Kalen is in his office. His hair is still damp from a post-workout shower and he's wearing jeans and a charcoal grey tee-shirt.
There is a coffee mug next to a bunch of papers, half empty because Kalen is working on transcribing and annotating rotes and has basically forgotten it. He has several heavy books out and his journal, and fountain pens full of multiple metallic colors and a few more normal colors. There are a series of intricate sigils in gold and silver and copper and bronze, accented with other colors on occasion drawn on large sheets of nearly translucent paper. There are sheets of actually translucent paper with annotations to serve as overlays. Heavier textured paper to serve as covers and various colors of silk thread to bind little folios together.
He's really only a step or so away from art.
Grace
Kalen's office door swings open suddenly, because Grace has little patience right at the moment, and little things like courtesy go flying out the window when she is in deep thought. She does announce her presence with a loud "Kalen!" right before going for the door handle, but there wasn't much thought behind that to be honest.
She doesn't even bother to fully process what's going on in the background, with the sheets of paper and metallic inks. It registers, of course. He's making sigils. Working. It's still not quite as important as what she's got on her phone right now, its screen pointed at him, showing the selfie of a guy with shoulder-length black hair, tanned skin, and a serious expression.
"So, uh. I'm a little freaking out right now..."
Kalen
Kalen looks at the picture for a few seconds and then sighs. "Why do I suspect this is more complicated than that he is cute, he's asked you out to coffee, and you suddenly care whether your clothes match?
"Not that that wouldn't be a legitimate reason to come flying into my office....."
Grace
What? Asked her out to coffee? She just blinks at him.
"Okay. Uh. No. You remember Bastion, right? This guy -- he was a part of that world. Atreyu. It's kinda complicated, you know?"
She slides the phone across his desk at him, doesn't sit down.
"He was the security protocol. Kind of. Also a living portal between worlds. Sometimes he wasn't a he, but near the end, he looked exactly like this. And this was taken at his request by Arionna who just came by to deliver the message that he's looking for me."
So, you know, talk about evidence that one is in another world, right? Arionna looking out for her fellow man? Gotta be a sign.
Kalen
Kalen goes very still at the menton of Bastion.
Stays very still until Grace has finished speaking. For a moment after.
And then, quietly, "Do we know why he is here at all?" There is no real emotional tone, because control. But his eyes are just a little wide. His breathing too perfectly even. He might be good enough to fool most people most of the time, but he is not, not remotely, calm.
Grace
"She said he was also looking for some other people whose names she didn't recognize and didn't remember, other than that -- no idea," Grace says, paces towards the wall with a sigh.
"More great news? They had an 'encounter' with a lead scientist with the Technocracy. He had to have told her that -- she didn't seem to know what the Technocracy is. She said that happened at a bakery near the campus, which could be like ten different bakeries. She didn't know the name of the place."
She turns back to face him, leans against the wall.
"I'm going to go try to find him now, you know."
Kalen
Kalen does not seem surprised by the mention of the technocracy. It has been brought to his attention twice recently.
He remembers zombies shambling, mindless and seemingly endless. Remembers having a horse that was his only real companion for months.
Remembers standing in line at a cafe and feeling out what to do about the man with the Static Resonance and the black suit. Until the world became the one he had seen before and he'd had to make a choice. And he had, in that second, given a warning to someone he is relatively sure was a technocratic agent in the hope that what they both cared about most was not fighting. That it was protecting the lazy afternoon crowd from people with a shotgun.
He hadn't told the others about that. Not that in his vision Kelsey had killed him, not that the person he'd temporarily partnered with was perhaps his enemy.
Perhaps. But hen perhaps a whole horde of people just really need to read A Separate Peace. And pay attention.
"I would expect no less," Kalen says. Still perfectly, carefully measured. "Let me know if you need me for anything."
Grace
[Perception + Empathy = Does Grace notice how not-calm he is?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kalen
[Manip+Subterfuge - Not that Grace can't tell, I just want to know how good he is at not freaking out.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
"Do you need anything? Like... a Valium? I know where Elijah keeps his tequila."
He might be able to fool most people most of the time, but there's no fooling Grace right now. Something's up, there. Her own trip to Bastion wasn't a walk in the park, but what she heard of his? He doesn't like to talk about it. Nobody did.
"Listen. The world isn't falling apart. Not yet. And even if it starts? I'll fix it. Nothing I haven't done before," she says, gives him a smile.
Kalen
Kalen laughs at that. "Look at you. Definitely my best apprentice. You learned the most important thing." And he does, there, sound a little proud. Grace is not the girl he met at a picnic table two years ago anymore. She is no longer unsure how to respond to zombie dogs and unexpected Umbral trips and the looming threat of the apocalypse.
She has accepted that she can change the world. And, if she must, that she should.
If she could have learned that or Enochian...well...the right thing took.
Grace
Grace rolls her eyes at that.
"Okay. Listen. I don't actually think the world's about to end or anything, but it might start getting interesting here real soon. I don't want to lead anyone or anything to something I care about, so I'm going to go do my thing from the parking lot of the Walmart on Wadsworth Boulevard. Just so you know."
Just in case she goes missing, she means. Which isn't going to happen, Kalen...
She walks over to his desk, leans over to grab her phone back -- Atreyu's face staring back at her. "Ugh, why couldn't you have told Arionna something important? Like how to find you? Jerk..."
She's talking to the phone of course. Then, she stalks her way back out of Kalen's office with her face stuck in it.
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