Let's try this again!
Without an email after his disappearance from the Danger Room last week Grace may have forgotten he had ever come by in the first place. He had and he had taken with him a phone rooted to Ginger and a better understanding of how little he understood about the way the Traditionalists in this city operated but he had not reached out to Grace again.
Given that he has a somewhat standing invitation to just drop by whenever the hell he wants and an aversion to setting times or allowing other people to expect his presence when it takes him so much effort to leave the fucking house when he arrives this day Samir has neither emailed nor texted Grace to let her know he was coming over.
Maybe he just happened to be in the neighborhood. Who even knows.
Samir hesitates when he arrives. He's already ditched the cigarette he was smoking as he came up the sidewalk and has gone ahead and paced back and forth four times to stave off whatever disaster would occur if he interacted with the door without pacing first. Then he takes a deep breath and steps up to the door and knocks.
Grace
[Awareness! Samir, you are so hard to detect...]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
[Alertness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Alertness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Er, yeah, okay -- that first one...]
Grace
Samir knocks. And there is nothing. No response, for quite some time. Grace might be out of the 'house' perhaps?
Truthfully, there was a response. Grace heard a noise she wasn't expecting and went to go check the security cameras on the compound perimeter, and noted a man outside.
Just a man. Something familiar about him, in a hard-to-place way. Maybe its the aura of fear about him that sparks off a memory that cascades from there. After all, he'd just gone out of his way to be noticed, right? So she notices.
On the way out to the door, however, she has to struggle to remember why she got up.
Finally, the door clicks and creaks open, and Grace peers out of it, a little confused at herself until -- "Oh! It's you! I... Huh. Dude, you totally need to announce yourself in some way a little more obvious than a knock on the door. I might have just left you out here all night... Come in, man."
Samir
A self-conscious self-depreciating half-a-laugh and Samir nods and starts to open his mouth like he would apologize if she weren't telling him to come in in the same breath but she does tell him to come in so his nod changes tone.
"Alright," he says and steps over the threshold way quicker than he did the night Alexander happened upon him. "I... sorry, I forget, sometimes, that other people..."
That other people forget him. He abandons the sentence for no real apparent reason and starts over. The stammering's getting easier to rein in the more he meets her but Grace is not as open and easy to read as some of the other folks he's met recently. If she continues to think of him as uncomfortable if not outright anxious no one would blame her. He is.
"Anyway, I was just..." He has his hands in the pockets of his jacket now. Sticks his elbows out a little wider like to indicate the world outside. "... in the neighborhood..." Relaxes his shoulders so his elbows aren't sticking out anymore. "... and I thought I'd stop by. I don't know if you remember, last time I was here, when Jo came in? I booked without...?"
Does she remember. He gives her a chance to think before continuing on his rambling way to whatever the point of his visit is.
Grace
Grace thinks about it. And then her eyes open a touch wider. Oh. The last time he was here, Jo arrived, and was very Jo-like, and Samir fled the scene.
"Without saying goodbye. Yeah. It's okay. Jo can be a bit much to handle."
Grace shrugs, but -- damnit, Jo -- she is blushing with the return of that memory. To hide that, she turns and starts up the stairs, without really asking what Samir is actually here for. Whatever, most of the cool stuff is upstairs anyway. Unless he wants food. At that though, she turns again, twisting her body around just to ask: "Are you hungry?"
Grace
[at that thought*]
Samir
[perc + emp: ARE YOU ASKING TO BE POLITE OR DID I INTERRUPT YOU. specialty probably doesn't apply here.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Samir
Is he hungry.
Right now he doesn't know Grace well enough to know that she wouldn't ask him that if he had interrupted her going to town on a plate of spaghetti. She probably would have come to the door with noodles hanging out of her mouth. But there's still a moment where he argues with himself whether she's asking to be polite or not. Then it dawns on him Grace is asking because she actually wants to make sure he's not hungry.
"No," he says, "thank you, I ate earlier. I actually came by hoping I could talk you into letting me into the Danger Room again. We... I promise I won't just leave next time someone Jo-like stops by, I just..." Another wry laugh. "... wasn't expecting that."
Grace
"Oh yeah!" she says, and swings around to go the other way, back down the stairs again. "You didn't get to play any, did you?"
"We could just pick up where we left off then, I guess?"
And there she goes again, down the hall without regard to Samir. If he follows, she doesn't much care. It would just make sense, wouldn't it?
"I always like doing shit in the Danger Room. Unless I'm asleep... I sleep like a rock."
Grace
"Oh yeah!" she says, and swings around to go the other way, back down the stairs again. "You didn't get to play any, did you?"
"We could just pick up where we left off then, I guess?"
And there she goes again, down the hall without regard to Samir. If he follows, she doesn't much care. It would just make sense, wouldn't it?
"I always like doing shit in the Danger Room. Unless I'm asleep... I sleep like a rock."
Samir
And if he didn't follow she might very well find herself asking herself why she couldn't remember what she was just doing. It would be a great way for him to fuck with people if Samir were an individual who delighted in fucking with people but Samir is more of the type to treat others the way he would like to be treated and Samir does not like it when other people fuck with him.
So he does follow Grace. Even manages not to run right into her when she wheels around to double back down the stairs.
"Yeah, I..." What? She can't see Samir frown a baffled yet somewhat amused frown trying to figure out the relationship between the two statements. Walk it off, buddy. "... wouldn't want to sleep in there, either. Seems kinda impossible."
What with foul-mouthed hyperactive barely-legal girls barging in and all.
Grace
That statement brings Grace up short, and she pauses a bit in her walk. "Of all the things we do and see, you find sleeping in a room with a padded floor to be... impossible? Like, more impossible than having a long conversation with an angel, or more impossible than possessed horror movies?"
She walks on. "I'm going to sleep in there tonight, just because."
And thus, we get to the door, which she shoves open. The room is just as Samir remembers, with its drab color scheme and bizarre accouterments.
Samir
And Samir actually looks at her as if he has no idea what she's talking about when she mentions the two events he's read about on Ginger already. This group has had quite the spate of adventures since the city Chantry went to rubble.
He was being facetious but he'd rather she think him naïve or stupid or... not funny... than point out that he was trying to be funny. Besides she's already concluded she's going to sleep in there tonight because fuck you, Samir. No point arguing about what he meant.
"Right on," he says and then they're in the Danger Room.
He glances over his shoulder once like he's expecting the same thing to happen this time as happened last. Like they've got a couple minutes of almost-arguing before someone else is going to show up. This place is almost like a Chantry in that it's a hub of activity. Almost.
After that glance back Samir falls into orbit two arms' lengths from Grace and takes in the dimensions of the room and the potential beyond the grayness.
Grace
"So. Daaaanger Rooom," Grace says, waving her arms up in the air. "There's not a lot of actual danger though. I only have limited resources to heal massive damage."
Which suggests... if she didn't have limited resources... what kinds of things would she populate the room with?
She goes immediately toward arming herself, donning the red coat that is tailored to her, and picking out her favorite gun. Then, it's to the control panel of buttons and dials to make this whole thing more interesting. As she goes to work on it, Samir will notice a hissing noise as the mist generators come online from the ceiling (to make the lasers show up when fired) and the lights switch to their blacklight counterparts, turning the whites of their eyes odd colors.
"What do you think... Music?" she asks, with slightly glowing, blue teeth peeking out of her mouth.
Samir
I only have limited resources to heal massive damage.
Samir snorts. Might have said something smart-assed then if he didn't want to risk the smart-assery falling flat. He finds her reasoning humorous though. Maybe understands it a little. He himself has limited resources. Their potential isn't quite so limited but that's another debate.
Then she sets about preparing for battle and Samir startles like the movement has hauled him out of his own thoughts. Along the wall he sees hung those reflective coats but isn't sure if they belong to specific people or if it's a free-for-all. The red one fits Grace just fine. His eyes raise to sight the source of the hissing.
Truth be told after the Umbra that isn't anywhere near the strangest thing he's going to see this year. Then the black lights come and he blinks but doesn't seem otherwise fazed. Maybe he's looking for weird stains so he doesn't step someplace he shouldn't. If people sleep in here he doesn't want to know what else they do.
Focus.
Music?
"You got any Swedish death metal on that thing?" he asks.
Grace
"I got YouTube on that thing, so yes..." she says, and actually appears to be typing something in somewhere to achieve a certain effect. "You have any suggestions in particular?"
"Oh yeah, and uh," she says, and her coat turns on, its strips of flexible plastic LED lights outlining her in brilliant blue. "There's a switch inside the sleeves, and one on the guns. Not hard to find. Just, you know, if you want it to function..."
This is not strange. It's still very mundane. They haven't yet gotten to the real point of this little game. It is, essentially, a training simulation, and your target is another Mage. There is no rule against strangeness here.
Samir
Grace gives him the instructions for turning on the coat and the gun and Samir nods his comprehension. He finds a coat that looks as if it will fit him and a gun he might not drop right away and returns to the original more important topic as he switches on his gear:
"Do you not listen to Swedish death metal?" He sounds as if this is a foreign-ass concept to him but he could be joking. Given that they're standing in a blacklit room about to shoot each other with lasers he could have said anything and an outsider would be hard-pressed to take him seriously. "Alright, tell look up Nihilist. They're one of the grandfathers of Swedish death metal, YouTube should have an entire album on there somewhere."
Grace
"I don't listen to a lot of things. I'm pretty well versed in all aspects of not listening to music," Grace says, and that might actually be a foreign-ass concept to him. "I actually got a request for this whole sound-system deal? Which is why it exists."
She messes with the little pad by the door in order to connect it to YouTube, and then -- Nihilist. It's loud enough to mask light noise, but not a loud yell. Samir might want to turn it up, but Grace doesn't. It's just music.
Music that's quick to the beat, and gets the heart pumping, and... sounds like somebody's dog is choking, but no -- that's singing. Okay. Whatever.
"Okay! Threetwoone go!"
And, she's off into the twisty corners of the maze she built herself. Already has a one-up on Samir in that she knows this place like the back of her hand.
[Stealthiness! Dex 3 + Stealth 2 + Arcane 2]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[oh are we playing the stealth game? arcane 4 halp.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Samir
Okay. So Grace doesn't listen to music. Given that their people can teleport and hijack other people's computers without an Internet connection and do all other sorts of things that rend the fabric of reality that isn't the strangest thing he's going to encounter today. Different people have different experiences.
He takes a moment to watch her reaction to what has just invaded the sound system. Young long-haired guy like him. Of course he listens to death metal. He bobs his head in approval of the quality of the recording if not the volume and then Grace is getting right to it.
He has no fucking clue what the layout of the maze looks like. About all he has going for him is the possibility of his disappearing beneath a mental fog the second they're out of each others' sight. Samir still goes barreling off in the other direction in hopes of orientating himself.
Shit-kicker boots are not the world's stealthiest footwear and he is not light on his feet. But death metal. Distracting. Brilliant.
Grace
[Lookin for a person! WHO IS REALLY HARD TO FIND!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
[perc + alert -2 for grace's arcane]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Okay, Samir and his disappear-from-the-universe thing? That's cheating, man. The music is loud, the lighting is low, and if it weren't for the lights on his coat, she wouldn't have seen a damn thing.
But she knows there's only so many paths he could have taken, and she checks the most probable ones, and there... somewhere... a flash of red LEDs that she follows with speed and...
Fuck, does he see her too?
[Declare: Gonna shoot you, Samir!]
Samir
It's rare that Samir thinks of his fading permanence in the collective consciousness as a boon. Even in this moment he doesn't realize it's a boon. He's more concerned with finding a path down which he can hide until he figures out where the hell Grace has gone off to.
Which he does quicker than she returns the favor. A few seconds before she registers the movement of LEDs he's pointing and firing his laser gun.
[lol: dex + SOMEONE DOESN'T HAVE A FIREARMS SCORE.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Grace
And Grace goes dark. It's a part of the programming -- gives the loser time to hide, and shuts down their gun so they can't easily retaliate too. Grace is thinking about changing that right about now. Realism, right? Rarely in real life is the monster going to run and hide just because you put one bullet in it.
Yeah. For realism's sake. That's the ticket.
Samir gets the satisfaction of a curse from her general direction, before she leaves again, off behind walls.
[Stealthiness! Dex 3 + Stealth 2 + Arcane 2]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
[And I guess break for real? I rule Samir won :P]
No comments:
Post a Comment