprawls with couches). There's a dresser too. But she doesn't mention those.
Instead, she goes to one of the puffed-up overstuffed chairs in the little sitting room and plops herself into it.
Samir
There was a painting on the wall. Now it's been taken down and propped canvas-side towards the wall. No damage done to it but Sam didn't want the damned thing watching him and he had to scrub the walls down anyway. That room smells much more strongly of antiseptic than it ever did before he started staying with them and that window may have been open while he was on his cleaning binge Monday but it's just as likely he did not open it.
Irrelevant. Sera can't see what Sam is doing upstairs. She can feel the low hum of his resonance for the persistence of his Quiet. Like threading a needle. He's oblivious. If he were in his right mind he would have snipped the thread so soon as he was aware of it but he is not aware of it. He's underneath the bed trying to sleep.
It's difficult. Sometimes he hears the echoes of a monstrous woman's shriek. He smells rotting meat.
He does nothing to resist Sera.
Serafíne
Dan tightens his arms around Sera's spare shoulders. Even he can feel the hum of her resonance, the en-victualled, enthralling thrill of it. A few of the hairs on his forearm stand on end. She is both here and / there because there is no here or / there there is only is. Can't see it but behind the glasses her eyes are closed. Her throat works neatly to swallow another mouthful of tea that Dan kindly helps her steer toward her lips. Not that she's drunk this quickly, no, but she started earlier and she is allowing herself to become loosed, unmoored, unmade, undone. Something very un-everything about her magick. The way she lets go of her/self the way she has neither her nor self, the way she becomes everything and nothing.
just, you know, all.
Starts humming somewhere in all this, nothing more than a hum, faint enough that it sounds meditative.
First: calm mind. Dif: 7 -1 (focus) -1 (time)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Extending: +1
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Extending again!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace has never really understood how this works. How Sera can just drink a thing or smoke a thing and the universe changes for her. I mean, if that were a thing that worked, every college student who ever filled a stairwell with the aroma of pot would be turning back the pages of Time as they did so.
But, however it works, it does. That's all Grace really needs to know.
She stays quiet as Sera does her thing. Personally, she always likes a bit of focus when she's untangling the Tapestry's strings, making them dance to her direction. She does, however, pull a leg up into the chair, her foot resting in her lap. It's comfortable, for a certain type of person...
Samir
To compare it to the sudden yearned-for cessation of a headache isn't accurate. It's close. He may very well never talk to either of the women downstairs about what it's like to live with his illness. Ignore the fact that they're the closest thing to friends he has in this city.
Well. One of them is. One of them was or could have been or almost was. Plenty of reasons for her not to be here and she is anyway. Neither of them can reach in and pluck the paradox from the room cast it outside blot it out with her own energy but getting him to sleep so he can fight this off himself is a greater help than Sam can even see right now.
He isn't blind to the world around him. When Grace found him he was. He was getting better and he's blind to the fact that he was getting better.
That itch to check everything in the room is gone. He's too tired to stay busy enough to keep himself distracted from the thoughts that let themselves in unannounced. Those stop too.
Sam exhales as if he'd been holding his breath this entire time. No one is there to see it. He's alone with his madness but it's a madness reduced to one front now. May take him a few days to come out of it enough to recognize that he wasn't actually alone. Right now he's tired and no one is trying to open the door.
He lies still a moment and when he's assured of the fact that he can move Sam rolls onto his back and climbs out from under the bed.
Serafíne
4 Grace does not understand how Sera can do what she does, and the truth is that that equation works the other way, too. Sera does not understand how magick can function within the confines of all these devices, programs, data.
But she's not thinking about any of that right now. She is / everywhere. A moment where her mouth is seamed and her eyes are closed and the humming stops.
Then something else. Sharper, more gut-wrenching than the work she has done until now. You can do this/You can make it through.
(mind 2/prime 2 - modified cult-y hope's birth, which can give 1 temp willpower. this is more like a gut-twisting affirmation of strength/life than hope, specifically. Would be more poetic but it is late and I am tired).
Dif: 6 -1 (resonance) -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Extending.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
"I think that's all I can do." Sera murmurs when she comes to / from wherever she's been, Half-sitting up, dress rucked up, hair mostly dry by now, at least on the surface. Dan helps her off him and then stands up and reaches down a hand for her and she rises, too. Gives Grace a distracted little smile and heads out with Dan. He opens the van door for her, reading a certain tension in her brow and in her body that has him paying attention to her as he circles the van, opens the driver door, climbs inside.
Waits.
Serafíne
Paradox.
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 9 )
Serafíne
Soak
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
It's been a shitty few days. But for someone else in the place, it's been a whole lot shittier.
Grace doesn't understand Quiet. She's never been through it, never seen anyone go through it. The closest she's come has been suffering from a Technocratic virus meant to torture its victims as much as possible through hallucinatory horror. So she has sympathy when Samir takes apart his bed or spends the day cleaning furiously. She's always there with food, cutting through his bullshit to make him eat. Thinks this might have been something the monster did to him.
She couldn't really leave the office the day before yesterday. He was more out of it than usual, and somebody had to make sure he wouldn't bolt out and start wandering the streets again, muttering about that woman who tried to put government mind-control agents in his food.
Not that he'd get too far, because Grace hasn't yet shut down her monitoring program.
Yesterday, though, he wouldn't eat. Wouldn't do anything. His little red dot on her map of Denver didn't move.
Today, the dot is on the move again. And Grace is on her phone in the kitchen, calling Sera. The only time he's been halfway coherent was after she helped him get there.
Sera, your phone is ringing.
Serafíne
The creature sounds - well - sleepy when she answers. Like she was drowsing on a blanket spread out beneath the late summer sun, or maybe - just maybe - rolling over amidst the rich tangle of her fluffy white duvet and crisp sheets. This lazy, back-of-her-throat sound as her mouth more-or-less finds the right spot on her iPhone for talking. That's all luck.
"Grace. 'Sup?
Grace
"Hey, Sera. It's about Samir -- I don't know if you know him? The guy from the... a few days ago? Things aren't really improving," she says, glancing at the plate she made up with all of Samir's favorites.
"He's not eating. Or drinking. I really don't want to take him to the hospital, but eventually, you know, people get dehydrated... I don't really know what to do."
She's avoiding saying all the reasons he's giving for not eating. And of course, she doesn't want to take him to the hospital for Reasons. That's not even close to an option.
"He seemed to do better with you."
Because, you know, you have that magic touch, there, Sera.
Serafíne
"Mmmph."
Something something in the background. Music. A window rattling open, perhaps, the assertion of exterior noise, the hum of some insistent insect. The world is so alive, and beneath it this susurrant huskhuskhusk. That's the comforter, trailing along the floor behind her. Unwinding.
"Where are you?" Then: "Where's that?"
And then:
"Okay. Be there soon."
--
A half-hour, maybe forty-five minutes later, a van pulls up to a certain address in another section of town. The passenger's door opens, and rather spare young woman in a short pink sundress covered in bumble bees. Thigh-high fishnets held up by visible garters encase her legs, right down to her well-worn black combat boots. Damp curls fragrant around her shoulders, a thermos full of whiskey-spiked Darjeeling in hand, she hangs out long enough for her companion - tall, blond, beared, lanky - to park and circle the van and come up alongside her.
Together, they head toward the closest door-like thing they see.
Grace
[Awareness! Can we sense the approach of a Sera?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace lets Sera know the address -- a place West of Denver proper, on the outskirts of town.
The Warehouse sits beside the Office, a two-story building. Neither look like much from the outside, which is probably the point. A horribly faded image of a cow decorates the side of the Warehouse, which might lead one to believe that this place was attached to a dairy business at one point. It is not, anymore. For one thing, dairies don't generally have need for such thick doors, with what appear to be biometric locks.
Grace is expecting visitors, and she can feel the mesmerizing presence of Sera filtering in through all the other resonant signatures here. It doesn't take her long to appear at the door to the Office, opening it with a crunching noise.
"Hey, Sera. Dan," she says, keeps the door open for them -- but not too much. Persimmon, one of Kalen's Bengal cats is eyeing the door like it is a portal into a strange new world.
Serafíne
The door opens. There they are, the pair of them. Sera has her head tipped back - gleaming sunglasses obscure her eyes - but she is sort of looking over the frames at Dan, who has a tattooed hand on her shoulder and is laughing, or maybe smirking, just a bit at something Our Sera said.
He glances up, inhales as the door opens, and - nah. Doesn't say anything except, "Grace," which serves as a stand-in greeting for the two of them because Sera kinda waves her thermos of tea.
In through the door and they are both looking around because the place is so - well - unusual and the technological locks honestly kinda freak Sera out so good thing she doesn't really notice-notice them.
"Interesting place," Dan to Grace, as he steps in behind Sera. "Kinda feel like I'm entering the lair of a Bond villain. Or at least the movie-set of the lair of a Bond villain."
Sera, for her part, lofts one of her straight dark brows over the rim of her oversized glasses. Fixes them on Dan, briefly, then back at Grace. "Where is he?"
Samir, she means. Of course.
Samir
Yesterday the dot had no more energy than a slug. Even a slug is possessed of a sense of self-preservation. All living creatures have within them such a drive but Samir is trapped in a reality that doesn't match the reality his friends know. The other day Sam was able to claw his way back to some semblance of sanity. He isn't having wild visual hallucinations or hearing so much noise that he can't concentrate anymore but Sam doesn't know how long he's going to be like this. Quiet doesn't come with an instruction manual.
Today Sam is tired. Call it a bout of despair. His only options are to fight off the madness for a few hours and be incapable of doing so much as hauling himself out of bed for the rest of the next day or to lock himself in his room so Grace doesn't keep trying to get him to ingest whatever mind-control substance the government or the Technocracy maybe it's the Technocracy maybe it's some other entity he hasn't thought of yet but the voices are angry with him and if they can't get him to do what they want him to do one way they'll find another.
So he went with Option B.
The dot is upright and active. Thus far it hasn't moved from its place on Grace's map of Denver.
Grace
"The Bond villain's totally Kalen," Grace says, nods at him. Inside the place, it looks (and feels) more like a Hermetic's lair, with the resonance of Kalen and Elijah seeped into the pores of the wood. Kalen likes his interiors beautiful and decorated, with deep, jewel-tones on the walls, and paintings, maps, objects plenty. If Sera ever makes it to the library, she will find a rather large marble lion statue -- it is that kind of place.
"He has locked himself in his room. I'll show you," she says to Sera's question, and turns to go up the stairs.
Serafíne
So, jewel tones, paintings, rich warm woods, libraries with enormous marbles statues hidden away behind a concrete facade with a fading dancing cow, thick doors and biometric locks.
Definitely Bond villain. The vibe only deepens the further they get inside.
Dan gives Grace a quick little - something. Grin? Grimace? Something between? through the beard and falls into step behind Sera as they head up the stairs. She's being pretty quiet, keeps pace, doesn't take off the sunglasses, makes all the turns and follows all the paths.
Upstairs, the hallway: "You have a key right?" Sera, quiet. "Lock-picking's not exactly one of my skills."
Grace
Grace looks like she's just coming to think of the idea of a key. Of course, Sera needs to get in. Samir's locked the door. That all makes sense. Part of the reason why she gave Samir a room that locked in the first place was to give him a sense of security. That's going to get violated now, isn't it?
"Key. Right. I do, hold on..." she says, and darts down the hallway, slipping her finger on a fingerprint-reader, which opens the vault-like door to her own office. The Bond villain vibe does not decrease. At all.
Soon, though, she's returning with a keyring of note. There's keys to their servers, to the freeze-dried goods larder, to the gun range, to a few other offices -- and Samir's room. She holds out the right one to Sera.
"I don't think he'll want me to be the one opening that door. He's been... unhappy with me today I think."
Samir
Oh good. Voices out in the hallway. Just what a guy who's already having auditory hallucinations and delusions concerning the intentions of the person who's been providing him with shelter wants to hear in a moment like this.
The door is already locked. On their side the girls can hear a rustling and then a very near thumping. (The audience can see Sam flying up from where he'd been sitting on the floor and grabbing a computer chair and then wedging it underneath the doorknob.)
He's breathing fast. He's scared.
Grace wasn't taking I'm not hungry for an answer earlier. They must have gotten to her already. He doesn't know who's with her and he doesn't particularly want to find out either.
Serafíne
"It's really good of you to watch out for him, Grace," Dan tells her when she returns with the key, remarking on the fact that Samir might be - unhappy with her. One of his hands is on Sera's spare shoulder, beneath her damp curls. The other is on her opposite bicep. They're close.
Sera accepts the key from Grace's hand. Well, first trades-off the thermos full of whiskey-laden tea, then accepts the key. She takes this neat little breath, watching Grace or a beat, or two, or even three longer than is necessary, then exhales, long and quiet. Wry.
"Grace," she says, still-quiet, frowning a bit, thoughtful. Glances down at the keys as she turns them over in-hand, then back up. "You know that's not about you, right? Right now. Whatever he's feeling. He's unmoored right now, that's all. Don't take it to heart. I'm sure he'll thank you for everything, when he's better."
--
Doesn't say anything more, Sera. Turns over the keys.
Opens the door.
--
Tries to, anyway. It only goes so far. Gets stuck and Sera tries to push it harder and it is Dan who stops her pushing Pulls her back a bit, a gentle pressure on her spine. Bends over and kisses her on the crown of her head, murmurs something into her ear.
It's not like a closed door will keep her from doing magick. It makes it harder, though.
--
"Samir, it's Sera. I wanna help, but you need to let me in. It's harder from out here. Please open the door."
Grace
"Oh, I'm very aware that's all about his... you know," Grace says. "I think he's afraid of me is all."
She takes the thermos, steps back, gives Dan this look: a bit of exasperation, though not at anyone in particular. More, this situation. It's frustrating. The door sticks, and Grace doesn't speak anymore. She just looks up at the ceiling, like it might have some answers.
There is a thing that might have some answers, might it not? She fishes for her cell phone in her jeans pocket, pulls it out.
Samir
"Ah, fuck..."
The muffled exclamation sounds almost mournful. Like this is worse than he thought it was so much as he can claim to be thinking part of his problem is his brain is always on and it's always overthinking but if his brain were the thing misfiring right now it'd be an easy fix. It's not his brain. It's his Avatar or the cosmos or the code. Something.
A moment of silent contemplation. Shut the fuck up. Think. Where the hell am I. Are there more of them? Does it matter? It doesn't matter. How the fuck does this window--
Oh there it goes.
A latch pops.
Serafíne
Sera listens. Closes her eyes behind those glasses and breathes out something like a sigh.
"I don't think there's anything we can do, Grace. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna go."
Nudges Dan with her right shoulder and hands the keys back to Grace, then turns around and heads back down the stairs.
Grace
She looks up from her phone (still showing Samir inside his room) when Sera speaks, her eyebrows almost meeting in the middle of her forehead. "Okay. I'll keep an eye on him, I guess."
She breathes out a sigh, and looks around -- at the door, at Sera, at Dan. "Well, thanks for coming, anyway. Any time you want to come by and play laser tag, or... our library is open to anyone, so..."
But, hey, maybe now's not the time.
"Just, yeah. If anything changes, I'll let you know."
Samir
[i am so sorry grace. soak roll per rules on p. 439 in M20.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
There's no more noise from inside the room after that.
Grace's computer screen can tell her more than the closed door can. She's not looking at it now but when she does she'll see the dot is moving at a decent clip. That drop down to the ground didn't hurt him at all. Truly the universe looks out for the young and the crazy.
Serafíne
Time 3. Rewind. Difficulty: 8 -1 (focus) -1 (resonance: liminal)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Ditto. +1 (extending) -1 (quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(Again, Damnit.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Per + Empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Serafíne
Stop.
They're walking away and Grace is saying something about fucking laser tag, her brows drawn together over her eyes, and outside there's more than the latch opening there is the rattle of a window in its casement and maybe the sudden drop of a body -
- no -
nothing hits the ground. No one heads downstairs. The seconds are peeling themselves backwards and apart and there is something about this that is so inherently wrong it feels like unsplitting a broken-atom, like pushing ink back into the nib of a pen. Just a wrench and shaking her hands areshaking her hands are shaking as she reaches out to take the keys from Grace's hand and Grace is saying or maybe thinking that Sera should be the one to open the door because Samir is maybe a little bit afraid of her right now and Sera is looking at the keys in her hand and gives Grace a quirky little frown, pushes the keys back into her hand.
"On second thought, he locked the door. Let's not barge in. Let's go back downstairs?"
So: noise outside. Grace's voice, others. Keys yes, but none in the lock.
Footsteps shuffling in recessional.
Dan's giving Sera a suspicious look but that might be the suggestion of restraint over the keys or something.
Grace
Time unhooks itself, starts rolling back. A few seconds go by, the other direction. Surely the universe won't miss them. Right?
For all Grace is aware, the lingering presence of Sera goes and makes her feel as though between-worlds in a sudden burst of Working that lingers -- without a trace of what actually changed -- right as she hands the keys over, trying to explain why she shouldn't be the one to open the door.
Sera's pushing the keys back on to her. Yes, let's go back downstairs. Grace didn't really want to open that door in the first place.
"Sure. There's a room with some couches down there," she says, gives Sera's shaking hands a little look. Wonders what changed her mind.
But then, she turns and walks down the hall again. Samir's sanctum of solitude won't be breached just yet.
Samir
They both know him better than they might think they do. He hasn't changed. It's the reality surrounding him that's changed. Samir is locked inside his own thin cocoon of paradox more than he can say to be locked inside that room but he is still in there somewhere.
They both know even if he has never admitted to it that Samir suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. On a bad day he doesn't like to touch things other people have touched and he doesn't want to touch other people and he'll hole up in his own apartment. They've lost track of him for weeks already because he won't reach out when he's having a bad time and it's so easy to forget about him anyway. Even on good days he seems distracted by his own thoughts.
This is a bad day. With mood swings and voices whispering in his ear.
He is sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. The window is closed. The door is locked but not barred. There are two voices out in the corridor. He breathes slow and waits until he hears footsteps retreat down the corridor. Then he crawls underneath the reassembled bed and wraps his arms around his ribs and closes his eyes.
Serafíne
Downstairs, they find the couches Grace mentioned. Sera can feel the faint jangle of broken reality behind her eyes, at the back of her skull, held off, waiting. So she closes her eyes and doesn't really think about it.
She's good that that, Sera. Not thinking about the Thing Behind Her when she wants to avoid instead of simply deny reality.
Dan sits in the corner of the couch. Sera sits beside him, sort of curls up against him. Rests her sharp little chin on his chest. Grace might offer them something to eat - that happens here sometimes, or so we hear, but if so Sera waves it off. Unscrews the lid on her thermos and takes a sip of her whiskey-laced tea.
Then gulps it down like a shot.
Does another like that.
"Tell me what that room looks like, Grace. While I Work. It'll help me imagine it."
Correspondence 2: to establish the link through which she can cast. Is this vulgar too? -1 (focus) -1 (time)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
(Extending:
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
They do pass a kitchen on their way downstairs. There is a cake on the table inside, and some cookies. They are vegan carob cookies, because Samir used "I'm a vegetarian" as an excuse not to eat once. Now, the taste of those atrocious cookies might be what's caused him to believe them to be full of mind-control goo. Carob kind of has that lingering aftertaste.
But they pass it, and Grace offers a cookie (because she wants to find somebody else who likes them other than Elijah) and gets told no. And they continue.
"Well, depending on whether he's disassembled his bed again, there *is* a bed in there. Or at least parts of one. It's a rectangular room. Like, about four hundred square feet? And the walls are green. Tile floors, with some of Kalen's Persian rugs on them, because it's all tile and he might want to go barefoot. Um... there's a window? It faces West."
There's other things too. A painting on the wall that Grace only barely recalls, and a couch (because this place sprawls with couches). There's a dresser too. But she doesn't mention those.
Instead, she goes to one of the puffed-up overstuffed chairs in the little sitting room and plops herself into it.
Samir
There was a painting on the wall. Now it's been taken down and propped canvas-side towards the wall. No damage done to it but Sam didn't want the damned thing watching him and he had to scrub the walls down anyway. That room smells much more strongly of antiseptic than it ever did before he started staying with them and that window may have been open while he was on his cleaning binge Monday but it's just as likely he did not open it.
Irrelevant. Sera can't see what Sam is doing upstairs. She can feel the low hum of his resonance for the persistence of his Quiet. Like threading a needle. He's oblivious. If he were in his right mind he would have snipped the thread so soon as he was aware of it but he is not aware of it. He's underneath the bed trying to sleep.
It's difficult. Sometimes he hears the echoes of a monstrous woman's shriek. He smells rotting meat.
He does nothing to resist Sera.
Serafíne
Dan tightens his arms around Sera's spare shoulders. Even he can feel the hum of her resonance, the en-victualled, enthralling thrill of it. A few of the hairs on his forearm stand on end. She is both here and / there because there is no here or / there there is only is. Can't see it but behind the glasses her eyes are closed. Her throat works neatly to swallow another mouthful of tea that Dan kindly helps her steer toward her lips. Not that she's drunk this quickly, no, but she started earlier and she is allowing herself to become loosed, unmoored, unmade, undone. Something very un-everything about her magick. The way she lets go of her/self the way she has neither her nor self, the way she becomes everything and nothing.
just, you know, all.
Starts humming somewhere in all this, nothing more than a hum, faint enough that it sounds meditative.
First: calm mind. Dif: 7 -1 (focus) -1 (time)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Extending: +1
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Extending again!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace has never really understood how this works. How Sera can just drink a thing or smoke a thing and the universe changes for her. I mean, if that were a thing that worked, every college student who ever filled a stairwell with the aroma of pot would be turning back the pages of Time as they did so.
But, however it works, it does. That's all Grace really needs to know.
She stays quiet as Sera does her thing. Personally, she always likes a bit of focus when she's untangling the Tapestry's strings, making them dance to her direction. She does, however, pull a leg up into the chair, her foot resting in her lap. It's comfortable, for a certain type of person...
Samir
To compare it to the sudden yearned-for cessation of a headache isn't accurate. It's close. He may very well never talk to either of the women downstairs about what it's like to live with his illness. Ignore the fact that they're the closest thing to friends he has in this city.
Well. One of them is. One of them was or could have been or almost was. Plenty of reasons for her not to be here and she is anyway. Neither of them can reach in and pluck the paradox from the room cast it outside blot it out with her own energy but getting him to sleep so he can fight this off himself is a greater help than Sam can even see right now.
He isn't blind to the world around him. When Grace found him he was. He was getting better and he's blind to the fact that he was getting better.
That itch to check everything in the room is gone. He's too tired to stay busy enough to keep himself distracted from the thoughts that let themselves in unannounced. Those stop too.
Sam exhales as if he'd been holding his breath this entire time. No one is there to see it. He's alone with his madness but it's a madness reduced to one front now. May take him a few days to come out of it enough to recognize that he wasn't actually alone. Right now he's tired and no one is trying to open the door.
He lies still a moment and when he's assured of the fact that he can move Sam rolls onto his back and climbs out from under the bed.
Serafíne
4 Grace does not understand how Sera can do what she does, and the truth is that that equation works the other way, too. Sera does not understand how magick can function within the confines of all these devices, programs, data.
But she's not thinking about any of that right now. She is / everywhere. A moment where her mouth is seamed and her eyes are closed and the humming stops.
Then something else. Sharper, more gut-wrenching than the work she has done until now. You can do this/You can make it through.
(mind 2/prime 2 - modified cult-y hope's birth, which can give 1 temp willpower. this is more like a gut-twisting affirmation of strength/life than hope, specifically. Would be more poetic but it is late and I am tired).
Dif: 6 -1 (resonance) -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Extending.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Serafíne
"I think that's all I can do." Sera murmurs when she comes to / from wherever she's been, Half-sitting up, dress rucked up, hair mostly dry by now, at least on the surface. Dan helps her off him and then stands up and reaches down a hand for her and she rises, too. Gives Grace a distracted little smile and heads out with Dan. He opens the van door for her, reading a certain tension in her brow and in her body that has him paying attention to her as he circles the van, opens the driver door, climbs inside.
Waits.
Serafíne
Paradox.
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 9 )
Serafíne
Soak
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Monday, August 24, 2015
Looking into things.
Grace
Grace puts the car in park and turns to Elijah. "Okay. You know where the thing is."
The thing. The body. What they're after. She's not going to give it an actual definition. Might make it more real.
"I don't want to get out shovels and draw attention to the place. I can scan it without digging it up," she adds, because yeah -- getting caught by some normals in the process of unearthing a hell-beast in the park probably wouldn't be a great idea.
Elijah
"Okay, so, uhhhhh… that's good? Because I figure we're gonna need more of a paddle than a shovel to go get to the body," he swallowed, flashed Grace a reassuring smile- it's not for Grace, though. He ran a hand through his hair, then unlocked the door.
"Most of it is in the lake, but part of it is under a pine tree- I can show you where that part is, but I figured it shouldn't be all in the same place."
vicissitude
Once this was a historic neighborhood with well-maintained historic buildings and ambling pathways that spoke of horse-drawn carriages and long post-prandial constitutionals. Trails wind around the park's perimeter and ponds and outdoor sports fields cluster around the indoor recreation center and in the dark one can almost ignore the decay that has taken hold of this place same as it has taken over every other place.
There's a boathouse. A launch dock. In the daylight the water tosses back the sun's rays creating a twinkling effect and the air has an oppressive feel to it. Joggers trot along the paths miserable in the pursuit of fitness and dotted along the benches are the homeless and the degenerate.
No one pays attention to the two mages sat in a parked car.
Somewhere in the distance a siren screams.
Grace
"Mmm. Maybe good," Grace says, and thinks that perhaps the next time they drain that lake to retrieve another body, they find something they didn't expect.
She pops open the door to the car, and steps out into the day. People are out walking their dogs, being normal. They don't know what the two weirdos are up to, and wouldn't even be able to guess.
"A piece of it is all I need to do some basic analysis. Let's go."
Elijah
Elijah stepped out of the car, exhaling a long and deep breath as he tried to remember which pine tree he buried the thing under. There were a lot of pine trees, this sort of thing is difficult when you had to think of something. the point was to be nondescript. Who was going to mark what tree they buried something under? It would draw suspicion.
Mostly, he remembers trying not to throw up, and failing. He had to bag things up with Kiara, when you've attacked something's very essence of being, it tends to fall apart.
"Let's get to moving, if we can avoid going over to the boathouse the better."
vicissitude
Maybe Elijah feels eyes on him. Trauma has a funny way of leaving the nerves wrung and ringing from the aftershock. Just because he feels them doesn't mean they're there.
A hacking cough rings out in welcome as the two mages step out of the car and seek to recreate the steps one took with another several nights ago. The siren whoops once twice and then falls silent.
Beyond the trees a child is crying. They cannot see where the child is and its distress is none of their concern anyway.
Whichever path Elijah chooses they will find it unobstructed.
Elijah
[Per+alert, what am I hearing?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Grace
She walks with Elijah, purpose-laden, but looking up into the sky, at the clouds, at the people, at anywhere except for where she's going. Elijah leads, she follows.
The sirens don't bother her. Sirens go off all the time.
"Just get me in the general area. I should be able to find it."
Elijah
He notices everything. Not overwhelmingly, not like he has before, but there is a moment where he can hear someone coughing, almost feels like he can hear whether or not it is a smoker's cough or if it is born of allergies. He hears some child crying in the distance, but can't quite tell if the crying is because of a lost balloon (remorseful) or a scraped knee (sharp, agonized) or simple fear (high, shrill). He knows the sound, can place the siren's pitch on a keyboard.
He walks, ambles by the tree line and it really is just that- ambling. Off to a tree that he knew he had chosen. Elijah remembered why he picked that tree, he remembered climbing that tree, falling out of it and falling on to Dan. He remembers saying a few words, like it would be right to give whatever had died a eulogy (it had eyes that were blue and sparkling with eyelashes that were thick and curled effortlessly set against a face with a flat, non-existent nose and a mouth that was too damn big.)
He stops at a tree, then exhales.
"I think this is it?"
Grace
Grace looks at the spot he specifies, and keeps right on walking. "Okay. I'm going to go find a bench."
Locations aren't a thing to her except a variable. Now that she knows where, she could scan that spot from anywhere else.
Partly, she just doesn't want to be found futzing on her phone over something's grave. Partly, she wants to find a decent place to sit down that isn't the ground.
Elijah
he follows along to a bench. Hands loose at his sides and then, off to a bench. He plops down with Grace, though he does choose, instead, to sit on the grass. He liked sitting in the grass, he liked feeling the ground. He liked the way that it had the tiniest bit of give underneath his bodyweight.
"After this," he tells her, "I need to go to where it all happened. I have to actually be somewhere to stare at the timeline."
Checks his pocketwatch, carefully winds it.
Grace
"Okay. I don't know how it works for you, but me..." she trails off and pulls out her phone, looks off in the direction of that pine tree, then back to the phone. Totally normal this.
She's only opening up the connection she has to the source code of reality and using that to determine the general aspect of the buried corpse of a thing with four arms that attacked her friends. Nothing to see here, normal people. Nothing.
With that, she opens up her special program, the one that looks like some weird cell phone game -- twisting lines, deep connections, colors that all mean something -- and starts filtering through it to find what she wants.
[Corr 2, Life 1, Entropy 1 (because we've suspected vampires) = What's buried under that pine tree? Diff 5-1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 4, 10) ( success x 3 )
vicissitude
For a given value of 'alive': the ash and bits of bone buried beneath the tree belonged to something that was once alive.
The molecular bonds holding it together no longer serve their purpose. But its essence what not unmade. It did not cease to be at all.
Hard to form a clear picture of the creature because the creature was once two young women. It was a human body warped. By what and for what purpose she cannot glean using the program she's chosen but given the information she has about what happened Grace can state with some certainty that the body's physical structure had been altered beyond recognition or repair but that on a chromosomal level it was still human.
For a given value of 'human.'
This is the spot.
Grace
The first results she gets back suggest humanity. Here's a chromosome. Another. Tightly-packed data in the stream, twisted amino acids piled upon each other. The branched fractalline crystal of life. She has to separate it out from soil bacteria, but suddenly a burst of tissue, all alike, and yet broken down. Two people with two different sets of XX chromosomes. Women, pieced together? Would explain the four arms. Wouldn't explain the how or the why or the what the fuck.
"It was made of two women," she says, under her breath. Looks at Elijah with a disgusted air about her.
Elijah
[Stamina: nope, that totally doesn't make me want to throw up!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
(what am I thinking, that's not willpower)
Elijah
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
He pales. He pales and he looks like he might just get sick for a second because all he can think about is the sound, how it made sense (screaming, screeching like two voices and there's a kid crying in the background and he still can't place how or why) the eyes and the hands folded delicately across the mismatched torso (there's a lawn mower going off in the distance and there's people jogging and he can pick out the rhythm.)
Elijah looks at his watch again, inhales slowly and deeply- the kind of breath that gets forced out again. The kind of breathing one does when you're trying to will away reality.
"How the fuck is that even possible?" he asks, stands up because he's not sure if he wants to be staring at the tree now, thinks about the kinds of things he could have done, hopes that between Samir and himself it was quick. Thinks about the way its (her, their) hand came down and cut across his neck but it felt more like something desperate. He thinks of the situation, tries to piece it together differently. "Do you know how that happened?"
Grace
"Somebody with a really amazing amount of control over living tissue? Could have been an Awakened person," she says, and hey -- could have been. How is that even possible? Lots of things are possible, Elijah. Anything, really. Even the horrific things.
She dashes away the working she had, goes back to the fuzz of lines and data, the meaningless feed of it. Starts filtering down again, looking for the lingering effects of reality manipulation upon it. She knows that Elijah and Samir tried to take 'them' apart. That's not what she's after. She's looking for what held 'them' together in the first place.
[Corr 2, Prime 1 = What magic is this? FFS? Diff 5-1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
vicissitude
This is unholy magick.
As best as she and her paradigm and the program she runs is able to tell this magick is the magick of flesh-crafting. The power of making beautiful or rendering horrendous. Of creation. Defilement.
What happened to these women seems as if it was transmitted as if by a virus. Through the blood. Yet they - it? - bit Samir and Samir has not begun to show signs of infection. If it were an infection Kiara would have known this last night when she touched his face and reunited the loose threads of his pattern.
It does not feel like any Life magick Grace has ever known anyone in their circles to use. She does not recognize a resonance and she does not recognize a source. Whoever did this though feels no more powerful than an disciple.
Grace
Grace mutters to herself: "Bloodborne virus," and then a memory triggers. Some time ago, it was a virus that made her bleed in order to spread itself. There, a frown furrows her face.
"I'm going to scan you, Elijah. Just to be sure. This looks viral," she says, and it's floundering and rather suspect. Viruses can lie dormant for long periods of time before they strike. Could be asymptomatic, but trying to spread?
Again, she fuzzes the data on her screen, points in Elijah's direction, starts looking for some evidence of the same... defilement in him.
[Life 1 = OMG NO NOT ELIJAH YOU ASSHOLES. Diff 4 - 1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
He stops, turns around. She says something looks viral and it makes him slow to a stop and just… regard Grace. She had her phone on her, pointed at him and said that this looked viral. His breath was held and he put his hands up, like he was waiting to get scanned with a metal detector.
"So, uh… true story, pretty sure this is scarier than a pregnancy test."
Grace
There is evidence of a virus. Okay, it's the cold Elijah might have had two years ago. That is not the viral information we're looking for. She quickly loses track of Elijah's living code, but that's okay. She saw enough while she was in there.
"You're clear. I don't see it in you. Whatever the fuck it is... Could be something Technocratic, even though I don't know why they'd release a thing like that in a park. Then again, I barely understand half of the fucked-up things they do as is. Could have been after the two of you specifically."
Not a great thought, that. Grace fairly well burns with a passionate distaste for the 'Crats after what they've done, after what she's seen. It's true that unleashing horror-beasts into the populace isn't their style, but they did also try to wipe out the population of Earth with a strand of genetically engineered Ebola at one time too. Nothing goes without question.
She slips her phone back into her pocket, stands. "You want to try looking at the timeline, as you said?"
Elijah
He's already walking, watch in hand and setting the time back, slowly and purposely to the time that he was supposed to meet Samir… and then winding it backwards.. .back more… back more. Five minutes, two hours, five hours. Exhales slowly and nods. Grace is seething, he looks up in time that he can catch expressions- disgust, anger, distaste. He doesn't know all the context, but he knows part of it- the Union that Elijah has encountered in the form of a dude on a forum is incredibly different than the condors who released a virus into the population.
"Well, you know, any day that I don't have a debilitating death virus," he gives a half laugh, more nervous than anything. But, it's back tot he scene of the crime, so to speak. There's going to be a bench nearby, an overhead light. Pretty little path and a nice, disheveled set of bushes that were thick enough to mostly hide an eight foot tall amalgamation of human parts.
Grace
She walks along, and anybody looking in might tell that somebody's in a bad mood. Grace hates whatever it was that did this. But, it's pretty much as she feared -- there's not much here that she can find. Just evidence that yes -- it was magic what made the monster. And it's dead now. We already knew that.
Elijah, though...
"Yeah. You're alive. Good going there."
They arrive at the bench where Samir got his head nearly taken off, and Grace questions what 'business' occurs on a park bench at night, but keeps her mouth shut about it. Whatever. Keep your secrets, Elijah.
She keeps an eye out for him, though. Ready to disarm somebody wondering about whatever odd behavior ensues with a: "Oh, he's coming down from a bad trip. Don't worry, got it handled..." She's never seen how he does this. It might involve weirdness.
Elijah
He doesn't sit down. Elijah holds his pocket watch, says something under his breath, an affirmation of intention. 'We gather here just as those who gathered at the edges of Mnemosyne- to remember."
His fingertips trace the circle on the face of the watch, an unbroken circle. Graze over the glass there and he is careful, he is cautious. He does not falter there, even though- in truth- this is the first time he's looked to the past in a manner that actually mattered. He took his steps forward, then in a metered breath he stopped. Held his hand over where he knew he wanted the effect to end.
Circle tarnished, but unbroken. All points a beginning, all points an end. He exhales, breathes, and steadies himself.
[Time 2, life1, entropy 1, prime 1, mind 1: okay, guys, see the past. All magic, all decay, all things living and having a consciousness.
diff 5 - 1 (taking the Hell outta some time]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
(we close our tags)
Grace
He's muttering while holding his pocket watch like it's extremely important. Yup, Grace smiles at some passers-by like chill -- this man is totally cool. She doesn't want to break his concentration by speaking, though. There lifts a tumult on the air as he Works, and she knows what that's like. Like being in the Zone, dead to the world.
She waits, to hear what he has to say.
vicissitude
Nobody in this park gives half a fuck what Elijah is doing. They're all staring at their smartphones or listening to music as they trot along the trails or arguing with their significant other with whom they're pushing a stroller over whether they're going to press charges against the neighbors.
The child finally stops screaming.
Elijah
He stops. He's still. It's strange, because he's still and he pins something in the distance as though he could see that thread of reality, that train of thought. He sees the world in moments, pieces that get dropped and picked up, like you're skipping through the chapters on a DVD backwards. This could have been bad. This could have been more than bad- Elijah and Samir are lucky that things didn't go from bad to dead. He could extrapolate what if later, when his mind has quieted and he has seconds to himself.
He's still, looking at something that doesn't quite seem to be there before he turns and starts headed towards East Louisiana Avenue. There were limits to how far he could see, limits to how far he could pick things up. If it didn't happen within his own backyard, Elijah could hardly keep track of it. When he stops again, he's focused. Present.
"This wasn't your mirror shaded buddies," he says, first thing that comes out of his mouth, "they came through here, three days ago, ate a homeless guy, snapped his head off- easy. Flash back over at some football field around here, two women end up-"
He stops there. Decides Grace doesn't need the details of how in that particular juncture, or rather just concludes that he doesn't want to share that little bit of cruelty just yet, "anyway, there were two men- one young and fucking gorgeous and the other was pretty average. One of them… have you ever seen something or someone that is beautiful, but… inhuman? I mean, bipedal and shit, but… something doesn't fall into the realm of natural fucking human beauty?"
He shakes his head, getting tripped up, "that one- smoothed over one of their mouths with his bare hands, like it was modeling clay. I don't think that the two guys made the whole fusion of people thing at the football field, but… but our victims were subdued and taken from there. After that, I can't see far enough to know where they went.
"That's not…" he bridges the gap and comes back to talk to grace. Low, quick, intent. "That can't be awakened magic. If it was, reality would have wiped that guy off the face of the planet, he did the initial work out in the open- the level of difficulty and the fact that it was in public means that it would have been extraordinarily difficult. It's more plausible to think we're dealing with something that isn't human."
A pause, "I can see if I can get Jenn to draw me a composite of those guys? But, you know, if one of them can mesh two people into one, I really doubt that appearance is something that is permanent for him."
Grace
Grace listens as he describes the reality of the situation. Not a virus. Not mirrorshades. Two guys at a football field, one of which has probably gone to town on his own face like it was made of putty. Well, great.
She's not having the greatest day, is Grace. It shows.
"Listen, Elijah, I know what you're thinking, right? But unless you can get something a little better than that, like where those guys live? There's not much else we can do but -- as you said -- draw up a picture, spread it around, and tell people to watch out. I can't pull anything more out of it, I mean honestly, I got 'virus' out of that. Don't think it's a virus anymore..."
People act like this whole 'looking into shit' is easy when you've got nothin'. They always look to her, like she's the information fairy. And, well, yes, sometimes she can indeed pull the magic strings and get what she needs. Not always.
Elijah
"I can..." he takes a second, listens to Grace, looks at Grace... she was the type of person who could get information, and when Grace Evans tells you it's a cold case there are two options- prove her wrong (which is really fucking difficult) or accept her wisdom (which is difficult for different reasons.)
"I can't think of a way to go about this safely. If I can get to the football field from here, that's one thing, but once it's out and about we're out of good territory. I'll hit the books, and maybe ask Henry if he has any ideas?"
Because if there is one thing he has finally learned, it's this- ask your mentor when you don't know what the Hell to do.
Grace
"Ask Henry. That sounds like a great idea," Grace says, starts walking back on the path to her car again.
At least then, he can be warned away. Or maybe Henry actually knows what the fuck that was, being a guy who's been at this whole Mageing thing for a while. Maybe he has ideas. Maybe he'll take care of this...
Grace has Samir to take care of, a guy who's still having extreme issues and refusing to eat unless she practically makes him. One thing at a time, mmkay?
"Don't do anything without asking Henry, okay. I mean it."
Elijah
"Dude, I just got the Order to kind of like me, I'm pretty sure if I do something stupid they will kick me out." And, obviously, he did not want to get kicked out, "and Henry said we were gonna go do stuff in the umbra. I want to be alive to do things in the umbra."
And, with that, he headed along to the car.
Grace puts the car in park and turns to Elijah. "Okay. You know where the thing is."
The thing. The body. What they're after. She's not going to give it an actual definition. Might make it more real.
"I don't want to get out shovels and draw attention to the place. I can scan it without digging it up," she adds, because yeah -- getting caught by some normals in the process of unearthing a hell-beast in the park probably wouldn't be a great idea.
Elijah
"Okay, so, uhhhhh… that's good? Because I figure we're gonna need more of a paddle than a shovel to go get to the body," he swallowed, flashed Grace a reassuring smile- it's not for Grace, though. He ran a hand through his hair, then unlocked the door.
"Most of it is in the lake, but part of it is under a pine tree- I can show you where that part is, but I figured it shouldn't be all in the same place."
vicissitude
Once this was a historic neighborhood with well-maintained historic buildings and ambling pathways that spoke of horse-drawn carriages and long post-prandial constitutionals. Trails wind around the park's perimeter and ponds and outdoor sports fields cluster around the indoor recreation center and in the dark one can almost ignore the decay that has taken hold of this place same as it has taken over every other place.
There's a boathouse. A launch dock. In the daylight the water tosses back the sun's rays creating a twinkling effect and the air has an oppressive feel to it. Joggers trot along the paths miserable in the pursuit of fitness and dotted along the benches are the homeless and the degenerate.
No one pays attention to the two mages sat in a parked car.
Somewhere in the distance a siren screams.
Grace
"Mmm. Maybe good," Grace says, and thinks that perhaps the next time they drain that lake to retrieve another body, they find something they didn't expect.
She pops open the door to the car, and steps out into the day. People are out walking their dogs, being normal. They don't know what the two weirdos are up to, and wouldn't even be able to guess.
"A piece of it is all I need to do some basic analysis. Let's go."
Elijah
Elijah stepped out of the car, exhaling a long and deep breath as he tried to remember which pine tree he buried the thing under. There were a lot of pine trees, this sort of thing is difficult when you had to think of something. the point was to be nondescript. Who was going to mark what tree they buried something under? It would draw suspicion.
Mostly, he remembers trying not to throw up, and failing. He had to bag things up with Kiara, when you've attacked something's very essence of being, it tends to fall apart.
"Let's get to moving, if we can avoid going over to the boathouse the better."
vicissitude
Maybe Elijah feels eyes on him. Trauma has a funny way of leaving the nerves wrung and ringing from the aftershock. Just because he feels them doesn't mean they're there.
A hacking cough rings out in welcome as the two mages step out of the car and seek to recreate the steps one took with another several nights ago. The siren whoops once twice and then falls silent.
Beyond the trees a child is crying. They cannot see where the child is and its distress is none of their concern anyway.
Whichever path Elijah chooses they will find it unobstructed.
Elijah
[Per+alert, what am I hearing?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Grace
She walks with Elijah, purpose-laden, but looking up into the sky, at the clouds, at the people, at anywhere except for where she's going. Elijah leads, she follows.
The sirens don't bother her. Sirens go off all the time.
"Just get me in the general area. I should be able to find it."
Elijah
He notices everything. Not overwhelmingly, not like he has before, but there is a moment where he can hear someone coughing, almost feels like he can hear whether or not it is a smoker's cough or if it is born of allergies. He hears some child crying in the distance, but can't quite tell if the crying is because of a lost balloon (remorseful) or a scraped knee (sharp, agonized) or simple fear (high, shrill). He knows the sound, can place the siren's pitch on a keyboard.
He walks, ambles by the tree line and it really is just that- ambling. Off to a tree that he knew he had chosen. Elijah remembered why he picked that tree, he remembered climbing that tree, falling out of it and falling on to Dan. He remembers saying a few words, like it would be right to give whatever had died a eulogy (it had eyes that were blue and sparkling with eyelashes that were thick and curled effortlessly set against a face with a flat, non-existent nose and a mouth that was too damn big.)
He stops at a tree, then exhales.
"I think this is it?"
Grace
Grace looks at the spot he specifies, and keeps right on walking. "Okay. I'm going to go find a bench."
Locations aren't a thing to her except a variable. Now that she knows where, she could scan that spot from anywhere else.
Partly, she just doesn't want to be found futzing on her phone over something's grave. Partly, she wants to find a decent place to sit down that isn't the ground.
Elijah
he follows along to a bench. Hands loose at his sides and then, off to a bench. He plops down with Grace, though he does choose, instead, to sit on the grass. He liked sitting in the grass, he liked feeling the ground. He liked the way that it had the tiniest bit of give underneath his bodyweight.
"After this," he tells her, "I need to go to where it all happened. I have to actually be somewhere to stare at the timeline."
Checks his pocketwatch, carefully winds it.
Grace
"Okay. I don't know how it works for you, but me..." she trails off and pulls out her phone, looks off in the direction of that pine tree, then back to the phone. Totally normal this.
She's only opening up the connection she has to the source code of reality and using that to determine the general aspect of the buried corpse of a thing with four arms that attacked her friends. Nothing to see here, normal people. Nothing.
With that, she opens up her special program, the one that looks like some weird cell phone game -- twisting lines, deep connections, colors that all mean something -- and starts filtering through it to find what she wants.
[Corr 2, Life 1, Entropy 1 (because we've suspected vampires) = What's buried under that pine tree? Diff 5-1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 4, 10) ( success x 3 )
vicissitude
For a given value of 'alive': the ash and bits of bone buried beneath the tree belonged to something that was once alive.
The molecular bonds holding it together no longer serve their purpose. But its essence what not unmade. It did not cease to be at all.
Hard to form a clear picture of the creature because the creature was once two young women. It was a human body warped. By what and for what purpose she cannot glean using the program she's chosen but given the information she has about what happened Grace can state with some certainty that the body's physical structure had been altered beyond recognition or repair but that on a chromosomal level it was still human.
For a given value of 'human.'
This is the spot.
Grace
The first results she gets back suggest humanity. Here's a chromosome. Another. Tightly-packed data in the stream, twisted amino acids piled upon each other. The branched fractalline crystal of life. She has to separate it out from soil bacteria, but suddenly a burst of tissue, all alike, and yet broken down. Two people with two different sets of XX chromosomes. Women, pieced together? Would explain the four arms. Wouldn't explain the how or the why or the what the fuck.
"It was made of two women," she says, under her breath. Looks at Elijah with a disgusted air about her.
Elijah
[Stamina: nope, that totally doesn't make me want to throw up!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
(what am I thinking, that's not willpower)
Elijah
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
He pales. He pales and he looks like he might just get sick for a second because all he can think about is the sound, how it made sense (screaming, screeching like two voices and there's a kid crying in the background and he still can't place how or why) the eyes and the hands folded delicately across the mismatched torso (there's a lawn mower going off in the distance and there's people jogging and he can pick out the rhythm.)
Elijah looks at his watch again, inhales slowly and deeply- the kind of breath that gets forced out again. The kind of breathing one does when you're trying to will away reality.
"How the fuck is that even possible?" he asks, stands up because he's not sure if he wants to be staring at the tree now, thinks about the kinds of things he could have done, hopes that between Samir and himself it was quick. Thinks about the way its (her, their) hand came down and cut across his neck but it felt more like something desperate. He thinks of the situation, tries to piece it together differently. "Do you know how that happened?"
Grace
"Somebody with a really amazing amount of control over living tissue? Could have been an Awakened person," she says, and hey -- could have been. How is that even possible? Lots of things are possible, Elijah. Anything, really. Even the horrific things.
She dashes away the working she had, goes back to the fuzz of lines and data, the meaningless feed of it. Starts filtering down again, looking for the lingering effects of reality manipulation upon it. She knows that Elijah and Samir tried to take 'them' apart. That's not what she's after. She's looking for what held 'them' together in the first place.
[Corr 2, Prime 1 = What magic is this? FFS? Diff 5-1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
vicissitude
This is unholy magick.
As best as she and her paradigm and the program she runs is able to tell this magick is the magick of flesh-crafting. The power of making beautiful or rendering horrendous. Of creation. Defilement.
What happened to these women seems as if it was transmitted as if by a virus. Through the blood. Yet they - it? - bit Samir and Samir has not begun to show signs of infection. If it were an infection Kiara would have known this last night when she touched his face and reunited the loose threads of his pattern.
It does not feel like any Life magick Grace has ever known anyone in their circles to use. She does not recognize a resonance and she does not recognize a source. Whoever did this though feels no more powerful than an disciple.
Grace
Grace mutters to herself: "Bloodborne virus," and then a memory triggers. Some time ago, it was a virus that made her bleed in order to spread itself. There, a frown furrows her face.
"I'm going to scan you, Elijah. Just to be sure. This looks viral," she says, and it's floundering and rather suspect. Viruses can lie dormant for long periods of time before they strike. Could be asymptomatic, but trying to spread?
Again, she fuzzes the data on her screen, points in Elijah's direction, starts looking for some evidence of the same... defilement in him.
[Life 1 = OMG NO NOT ELIJAH YOU ASSHOLES. Diff 4 - 1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
He stops, turns around. She says something looks viral and it makes him slow to a stop and just… regard Grace. She had her phone on her, pointed at him and said that this looked viral. His breath was held and he put his hands up, like he was waiting to get scanned with a metal detector.
"So, uh… true story, pretty sure this is scarier than a pregnancy test."
Grace
There is evidence of a virus. Okay, it's the cold Elijah might have had two years ago. That is not the viral information we're looking for. She quickly loses track of Elijah's living code, but that's okay. She saw enough while she was in there.
"You're clear. I don't see it in you. Whatever the fuck it is... Could be something Technocratic, even though I don't know why they'd release a thing like that in a park. Then again, I barely understand half of the fucked-up things they do as is. Could have been after the two of you specifically."
Not a great thought, that. Grace fairly well burns with a passionate distaste for the 'Crats after what they've done, after what she's seen. It's true that unleashing horror-beasts into the populace isn't their style, but they did also try to wipe out the population of Earth with a strand of genetically engineered Ebola at one time too. Nothing goes without question.
She slips her phone back into her pocket, stands. "You want to try looking at the timeline, as you said?"
Elijah
He's already walking, watch in hand and setting the time back, slowly and purposely to the time that he was supposed to meet Samir… and then winding it backwards.. .back more… back more. Five minutes, two hours, five hours. Exhales slowly and nods. Grace is seething, he looks up in time that he can catch expressions- disgust, anger, distaste. He doesn't know all the context, but he knows part of it- the Union that Elijah has encountered in the form of a dude on a forum is incredibly different than the condors who released a virus into the population.
"Well, you know, any day that I don't have a debilitating death virus," he gives a half laugh, more nervous than anything. But, it's back tot he scene of the crime, so to speak. There's going to be a bench nearby, an overhead light. Pretty little path and a nice, disheveled set of bushes that were thick enough to mostly hide an eight foot tall amalgamation of human parts.
Grace
She walks along, and anybody looking in might tell that somebody's in a bad mood. Grace hates whatever it was that did this. But, it's pretty much as she feared -- there's not much here that she can find. Just evidence that yes -- it was magic what made the monster. And it's dead now. We already knew that.
Elijah, though...
"Yeah. You're alive. Good going there."
They arrive at the bench where Samir got his head nearly taken off, and Grace questions what 'business' occurs on a park bench at night, but keeps her mouth shut about it. Whatever. Keep your secrets, Elijah.
She keeps an eye out for him, though. Ready to disarm somebody wondering about whatever odd behavior ensues with a: "Oh, he's coming down from a bad trip. Don't worry, got it handled..." She's never seen how he does this. It might involve weirdness.
Elijah
He doesn't sit down. Elijah holds his pocket watch, says something under his breath, an affirmation of intention. 'We gather here just as those who gathered at the edges of Mnemosyne- to remember."
His fingertips trace the circle on the face of the watch, an unbroken circle. Graze over the glass there and he is careful, he is cautious. He does not falter there, even though- in truth- this is the first time he's looked to the past in a manner that actually mattered. He took his steps forward, then in a metered breath he stopped. Held his hand over where he knew he wanted the effect to end.
Circle tarnished, but unbroken. All points a beginning, all points an end. He exhales, breathes, and steadies himself.
[Time 2, life1, entropy 1, prime 1, mind 1: okay, guys, see the past. All magic, all decay, all things living and having a consciousness.
diff 5 - 1 (taking the Hell outta some time]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
(we close our tags)
Grace
He's muttering while holding his pocket watch like it's extremely important. Yup, Grace smiles at some passers-by like chill -- this man is totally cool. She doesn't want to break his concentration by speaking, though. There lifts a tumult on the air as he Works, and she knows what that's like. Like being in the Zone, dead to the world.
She waits, to hear what he has to say.
vicissitude
Nobody in this park gives half a fuck what Elijah is doing. They're all staring at their smartphones or listening to music as they trot along the trails or arguing with their significant other with whom they're pushing a stroller over whether they're going to press charges against the neighbors.
The child finally stops screaming.
Elijah
He stops. He's still. It's strange, because he's still and he pins something in the distance as though he could see that thread of reality, that train of thought. He sees the world in moments, pieces that get dropped and picked up, like you're skipping through the chapters on a DVD backwards. This could have been bad. This could have been more than bad- Elijah and Samir are lucky that things didn't go from bad to dead. He could extrapolate what if later, when his mind has quieted and he has seconds to himself.
He's still, looking at something that doesn't quite seem to be there before he turns and starts headed towards East Louisiana Avenue. There were limits to how far he could see, limits to how far he could pick things up. If it didn't happen within his own backyard, Elijah could hardly keep track of it. When he stops again, he's focused. Present.
"This wasn't your mirror shaded buddies," he says, first thing that comes out of his mouth, "they came through here, three days ago, ate a homeless guy, snapped his head off- easy. Flash back over at some football field around here, two women end up-"
He stops there. Decides Grace doesn't need the details of how in that particular juncture, or rather just concludes that he doesn't want to share that little bit of cruelty just yet, "anyway, there were two men- one young and fucking gorgeous and the other was pretty average. One of them… have you ever seen something or someone that is beautiful, but… inhuman? I mean, bipedal and shit, but… something doesn't fall into the realm of natural fucking human beauty?"
He shakes his head, getting tripped up, "that one- smoothed over one of their mouths with his bare hands, like it was modeling clay. I don't think that the two guys made the whole fusion of people thing at the football field, but… but our victims were subdued and taken from there. After that, I can't see far enough to know where they went.
"That's not…" he bridges the gap and comes back to talk to grace. Low, quick, intent. "That can't be awakened magic. If it was, reality would have wiped that guy off the face of the planet, he did the initial work out in the open- the level of difficulty and the fact that it was in public means that it would have been extraordinarily difficult. It's more plausible to think we're dealing with something that isn't human."
A pause, "I can see if I can get Jenn to draw me a composite of those guys? But, you know, if one of them can mesh two people into one, I really doubt that appearance is something that is permanent for him."
Grace
Grace listens as he describes the reality of the situation. Not a virus. Not mirrorshades. Two guys at a football field, one of which has probably gone to town on his own face like it was made of putty. Well, great.
She's not having the greatest day, is Grace. It shows.
"Listen, Elijah, I know what you're thinking, right? But unless you can get something a little better than that, like where those guys live? There's not much else we can do but -- as you said -- draw up a picture, spread it around, and tell people to watch out. I can't pull anything more out of it, I mean honestly, I got 'virus' out of that. Don't think it's a virus anymore..."
People act like this whole 'looking into shit' is easy when you've got nothin'. They always look to her, like she's the information fairy. And, well, yes, sometimes she can indeed pull the magic strings and get what she needs. Not always.
Elijah
"I can..." he takes a second, listens to Grace, looks at Grace... she was the type of person who could get information, and when Grace Evans tells you it's a cold case there are two options- prove her wrong (which is really fucking difficult) or accept her wisdom (which is difficult for different reasons.)
"I can't think of a way to go about this safely. If I can get to the football field from here, that's one thing, but once it's out and about we're out of good territory. I'll hit the books, and maybe ask Henry if he has any ideas?"
Because if there is one thing he has finally learned, it's this- ask your mentor when you don't know what the Hell to do.
Grace
"Ask Henry. That sounds like a great idea," Grace says, starts walking back on the path to her car again.
At least then, he can be warned away. Or maybe Henry actually knows what the fuck that was, being a guy who's been at this whole Mageing thing for a while. Maybe he has ideas. Maybe he'll take care of this...
Grace has Samir to take care of, a guy who's still having extreme issues and refusing to eat unless she practically makes him. One thing at a time, mmkay?
"Don't do anything without asking Henry, okay. I mean it."
Elijah
"Dude, I just got the Order to kind of like me, I'm pretty sure if I do something stupid they will kick me out." And, obviously, he did not want to get kicked out, "and Henry said we were gonna go do stuff in the umbra. I want to be alive to do things in the umbra."
And, with that, he headed along to the car.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Showering. It's a thing.
Samir
Dynamic Resonance vs. Perc + Awareness, GO.
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Samir
[Fuck yeah he knows this shit ain't real! That drops him down to Paradox 6 and WP 1.]
Elijah
[songs!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
His apartment had people in it. At first, he had been pretty okay with the fact that a friend from Louisiana was going to live with him- temporarily, of course. He usually split his time pretty evenly between his apartment and his room in the warehouse, though now the warehouse had actually become his own little fortress of solitude, or at least as much solitude as Elijah could stand.
Besides, there were books here. He had yet to develop the habit of falling asleep on one of Henry's couches after doing whatever it was that Henry had him doing in the first place. Though, admittedly, he did know where the nearest IHOP was on the route. Drank a lot of crappy coffee and then obsessively brushed his teeth because he drank that much coffee and he was pretty intent on keeping up with oral hygiene. Elijah was the kind of person that the dentist didn't chastise for not flossing enough. We digress.
But, there he was, passing from the kitchen to the space where there were offices and bedrooms and bedrooms that were used as offices and offices that were used as bedrooms. The place still felt a little like (okay, a lot like) Kalen. They hadn't had much overlap, but we digress. Clothing was comfortable- sweatpants and a tee shirt. He'd borrowed the pants from some one night stand since he couldn't actually find his pants in the morning. The tee shirt was his. He had a necklace on with a little sun charm on it, tied on too tight and he was just waiting for it to call off at this point because even Jenn couldn't get the knot undone.
"Ohhhhh won't you take me home tonight? Ohhhhhhh down besiiiiiide that something liiiiight?"
Elijah
There was a pitstop to be had, though. He could make his run to the room, consider putting on decent pants, and be done with the day. He could stare at the ceiling for all anyone cared. Hell, he could actually be a good student and study for something that wasn't a harp recital (harp was coming on Wednesday. Piano was still int he works, but he didn't actually know how he was going to get a piano to fit in either of his living spaces, and he wasn't going to get a keyboard because fuck keyboards.)
He stopped, though, remembering that he wasn't alone and that their houseguest (patient?) probably didn't want to hear Elijah fumble through Fat Bottomed Girls. He scales back to humming, makes a turn, and finds himself at a door. Knocks three times, because he always knocks, even if he was going to barge in.
He doesn't barge in, though. That's self-restraint.
knock knock knock
"Hey man, do you want anything to eat?"
Samir
Whatever happened last night is nothing to which Sam could attest with any degree of certainty. For all he knows he teleported from the massage parlor to the office. For all he knows he isn't even at the office. This could be someone's dungeon for all he knows. Made up to look like a guest room.
He hasn't come out since last night. Sat at the table with Grace and ate his food with as much enthusiasm as one can muster when all one wants to do is crawl into bed and enjoy oblivion for a few hours. It was good fucking tofu though. Maybe he'd said something to that effect. Even in the depths of his madness he would like to try to give some indication that he is present in whatever capacity he can say to be present.
So Elijah startles the shit out of him and he lets out an undignified shout and something crashes into something else and something else drops to the floor behind the closed door. Shit happens sometimes.
"No!" Sam says in that overshot friendly tone that doesn't do anything but announce that he's lying. "No, I'm good! I ate..." He doesn't remember when. "I ate already! Thank you!"
He does not say Go away! but that's the implication.
Grace
Grace went on a mission this morning. First, she made sure that Samir was sleeping, and then went on a circuit of town, picking up all the things she'd need to host a vegetarian for however long. There is a vegan cake (carrot cake gone very carrot) in the kitchen, along with a pack of cookies. But more substantial than that is the samosas with tamarind sauce, eggplant curry, spinach curry, some more of that lemongrass tofu (because he liked it). There's soy and almond milk in the fridge.
Whenever Samir gets hungry, he'll have food, and choices of it. There's enough for everybody, really.
Grace comes padding down the hallway from the kitchen, wearing socks on her feet (and of course, jeans and a black tee shirt, because she cares about scaring people) carrying a 'chocolate' cookie in hand. It's really carob. But hey, vegan right?
No, I'm good! I ate...
"Yeah, you ate yesterday! You can eat today too, it's almost magical that way! I bought cookies!"
Elijah
"Wait, you bought cookies?" he turns around and looks at Grace. And her cookie, then up to Grace's face. He took a step away from the door, hearing the crash of things that he didn't quite know what fell down but given the the tone of his voice, and given that Elijah is a hormonal young man in his early twenties, there are things that he presumes (incorrectly.)
"Hey, uhhhh, I'll give you, like, ten minutes or something," he backs away from the door and whispers to Grace, "I think he's having personal time."
Samir
After three almost four days of this Sam has himself pretty well and assured that he can distinguish between the things that are not actually happening and the things that are.
So Grace doing a pretty spot-on impression of his mother back in 2002 is something he can file away under Unsettling; Very Real.
A pause while the two whisper outside the door and then Sam cracks the thing slow. He was not jerking off in there. He's still wearing the same shit he had on yesterday to include his boots. What he was doing was dismantling the bed for fuck knows what reason. Looking for insect nests or dusting the baseboards or whatever it is obsessive-compulsive young men do when Quiet is kicking their ass.
At first he just stares past them to make sure they're alone. Then he takes a deep breath and opens the door open all the way. An invitation or a demonstration. He doesn't have the glassy-eyed harried look that he did last night. Improvement maybe.
"What?" he asks Elijah like he almost caught what he was saying. Might have heard something else. Might know exactly what he was saying and be mildly offended. Never mind. Mild confusion takes the place of paranoia. He's still addressing the other young man: "Oh. Shit. Hi."
He doesn't remember Elijah's name and he doesn't remember whether he should or shouldn't remember and he isn't entirely sure he remembers what they were doing when his brain exploded either. Fuck.
Grace
Grace ambles by and hands Samir the other cookie she was holding. It's not the best cookie ever. It's what vegans use to approximate a cookie. But there is no excuse for Samir not to take it this time.
"Good morning," she says, and looks into the room, notes the disassembled bed. Huh. It doesn't really shock or surprise.
"If you want to shower, I'll bet Elijah would wash your clothes."
Wouldn't you, Elijah?
Elijah
Elijah Poirot learned several important things during his apprenticeship with Kalen about the structure of the Order of Hermes.
Specifically, there was protocol and rank and you could get your underlings to occasionally do things for you because you are that badass and you said so and this is was the way of things. Somehow, he also managed to get that certain things the Order did influenced large parts of awakened society. Which meant this: when someone told him he was going to do laundry, he didn't bitch about it anymore. Grace might not have pulled rank, but laundry had to get done and he wasn't going to whine about it being unfair or whatever because there was a dude standing there who could probably stand to have Samir just chill in crappy dirty clothes.
"I could loan you a shirt, too? And maybe pants, because I don't think you got a change of clothes there," he told Samir. "I am halfway decent at getting blood stains out-" crap don't say that "-and red wine stains. But not mustard. Fuck mustard, that shit can go die in a fire for all the damages it does."
Samir
"Ah..."
He glances down and he can't see the dried blood that's gone to flakes on the side of his neck but now that they've reminded him that he's a wandering filth beast showering does sound like an excellent idea. He's never been in the bathroom in this place. It's probably filthy.
"Yeah... where's the..." A glance back at the room and he debates picking up that mess before he goes and tackles a new one. Fuck. Sam takes a bite out of the cookie Grace gave him. Frowns. What the fuck did he just put in his mouth. He chews and swallows whatever it is. "Where's the bathroom?"
Grace
"Oh, that's nice of you, Elijah," she says, gives him a big smile, like hey -- he's doing all right at this.
"There's a shower downstairs. I'll show you," she says, and starts down the hallway, looking at the walls as she goes, amused at the pattern the textured wall makes when it's moving. Who's the crazy one?
She takes another bite of cookie, and disappears down the stairwell.
Elijah
[per+alert: What size are you, Samir?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Elijah
[I take stairs gracefully!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
Then comes the awkward part, the part where Elijah is standing there and it dawns on him that he's going to actually need Samirs clothes to wash them and he didn't seem like the type to walk around the office naked. Now, grant you, Samir is a handsome man. Samir has also had a break from what is traditionally considered reality so Elijah would rather not see him walking around naked because in his mind it somehow effects his agency as a person. He's not cognitively sound enough to go you know, I think I'll walk around naked. As such, it was not an experience that other people could enjoy.
Plus it might weird Grace out. Which was also not a good plan. He gives the dude a quick look over, tries to gauge what size he is and concludes that the guy- who just disassembled a bed- probably also would not like to borrow another dude's boxer briefs. He nods, then heads off to his room, leaves the door open- bed made save for the blanket that is thrown haphazardly on top of the comforter- he doesn't sleep under the sheets unless he absolutely has to- and alarm clock flashing 3:27 because he turned off the strip outlet at some point during the day. (precisely three hours and twenty seven minutes ago, actually). It's off to a chest of drawers where he retrieves athletic pants and a black tee shirt.
It's soft, at the very least, and he then half jogs to catch back up with those headed down the stairs… which he almost falls down because he takes two at a time and then accidentally three at once because he jumped and half teetered.
"Grace, do we have- wait," a pause, "dude person, do you have an allergy to fabric softener?"
Samir
So he trails behind Grace eating this carob-whatever cookie and wondering what fresh hell awaits him in the bathroom. She may very well have shown him where it is already but he'll be damned if he's able to retain his sense of direction when he's like this. Not even his sense of direction. Any sense of direction.
Reality is super fucking pissed at him. It doesn't care if he gets turned around walking through a door. That's what he gets.
Then Elijah comes barreling down the hall after them and Sam spins around like he's ready to confront the creature that came at them in the park. Like he has no idea it's been reduced to a pile of nothing and dumped someplace by a Hermetic and a Verbena already. That cookie wouldn't make a very good conductor but he could throw it.
He doesn't throw it. Elijah calls him dude person.
"No. I don't know. I don't think so. It's not--?" No. Shut it down. That way lies delusional rambling. They are not putting radioactive sludge in mass-produced fabric softener and it sure as shit isn't mind-controlling radioactive sludge. "Sam. My name's Sam."
Oh hey look a bathroom. Sam holds up the rest of the cookie like to say well this has been fun I'd best be off now and then ducks inside and slams the door behind him. Doesn't mean to slam the door. It just kind of happens.
Grace
"And yeah, showers..." SLAM! "Are in there. Right."
Grace turns to Elijah and shrugs. She bites her cookie, because it needs eating more than it really tastes good. Being vegan is terrible, she decides, if this is the cookies they get to look forward to.
"So, it strikes me that I haven't told you much about Samir," Grace says, walking a bit down the hallway as she does. Strikes her, because Elijah just called him "dude person" and yeah... No.
Elijah
The door slams and Elijah and Grace are left standing there. He has clothing under one arm, eyes locked on the door before he shot Grace a sideward glance. He reached forward to take part of the cookie completely unashamed to partake in cookie while Grace was eating it. Bite, chew, swallow.
Stand there.
Blink.
Slowly reach for another bite.
"I'm Elijah!" he offers through the door, which sounds quiet and a little muffled and the name is a bit hard to make out, and then it was back to Grace, "So, uh, how do you know Sam?"
Grace
"He's a Mercurial Elite. Virtual Adept. We changed our name. Anyway. He's cool," Grace says, even though nothing about Samir's behavior has even hinted toward his being 'cool' in any fashion.
She breaks off half of her cookie and just hands it to Elijah so he will stop stealing bites.
"He said he was vegetarian yesterday, so that's why all the stuff in the kitchen is veggie right now. I'm making sure he's okay with food."
And none of this explains or touches on the obvious mental distress poor Samir is facing at the moment. Grace just keeps taking it all in stride.
Elijah
She thinks this will stop him, giving him part of the cookie.
Part of the appeal, of course, is that it is Grace's cookie. He holds the cookie in one hand, shifts the laundry to be under his arm and he reaches forward, slowly, as though this were a scene from Dune. The slow hand steals the cookie.
"So, I'm super relieved he's not a technocrat, because… uh… yeah. Did anyone tell you what happened?"
Samir
After he finishes rifling through the cabinets in search of towels and satiation of his curiosity and paranoia Sam investigates the shower. Whether it's a curtain or a clear door he opens it and stares around for a bit. Decides that even if it is filthy it isn't any worse than he is now.
The water begins running.
Grace
The bathroom is not filthy, at least not by normal standards. The tiles are of sparkly granite, the grout scrubbed. There's two gold-colored showerheads in that spacious shower, one coming out of the ceiling to provide a nice rain effect. The toilet has a lightly-used candle sitting in a gold candelabra, deep red. There's a painting on the wall in the short hall opposite the sink that looks to be a real oil painting, not a print -- of something that looks like an expressionist's take on lions. The painting might have some dust. But hey -- it's obvious that whoever did this bathroom up cares little for expense. There's no litter of toilet paper or toothpaste spots all over the mirror here.
Grace just ignores stuff like that, most of the time. What Kalen spends his money on is often beyond understanding.
"Yeah," Grace says, rolls her eyes and hands Elijah the rest of her cookie. If he likes carob so much, he can have it, seriously...
"Maybe you could fill in some more details? I get that he was bitten in the face a lot. Another vampire in the park?"
Elijah
[Manip+sub: NBD, it was just a normal night in the park aside from death]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
[Perception + subt = no, no it wasn't. FFS.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
The whole half of Grace's cookie goes down the hatch in a matter of two bites. Apparently, he really did like carob that much, that or he had no standards when it came to putting baked goods in his mouth. He chews, takes his time chewing because it gives him a chance to formulate his answer. You know, one of the great things about vegan cookies is that nothing about them has the consistency of cooked flesh, which Elijah was starting to develop a taste to avoid courtesy of awakened life.
"So, we met up at the park for a business thing," which is inconsequential and I am totally glossing over it, "and this thing just kinda comes out of the bushes and it has four arms and when it stood upright it had to be at least eight feet tall. It had this mouth that looked like… you know, have you ever seen something that just has rows and rows of teeth, all sharp and… fuck… I don't know think sarlac pit or something. Or a lamprey meets a fucking pelican. It could have fucking bit Sam's head off if it had gotten a better hold."
That… he's holding it together, but something indicates that he's shaken, still shaken, that things went from bad to worse pretty quickly, but they were alive. He inhales slow, takes another bite of carob and chews. Because it gives him something to do, an excuse for not talking. He thinks, because he's always thinking. There's quiet, then?
"I don't think it was like a vampire, it are meat, I remember that much. I remember sees some tuft of fur and then it came barreling over and Sam had it on the ropes with, like, the dude called lightning out of nowhere-" says the young man who literally told the forces of creation that they were going to do what the fuck he said and strike his enemies down with holy fucking fire from the sky. "Anyway, we killed it and it was dead… and… I don't know, it was warped but sometimes it's like… you kind of got the impression that it was fucking miserable, like you're fighting against instinct and humanity. You want to eat, but you don't want to be a monster and… yeah, guess what won out."
Elijah
(*ate meat, not are meat.)
Grace
"Crap. Okay. That was a night, then," Grace says, although it doesn't really surprise her. "I think we should stay out of the park at night, just 'cause having things shove shadows down your throat and / or bite your head off just isn't awesome."
She sighs.
"That explains a few things, like why Samir might be having some issues dealing. He's having hallucinations, I think. Or at least, dealing with the aftereffects of them."
And she's got him tracked just in case he decides to go wandering the streets again. So there's that.
She's also fully aware that Elijah isn't telling her everything about their 'business thing'. Elijah has business? Like hell he does. Whatever. The thing with four arms that about ripped her friend's head off is a little more important than that lie.
"There's samosas in the kitchen if you're hungry. And other stuff."
Elijah
"I think that, instead of avoiding the park at night we should actually look into the place. Just because we're not there, it doesn't man the problems are going to go away. And, yeah, we'd be safer if we weren't out there, but there are sleepers and stuff out there- people get attacked and die and nobody knows what happened to them except for a missing person's file that doesn't actually ever get looked into. Like that guy that got eaten awhile back from that weird cult? Who we didn't find out about until he was a ghost wandering around looking for his dog? I'm of the belief that we have a bit of a duty to leave the place better than when we found it."
Cookie gets finished. Down the hatch and brumes wiped off his hands courtesy of the side of his pants. Elijah took a second, looked back at his clothes and knocked on the door, "Sam? I need to get your shit and trade you clothes. I need to wash things."
then, back to Grace, "I just kinda figured it had hallucinogenic spit or something."
Elijah
(ugh, try again)
Elijah
(CLOSE)
Elijah
"I think that, instead of avoiding the park at night we should actually look into the place. Just because we're not there, it doesn't man the problems are going to go away. And, yeah, we'd be safer if we weren't out there, but there are sleepers and stuff out there- people get attacked and die and nobody knows what happened to them except for a missing person's file that doesn't actually ever get looked into. Like that guy that got eaten awhile back from that weird cult? Who we didn't find out about until he was a ghost wandering around looking for his dog? I'm of the belief that we have a bit of a duty to leave the place better than when we found it."
Cookie gets finished. Down the hatch and brumes wiped off his hands courtesy of the side of his pants. Elijah took a second, looked back at his clothes and knocked on the door, "Sam? I need to get your shit and trade you clothes. I need to wash things."
then, back to Grace, "I just kinda figured it had hallucinogenic spit or something."
Samir
[PERC + ALERT: WUT]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 2, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
He did say I need to get your shit and not Would you stop being weird for five seconds and hand me your shit.
"Okay!"
Door is shut but he didn't lock it. No point. Hallucinations don't give a damn about locks.
Grace
"Usually, when people say 'leave the place better than you found it' they mean clean up the trash and don't take souvenier pinecones... But I get you. Thing is, I don't know the first place I would go to for looking into something like that. Maybe you should ask the Gingerites," Grace says, shrugs.
Monster with four arms and a mouth like a shark just doesn't seem to be something one could look up on Google. Mr. Monster didn't leave a business card behind, she doesn't believe. Dead ends are dead, Elijah...
"Or maybe we need to spend more time in the park such that the monsters get the idea that we're there and not to be fucked with, I don't know. Do you think that would make them stop? Honestly?"
Elijah
[dex+athletics, just backing in and getting your clothes. +2 diff (because effectively blind)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"It depends," he says, almost like perhaps he had grown up a little or had time to think about these things or had the wherewithal to somehow come up with a plan for something. He's talking and going into the bathroom, and he's backing in because he doesn't want to peek in on the dude (nope, he kinda did, which is why there was such a production to not stare at Sam.) One does not oogle their dealer; it's bad for business. It also makes your prices go up, or starts a turf war accidentally.
He leaves the pants and the shirt folded neatly and stacked on top of the toilet seat. Clothes are fetched and he makes his way back into the hallway. Then, off to the laundry. He's still talking, though. Also, completely forgot to close the door.
"If you are dealing with vampires and things that have a sense of agency and organization and aren't just fucking around doing whatever it is they're doing, it will make a difference. Mostly, like the thing with Victoria and tonight? It's isolated incidents- one with obvious conclusions when wedon't step in, and one where we do step in. It all kind of goes in to the theories of begin a general deterrent versus a specific deterrent. Things that look like they're made of human body parts and really not human body parts don't just randomly appear."
"I figure we can at least go and see what we can see for the time frame at least. What's done is done, and you'd have to be some kind of badass to change the past."
Samir
Sam does go startled-still when the door opens and even while Elijah isn't looking at him he is looking at Elijah. Good job coming at him back-first so he has to stop what he's doing and reason out that that is an actual person whose name he now knows and not another monster. Ready to throw a bottle of shampoo if he has to. It is not a monster nor is it a hallucination.
The Hermetic makes off with the Elite's clothes and leaves the door open. Sam is too tired to care.
Grace
Grace notices the door being left open. Of course she does. Now she has to face that. So, she goes to close it, being just as blind as Elijah was, with her arm over her face, fumbling around for the doorknob and yanking it shut.
Then, it's to go follow Elijah's voice down the hall and pretend that she can't see Samir's underwear amidst all that.
"Yeah, we can go back I guess. See if it left anything..."
Elijah
"Awesome, it shouldn't be hard, just alter your perception to encompass living beings and possible mental states, which- ugh- I can't do yet," yet being the operative word. Elijah has been pretty insistent on things being of the yet variety. He continues on, off to where they do laundry. He's checking tags the whole time, looking for laundering instructions.
"When do you wanna go? It'll be an adventure."
Grace
"When I can be reasonably assured Samir isn't going to flee the place in terror and go wandering the street for two days with a bleeding face again," Grace says, rather firmly. There's people to take care of, is the point she's making.
She leans up against the wall. "I can scan for living beings and mental states. And non-living beings for that matter. Only thing that would be a problem is if it's some kind of spirit, which it might be. Could be that thing escaped out of a tear in the Gauntlet, sort of like that Message dealie? In which case, I got nothin'."
Elijah
"Oh dude, umbral beings and weirdness? I got that," he said, solid and assured that, yes, he was capable and, yes, he knew what he was doing with regards to spirits. He checks the tags again to be sure, thinks of the person in the shower at this juncture, and gets on to getting the clothes in the washer. He took a moment, looking over the blood stains.
"Yeah... these are cold, it's going to be a bitch to get out," he said as he rummaged through cabinets for some Shout or something that he could leave on the clothes to let it set for a minute or two.
"Okay, weird but not weird question- you can see the future, right?"
Grace
"Sure, when the future becomes the present. But that's not much of a super power, is it?"
There are two things that Grace doesn't know much about. The first is spirits. The other is time. She's fairly certain time is just another of those things humans made up because experiencing everything at once is too much sensory overload. But things that don't actually exist are hard to perceive...
Grace is pretty much a creature of the here and now, of the 'real' bits of reality.
"I can see the past too, but only in memories. Sorry. I suck."
Elijah
"Okay... uh... theeeeen... I could- ugh, I think we buried it," he takes a second, thinks about it, puts it all together in his head. He takes a moment and recenters. A little more rubbing at the spot. He quirks his mouth to the side and makes a little displeased sound. "I guess we could unbury it? If you wanted to take samples? Kiara and I took care of it so that wasn't... yeah. I guess exhuming the corpse would totally not be weird."
Yeah. because he totally sounds like he is completely okay with this and the idea of digging up some nameless monster's dead body to figure out what it was is really high on his to do list. He mentions it and scrubs at the bloodstain a little harder, sounds a little disconnected and distracted (just a little dissociation, nothing terrible in comparison)
Exhales. Hard. Focuses.
"How about... I can go to the park during the day and do some on-site research and theeeen you and I can go dig up a body and you can look at it, like it's CSI."
Samir
Through the closed door the sound of crashing shower water stops.
Sam psychs himself up to open the shower door and find the towel he'd already excavated and dry off. Wherever they've gone is a location to which he is not privy and after he steps out of the shower he has to ask himself whether he knows from whence the pants and t-shirt came. Decides it doesn't matter. He doesn't want to wander around in a towel. He hangs the towel from whatever hook he finds and climbs into a stranger's clothes.
Down the hall the bathroom door opens and then slams shut again. Sam rests his forehead against it. He doesn't want to go out in the empty hallway but he doesn't want to stay in the bathroom all day either.
"Fuck," he says to no one.
Grace
"Oh hell. On CSI, they had two people use a keyboard at the same time because it would allow them to hack faster. I'd hope we're better than that," Grace says, trying to lighten the mood a bit, since they're talking about digging up the corpse of a thing Elijah helped kill.
Really, this is a normal Sunday. When did this become normal? No idea. Still...
Samir slams the door to the bathroom again, and Grace perks up again. Elijah has his plan, and as much as she doesn't relish digging up a corpse, it's the best plan they've got. Grace has to make sure a certain somebody knows where the food is.
"Somebody's out of the shower," she says, and starts off to find Samir.
Elijah
"Oh my god, that was a thing?" he says, holds the shirt for a minute and he seems just shocked. H muses over blood stains, wonders if this is something Henry's going to have him do at some point- probably yes. He does a lot of cleaning at Henry's place. And organizing, and listening; it makes the time go after. You get to associate an action with a word, makes it stick better. Like doodling during a lecture, but more productive.
"Things will work out," he says, as if this was the truth because he said so.
Samir
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Dynamic Resonance vs. Perc + Awareness, GO.
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Samir
[Fuck yeah he knows this shit ain't real! That drops him down to Paradox 6 and WP 1.]
Elijah
[songs!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
His apartment had people in it. At first, he had been pretty okay with the fact that a friend from Louisiana was going to live with him- temporarily, of course. He usually split his time pretty evenly between his apartment and his room in the warehouse, though now the warehouse had actually become his own little fortress of solitude, or at least as much solitude as Elijah could stand.
Besides, there were books here. He had yet to develop the habit of falling asleep on one of Henry's couches after doing whatever it was that Henry had him doing in the first place. Though, admittedly, he did know where the nearest IHOP was on the route. Drank a lot of crappy coffee and then obsessively brushed his teeth because he drank that much coffee and he was pretty intent on keeping up with oral hygiene. Elijah was the kind of person that the dentist didn't chastise for not flossing enough. We digress.
But, there he was, passing from the kitchen to the space where there were offices and bedrooms and bedrooms that were used as offices and offices that were used as bedrooms. The place still felt a little like (okay, a lot like) Kalen. They hadn't had much overlap, but we digress. Clothing was comfortable- sweatpants and a tee shirt. He'd borrowed the pants from some one night stand since he couldn't actually find his pants in the morning. The tee shirt was his. He had a necklace on with a little sun charm on it, tied on too tight and he was just waiting for it to call off at this point because even Jenn couldn't get the knot undone.
"Ohhhhh won't you take me home tonight? Ohhhhhhh down besiiiiiide that something liiiiight?"
Elijah
There was a pitstop to be had, though. He could make his run to the room, consider putting on decent pants, and be done with the day. He could stare at the ceiling for all anyone cared. Hell, he could actually be a good student and study for something that wasn't a harp recital (harp was coming on Wednesday. Piano was still int he works, but he didn't actually know how he was going to get a piano to fit in either of his living spaces, and he wasn't going to get a keyboard because fuck keyboards.)
He stopped, though, remembering that he wasn't alone and that their houseguest (patient?) probably didn't want to hear Elijah fumble through Fat Bottomed Girls. He scales back to humming, makes a turn, and finds himself at a door. Knocks three times, because he always knocks, even if he was going to barge in.
He doesn't barge in, though. That's self-restraint.
knock knock knock
"Hey man, do you want anything to eat?"
Samir
Whatever happened last night is nothing to which Sam could attest with any degree of certainty. For all he knows he teleported from the massage parlor to the office. For all he knows he isn't even at the office. This could be someone's dungeon for all he knows. Made up to look like a guest room.
He hasn't come out since last night. Sat at the table with Grace and ate his food with as much enthusiasm as one can muster when all one wants to do is crawl into bed and enjoy oblivion for a few hours. It was good fucking tofu though. Maybe he'd said something to that effect. Even in the depths of his madness he would like to try to give some indication that he is present in whatever capacity he can say to be present.
So Elijah startles the shit out of him and he lets out an undignified shout and something crashes into something else and something else drops to the floor behind the closed door. Shit happens sometimes.
"No!" Sam says in that overshot friendly tone that doesn't do anything but announce that he's lying. "No, I'm good! I ate..." He doesn't remember when. "I ate already! Thank you!"
He does not say Go away! but that's the implication.
Grace
Grace went on a mission this morning. First, she made sure that Samir was sleeping, and then went on a circuit of town, picking up all the things she'd need to host a vegetarian for however long. There is a vegan cake (carrot cake gone very carrot) in the kitchen, along with a pack of cookies. But more substantial than that is the samosas with tamarind sauce, eggplant curry, spinach curry, some more of that lemongrass tofu (because he liked it). There's soy and almond milk in the fridge.
Whenever Samir gets hungry, he'll have food, and choices of it. There's enough for everybody, really.
Grace comes padding down the hallway from the kitchen, wearing socks on her feet (and of course, jeans and a black tee shirt, because she cares about scaring people) carrying a 'chocolate' cookie in hand. It's really carob. But hey, vegan right?
No, I'm good! I ate...
"Yeah, you ate yesterday! You can eat today too, it's almost magical that way! I bought cookies!"
Elijah
"Wait, you bought cookies?" he turns around and looks at Grace. And her cookie, then up to Grace's face. He took a step away from the door, hearing the crash of things that he didn't quite know what fell down but given the the tone of his voice, and given that Elijah is a hormonal young man in his early twenties, there are things that he presumes (incorrectly.)
"Hey, uhhhh, I'll give you, like, ten minutes or something," he backs away from the door and whispers to Grace, "I think he's having personal time."
Samir
After three almost four days of this Sam has himself pretty well and assured that he can distinguish between the things that are not actually happening and the things that are.
So Grace doing a pretty spot-on impression of his mother back in 2002 is something he can file away under Unsettling; Very Real.
A pause while the two whisper outside the door and then Sam cracks the thing slow. He was not jerking off in there. He's still wearing the same shit he had on yesterday to include his boots. What he was doing was dismantling the bed for fuck knows what reason. Looking for insect nests or dusting the baseboards or whatever it is obsessive-compulsive young men do when Quiet is kicking their ass.
At first he just stares past them to make sure they're alone. Then he takes a deep breath and opens the door open all the way. An invitation or a demonstration. He doesn't have the glassy-eyed harried look that he did last night. Improvement maybe.
"What?" he asks Elijah like he almost caught what he was saying. Might have heard something else. Might know exactly what he was saying and be mildly offended. Never mind. Mild confusion takes the place of paranoia. He's still addressing the other young man: "Oh. Shit. Hi."
He doesn't remember Elijah's name and he doesn't remember whether he should or shouldn't remember and he isn't entirely sure he remembers what they were doing when his brain exploded either. Fuck.
Grace
Grace ambles by and hands Samir the other cookie she was holding. It's not the best cookie ever. It's what vegans use to approximate a cookie. But there is no excuse for Samir not to take it this time.
"Good morning," she says, and looks into the room, notes the disassembled bed. Huh. It doesn't really shock or surprise.
"If you want to shower, I'll bet Elijah would wash your clothes."
Wouldn't you, Elijah?
Elijah
Elijah Poirot learned several important things during his apprenticeship with Kalen about the structure of the Order of Hermes.
Specifically, there was protocol and rank and you could get your underlings to occasionally do things for you because you are that badass and you said so and this is was the way of things. Somehow, he also managed to get that certain things the Order did influenced large parts of awakened society. Which meant this: when someone told him he was going to do laundry, he didn't bitch about it anymore. Grace might not have pulled rank, but laundry had to get done and he wasn't going to whine about it being unfair or whatever because there was a dude standing there who could probably stand to have Samir just chill in crappy dirty clothes.
"I could loan you a shirt, too? And maybe pants, because I don't think you got a change of clothes there," he told Samir. "I am halfway decent at getting blood stains out-" crap don't say that "-and red wine stains. But not mustard. Fuck mustard, that shit can go die in a fire for all the damages it does."
Samir
"Ah..."
He glances down and he can't see the dried blood that's gone to flakes on the side of his neck but now that they've reminded him that he's a wandering filth beast showering does sound like an excellent idea. He's never been in the bathroom in this place. It's probably filthy.
"Yeah... where's the..." A glance back at the room and he debates picking up that mess before he goes and tackles a new one. Fuck. Sam takes a bite out of the cookie Grace gave him. Frowns. What the fuck did he just put in his mouth. He chews and swallows whatever it is. "Where's the bathroom?"
Grace
"Oh, that's nice of you, Elijah," she says, gives him a big smile, like hey -- he's doing all right at this.
"There's a shower downstairs. I'll show you," she says, and starts down the hallway, looking at the walls as she goes, amused at the pattern the textured wall makes when it's moving. Who's the crazy one?
She takes another bite of cookie, and disappears down the stairwell.
Elijah
[per+alert: What size are you, Samir?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Elijah
[I take stairs gracefully!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
Then comes the awkward part, the part where Elijah is standing there and it dawns on him that he's going to actually need Samirs clothes to wash them and he didn't seem like the type to walk around the office naked. Now, grant you, Samir is a handsome man. Samir has also had a break from what is traditionally considered reality so Elijah would rather not see him walking around naked because in his mind it somehow effects his agency as a person. He's not cognitively sound enough to go you know, I think I'll walk around naked. As such, it was not an experience that other people could enjoy.
Plus it might weird Grace out. Which was also not a good plan. He gives the dude a quick look over, tries to gauge what size he is and concludes that the guy- who just disassembled a bed- probably also would not like to borrow another dude's boxer briefs. He nods, then heads off to his room, leaves the door open- bed made save for the blanket that is thrown haphazardly on top of the comforter- he doesn't sleep under the sheets unless he absolutely has to- and alarm clock flashing 3:27 because he turned off the strip outlet at some point during the day. (precisely three hours and twenty seven minutes ago, actually). It's off to a chest of drawers where he retrieves athletic pants and a black tee shirt.
It's soft, at the very least, and he then half jogs to catch back up with those headed down the stairs… which he almost falls down because he takes two at a time and then accidentally three at once because he jumped and half teetered.
"Grace, do we have- wait," a pause, "dude person, do you have an allergy to fabric softener?"
Samir
So he trails behind Grace eating this carob-whatever cookie and wondering what fresh hell awaits him in the bathroom. She may very well have shown him where it is already but he'll be damned if he's able to retain his sense of direction when he's like this. Not even his sense of direction. Any sense of direction.
Reality is super fucking pissed at him. It doesn't care if he gets turned around walking through a door. That's what he gets.
Then Elijah comes barreling down the hall after them and Sam spins around like he's ready to confront the creature that came at them in the park. Like he has no idea it's been reduced to a pile of nothing and dumped someplace by a Hermetic and a Verbena already. That cookie wouldn't make a very good conductor but he could throw it.
He doesn't throw it. Elijah calls him dude person.
"No. I don't know. I don't think so. It's not--?" No. Shut it down. That way lies delusional rambling. They are not putting radioactive sludge in mass-produced fabric softener and it sure as shit isn't mind-controlling radioactive sludge. "Sam. My name's Sam."
Oh hey look a bathroom. Sam holds up the rest of the cookie like to say well this has been fun I'd best be off now and then ducks inside and slams the door behind him. Doesn't mean to slam the door. It just kind of happens.
Grace
"And yeah, showers..." SLAM! "Are in there. Right."
Grace turns to Elijah and shrugs. She bites her cookie, because it needs eating more than it really tastes good. Being vegan is terrible, she decides, if this is the cookies they get to look forward to.
"So, it strikes me that I haven't told you much about Samir," Grace says, walking a bit down the hallway as she does. Strikes her, because Elijah just called him "dude person" and yeah... No.
Elijah
The door slams and Elijah and Grace are left standing there. He has clothing under one arm, eyes locked on the door before he shot Grace a sideward glance. He reached forward to take part of the cookie completely unashamed to partake in cookie while Grace was eating it. Bite, chew, swallow.
Stand there.
Blink.
Slowly reach for another bite.
"I'm Elijah!" he offers through the door, which sounds quiet and a little muffled and the name is a bit hard to make out, and then it was back to Grace, "So, uh, how do you know Sam?"
Grace
"He's a Mercurial Elite. Virtual Adept. We changed our name. Anyway. He's cool," Grace says, even though nothing about Samir's behavior has even hinted toward his being 'cool' in any fashion.
She breaks off half of her cookie and just hands it to Elijah so he will stop stealing bites.
"He said he was vegetarian yesterday, so that's why all the stuff in the kitchen is veggie right now. I'm making sure he's okay with food."
And none of this explains or touches on the obvious mental distress poor Samir is facing at the moment. Grace just keeps taking it all in stride.
Elijah
She thinks this will stop him, giving him part of the cookie.
Part of the appeal, of course, is that it is Grace's cookie. He holds the cookie in one hand, shifts the laundry to be under his arm and he reaches forward, slowly, as though this were a scene from Dune. The slow hand steals the cookie.
"So, I'm super relieved he's not a technocrat, because… uh… yeah. Did anyone tell you what happened?"
Samir
After he finishes rifling through the cabinets in search of towels and satiation of his curiosity and paranoia Sam investigates the shower. Whether it's a curtain or a clear door he opens it and stares around for a bit. Decides that even if it is filthy it isn't any worse than he is now.
The water begins running.
Grace
The bathroom is not filthy, at least not by normal standards. The tiles are of sparkly granite, the grout scrubbed. There's two gold-colored showerheads in that spacious shower, one coming out of the ceiling to provide a nice rain effect. The toilet has a lightly-used candle sitting in a gold candelabra, deep red. There's a painting on the wall in the short hall opposite the sink that looks to be a real oil painting, not a print -- of something that looks like an expressionist's take on lions. The painting might have some dust. But hey -- it's obvious that whoever did this bathroom up cares little for expense. There's no litter of toilet paper or toothpaste spots all over the mirror here.
Grace just ignores stuff like that, most of the time. What Kalen spends his money on is often beyond understanding.
"Yeah," Grace says, rolls her eyes and hands Elijah the rest of her cookie. If he likes carob so much, he can have it, seriously...
"Maybe you could fill in some more details? I get that he was bitten in the face a lot. Another vampire in the park?"
Elijah
[Manip+sub: NBD, it was just a normal night in the park aside from death]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Grace
[Perception + subt = no, no it wasn't. FFS.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
The whole half of Grace's cookie goes down the hatch in a matter of two bites. Apparently, he really did like carob that much, that or he had no standards when it came to putting baked goods in his mouth. He chews, takes his time chewing because it gives him a chance to formulate his answer. You know, one of the great things about vegan cookies is that nothing about them has the consistency of cooked flesh, which Elijah was starting to develop a taste to avoid courtesy of awakened life.
"So, we met up at the park for a business thing," which is inconsequential and I am totally glossing over it, "and this thing just kinda comes out of the bushes and it has four arms and when it stood upright it had to be at least eight feet tall. It had this mouth that looked like… you know, have you ever seen something that just has rows and rows of teeth, all sharp and… fuck… I don't know think sarlac pit or something. Or a lamprey meets a fucking pelican. It could have fucking bit Sam's head off if it had gotten a better hold."
That… he's holding it together, but something indicates that he's shaken, still shaken, that things went from bad to worse pretty quickly, but they were alive. He inhales slow, takes another bite of carob and chews. Because it gives him something to do, an excuse for not talking. He thinks, because he's always thinking. There's quiet, then?
"I don't think it was like a vampire, it are meat, I remember that much. I remember sees some tuft of fur and then it came barreling over and Sam had it on the ropes with, like, the dude called lightning out of nowhere-" says the young man who literally told the forces of creation that they were going to do what the fuck he said and strike his enemies down with holy fucking fire from the sky. "Anyway, we killed it and it was dead… and… I don't know, it was warped but sometimes it's like… you kind of got the impression that it was fucking miserable, like you're fighting against instinct and humanity. You want to eat, but you don't want to be a monster and… yeah, guess what won out."
Elijah
(*ate meat, not are meat.)
Grace
"Crap. Okay. That was a night, then," Grace says, although it doesn't really surprise her. "I think we should stay out of the park at night, just 'cause having things shove shadows down your throat and / or bite your head off just isn't awesome."
She sighs.
"That explains a few things, like why Samir might be having some issues dealing. He's having hallucinations, I think. Or at least, dealing with the aftereffects of them."
And she's got him tracked just in case he decides to go wandering the streets again. So there's that.
She's also fully aware that Elijah isn't telling her everything about their 'business thing'. Elijah has business? Like hell he does. Whatever. The thing with four arms that about ripped her friend's head off is a little more important than that lie.
"There's samosas in the kitchen if you're hungry. And other stuff."
Elijah
"I think that, instead of avoiding the park at night we should actually look into the place. Just because we're not there, it doesn't man the problems are going to go away. And, yeah, we'd be safer if we weren't out there, but there are sleepers and stuff out there- people get attacked and die and nobody knows what happened to them except for a missing person's file that doesn't actually ever get looked into. Like that guy that got eaten awhile back from that weird cult? Who we didn't find out about until he was a ghost wandering around looking for his dog? I'm of the belief that we have a bit of a duty to leave the place better than when we found it."
Cookie gets finished. Down the hatch and brumes wiped off his hands courtesy of the side of his pants. Elijah took a second, looked back at his clothes and knocked on the door, "Sam? I need to get your shit and trade you clothes. I need to wash things."
then, back to Grace, "I just kinda figured it had hallucinogenic spit or something."
Elijah
(ugh, try again)
Elijah
(CLOSE)
Elijah
"I think that, instead of avoiding the park at night we should actually look into the place. Just because we're not there, it doesn't man the problems are going to go away. And, yeah, we'd be safer if we weren't out there, but there are sleepers and stuff out there- people get attacked and die and nobody knows what happened to them except for a missing person's file that doesn't actually ever get looked into. Like that guy that got eaten awhile back from that weird cult? Who we didn't find out about until he was a ghost wandering around looking for his dog? I'm of the belief that we have a bit of a duty to leave the place better than when we found it."
Cookie gets finished. Down the hatch and brumes wiped off his hands courtesy of the side of his pants. Elijah took a second, looked back at his clothes and knocked on the door, "Sam? I need to get your shit and trade you clothes. I need to wash things."
then, back to Grace, "I just kinda figured it had hallucinogenic spit or something."
Samir
[PERC + ALERT: WUT]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 2, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
He did say I need to get your shit and not Would you stop being weird for five seconds and hand me your shit.
"Okay!"
Door is shut but he didn't lock it. No point. Hallucinations don't give a damn about locks.
Grace
"Usually, when people say 'leave the place better than you found it' they mean clean up the trash and don't take souvenier pinecones... But I get you. Thing is, I don't know the first place I would go to for looking into something like that. Maybe you should ask the Gingerites," Grace says, shrugs.
Monster with four arms and a mouth like a shark just doesn't seem to be something one could look up on Google. Mr. Monster didn't leave a business card behind, she doesn't believe. Dead ends are dead, Elijah...
"Or maybe we need to spend more time in the park such that the monsters get the idea that we're there and not to be fucked with, I don't know. Do you think that would make them stop? Honestly?"
Elijah
[dex+athletics, just backing in and getting your clothes. +2 diff (because effectively blind)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"It depends," he says, almost like perhaps he had grown up a little or had time to think about these things or had the wherewithal to somehow come up with a plan for something. He's talking and going into the bathroom, and he's backing in because he doesn't want to peek in on the dude (nope, he kinda did, which is why there was such a production to not stare at Sam.) One does not oogle their dealer; it's bad for business. It also makes your prices go up, or starts a turf war accidentally.
He leaves the pants and the shirt folded neatly and stacked on top of the toilet seat. Clothes are fetched and he makes his way back into the hallway. Then, off to the laundry. He's still talking, though. Also, completely forgot to close the door.
"If you are dealing with vampires and things that have a sense of agency and organization and aren't just fucking around doing whatever it is they're doing, it will make a difference. Mostly, like the thing with Victoria and tonight? It's isolated incidents- one with obvious conclusions when wedon't step in, and one where we do step in. It all kind of goes in to the theories of begin a general deterrent versus a specific deterrent. Things that look like they're made of human body parts and really not human body parts don't just randomly appear."
"I figure we can at least go and see what we can see for the time frame at least. What's done is done, and you'd have to be some kind of badass to change the past."
Samir
Sam does go startled-still when the door opens and even while Elijah isn't looking at him he is looking at Elijah. Good job coming at him back-first so he has to stop what he's doing and reason out that that is an actual person whose name he now knows and not another monster. Ready to throw a bottle of shampoo if he has to. It is not a monster nor is it a hallucination.
The Hermetic makes off with the Elite's clothes and leaves the door open. Sam is too tired to care.
Grace
Grace notices the door being left open. Of course she does. Now she has to face that. So, she goes to close it, being just as blind as Elijah was, with her arm over her face, fumbling around for the doorknob and yanking it shut.
Then, it's to go follow Elijah's voice down the hall and pretend that she can't see Samir's underwear amidst all that.
"Yeah, we can go back I guess. See if it left anything..."
Elijah
"Awesome, it shouldn't be hard, just alter your perception to encompass living beings and possible mental states, which- ugh- I can't do yet," yet being the operative word. Elijah has been pretty insistent on things being of the yet variety. He continues on, off to where they do laundry. He's checking tags the whole time, looking for laundering instructions.
"When do you wanna go? It'll be an adventure."
Grace
"When I can be reasonably assured Samir isn't going to flee the place in terror and go wandering the street for two days with a bleeding face again," Grace says, rather firmly. There's people to take care of, is the point she's making.
She leans up against the wall. "I can scan for living beings and mental states. And non-living beings for that matter. Only thing that would be a problem is if it's some kind of spirit, which it might be. Could be that thing escaped out of a tear in the Gauntlet, sort of like that Message dealie? In which case, I got nothin'."
Elijah
"Oh dude, umbral beings and weirdness? I got that," he said, solid and assured that, yes, he was capable and, yes, he knew what he was doing with regards to spirits. He checks the tags again to be sure, thinks of the person in the shower at this juncture, and gets on to getting the clothes in the washer. He took a moment, looking over the blood stains.
"Yeah... these are cold, it's going to be a bitch to get out," he said as he rummaged through cabinets for some Shout or something that he could leave on the clothes to let it set for a minute or two.
"Okay, weird but not weird question- you can see the future, right?"
Grace
"Sure, when the future becomes the present. But that's not much of a super power, is it?"
There are two things that Grace doesn't know much about. The first is spirits. The other is time. She's fairly certain time is just another of those things humans made up because experiencing everything at once is too much sensory overload. But things that don't actually exist are hard to perceive...
Grace is pretty much a creature of the here and now, of the 'real' bits of reality.
"I can see the past too, but only in memories. Sorry. I suck."
Elijah
"Okay... uh... theeeeen... I could- ugh, I think we buried it," he takes a second, thinks about it, puts it all together in his head. He takes a moment and recenters. A little more rubbing at the spot. He quirks his mouth to the side and makes a little displeased sound. "I guess we could unbury it? If you wanted to take samples? Kiara and I took care of it so that wasn't... yeah. I guess exhuming the corpse would totally not be weird."
Yeah. because he totally sounds like he is completely okay with this and the idea of digging up some nameless monster's dead body to figure out what it was is really high on his to do list. He mentions it and scrubs at the bloodstain a little harder, sounds a little disconnected and distracted (just a little dissociation, nothing terrible in comparison)
Exhales. Hard. Focuses.
"How about... I can go to the park during the day and do some on-site research and theeeen you and I can go dig up a body and you can look at it, like it's CSI."
Samir
Through the closed door the sound of crashing shower water stops.
Sam psychs himself up to open the shower door and find the towel he'd already excavated and dry off. Wherever they've gone is a location to which he is not privy and after he steps out of the shower he has to ask himself whether he knows from whence the pants and t-shirt came. Decides it doesn't matter. He doesn't want to wander around in a towel. He hangs the towel from whatever hook he finds and climbs into a stranger's clothes.
Down the hall the bathroom door opens and then slams shut again. Sam rests his forehead against it. He doesn't want to go out in the empty hallway but he doesn't want to stay in the bathroom all day either.
"Fuck," he says to no one.
Grace
"Oh hell. On CSI, they had two people use a keyboard at the same time because it would allow them to hack faster. I'd hope we're better than that," Grace says, trying to lighten the mood a bit, since they're talking about digging up the corpse of a thing Elijah helped kill.
Really, this is a normal Sunday. When did this become normal? No idea. Still...
Samir slams the door to the bathroom again, and Grace perks up again. Elijah has his plan, and as much as she doesn't relish digging up a corpse, it's the best plan they've got. Grace has to make sure a certain somebody knows where the food is.
"Somebody's out of the shower," she says, and starts off to find Samir.
Elijah
"Oh my god, that was a thing?" he says, holds the shirt for a minute and he seems just shocked. H muses over blood stains, wonders if this is something Henry's going to have him do at some point- probably yes. He does a lot of cleaning at Henry's place. And organizing, and listening; it makes the time go after. You get to associate an action with a word, makes it stick better. Like doodling during a lecture, but more productive.
"Things will work out," he says, as if this was the truth because he said so.
Samir
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
Lemongrass Tofu
Samir
retroactive disbelief vs. dynamic resonance rolls 1/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Samir
2/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Samir
3/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
It's a beautiful evening. Clouds cut back on the mountain-high heat and the breeze feels nice after a period of oppressive sunlight. The sidewalks teem with pedestrian foot traffic and every block emits music and conversation. People shout across the street at each other and open restaurant doors give way to the sounds of clattering cutlery and discussions melted together into a din.
That said: Samir is having a bad day.
The worst thing that could happen to a Virtual Adept is to lose his sense of direction. Their magic works through connections and code and when it all starts to fritz out everything looks the same. He hasn't changed his clothes in two days and the less said about what he did yesterday when he escaped from wherever he was Thursday night the better. On a good day the man is aware and leery of germs and their presence in the environment and on other people. His own thoughts keep him away from other people. The amount of ritual he has to go through just to leave the apartment eats up entire hours of his day.
Grace has never seen the young man with his hair down. The tie responsible for keeping it restrained is still in place but he's had a rough few days and chunks have fallen free of its bindings and fall stringy down to his shoulders. A healing laceration mars his face.
'Laceration' is too kind a word. It looks like someone tried to eat a chunk out of his face and managed to break the skin without causing any further damage. Scabs left behind.
He may or may not have gone missing. Someone may or may not have said something. He doesn't even know where he is right now. He ought to know he's going the opposite direction of his fucking apartment because the light rail tracks are nearby and he doesn't live near the light rail.
So whatever Grace is doing on this lovely late summer afternoon she happens to look up and see a somewhat disheveled young reality hacker go slinking past.
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace is having tacos. She's got a sack in one hand and a taco in the other, taking in the sights of Federal Boulevard on her way to her car when it happens. There's a hint of sharpness to the air, and it's something familiar, something that jogs her memory. She looks around her, and her eyes almost pass right over Samir. If it weren't for the general state of him, with the scabs of healing wounds and signs of distress, she might have had to look a lot harder.
People like Samir disappear. It happens. Whatever it is about him that selectively deletes him from memory works hard. It can get you in trouble. Still, she's heard it around. The event that left him like this, his disappearance? Not exactly something that she's missed.
"Samir?"
They're about to run into each other -- literally.
Samir
Her voice is different than the voices of the loas that had gathered in judgment around him and started hounding him two nights past. It's real. It tugs at him in a way the voices he's ignoring do not.
In the seconds that their eyes meet as they pass each other on the sidewalk Grace can see a glazed sort of madness in his eyes. This isn't a mindscape he's in or a Marauder he's become but she can feel the influence of his resonance and more than that she can feel the paradox crackling around him electricity-wild and for a second it looks as if he's going to turn and run.
Sleepers everywhere. If he were not in control of himself this would be a potentially deadly situation. Still could be. Grace doesn't know what sort of state he's in.
Startled and jolted and Sam stuffs his hands deeper into the pockets of his banged-up biker jacket. Ducks his head and keeps walking. For all he knows she's not real. He's having trouble differentiating between what's real and what isn't. He can push away the things that are very obviously not real but it's the things that could be real and aren't that still give him trouble.
They do not run into each other literally or otherwise. He sidesteps her and passes her by.
Grace
Okay. The taco she was eating gets wrapped up and stuffed in her bag quick-like.
"Samir! Hey," she says, to his back, turning around to walk with him. "It's me. It's Grace. Where are you headed?"
She tries to keep her voice calm, does not even get close to touching him. When she pops up at his side a few seconds later, it's on the other side of the sidewalk.
Samir
"I--"
He about jumps out of his skin when she appears in his peripheral vision on his left side instead of his right where she'd been a moment ago. She can hear whatever he was about to say next catch in his throat.
There's as likely a chance that he's talking to himself as he is talking to another human being. He doesn't understand why it's called Quiet. Ought to just call it Batshit and get it over with. Even if she is a hallucination it's not worth leaping into traffic to stabilize his personal bubble.
A frown creases his brow. They're still walking.
"Are you actually here?"
He's too worn out to try and word that question so he doesn't sound as if he's lost his damned mind.
Grace
Are you actually here? Grace remembers those words from another direction. Lying in a bed drenched with sweat and bloodstains when a quiet Verbena in a lab coat and face mask brought her water. Are you actually here?
She knows what that's like. Knows the look on people's faces when they figure out that the person they're talking to is out of their minds. She just keeps walking without letting that get to her enough to show the shock.
It doesn't really matter why Samir's like this. Just that he is, at this point, hallucinating. Pretty sure about that.
"Yes. Though I know it's fairly difficult to take me at my word when I could be a hallucination. I'm not, though. Listen, you've been gone for two days now. I can see why. You need some help, yeah?"
Samir
Just because she says she's actually here doesn't mean she isn't saying what he would think she would say. The mind is a more powerful computer than the typical user and the typical user doesn't have the ability to write a few lines of code and change physical space.
Their people tend to generate Paradox more quickly than the other traditions do. It's hard to tell how far gone he is from looking at him. Maybe he wouldn't have even noticed an expression of shock if it came over her face.
But he flinches when she uses the word 'hallucination' and stops walking when she says she can see why. That he needs help.
"What?" he says. "No, I'm fine. What are you talking about?"
Grace
"Hmm yes. Fine," she says, stops on the sidewalk with him. "I'm not going to argue. You are alive enough. That's good. People have been worried."
It could be a lot worse, she seems to be saying. At least he's only wandering down the road looking like a rabid dog got to him, asking his friends if they're really there...
"Where are you headed?" she asks again. He might even know.
Samir
"Nowhere."
He's paranoid. Just because she isn't a hallucination doesn't mean she isn't something else. A construct or a hologram. An evil twin or something. Paranoia shoots his answer out at her and it's not an honest answer.
A glance over his shoulder reveals the direction he was headed is clear. Grace doesn't know where he lives or how he gets around.
"Just..." He clears his throat. Scratches the skin near the bite one two three times quick then shoves his hand back in his pocket. Doesn't scratch the bite itself. If he did that he'd tear off the scab. Act normal, damn it. "Just out for a walk."
Grace
"Okay," she says. Damn, he's going to be hard to get to, she thinks. Just out for a walk? Fuck, man. She rolls her eyes, because even the insane will get that out of her when they're being ridiculous.
"Would you like a taco?" she says, digs into the bag to find a fresh one. He might not have eaten for those two days. It's still in its wrapping paper when she hands it over, across the sidewalk. She has to lean over to get anywhere close to him, but she does. Slowly.
Samir
"No no no, I don't--!"
Overdone attempt at reassurance. Like he has a muscle spasm adjusting his Friendliness dial and cranks it all the way up to 11. That she hands something to him at all whether it's the innocuous taco it actually is or appears to be something fucked-up filtered through the lens of his perception would have been enough for Sam to try and decline as polite as possible if he were--
Well. Sam isn't exactly mentally healthy on an ordinary day either but if he's deranged on an ordinary day he's quiet about it. Quiet versus In Quiet.
His hands came out of his pockets as he sprang away from Grace. Not showing his palms yet but more to keep his balance. Like he might need to turn and start hauling ass in a second. That wound on his face looks like it hurts even if he doesn't realize it's there.
"Heh!" Act normal: fail. Reel it in. "I don't eat meat. Vegetarian." He stops talking before he can launch into a delusional rant about what the government does to the meat in this country. Starts walking backwards away from her. "Thank you. Though. I really... I'm fine."
Grace
She turns to face him as he's walking backwards. First things first? We're going to make sure he doesn't get lost again, 'cause it looks like he's about to book it away from his friends -- again. Honestly, Samir? The taco gets stashed away again.
"I'm going to call Kiara, all right? She can help with your," Grace starts, making a sweep across her face.
She pulls out her phone, and huffs a little sigh into it as she goes to operate her 'special' programs. Tracking people is almost her specialty, by now. Usually, she doesn't do it to friends, but in this case...
"I'm also going to make sure we can find you," she says, under her breath. "Last time somebody called Kiara, that didn't work out so well..."
[Corr 2, Life 1, Mind 1 = Tracking a Samir. He's not running away again if she can help it.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Grace
[Extending, because...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Samir
That gesture she makes doesn't mean anything to him. Sam frowns heavy and considers her for several seconds. Call Kiara. How does she know Kiara. Maybe she is actually Grace.
In an ideal world he would accept the help she offers and sit quietly while they waited for the healer to arrive. It isn't as if Kiara is an unknown variable here. He trusted her enough to go off into the desert and let her show him the fucking Umbra. He's been alone in a warehouse with Grace several times.
His capacity to trust others and his own safety aren't the issues here about but he doesn't have an altruistic martyr streak going either. It isn't a matter of him valuing other people's lives more than his own. Worrying that the Technocracy or vampires or some other faceless malevolent force is going to swoop in and kill his friends. It's that he doesn't trust himself.
No way for him to convey that to Grace without sounding crazier than he already does so he just stands wide-eyed controlling his breath while she looks down at her phone to punch in a command.
Sam isn't a ghost. He can't vanish at will. What he can do though is keep creeping backwards away from Grace and then duck into a fucking alleyway. Introduce a bit of lag between when she last physically saw him and when his coordinates show up on her computer.
When she looks back up he's gone from the sidewalk but she knows exactly where he is.
Grace
After the blip of red shows up on her map displaying "Samir" she flips back to the normal operating routine of phones. There's a list of contacts that she scrolls through (Jeez, Grace, when did you start having all these friends?) and finds the K's.
Somewhere else in Denver, Kiara's phone starts going off. If she picks up, it's Grace on the other end with this to say:
"Hey, it's Grace. I'm having a problem? I'm on Federal right by the... uh... Truong An Asian Gifts store? It's Samir. He's all fucked up. Need backup. You available?"
Kiara
[We're doing a little detective work from the other night here. Life 1, coincidental scanning blood. Who was with Elijah? Did Kiara figure that out. Base diff 4, + 4 Sam's Arcane equal to Jesus or something to pick up traces of his resonance, -1 focus, -1 taking her time = BASICALLY DIFF 6]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Extending, don't mind me.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3) ( botch x 1 )
Kiara
[Oh screw you paradox.]
Samir
[That is amazing.]
Kiara
[Reality says no.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Kiara says ow.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
The last time Kiara had gotten a phonecall, it had involved her driving to Washington Park to assist Elijah with a certain situation involving a drug dealer, Vulgar magic and some sort of entity that had ended up as little more than fatty, smoldering clumps on the ground where it had (quite literally) been scorched from the earth. To say the Verbena's evening had taken a turn would be putting it lightly.
Tonight, she's leaving a tip at a Vietnamese restaurant and shrugging her bag over a shoulder when her pocket vibrates. Not Elijah's half blurred identifying picture but a placeholder (the brunette was yet to manage a capture of Grace for her number) and it's with a pause and a swipe of her thumb over the screen that Grace hears the click and familiarity of Kiara's voice on the other end of the line.
"As I live and breathe, Grace Evans. What's going on, girlfriend?"
There's a certain lightheartedness to the pagan's greeting as she smiles in farewell to a waitress and pulls open a glass door that fades in response to Grace's greeting. Kiara twisting, instead, to sight her location in relation, a frown pulling her red painted lips down. "Samir?"
The pieces hadn't made any sense at the time. Blood on Elijah. Another Awakened but she hadn't been able to pick up a trace. In fact, it had seemed - "I'm on my way." She's easy to spot, too. The Verbena with her long, wild hair and red mouth. The edges of a skirt licking at her heels as she jogs toward the Truong An Asian Gifts store; a heavy silver belt laced at an angle around her hips and jewellery; stones and beads and who knew what else adorning her wrists and neck.
You could feel Kiara Woolfe coming, the deluge of rejuvenating energy and swirling, pulsing life (here came the healer).
[Be nice, dice. Awareness, just in case.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Grace
Grace is a presence leaning against the outside wall of the gift store when Kiara shows up. She's looking into her phone, and Samir is nowhere to be seen.
Still, she peels her eyes off of whatever is so interesting in order to look at the sensation of Kiara. "Hey. He turned and ran. But I could see it coming, so," she flips her phone around, showing Kiara the map of Denver, complete with the little red dot that is Samir upon it.
"He's hiding out in an alley behind the shop. I think he's hallucinating and extremely paranoid. Doesn't think we are who we say we are, I think? In other words, use caution."
Samir
That little red dot starts to boop its way around the back of the building and towards the parking lot.
After he'd ducked out of sight Sam had thought he would try a little self-medication. Light up a cigarette and wander the length of the alleyway or breezeway or whatever the hell this structure is called while window-gazing while he gave himself a pep talk. Acting like he's waiting for someone. Something other than hiding from someone who is trying to help him.
What he can state with certainty is that he is in fact hallucinating and he is in fact suffering from delusions and sensory overload.
What he cannot state with certainty is what actually qualifies as any of those things.
Hiding in an alleyway was not the smartest decision he's made today and especially not this particular alleyway. It takes about two cigarettes for him to state that to himself with certainty. Not smart hanging out in a place where it looks like the awful things he's been seeing or worrying about could actually happen.
Something rustles through a pile of garbage and that's about enough self-medication for right now.
So the little red dot moves. Luckily the little red dot hasn't eaten in two days and has no sense of direction right now. It starts to head towards South Federal rather than cutting north and running.
Samir
OOC: STRIKE THAT FIRST SENTENCE I JUST LOOKED AT A MAP
Kiara
Whatever Kiara had been doing before Grace called, there's no clear sign of it. No shopping bags hang from the woman's arms; there is just a lightweight jacket that cuts in at her waist and elbows, leaving her forearms and wrists free and allowing glimpses of the bracelets the brunette wears around each; a ring on her right hand; some smooth oval stone that catches and glints with her movements in the light.
She's slowed to a purposeful walk by the time she sights Grace leaning against the wall of the gift store, the shifting, keen sense of her guiding the Verbena as surely as anything else. The sensation the Verbena has of the other woman is frequently something clever and agile, the cunning fox that slips into the grasses before it can be scented by predators; the circling eagle; its wings spread wide and casting low shadows across the dry earth before it dives. Clever and quick, that was Grace.
Kiara's eyes tick to the phone in Grace's hands with this brief, tugging smile.
Admiring. Impressed. She nods, breathes out slowly as Grace talks and falls into step with her; Kiara's skirt shifting around her legs as she does; it's a vibrant flourish of pinks and greens and a cut down the side that reveals the edges of the strapped heels on her feet. "I think I may know why. Elijah called me the other night from Washington Park," Kiara's voice is pitched low, her focus shifting from Grace to the careful dodging of pedestrian traffic around them as they weave toward the dot known as Samir.
"He said he was there with another - " She hesitates as a couple brush near them, "- one of us. Something attacked them, but by the time I got there whoever was with him had taken off. Elijah had their blood on him. I tried to use it to figure out who it was but - " The Verbena's expression knits into something akin to lingering confusion. "The blood was strange. I couldn't get anything that even seemed human, but Elijah said the guy with him, he was freaking out."
Her eyes tick to Grace. "Sounds a little familiar."
Grace
"Yeah. I put that much together. I mean, the injuries match what I've been told," she says, shrugs. "Samir's a friend. He's one of my kind, you know? Think he's having the worst couple of days ever..."
She heaves herself off the wall, looks at her phone again. "He's moving. Probably found the courage to get out of that horrible alley... Want to go get him? See if he'll respond to some semblance of reason?"
She sighs, heavy, like that's rather unlikely. At the very least, he might stand still long enough to let Kiara heal his face. But then again, Grace isn't really going to let him walk the streets now that she knows where he is. He's a walking Technocrat magnet in his current state. Fuck that. She starts walking a brisk pace in the direction of the dot. South. Let's go that way.
Samir
Fun fact: Samir had been meeting up with Elijah the other night after nearly three weeks in a milder episode of Quiet. No one has seen him at all this month because he has been holed up in his apartment hallucinating and attempting to puzzle out a sort of meaning from the hallucinations.
All he's come up with is he needs to stop fucking up vulgar hacks.
So for three weeks Samir had subsisted on a diet of cigarettes and bottled water and whatever he could scrounge up from the bodega downstairs without drawing too much attention to himself. He looked a bit thinner to start out. Now he looks thinner and dirtier for not having bathed in two nights. The wound on his face is the source of the blood on Elijah's shirt.
Their paths converge because he doesn't know where he's going and they do. When he sees the both of them his eyes go wide. Dart between the two women's faces several times. But he doesn't turn and bolt. He puts his back against the wall of the building and breathes fast and waits to hear what they have to say.
Kiara
The look Kiara casts Grace is one of contained sympathy. She brushes the fingers of one hand briefly against Grace's elbow, the touch so fleeting and barely there before it was gone it could have been mistaken for an accident. Touch rarely was, that being said, with the Verbena.
"We'll fix it. If we have to, we can hold him until I can at least heal his face." There's something very matter of fact about the way she says this, Kiara, that offers the idea she has absolutely no qualms with attempting to physically restrain a fully grown man to prevent him injuring himself (or others) further. It's there in a steady way the brunette says it; the intent sweep of her eyes over the crowds, the tilt of her chin.
Their paths converge and Samir looks like a startled, wide eyed doe caught in a hunter's crosshairs. Back against the wall; staring at them and Kiara's supple mouth thins to a line; her dark eyes flicking over the Virtual Adept's body and returning to focus with keener intent on his face. On those wild eyes of his.
"Hey, Samir." Kiara takes a step, subtly preempting Samir's flight on one side; her fingers slide to her sides; one resting over her bag; a worn leather thing that looks as if its held together by determination more than any physical resilience. The pagan's voice is quiet, threaded with (deliberate) pleasure at the sight of him. He looks thin, drawn and smeared in blood and dirt and there's a certain way the Verbena draws in a breath, a certain angling of her body that reads readiness.
That speaks of unvoiced sympathy for his current situation.
"Grace and I were just looking for you. I heard you had a rough night. I can help you feel better, if you like."
Grace
"Yeah, don't grab him, Kiara. I know you might want to -- I'm just saying, that will make it worse. Be careful about the touching shit all together. I'm afraid of what he might do if he gets hyped up by somebody trying to hold on to him. I used to be like that. Sucks."
She just keeps staring into her phone while she talks, not really looking at Kiara's reaction to that.
Eventually, they catch up. They catch him. He's up against the wall and scared shitless. Grace's eyes skitter off of his, with his fast breathing and cornered animal expression.
"Hey. I called Kiara, just like I said. Hey, I can get you something vegetarian to eat, hey? I uh... ate all of the tacos..."
It's about all she can do at the moment. And necessary, because come on -- he looks like she did after throwing up her stomach lining for a month.
Samir
Option A: Continue asserting that he's fine and nothing's going on he just partied too hard the other night hah hah go away Friends nothing to see here and then they double-team him and everything is awful and they end up on the news or in a Paradox Realm or Room 101 or or or.
Option B:
He listens as Kiara offers to help him. He listens as Grace offers to get him something besides the tacos she ate. He doesn't want food. They as in They with a capital T They are trying to kill him because he won't do what they tell him to do. He knows They aren't real. But then there's the germs he knows are there. Germs and he go round and round most nights anyway.
But he's tired and he's hungry and he doesn't want to upset them. He and Tobacco concluded that they're real and they probably aren't being remotely mind-controlled by the Technocracy. Or else he just doesn't care if they are.
"Okay," he says.
Kiara
It's at some point between Grace asserting that she shouldn't touch Samir and the way Samir looks at them as if he's resigning himself to some fate worse than death that the Verbena's fingers slide into her bag and curl around her phone. It's a subtle motion but in Samir's current state might as well be certification she's calling in more suits to come in and restrain him while they escort him away.
The brunette knows precisely two people who might be able to reach the man pressed against the alleyway wall in ways that won't snap whatever tenuous control he's clinging to and her fingers tap out a message to the first she locates in her saved numbers. Two women with devices in their hands, exchanging looks between them and the second; the taller; tucks hers away after a moment and reaches down to set her bag on the ground with a dull impact suggestive of heavy items within.
"Okay." She repeats and straightens, but doesn't approach. There's a cant of her head, her eyes search Samir's expression for signs he's about to lash out, make another run for it. "You know I'm not going to hurt you, right? You have a cut - " she gestures to her temple, the heavy jewellery on the Verbena's wrists clinking together. "I'm going to fix it. I'm going to come closer."
A beat. Kiara takes a step. "Tell me if you want me to back off."
Serafíne
Taxi on the corner. The yellow sort with the lights framing the word TAXI to tell you: on duty or off, occupied or un. Half a dozen tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror and a strange, subdural sort of music muttering from the speakers.
Lights flashes against traffic. The smear of the lingering sun this bloodied, blooded stain over the windshield, or maybe that's simply the pulse of traffic light as it changes over from yellow to red.
--
A woman climbs out of the backseat. Creamy white, maybe ivory, cocktail dress. Brocaded or beaded and strapless, long hair pulled back into a loose almost-chignon that only emphasizes the darker, shaved fringe on her head. Heels on the sidewalk (black, peep-toe, these) as she saunters towards the trio, studded black clutch tucked in her right hand.
Samir
Sam opens his mouth to answer the question as to whether he knows she's not going to hurt him. It isn't so much that she cuts him off as he decides he doesn't want to answer that. Sure the hallucinations aren't real and he can tell himself that all he wants but the ones he sees are everywhere and the ones he hears won't shut the fuck up. He can ignore them but that doesn't make them go away.
His eyes have a febrile sheen to them but he's gone pale from lack of sleep and food. It isn't illness that has him acting like this. They can practically feel how haywire his Work has gone or hear electricity crackling in the air around him. Practically but not quite.
He wants her to back off but not for the reason Grace has warned her about.
That cut is a bite. What bit him was once human. A young blond man with an appetite for dangerous things unwrote its Pattern and left it as singed nothing on the grass in Washington Park. He isn't sure he believes her. When he puts his fingers to his face he doesn't draw away blood but that's because the wound has already scabbed over.
Wordless resignation. Kiara can put a hand on him and he won't try to escape.
Grace
Grace nods at his "Okay" and starts stalking off to find him something vegetarian in this place. The Vietnamese places usually have plates and soups full of meat. The taco places usually have meat wrapped up in tortillas. Maybe she might find a taco place with some sort of bean burrito, but then that would be full of lard, so no...
A bit of wandering through Google finds the place they just passed (Saigon Bowl) with a vegetarian menu. Score. Lemongrass sauteed tofu sounds good (and more portable than a soup) so, she trundles off to go get some.
Kiara seems like she has this "no touching" thing down. She's asking permission first, at least.
It's then that she notes Sera, that unmistakeable gut-wrenchingly enthralling sensation of her. Grace turns and waves. "Gonna go get him some food," she says, as if that explains everything. It might. The guy needs to eat as much as he needs his face put back together.
Serafíne
Mind 2: (less aura reading/surface thoughts. more like a life scan: wtf is wrong with you?) Difficulty -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
(And now Mind / Prime: 1 methinks. are you under the influence of magicks?). Dif -1: focus.
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kiara
It's hard to imagine what Kiara must have texted Serafine to get her to Federal on a Saturday at dusk. After, even. The sun sinking down and stars speckling the sky; clouds rolling over and there's the three of them with Samir pressed back against a wall as if he's preparing himself for some sort of onslaught. Blood dried to his face; gore and who knew what else staining him.
He's got a bite mark on his face and the creature responsible for it wasn't anything explainable to most people. There's nothing normal about any of this but then again - their lives, their world - Kiara's taken a step closer and Grace stalks off in the quest for food and then there's the curl and hook of the Cultist and Kiara cuts a look over a shoulder; her hair wild and loose tonight; she's in white and pink and green and there's a protracted pause before she says anything.
Lets the other female closer and then: "Something attacked him with Elijah in Washington Park two nights ago." An undertone, that. Kiara's voice a deliberate aside, her hands dropping to her sides. "Whatever it was, it got Samir. I can heal it, but - " Her attention settles back on him. It's not the physical that's the problem, the unspoken as she moves closer. Her focus on the injury to his face.
[Life 1, scanning those injuries to see how bad they actually are. So much magic. -1 for focus.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 3 )
Kiara
[Int + Med to possibly lower a roll to heal with Life, I think we need at least 3 to drop it a diff.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Vulgar af, Life 3 + Prime 2: Heal Samir's face. Base diff 7, -1 focus, -1 going slow, -1 practiced rote]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 5) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Kiara
[Paradox, 3 + 1 for probable/possible Sleepers around cuz they always are]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
[Ow.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Serafíne
The creature's dark eyes track to Grace as Grace walks by, remarks that she is going to get him some food. Sera's mouth is painted a red so dark it seems to be the color one imagines heart's blood must be. There is a sort of sliding acknowledgment in that glance but also: a clear focus elsewhere. This hum, beneath her breath, beneath her skin, the sliding grace of it, music of the spheres or at least music of her spheres: less rhythm than harmony, with the glissading uncertainties of the universe.
"Paradox."
That is Sera's response to Kiara. Both the verbal greeting and the unspoken warning or perhaps request.
Samir is hallucinating like a schizophrenic off his meds and on a psychotic break.
--
None of them really belong here but at least in her usual get-up Sera can be both classified and dismissed as a streetwalker. That's what all the abuelitas in a certain priest's congregation always thought she must be: showing up at all hours, half-dressed, fucked the fuck-up.
Now it is dusk, a late-dusk, a summer-dusk, the hum of traffic skimming by on Federal, feral kid and Sera's mouth closes, flattens - this neat, thoughtful sort of grimace. Keeps some distance as Kiara starts to heal Samir. Her right hand half-closes, thumb rubbing slow and rhythmic over the bronze ring she always wears. This small physical tic she is not really aware of.
(While Kiara is casting: Mind 1: Mind Shield.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Upon her arrival at the Saigon Bowl just down the street, Grace orders some lemongrass sauteed tofu (with peppers and a spicy sauce, the menu says, so hope Samir likes heat. Probably does.)
It reminds her so much of all those times Kalen would just bring her food. Like -- hey, you look like you haven't eaten. Here's some noodles. Don't starve. He's rubbed off on her. Or, perhaps she just can't think of anything else to do for him. Everyone wants to help. It's a thing you do as a Mage in Denver -- or at least it's a thing that their little group does. Theirs is a small spot of sanity in the insane world.
It's going to be a little bit before the stir fry is done. In the intervening time, she checks her phone. Samir is staying put, and that's a good sign. She doesn't want to have to chase him down so she can deliver tofu.
Samir
All of them would qualify as schizophrenic if they were to ever speak to a Sleeper professional about what they believe themselves capable of accomplishing. Breaks from reality and delusions of grandeur. Strange thoughts and stranger behaviors.
Reality is punishing Samir for breaking the rules. His is not a divorce from reality brought on by a chemical imbalance and reality is not one thing to all people.
He is more dangerous than a schizophrenic because the things he believes and thinks he can make into reality. If he chooses to believe in whatever it is he's seeing and hearing then those things can cross the gauntlet into this world.
They're all wary of him. He knows they are. He's breathing heavy because he's overwhelmed by what the world is doing to him and then there's Kiara trying to help him even though he's--
Well. Sera isn't reading his mind. She has no idea what he's thinking. Neither is Kiara. Kiara is close enough to hear the cadence of his respirations. That he's scared.
Kiara's palm finds the wound on his face smooth but for the scabbing and the two days' worth of stubble come in on his jaw and as she works her pagan magic saltwater traces the line of her thumb.
He keeps his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes locked shut the entire time.
Kiara
There is something innately wild in the manner the Verbena heals people. Professionally, as a mundane calling, she rarely does it quite as intimately (or brazenly) as this. Which is: Samir allows Kiara to come closer and - with a beat where she garners the awareness from Serafine (Paradox) - invade his personal space. She steps close enough to him that he can see the color of her eyeshadow; the thick application of mascara on her lashes; the faint smattering of freckles on her nose.
He can smell the brunette's perfume and when her eyes rove his face; feel the intensity behind it. Her hands come up; there's no contact at first; just a vague sense of warmth that radiates from the pagan. She looks as if she's pushing at the edges of an invisible bruise; her teeth sink into her lip and she tastes blood; the tang of it on her tongue strengthens the focus.
Pulls at the fabrics of reality; unspools it; slices into it with the precision and disregard a weed might for the way and direction it grows; pushing itself into the world. Kiara Woolfe pries apart what should be and creates what shall be and Samir's eyes are shut against it when she puts a hand on his face; cups it; and slides another down into his clothing.
Over his chest; skin to skin. Pushes down and there's this subtle; tingling radiation. A surge as if his heart had suddenly galloped and there. His skin begins to knit itself together; as if time had sped up in tandem and the layers of wounded tissue repair; half hidden by matted hair and dried blood and a few days of beard growth Samir's body regenerates and he can feel it. Feel the burn of Kiara's will pushing itself against him and then -
She lets go; there's a sudden severing and the sense of warmth fades and she steps back, Kiara, the slightest of smiles twitching her mouth.
(There's always a cost, though).
Her nose starts to bleed and she takes a jerkier step back, lifts her fingers to her face; turns her eyes on Serafine and notes, in a considerably weaker voice: "It's done." (Nature cannot be altered without recompense.)
Serafíne
(Mind 3: Calm. Difficulty: 8. -1 Focus. - 1 Time.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(Extending: +1)
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(One more time.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Samir has plenty of time to refuse what comes next. To get up, to get away. To object: physically or forcefully or merely with his words. There's magick in the air as Kiara, touches him, spills blood for him in more ways than simply one. Unknits something-that-was and creates what-will-be.
Somehow, on some level, this is all so absurd. The strangest of gatherings around a frightened, hallucinating drug dealer. It's not really a part of town where passers-by look too closely at strangers, because they don't want strangers to look back, but anyone looking would probably make a half-dozen connections and end up with an assumption that is somehow closer to the truth than they know: college kid and shrooms, graduate student and a bad batch of MDMA, friends gathering to talk him down from that ledge, or at least out of the filthy alley behind Saigon Pho House or whatever, and into someone's car.
Humming: Sera is simply humming, a very quiet, very particular song beneath her breath. The chord progressions basic enough that they sound very much like a lullabye. This point where they hook through: skin and spine and consciousness and she closes her eyes, fixed and concentrating. Sinking into this not-precisely-meditative state where she wraps her intentions around her will and frames them in her mouth with a stranger's words.
Opens her eyes not long after, strangely settled.
The humming opens up into this low, rough song, the words more spoken than sung.
Black sky and black sea, lighten up
When we can't breathe
All dreams escape fire, over worlds
Fly but won't tire
Slow down on us wind, hold us still
When everything spins
Near the end she offers Samir her hand. Who knows if he'll take it.
"I have to go. You should let Grace or Kiara take you home. You shouldn't be alone right now."
Grace
The food arrives, and Grace picks out a coconut juice drink to go with it. Tips the people, because she always does. They may not know it, but they're helping so much.
So -- plastic sack of food hanging off of one arm, with the coconut drink in hand, she uses the other to check on her phone, to see that Samir's still there. They haven't scared him off yet. And so, she takes it easy, doesn't run after him. Probably wouldn't be a good idea to run after him anyway. Probably would be a good idea to take it slow and just arrive where he decides to hide and be very insistent about the food.
We'll get there. Eventually.
So it takes a little bit, again, for her to stroll up all nonchalant and smiling.
"Thanks, Sera," she says, because there's the hum of her Working in the air, and something happened. Did it not? Wasn't there someone singing? "I brought lemongrass tofu. They assured me it was actually vegetarian. And this is some kind of coconut drink," she says, giving him a look-over. The bites are gone from his face. That's cool.
No excuses this time, Samir.
Samir
The last time they saw each other Samir promised Serafíne that if she said or did anything to make him uncomfortable beyond the level of uncomfortable he was striving for on his quest to Leave The House More Often he would tell her.
He broke that promise. He made up an excuse about leaving a window open and got the hell out of there. That excuse was bullshit. Then he spent the next three weeks shut up in an apartment whose windows he never fucking opens let alone would have left that way barely talking to anyone.
Neuroplasticity ensures that the human brain can adjust to just about anything. The mind and the will it houses are more powerful tools than any focus any of these fledglings could conjure up. Whatever drove Sam into choosing solitude has kept him there long enough that he's fallen into Quiet twice in one month.
Whether he wants her to or not Kiara runs her hand over his cheek and face. He's wearing the same clothing he had on the night he met Elijah. Wine-red Doc Martens and black jeans and a biker jacket. Some band t-shirt on underneath. Some gray tissue-thin cotton t-shirt with a band logo so faded one would have to lay it out flat to make sense of it.
His heart hammers against the Verbena's palm. He grits his teeth and closes his eyes tighter.
Yes. Yes this looks fucking absurd.
Kiara takes away the scab and the wound beneath and he when he has his right mind back later he will thank her. His right mind remembers the attack. She takes away the wound and she makes room for Sera and then Sera shuts down the part of his brain that is always on. Nothing she can do for the Quiet if she even realizes he is in Quiet. Maybe she just thinks he is a schizophrenic or a bad trip. He doesn't know what she saw in his pattern and he doesn't ask. He doesn't know where he is right now.
Another saltwater line leaves the other eye when he opens them. Lets go a breath like he'd been holding it all this time. That release junkies seek when they push the plunger. A moment of disorientation. Sera doesn't know what effect she's had. He's still in Quiet. But it's quieter now.
He shouldn't be alone right now.
His hands are still shaking. He doesn't take hers. In his right mind he would take her hand and his mind is better but his mind wasn't the problem to begin with. He looks her in the eye. Still bombarded by things he can recognize and ignore but not escape. And then here comes Grace to offer gratitude his throat won't give up.
Sam sags against the building rather. His knees do not give out. He remains standing.
"Fuck," he says. Ragged. Like someone who'd about lost their voice screaming the night before. "I'm so tired..."
Alright. Coconut drink. He won't argue with her. Whatever Sera did helped.
Serafíne
Sam doesn't take her hand, so Sera drops it back to her side. Has a little clutch slung across her body on a chain reaches for that little clutch, snaps it open, pulls out 1) lipstick; 2) an iPhone. Gives Grace a quiet little look as she reapplies her lipstick and calls another cab. Offers to share it with Kiara if Kiara needs a ride but otherwise: soon, gone.
Serafíne
(Thanks guys! Gotta sleep!)
Kiara
(Thanks for coming to help!!)
Kiara
Kiara will need a ride. That is to say - the universe has reached across and taken back from the Verbenae what she pressed into it. Her nose keeps bleeding and the brunette has to reach into her bag and find a crumpled tissue to press against it to stem the flow. It soaks the thin paper and she looks across at Serafine as she says she has to go; extends the offer to the pagan.
"Yeah." It's a subdued answer, a tick of Kiara's eyes to Grace as she arrives with the food. One look at Kiara dabbing at blood around her nose and Grace might just think Samir had clocked her in the nose for daring to touch him. But - the tendrils of Working linger in the air around them and Kiara sniffs as she reaches for her bag and hoists it over a shoulder.
"I think - I'll head off with Sera." A beat, Kiara's eyes flick over Samir; the way he's sagged into the wall. Back to Grace. "Are you okay to get him home? I can stay, but - " She offers a slighter smile; a half-hearted curl at one edge.
"He might feel safer at your place."
Grace
Grace hands over the coconut drink, and then the sack of food, listens to Kiara talk about how she has to get a ride. Her nose is bleeding.
"Yeah. Probably. Thanks, Kiara. I'll make sure he's safe."
Then, back to Samir, who is no longer pretending to be 'fine'. Nobody's fine when they say they are. It's protesting too much, right?
"My car's just down the street. I can take you somewhere with good locks on the doors, and protection. Nobody will bother you," she says, and there's a lift to her brows like -- is that okay?
Samir
It doesn't register that Kiara is bleeding because of her magick. He hadn't realized that he was bleeding either. Hadn't noticed the blood when it got on his hands and smeared everywhere else and he doesn't notice it staining the Verbena's upper lip. Make of that what you will.
He takes the coconut drink and he takes the sack of food as if he isn't sure if they're real. Different than not wanting to touch something because it might contaminate him. Small difference the others might not even notice. Hesitation like to make sure he's centering his grip right and he ought to thank her but gratitude is hard to conjure up like this.
That Sera leaves and takes Kiara with her doesn't register either. This is how he leaves all the time. Fades out of memory as if he wasn't there at all. Standing upright is difficult and orientating himself is impossible and nobody likes to need other people. Maybe they can talk about this after he's had rest.
Samir looks as if he needs to sleep for about a week. 'Fine.' Like hell he is.
"Okay," he says. Pushes himself away from the wall prepared to follow her. Another exposed-nerve confession: "Grace, I can't--" His voice cracks a bit but he doesn't start crying. "I can't take much more of this."
Her car's just down the street. The little red dot can make it down the street.
Kiara
[I think we're wrapped, ladies and germs. Thanks for the hella awesome scene!]
retroactive disbelief vs. dynamic resonance rolls 1/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Samir
2/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Samir
3/3
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
It's a beautiful evening. Clouds cut back on the mountain-high heat and the breeze feels nice after a period of oppressive sunlight. The sidewalks teem with pedestrian foot traffic and every block emits music and conversation. People shout across the street at each other and open restaurant doors give way to the sounds of clattering cutlery and discussions melted together into a din.
That said: Samir is having a bad day.
The worst thing that could happen to a Virtual Adept is to lose his sense of direction. Their magic works through connections and code and when it all starts to fritz out everything looks the same. He hasn't changed his clothes in two days and the less said about what he did yesterday when he escaped from wherever he was Thursday night the better. On a good day the man is aware and leery of germs and their presence in the environment and on other people. His own thoughts keep him away from other people. The amount of ritual he has to go through just to leave the apartment eats up entire hours of his day.
Grace has never seen the young man with his hair down. The tie responsible for keeping it restrained is still in place but he's had a rough few days and chunks have fallen free of its bindings and fall stringy down to his shoulders. A healing laceration mars his face.
'Laceration' is too kind a word. It looks like someone tried to eat a chunk out of his face and managed to break the skin without causing any further damage. Scabs left behind.
He may or may not have gone missing. Someone may or may not have said something. He doesn't even know where he is right now. He ought to know he's going the opposite direction of his fucking apartment because the light rail tracks are nearby and he doesn't live near the light rail.
So whatever Grace is doing on this lovely late summer afternoon she happens to look up and see a somewhat disheveled young reality hacker go slinking past.
Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Grace is having tacos. She's got a sack in one hand and a taco in the other, taking in the sights of Federal Boulevard on her way to her car when it happens. There's a hint of sharpness to the air, and it's something familiar, something that jogs her memory. She looks around her, and her eyes almost pass right over Samir. If it weren't for the general state of him, with the scabs of healing wounds and signs of distress, she might have had to look a lot harder.
People like Samir disappear. It happens. Whatever it is about him that selectively deletes him from memory works hard. It can get you in trouble. Still, she's heard it around. The event that left him like this, his disappearance? Not exactly something that she's missed.
"Samir?"
They're about to run into each other -- literally.
Samir
Her voice is different than the voices of the loas that had gathered in judgment around him and started hounding him two nights past. It's real. It tugs at him in a way the voices he's ignoring do not.
In the seconds that their eyes meet as they pass each other on the sidewalk Grace can see a glazed sort of madness in his eyes. This isn't a mindscape he's in or a Marauder he's become but she can feel the influence of his resonance and more than that she can feel the paradox crackling around him electricity-wild and for a second it looks as if he's going to turn and run.
Sleepers everywhere. If he were not in control of himself this would be a potentially deadly situation. Still could be. Grace doesn't know what sort of state he's in.
Startled and jolted and Sam stuffs his hands deeper into the pockets of his banged-up biker jacket. Ducks his head and keeps walking. For all he knows she's not real. He's having trouble differentiating between what's real and what isn't. He can push away the things that are very obviously not real but it's the things that could be real and aren't that still give him trouble.
They do not run into each other literally or otherwise. He sidesteps her and passes her by.
Grace
Okay. The taco she was eating gets wrapped up and stuffed in her bag quick-like.
"Samir! Hey," she says, to his back, turning around to walk with him. "It's me. It's Grace. Where are you headed?"
She tries to keep her voice calm, does not even get close to touching him. When she pops up at his side a few seconds later, it's on the other side of the sidewalk.
Samir
"I--"
He about jumps out of his skin when she appears in his peripheral vision on his left side instead of his right where she'd been a moment ago. She can hear whatever he was about to say next catch in his throat.
There's as likely a chance that he's talking to himself as he is talking to another human being. He doesn't understand why it's called Quiet. Ought to just call it Batshit and get it over with. Even if she is a hallucination it's not worth leaping into traffic to stabilize his personal bubble.
A frown creases his brow. They're still walking.
"Are you actually here?"
He's too worn out to try and word that question so he doesn't sound as if he's lost his damned mind.
Grace
Are you actually here? Grace remembers those words from another direction. Lying in a bed drenched with sweat and bloodstains when a quiet Verbena in a lab coat and face mask brought her water. Are you actually here?
She knows what that's like. Knows the look on people's faces when they figure out that the person they're talking to is out of their minds. She just keeps walking without letting that get to her enough to show the shock.
It doesn't really matter why Samir's like this. Just that he is, at this point, hallucinating. Pretty sure about that.
"Yes. Though I know it's fairly difficult to take me at my word when I could be a hallucination. I'm not, though. Listen, you've been gone for two days now. I can see why. You need some help, yeah?"
Samir
Just because she says she's actually here doesn't mean she isn't saying what he would think she would say. The mind is a more powerful computer than the typical user and the typical user doesn't have the ability to write a few lines of code and change physical space.
Their people tend to generate Paradox more quickly than the other traditions do. It's hard to tell how far gone he is from looking at him. Maybe he wouldn't have even noticed an expression of shock if it came over her face.
But he flinches when she uses the word 'hallucination' and stops walking when she says she can see why. That he needs help.
"What?" he says. "No, I'm fine. What are you talking about?"
Grace
"Hmm yes. Fine," she says, stops on the sidewalk with him. "I'm not going to argue. You are alive enough. That's good. People have been worried."
It could be a lot worse, she seems to be saying. At least he's only wandering down the road looking like a rabid dog got to him, asking his friends if they're really there...
"Where are you headed?" she asks again. He might even know.
Samir
"Nowhere."
He's paranoid. Just because she isn't a hallucination doesn't mean she isn't something else. A construct or a hologram. An evil twin or something. Paranoia shoots his answer out at her and it's not an honest answer.
A glance over his shoulder reveals the direction he was headed is clear. Grace doesn't know where he lives or how he gets around.
"Just..." He clears his throat. Scratches the skin near the bite one two three times quick then shoves his hand back in his pocket. Doesn't scratch the bite itself. If he did that he'd tear off the scab. Act normal, damn it. "Just out for a walk."
Grace
"Okay," she says. Damn, he's going to be hard to get to, she thinks. Just out for a walk? Fuck, man. She rolls her eyes, because even the insane will get that out of her when they're being ridiculous.
"Would you like a taco?" she says, digs into the bag to find a fresh one. He might not have eaten for those two days. It's still in its wrapping paper when she hands it over, across the sidewalk. She has to lean over to get anywhere close to him, but she does. Slowly.
Samir
"No no no, I don't--!"
Overdone attempt at reassurance. Like he has a muscle spasm adjusting his Friendliness dial and cranks it all the way up to 11. That she hands something to him at all whether it's the innocuous taco it actually is or appears to be something fucked-up filtered through the lens of his perception would have been enough for Sam to try and decline as polite as possible if he were--
Well. Sam isn't exactly mentally healthy on an ordinary day either but if he's deranged on an ordinary day he's quiet about it. Quiet versus In Quiet.
His hands came out of his pockets as he sprang away from Grace. Not showing his palms yet but more to keep his balance. Like he might need to turn and start hauling ass in a second. That wound on his face looks like it hurts even if he doesn't realize it's there.
"Heh!" Act normal: fail. Reel it in. "I don't eat meat. Vegetarian." He stops talking before he can launch into a delusional rant about what the government does to the meat in this country. Starts walking backwards away from her. "Thank you. Though. I really... I'm fine."
Grace
She turns to face him as he's walking backwards. First things first? We're going to make sure he doesn't get lost again, 'cause it looks like he's about to book it away from his friends -- again. Honestly, Samir? The taco gets stashed away again.
"I'm going to call Kiara, all right? She can help with your," Grace starts, making a sweep across her face.
She pulls out her phone, and huffs a little sigh into it as she goes to operate her 'special' programs. Tracking people is almost her specialty, by now. Usually, she doesn't do it to friends, but in this case...
"I'm also going to make sure we can find you," she says, under her breath. "Last time somebody called Kiara, that didn't work out so well..."
[Corr 2, Life 1, Mind 1 = Tracking a Samir. He's not running away again if she can help it.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Grace
[Extending, because...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Samir
That gesture she makes doesn't mean anything to him. Sam frowns heavy and considers her for several seconds. Call Kiara. How does she know Kiara. Maybe she is actually Grace.
In an ideal world he would accept the help she offers and sit quietly while they waited for the healer to arrive. It isn't as if Kiara is an unknown variable here. He trusted her enough to go off into the desert and let her show him the fucking Umbra. He's been alone in a warehouse with Grace several times.
His capacity to trust others and his own safety aren't the issues here about but he doesn't have an altruistic martyr streak going either. It isn't a matter of him valuing other people's lives more than his own. Worrying that the Technocracy or vampires or some other faceless malevolent force is going to swoop in and kill his friends. It's that he doesn't trust himself.
No way for him to convey that to Grace without sounding crazier than he already does so he just stands wide-eyed controlling his breath while she looks down at her phone to punch in a command.
Sam isn't a ghost. He can't vanish at will. What he can do though is keep creeping backwards away from Grace and then duck into a fucking alleyway. Introduce a bit of lag between when she last physically saw him and when his coordinates show up on her computer.
When she looks back up he's gone from the sidewalk but she knows exactly where he is.
Grace
After the blip of red shows up on her map displaying "Samir" she flips back to the normal operating routine of phones. There's a list of contacts that she scrolls through (Jeez, Grace, when did you start having all these friends?) and finds the K's.
Somewhere else in Denver, Kiara's phone starts going off. If she picks up, it's Grace on the other end with this to say:
"Hey, it's Grace. I'm having a problem? I'm on Federal right by the... uh... Truong An Asian Gifts store? It's Samir. He's all fucked up. Need backup. You available?"
Kiara
[We're doing a little detective work from the other night here. Life 1, coincidental scanning blood. Who was with Elijah? Did Kiara figure that out. Base diff 4, + 4 Sam's Arcane equal to Jesus or something to pick up traces of his resonance, -1 focus, -1 taking her time = BASICALLY DIFF 6]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Extending, don't mind me.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3) ( botch x 1 )
Kiara
[Oh screw you paradox.]
Samir
[That is amazing.]
Kiara
[Reality says no.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 7) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Kiara says ow.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
The last time Kiara had gotten a phonecall, it had involved her driving to Washington Park to assist Elijah with a certain situation involving a drug dealer, Vulgar magic and some sort of entity that had ended up as little more than fatty, smoldering clumps on the ground where it had (quite literally) been scorched from the earth. To say the Verbena's evening had taken a turn would be putting it lightly.
Tonight, she's leaving a tip at a Vietnamese restaurant and shrugging her bag over a shoulder when her pocket vibrates. Not Elijah's half blurred identifying picture but a placeholder (the brunette was yet to manage a capture of Grace for her number) and it's with a pause and a swipe of her thumb over the screen that Grace hears the click and familiarity of Kiara's voice on the other end of the line.
"As I live and breathe, Grace Evans. What's going on, girlfriend?"
There's a certain lightheartedness to the pagan's greeting as she smiles in farewell to a waitress and pulls open a glass door that fades in response to Grace's greeting. Kiara twisting, instead, to sight her location in relation, a frown pulling her red painted lips down. "Samir?"
The pieces hadn't made any sense at the time. Blood on Elijah. Another Awakened but she hadn't been able to pick up a trace. In fact, it had seemed - "I'm on my way." She's easy to spot, too. The Verbena with her long, wild hair and red mouth. The edges of a skirt licking at her heels as she jogs toward the Truong An Asian Gifts store; a heavy silver belt laced at an angle around her hips and jewellery; stones and beads and who knew what else adorning her wrists and neck.
You could feel Kiara Woolfe coming, the deluge of rejuvenating energy and swirling, pulsing life (here came the healer).
[Be nice, dice. Awareness, just in case.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Grace
Grace is a presence leaning against the outside wall of the gift store when Kiara shows up. She's looking into her phone, and Samir is nowhere to be seen.
Still, she peels her eyes off of whatever is so interesting in order to look at the sensation of Kiara. "Hey. He turned and ran. But I could see it coming, so," she flips her phone around, showing Kiara the map of Denver, complete with the little red dot that is Samir upon it.
"He's hiding out in an alley behind the shop. I think he's hallucinating and extremely paranoid. Doesn't think we are who we say we are, I think? In other words, use caution."
Samir
That little red dot starts to boop its way around the back of the building and towards the parking lot.
After he'd ducked out of sight Sam had thought he would try a little self-medication. Light up a cigarette and wander the length of the alleyway or breezeway or whatever the hell this structure is called while window-gazing while he gave himself a pep talk. Acting like he's waiting for someone. Something other than hiding from someone who is trying to help him.
What he can state with certainty is that he is in fact hallucinating and he is in fact suffering from delusions and sensory overload.
What he cannot state with certainty is what actually qualifies as any of those things.
Hiding in an alleyway was not the smartest decision he's made today and especially not this particular alleyway. It takes about two cigarettes for him to state that to himself with certainty. Not smart hanging out in a place where it looks like the awful things he's been seeing or worrying about could actually happen.
Something rustles through a pile of garbage and that's about enough self-medication for right now.
So the little red dot moves. Luckily the little red dot hasn't eaten in two days and has no sense of direction right now. It starts to head towards South Federal rather than cutting north and running.
Samir
OOC: STRIKE THAT FIRST SENTENCE I JUST LOOKED AT A MAP
Kiara
Whatever Kiara had been doing before Grace called, there's no clear sign of it. No shopping bags hang from the woman's arms; there is just a lightweight jacket that cuts in at her waist and elbows, leaving her forearms and wrists free and allowing glimpses of the bracelets the brunette wears around each; a ring on her right hand; some smooth oval stone that catches and glints with her movements in the light.
She's slowed to a purposeful walk by the time she sights Grace leaning against the wall of the gift store, the shifting, keen sense of her guiding the Verbena as surely as anything else. The sensation the Verbena has of the other woman is frequently something clever and agile, the cunning fox that slips into the grasses before it can be scented by predators; the circling eagle; its wings spread wide and casting low shadows across the dry earth before it dives. Clever and quick, that was Grace.
Kiara's eyes tick to the phone in Grace's hands with this brief, tugging smile.
Admiring. Impressed. She nods, breathes out slowly as Grace talks and falls into step with her; Kiara's skirt shifting around her legs as she does; it's a vibrant flourish of pinks and greens and a cut down the side that reveals the edges of the strapped heels on her feet. "I think I may know why. Elijah called me the other night from Washington Park," Kiara's voice is pitched low, her focus shifting from Grace to the careful dodging of pedestrian traffic around them as they weave toward the dot known as Samir.
"He said he was there with another - " She hesitates as a couple brush near them, "- one of us. Something attacked them, but by the time I got there whoever was with him had taken off. Elijah had their blood on him. I tried to use it to figure out who it was but - " The Verbena's expression knits into something akin to lingering confusion. "The blood was strange. I couldn't get anything that even seemed human, but Elijah said the guy with him, he was freaking out."
Her eyes tick to Grace. "Sounds a little familiar."
Grace
"Yeah. I put that much together. I mean, the injuries match what I've been told," she says, shrugs. "Samir's a friend. He's one of my kind, you know? Think he's having the worst couple of days ever..."
She heaves herself off the wall, looks at her phone again. "He's moving. Probably found the courage to get out of that horrible alley... Want to go get him? See if he'll respond to some semblance of reason?"
She sighs, heavy, like that's rather unlikely. At the very least, he might stand still long enough to let Kiara heal his face. But then again, Grace isn't really going to let him walk the streets now that she knows where he is. He's a walking Technocrat magnet in his current state. Fuck that. She starts walking a brisk pace in the direction of the dot. South. Let's go that way.
Samir
Fun fact: Samir had been meeting up with Elijah the other night after nearly three weeks in a milder episode of Quiet. No one has seen him at all this month because he has been holed up in his apartment hallucinating and attempting to puzzle out a sort of meaning from the hallucinations.
All he's come up with is he needs to stop fucking up vulgar hacks.
So for three weeks Samir had subsisted on a diet of cigarettes and bottled water and whatever he could scrounge up from the bodega downstairs without drawing too much attention to himself. He looked a bit thinner to start out. Now he looks thinner and dirtier for not having bathed in two nights. The wound on his face is the source of the blood on Elijah's shirt.
Their paths converge because he doesn't know where he's going and they do. When he sees the both of them his eyes go wide. Dart between the two women's faces several times. But he doesn't turn and bolt. He puts his back against the wall of the building and breathes fast and waits to hear what they have to say.
Kiara
The look Kiara casts Grace is one of contained sympathy. She brushes the fingers of one hand briefly against Grace's elbow, the touch so fleeting and barely there before it was gone it could have been mistaken for an accident. Touch rarely was, that being said, with the Verbena.
"We'll fix it. If we have to, we can hold him until I can at least heal his face." There's something very matter of fact about the way she says this, Kiara, that offers the idea she has absolutely no qualms with attempting to physically restrain a fully grown man to prevent him injuring himself (or others) further. It's there in a steady way the brunette says it; the intent sweep of her eyes over the crowds, the tilt of her chin.
Their paths converge and Samir looks like a startled, wide eyed doe caught in a hunter's crosshairs. Back against the wall; staring at them and Kiara's supple mouth thins to a line; her dark eyes flicking over the Virtual Adept's body and returning to focus with keener intent on his face. On those wild eyes of his.
"Hey, Samir." Kiara takes a step, subtly preempting Samir's flight on one side; her fingers slide to her sides; one resting over her bag; a worn leather thing that looks as if its held together by determination more than any physical resilience. The pagan's voice is quiet, threaded with (deliberate) pleasure at the sight of him. He looks thin, drawn and smeared in blood and dirt and there's a certain way the Verbena draws in a breath, a certain angling of her body that reads readiness.
That speaks of unvoiced sympathy for his current situation.
"Grace and I were just looking for you. I heard you had a rough night. I can help you feel better, if you like."
Grace
"Yeah, don't grab him, Kiara. I know you might want to -- I'm just saying, that will make it worse. Be careful about the touching shit all together. I'm afraid of what he might do if he gets hyped up by somebody trying to hold on to him. I used to be like that. Sucks."
She just keeps staring into her phone while she talks, not really looking at Kiara's reaction to that.
Eventually, they catch up. They catch him. He's up against the wall and scared shitless. Grace's eyes skitter off of his, with his fast breathing and cornered animal expression.
"Hey. I called Kiara, just like I said. Hey, I can get you something vegetarian to eat, hey? I uh... ate all of the tacos..."
It's about all she can do at the moment. And necessary, because come on -- he looks like she did after throwing up her stomach lining for a month.
Samir
Option A: Continue asserting that he's fine and nothing's going on he just partied too hard the other night hah hah go away Friends nothing to see here and then they double-team him and everything is awful and they end up on the news or in a Paradox Realm or Room 101 or or or.
Option B:
He listens as Kiara offers to help him. He listens as Grace offers to get him something besides the tacos she ate. He doesn't want food. They as in They with a capital T They are trying to kill him because he won't do what they tell him to do. He knows They aren't real. But then there's the germs he knows are there. Germs and he go round and round most nights anyway.
But he's tired and he's hungry and he doesn't want to upset them. He and Tobacco concluded that they're real and they probably aren't being remotely mind-controlled by the Technocracy. Or else he just doesn't care if they are.
"Okay," he says.
Kiara
It's at some point between Grace asserting that she shouldn't touch Samir and the way Samir looks at them as if he's resigning himself to some fate worse than death that the Verbena's fingers slide into her bag and curl around her phone. It's a subtle motion but in Samir's current state might as well be certification she's calling in more suits to come in and restrain him while they escort him away.
The brunette knows precisely two people who might be able to reach the man pressed against the alleyway wall in ways that won't snap whatever tenuous control he's clinging to and her fingers tap out a message to the first she locates in her saved numbers. Two women with devices in their hands, exchanging looks between them and the second; the taller; tucks hers away after a moment and reaches down to set her bag on the ground with a dull impact suggestive of heavy items within.
"Okay." She repeats and straightens, but doesn't approach. There's a cant of her head, her eyes search Samir's expression for signs he's about to lash out, make another run for it. "You know I'm not going to hurt you, right? You have a cut - " she gestures to her temple, the heavy jewellery on the Verbena's wrists clinking together. "I'm going to fix it. I'm going to come closer."
A beat. Kiara takes a step. "Tell me if you want me to back off."
Serafíne
Taxi on the corner. The yellow sort with the lights framing the word TAXI to tell you: on duty or off, occupied or un. Half a dozen tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror and a strange, subdural sort of music muttering from the speakers.
Lights flashes against traffic. The smear of the lingering sun this bloodied, blooded stain over the windshield, or maybe that's simply the pulse of traffic light as it changes over from yellow to red.
--
A woman climbs out of the backseat. Creamy white, maybe ivory, cocktail dress. Brocaded or beaded and strapless, long hair pulled back into a loose almost-chignon that only emphasizes the darker, shaved fringe on her head. Heels on the sidewalk (black, peep-toe, these) as she saunters towards the trio, studded black clutch tucked in her right hand.
Samir
Sam opens his mouth to answer the question as to whether he knows she's not going to hurt him. It isn't so much that she cuts him off as he decides he doesn't want to answer that. Sure the hallucinations aren't real and he can tell himself that all he wants but the ones he sees are everywhere and the ones he hears won't shut the fuck up. He can ignore them but that doesn't make them go away.
His eyes have a febrile sheen to them but he's gone pale from lack of sleep and food. It isn't illness that has him acting like this. They can practically feel how haywire his Work has gone or hear electricity crackling in the air around him. Practically but not quite.
He wants her to back off but not for the reason Grace has warned her about.
That cut is a bite. What bit him was once human. A young blond man with an appetite for dangerous things unwrote its Pattern and left it as singed nothing on the grass in Washington Park. He isn't sure he believes her. When he puts his fingers to his face he doesn't draw away blood but that's because the wound has already scabbed over.
Wordless resignation. Kiara can put a hand on him and he won't try to escape.
Grace
Grace nods at his "Okay" and starts stalking off to find him something vegetarian in this place. The Vietnamese places usually have plates and soups full of meat. The taco places usually have meat wrapped up in tortillas. Maybe she might find a taco place with some sort of bean burrito, but then that would be full of lard, so no...
A bit of wandering through Google finds the place they just passed (Saigon Bowl) with a vegetarian menu. Score. Lemongrass sauteed tofu sounds good (and more portable than a soup) so, she trundles off to go get some.
Kiara seems like she has this "no touching" thing down. She's asking permission first, at least.
It's then that she notes Sera, that unmistakeable gut-wrenchingly enthralling sensation of her. Grace turns and waves. "Gonna go get him some food," she says, as if that explains everything. It might. The guy needs to eat as much as he needs his face put back together.
Serafíne
Mind 2: (less aura reading/surface thoughts. more like a life scan: wtf is wrong with you?) Difficulty -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne
(And now Mind / Prime: 1 methinks. are you under the influence of magicks?). Dif -1: focus.
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kiara
It's hard to imagine what Kiara must have texted Serafine to get her to Federal on a Saturday at dusk. After, even. The sun sinking down and stars speckling the sky; clouds rolling over and there's the three of them with Samir pressed back against a wall as if he's preparing himself for some sort of onslaught. Blood dried to his face; gore and who knew what else staining him.
He's got a bite mark on his face and the creature responsible for it wasn't anything explainable to most people. There's nothing normal about any of this but then again - their lives, their world - Kiara's taken a step closer and Grace stalks off in the quest for food and then there's the curl and hook of the Cultist and Kiara cuts a look over a shoulder; her hair wild and loose tonight; she's in white and pink and green and there's a protracted pause before she says anything.
Lets the other female closer and then: "Something attacked him with Elijah in Washington Park two nights ago." An undertone, that. Kiara's voice a deliberate aside, her hands dropping to her sides. "Whatever it was, it got Samir. I can heal it, but - " Her attention settles back on him. It's not the physical that's the problem, the unspoken as she moves closer. Her focus on the injury to his face.
[Life 1, scanning those injuries to see how bad they actually are. So much magic. -1 for focus.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 3 )
Kiara
[Int + Med to possibly lower a roll to heal with Life, I think we need at least 3 to drop it a diff.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Kiara
[Vulgar af, Life 3 + Prime 2: Heal Samir's face. Base diff 7, -1 focus, -1 going slow, -1 practiced rote]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 5) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Kiara
[Paradox, 3 + 1 for probable/possible Sleepers around cuz they always are]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kiara
[Ow.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Serafíne
The creature's dark eyes track to Grace as Grace walks by, remarks that she is going to get him some food. Sera's mouth is painted a red so dark it seems to be the color one imagines heart's blood must be. There is a sort of sliding acknowledgment in that glance but also: a clear focus elsewhere. This hum, beneath her breath, beneath her skin, the sliding grace of it, music of the spheres or at least music of her spheres: less rhythm than harmony, with the glissading uncertainties of the universe.
"Paradox."
That is Sera's response to Kiara. Both the verbal greeting and the unspoken warning or perhaps request.
Samir is hallucinating like a schizophrenic off his meds and on a psychotic break.
--
None of them really belong here but at least in her usual get-up Sera can be both classified and dismissed as a streetwalker. That's what all the abuelitas in a certain priest's congregation always thought she must be: showing up at all hours, half-dressed, fucked the fuck-up.
Now it is dusk, a late-dusk, a summer-dusk, the hum of traffic skimming by on Federal, feral kid and Sera's mouth closes, flattens - this neat, thoughtful sort of grimace. Keeps some distance as Kiara starts to heal Samir. Her right hand half-closes, thumb rubbing slow and rhythmic over the bronze ring she always wears. This small physical tic she is not really aware of.
(While Kiara is casting: Mind 1: Mind Shield.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Upon her arrival at the Saigon Bowl just down the street, Grace orders some lemongrass sauteed tofu (with peppers and a spicy sauce, the menu says, so hope Samir likes heat. Probably does.)
It reminds her so much of all those times Kalen would just bring her food. Like -- hey, you look like you haven't eaten. Here's some noodles. Don't starve. He's rubbed off on her. Or, perhaps she just can't think of anything else to do for him. Everyone wants to help. It's a thing you do as a Mage in Denver -- or at least it's a thing that their little group does. Theirs is a small spot of sanity in the insane world.
It's going to be a little bit before the stir fry is done. In the intervening time, she checks her phone. Samir is staying put, and that's a good sign. She doesn't want to have to chase him down so she can deliver tofu.
Samir
All of them would qualify as schizophrenic if they were to ever speak to a Sleeper professional about what they believe themselves capable of accomplishing. Breaks from reality and delusions of grandeur. Strange thoughts and stranger behaviors.
Reality is punishing Samir for breaking the rules. His is not a divorce from reality brought on by a chemical imbalance and reality is not one thing to all people.
He is more dangerous than a schizophrenic because the things he believes and thinks he can make into reality. If he chooses to believe in whatever it is he's seeing and hearing then those things can cross the gauntlet into this world.
They're all wary of him. He knows they are. He's breathing heavy because he's overwhelmed by what the world is doing to him and then there's Kiara trying to help him even though he's--
Well. Sera isn't reading his mind. She has no idea what he's thinking. Neither is Kiara. Kiara is close enough to hear the cadence of his respirations. That he's scared.
Kiara's palm finds the wound on his face smooth but for the scabbing and the two days' worth of stubble come in on his jaw and as she works her pagan magic saltwater traces the line of her thumb.
He keeps his hands jammed in his pockets and his eyes locked shut the entire time.
Kiara
There is something innately wild in the manner the Verbena heals people. Professionally, as a mundane calling, she rarely does it quite as intimately (or brazenly) as this. Which is: Samir allows Kiara to come closer and - with a beat where she garners the awareness from Serafine (Paradox) - invade his personal space. She steps close enough to him that he can see the color of her eyeshadow; the thick application of mascara on her lashes; the faint smattering of freckles on her nose.
He can smell the brunette's perfume and when her eyes rove his face; feel the intensity behind it. Her hands come up; there's no contact at first; just a vague sense of warmth that radiates from the pagan. She looks as if she's pushing at the edges of an invisible bruise; her teeth sink into her lip and she tastes blood; the tang of it on her tongue strengthens the focus.
Pulls at the fabrics of reality; unspools it; slices into it with the precision and disregard a weed might for the way and direction it grows; pushing itself into the world. Kiara Woolfe pries apart what should be and creates what shall be and Samir's eyes are shut against it when she puts a hand on his face; cups it; and slides another down into his clothing.
Over his chest; skin to skin. Pushes down and there's this subtle; tingling radiation. A surge as if his heart had suddenly galloped and there. His skin begins to knit itself together; as if time had sped up in tandem and the layers of wounded tissue repair; half hidden by matted hair and dried blood and a few days of beard growth Samir's body regenerates and he can feel it. Feel the burn of Kiara's will pushing itself against him and then -
She lets go; there's a sudden severing and the sense of warmth fades and she steps back, Kiara, the slightest of smiles twitching her mouth.
(There's always a cost, though).
Her nose starts to bleed and she takes a jerkier step back, lifts her fingers to her face; turns her eyes on Serafine and notes, in a considerably weaker voice: "It's done." (Nature cannot be altered without recompense.)
Serafíne
(Mind 3: Calm. Difficulty: 8. -1 Focus. - 1 Time.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(Extending: +1)
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
(One more time.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (5, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Serafíne
Samir has plenty of time to refuse what comes next. To get up, to get away. To object: physically or forcefully or merely with his words. There's magick in the air as Kiara, touches him, spills blood for him in more ways than simply one. Unknits something-that-was and creates what-will-be.
Somehow, on some level, this is all so absurd. The strangest of gatherings around a frightened, hallucinating drug dealer. It's not really a part of town where passers-by look too closely at strangers, because they don't want strangers to look back, but anyone looking would probably make a half-dozen connections and end up with an assumption that is somehow closer to the truth than they know: college kid and shrooms, graduate student and a bad batch of MDMA, friends gathering to talk him down from that ledge, or at least out of the filthy alley behind Saigon Pho House or whatever, and into someone's car.
Humming: Sera is simply humming, a very quiet, very particular song beneath her breath. The chord progressions basic enough that they sound very much like a lullabye. This point where they hook through: skin and spine and consciousness and she closes her eyes, fixed and concentrating. Sinking into this not-precisely-meditative state where she wraps her intentions around her will and frames them in her mouth with a stranger's words.
Opens her eyes not long after, strangely settled.
The humming opens up into this low, rough song, the words more spoken than sung.
Black sky and black sea, lighten up
When we can't breathe
All dreams escape fire, over worlds
Fly but won't tire
Slow down on us wind, hold us still
When everything spins
Near the end she offers Samir her hand. Who knows if he'll take it.
"I have to go. You should let Grace or Kiara take you home. You shouldn't be alone right now."
Grace
The food arrives, and Grace picks out a coconut juice drink to go with it. Tips the people, because she always does. They may not know it, but they're helping so much.
So -- plastic sack of food hanging off of one arm, with the coconut drink in hand, she uses the other to check on her phone, to see that Samir's still there. They haven't scared him off yet. And so, she takes it easy, doesn't run after him. Probably wouldn't be a good idea to run after him anyway. Probably would be a good idea to take it slow and just arrive where he decides to hide and be very insistent about the food.
We'll get there. Eventually.
So it takes a little bit, again, for her to stroll up all nonchalant and smiling.
"Thanks, Sera," she says, because there's the hum of her Working in the air, and something happened. Did it not? Wasn't there someone singing? "I brought lemongrass tofu. They assured me it was actually vegetarian. And this is some kind of coconut drink," she says, giving him a look-over. The bites are gone from his face. That's cool.
No excuses this time, Samir.
Samir
The last time they saw each other Samir promised Serafíne that if she said or did anything to make him uncomfortable beyond the level of uncomfortable he was striving for on his quest to Leave The House More Often he would tell her.
He broke that promise. He made up an excuse about leaving a window open and got the hell out of there. That excuse was bullshit. Then he spent the next three weeks shut up in an apartment whose windows he never fucking opens let alone would have left that way barely talking to anyone.
Neuroplasticity ensures that the human brain can adjust to just about anything. The mind and the will it houses are more powerful tools than any focus any of these fledglings could conjure up. Whatever drove Sam into choosing solitude has kept him there long enough that he's fallen into Quiet twice in one month.
Whether he wants her to or not Kiara runs her hand over his cheek and face. He's wearing the same clothing he had on the night he met Elijah. Wine-red Doc Martens and black jeans and a biker jacket. Some band t-shirt on underneath. Some gray tissue-thin cotton t-shirt with a band logo so faded one would have to lay it out flat to make sense of it.
His heart hammers against the Verbena's palm. He grits his teeth and closes his eyes tighter.
Yes. Yes this looks fucking absurd.
Kiara takes away the scab and the wound beneath and he when he has his right mind back later he will thank her. His right mind remembers the attack. She takes away the wound and she makes room for Sera and then Sera shuts down the part of his brain that is always on. Nothing she can do for the Quiet if she even realizes he is in Quiet. Maybe she just thinks he is a schizophrenic or a bad trip. He doesn't know what she saw in his pattern and he doesn't ask. He doesn't know where he is right now.
Another saltwater line leaves the other eye when he opens them. Lets go a breath like he'd been holding it all this time. That release junkies seek when they push the plunger. A moment of disorientation. Sera doesn't know what effect she's had. He's still in Quiet. But it's quieter now.
He shouldn't be alone right now.
His hands are still shaking. He doesn't take hers. In his right mind he would take her hand and his mind is better but his mind wasn't the problem to begin with. He looks her in the eye. Still bombarded by things he can recognize and ignore but not escape. And then here comes Grace to offer gratitude his throat won't give up.
Sam sags against the building rather. His knees do not give out. He remains standing.
"Fuck," he says. Ragged. Like someone who'd about lost their voice screaming the night before. "I'm so tired..."
Alright. Coconut drink. He won't argue with her. Whatever Sera did helped.
Serafíne
Sam doesn't take her hand, so Sera drops it back to her side. Has a little clutch slung across her body on a chain reaches for that little clutch, snaps it open, pulls out 1) lipstick; 2) an iPhone. Gives Grace a quiet little look as she reapplies her lipstick and calls another cab. Offers to share it with Kiara if Kiara needs a ride but otherwise: soon, gone.
Serafíne
(Thanks guys! Gotta sleep!)
Kiara
(Thanks for coming to help!!)
Kiara
Kiara will need a ride. That is to say - the universe has reached across and taken back from the Verbenae what she pressed into it. Her nose keeps bleeding and the brunette has to reach into her bag and find a crumpled tissue to press against it to stem the flow. It soaks the thin paper and she looks across at Serafine as she says she has to go; extends the offer to the pagan.
"Yeah." It's a subdued answer, a tick of Kiara's eyes to Grace as she arrives with the food. One look at Kiara dabbing at blood around her nose and Grace might just think Samir had clocked her in the nose for daring to touch him. But - the tendrils of Working linger in the air around them and Kiara sniffs as she reaches for her bag and hoists it over a shoulder.
"I think - I'll head off with Sera." A beat, Kiara's eyes flick over Samir; the way he's sagged into the wall. Back to Grace. "Are you okay to get him home? I can stay, but - " She offers a slighter smile; a half-hearted curl at one edge.
"He might feel safer at your place."
Grace
Grace hands over the coconut drink, and then the sack of food, listens to Kiara talk about how she has to get a ride. Her nose is bleeding.
"Yeah. Probably. Thanks, Kiara. I'll make sure he's safe."
Then, back to Samir, who is no longer pretending to be 'fine'. Nobody's fine when they say they are. It's protesting too much, right?
"My car's just down the street. I can take you somewhere with good locks on the doors, and protection. Nobody will bother you," she says, and there's a lift to her brows like -- is that okay?
Samir
It doesn't register that Kiara is bleeding because of her magick. He hadn't realized that he was bleeding either. Hadn't noticed the blood when it got on his hands and smeared everywhere else and he doesn't notice it staining the Verbena's upper lip. Make of that what you will.
He takes the coconut drink and he takes the sack of food as if he isn't sure if they're real. Different than not wanting to touch something because it might contaminate him. Small difference the others might not even notice. Hesitation like to make sure he's centering his grip right and he ought to thank her but gratitude is hard to conjure up like this.
That Sera leaves and takes Kiara with her doesn't register either. This is how he leaves all the time. Fades out of memory as if he wasn't there at all. Standing upright is difficult and orientating himself is impossible and nobody likes to need other people. Maybe they can talk about this after he's had rest.
Samir looks as if he needs to sleep for about a week. 'Fine.' Like hell he is.
"Okay," he says. Pushes himself away from the wall prepared to follow her. Another exposed-nerve confession: "Grace, I can't--" His voice cracks a bit but he doesn't start crying. "I can't take much more of this."
Her car's just down the street. The little red dot can make it down the street.
Kiara
[I think we're wrapped, ladies and germs. Thanks for the hella awesome scene!]
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