Tacos after Arson

Arionna de la Babin
[perc + alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Arionna de la Babin
perception + awareness

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lavinia
There's a taquería next to an old movie theatre that got converted into a wig shop. The restaurant is old, probably was built when the wig shop was actually a theatre and had patrons instead of awkward balding people came by shopping for toupees (which, rest assured, is still very much a business that is booming.) There is a taquería next to an old movie theatre, and that taquería has a smell. A very distinct smell of fresh roasting beef and  baked goods when the door opened.

The menu was easy enough, but mostly in Spanish. Lavinia came there because, well, she was having one of those days where she missed family and therefore felt the need to stuff her face full of tacos and just binge. She could stand to put on some weight- she'd stopped eating for awhile, still exercised like she was taking in an adequate number of calories. She looks like she might blow over in a stiff wind, except her legs are solid, her arms are defined. Her stomach is flat.

She's much stronger than she looks, it's almost uncanny. It's almost disconcerting.

But there she was, outside with a cigarette because she was nostalgic, because there was that aching feeling of missing something. The kind of thing that you could drown out if you worked long enough, worked hard enough, focused on what was in front of you. When things hurt like this, you turn to devotion. You turn to faith, and hers would not waver now. Purpose solidified like something eternal. She's smoking Oliver's brand, doesn't like the taste but she does like the smell. She used to smoke, kicked the habit after Ollie left because her supplier ran off to... what? Be a surrogate father? Nurse his wounds? Cut ties because looking at Lavinia hurt too much like Cameron? What?

She inhaled again, polished the cigarette off and dropped it so she could snuff it out with her boot. She has on shorts that only accentuate how long her legs are. Wears combat boots because she might need to run today. Tank top that's lower in the back than the front and a sports bra because... well, people expected her to wear a bra. This is where we open the scene, with an angel reflecting on her newfound situation that isn't so new.

Grace
[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
Where does one go when facing the uncomfortable ache that is being an accessory to murder? If you're Grace, a taquería, apparently.

She'd been miles away from the event. She didn't have to smell the roasting bodies up close and personal. Maybe that's why the beefy scent of this place hasn't totally thrown her stomach for a few loops yet. Instead, it draws. So, a detour from Saigon Bowl it is.

Almost immediately upon reaching the threshhold of the establishment, Lavinia, oh! It feels like the fires of God laid waste somewhere. They did, yesterday, but aside from that... Grace sniffs the air as she walks in, looks around the place, finds the one she's looking for, and just tilts her head, like yeah. I see you over there. Not hard to miss you, Lavinia.

She puts in her order -- pork and green chili tacos all the way -- and ambles off toward Lavinia's table.

Lavinia
[Per+aware, people?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lavinia
Lavinia is hard to miss. She's always been hard to miss, feels very much like the purpose she has. Like she's easily labeled and hard to miss. The woman stretches (who is not so young, as she knows. A little older than most of the people she meets even if she doesn't keep track of her age anymore. Knows only when her sister marks the date because someone has to keep up.) She put in an order a little while back, something with lengua and enough habenero peppers to kill a small horse with it.

Fingers wave, she half scoots the chair out with one foot, crosses her legs and knits her fingers together in front of her, as though she was perpetually interested in what was to be said and what was to be done.

"What did you get?" she asks, as though she was meeting Grace here and not just finding themselves in a situation where they both overlapped.

Grace
"Pork and green chili tacos. You?"

Grace slides into a chair opposite Lavinia, the black of her normal t-shirt replaced with a grey zip-up turtleneck. Somebody is just a little bothered by biting things lately. Though, what peeks out from under the jacket is very colorful -- some sort of rainbow triangle design.

"Haven't seen you around in a while."

Lavinia
"Lengua and habanero with mangoes. It's like a danger taco," she replies. She takes in the clothing choices, quirks a brow for a second because Grace is... incredibly covered. Incredibly enough that it makes Lavinia wonder-

But! The subject changes and she doesn't delve into sweater territory. Yet. Maybe Grace just gets really cold. Computer people did tend to live in frigid wastelands of server racks and despair, it gets cold there.

"Between teaching Arionna and trying to rebuild some burnt bridges, I've been pretty scarce," Lavinia admits, "still operating as a one woman army. Turns out said army isn't getting a lot done."

Aidan
[I promise I have finally decided. I will post asap]

Aidan
[nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
"That sucks," Grace says, peers off into a corner. "I always get fidgety when I don't get anything done."

Not that that's been a problem lately.

"How goes the teaching Arionna bit?"

Aidan
The air is cooling. The heat is leaving the city and Aidan wonders, at times, why it doesn't take any travel packages with it. Could it not build a fire if it felt like it were growing colder? Though really, they were separate entities at times... which begged the question of why exactly...

Sometimes his thoughts make sense, and sometimes they do not. He was an oddity. Today he wonders if there is a spirit for each type of food. Not the small guys he sees and speaks to, but the sort of overarching overlord of burgers and tacos. The Boss, if you will. Is there a burger spirit, that, if given proper penance, will bless every burger you eat thereafter? Would it be upset at someone like Aidan who shuns animal products? These are his questions.

Strange then that he seems to appear at a taco -place.-  It might have been his thoughts which brought him here, or perhaps the wind knew what he as thinking and pushed him along. He may have even come here by accident...but Aidan doesn't believe in accidents.

He wore a green top that he crocheted himself. It was a beautiful pattern, at least to him, and he felt a great swell of pride when he wore it. It was bigger than it ought to be, nearly hanging off his shoulders, but it was comfortable in the heat. Otherwise he wore normal, tighter jeans, and a pair of sneakers. Aidan was....somewhat... a simple creature. He felt.. well he felt bouncy. Like a soft spright that danced in the wind and played some lovely little tune that one couldn't help but follow. A wisp that bobbed to and fro, entrancing those around it with its light. That was what he was.

He slipped into the Taco place, poking his head in first as if to be certain nothing was there, and then he simply walked in, humming to himself. Lots of talking, lots of sounds that others didn't know, and sometimes that's what made it feel like home.



Aidan
[  for reference.. heh heh    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/dd/de/70/ddde70c6020cc559383087e5dfc431ab.jpg    ]

Lavinia
She peers off into the corner, and Lavinia's eyes narrow slightly. She turns her head a little to one side, enough that she can hear Grace a little better and her deaf side is to the crowds. She's looking at the other woman for information, for input. She's looking at her like the hypervigilant creature will notice something before Lavinia has to.

Her senses aren't as sharp as they need to be. She hates it, but knows it's a fact. Knows it to be a truth she can't quite avoid. She's physically fast but mentally just a step behind, average. Strange that something otherworldly would be average.

"It's going okay. There's some fundamental concepts that we're having difficulties with due to a difference in world view. I tried to frame certain concepts under the umbrella of self-defense and I either missed the mark or she's intentionally trying to make me say that I don't know what I'm talking about," a pause, "I get the impression at times that she isn't really listening to me. I get it, she's a teenager, they always know way more than anyone else, but some things? If I let her learn them on her own it will kill her."

A huff, almost dramatic, "I'm never procreating."

Grace
Grace lifts her head at Aidan's entrance. She's heard of Technocrats in the area, but somehow, after a glance at the door, she doubts that any of them would willingly show up at a taco joint wearing homespun crochet. Perhaps that's prejudice talking, but whatever. She doesn't let the glance linger.

"Me either," she says in response. "Fuck that..."

With Grace's luck, she'd create a mini Arionna. Oh, God, the thought has her staring into the wall.

"We've got company," she says, to the wall.

Aidan
[awareness  perc spec - intuition]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Aidan
Aidan and Lavinia have met. It was over the lovely sound of music, and the way her name simply suited her, but they met. Lavinia was an oddity on her own, but Aidan didn't mind; to him she seemed the way everyone else seemed, just more obvious and closer to what she ought to be.

He already knows Lavinia is there. He already knows because he can feel, not just her resonance, but he almost smell it...taste it... even see it. Grace is someone he doesn't know, a new set of sensations and tastes and he finds them...fascinating. But what doesn't he?

He seems to ounce towards Lavinia, and without thought, wraps his arms around her in a rather exuberant and tight hug. "Hello!" He says, pleased to meet back up with her. "You brought a friend. I like friends. Elijah shows me friends too. Special friends I mean. I mean I'm everyone's friend but I really like special friends."

Aidan paused and pressed his nose in Lavinia's hair, inhaling deeply. "You taste even better today!" He sits next to her, beaming happily, and turns his attention to Grace, flashing her an even brighter smile as he leaned over the table. "You make me think of toast."

Lavinia
Aidan is on her deaf side when he comes in. She doesn't really notice him until he wraps his arms around her and she stays still, shoulders up, eyes wide and she holds her breath for a second like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water down her spine. She doesn't squeak, either, because she's a dignified creature and recognizes that this person is hugging her and not trying to choke her out and, therefore, does not need to be met with a very physical response in kind.

Nope, Aidan is just saying hello, which she eventually picks out over the multidirectional hum of people.

Aidan has his nose in her hair, which is down and a mess of bright golden waves that tapers almost to sunlight at the ends. She's hard to miss, an ever expanding cosmos. The wrath of a displeased God. A herald to what has yet to come.

"I showered," she told Aidan with a laugh, the tension not quite bled out just yet.

"And... what are special friends?" she said, brows knit together for a second like she isn't sure if she wants to know what this Elijah person thought special friends were.

Grace
Wow. Aidan. Grace blinks, and her lips seem to disappear when she looks at Lavinia as if to question whether this guy is real.

"Why toast?"

This guy seems to know Lavinia and Elijah. The latter is understandable. A guy like this, with Elijah? Yeah. It fits. Elijah's the puppy, and this guy is the fairy who follows the puppy around as they roll in a field of flowers together. At that thought, Grace blinks at the wall again.

"Special friends are ones who you'd know are special from across the room, right?"

Aidan
"No. No not showered. Same as before. But better. Not like flowers. Shampoo smells like flowers. Tastes metal. Or like glass windows." He puts his chin in his hands, elbows on the table and blinks at Grace, watching her like any fascinated person might. But ah, Lavinia asks him a question and he looks at her, laughing softly. "Friends that are special." As if that answered it.

"I don't know." He says to Grace. "You just taste make me think of toast. I like toast. With jam. Little fruit jam with pieces of fruit in it. Not the smooth kind, but I like the smooth kind too. But the smooth jam lacks personality. It's very dull." He leaned back, putting his hands in his lap and straightening his arms as he did. "Yes! Friends we know when we see them but everyone is my friend so... so yes. Friends that can hear each other from afar. Or taste. or smell. or feel. Some people don't taste like anything. "

Lavinia
Grace looks Lavinia's way, Lavinia nods as if to confirm that, yes, this person was really like this. This was really happening but her eyes are wide and the Chorister (who, we should note, has stared down Nephandi and eviscerated spirits of corruption and destruction without batting an eye) looks overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sensory input.

"Aidan," she says for Grace's sake, and Lavinia doesn't introduce the Mercurial Elite because it isn't her place to give someone else's name away, "I think, sometimes, you might not want everyone to be your friend."

Clears her throat, "are you going to order? You should eat something, you're too skinny."

Grace
"Toast tends to lack personality unless it has something on it," she says, absentmindedly. Then comes the unfortunate realization that maybe those were not the best of words to say...

"It's true you know," she says, with a little cough. "There's some... bad people out there. You might not want to hug them all."

Aidan
Aidan shakes his head slowly. "Toast has a temper." He says most assuredly. "The more you burn it, the meaner it gets. The lighter toast is friendlier and talkative. The burnt toast is grumpy. I like them both though. Burnt toast is funny but I feel sad for it. They didn't choose to be burnt, some people just really like mean toast. But I'd be grumpy too if someone burnt me."

"Mmm... why wouldn't I want to be friends with everyone?" There's an honest confusion there, one he doesn't try to hide in the least. After all, why -wouldn't- everyone want to be his friend? He still doesn't understand why some people don't like other people. Spirits, he understands. Some things are just opposite of the other because they must be.

"Oh? Me?" He looks up, leans a little as if to reorient himself to where he is. "I don't need anything." A bright smile and an acceptance of just having company.

Lavinia
[Manip+subterfuge: This is totally not the warrior's equivalent of being asked to explain sex to your kids]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lavinia
"Some people want to do bad things to others, Aidan," her voice is calm, comforting, because sometimes one does not need to be harsh but she delivers a harsh reality. Did the angels not speak fear not before? Was there not some comfort to be found in the divine?

"And, in a perfect world, we would have the time and ability to convince and help all of those people who would do something horrible to others and make them not do that anymore. But, in some cases, that would take lifetimes nd we are not graced with the burden of eternity. Sometimes, it's best to find people who will be good to you than waste it with those whose hearts and minds and souls are invested only in harming others."

There's a sort of elegance in the words. An elegance, of course, that came with the expense of being direct. And she would not lose her meaning.

"So, in those cases that you meet people who want to hurt you, you do not want to become their friend because they will more-than-likely actively harm you and you'll get hurt."

Grace
Lavinia lays it out pretty... thoroughly. But if Aidan hadn't come to this realization before, who knows? Maybe he's just that dense.

"This is a shit world," Grace says, sighs heavily. Her mind is filled with images she'd rather not have to see.

It's then that the tacos arrive, and Grace gives a thumbs-up of thanks to the waitress who may just have overheard that 'shit world' comment. She has three tacos, so she offers one to Aidan, even though he said he didn't need it. Sometimes you still want things that you don't need exactly.

"Want one? I have plenty."

Aidan
He's been on the victim end of people who do bad things to others, and yet he still doesn't feel the sort of anger that others might. Instead, he wants to help them. "People do bad things and want to do bad things because they think they have to. We should try to help those people. Being their friend means they'll have someone to be better for.." He smiles warmly at her. "I don't mind getting hurt if it helps make someone better. Isn't that part of why we're here?" He says it cheerily, as if he doesn't see the problem with his particular viewpoint.

Grace's comment about the shit world makes Aidan blink and the smile fades only a little. "It's a beautiful world!" He even throws his hands up. "It has trees, flowers, squirrels, chipmunks, cats, dogs, leaves, the wind, fire, the rain, clouds, tornadoes, beads, books, people, microwaves, and toasters and... and lots of things! That makes it beautiful." He let his hands drop down and looked to each of them. "Everyone has good in them somewhere. Sometimes it's just hard to see it."

But Grace is kind enough to offer her tacos and Aidan leans forward a little as if to look at what she has, or perhaps to smell it. "Thank you but I'm alright. I don't eat animals. I prefer to talk to them. It's rude to eat your friends."

Lavinia
Which is about when Lavinia's food gets here- mangoes, tongue, and freaking death peppers. Lavinia can not be fucked to eat food that isn't fourteen different kinds of obscenely hot. She picks up her taco, takes a rather hearty bite, and chews. She's not put off by the heat mixed with the sweet. She chews, tries to put together what she thinks and how she's going to handle this one.

Chews. Swallows.

"Okay," exhales slowly, partially because of the heat and partially because of the thought. She looks at Grace, points to her tacos with her eyebrows raised. An offer if there ever was one.

"Aidan, if you are not careful with the people you choose to save versus the people you can't save, you will die. For some people that is not a problem, but you have to think of the people you are going to be left when you are gone and how sad and upset and distraught they're going to be. It isn't just getting hurt, it's dying. Not everyone is understanding and not everyone is kind at first and it's very hard to teach them to be kind and understanding when they put you in the hospital at best."

Exhales again, looks down at her food and puts it down. It's hard to coax her to eat, looks at the food like it might not exactly be her best friend. Like it has to earn its keep and her enjoyment of it.

"And yes," she continues, "the world is beautiful because of all of those things but-" she stops. Purses her lips together and drops her voice, "-there are things whose very spiritual nature are corrupt and  their entire purpose is to cause damage or choke things out of worm their way into your very being and change you. Those are not good beings. Not anymore."

Grace
Grace nods, accepting his refusal of meat, and bites into her taco. She has no such reservations herself. Then, she looks at Lavinia's offer, and switches out one of her tacos for one of Lavinia's. Tongue and Death. Awesome combo. Her own green chili, lard, and pork tacos are positively mild in comparison -- but not entirely. Her mouth feels like it's on fire, and Lavinia's resonance doesn't help with that.

Ahh, endorphins.

She leans in to Aidan. "The world is great, yes. Because people work to keep it so. And sometimes that work isn't making friends with others. Yesterday, I watched a man get skinned alive," she says, pausing, because that image -- it hurts. "The ones who did it loved their work. Should we make friends with them?"

Aidan
[subterfuge + manipulation - I'm not at all unsettled or changing the subject because I don't want to deal with it]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Aidan
"Oh no one will mind. I'm just me."

"I know. Sometimes it's very hard. Granna tried to save things. She tried to clean up the bad places and make the spirits healthy. Some people didn't really like that very much." Aidan leaned into Lavinia, looking at her taco as she ate it. "What does it taste like?"

"I don't think I've had tacos." He feels like he knows the taste of them. It seems familiar, though Granna and him never got tacos, and he didn't get them at the ward. He got all sorts of foods, or at least alternative foods, but he didn't recall tacos.

"I  will have to make some!" He decided.

He looked at Grace suddenly, leaning in, chin in his hands. "Who is your family? I know Elijah's family and.... and Lavinia is something special. " And then he perked up. "Oh! OOOH. I got it. Oh.. no wait." He settled again, shifting his attention to the side.

Lavinia
She is content to nod along and then Grace said something that made Lavinia stop mid chewing of the green chili and pork taco. Swallows, doesn't seem like that really curdled her appetite too much, but she leans in, eyes locked on the woman for a moment, "holy shit, really?"

A beat.

"You know you can call me if you need assistance with things, right?"

Grace
"My family is mostly in Arizona. They're all Asleep, far as I know," Grace says, and it's all she offers.

She takes another bite of her taco. Mom would call this trash-people food. Maybe it's the reason she likes it so much...

"We handled it," Grace says, mouth full of hot chiles. "Thanks, though. I'll keep you in mind."

Aidan
"Hm?" He slips his attention back to the two of them. "Oh that's not what I meant." But he smiled regardless and let it go. Instead he leaned against Lavinia again and set his head on her shoulder.

Lavinia
"You holding up okay?" she says, but it feels hollow to her, doesn't quite compute and doesn't quite come off the way she wants. Offers her a smile that almost understands, or at least understands enough to know that each atrocity is its own wound, each situation is unique and needs to be dealt with as such. "I still need to bring my books by wherever it is you're doing things. They're no longer holed up in my car- I'm actually setting up basecamp for once."

She doesn't shrug Aidan off or tell him to get off her shoulder. Though, it would seem, eating is a little difficult for her.

"Sorry you had to deal with that, though. And that you had to see what you did, that's fucked up," that, though, doesn't sound stupid or anything other than sincere.

Grace
"Yeah, it was. They were pretty fond of doing fucked-up things. That was icing on a fucked-up cake, that," Grace says, upends her taco into her mouth.

"If I wasn't holding up okay, I wouldn't be here eating tacos," she says, through her taco, and gives Lavinia a shrug.

Chew chew chew. Swallow. Lips on fire. "You know where it is? I can take you. Can take both of you, if you'd like," she says, looks to Aidan with a question.

"We have a place with a big library, lots of couches, coffee and tea. Also laser tag, and a couple of cats. If you get into any trouble, you can go there, and it'll be a bit safer."

Aidan
"Granna says I shouldn't have coffee. She says the world might stop if I drank coffee. I don't know what she means but I do like tea! And cats! And you have books? Books have the best stories. Not the ones inside. But the ones they see. They see a lot."

He hasn't moved from his spot on Lavinia, even if he's making it difficult. She hasn't complained after all. He did lightly roll his head to look at Lavinia. "You have tents too? For your camp?"



Kiara
[Fly by Verbena mode, activate. Locate Peeps.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia
[Manip+sub: don't sound too excited there, Lavinia]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia
"It's always good to meet another person who eats when things are good," she says, doesn't seem to realize how much food she has left. Looks down, realizes that there is a fair bit of food left, and she makes a concerted effort to actually eat what is in front of her.

"I don't have  clue where this place is but I'd love to see it. Might be nice to be in a place where people are actually gathering and have a common goal," oh yeah, like she totally wasn't looking forward to this. Despite the fact that she knew where the chantry was, the place always seemed... odd. She felt disconnected, but to be fair, Lavinia was by nature disconnected from things. By nature a little off from the current puzzle.

"And basecamp is a catchall for places that you operate out of.No camping required."

Grace
Yeah, Aidan's 'Granna' had a point. The world might stop if Aidan ever drank coffee, because he's already at a Caffeine 10. Cranking him up to 11 might not be the best idea.

"After tacos, then," Grace says, because tacos are good. She picks up the one of Lavinia's she traded off and eyes it like it might actually be out to incinerate her tongue. Ohh well.

Down the hatch.

And her eyes bug out. "Oh... ow!"

Fuck habaneros. There are tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and her face is turning as red as this feels.

Grace
[brb, afk]

Aidan
"Oh." A sort of sadness that is brief but present. "You don't get to sleep with the trees?" What better way to sleep? They could lull you to sleep with their words. Not that he doesn't feel like he couldn't just sleep here, it's just difficult. The city was noisier; it always felt like there was more in the city than nature...or maybe they all liked to talk more.

Grace's expression perks up Aidan and he straightens, his brows furrowing in concern. "Are you ok?!" Sliding his hands along the table top as if to grab a hold of Grace in some attempt to comfort. "Did it bite you?"

Kiara
[Don't wait for me to post, ya'll. I'm not sure if I'll hop in or not! But post around me regardless! :) ]

Lavinia
"Just feel the burn, just breathe through it- once the hot goes away you breathe out and it's sweet," she just breathes in long and deep, "my mom had a thing for habanero peppers so this is just how I thought tacos were supposed to taste for years."

She doesn't rush off to Grace's aid, just takes another hearty bite of taco because the prompt to keep eating (or finish eating, or start actually eating) isn't quite forgotten.

"She'll be fine, this is just standard pepper stuff."

Grace
"It bit me with capsaicin. Best kind of bite. Mmm," Grace says, though her tongue is now a raging inferno.

She breathes through it. It doesn't improve. Mmkay. She leans back in her chair.

"The reason why people eat these things is because they bite, Aidan. It makes your endorphins just sing. It's not real damage."

Aidan
Aidan watches Grace with uncertainty. But even Lavinia agrees she's ok and he eases up, relaxes a little. "If it bites, why do you eat it?" Concern has now moved into confusion. It was like approaching an angry bear. If you knew it was angry, why did you make it angrier? "Maybe it doesn't like to be eaten. Seems like if it bites when you eat it, it's trying to defend itself."

Lavinia
"Because that's what peppers do, they have a kick. They're delicious, the burn is part of the appeal. It's not a literal bite- I watched a youtube video about this. They evolved that way because they're supposed to attract birds and detract mammals- hence the burn. Except, humans are occasionally attracted to peppers because of the flavor and they enjoy the spice. Like Grace said, it releases all those this feels amazing chemicals in your brain. It's a rush. Peppers are pretty much the only thing I will eat, even when I don't feel like eating."

And she finally finished a taco after saying that.

Aidan
[it's getting close to bedtime as a warning]

Grace
"Okay. Okay. I think I can do another bite now," Grace says, not about to be out-badassed by Lavinia. She squints, and takes another bite.

But, see, there's a thing about habaneros... The heat builds.

Tears again. Oh, hell. Feels like it in her mouth right now. Breathe, breathe!

"Or not!"

Lavinia
(Charisma+Expression- YOU GOT THIS)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 4) ( fail ) [Doubling Tens]

Aidan
"Seems they don't want us to eat them." Aidan has just decided he will not eat spicy things, just in case he's upsetting a pepper somewhere. The list of acceptable foods is becoming increasingly shorter.He moved a little in his seat then looked down at his chair contemplatively. He moved again, just a little. Aidan glanced back to Grace, brows furrowing just a little as he regarded her.

Lavinia
"Oh come on, you totally got this," except, of course, while she was saying this the look on her face clearly said oh sweet Jesus, the taco is trying to kill Grace and might succeed. It was clear across those luminous eyes, that angelic face.

Nope, Grace, you don't got this.

The taco is winning.

Grace
"If it didn't want to be eaten, it wouldn't be packaged in a bright red nutrient rich fruit. It spreads its seeds this way," Grace says, through tears. "It's just got a thing against mammals, like Lavinia said."

Oh, does it ever. Breathe, Grace!

"I think though, I'm going to take a break on the hot things. I've had enough hot lately." This must be karmic debt after helping burn a house down. Must be.

Aidan
[I'm going to need to bail because it's late]

Lavinia
(No worries! Thanks for the scene!)

Aidan
"Which means...it doesn't want you to eat it. I think that's good enough." Aidan stayed with them, though he grew quiet and listened to them. He stayed, wandering out with them to the office should they do so, or well... heading off his merry way, which would likely involve getting lost (again). But he didn't mind that very much.

Lavinia
She opens her mouth, looks sideward at GRace like there was confusion written on her face. Like there was some very obvious part of the puzzle that regarded understanding Aidan's adament behavior towards not eating peppers despite the fact that they'd both made arguments for it based only on the idea that he thought they didn't want it (and had no evidence to back that up) ... just...

"Huh."

A beat.

"I guess... I'm... talking to peppers? Later?.. this is not what I was meant to be doing with my existence."

Grace
"Well, next time I find some really bad dudes, I'll let you in on it. You need to check your messages more often," Grace says, leans back in her chair, wipes away heat-inspired tears.

"Want to pack up the tacos and head to the place?"

The place. Where there will be cats, and a library, and food that does not bite.

"Maybe I can down some ice cream and make my tongue not be on fire..."

Lavinia
"What? Use technology and messaging systems for their intended purpose? Blasphemy," she said with a grin. The woman was already getting on her feet and headed to the front to grab some to go boxes, "and I'd love to go. I feel like I owe you an apology for the death taco at the very least."

Grace
[And thus, the trepid adventurous trio goes to the Office for tea and cats and books -- the stuff Mages are into! Woo! And we wrap :)]

Welcome to Ginger, Lavinia

Grace
Hey. I have seen you around. I'm Grace. I got your number from Kalen. You want to get in on some things?

The text comes in on a Friday afternoon, the day after Lavinia faced down a horrible dog thing. She might indeed be wanting in on some things. Grace has yet to find out about the incident. Perhaps this invitation comes a little too late?

But whatever. It comes.

Lavinia
There was a text that came back. It wasn't immediate, of course. There were moments of good downtime, maybe fifteen minutes of whatever it was that Lavinia happened to be doing for the time being, and frankly who knew what it was that she did in the times that things. Maybe Lavinia was sleeping, and oddly enough that seemed to make sense. There were odd typos in her reply.

Sue, i want to di Thigs.

And then, shortly thereafter.

Fuck, blindtexting. I would love to do things. Location?

Lavinia rolled off the bed, stumbling to her dresser to grab some tights. Time to be presentable.

Grace
Come to Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 314. I'll meet you there. Bring your phone/computer/whatever.

Maybe a little cryptic, that? Okay. But it's Grace, right? Has Lavinia paid any attention to her? If so, it might make a bit of sense.

Grace arrives at her own apartment, and unlocks it for the first time in days. It's a bare-bones thing, not like her office. Nice to get away to sometimes, when she needs the blankness and solitude, or needs to pick up some clothes, but that's rare. And so, it sits empty the vast majority of the time.

There's a small table with a chair, and a bed in a little alcove. There's a tiny kitchen, too, off in a corner of the one big room. The only other rooms in this place are the closet and bathroom, which are only barely big enough to be called rooms.

It speaks the language of college student (or, perhaps, ascetic monk with bad taste in mismatched plastic furniture).

When Lavinia arrives, Grace will be set up with her laptop (bright, shiny, new and sleek, a sharp contrast to everything else around) at that little table, sitting on a box.

Lavinia
It was a little cryptic, and for that Lavinia was.. intrigued. Pleased, to say the least, but there was a sort of joy in finding someone who was going to be covert about things. She looked at her phone again, and got onward and outward to where she needed to be.

Lavinia showed up with tights on. Tights and a skirt that was short beyond measure, hammering in the fact that she is taller than the average man. She even has a couple inches on Kalen, and today she hasn't deigned to wear heels. There are combat boots. Legitimate, honest-to-God combat boots. Her constant companions.

It's into the apartment, not at all with a bit of judgment. Actually appraising, actually pleased with the surroundings. She drops a purse by the door. Phone comes out of her back pocket.

"What's the rent on this place like?"

Grace
"Cheap, but you could probably find cheaper farther from campus. I used to go to school here, so it made more sense," Grace says, and then swivels her her head over to get a better look.

Ahh. Much better. Not a suit this time. There's a bit of a relief, eh?

"So, welcome to Denver, eh? Have you been here long?"

Grace is clad in her usual jeans and t-shirt. The t-shirt is black, and has a penguin on the front, waving a red and black flag with the anarchy symbol on it. There's some text too, but unless you're of a certain persuasion, the jargon may as well be another language.

> kill -9 state

> rm -rf

/system/capitalism

# apt-get install anarchy

[t-shirt reference: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/capitalism.jpg]

Lavinia
"I came a few months back, work took my partner and me out of town. He settled down, I came back," she told Grace. She rolled her shoulders back and stood a tad hip-shot. There was a sort of early punk. The skirt wasn't short because she liked mini skirts, it was just because she was ungodly tall. The tights had holes. The shirt was torn up.

There was something about that, though. On first glance it's carefully cultivated disheveled mess. On second glance, the holes seem to be genuine and dressed up to be workable. The holes in her shirt? More than a couple looks like it survived a fight instead of just being cut up to look cute. She had a sports bra on, but Lavinia didn't have much to hold up.

"So I've been back for about a month? Did Jo tell you about what happened?"

Grace
Blink. Blink. Something happened? With Jo?

"No. Could you elaborate on that a bit?"

Grace looks around, seemingly at a wall.

"Oh yeah, and please do come in. Get comfortable. Mi casa es tu casa and all that shit."

Lavinia
"Basically," this isn't good. Nothing good ever happens when someone starts their sentence with basically, "we were in the park and there was a dog-that-wasn't-a-dog- twisted warped once-a-dog-but-corrupted-and-no-longer kind of thing. Comes at us, Jo keeps me from getting completely mauled, takes some damage. Thing dies, Ian comes and patches us up-"

a beat.

"Jo kept a corrupted physical monster from attacking by basically insulting it and throwing a bicycle at it. She means well, but that generally doesn't actually end well. I'm grateful? But seriously, don't throw bicycles."

She plops down in a nearby plastic chair.

Grace
"Ohh, geez," Grace says, rubs her eyes. Jo. "Well, I'm glad she's okay. She is okay, right?"

There's okay physically, and then then there's okay mentally. Ian patched them up? So don't worry about the one. The other?

"I'm going to have to teach her better techniques. I guess now, she knows why."

Lavinia
"Yeah," she said, "Ian made sure she was patched up, she's got a spine so that's... that's a pretty damn big deal. You can't teach someone that. She also asked for me to feed her ice cream in an apron. And I have no clue what a waifu is."

Grace
Grace snerks while staring at a spot just behind Lavinia's head. It really sounds like that, too. Snerk.

"Well, yeah, okay. That answers that question. Spine gets her props too. Just, you know, as you said, a bicycle is not really the appropriate weapon to wield when taking on a dog monster."

Oh, the strange things that come out of one's mouth when one is a Mage...

"A waifu, by the way, is another word for the target of your obsessive love for an anime character."

Okay. Adjust. Look at the person you're talking to, okay? Okay.

"Right. So, I did invite you here for a reason. You're a Traddie, right? Or at least not all hostile with us?"

Lavinia
"I'm a Disciple of the Celestial Chorus," she said. Unashamed, unabashed, proud even- and why shouldn't she be? "I'm with the Sisters of Gabrielle, we're an order charged with keeping care of the physical- actually, if you don't care, just say so. I won't keep you up with the details. Long story short, we're a martial order."

Grace
Oh, yay. A Chorister. But then, Pan wasn't too much of a little shit, and Kalen's a member of the Pretentious Little Shit's Club, yet he manages to stay sane. The labels people choose often don't come with every single piece of baggage.

Lavinia gets smiled at.

The t-shirt, by the way, was a test. A Technocrat would have been nonplussed, almost assuredly.

"I'm a Grand Hooptydoo of the Virtual Adepts. I'm an informational order. Speaking of which -- I have some for you. Chantry location, and a shit-ton of other goodies, should you wish for them."

Lavinia
[Perception+empathy- do I catch the Grace emotions?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Lavinia
"Hunting demons alone is a shitty hobby," she told Grace, "I'll take what I can get, I want someone to know to look for me if I die."

Chipper, but... not at all being anything other than serious. She wasn't being dramatic, over the top, in fact she was almost flippant- but there is an understanding there. A hope that someone really would notice if she died, just in case it is an unpleasant occasion.

Grace
[Manipulation + Subterfuge = nope, there was not just a slight disappointment that Lavinia is a Chorister...]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[She seems genuinely pleased, genuinely playful. She's rather unafraid of Lavinia, despite having felt her rather strong resonance before, so there's not a lot of watching her tongue or deferential respect there. Her needling, joking statements are how she speaks to friends and equals.

However, yes, there was a bit of a microexpression there -- a frown at the mention of the Chorus that could only mean a split second of disappointment, before she put her face back in order.]

Lavinia
She grinned, the expression pleased, "don't worry, I totally got over my convert all the things phase years ago."

Grace
"You sound just like Kalen. He's a Flambeau," she says, as though that should explain everything.

"And, I think you just found out that Denver is a happening place for hunting evil corrupted nasty things. We have a kind of underground communication system for that. Runs off of a hacked phone sex line, which I hope you're okay with. It's a place where nobody would look, right? But, it'll show up on your phone records that you enjoy dirty conversation.

"There is no actual porny stuff on the hacked version," Grace says, and is she blushing a little? Yup. "It's just our message drop stuff."

Lavinia
"Aw, no actual porny stuff? Well that kills half the fun of having a secret conversational line," her lips upturn and she's got a grin on her face, eyes dark like the space between the stars and bright and shining like torches. She's getting a bit of a tan, coming close to bronze or getting there. It seems to suit her, what with her golden halo of hair and a voice like a herald.

"It's a burner phone, if someone is checking my phone records I've done something wrong," she says as she produces her phone, "I think. And would it be weird to ask your friend to come hunt demons with me? Is that a thing? Or do I have to take people out to coffee first, normally someone else set up my war party play dates."

Grace
"I'm sure he would be thrilled. He likes investigating tunnels and abandoned places? And I'm pretty sure it's just so he can run into stuff that needs killed?"

She takes Lavinia's phone, looks it over for data ports, and rummages around in her laptop bag for the appropriate cord. "I do... have to install a piece of encryption software. I'm also not going to guarantee complete and utter safety. This setup has been designed to avoid people being able to easily track down the entire network of users, through various means. Encryption, obscurity, the fact that the hub never calls out, we are only calling it? But if somebody were truly truly relentless and skilled at Magicking it out... It could happen. Then again, dog-monsters could happen. Anything could, right? Right."

After finding the right cord, she pauses before connecting it to Lavinia's phone. After the safety spiel is done, Lavinia has to consent to the terms and conditions.

Lavinia
"Well, first off, abandoned places are gorgeous, and secondly things tend to pool there and there's this feeling of- well, it depends on why it's been abandoned. Anyway, totally loved checking out abandoned places with a posse," she watches as the other woman takes her phone. Listens to the spiel and waits. She does turn so that Grace is on her left side, so that she's where Lavinia can keep her full attention on her.

"So, more secure than most things, but not completely secure, use with caution and care. I agree that I won't do anything stupid intentionally."

Grace
"Well, that's the best policy, I find..."

Grace plugs in Lavinia's phone, and then gets to work. It's not a long, drawn-out endeavor, here. The process of installation has been streamlined and smoothed out so that hiccups can be avoided. She's had to do this a lot.

"Then, we'll uh... have to... explain how to get to the Chantry..."

And we're all done. Lavinia's phone gets unplugged, and Grace hands it back.

"It's out in Morrison. I wish there was someplace closer, but no such luck."

Lavinia
"Do you think I could crash there?" she asked a little more quickly than she realized she was asking. She cleared her throat, "generally when I blow into town, I crash at a chantry because I'm not staying but I'm staying this time and I'm kinda sick of living in a no tell motel."

Grace
"Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'd probably want to ask Annie first, but I'd be pissed if she said no," Grace says. "It's a really big house, there's lots of rooms. And a Node, and a library. It's pretty chill, if you don't mind the country living."

The address is discussed, as are the important landmarks. The mailbox. Thing is, the Chantry can be hard to find. All good Chantries are hard to find, of course. It makes sense.

Lavinia
"I wouldn't mind country living. Who knows, if I stick around for too long I might actually get to get my books out of the damn trunks," she informs Grace, "but whatever the case, if I'm staying I don't want to be in people's hair for too long. It's been a long time since I've sene a node."

Not true. It's been a long time that she's seen a node that wasn't attached to someone she had no desire to speak to, who she said in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to see him again. (Lies, all lies. Ezekiel or Eric or whatever she wanted to call him, Palmer. Whatever his name he wasPalmer and she was something that defied human lips and-

It was complicated. Suffice to say, she never wanted to see that person again, and therefore cut herself off from a pretty nice node in the northwest.

"Oh," she says, brows raised, smile lights up and there is a moment as if she finally remembered something, "I actually acquired a student, I don't know if you know her- Arionna?" No statement about how she is or how she interacts with people, "if she does anything that gets her into hot water, let me know?"

Grace
Grace's eyes pop open wide at the mention of Arionna. What. The. Fuck. That girl has a teacher? Does Lavinia have her chained up in the basement or something, and is calling that a mentorship?

"Really? Her? Uhh... Well, that's... Yeah. You're a saint, I think. If she does anything that gets her into hot water, it'll be on Ginger. Just so you know. If she becomes a threat to people, they have a right to know. Unless it's, you know, not that serious. Then, sure. Yeah. I'll just call you."

Lavinia
"Yeah," she says, matter of fact and completely unabashed. It was as if there was no question, as if there was nothing that was to say. She said it, solid and sound. She said it, like this wasn't something that she should shy away from and shudder and act embarrassed about. No, it's said with the same way that she said she was a member of the Chorus.

"And with anyone, if they become a threat to people then everyone does have a right to know. And if anyone becomes a threat to anyone else, I will be there to make sure that the problem is taken care of."

This isn't lip service.
This is the kind of taken care of that one only thought Chakravanti dealt in.

"I assumed that was just customary behaviors of where you are." No, Lavinia, having the guaranty that someone will kill you if you become a threat to the community at large on account of walking some unpleasant path is not normal.


Grace
"That's actually the best news I've ever heard about Arionna. I'm glad you're going to be there for her, in whatever capacity."

Because, you know, cleaning up after fallen Mages is not a fun and pleasant task. It never has been. And if Lavinia can keep it from happening entirely? Even better.

"It's not something I could do. Don't have the patience. That's for damn sure."

Lavinia
"I was a shit when I was an apprentice," she said matter-of-factly, "I definitely got more chances than I should have courtesy of good ol' fashioned nepotism. If I can have faith in an intangible, unknowable divine, then I can have faith in a tangible, knowable piece of it."

Grace
Grace has no faith in any divine. And yet, others do. And they're able to hack with that, and so be it. Still, she gets it -- Arionna bends the universe with her will, and that is not something that you should just throw to the winds. One could conceive of their skills as being a tangible, knowable piece of the divine, even if one does not believe in divinity. Gods, perhaps, for certain definitions of the term...

"Well, good luck with that. I'm extremely surprised she let anyone teach her anything. But yeah, go you. Major props."

Lavinia
"I feel bad for her," she laughed, "because I? Have never had a student until now. She has the unfortunate honor of being my guinea pig."

she crossed her legs and drew her attention to the ceiling. Stretched because she needed to stretch, "so... is there anything else I need? Sending you thank you texts? Loaning you library keys? Something?"

Grace
"Library keys?" Yeah, Lavinia mentioned books... "Actually, if you don't mind, I would like to get a look at your books. My partner and I have a digital library project going. We take books and scan them for the sake of sharing through a distributed network. So far, we have... uh... our books. And a few others. But we'd love to grow it."

Lavinia
"I've got it all packed up into a nice, viable format. Are you working primarily in English or does the language actually matter? A fair bit of it is in Greek as of the current. Greek and Latin and a little Arabic. The arabic is for personal purposes." Lavinia muses, "but once you want it let me know how long you'll have it."

Grace
"Language doesn't matter. It's for sharing. I'm sure some of the people who would eventually look through it would know Latin and Greek and Arabic. And I can always hook it up to a translation dealie, but those are never quite as good as you'd hope they'd be...

"I'll have to show you where we work sometime. Aside from the various projects, we also have a gun range, a bunch of nonperishable foodstuffs, thick doors, and a combat training arena, because some people like to be prepared."

Grace grins. Lavinia seems to be the kind of person who would not consider her crazy for such a statement, but would understand. Life's tough out here sometimes.

Lavinia
"You know the worst part of traveling?" she said, and it was a non question, because Lavinia was no doubt going to tell her the worst part about traveling, "the worst part about traveling is that you don't have people to practice with. It's being the perpetual army brat, from what I understand. Everything I've read says this is what other people who travel a lot do."

A beat.

"I'd show you where I work, but it consists of a car, a motel room, and my sister's attic. I'm lucky I have that. "

Grace
"Well, now you have our place too. If you ever need a safe place to crash that's closer than Morrison, or just need a lot of guns or backup fast? Well, we're usually around. And if I'm not around, I can be around -- quickly."

It's the welcome wagon, Lavinia. Here's your gift basket of ammo...

Art Appreciation

Lucas Reed
One of the gallery spaces in the Art Network (a two-story Arts Center located on Santa Fe) was currently exhibiting a show by the artist Tadashi Hayakawa titled Echoes of Heritage. It was by chance that Lucas happened to be walking by. He might not have turned his head in time to see the poster, but he did. One of the artist's paintings was depicted on the print, and it caught his attention. Something about the colors and the pattern of the shapes. It stirred like an old memory - something he carried in a part of his soul that remembered another time (another place.) So he stopped there on the sidewalk, looking at the poster for a long, stilled moment. Then he blinked and glanced up at the building.

Why not?

He went inside, grabbing a brochure as he made his way up the stairs to the exhibit.

Kalen Holliday
[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lucas Reed
[Edit: "He went inside, grabbing a brochure as he made his way through the door." (Because apparently I'm an idiot and this gallery is on the first floor.)]

Lucas Reed
[Also, if anyone wants to check this thing out: http://www.artworknetwork.com/currentexhibit.php]

Kalen Holliday
Kalen is drifting through the exhibit - half aware of the colors taking shape in the works of art before him and half still caught on butterfly wings.

The world is colors and light and he feels it more now in general and then more in specific as Lucas comes into the gallery.  There have been days that he would have come straight up to Lucas-to greet or to challenge or to welcome.  Tonight he keeps looking at the paintings.  One of them reminds him of a tiger.  And therefore of Ian.

At the moment though, he is standing before a portrait of some koi fish and wondering if they, creatures of ink and color and fate and dreams, would like to come sailing off of the canvas to swim through the air in the gallery.

What would all of these people do?  Would they think it was as magnificent?  He remembers that he was afraid when confronted with a larger world, but that larger world did arrive in the form of something trying to eat him.  And magic, wild and instinctive and pure and glorious, saving him from being eaten.

Serafíne
(I may/may not join, so please no one wait for me!  Just if the whim hits.)

Lucas Reed
[Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Awareness too]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lucas Reed
Lucas was somehow both easy and difficult to miss. Easy, because he was rather on the small side physically, and difficult because something about him felt so vivid and clear - all stark details and vibrant color. He also felt older than he looked. Like remembrance. Like these paintings, actually. Old and new all at once.

Kalen noticed him, but didn't look. Lucas noticed Kalen as well. He glanced toward him with wide, dark eyes, alert and interested (curious as much of him as he was of everything else in this new environment.) He didn't approach Kalen immediately though. Instead he wandered past a wall decorated in elegant black and white canvases. His eyes followed the brush strokes, curving around as he tilted his head - briefly enraptured.

Grace
Kit.  Come help me pick out some paintings.  The library needs more color.

If Grace were honest with herself, she'd ponder about Kalen's sanity, with that text. Such a request is like asking Pan Echeverría to come help pick out new servers. But let's be double-double honest -- she's not doing this to pick out something pretty for the library. She's mostly doing it to keep Kalen from buying the entire lot of paintings and leaving them with no funds with which to purchase new servers.

She's got her priorities straight, does Grace.

She only hopes she makes it there in time to keep him from spree-ing.

But, when she arrives, she doesn't sense the presence of her sometimes overly enthusiastic friend. She feels... something though. Someone(s)? The hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she keeps on going. It's just that little bit of confusion, as she steps into the place, looks around.

She doesn't look like the kind of person who belongs in an art gallery. A nerdy tee shirt paired with jeans of the non-designer variety make up the majority of her wardrobe, and today is no different. Still, people might find it hard to consider her anything but the background noise.

Lavinia
[I wanna roll awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Lavinia
She was wearing a suit. An honest-to-God, tailor-made perfect lines and seams suit. She wasn't sure what to wear to an art exhibit, especially one that she was showing up at alone. She found, however, that she rarely had the opportunity to wear her suit, so god dammit she was going to wear it. With heels, because fuck people who can't deal with a six and a half foot tall vision of angelic radiance. That was the thing about going alone places- she didn't have anyone to stand with. No one to impress upon her certain standards and responsibilities.

Lavinia could do what she damn well wanted.

So there she was, bright blue heels clicking and legs looking especially long. The pants sat high on her waist, the shirt tucked in and a nice, crisp white. The top button was unbuttoned; she wore a black tie anyway, jacket thrown over her shoulder with some gold pin on the lapel. She wore a men's watch, something that wasn't as nice as the suit but something she liked anyway. It wasn't so much a gift as it was that she stole it from a previous lover/devotee/student of celestial things. He didn't care that she kept the watch, she wore it sometimes to remember him, to wax nostalgic on better times.

Art had a tendency to do that with Lavinis, provoke introspection. She held a tiny blue bag with a tiny gold strap. Make your shoes match your bag, someone drilled it into her head and arguably this is the nicest the blonde-haired woman had looked in awhile. She was hovering by some picture that spoke more of movement than anything. The loop, something that made her think of ink being poured into water. She stood in front of a bench, one that she considered making use of.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen, because it was Oliver who greeted him as he came out of the dark, remembers him in some ways more clearly than he does Lavinia.  He remembers the sense of Lavinia more than the person.  He is not sure what he will call her.

He already calls Alyssa Angel.

They already have a Seraphine.

Kalen leaves Lavinia be for now, slipping through the gallery instead to meet Grace.  He is unconcerned by the unexpected gathering.  These are so very Denver.  If the others stay, they will become accustomed.  If they leave, as so many seem to....

Well.  He can only hope they found what they were searching for before they moved on.

"Hey, Kit."

Grace
Bwa? Grace looks over Kalen like he's an alien. She even reaches out with a confused hand and sniffs the air around him.

"Kalen?"

The fuck?

"You're different. Way different."

She gets the sensation of a swirl of shattered colors, of stars, of something otherworldly. Like what's standing in front of her might just be alien indeed. It's enough to question all other evidence that Kalen is... Kalen. It's like coming across a good friend who's suddenly gained a foot in height.

Lucas Reed
"Lavinia." Luke's smile was broad and natural when he felt her come in; sensed her presence like a brilliant beacon of angelic light. She and Kalen had that in common (they both felt as though they'd descended from the heavens,) but Lavinia was at least a slightly familiar presence - and impossible to miss in every conceivable way. Luke managed to pull his attention away from the paintings long enough to approach her, tilting his head so that he could meet her eyes with his own. She was a full foot taller than he was, and standing beside each other, the differences in their appearance was stark.

"Nice to see you again." He glanced back at Kalen and Grace. "I guess I picked a good time to wander through the neighborhood."

(Yes, funny how that worked.)

He'd shaved today, so there was no evidence of the facial hair he'd been sporting on their last encounter, but the septum ring was still there. He'd also shaved his head recently, leaving only a fine layer of dark fuzz on his scalp. Unlike Lavinia, he hadn't bothered to dress up (that would have required advance knowledge of his plans.) Instead he wore a simple white t-shirt over a pair of red skinny jeans and a set of doc martens.

Lavinia
There's a way that she assesses new feelings and resonance. She marks it, closes her eyes for a second. She's feeling things out, trying to assess if the feelings were something she could be concerned about. Checking to see if anything felt familiar. One. Two. Three..? No, she didn't recognize the third. Lavinia?

Eyes open, dark like the space between the stars, bright like torches. Her face lights up, and she looks at Lukas. He was broad and natural and vivid brightness. Something felt right about him, something felt like color and brightness and wild trips of the imagination.

"Hey, Lucas, right?" she turns to the left to talk to him, splitting her attention between the painting. Keeps her open to anything that might come up that she misses. "It's pretty good timing. This exhibit is great, I haven't been to a gallery in forever."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen laughs softly at that greeting.  "I sleep now too.  It's bizarre."

He can see, out of the corner of his eye Lucas and Lavinia greeting each other.  Notes that they seem to know each other.  But, at least for now, he lets Grace have a moment.

"I like the one with the koi fish.  But I think we might wake up one day to find they've swum off the canvas.  Which I suppose would be alright, as long as they swim high enough in the air to avoid the cats."

Lucas Reed
"It's beautiful, and reminiscent, and... dynamic. I love that about it." He indicated the piece that Lavinia was gazing at. "I really like this one. I've never seen Hayakawa's work before, but now I think I want to look him up when I get home. I love just... being in this space."

As though to indicate this, he took a few steps back and sat down on one of the cushioned leather benches, leaning back on his palms to regard the full picture of the wall in front of him - taking it in like a snapshot (painting it into his memory.)

"You can call me Luke. Unless you like Lucas better. Either works." He glanced up at her, tilting his head back toward Kalen and Grace. "Should we introduce ourselves?"

Grace
Well, it's Kalen's appearance, Kalen's body wash, and Kalen's idiosyncratic way of explaining paintings. So either it's a thing with Kalen's memories who has somehow managed to best him and replace him like some kind of magical body-snatcher, or it's really him.

Grace blinks.

"Right. What happened? With the...." she waves her arms around in the air.

It's then that she looks around at the paintings, looking in vain for the one he's talking about.

"And which one has the koi fish? I just see a bunch of black circles."

Lavinia
"I think it would be a little sad if art were static, this though, this is fantastic. It… it moves, I guess flows is better because.. yeah," she moves with her hands, holds them out in front of her in a triangle and moves downward and then up, following the dark swatches of paint on the canvas. she remembered someone telling her about the use of negative space, but she was pulling for it, trying to find something that pricked her memory on that other than the words negative space.

She takes a seat with Luke, and it's quite a ways down for her to go. She stretches her legs out, crosses them at the ankles. She isn't towering that way, but she seems to make sense when she is towering. It seemed to emphasize how she was boundless, emphasized her own use of space.

"Names, and what you choose to call yourself, is important. If you want me to call you Luke, you're totally Luke," she informs him, lips upturned and smile playful. She looked back to the two people, taking them in for a second and only really being able to place one. That was… Grace? Mechanical keen and sharp and winged thing. Her expression lingered on Kalen for a moment, she cocked her head to the side and tried to place the feeling and, perhaps, she lingered long enough that she realized she was being rude.

Blinked and shook her head. Looked back at Luke.

"It's like you're standing inside of someone's head, looking out and seeing how they perceive the world."

Kalen Holliday
And if it were a thing with all of Kalen's memories, would it really be someone else?  Could it really be?

"Mmmmmmmmm...not here.  Here is for paintings."  Kalen leads her to a painting that might be a portrait of koi fish or might be an abstract reminiscent of koi fish.  Kalen sees koi fish, fins and lily pads and auspicious red markings.

There is a second when his attention is caught by another painting, a second which stretches into a few seconds of staring into bold and majestic brush strokes, mostly black with a hint of red.  There might be a clumsy circle on that canvas to Grace, but Kalen sees a tiger.

Of course he does.

Kalen shifts his attention back to Grace, back to the koi fish and their vibrant colors.  Away from the power and the majesty of the tiger.

"This one," he says to her.

[And, should you wish to look at these particular paintings: http://www.artdistrictonsantafe.com/uploads/events/celiv2.jpg and http://artworknetwork.com/files/detailed/detail-HYrXOS.jpg]

Grace
Grace looks, and she tries, she really does. There she is with the confused cocked head and everything.

"If that thing jumps from its canvas and starts swimming around the room, I'm going to call for backup."

It doesn't look like fish. In fact, it kind of looks like a penis, with some additional appendages.

"The colors are..." colors. They certainly have wavelengths of light bouncing off of them, yup. "Pretty? Though?"

Lucas Reed
"The paintings?" He asked because she might have meant him, based on her wording (and the fact that she was looking at him.) "They are like that. I think most good paintings are. Sort of what painting is I think." After a beat, he exhaled softly. "Fuck, I'd love to meditate in here."

He glanced up at Lavinia with a wry glimmer in his eyes. "I have another name. Maybe someday I'll tell you that one too."

And on that note, he hopped up off the bench and walked over to where Grace and Kalen stood examining a painting that looked a bit like koi fish.

"This is a great show, don't you think?" He held out his hand. "I'm Luke."

Lavinia
The paintings?
"Right," like it just dawned on her that they could possibly be talking about the paintings and not the man she happened to be talking to, Though she does turn her attention back to them, smile growing wide when he says he'd love to meditate here. "You might be able to, you know, come in the middle of the day, make nice with the curator and see if you can come in when it's closed. I'd feel like that would be a benefit of running a gallery, sometimes you get to be alone with all of this."

She sighs, and that really was for the art. The woman sat on the bench a little bit longer. Her attention swinging to Luke with that wry glimmer in his eyes. She quirked a brow at him and her smile upturned; she was not one to back down from a challenge. A task. Something new. Layers upon layers, she thought. The woman stayed seated for awhile, taking a moment to just soak in the painting.

She stayed there for a second longer, put her hands on the bench and hoisted herself up. Jacket gets thrown over her shoulder again and attentions go where they have to go- with people. Perhaps more than art, she craved attention. Craved contact because existence had been very lonely since she got back to Denver. May as well go make friends, right?

Of course right, onward! To people!


Kalen Holliday
Had Grace told him what she saw in that painting, Kalen would have bought it for Kharisma.  At some point.  After he stopped laughing.

"They are colors, are they?"  He smiles.  "We can get a different painting.  There are many paintings in the world and we do not, alas, have infinite space."

Perhaps he might have said something else, might have started drifting toward another painting, but Luke arrives.  Kalen reaches out and shakes Luke's hand, smiling again.

"Kalen," he says.  "Welcome to Denver...?"

Grace
Grace would argue about that space point, but it might end up with Kalen wanting to buy infinite paintings, so she just smiles, and leans in. "It looks like weird squiddy genitalia," she whispers, because there are other people around now. "I don't see where you got koi."

That having been said, there are other people around now, and she must welcome at least one of them. She smiles at Lucas, first, because he spoke some introductory thing. "It is. More for the people, I think."

Lavinia she has seen before, in less formal attire. Grace squints her eyes at that, but whatever. Apparently white suits are appropriate attire for people to gawp at thousands of dollars worth of pictures of black circles and fishlike penii. She'll never ever understand this.

Lucas Reed
"Thanks." Luke smiled as he shook Kalen's hand. The skin on Luke's palm was a little rough - worn and nicked in places from labor or training. He didn't offer any correction to Kalen's assumption, which was as good as confirming it. "I'm liking it so far. Are there a lot of us around?"

(Us. The Awakened. People who resonate.)

Grace acknowledged his presence with a response, but neglected to offer her name. At this, Luke canted his head with a little smile (as though to convey that this fact had not gone unnoticed) but didn't press her for it.

"I've met Lavinia and Josephine, and now you."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen thinks back to a time when the only other Awakened he knew were Kharisma and Jack.  To living in a Hermetic chantry surrounded by other Magi.  To Santiago with Ramon and only occasionally any others at all.

"I think that depends on how you define a lot," he says.  "Sometimes more than others.  People drift in and out.  But if you want to feel that out for yourself sometime, we can set up some introductions.

"Maybe a smidge more wine and a smidge less art.  Maybe not."  A trace of something playful threads through his tone.  "But you never know.  I might buy an art gallery something.  I am in a mood."

Grace
"Kalen? In a mood? You don't say," Grace says, and rolls her eyes. Yes, dears, he's pretty much always in a mood. Some kind of mood.

"Mmm. And, you have met Grace," she says, adding to Lucas's list. "I am delighted to make your acquaintance." Grace is totally playful, making fun of the very idea of people saying such silly things as 'I am delighted to make your acquaintance.'

Lucas Reed
Lucas laughed at that. "What it must be like to be able to buy art galleries on a whim." He didn't actually know if Kalen was being serious or not, but even the suggestion seemed alien to him. "I think art transcends ownership. Kind of a shame we've capitalized it." He glanced at the painting before replying to Kalen's offer. "I think I'd like that, though. Introductions. Not so much the wine."

(He didn't drink, you see.)

And here now was Grace's introduction - so very proper (so very making fun of proper.) Luke caught the inflection, but didn't seem especially offended by it. Instead he just grinned and nodded toward her. "I'll remember that."

(And he would. He would remember their names forever. Possibly even into the next lifetime.)

Kalen Holliday
"Paintings on a whim, maybe.  I might have to think about the art gallery.  Investors.  Paperwork."  He rolls his eyes.  "So much effort."  And then Kalen grins.  "And there are so many books to buy first.

"Less wine, huh?  Okay.  We can still do that I think.  I should get your number or something.  So that we can have further discussions about things that may or may not transcend ownership."  He doesn't mean art, at least it isn't art that he';s thinking of.  No, Kalen is thinking of Nodes and libraries and maybe at some point Ginger and the House.

But, now that Luke brings it up, maybe art too.

If he donates that one painting to a museum, he's pretty sure he and Grace will have something to laugh about forever.  Would she visit it, after he died?  Would he stand before it in another life and wonder why he was laughing?

Focus.

"Sometimes it can be like herding cats, but I'm sure we can get at least a few of us together."

Grace
"I feel like pretty much everything transcends ownership," Grace says. "Humans just like coming and fucking things up with their resource distribution systems."

"We're like cats because most of us are like 'phh, rules'. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? Isn't that part of how we got to be who we are in the first place?"

And thus, Grace goes on the blabby side of things.

"But yes, we must introduce you to more people. If you want. If you don't want, that is okay too."

Lavinia
For all that she was tall and striking and generally hard to miss, Lavinia had done a very good job of just standing, smiling ever-so-slightly, and enjoying the conversation. She watched people talk, watched mouthes specifically in such a fashion that one might wonder if she speaks English as a first language. (She does, she is just a little deaf on one side, but people don't know that to look at her.)

Idly, she ended up humming the first few bars of Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas at the mention of things transcending ownership.

Lucas Reed
"Whatever works." See, he was easy like that. One might almost be forgiven for mistaking him for a Cultist (the resonance, the septum piercing, the hints of socialist leanings - though there was that wine thing.) "Seems like you guys are a diverse group. That'll be a nice change of pace." He didn't elaborate though, mostly because they were in public, and however relaxed his demeanor he still understood the dangers of indiscretion. To Grace he said, "I agree with you, actually. Art just has a way of transcending it in spite of us. I mean, if you see a painting, it becomes yours for as long as you remember it."

Luke pulled a cell phone out of his pocket - an android that looked a few years old and more than a little scuffed (it was kind of a miracle he hadn't broken it yet.) He didn't actually need to write Kalen's number down, but having a contact list made life easier. "Here, let's switch." He opened up his contacts and handed the phone to Kalen.

Kalen Holliday
Let's switch.  Kalen pulls his phone out of pocket and hands it over.  Maybe he could be more cautious, but what, really, might happen.  Ginger is hardly noticeable.  All of his contacts are in by the names he has given them.  Luke probably won't remain Luke for long.

He enters his name as Kalen Holliday, though he expects he doesn't have a reputation outside the Order enough for that to matter.  His phone number.  An e-mail address.  The physical address for his library.  And then, because non-sleep-deprived and newly-emerged-from-a-Seeking Kalen is nothing if not playful, he snaps a picture of the koi (or penii, that is, after all, for each of them to interpret on their own) and sets it as his contact picture.  And he has that luxury.  Grace is right there.  Grace will alert him to signs of ambush while he is playing.

"Yeah.  We even mostly get along.  Me less, actually, I think.  On account of my being all  moody and temperamental."

"Oh.  Hey.  You can play the phone switching game too if you want," he says to Lavinia.

Grace
"Hah, yeah. I'll remember that one," she says, pointing toward the 'koi'. "Some of the circle ones are nice, but about all I'm going to remember of them tomorrow is weird black circle shapes. I guess that means I don't get to keep them."

Unless...

Grace takes out her own phone and snaps a picture of a random painting. They might have a rule about that here. Grace doesn't care.

"Caught you, you... funky circle."

Lavinia
"Do we all pass to the right? how's this going to work?" she says as she fishes a boring, boring phone out of her tiny, tiny purse. It is a go phone, the kind of thing that you put minutes in every so often or ditch in a trash can when it becomes to cumbersome. Something with a removable memory card. A smart phone that is several generations old and was… surprisingly scratch free.

"Lavinia," she clarifies, doesn't give a last name because what were the odds that someone would have more than one Lavinia in their phone?

She looks at Grace and grins, "you know, last time I saw you, you and… uh… Jo? Was it Jo? Anyway, did you guys get home okay?"

Lucas Reed
When Kalen took his phone back, he'd find that Luke had entered both a phone number and an e-mail address (though no physical address.) His full name was apparently Lucas Reed. The e-mail address he entered said: chotehathi@gmail.com.

Kalen said that he was moody and temperamental, to which Luke just smiled quietly. "I can handle moody." He passed his phone over to Lavinia. "It's like a circle jerk, but way more boring."

After a pause, he added, "Sorry. That was super inappropriate."

Lavinia
[oh my god, did I hear that correctly?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday
"Oh, Kit.  They will live forever in your heart."  He glances over the information Luke put into his phone, and then offers his phone to Lavinia.

"Famous last words," Kalen mutters, but with no real indication of anything but amusement.  And then there is a startled, muffled laugh.

"Damn.  Well, that was not on the list of things I expected to hear at this particular exhibit.  I mean...the ne next Tuesday down the way with the artistic nudes maybe.  Not so much here.  Definitely welcome to Denver."

Grace
"Why wouldn't we get home okay?" Aside from, you know, monsters. But even then, getting home okay is still fairly good chances.

Notice, she does not hand her phone over. Instead, she slips hers back in her pocket. It's just a weird thing to imagine, okay? Like handing somebody your foot to pass around. Her phone is something she typically uses to do Magic with. It hums with her. One might expect it to grow its own wings someday and fly around.

And, it has secrets upon it. The phone numbers of a few vampires, her friends (without nicknames), her encryption, her specialty programs. She's not in any hurry to completely open up to the newcomer.

Which is not to say that he doesn't get all the smiles she can muster.

"Oh, my heart will be so thrilled to learn this, Kalen. Truly."

Lavinia
It takes a moment where there is curiosity then surprise, then finally she was sure of what she heard.

And Lavinia laughs.

She takes the phone from Luke. Eyes light up and nearly close, laughing comes unabashed and sonorous. There are sounds that one thinks o, but they don't have human equivalents. There are all sorts of images that people go to when angels laugh, and it usually involves something sickeningly sweet but this isn't sickeningly sweet. This is the voice of a herald, whose mirth is not quelched.

"So we just don't make eye contact while we're doing this and it's all good?" she's getting a little tan, but her cheeks are pink and she's putting her name in the phone. Lavinia Cervantes. A phone number from Texas, no email address. But she does take a picture of herself while she's holding back laughter, something about photos makes her less daunting but makes her hair seem a little more like a halo. Though, she doesn't seem to have her hands free, because she took Kalen's phone too soon and she looked a little awkward for a minute, confirmed what was right with Luke's before starting in on Kalen's.

Same thing- Lavinia Cervantes. Texas phone number. No email. Standard peace sign selfie. (Do celestial beings take selfies? Yes, yes they do.) She got back to laughing, just small and under her breath but it lingers in her eyes.

Lucas Reed
"You have a nice laugh." Luke smiled at Lavinia, his expression openly sentimental. Not exactly a flirtation (that would involve some kind of intent.) More like the way he looked at those paintings. Like he wished he could jump inside the sound of her voice and live there. (He would likely recall that laugh when he thought of her later: hear it again in his mind as clearly as though she was standing beside him.)

If her phone eventually made its way into his hand, Luke would type the same information that he'd given to Kalen. Otherwise she'd get a text from him later. Grace didn't offer her phone, so Luke didn't ask for it. Everyone had different boundaries. Different things they considered personal and private.

"Not making eye contact sounds like a pretty depressing way to have a circle jerk. Where's the intimacy?" The tone of his voice there was relaxed and honest, lacking in anything resembling wry flirtation.

To Kalen, he said, "I aim to be surprising."

And then? He ducked his head in a little bow of goodbye. "I have to get going, but I'm glad I ran into you all. I hope we can meet up soon."

After that, he made his way back out to the street.

Lucas Reed
[I must be off guys! Thank you for the scene! Have a good night!]

Grace
[I must also be off. Work work :(]

Kalen Holliday
[Me too, really.  We just want to call it at phone numbers and goodbye?

Lavinia
(sounds like a plan to me!)

Grace
[Whee! Sleep time!]

Fighting Lessons

Ian
[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Ian
[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian
Washington Park was full of visitors today - the lush, green landscape dotted with joggers and frisbee players, college kids playing basketball, boisterous children playing hide and seek in the trees and elderly couples walking hand in hand by the lake. The weather was lovely, a welcome change of pace from the cold snap that had hit earlier in the week. The evening sun was a warm golden glow shining through the trees. Ian and Jae-shin were sparring in the grass near one of the flower gardens. Maybe it was the weather (that infectious thrill of spring,) but the today the practice had an air of playfulness about it. Ian grinned as they danced around each other, breathing hard. His pulse beat out a rough rhythm in his ears, and sweat shone on his exposed skin. He had on a pair of tapered silver athletic pants, but was otherwise shirtless and barefoot. His toes dug into the soft earth before he lifted off in a tight, predatory spring.

The attack was swift and elegant, but Jae-shin was just fast enough to block it. After a series of swift blows, Jae-shin finally managed to land a hard kick to Ian's side. Ian exhaled roughly at the impact only to dance away, shaking his head with a laugh.

"Careful, I might start fighting for real."

Jae-shin's expression was quietly challenging.

Serafíne
Awareness.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Jo Hamilton
[Jo Hamilton uses SPLASH!]

Serafíne
Among the visitors: someone, you know?  Who knows, who has some hint of, every strange tracery of magick in the air tonight.  Who is: enthralled by it and entombed by it and entangled by it.  Follows that thread from god knows how far away to the place where it makes a new, strange knot.

Ian and his partner have an audience.  Probably they are too intent on each other to take note of anything more than the impression of blond hair left loose, streaming into a wild tangled mass when the wind kicks up.  The sensation of her resonance: gut-wrenching, enthralling, threshold-hovering right there.  Right there.  Right there.

Sera is wearing something close to preppy drag: a highwaisted skirt, pleated and short, with silver buttons precise at the waist.  A longsleeved, rather high-necked little jacket, also black, with more silver buttons in marching military-themed rows, the cut of which would be conservation were it not, you know, so very short: the undercurve of her breasts, the spare cut of her torso.  The dark scrawl of her tattoos against golden skin.  Someone's been worshipping the sun: somewhere.  Somehow.

Serafíne
(Fair warning guys: I go to bed in an hour and a half, so I am probably going to ignore osting order or I will not get to make another post with these many people in the room.  :) )

Jo Hamilton
[I'm fine with that :D]

Grace
"So, yeah. The park!" Grace says, sniffing in the warm air and tree smell. "Places like this are good for distraction-free thinking-time. And you need that."

She walked down a park path with Jo, all decked out in a bright blue shirt with a massive comma on it. Just below the comma, in small text is "or 1=1 --". If we're going to teach, do it right, right? Be the exploit.

"So, first off -- you say you want to learn about electricity and stuff like that? First, I want to know -- what do you think of the physical things? The elements, atoms, that kind of thing? Because it's all related. Well, okay, it is all all related, but forces and matter more so than most."

Lavinia
[Per+aware, oooh?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Jo Hamilton
[Do I sense decepticons?! per+aware]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Jo Hamilton
She needs distraction free thinking.

This is what Grace says to Jo, who has her cellphone out in her hand and is plugging away at something. Because Jo... Jo doesn't know the meaning of 'distraction-free' unless what Grace really means is boredom. Jo moves too much to ever be distraction free; always thinking, always searching.

The day has been warm, though the temperature has dropped dramatically from her time on campus, and she's dressed accordingly. Her black tank is lit up with yellow letters spelling out 'IN TRAINING TO BE BATMAN' with the bat symbol displayed at the top. And capri light pants (do men call their long shorts capris or shorts?). Of course, her wrists are touched with all manner of things to decorate them (probably gutted someone's computer somewhere, hopefully they don't know about it).

"Huh? Oh right yeah like.. Ok well I mean like, it's just coding right? Like a background program.. like ya know.. like your desktop wallpaper. Or maybe it's like, like an if-then statement. Like if THIS coding happens, do this! Ya know like.. dude how did the Matrix explain it? Where's trinity when you need her?"  Jo hummed. She hummed like the powerlines. Always moving, but never radically. Predictable. Necessary. Pulling humanity along, whether it liked it or not.

Lavinia
It's actually a beautiful day. More than a beautiful day, it's fan-fucking-tastic. She had been spending time with friends, some people she had concluded were decent company, regardless of whether or not they had a roof over their head. There but before the grace of God go she, and all that jazz. She remembers being out here, she remembers being hot and being cold, she remmebers thinking that she had better be brilliant or better be talented because otherwise she wouldn't be able to put a roof over her head.

Anyway, it wasn't important. She'd eaten part of a bucket of chicken with the guys, bid them adios and headed on to enjoy the rest of the park. It was a beautiful place, full of frisbee and basketball and trees and- oooh, were those people sparring?

Something felt interesting, and her dark eyes lit up like torches (like she ever had to really wonder about that) and a grin blossomed across her face. THe blonde, with her golden halo of hair and rather remarkable height and capris (nope, those were regular pants, they were just capris because Lavinia Cervantes was over six feet tall) She followed sensation, marched forward in combat boots and a cut up tee shirt (something to hide naturally occuring holes from God-knew-what)

And she headed forward, looking from the men sparring to a blonde sitting and watching and instead her attention went there. Had no qualms with plopping down next to her. Left ear to the lady's side.

"They just start?"

Ian
[Life 3, Better Body diff 6]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian
[+1 Dex for 24 hours, woot]

Ian
[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )

Ian
[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne
"Fuck if I know," the lovely creature shrugs and the movement threatens to upend whatever modesty the cut of the jacket affords her.  She is wearing sunglasses.  Yesterday they were framed with skulls.  Today, they are black, cat-eyed, the frames studded with silver nailheads.  Match to the leather wrapped-round her throat.

This sideglance then, her eyes hidden behind the glasses so large they dominate her angular features, without occluding them.  "I just started watching them."

The sun slides across the reflective surface of the dark glass.  Moving, luminous.



Grace
"Well, yes. Except that there is no real if-then. If you look deep enough into the code, you might say forces are a type of matter, or matter is a type of force. They are composite objects made of the same general parts. Like, take electrons. Electrons are what carry electricity, which is a force, but they're also the things that help make up atoms. They're the same type of object, just with slightly different variables. So if you already have some theory of matter, it's relatively easy to translate that into a theory of forces."

Stroll, stroll, stroll. Lecture, lecture, lecture.

Ian and Jae-shin.

Cloud.

Wait, what?

"Oh hey! They're doing a thing!"

She turns on a heel and heads over. So, now -- a bright-eyed embodiment of shifting, winged focus starts beelining for the assembly, pseudo-apprentice in tow.

Ian
It was the first time any of the people in the park (apart from Ian's current sparring partner) had seen him since he'd gone Seeking up that mountain peak. The first time Sera would notice the addition of a deeper, more primordial note within his resonance. The primal energy of it coiled fittingly with the rest of his feline characteristics. And as Ian moved, the press of his Will blossomed out, his working evident to anyone paying particular attention. He focused with his pulse, his movement, dancing across the grass with an effortless grace that hinted at his ballet training. And then suddenly he lunged, ducking beneath Jae-shin's arms to knock him in the back of his knee. Ian followed it up with a sweeping kick that took the Akashic's feet out from under him.

Then he pounced, pinning Jae-shin to the grass with a sharp, triumphant grin.

Jae-shin looked up at him quietly, catching his breath. After a moment, he laughed - pleased and surprised. "You cheated."

"You're just mad I finally pinned you." Ian reluctantly released his prize, getting to his feet as he cast a glance toward Sera and Lavinia. When he focused on the latter, there was a light tilt of his head. "Hey."

Jo Hamilton
"Buuuuuuuuuuut matter is just code. So like if it's jsut matter and stuff, then it's just code. Cause like, how could it like be anything else? So is it like a program running? Or like.. it has like a schedule? But like if it's not an if-then, then like why is the weather and stuff all chaotic? Like for realsies?"

Now Jo HAD sensed a new individual, she has just been engaged in her phone and Grace, but now was being aimed in their direction. "A thing!" Jo exclaimed, as if this said everything. "We must like see this thing! Because things, things are cool. Not like those thingie-ma-jigs.."

Jo is right on her heels, shoving her phone in her back pocket.

Lavinia
"Good enough for me," she replied with a shrug. She wasn't wearing a skirt today, like Lavinia ever really paid attention to what she was doing in a skirt, dared egg someone closer to getting an eye full of whatever she was wearing underneath, but we digress. It wasn't important what she wasn't wearing right now. "I'm Lavinia."

Sera got another glance, having the worst time not looking and being taken in by the fact that Sera was striking. Maybe she had painting or chalk drawings on her mind after her last escapade with the awakened populace of Denver. She opened her mouth, but then noticed people approaching and turned her attentions again.

When Ian spoke she nonchelantly watches his lips, not longing but decyphering. Then, her eyes went to his face. "Hey, you two are great," she replied.

That was the voice of a herald. Something that spoke with confidence, that bid fear not, something that brought tidings of joy or the message of something wrathful beyond measure. She is a messenger, or at least that's what her voice seems intent on conveying about her.

Ian
[I suppose we should do this awareness thing]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne
Then it's over.  Ian - cheating - has pinned his partner and Sera, who seems to be both watchful and somehow removed or contained or maybe merely high, notices.  Her sharp little chin rises in a way that makes the sun's reflection glint off the nailheads in her sunglasses: or maybe just the darkdark glass.

And she: claps.

You know: for the show.

Around the paper cup, fingers finding her palm.  Mouth crawling, curved at one corner that is essentially inhabited.

"Serafíne.  You can call me Sera."

This to Lavinia.  Nothing to Ian except the fixed attention of her hidden eyes on him, as he rises: from the hold, from the ground.  Glances up at Sera, Lavinia, greets the latter.  Something arrested in that awareness.  She knows everything: feels everything.  Every piece of it, which threatens to peel her apart even as she is cinching herself back together.

Grace
"The weather and stuff is all chaotic because it isn't an if-then. There are very few things in this universe that are a true either-or. Mostly, we exist in the grayish in-betweens. If things were deterministic, like an if-then, we would be able to predict the chaos precisely. But as it's all built on probabilities, even so far as the electrons and protons? The world isn't a firmly defined thing. At all. Which is nice, because hey -- that would be way boring."

That spiel having been said, Grace golf-claps to Ian, and plops down next to Lavinia. "I'm Grace. Hi."

Jo Hamilton
"Well yeah but you're like totally simplifying it. Like, it's an if-then statement but it's not like, if Jo sneezes, Butterflies are born. It's like.. like If this person does this, under this, when this, but only while, then this happens, which does this, but only this while this, and so on and so on. Like it's a lot more complicated and stuff. You can totes predict stuff, if you got the code. Like if I knew the whole code, I could totally tell you when stuff is gunna happen. I mean it's be like super easy. But like we're missing the pieces and stuff so it only seems chaotic.

Jo..gives Ian a thumbs up. That is her congrats to..whatever that was. Because Jo isn't into the physical exercises, save one..or two.

"Yo Sera!" Jo gives her a wave and then finally..oh FINALLY focuses on the new one. She twitches her nose, lifts her brows and seems to look as if someone gave her to the key to the gaming store. Grace sits next to lavinia, who is sitting next to Sera. This... no.. this can't be.

So Jo, sits in Grace's lap and leans in towards Lavinia. "So, will you marry me?"

Lavinia
[You're on my deaf side, did I actually catch any of this?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia
"Sera," she repeats, grins a little at Serafíne,  lights up for a second because there is something vaguely hopeful for the woman at her side. She wasn't entirely human, this one. On first glance, certainly, but there's far too much energy there. More than a mortal body can handle (she's fragile, though she doesn't let on. She's stronger than she looks, but she's not as strong as she thinks) "Glad to meet you."

This is Grace. And there she is, surrounded by strangers who feel like- well, now, this one is certainly different, but happens to have the misfortune of being on Lavinia's right side instead of her left. She scoots back enough so that she can kind of see Grace's face. A little. Just enough so that she doesn't have to turn her head to see the woman next to her. Her brows furrow for a second, like she was thinking, like she was straining.

But, once she puts two and two together, the woman laughs, something that is intent and warm and that stuck to the senses. She wasn't terribly loud, but she certainly cut through the ambient sound.

"Lavinia," she offered to the pile of GraJoCe. "Are you tryin' to make an honest woman outta me." Brow quirked, grin widened, "or are you proposing to Sera? I haven't been married in a little while, so I feel the need to clarify."

Ian
Lavinia said they were great. Grace and Sera clapped, as though Ian and Jae-shin had been nominated the evening's designated entertainment. Jae-shin responded to the approval with a hesitant smile, perhaps unsure if he ought to be encouraging the notion that combat was a spectator sport (or perhaps he was just shy.) He got to his feet with a smooth motion, dusting dirt and grass from his legs. Unlike Ian, he had on a tank top, but was otherwise similarly outfitted in athletic clothes. They'd obviously come here with the express purpose of doing what they'd just been engaged in.

Ian, of course, took the applause in stride. The side of his mouth quirked lightly, and he bent down into a loose, graceful bow. Slightly theatrical.

"You guys are welcome to join us, if you like."

The challenge hung in the air, dry and coyly tempting, though Ian did not expect that any of those seated nearby were likely to take him up on it.

Serafíne
Yo Sera! shouts Jo and our Sera tips her coffee mug in the creature's direction.  Her head turns; their collective reflection crawls across the gleaming surface of her glasses.  Does not comment on if-thens and why-wheres and data because that all sounds like bullshit to her.

Except of course you can predict stuff.  She's a seer.  The future and the past crack themselves open between her teeth.

They speak different languages, though.  On every level.

She is looking at them though: her golden head turned, her chin low over her narrow shoulder, the dark cut of that little black jacket clearly tailored for her: from the width to the length to the glove-like fit of the arms.  Custom-made.

Somehow the lift and curve of that cup is both greeting and farewell.  It's clear - body language, the way she holds herself - that this is only a temporary waystation.

"I don't believe in fucking monogamy," this to Lavinia, a sideline, a sidelong.  "So marriage is pretty much off the table.  I think she was proposing to you, though."

Then she's moving, turns around on her heel because she never sat down, just paused in her passage.  Glance back at Ian over a dark shoulder.  "Ask me when I'm sober.  Watch me say yes."

--

That's really all the farewell they get.  She's on her way down the path, into the shadows.  Sunglasses still covering her eyes.



Grace
It seems that Jo and Grace have already joined Ian and Jae-shin in the physical contact and pinning department, which -- let's be honest here, Grace was not really expecting at this juncture.

Like, how can Jo say that the universal code is a firmly definite thing when she herself is so unpredictable?

She's got a young woman sitting in her lap. This is not a thing that has occurred before, and she blinks. Her eyebrows move a little closer together, and her eyes seek a way out.

"Oh. Huh."

And, she stands up, dumping Jo to the ground.

"Oh, it is chaotic. Just, there are ways of quantifying chaos and analyzing its probabilities. Like, if you know a word starts with 'a', it's probably 'and' or 'at' and not 'aardvark'. But sometimes, it turns out to be 'aardvark', so you cannot completely discount anything. Like people just sitting in your lap, for instance."

Yup. Like that.

"Hi, Lavinia! I haven't seen you around..."

Jo Hamilton
"Tcht. Dude the only wrestlin I' do isn't like, something you'd do in like the park." But she turns her attention right back to Lavinia and Sera, one of whom is on her way out soon enough. "Dude. Nah. Sera totes would reject me. She's like a free woman or something. All rockin it and stuff. See my awesomeness? Just hold her down really." Her lips curl into a slow grin.

"But like for realsies? Yup. Toes asked you. But I mean if you're not cool bein the chick, I'll totally be your waifu. Just don't like, ask me to like cook you anything. Only skills I got be like, mac and cheese or stovetop. True facts. " Jo is in the midst of talking when she goes forward and is dumped, rolling on her back  and sitting up on her arms to look at them. "Dude you took my spot. What'd you expect? See you'd know that if you were like in the know of the if-thens of like my software."

Lavinia
She looks at Grace and Jo in the pile together, she furrows her brows and cocks her head to the side. She doesn't quite seem to put two and two together, confusion on her face born from the fact that she can't quite figure out if she actually heard the word aardvark or not.

Just like Grace said, if a word starts with an a it is probably not aardvark but sometimes it actually is aardvark.

There were words, though. A lot of words. A lot of words that Jo said and, even if Lavinia was watching her mouth (and she was) they didn't quite register. The look of query on her face almost made one wonder if she actually spoke English as a first language. (She did, but there were things that she completely mised. Like whatever the hell a way-foo was.)

"Uh..." yep, that is confusion on her face, "I think our love could survive a diet of mac and cheese and stovetop."

She looks back at Ian, contemplates for all of a second before she straightens up just a little. He doesn't expect that someone will take him up on this. She does light up, though, her expression is laced with being delight- ah, the look says, a challenge. That was what she misse about Oliver. She missed sparring with him. She missed having someone to exert herself with, and not in the typical sense that one thinks a lovely young female creature exerts herself.

Oliver wouldn't have done it, anyway. She wasn't his type, for one, and for two she was holy.

Whatever the case, there was a little bit of relief that someone had said something she actually understood most of it.

"Need me to take off my boots? Combat boots are a bitch, but I don't mind. It's up to you."

Ian
"I'll hold you to that," Ian offered in the wake of Sera's departure, though the odds of running into a sober version of Sera seemed small at best. He watched her go, attention momentarily riveted to the flow of her legs and the sun striking off her hair. Then Jo said something about becoming Lavinia's waifu and Ian and Jae-shin both looked at her, then at each other, before focusing on the conversation at large.

As it happened, Lavinia took him up on his offer. When she did, Jae-shin smiled and stepped aside, ceding the ring to Ian. He seemed content for the moment to stand as an observer with the others. Ian, meanwhile, raised his eyes to meet Lavinia's gaze. She had a couple of inches of height on him, and a reservoir of resonance that seemed to sing with angelic grace. These facts alone made her a natural focal point.

"Whatever you're comfortable with." He took a few steps back from the group, leaving a buffer so that no one would get hurt. Then he held himself - still and poised - as he waited for Lavinia to give him some indication that she was ready.

Grace
"If it were a list of if-thens, that would be the most horrible pile of spaghetti mess I've ever seen, Jo. Do you see it like that? I'm so so sorry if that's what you have to parse."

Grace just shakes her head, like she can't begin to understand Jo's way of unfolding the universe. That's just... massively inefficient.

She also completely ignores the whole relationship talk. That's in Here Be Dragons territory as far as Grace is concerned.

"But, I think someday you will find the chaos. Existence cannot happen without it. Creation and destruction and stasis form the first abstraction. From there, all other things split off. They work together to create and do."

And she sits again, next to Jo (not on top of her). Then, she watches just in case she has to stand up again. Probabilities, right?

Jo Hamilton
Jo drops back down again, back flat on the ground. "Man now I gotta get rings and all that. " She was having a good time of it, tilting her head to look at Ian and Lav as they get prepared for sparring. But Grace, Grace and she are still discussing the universe and computers or..where did this start again? Oh. Forces.

"Totes would.But like the software kinda is like a mess. Cause like it's always trying to improve right? So it's never like perfect and stuff. Always all these kinks and stuff you gotta like work out. Bugs right? Bugs and stuff.So like why does the universe need chaos? Like why does it have to be like, chaotic and all that to even exist? What is it like, about chaos that is so like needed for the universal code? Why can't it like... just be envisioned and all that. Like.. well.. like planned is what I mean."

Lavinia
"I'll hold off, they're kind of a pain to get re-laced," she told Ian. Conversational, but no matter how she tried to be casual the sense of otherness always crept in. Unexpected. Unintentional. But other, like a stranger in a strange land, no mater how many lifetimes she's spent here.

She takes a second to walk to the circle. Calm and confident and inspiring.. She has a presence that draws attention, that keeps attention. With resonant voice and a being that radiates a boundless, every reaching, burning ember of forever. "And you don't need rings," she calls back, "jump the broom- be united for a year and a day then reup the next year."

Reup, like it was military service.

She straightened up at that point, taking a stance that was at once comfortable but born out of practicality. Someone who learned to defend herself in a bar and polished up later with actual training. "I'm out of practice," she tells him. Says it with sincerity, too. Deception wasn't in her framework.

She nods, and was most assuredly ready at that point.

Ian
Jo and Grace were embroiled in a conversation about code and chaos and the laws of reality, and meanwhile there was Ian and Lavinia, squaring off for physical combat. They really were a diverse group.

Lavinia said she was out of practice, to which Ian canted his head and asked, "want me to go easy?" It seemed a genuine offer, though something in his eyes glimmered darkly (tempting, challenging.) They had different combat styles. Different ways of moving. Perhaps the element of surprise would do both of their training some good.

[I'll roll init now. +8]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia
"Nah, what would I learn if you went easy on me?"



(5+1d10)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Lavinia
(oops)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia
Let it be said that her former companions were the ones who did most of the tactical things. They were the ones who thought things through. She wasn't impulsive so much as she was hindered. A few too many blows to the head, maybe the lack of hearing on one side, something made the reasoning part of her instincts slower. Made up for it in what was plugged into muscle memory.

She moved in, threw an elbow to the ribs. She does fight like she's had to deal with people. Something that spoke of learning rules and etiquette later. Let it be said, though, Lavinia acts and she commits

{action! Elbow to the ribs]

Ian
[Split action, 1a: Evade, 1b: strike to the kidney. First split Dex 5 + Athletics 4 (evasion specialty) -2]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
"So it's evolving, right? The code itself mutating into new forms. You know how life evolves, right? Tiny errors in the DNA code occur when they get transcribed wrong and get passed down. Some of them are terrible, and some of them are beneficial, and the beneficial ones live on. The code of life doesn't think, oh, if I need to avoid light then I evolve an eye, so I'm going to develop an eye blueprint. It just randomly, chaotically, bubbles up.

"Sometimes an error in transcription isn't a bug. Sometimes, it becomes a feature. And thus, matter and forces and life and everything come into being, like an eye evolving on a worm. If there weren't errors, there would be no improvement either. There would just be a single, perfect zero. Nothing. The universe continually moves toward the one by cracking that zero apart, introducing errors which add stuff and do things that become its features. We use chaos to drive that movement toward something."

Ian and Lavinia spar, and Grace is more than content to watch and talk endlessly about chaos, because it's how she does. She's also thoroughly distracted.

Ian asks if Lavinia wants him to go easy on her, and she responds with violence. Grace laughs. "Noooope, she doesn't!"

Lavinia
[aaaand try and land something, dex3+brawl3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Ian
[er, pretend I re-rolled those 10's]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Ian
[Dex 5 + Brawl 3 -3, +1 diff for called shot]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Jo Hamilton
"Man that ain't no fun. Then you miss all the happy-couple cosplay. Like for reals. That's really why people like get hitched. Cause you know, you don't need to like get married to get laid."

"Thing is, we don't know if like the universe doesn't think. I mean look at us right? We're just like low-end software. Stupid little things. And we're just like self aware enough that we like get it. And we try to mess with it. And since we're just like software, what is thought really? Like is thought what we think it is? Maybe it's just complex code itself that's like thought based. I mean like sure, rocks and stuff can't think, probably, but like...they're simplistic. What if like the more complex the code, the more thought it has? Then that like means like the universe is a thinker, and a better one at that. It's got small thinkers running around doing things so...ya know, collective thought Grace. "

"Course the problem is to think that logic is based on thought. But like, it's really just breaking down biases to like understand how things work. So like..I mean simplistic way.. I see like a cat, and it's white. So then I say, if it's a cat, it's white. Well...that's illogical because in the universe, there are coded many cats that are like many different colors. So it's not that our thought is logic, or like we're trying to like impose order, but that we're trying to understand the order and then like put that into the collective network to create a better program."

"I mean like I see what you're sayin tho, about errors and all that. I just don't know that like, it's chaos necessarily. I mean what if there is like an acceptable level of errors, and like nothing goes wrong beyond that. But that level is just like, there to like help move things forward? But I mean let's say that like sure, ok, chaos and all.. probabilities. You can still predict what's like gunna happen down to a tight likelihood. Like... when I play chess right? There's like certain things that beginners like to always do wrong. Swear it. Like always. I just know it's gunna happen. I mean sure you leave like wiggle room to like fix in case they don't, but nah.."

Jo squints a little as she turns her head to look at the two of them. "See... this is why I don't do that stuff. I mean.. it's voluntary pain. " She thrust her hand in the air though. "Get 'em! " Urging the blonde on.

Ian
Lavinia was fast. Ian only just barely managed to evade the blow, his spine curving back at a sharp angle before he spun on his axis and came around behind Lavinia, using her height to his advantage. She'd feel a sharp tap right over her left kidney where his fist made contact - a blow that could have been painful if he'd put any real force into it.

And then he was darting away, smooth and and agile (even by his standards.) When he met Lavinia's eyes again, he smiled subtly (pleased and impressed.)

Lavinia
That would have been bad. Oh, it would have been something that took the breath out of her, and she knows that. When she locks eyes with Ian she is alight, more the stars than the space between them. There wasn't any real force behind the blow, which speaks to his restraint. One, she thinks. One-zero.

He's grace in motion. He's fast. And she is delighted. Her lips upturned ever so slightly, restrained because she's in the zone. This is training.

And damned if she didn't love training.

Lavinia
[action! sweep the leg!]

Ian
[And again with the split action. 1a: evade, 1b: kick. Rolling to evade, -2]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Ian
[hahahahahaha]

Lavinia
[Dex3+brawl3, diff 7}

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
"It is chaos because otherwise we could not go anywhere with it. And it is ordered, because without order the chaos would fling us into nothing again. And it grows in the interplay between those two. It is possible for the universe to have many aspects. Like I said, there are very few parts of the universe that are an actual either-or.

"And, I've always felt that the universe thinks precisely because we are not separate from it. You are talking about how I see the thing, like a mind-fractal. Like, individual minds are fractal-shaped, but then beyond the individual is another level of the fractal -- the universal mind."

She leans back on the grass, content to watch the two at their voluntary pain. But see? The universe puts itself through voluntary pain as a way of improvement. Why not us?

Ian
Sometimes, the word really was aardvark. And sometimes cats didn't land on their feet.

Lavinia swept out her leg, mimicking the same tactic that Ian had used to defeat Jae-shin moments earlier. It was a tactic that often failed to be effective when turned on Ian (as Jae-shin could personally attest to,) but this time... it worked. Ian made to jump out of the path of Lavinia's combat boot, but he was too slow, and his balance tipped when she swept his feet out from under him.

He hit the ground hard on his side with a muffled thump and a tight exhale as the breath rushed out of his lungs. And for a second, he just lay there, as though he couldn't quite fathom how he'd managed to end up in the grass. In this distance, leaning against a tree, Jae-shin laughed.

Ian was going to have a bruise on his hip later.

He sat up, wiping some of the grass from his arm, and managed not to look too ungraceful as he got to his feet. When he glanced at Jae-shin, he raised his hand and flipped the other man off in a relaxed gesture. Lavinia, though, got a low chuckle. "I think that probably counts for two."

Jo Hamilton
"But why? I mean that's not really like, a reason. That's just like.. what people say when they don't have an answer but like they want someone to stop asking questions. Dude, it's not really a why, so much as a 'because.' If chaos is like necessary, then there has to be like a logical reason for it. Like why would it be like needed for progress? That sorta thing."

She curled her arms back, hand sunder her head as she watched the sparring. "I guess that's like a way to look at it. Guess I don't see it as fractal, but could totally work. Course not like I'd know how to like envision it other than like..binary or something. "

And then Ian drops. Jo would not consider herself a sports person, unless one counts MMOs and other online games as sports. But when Ian drops, she sits up and gives a "Yeah!" As if her team had just won a touchdown. "Man shouldn't we be like..making bets or something?"

Lavinia
She took a step back so Ian could get up. DIdn't get on top of him, didn't gloat, she just looked ready. That moment when adrenaline tries to push her senses. Her attention swung between Ian and Jae-shin, "you two are definitely friends."

A little admiring, that. Casual, but the barest bit of something else. It was a lonely road to walk, and she'd bid farewell to one of her longest standing companions, lost the other. Cooped up in a motel room waiting to find something to throw her full attention at. This was a welcome distraction, a welcome run of practice.

"Okay, so one-two? That one was more oh god, work than anything. You're pretty damn agile."

Kiara
"I'd go for the leggy blonde, myself. She's got attitude." That, from a voice drifting over near a tree close to Jo and Grace. There's a body leaning easily against it; knee high boots crossed neatly at the ankle; arms over her chest and this wild sort of tangle of dark hair set against dark red lips and a set of eyes harboring no lack of amusement for the scene in front of her.

Kiara Woolfe, if you please.

She hasn't just appeared, not without that tingling at the edges of awareness but it's been subtle tonight.

An idle passing of ways; the brunette's attire suggesting she was on her way from somewhere - or to somewhere else; somewhere requiring heels and a long skirt; a top with splashes of vibrant; glittering color and a short, fitted jacket that hugged in at her waist. A belt sat low on her hips and she seemed; with a brief cant of her head toward Grace; the dip of her mouth as she let her attention wander back to the sparring pair in the distance; quite content to remain a casual spectator.

Ian
And then there was Kiara, who Ian hadn't seen in... too long, really. And she'd just witnessed him getting knocked on his ass by a statuesque blond in combat boots. When he felt her presence, his eyes found her at the treeline and fixed there, as though she was some sort of focal point. Lavinia might wonder at the delay, but his focus was back a moment later, and this time when he looked at his opponent, there was a coil of predatory intent in the way his muscles tensed.

"So are you."

Grace
Ian hits the ground, and Grace's eyes widen like woah.

"Because, chaos is the most efficient method you can use to break a thing out of its limitations.  Efficiency. In code, in run-time, in processor cycles. If you want a good simulation, you set up some data, and you set up some simple-as-can-be rules that data has to follow, and then you randomize the fuck out of that. You don't engineer every little thing, because -- yeah, you could do it, but it'd take so much effort. You take it down to its most basic form, and let it evolve into what you need.

"Ian fell, and he'll learn a thing from that, and hopefully not do... whatever next time. Improving. He could have started out perfect, but what if perfection isn't perfect? What if the writer of this universe felt that nematodes were perfection, and created them perfectly, and allowed them to change, but never outside of 'nematode' because... how? Without chaotic fracturing, how would you accomplish that? It'd have to be recoded entirely from the ground up, if you wanted to make something new. It's all about efficiency."

Grace leans back so that her head goes backwards, to eye Kiara. "I'd go for Ian." Even though he just hit pavement. Somebody has to root for the 'underdog' right?

Lavinia
[Declare!: Splitting-

1a: punch to the wherever-the-hell-I-can-hit

1b: dodge the fuck out of whatever is coming]

Ian
[1a: kick, 1b: evade, rolling to kick -2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Lavinia
[Shit! evade! -3, because split. Dex3+Athletics 3-3=3]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Lavinia
(and one more, because it goes first)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Ian
[and the kick lands on Lavinia's side]

Jo Hamilton
"I know right? " Jo slipped her hand through her pockets, trying to locate something, given hat money wasn't exactly something she had a lot of. "Ha!" She sad as she pulled some piece of something out. "Taffy! I bet a... green apple taffy that she'll kick his butt like woah." Jo even waved it in the air, displaying her prize.

"Is it the most efficient? I mean like, what are we basing it on? See if the universe is built of a code we haven't like, figured out, and like don't know, stuff we're only getting snippets of, then it like, might be possible that the way we see data work here isn't like exactly the same higher up, or like..maybe we're misinterpreting it."

"Dude.. everyone knows mantis shrimp are perfection. I mean for reals. I bet those little guys are really the coders in disguise or something. Managerial programs hiding out like 'yah, we're just gunna be here in the ocean, like all awesome and stuff.'"

"I just figure, I don't know. I mean that's like the crux of it right? Completely got no clue. II'm still like, figuring out the first  code I ever ran across. So I figure there's somethin I ain't seeing."

Lavinia
[Attack! second split. Dex3+brawl3-3=3]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Ian
[Dex+Ath -3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Ian
[And they're tied again!]

Lavinia
She doesn't hold back, save for when she doesn't intend to hurt someone. She is invested, her movement is sound, confident after having actually landed a hit against her opponent, only to divide her attentions.

She'd said it before- Ian was agile. Ian knew what he was doing, had command over his body and she came close, so very close to evading that well-placed kick to the side but it made contact anyway. Close only counts with horse shoes and hand grenades, they say. Close to dodging doesn't mean actually dodging. She powered through the movement, tried to land her punch only to find it falling short.

The young woman pulled back at that point. Not ready to give up, but still beaming, still burning bright- a captivating representation of eternity wrapped in a finite form.

"I gotta figure out how you spread your energy so well. I'm usually one and done, this is a stretch," she compliments. Looks to the trees, back to where she had been, takes in the sights because the sounds fail her.

"Want to keep going?"

Kiara
He feels different to her, Ian. It's there in the way their eyes meet - the way her expression shifts just so - the edge of her smile; the glint of her eyes in the distance and then she's dipping her chin; directing that smile down toward Grace when she's reclining back to meet Kiara's quip with the notion she plans to support Ian.

The underdog.

The Verbena doesn't laugh at that; but she does let her teeth flash. "He does have stamina on his side." Does flick her eyes over the dark haired female beside her as she chatters about data and coding and the universe and - mantis shrimp. Doesn't shift her weight from her vantage point but rather lets her eyes comb the area.

It's not without some suggestion of vigilance; not without the subtle precision of a predator aware of the potential for conflict; for ambush while exposed.

Ian
They were two-for-two now, with Lavinia's impressive sweep countered by Ian's quick evasions and precise strikes. He'd trained in both kick-boxing and kung fu, and the latter showed in the way he moved, particularly in the fluid way he avoided Lavinia's attacks. That kind of training didn't necessarily make him a better fighter, though. The style itself mattered less than the wits and skill of the person using it.

Did he want to keep going?

"I think they're placing bets over there. Let's go one more. We should give them a winner."

Grace
"We should be mantis shrimp. Who doesn't want to see in over twenty colors and create cavitation bubbles that collapse at several thousand Kelvin with their pistol-arms, right? Bad. Ass."

"I don't know if it's the most efficient. And that's the beautiful part of it. There's more left to find out. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're wrong. Actually, we both are. Almost certainly."

"Whatcha looking for, Kiara?"

Lavinia
She gives him a thumbs up, taking the second to recenter and regain her breath. And with that, she was ready again.

[And an elbow to wherever is available, she ain't picky]

Ian
[1a: sweep, 1b: tackle, rolling for the sweep Dex+Brawl -2, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Jo Hamilton
"Totes. Mantis shrimp all the way."

Jo waves her taffy in the air again. "I got green apple riding on you. Like the best flavor ever. " She sat up to look towards the sparring two,  then Kiara. "You know like, you can totally come sit and all. I mean I don't bite... well.not like...unless you want me to." She wiggled her eyebrows at her. "But for reals."

Lavinia
[Ack! Stay up! Dex3+athletics3=6, diff8]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ian
[rolling WP to revert to a defensive action since she didn't go down]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Ian
[And Dex+Ath to evade, -3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia
[Dex3+brawl3=6, diff 6]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ian
[and they tied again, lol, dammit]

Kiara
[It's Kiara, she's throwing everything off with her witchy voodoo, tbh.]

Ian
[Between her and Lavinia, there is too much hotness. Ian is clearly distracted.]

Lavinia
[Hot people sparring breaks the universe. True story]



(declare: knee to the somewhere that is legal and respectable to do in an actual fight and not a bar fight)

Kiara
[+1 diff, Kiara Factor.]

Ian
[1a: kick, 1b: punch, 1c: punch, rolling to kick Dex+Brawl -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia
[Land this! Dex+brawl, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ian
[punch 1 -4]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Ian
[punch 2 -5]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Kiara
What's she looking for.

It's been an overcast day but not overly breezy; barely enough to shake the leaves as it passes through the park. Still - it skims over the brunette's form; the briefest gust; stirs the hair that's fallen over her face; ruffles the collar of her jacket. Kiara's focus remains drawn into the distance; a line marring her otherwise smooth brow; drawing her eyebrows together.

Grace's query seems to cut through whatever it is that's distracting her and her eyes swing back; slip between her and Jo. Her mouth reshapes itself into a supple expression of mirth; the faintest trace of flirtation sliding into it like a promise and a dare when Jo says she doesn't bite. "Oh, I always want people to."

She straightens a little and moves around her tree to lean her spine against it; the edges of her jacket falling open; the heavy collection of necklaces jangling together as she does. "Nothing, in particular. I guess it's just - " This, to Grace, with another brief look over; away.

"Habit."

Ian
[Final score: Lavinia 4, Ian 6]

Ian
If it'd been a real fight, things might have gone differently. Maybe that strike to the kidney that Ian had done at the beginning of the round would have ultimately won him the edge he needed to take Lavinia out. Maybe, after knocking Ian onto the ground, Lavinia would have had just enough time to dive in for a killing blow. Real fights were much more brutal, and much less predictable, than sparring matches.

But they weren't really fighting, and it showed in the way that Ian grinned, panting softly as the setting sun lit a warm glow on his tanned skin. In those last few moments, he'd abandoned his efforts to evade Lavinia's blows in favor of an all-out flurry of attacks, striking out with a swift kick that was followed by two strikes from his fists - one to her side and one to her jaw. The final blow was barely a graze, tapping her in the chin as he reeled in his momentum.

She'd landed a solid knee to his rib-cage. If this had been a real fight, it would have broken bone.

"We should do this again some time. Lavinia?" She'd given her name earlier, but not to him.

Grace
"Mmm. I understand," says Grace, and she remembers a time of furtive looks and predator lookouts. It happens. Their lives are not easy ones, but whose are?

"I believe you owe me a green apple taffy?" Grace says, swiveling a look at Jo.



Lavinia
She had no idea what was coming. Expecting one blow, preparing for one, knowing that she could land another, keep them tied, but she wasn't expecting for Ian's sharp mind and sharper reflexes to beat her out in the end. There was one hit, a solid hit, one that was landed in purpose to the gut but she left herself open. Couldn't possibly divide her attention so evenly as Ian could.

His first blow lands easily, she expected one but not the second. Not the third. The final blow was a literal tap on the chin, something she didn't shy away from but did make her exhale sharply, close her eyes for just a second.

There was a certain degree of brutality that came in real fights. There was something she had originally grown accustomed to, that her original knowledge had come from desperation- like being a cornered animal. Growing into something more sophisticated, more practiced, more poised because someone taught her what to do instead of letting panic take hold. She knew this wasn't real, knew it was training and seemed to delight in the fact. Revel in the moment that she'd missed this.

They should do this again. The world came back from pinpoint focus, from the moments where she was paying attention to what was directly in front of her. "Yeah," a confirmation of her name. "Yeah," she repeated, catching her breath and beaming- all radiance, this one, "I'd like that. Do you have a phone number or something?"

A second.

"Or a name?"

Jo Hamilton
Jo grinned. She pulled back her lips to show her white teeth in the widest grin she could  manage. "Ha!" She pronounced at Kiara. "Well you know, if you like waltz over here, I'll totally take a few nips. Course you'll have to share with her." She gestured her thumb at Lavinia, finally looking back at the two of them as they sparred.

"Ah man." Jo let out a huff and held the taffy over to Grace. "Next time champ! Next time!"

Grace
[I think I'm just going to have Grace pass out on the grass, because I need to pass out XD]

Jo Hamilton
[this is a solid... because I'm with you there]

Ian
[Thanks for playing guys! I have to take off soon too. Have a good night!]

Grace
[X_X]