Kalen invites Alyssa to come out and meet him in the place that is more suited for guests. And, to Grace, who has been here before, it is more like a place someone might live now. The little living room has a few small statues in it, things Kalen has brought back from some of his trips off to acquire something or to deliver something. He's hung maps on the walls, added a carpet to the space under the table and framed by the couch and two chairs. Where he got furniture upholstered in cream and earth tone paisley on corduroy is anyone's guess.
He just skipped to the assumption that at least and Grace are interested in coffee, and already has all of the things associated with coffee on the coffee table: coffee mugs on wooden coasters, little containers of milk and cream, vials of hazelnut and vanilla flavoring, a bowl full of sugar cubes with little tongs and those rock candy stirrers. There are no brownies today, but, probably for Grace, there is a bowl filled with Astronaut Ice Cream. On the empty side of the coffee table, the side opposite the couch, is a small cooler.
Kalen lets Alyssa know that he is inviting Grace, and that is he would like to invite her almost-apprentice, she is welcome to.
Connor's busy with other things likely (what they may be are his business), and so Alyssa doesn't bring him along. Instead she shows up by foot, having parked a little ways away from the apartment. Those feet are clad in a pair of Doc Martins Vintage 1914s (not actual vintage, but the Vintage Collection) from the company's UK line. Above that is a pair of black jeans with an Eye of Horus patterned into the side of both legs and a vest with a motorcyle collar into which pyramid studs are sewn and a duster over that. She's done up incredibly light for a goth but that's still heavy for a normal person; there's just enough eyeliner to make it look like she's not sleeping well, green eyeshadow and lipstick a shade or two too dark to be hooker-red. And of course that Resonance which follows her of bloodied, feathered wings wrapping around protectively (or perhaps smotheringly).
And so she'd shown up and when let it, let Kalen lead the way. She'd done a quick look around when they passed through and nodded a little bit before following Kalen into the living room area.
"Not bad, Gryffindor." She smiles a little it as she looks the place over. "Must be doing pretty well for yourself if you can afford your own warehouse. At least, I'm guessing that this is you and not the House? It's not quite their style."
She knows what Kalen's trying to do. Get her out of the apartment, keep her busy and sociable. It's appreciated, even if she doesn't always show it.
So, the invitation is accepted, and she drives up to the warehouse in her old red Toyota. She brings her new rig and equipment along with, just in case.
She knew Alyssa would be here, and prepared for the blood. Maybe this is like, therapy. Exposure to the thing that brings back such memories?
In any case, it's not long after Alyssa arrives that Grace brings her own weakly sliding self.
There's not much in the way of introductions with her. She just waves at Alyssa, says hi to Kalen, and sets up on one of the chairs next to the table with the coffee...
Coffee. Yes.
There is a little amused huff when Alyssa calls him Gryffindor. "This is, in fact, me and not the House. I determined that it was easier to accomplish things with more resources and spent considerable time learning to secure those resources. In some sense, I may have gone a little farther than I needed to. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa, and all." The cadence of his speech switches when he changes languages, as if he perhaps actually speaks Spanish and isn't just parroting a line.
"Things for coffee on the table, beer in the cooler." There is beer in the cooler, should either of them look. Not the Coronas that Alyssa had, but local craft brewery beers in a about a half dozen flavors. Because, really, he may not have so much as playfully teased Alyssa about the Coronas, but he is so not serving those to guests.
"Hey, Kit." Grace's arrival gets a little grin. With Alyssa here, he doesn't really expect she'll eat any of the space food he left out for her, but...perhaps she will at least smile. At that. At the ridiculous rock candy stirrers. Perhaps he should have covered the table in kittens? Too late now.
She glances over when Grace arrives, looking her over a bit before giving a nod. Alyssa isn't blind to the fact that she made Grace uncomfortable, and to be fair to the Hollow One she even cares a tiny bit. However, that tiny bit isn't enough to go out of her way to find out why and change it. The Virtual Adept does get a pleasant enough smile before she looks back at Kalen, listening as she heads to the cooler to pick something out. She goes with a dark beer, for the record. Not 'cause it's dark though; she just likes the flavor more.
"Sounds like you're a self-starter then," she says to Kalen. "It's nice to see a few of those are still around. I'm more used to seeing people willing to draw off what's already there because it's easier to do than to gain their own." The cap is popped off with the underband of a silver ring on her right middle finger and she deposits the cap in the garbage can as she goes to take a seat.
"So you wanted to talk about things?" She settles back, looking between the two and curious as to what the topic may be.
"Yes. You arrived at a time where someone with knowledge of both the Ars Mentis and the Ars Manes is likely to prove incredibly useful. Or, well, just before and came to our attention now." Kalen settles onto the couch and pours two cups of coffee. One is offered to Grace before he starts fiddling with his own, and he leans in her direction to murmur, "Even if you don't drink it, it may help if you can smell something else." He doesn't really intend for Alyssa to hear, but they're not exactly far apart.
"I told you a bit about our current issue last we spoke. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how to deal with such a creature. Hunting it, binding it, avoiding getting possessed by it...those trivial details that would allow us to avoid it coming into this world and turning it into some nightmarish reflection of itself." He takes a sip of coffee. "I have always found it best to avoid such things coming to pass."
Grace does take Kalen's advice. The coffee smell almost wipes out the bloody sense in the air. "Yeah, I could use the caffeine," she replies.
There's coffee making to be done, which Grace amuses herself with somewhat. Kalen always has this spread of various apparati and toppings and things that go in coffee. It's more like coffee candy by the time Grace is done with hers. And she does use one of those ridiculous stirrers.
Not even Alyssa's resonant blood-on-the-tongue feeling is enough to get her to stop, and by the end she's looking quite... well, still dead-eyed and sad, but with caffeine.
And, she listens. She has no idea what it is attacking Shoshannah, even with Kalen's update to Ginger. Spirits of the Umbra aren't exactly what she's good at. So for now, try try try to understand.
She may have heard Kalen's advice to Grace; she may not have. She doesn't make reference to it either way. Instead she takes a draught off of the beer, throwing a knee over the other one as she gets comfortable and listens to Kalen explain that he wants to know if she had any ideas on how to deal with their spirit problem. She makes a face like she just smelled something foul herself (not blood; that smell is long past bothering Alyssa by now) when the Hermetic brings up the Umbrood.
"Usually my advice for dealing with Umbrood is, don't." She shakes her head. "Unfortunately, that's not usually an option I find that works. The tougher the wall gets, the more they want to break it down. It's like a spiritual version of the stereoytpical girl who keeps chasing after guys she'll never get."
She sets the beer down and leans forward a little bit. "Ward yourself up the ass, for starters. If an Umbrood can possess you, then you're in deep shit if it pulls it off. I don't know if you've ever seen it happen, but it makes The Exorcist look like a trip to Santa Claus' village in the mall. Usually, the only way to pull it out once it's truly taken over is to metaphorically grab by the roots and pull. And what happens to the dirt is what happens to the person's soul. I heard tell once that one Verbena that got possessed was successfully exorcised but it basically Gilgulled her in the process.
"As far as binding, don't count on it. With something powerful enough to do full-on possession, binding them is really God-damned hard as a rule. What you usually want to do is rip them away from whatever's holding them here. Disrupt rituals, take down a host, what-have-you. And then you just let the same laws that smack us around take hold and the sheer disbelief of the world will send it screaming back to its realm."
Kalen listens. By the end of the explanation, he is still holding his coffee mug but seems to have forgotten about drinking. There is a little frown, possibly at Alyssa's colorful metaphors, possibly because spirits aren't his precise area of expertise.
"So...it is clinging to this world through spiritual connections and if those connections are severed it should be dragged back away from here?" He sighs. "Perhaps less final than I was hoping for, but I would settle for buying the world another century and leaving them some more notes on what to do when it returns.
"How would we find the things it's bound to?"
"Keller, you think? Or that movie? What happens if we just burn the film or something?"
Just burn the film, as if it were simply done, yes. But still, why wasn't something like that done to begin with? Surely there would have been a good reason.
She sips coffee, each time taking a good long smell of it first.
She smiles, but only faintly, when Kalen says that it's not the final solution he was hoping for. "You're talking about a spirit, not a person. They operate by different rules than we do, and giving one a dirt nap isn't necessarily final for them. The most final option that you can find is usually if you can trap it within something and then bury that something so far down that no one ever finds it. Of course, eventually someone usually does find it, but there's still stuff out there that has never been uncovered."
When Kalen asks about finding what the spirit is tied to, she shrugs. "That's a neat trick if you can pull it off. They'll usually carry its Resonance to some degree, but Resonance isn't a fingerprint. Uncovering Lore about the creature or using somehow getting close enough to use the Umbrood, throw together a rote that will trace out the locations of items, that might work. These items have an Ars Manes association to it as a rule." He's Hermetic and Grace is his not-quite-apprentice, so she is just defaulting to the Hermetic sphere terms.
When Grace mentions specifics, Alyssa frowns and shrugs. "You're talking a bit over my head there, though that's probably for the best. I'm all about giving you the theoreticals, but it sounds like you guys may be a bit deep in this for someone else to dive into the pool."
"Sadly, I'm not sure I have anywhere else to look for more information about the Umbrood, unless you have the location of some amazing spirit library that would actually let me in to look around." He sighs again and takes a sip of his coffee.
"Getting close to it, probably isn't where I come in, not unless we're closing for a fight. There were, apparently, traces left on some of the people at the..." His voice trails off and his eyes widen, just a little.
"Fuck," he says, very softly. "It would want a lot of ties to this world, yes? As many as it could get?"
"You know that riot that happened recently? At the theater? That was the thing. It's like it's using the movie as a Trojan horse," she says. And while she's using tech terms here, the mythic story works just as well. It masquerades as a movie in its attempt to slip through the walls to this world.
"The guy who was all busy trying to get the movie shown, his name is Joshua Keller. He's a piece of work. I've read his email. I think Shoshannah was scrying on his place when... that happened."
She shrugs, the beer bottle about an inch from her mouth when she stops its ascent to answer Kalen's question. "Well, if it can then yes. But we're not just talking about someone that it brushed by and left some smell on. We're talking about things with very real ties. People who have been fully possessed, or places of power dedicated to it. Shrines of power and the like. Maybe artifacts dedicated to it. Those are the kinds of things that its going to have ties to. And those ties are a lot harder to forge, you know what I mean?"
She takes a breath and frowns, sets the bear down again and leans forward to settle her forearms on her knees. Her attention is focused on both of them; mostly Kalen, as he's asking the questions, but Grace too. "Let me put it this way. Okay, so ghosts, right? When someone decides to stick around instead of just passing on, it's because they have something they care too much about. People, places, things that they care so much about that they can't leave them behind. Think about what you might have like that. Something that is so important to you that you would defy the laws of reality themselves to come back to. If you're being honest then there's maybe, what? One, two things? Five at the absolute, 100% most? Now imagine what might exist on the other side of the Gauntlet that you care that much about. That's this Umbrood's situation."
"Soooooooooooo...you're telling me that I need to figure out what some alien thing that feeds on madness and fear loves?" Kalen laughs at that, surprisingly more amused than bitter. "Oh, this is going to be fun."
"Well, we know it loves horror movies," she says, takes some more caffeine.
She looks at Kalen with a blank expression. It feeds on fear, it likes horror movies, that makes sense, right?
She smirks a little bit and finally takes another drink off that beer. "Not things it loves, necessarily. Things like that don't necessarily know how to love. It's like telling a chipmunk to fix a space shuttle; just not in their DNA to be able to pull it off."
She shrugs. "But then, some higher-level Umbrood are even able to experience emotions we don't have words for. They exist on a scale that we don't get. Anyway, in this case I don't mean things they love..just mean things that are deeply personal and significant. Think about it this way. If you were--in theory, of course--ritually murdered. It's very possible that the athame may be something that is important to you, or the person who killed you. For this Umbrood, it is things that give him physical ties to this world that solidify it to the point that it can resist the power of Disbelief."
Kalen nods. "So, if someone made something that it was bound to, it might still be bound to it, even though it is no longer locked away by it? Something that it once held or was held by, pretty much completely? That would narrow down what it might be tied to. For a moment I was afraid it could claim ties more easily. If it cannot, then it is simpler."
Simpler. He says it as if these things can be simple. It's only trying to locate and destroy at least one thing tied to Thakinyan, which they have limited information on and which is definitely capable of pretty much swallowing Kalen whole. Nothing complicated here at all....
Grace eyes the freeze dried ice cream. Space food. He must have left it for her, but then...
She shrugs, and picks up one of the Neapolitan bricks. It's like styrofoam, light and airy, and entirely not-like-blood. She eyes Alyssa, and then bites the thing. It might almost seem... threatening.
It's not meant to be. Just, this is Grace trying to power through that nauseated sensation Alyssa leaves her with. It's nothing personal.
"Well... If there's anything I could do to help... I don't know if I can find information on the secret loves of Umbrood on the internet, though."
"Well, if you can get it back in the box, all the better," she says with a shrug. If it's locked back away then you don't have to worry about any of the rest of the nonsense. That'll be easier if you can destroy whatever other ties it has here though. Otherwise, it still has something to cling to while you're trying to suck it into its new-slash-old home. Otherwise, just destroying whatever ties you can find is a good plan, yeah."
She raises an eyebrow when Grace gives her that look. "Okay, I admit we didn't get off on the right foot, what with the Mexican stand-off outside of my apartment. But did I do something else to piss you off?"
There are some things which just don't occur to hold a grudge about for Kalen. One of those things is bringing a gun to the first meeting. This especially applies if he shows up unexpectedly at your doorstep. But somewhere about the time they switched from 'maybe about to start shooting' to 'who wants pizza and beer' Kalen let that go. He'd have answered the door with a gun too.
Really, if anything, he'd hold a grudge about the fucking Coronas. Come on, now....
And there weren't even lime slices?
He glances between Alyssa and Grace, and though he clearly almost does, he does not answer for Grace.
"What?" she asks, honestly confused. "I'm not pissed off." But she says it with that same listlessness in her voice that's been her new default. She could indeed be pissed off.
She takes off her shoes, curls her legs up underneath her in some complicated way that's comfortable for her, but certainly doesn't look it.
"The way you feel. It's kind of..." Well, how to put that? Maybe just the truth. "I recently spent a few weeks dying. Was drowning in my blood, throwing up blood, hallucinating horrible blood visions. I just am having issues... It's not anything you did."
Her nose wrinkles a little bit when Grace explains the situation. It's not the kind of look that expresses sympathy, at least in the Oh you poor dear kind of way. One might wonder if Alyssa were even capable of that. It's more of a look of distate at the idea, and perhaps even a tiny touch of understanding and empathy.
"Well, shit." She nods a little bit and gestures to Grace, as if to say There you have it. "I get it, then. I've got my own love/hate relationship with blood, to be honest. Just kind of had to get used to it on my part, because it's not going away any time soon if ever where I'm concerned. Best of luck to you, though. People say visions are a blessing, and I say that anyone who's ever said that is someone who's never had one."
There's obviously more to Grace's story and Alyssa is interested, but she doesn't push for details. That's the kind of thing that you don't tell unless you're ready to.
"So I'm assuming there's more than just you two and this Shoshannah person in town? Or are we the whole of the Traditions here?"
"There is a chantry, and we have..." Kalen pauses, thinking. "Around a dozen Magi, perhaps. I actually don't know everyone. Not everyone is in one place often. Varying Traditions, fairly divided among Traditions. I don't think they're all represented here. Fairly sure the Etherites aren't. I think you'd be the only one of your Tradition. But again, I don't really know everyone.
"Hopefully, we'll be able to make formal introductions for you and Connor soon."
"Etherites are," Grace corrects. "There's Patience. She's an Etherite. You know her, don't you, Kalen?"
Grace stares at her space ice cream, and then dunks it into her coffee. It foams.
"Formal introductions... I didn't have anything formal. Not that I'd have cared for that. There was just Sera. And then, a trip to the library."
Just Sera, as if Sera could be a 'just'. But formal? Not in that one's vocabulary.
She takes in what Kalen says, head tilted slightly at an inquisitive bent. A dozen Awakened, spread out among the Traditions. A chantry. No Hollow Ones. The goth woman nods a little it, finishes off the beer. That seems to be about what she might have expected.
"Sounds about right for a place like this. You never know unless you ask, though." She smiles, though it's brief. "It'd be good to meet everyone, though I don't think I'll be applying for Chantry membership, if there are applications. I'm not particularly good luck for them. Not that I don't want to get along with people, but group housing just isn't my thing."
And she nods at Grace when she says there aren't really formal introductions. "Good. I can play the formality game, but it's been a long time since I remembered whether to curtsy or bow and I don't really like it anymore myself."
She takes in the names--Patience, Sera--files them away for later.
Kalen's eyes light up at the mention of Patience. "Firefly?" He laughs. With actual delight. "That would make sense. I've never thought of her as belonging to anything. She's so...not like anyone else."
"They've pretty much adopted me, and I am definitely not coming to their door without baggage. Everyone I told about it was of the opinion that my being hunted was reason to stay rather than reason to leave. I don't live there, but I do visit from time to time. The overall sense of Denver is relatively informal. There are a few others of the Order here, but the two I know aren't very involved with the chantry at this point."
Grace thinks she likes Alyssa. Blood or no. Anyone who talks about applications like she does? Good people. Must be.
There's a return nod to Alyssa, and a bit of a stare. "There's also Ginger."
She takes the rest of the space ice cream in her hand and downs it, crunching the dry sweet.
"Ginger is kind of like our social network. Thing. Mostly to keep people aware of dangers and news. If you want it, I can help you there."
Grace describes Ginger, and Alyssa raises an eyebrow. "You invented Awakened Twitter?" A little smirk and she shakes her head. "Ballsy. But as an alert system, I'm intrigued. Wouldn't be bad to be in the know about things."
She nods a little bit to Kalen. "I guess that makes sense. Haven't run into a lot of the Order who like palling around the multi-Traditional format. You'd be one of a very small handful that I can think of. Who's hunting you, if I may be so old as to ask?" The girl loves a good story, and this certainly sounds like it might be one.
"Well, I think it's partly the communication barrier that comes with having your very own language for half the things in the world. More than just general disdain for the rest of the Magi in the world. We have our own traditions and our own structures and procedures and the world outside can be...intimidating."
Back comes all the cold into his eyes, the expression best described not by the presence of any one evident emotion but a complete absence of any of them at all. "If I knew, we'd already have fought this out. Or would be fighting this out. Sadly, they didn't leave a calling card when they blew up the last chantry I was part of."
Grace didn't know Kalen was being hunted. Didn't know it was the ones who destroyed his chantry. She's never asked.
She stops eating or sipping coffee at that point, and just gives Kalen a sad look, like she knows there's something hiding behind that coldness and lack. She does that too now.
Kalen's explanation of how the Order works is met with the expression of one who is thoroughly familiar with what he says. "Oh, I know. Between the Enochian, the Tradition names, the entirely different ranking structure...it all makes sense. Now granted, why all that is in place makes you think a bit, but..." She shrugs, a completely non-chalant gesture. She doesn't have disdain for specific Hermetics, at the very least, and she doesn't seem to be willing to provoke Kalen into defending it. That's one Hollow One stereotype she doesn't fit, amidst all the ones she does.
And then he drops into an emotionless mask, and Alyssa listens. She nods a little bit; again, it isn't sympathy that spreads across her features. A bit of understanding, perhaps, but she's not going to walk over there and comfort the Hermetic, tell him she understands and it would be okay. Because those are all silly things to do, in her mind. She just nods a little bit. "I find two bullets in the head is a pretty good method of dealing with people who are willing to do that. Got the job done for me the second time, anyway."
"Well, I will have to figure out who they are and get back into something like the proper shape to fight them. Hopefully they won't find me until I've made progress on at least one of those fronts. After that, yes, bullets in the head is effective enough. Reducing bodies to ash. Decapitation. There are options. Which I ultimately decide upon will depend primarily on who it is I am fighting."
"Why it's in place...." Kalen shrugs. "I would be lying if I were to tell you I had never considered. Even so, I am and remain of the Order. There is a good deal worth keeping, Mi'as nonwithstanding."
Grace's eyes slide off of Kalen when he begins to speak of how he wants to kill his enemies. She has watched her own die. It didn't really help.
Perhaps for someone like Kalen, it would. She doesn't know, doesn't honestly want to know. So she returns to her coffee.
She's seen enough horrible death lately to want to dwell on that.
She chuckles a little bit when Kalen mentions Mi'as, nodding at that. It's not the friendliest of chuckles, to be honest, though it doesn't seem directed specifically at him.
"No, no...I get it. I'm not trying to say 'Fuck the Order' or anything. If you were a Tytalan I might think somewhat differently, but..." She shrugs. "That's just because I've literally never met a Tytalan who's ass I didn't want to shove a four-inch soled boot up. Maybe some day one'll surprise me and not be a dick, though. The rest have all been varying ratios of asshole-to-non-asshole."
She gestures to Kalen with a chuckle. "Funny story, I actually get along with Flambeaus better than I do most other Houses. Similar mindsets, maybe. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. You keep doing you, I'll keep doing me."
"If I were a Tytalan we'd hardly be discussing methodology over coffee. We could, perhaps, hold a spirited debate over coffee." He smiles. "I have, at least for now, chosen to remain here in Denver. It is not without some presence of the Order, but it hardly could be considered theirs. I do not expect that to change, so...anyone here not actively working to turn the city into a stronghold for the Order is probably going to get along well enough you. At least as concerns the political aspects we're discussing."
Grace rolls her eyes over her coffee, over that curled-in body. "Ugh, politics."
It's really all she has to say about the matter, as she barely understands what the others are talking about. She knows Hermetics have their houses and their formality and their names and all that shit, and she's really happy Denver is not a stronghold of that.
She just knows politics sucks, and that she has about a 50% chance of pissing off a Hermetic within 10 minutes of meeting them, by statistics.
Ugh, politics is Grace's assessment, and Alyssa doesn't seem to disagree. The Hollow One leans back in her seat again finally, settling in. "Not overly worried about it, to be honest. I'm sort of a take me or leave me girl. The world sucks enough as it is, and if someone wants to be a pain in the ass I'm just as happy to let them do it on their own time."
She sighs a little, as if exorcising that part of the conversation away with the exhaled breath. "Anyway. Anything else I need to know about things here? Good things, bad things, things that are somewhere in-between?"
"Well...not that I know of. I wanted to warn you about our delightful creepy Umbrood spirit, and maybe see what you could tell me about them. Grace may be setting you up with Ginger, so then you'll have access to what at least many of us know. Ah, mentioning that you know me might be backward progress in relation to Sid, but I think she's okay with Grace and I know she's okay with Shoshannah. Well...just generally assume people who are not Grace and aren't Hermetics aren't fond of me. In case you ever want to use me as a reference. Grace doesn't seem to enrage people at quite the rate I do, she's probably a better reference." He doesn't seem terribly bothered that most of the Mages in Denver are either annoyed at him or still wary of him, if anything, he sounds amused.
"What happened between you and Sid? I just can't imagine... unless..."
She looks a bit pensive. "You didn't have this falling out after the virus hit did you? I mean. We're all kind of. Not ourselves."
That's probably an understatement of the fact, for some of them at least. For Grace it's fairly accurate.
"Well, consider me warned, and consider me noted about who to use as a reference and who not to." She shrugs. "I'm not really a reference-seeking kind of person but it's always good information to know."
And then Grace asks what happened between them and provides a little more information about how the mysterious virus shook things up. Alyssa takes that opportunity while the other two are conversing to rise and go to replace the empty beer for a full one.
Kalen
"Sid never liked me. Then I thought she abandoned me to be perhaps eaten by ghosts, and I may have been displeased. It is possible I was less than friendly and that was some anger, perhaps even some yelling. There may have been accusations. There is a distinct possibility it was a mess and Trent was concerned we would destroy his office trying to kill each other. It may be that she did not know about any ghosts, and that doors were slammed." Kalen coughs. "And it may also be possible that after that Trent and I argued until we both resorted to drinking."
Kalen laughs. "It may also be that I am rather amazed I ever make friends...."
"Oh," she says. "Well. That's not good."
"She saved my life, you know. Don't try to kill her. She probably doesn't like you much now, I imagine. But don't hate her," Grace sighs. She drains the last of her coffee.
"She was sick, having those hallucinations, and she still managed to somehow come up with a cure. And then, she went and prepped weapons and contacted the guy responsible for kidnapping Sera and Lena. You should have seen her. She was incredible. Sid wouldn't leave anyone to be abandoned, Kalen."
There is, perhaps, a bit of hero-worship in Grace. Sid is like some kind of sciencey role-model to her by now. Who she'd like to be when she 'grows up'. And it shows.
"Ghosts are less likely to eat you than to try and take a ride in your body, or perhaps do a little poltergeist-style throwing things around. Although eating is sometimes maybe the better option."
She says it as she comes back with a fresh beer, dropping back into the seat. She looks between the two as they both deliver their own impressions of Sid, storing those nuggets away to flavor whatever first impression she ends up with.
"Well, we can't all get along," she says finally, and it comes in a c'est la vie tone as she brushes her hair back over her shoulder. "If we could, we probably would have won the war."
"On purpose, perhaps not. I was only angry about that until I realized she simply hadn't figured out what was happening. I am not going to try to kill her." He makes a face at Grace that suggests she may have him cinfused with some other Kalen, and that he might be offended. But it's Grace, and it is more evident when he is playing with Grace because he doesn't entirely manage not to smile. "I certainly don't hate her. I am rather certain she hates me, but I've gotten at least somewhat accustomed to that."
"Be that as it may, angel, we are here now. We have the world that we have. We must make of it what we can."
She knows he's playing, and truth be told, so is she, even though her voice doesn't betray it. She doesn't really think Kalen would attack Sid.
But they aren't exactly safe from one another, really. Are they? Grudges turn to festering, and then...
She turns to Alyssa. "He's given you a nickname. Means he likes you."
At first she legitimately thought that Kalen was referring to Grace with the 'angel' comment. Of course, it makes little sense considering the words are in response to Alyssa's own comment, but maybe he's expounding in an almost-mentor to almost-apprentice state and...well, who knows why? She just asssumes such. And thus she looks surprised when the Virtual Adept suggests it is in reference to her.
"Wait, what?" She laughs a little, short and clipped but still amused. "I'm more commonly called the opposite of that, to be honest. In various ways, sure...she-devil, vile demoness, even got a couple succubuses thrown my way. I guess I'll take it though."
"Not chosen without irony," Kalen says with a faint smile. "Was there anything else you wanted to know about Denver?"
She shakes her head. "I think that's it. Unless you know of a good Thai place or a place to get some decent eyeliner. I'm tired of ordering my shit online."
She looks over at Grace. "I'll get with you to talk more about this Ginger thing soon, but in truth I should probably toddle off."
She rises to her feet and sets the beer down. "Been good chatting, though. If you need anything, feel free to drop me a line."
"I'll definitely get you set up. And your friend, the new guy. I have a feeling you'll both need it," she says, not meaning to be quite so ominous, but it comes out that way anyway.
"Denver's constantly getting undone. Kalen keeps trying to tell me I need to see it as us saving the world, not the world ending. But it seems to happen a lot."
And that, it seems is Grace's goodbye. She's just kind of distant.
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