On Avatars

Margot
The park is a big damn place, capable of hosting multiple events simultaneously-- which truthfully was most often the case, as far as gatherings and events went.  Some people met regularly at the volleyball sand pits to play during the summer, others scheduled weekly arrangements for yoga or drums or playdates with childrens groups.  All of these people could coexist without realizing one another were there.  That was the wonderful thing about great public spaces like this.

Margot was taking advantage of the ease to become lost by settling upon the bank of one of the less populated edges of a large pond.  She had a blanket spread out to sit on, with a bag of yogurt pretzels and a bottle of water beside her.  A messenger bag was on the blanket as well, with the flap folded open and over to reveal the spines of a couple books.  A smaller paperback book with pink-dyed pages was in her hand, posture neck and spine curled down over the yellowed pages as she read.

Were it not for the constant low thrum of war (the steady march of boots caked in mud and blood on toward the next battle) that saturated the air around her, Margot would be very overlookable indeed.  Her brown hair was drawn back into a ponytail, loose bits tucked behind ears.  She'd dressed in a three-quarter-sleeved baseball tee (white body/navy sleeves) and a pair of blue denim shorts, with her feet in white ankle socks and white tennis shoes alike.

She had a pencil held between her teeth as she read.  At a certain point she moved it to scratch at her scalp with the eraser end, then twirled the utensil about in her fingers to put graphite to the paper of a spiral notebook and take some notes.  When finished writing she looked up and about with wide and watchful eyes.  Hunting for someone.

Specifically, a Doctor who was finally available to come out and visit.

Sepúlveda
Marking their mentor as unreliable isn't the fairest assessment anyone could make of the guy. Granted, he provides such an abundance of unflattering characteristics that one probably doesn't need to fling on another one, but the two of them are beginning to be able to tell when their mentor is either out of town or buried in work because the emojis stop flowing.

Up until earlier today, or yesterday, whenever the hell it was that Margot reached out to him or he answered something she had sent weeks ago, the kids had not heard from him since the end of June.

He comes ambling down the path towards the duck pond wearing tan Oxford shoes, jeans that probably came out of the boys' section, and a tri-color panel shirt that looks like it's been alive since the 1950s. His hair could use a trim, as could his beard, but he doesn't look as if he's been living under a bridge for the last month, at least. Doesn't reek when he plops down next to her, and if his eyes are bloodshot, he's wearing sunglasses.

Before either of them speak, he wiggles one of the books out of the stack and reads its spine.

"Huh," he says.

Margot
To her credit, Margot's sense of anxiety about the Doc's well-being and sense of self preservation has abated considerably.  The successful rescue of Alexander Brandt helped solidify faith in an otherwise doubtful and anxious girl.  Helped, but didn't contribute soley.  Since her Seeking she seemed less high strung, still just as serious but more thoughtful and steady.  She saw the pattern in unresponsiveness followed by reappearance, saw it as a pattern of work and Work both, and settled for 'no news is good news until multiple months have gone by'.

All the same, she was quick to reply when he'd answered an old text she'd forgotten about, and now when she spied him she smiled and raised her hand in a still-motion version of a wave of greeting.

The book that he wriggled forth from the bag was laminated over the cover, checked out from a library, and covered some asshole's theory on chance over fate.  If he wriggled further the next book was Nietzche's 'Beyond Good and Evil'.  The one in her hand was some Wiccan-proclaimed book of rituals.  She surveyed his shirt and hair length while he judged her taste in literature.

"Huh," she agreed.  It sounded like he passed whatever test there may have been in initial meeting.  Glanced around, then moved the bag of pretzels to offer him some.

"It's good to see you," she started genuinely.  The tone would become forgetfully casual with familiarity as she continued on, groping about for her bookmark around her for a few moments before realizing it was in her lap and fetching it from there.  "I would say that pre-Awakened I didn't forsee myself doing nothing but studying over summer break, but that would be obvious lying.  Didn't really predict the Nietzche though," she confessed, glancing to the books as well after marking her page in the little rituals paperback.  Then, up to him:  "What've you been up to?"

Sepúlveda
"Oh shit," he says, "pretzels."

Nietzsche returns to the pile and the Etherite takes up the task of transferring pretzel twists from the bag to his stomach. It seems like he's attempting to stave off any sort of inquiry into or observation about his physical well-being. Seems that way, but it doesn't do him any good.

She can't see him roll his eyes when she tells him it's good to see him, but she can see his chewing slow to a halt. Maybe she has something nestled in her gray matter he's going to have to extract in a minute.

What've you been up to?

Crunch goes another pretzel before he tosses the bag back at her and dusts off his hands. He folds himself to sit cross-legged rather than sprawling out on the grass like a goddamn college kid and bounces crumbs off his shirt.

"Sorting out the connection between immediate and distant locations," he says, "and how to warp said connection so as to be able to Work remotely." You know. The usual. "Where's the other one?"

Margot
The Doc was studying Correspondance, it seemed, and when he said as much Margot's attention sharpened a bit more.  Specifically the bit about working from a distance.  She could be seen considering that, almost with a dab of envy (how nice would it be not to have to go to the actual scene of a murder and try to find a bloodstain to summon a victim from-- if only she could speak to the dead from the comfort of her own living room.)

"Huh," she sufficed to say again, rather than really speak her mind on the subject, then nodded appreciatively and looked around when he inquired where the 'other one' was.  When she didn't see him she shrugged.  "Probably studying and practicing, like one does."  It seemed to be the theme these days.  She reached for the pretzel bag herself and popped one into her mouth before shuffling the books all back into her bag and closing up the notebook she'd been writing into as well.  That, pencil in the coils, tucked away as well.  That done she leaned forward over her knees, which were bent up into the air, and began pulling the laces of her own shoes.

"I've been unlocking the secrets of Life and Spirit," she said casually and with a small grin to match the twist of humor in her voice.  She'd glanced over and started pulling off her shoes, followed soon by socks.  "With your help, of course.  But I'm deciphering what I'm supposed to do with those secrets."

Toes curled into the grass, finding it cooler here at the bank where the riding mowers didn't clip as close to the dirt for the sun to steal all the shade.  "Do you just... Work for yourself?  I mean, I know what I'm doing is all tied up in my Goddess, but what about people like you without that diety?"  A pause, then, caveat:  "Ned's obsessive puzzle-solving is another story, I'm not talking about that one."

Sepúlveda
At twice her age, there are loads of things Sepúlveda can do that Margot can't that may or may not cause her envy. He's already aware of their class differences and the visceral reaction she has to flashes of exorbitance, near as strong as her reactions to stressful situations. He is not aware that she might be experiencing something akin to covetous thoughts.

It would be something he could understand, though. He was nineteen once. Granted, at nineteen he was studying biochemistry at DU and had a newborn daughter to worry about, couldn't do half as much as Margot could as far as Work goes. He likes to remind the two of them that he didn't just open his eyes one morning capable of melting walls and turning mailboxes into trees and whatever the hell else he does with his free time.

She starts to clarify what she means, and Sepúlveda shifts his hip to extract his flask from his back pocket. Glug.

"Do you remember what I told you about Avatars," he asks, "the night I showed you two dunderheads what Quintessence is?"

Margot
"I remember what you said about the types of Essences that people have," Margot mused thoughtfully.  She tucked her socks into her shoes, then set her shoes neatly in the grass next the square of blanket.  She'd glanced over to Sepúlveda, then looked out toward the pond.  Intently at the grasses and mud along the shore, specifically.

"I know that they're different not just in their relationship, but they're a part of what your Magick is, what your Essence is, where it all comes from.  Which is why everyone's perception and ability is different."

Yeah, that would about summarize it, kid.

[Frog Huntin'!  Perception + Alertness]

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

Sepúlveda
"Well..."

Whatever it is she's doing, she can do without having to explain herself. The last time they met at the edge of the water, Margot sensed a dead body at the bottom of the lake. It turned out to be a skeleton with no lingering spiritual agenda.

"You also have to take into account people's refusal to admit when they're wrong. That has as much to do with their perception and abilities as how their avatar appears to them. So long as I don't become, eh, uninspired, you know, lazy, mine leaves me alone."

Margot
"So it's a Demon and a Muse both..."

She felt a scolding for analogies in the static of the air, but those seemed only to come with half a heart if ever at all despite the warnings they've received about drawing dumb analogies before.  Somewhere in the mud she spied a peek off smooth green skin shining through-- just a glimmer, and she felt elated like she'd just accomplished what a hawk would in spying a rabbit in the fields below.

Only she didn't swoop in for the kill.  She did keep her eye on that spot, though, for later.  It wasn't moving anytime soon but she didn't want to lose track of it.

"That relationship can change, though.  Like.... what if it were to catch you, but the instead of just shaking you up and setting you loose to go back to work it kept a hold of you and that's the way it was from there on out?"

Pen
(Life ain't easy, sing the Fates,
One by one they sing: Life ain't fair.)

Enter a long-limbed runner, one Pen. Pen whose appearance is always a myth-whittled thing, asking for oils and canvas or gouache and wood, is this coming 'round the bend: Burnished curls braided into a crown, bangs a rake of embers, curling around her ears, and she's been running hard enough and long enough that there's a glow to her skin and the suggestion of a flush to her cheeks and her lungs are bellows and air is transformative air is flux air can be coaxed into Fire or Matter air can be cajoled into Gold and there's nothing gold about Pen's color scheme. Short shorts which nonetheless are possessed of pockets and a thin but long long almost covering the shorts moon-gray t-shirt for a band called Sapsorrow.

(Girl's gotta fight for her rightful share, say the Fates.
They wanna know: What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?
They gloat: Now that the chips are down?)

This wood-block piece of art across the chest, roiling waves and an arm and a chalice with a flower. The hippiest thing. Stark. An earbud in an ear, another earbud dangling, and the mp3-player is tucked away in her bra.

(What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?

Now that the chips are down?)

Monochromatic, Pen: or almost. There's color at her fingers and at her wrist, little droplets of light spraying out scattering where a lance of the late afternoon light hits just so; Millais-vibrant color, on fire. Rings jewels things a Hermetic will wear.

(Help yourself, the Fates sing.

Hell with the rest.)

Her footfalls are steady, drumbeat rhythm boom and boom and boom and thud and thud and thus and fleet-footed be light be Mercury be swift be steady be a drum.

(The Fates are bold:

Even the one that loves you best.

What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?)

She's getting tired and she's circling toward water; it's always water, isn't it? Water which is the one element to dare shape your image back at you: A challenge. Look at this. What is it.

Some runners hold their mp3 players, but Pen is not doing that. Pen is holding a bottle of water, and it is sloshing, sloshing, and she'll be near enough Andres and Margot to notice them in T-minus. But does she have advance warning; does the air suggest them to her before she sees them?

Let's see.

[Am I aware?]




Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Sepúlveda
In t-minus the cavalry will arrive and he'll have reinforcements. In the meantime, it's just him and his former student and her ceaseless questions. And her frog hunt. Or whatever the hell she's doing.

Margot can practically hear him roll his eyes at the analogy but the eye-rolling keeps him from lashing out at her. Gives him the strength to uncap his flask and take another big swig.

"That would defeat the purpose of the entire relationship. The Avatar can only achieve Ascension through the practitioner's expanding enlightenment, so locking me in a dreamscape or, eh, whatever the fuck analogous situation you just tried to describe, it's not... it's not likely. I've never heard of anyone getting trapped in a dreamscape because of a Seeking, not unless they were already in a Quiet episode or something." Sip. "Demon and Muse..."

Margot
For all of her gold and fire Penelope was difficult to miss.  Margot was so focused on the frog, however, that she wasn't even mindful of what Magickal tickle or familiar sense of Resonance might be on the horizon (or nearer).  The Hermetic would be a welcome sight, but only after she'd drawn the little witchling's attention to her first.

Conversation, though, that didn't require eyes.

Margot shook her head a little as though she was going to correct her mentor's statement.

"That's not what I was saying."

Oh, look at that.

"I didn't mean that your Avatar was going to catch you and hole you up forever.  I meant, what if it caught you but kept close?  Changed the nature of how the relationship works entirely?  Or, perhaps it would even change the nature of the Avatar itself.  What if instead of being shadows on the wall and in the edges of eyes it kept close like a cloak on your shoulders?  Empowered instead of drove?"

She paused, then added in a somewhat self-conscious manner:  "I mean, it could potentially..."

Pen
(Eurydice sings, Oh my aching heart.
And the Fates keep on her,
What'cha gonna do when the chips are down?)

The freezing, ice-rime touch of augury, of fatalism just before it becomes numbing, wafts through the air; does resonance waft? No; it's a note, like the smell of grass, of water, of the air full of ozone. The grisly blood-splattered gut-strung note coupled with a steadiness an even-keeled something a hand that won't rock or waver too. Together a pair of ominous signatures, but Pen knows them like she knows little duck fluff-butts are cute (they simply are), and if either of them made her aware of omens they'd likely know; Pen is a woman of emotive countenance.

(Take if you can.
Give if you must.
Ain't nobody but yourself to trust,
the Fates say.)

Once she knows what to look for it doesn't take long for her sharp eyes to pick them out, an Impressionist painting on a blanket by a pond, and ducks in the duck pond beyond a child much further with his parents running at the ducks flinging a stone at them and squealing with laughter. It's funny how sounds can make certain planes seem otherwhere elsewhere.

She leaves the path, cutting across the grass, and slows. Slows, while calling out, "Hey, fellows!"
















Pen
(Man I do not know what's up with the ginormous blank space. I typed that sh' in the window!)

Sepúlveda
(Jove hates the soft return tag)

Sepúlveda
[awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Sepúlveda
That's not what I was saying.

Even with the sunglasses in place Margot can see the frown take over her mentor's entire face. He sucks on an eyetooth and settles in as if for story time. It's not possible for him to frown any harder the more she talks, so he sighs and scratches at his beard.

"Only you would come up with the idea of avatars giving out hugs."

Wait a minute. Here comes a distraction.

"PENELOPE," he says as he springs to his feet. "HELP, THE CHILD IS TALKING NONSENSE."

noel-lurk
[I need to fix that soft return thing... someday.]

Grace
Grace is not so put-together as Pen, who walks (runs?) into the scene as if out of a painting. The slight woman in her jeans-and-black-tee getup would have run her clothes ragged if not for the intervention of others who keep supplying her with gifts.

Mostly this is Elliot's doing. Chances are he has a box full of copies of her favorite tee shirt that he keeps replacing as need be.

She also doesn't so much walk or run into the scene as much as stumble upon it, looking up from her digital reverie only because Dr. Sepúlveda has just shouted to Pen that the child is talking nonsense.

People almost always talk nonsense. But it is sometimes interesting to hear what kind and style of nonsense it is. So, she heads in the general direction of the shout.

Margot
[Apologies for that delay y'all!  I had company drop in for a minute and then went to put food in my face but my laptop died and yeah and *types*]

Margot
She wasn't so pale-faced as she was in the colder months when she hid away from the sun-- Northern European (read: white as hell) though she may be she was picking up a bit of a tan all the same-- rituals tied to the earth demanded more time outdoors, after all.  Still, summer's signs did nothing to lessen the impact of her blush-- magenta cheeks and even those ears too.t

"I didn't say hug--," she started to insist, looking away from the frog (who would promptly dig itself away into the mud, out of sight, of course) and back to the man sharing the blanket with her (her professor?  hopefully they weren't dating.).  Penelope's calling to them cut her off, had her looking quickly to see who hailed them, distracted from whatever defense she was going to try to make from herself.

"Hey--," she began to greet, but was cut off by Andres leaping to his feet and yelling loudly toward the red-haired runner.  She lifted one arm up to protect her side from any errant elbows or other angles that may have clipped her when he sprang, then sighed and shook her head and grabbed a fist full of yogurt-coated pretzels to munch on while waiting for the temporary and tiny stormcloud of teenaged indignance to dissapate quietly away.

Pen
Up springs Sepúlveda, Pen smiles deeply at him. Look; it carves dimples, long, into her cheeks; the color of her eyes is an uncertain one, today, difficult to decipher; the dark t-shirt, the heightened color of her cheeks, the sky as Phaeton puts the Sun's chariot through its paces - these all contribute.

Once she has reached the pair of them, Pen reaches out to take Andrés' elbow and, keeping a courteous difference because she is sweaty, will go in for a cheek kiss-by-the-air. "It's been too long, Andrés."

The smile is back - and easy, and wide - for Margot. An elegant loft of her eyebrows is also eloquent, see: is this the child? Good humor.

"I take it you mean you have a disagreement. Hello, Margot. How is Yorick? What were you two talking about?"

Approaching: Grace - who can't just approach, can she? Flutters like butterfly wings which'll shift and shake the city walls downward.

Grace
Margot is the child, a fact that, when Grace finds out, causes her to smile a bit. "He does like to claim that people are being nonsensical. I don't know that people have another way to be, really."

"Hey, guys," she says, finally introducing herself in a way, after inserting herself into the conversation. "Nice to see you."

A bird catches her attention then, a quick flash, and her eyes dart to track it, such that she gives off the impression of someone not present for the conversation... not really. She tries hard enough, but alas.

Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda doesn't do courteous even if he has, from time to time, executed distance as part of his social protocol. When she takes his elbow he mirrors the gesture, the opposite hand going to her shoulder like to steady himself against the mild height difference. If they're going to air kiss like Europeans, it's got to be bilateral.

"July, you know? Useless month."

The Hermetic and the teenager, by extension, are spared the Etherite's interpretation of the misunderstanding by the sudden appearance of Grace. Her proclamation has him pointing one skinny finger at her.

"I do," he says. Know, that is. They all have the distinction of being in the presence of a paragon of sense, don't you know.

Margot
Pen approached and asked what they were speaking about after greeting The Doc, and Grace appeared not too far behind.  The sudden appearance of two other mages had her raising her eyebrows suspiciously.  She pulled a spiral notebook from her messenger bag and tugged the number two pencil from its rings.

"Hey Grace, hey Penelope," she offered to both of them and turned about on the blanket, remaining the only person still seated on the ground and not appearing to have any intention of standing up anytime soon.  Bare feet settled back on the blanket when she'd turned to better face the angle from which the two approached (that is to say, not the damn pond), and she propped the notebook up on her thighs to start writing a couple of words-- a thought for later.

She looked up to Penelope specifically to answer the questions that had been posed.

"Yorick's a happy handsome rabbit, he's well."  The pencil moved to gesture to Andrés with the eraser.  "We were talking about Avatars, mostly."  You know, philosophical Mage stuff.

Pen
Pen smiles at Grace, too, one of those touch-the-eyes smiles, a candescent woman, who then while the hellos are happening takes a draught of her water bottle. The water becomes water-light when she lifts it; her long throat works. There are no necklaces today, or right now, only the many rings, only studs in her ears. Some water escapes; dribbles down the water bottle's neck when she swings it, traces a line over her Mount of Venus and then her wrist. When Pen brushes her bangs away from her forehead, she leaves behind a smear of water.

"What of them? Their nature and function?" Mage philosophical stuff, aka Order of Hermes catnip. Pen could just roll around in Mage philosophical questions in a frenzy of happiness, if she were a cat who could roll around in intangible concepts and abstract ideas.

Grace
Mind you, this is the guy Grace once caught stark naked in an invisible van performing blood tests. Sensical is not the word she would use to describe Dr. Sepúlveda.

Unhinged, maybe. Confusing, yes.

Her eyes actually find him, and she smiles at him. "July isn't useless. It's about the only month where it isn't freezing here. Tell me you don't love the fact that it's not snowing."

"And yeah, what about Avatars?"

Speaking of Mages and catnip...

Sepúlveda
"I don't love the fact that it's not snowing."

So there.

Margot
"Uhm...," Margot glanced up between the three people standing and blushed again.  At least this time it wasn't the bright obvious reaction, but just a pink tinge.  She looked down at the notebook again, wrote a little more, and then paused with the pencil point still on the page when she spoke.  "Well, about their purpose.  And nature.  And how that nature could change but--," and she glanced briefly to Andrés here, as he was was contrary toward Grace (he was a hobbiest in the art, it seemed).  Frowned just a touch, but continued with the faint tone of a student answering a question that they were only about 75% certain they were correct on.

"--but how the purpose can't and won't."

Perked and interested in the nuances of Mage philosophy though others may be, Margot didn't much care for being behind podiums, in spotlights, or really in or on any kind of 'spots' in general.

The notebook was closed back up again, whatever thought that was written down being sufficiently recorded for her to revisit another time.  It tucked back into the messenger bag and Margot took a drink from her own water bottle before, at last, rising to her feet as well.  She'd turned to give her left shoulder to the conversation and her right to the pond.  Back to skimming the shore for frogs.

Pen
"Ooh. Interesting. And what do you believe, Andrés?"

He is a doctor in the Society of Ether, after all. What do they believe, if one thing? Pen has not had in-depth philosophical discussions with enough of Andrés's tradition mates to know, it seems - or she is interested in people on an individual basis.

Grace
"I don't even know what the purpose of my Avatar is, much less whether it's changed. I've heard they sort of travel from person to person as we live and die, but I don't know if I really... Well, I have no data to prove that."

Or anything related to her Avatar, for that matter. It probably exists. She has had Seekings and all...

"Maybe your Avatar's purpose hasn't changed, but that doesn't necessarily apply to everyone? Just throwing that out there. I know nothing."

Sepúlveda
Brave woman, Pen, asking the guy who can't shut the fuck up for longer than a few seconds what he believes.

While Margot and Grace discuss the purpose of the Avatar and whether or not it changes, Andrés scratches the back of his neck and aims his sunglasses up towards the sky. It isn't a beseeching posture but it sure looks like it from a certain distance. The moment passes and he returns his attention to Pen.

"I maintain--through science, Penelope, not belief--that the purpose of the Avatar, unless it's gone inverted, is to push the practitioner towards Ascension, and its nature is determined before the Awakening, and the only thing that changes is the practitioner's understanding and application of that understanding."

Pen
"Hmm." There is a gleam, see, to the eyes; the same Mystery that is under whatever is luminous on the surface of a dark pool; it could be pleasure; or mischief; or worship; or celebration; it is present; blooms into another curve of her mouth, something quick and - like most things about Pen - honest. He maintains through science, not belief.

"Grace, Margot -- how do you two define an Avatar's nature?"

Margot
What Grace had to say about her Avatar, how she barely knew it, drew Margot's curiosity and gaze both.  Then, back to the Doc, who had the floor to answer Pen about his beliefs of Avatars.  His answer, like every other speaking bit had here between the Awakened, was listened to and heard just as clearly.  She looked at him for a few moments before blinking wide-set hazel-colored eyes and asking (genuinely, mind you, not testingly):

"What determines the nature of the Avatar before you even Awaken to it?  How does that get shaped?"

She was still listening, certainly, but leaned down and went about the task of re-socking-and-shoeing her feet.  Pen wanted to know what her definition of an Avatar's nature was, and all Margot could do was shake her head.  "I just know mine.  Anything else is a theory or a guess."

A short answer-- she wanted to hear what her mentor had to say about how pre-awakened life impacted Avatars and Magick.

Grace
Margot isn't asking her, and Grace honestly hasn't a clue. But she'll blurt out something anyway. "No fuckin' idea."

"It's good that you know yours. It's nice to know somebody does. My Avatar once dumped me in the middle of Wheel of Fortune with Pat Sajak and Vanna White. I don't know what's up with it, honestly."

"But, I mean, the doc's answer does kind of ring true. I don't usually sit down and chat with my Avatar, I only really interact with it when it's in the middle of pushing me onward."

Sepúlveda
The fingers on Andrés's left hand waggle like he's about to conjure up something consensus-breaking. Those of you playing along at home will notice the wedding band has not reappeared since its removal prior to the Amaranthine Laboratory heist. At this rate, it's not coming back.

In a moment the waggling ends, and he points at his student.

"Pack up the pretzels," he says. "I have a book for you," the pointing finger starts to bob, keeping time with his thoughts, "back in the room. It's not Nietzsche, but I think it'll put some shit in perspective for you. Come on."

Pen is given a fist bump. Grace... well, they do better the fewer words they spare each other anyway. He's on the fast track to exiting stage... over there.

Pen
"Have you never learned about Essences then?" Pen is curious, see.

The question is directed toward both Margot and Grace, again, although her eyebrows flick upwards (good humor, again; a shiver of surprise, intrigue) when Grace describes one of her interactions with her Avatar.

A beat, and, "Andrés, you should take he to the ranch and show her that library, if you haven't already."

Her pocket vibrates, and she ignores it for a moment. Reaches up to fix the earbud still in her ear, and she absolutely fist bumps Andrés. Watch out for the rings. There is an explode-y finger twinkle, too. Pyooooo. Crshhh.

Grace
Grace doesn't get a fist bump, and Grace doesn't really care. She would probably stare at his fist, if offered, unsure of what to do with it.

"I've heard what other people say about Essences, yeah. That's a bit different than knowing it from first-hand experience, though. Sounds a lot to me like a personality test."

And, she knows, they are mostly wrong -- trying to categorize people who are spectral into binary boxes.

Margot
Let it be known that Margot can keep up with conversation.  She kept track of what was being said and what needed to be answered fine.  It was just the social pressures that she didn't fare especially well with.  Luckilly things academic, like philosophy and 'what you know', were more her wheelhouse.

For Grace:  A hard-to-place stare at the story about Wheel of Fortune as a Seeking.  Disbelief and humor and confusion and curiosity.  What?  "That's... strange.  And ambiguous.  That could be anything."  A pause before she offered up more information about her own in turn.  "My Avatar is the Goddess Andraste.  It's all... ancient war and victory and divination and things of that like.  Way more direct."

At this point the Doc gestured to her and advised that she gather her things, he had a book for her and apparently that meant they were going to get it right now.  She didn't disagree, though, and instead shrugged and finished pulling on and tying her shoes.  The messenger bag strap was pulled across her shoulder and chest and as she did this she spoke to Pen's question.

"I have, I know what those are.  I get that there are types, but how people come to their Avatars and the relationship beyond is varied in big ways.  My Avatar's nature is Victory and Prosperity-- that's what we strive toward.  Chances are that Grace's Avatar's nature is just a little different, given its sense of pop culture."  She glanced toward Grace, grinned just briefly, then lifted a hand to wave at the both of them.

"See you guys around."

Sepúlveda
[thanks for the scenes, you maniacs <3]

Pen
"I can understand why you'd think they sound like personality test answers," Penelope says, waving to Margot as well. "Give Yorick a carrot from me," she says, and then, "It seems as though it might be nice to have a seminar at the ranch sometime... well, perhaps 'seminar' isn't the right word. A kaffeklatch, a discussion group, topic: Avatars. Or a certain Sphere. Then we could all benefit from the different experiences and knowledge the people of this city have to bring to the table."

Grace
"I like that idea. The discussion group," she says, not really the seminar. Grace can't imagine herself going to a seminar.  "I can just sit and talk about Entropy all day long, I have to say. Might be hard getting me to shut up,"

This comes from personal experience. Mike never tries to get her to shut up when she goes on about it, though. On the contrary.

"Well. As long as people aren't like 'No, it is exactly like this, and no other way.' I can't say I've seen too much of that in Denver, though."

Pen
Pen grins. "Well, since you know your flaw, you can be mindful. Ars Fortunae is a fascinating subject -- I think we might have touched on it the first time we met, at that restaurant, now that I'm thinking of it."

Her voice drops, confessional, and she leans closer to Grace. "I have been considering getting little fliers out to some people about a 'Spirit Club.' 'Spirit Club: for Those interested in discussing the Cosmology of the Ethereal, Shadowy, and Otherworldly, and Denver's haunts.' Because a few of our brethren here have asked me if I have any skill with that Art -- I do not -- and ... I think Nicholas," and yes, Pen sounds, as she always does, besotted when she says his name; says it soft and special: a treasure, "would like to just get together with other people interested in the Art of Spirit and shoot the shit. I was thinking Alexander, Margot, Kiara, Nicholas. But I haven't yet hit upon the right way to anonymously set up this club and lure them all to it so they can talk."

The corners of her eyes crinkle, and she shrugs.

Grace
"Unfortunately, I don't know jack about any spirits save for Thakky, and that only because he... it? Tried to crawl out of a movie at me. Why does it have to be anonymous? You could just tell people: 'Hey, you know what would be a good idea? Spirit Club. Like Fight Club, except without all the fighting and hypermasculinity.' It would be great."

Grace, of course, is all about being blunt as a sledgehammer. She doesn't see the point in anonymous luring when one has the option of directness.

"Like, you want it to be a present? A surprise?"

Pen
"Right," Pen says, with a nod. Pen is: not sneaky, by nature or inclination.

Her phone vibrates again, and this time she takes it out.

"On that note, I need to keep running. We should get together for dinner soon, Grace, bring some things to the ranch house and share or something."

Grace
"Oh, sure! That sounds great. I need to get with you and talk about... stuff anyway," she says, eyes going far-off again. Now that she thinks about it, yeah, Pen needs to know some things.

"I will bring food, we can consume it. Cookies, at least, because everybody likes cookies. Except for those vegan carob ones I got once, ugh. Pen, do not ever buy vegan carob cookies, you won't get rid of them."

Not even vegans eat those things. She tried to get Sam to, but no. Mr. I'm Currently Being Devoured By Unreality didn't want any. Figures.

Pen
"Noted about the vegan carob cookies. I'll see you later," Penelope says, her eyebrows shifting with amusement at the warning against vegan carob cookies. There is a hand lift; the rings glitter, lake-light - evening-light, shivering in their cold glamour; she brushes at her burnished color-of-burning bangs and then jogs off and away. The jog becomes, after a deep steeling breath, a loping run.

Strive, strive, strive.

Cabals and Communes

Margot
It was midday Saturday with pleasant weather in June, you had better bet your ass that the park was crowded as hell today.  Clouds passed quickly across the sky in bunches, offering relief from the bright sun and bringing a summer-hot wind along with it.  No rain, though, not in the immediate forecast, so the park was not denied its typical weekend burst of life.

The good news about being surrounded by a sea of joggers with their dogs, clutches of friends playing volleyball or frisbee, and families with their kids picnicing and playing on the playgrounds?

Food trucks.  Plenty of them, parked in a line in the parking lot for the lunchtime push.  There were a couple of stands on the other end of the park, too-- mobile, smaller, one offering tacos, one offering falafels, and a third offering drinks and ice cream and other summertime confections.  It was at the last cart that Margot was standing in conversation with Dr. Sepúlveda while handing a couple of dollar bills to the mustached man running the cart, accepting an iced coffee drink in a plastic to-go cup in return.

They were in a middle of a conversation turned on a more mundane hinge thanks to the ears (and mustache) right in front of them.

"I'm thinking maybe I'll switch jobs and work at a bookstore instead, to keep an eye out for things to add to my Library all the better.  The dispensary's probably not going to have any curious tomes passing over its counter anytime soon."

Sepúlveda
Between the strip club, the Verbena's abode, and the brunch place up on Colfax - where the waitress was glad to see him actually interacting with other people and not just yelling at the two kids who, as far as she can tell, are his parolees or probates or foster kids or god knows what people think when they see Margot and Ned getting chewed out by Dr. Sepúlveda - the Etherite has been having an awful lot of outside time the last twenty-four hours.

Before he goes home, he extracts the kids from their respective places of dwelling with like 15 anchor emojis and a question mark.

And now here we are.

Despite the heat of the day, the Doc is wearing jeans, loafers, and a yellow button-down work shirt underneath a cardigan. His hair is a mess and his glasses could use a polish, but he seems to be in a decent enough mood.

As they wait for Ned to show up, he considers Margot's observations. His eyebrows lift up as if to ask if he's supposed to respond, then sucks an answer out of an eyetooth and says, "If it does, run."

Very funny.

"What sort of 'things' are you looking for?"

Margot
Today Margot was dressed in a china-blue-and-white printed sundress, capped sleeves with a low back and skirt that was loose enough for the breeze to tug but not lift from where it hunt above her knees.  Her hair was down, a straw sunhat on her head in lieu of sunglasses.  Flip flops, though, simple and broken in for park strolling.  Her face wore its standard amount of make-up, which is to say minimal, and she found time somewhere in the mix to paint her short fingernails a bright sunshiney yellow.

She sipped her coffee and wandered idle away from the concessions cart, but didn't walk with direction or purpose so as not to lose the designated meet point and thereby lose or miss Ned.  The game of 'where are you?' text tag was not one of her favorites.

"I don't really know.  I'm hoping to add more things on Prime and Entropy to my shelves, right now they're pretty heavy with medical texts and Spirits and other dimensions.  That stuff is easy enough to pick up, is the more insightful stuff that I want a chance to find."

Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda scratches at the crook of his jaw, short nails singing against the growth of beard. Thinking. His own library is expansive. The reason he's renting a suite instead of a room at the Crawford is twofold: he wants to be able to put the kids up if they get into trouble, and he has too many damned books to crash at a bedbug motel by the highway.

Besides. There's a bar downstairs. He might never leave the Crawford.

"You planning on becoming the initiate of a tradition any time soon?"

Ned
Ned shows up with a careful layer of avoidance in his gait and demeanour. His brow has been permanently furrowed for the last week and a bit and one might think this a normal state of affairs. He's taken to t-shirts, blacks, navy blues and the occasional white, with pairs of loose fitting jeans. His converse have been traded in for a nice pair of firm cross-trainers. He's sporting a belt and something like a small harness at his hip, cinched to the belt via a loop. It looks long and slender and empty.

He weaves around various bodies, taking little notice of their brief glances or Saturday afternoon 'pardons' that are few and far between. The careful steps and easy motions came more comfortably now, given he was starting to actively pursue the odd 'anonymity' that hovered around him like a second skin.

Spying the Doc and Margot wasn't difficult. A week ago (not long after The Incident) Ned had opted to download an app onto Margot's phone that tracked Friend locations. She could glance at her phone and know where he was, so long as it was on and vice versa.

"...Working on it." Was his reply to the Doc, a scattered glance cast at the man before eyeballing the Verbena-to-be. "Last I checked though, the options for who to talk to were...limited. Didn't you say you had a line on someone who could make you an offer?"

Margot
Perhaps the question about traditions had been aimed at Margot, but it was Ned's voice that had answered.  He'd come up from the side, and Margot startled just enough to turn her head sharply to find him.  For a moment she eyeballed Ned back (something different there, the Doc may pick up-- a tension, not caution not anger, not the kind of tense that came from fighting but it was something), then let her gaze get pulled away as a particularly young and fluffy puppy ran by with its human on a leash.

"....I'm still going through some formalities, but I've spoken to a couple of Verbena.  I think that's going to work."

She sipped her coffee and wished that she wasn't wearing a dress so that she had a place to tuck her other hand away.

Sepúlveda
[i love rolling empathy so much]

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

Sepúlveda
And the Doc does pick up on the exaggerated startle reflex in his younger pupil. It isn't a proper panic attack, but she just jump enough that he can tell it was Ned's arrive and the suddenness of it that spooked her.

Rather than drawing attention to it, Sepúlveda does something that will either betray the depths of his capacity for giving a shit, or will make it seem as if he didn't even notice. He does nothing. Just keeps his hands in the pockets of his jeans and heaves a heavy sigh when Ned asks his question.

"If you think it will, it will," he says, to the matter of the Verbenae working for Margot. Out of one of his pockets comes the flask, from which he takes a hard pull. Points at Ned with the finger of the hand holding the flask and frowns, pointed, before putting away the flask. "I said what?"

Ned
"Was talking to Margot."

Ned corrected himself and the Doc together, head bobbing toward her momentarily.

"She mentioned someone that Nick and Pen were going to introduce her to. A while ago..." A pause. Frowning. "I think..." Shaking his head. "I need to have a sit down with Nick. Once I'm sure he doesn't try to convert me to love all the animals and disney princess' damselling, I'm going to apply for the Euthanatos." If Ned seems at all disturbed, cautious or afraid of their surroundings and who might be overhearing them he doesn't let on. This conversation seems to be happening at a careful pace, wandering in no particular direction at all.

His hands jam into his pockets.

"...We need a place to live." Switching lanes with the fluidity of the abrupt. "...And I put in my two weeks notice."

Margot
1````

Sepúlveda
[hi hazel!]

Margot
Margot's eyebrows hopped up in mild surprise when Ned said he was talking to her, like she was under the impression that the question had been for Doc as well.  Then she blinked and nodded her head.  Popped the coffee drink straw from her mouth to answer.

"Yeah, Thane.  And Thane introduced me to this Kat woman, who's a real insightful badass.  She's a disciple of War, too."

Ambling onward, she listened while Ned explained that he was going to apply for the Euthanatos (in a move that no one saw coming).  Her gaze cast forward and to the side, like she was fly fishing for anything else to pay attention to in that moment.  Coffee straw went back into her mouth and she found some geese on the pond to watch paddling instead.  She only had enough time to watch them paddle a dozen meters before the subject of quitting ones job cropped up.

"Shit, already?"  She asked Ned, sounding surprised and looking (as usual) worried.

Sepúlveda
Overtop Margot:

"The fuck'd you do that for?" He rubs his temple with the middle and ring fingers of his left hand, like he's got a headache brewing. Before Ned can answer he goes on: "Good to hear you two have plans."

Because they didn't get a chance to talk about it the night he patched up Ned's collapsed lung, bitching the entire time but not asking too many questions.

Ned
"Makes sense. I don't want to be there anymore and...Well after learning Entropy...I didn't think hospitals could get anymore depressing, really." Ned's frown is deeper, thicker at the mention of this and his head rocks to one side as if to physically clear the expression from his face.

"Doing things officially, means I can maybe look into another area that isn't so time intensive. Pay will be less and really, most of my money goes towards takeout and transportation anyway." A pause. Abruptness: "I gotta start riding my bike more."

Then around at the people they are passing by, as if he'd only just noticed where they are and what normal folks do in situations like this.

"I've got a plan for the near future. Distant is another story..." That frown threatens again. "I want to know how 'safe' we are here and how much or many threats I need to learn about."

Sepúlveda
With the most long-suffering sighs in the history of long-suffering sighs, Andrés takes a few steps away from the kids, wanders off to the shade of an oak tree, and sits down. Or... flops, is more like it, since he ends up on his back.

"The Choir was right," he says, to himself and knowing full well they can still hear him. "The One is punishing me."

Margot
The point about the hospital being all the more depressing with Entropy in the picture was accepted with a nod and Margot contented herself with watching geese and ducks and puppy dogs again.  She got several steps away after Doc veered to the side and Ned no doubt lagged to continue the conversation with him.  Stopped after she realized she was walking alone, turned around, frowned a little, and walked back to stand on the edge of the shadow-splot of the tree that Doc had flopped beneath.

"The Distant Future could range anywhere from dead in the dirt to Ascension, there's no sense in planning it in much detail," she offered over to Ned, then glanced down to where Doc was laying in the grass.

"I think with what we know we're safest here... Just here, in Denver, where we know people and have help.  Outside of that, we're just going to need to learn to ward and banish to stay safe."

Sepúlveda
The Doc peels his glasses off his face and lets them lie bridge-down across his chest, showing no intention or sign of getting back up just yet. Grass gets in his hair and the daylight brings out the green in his eyes and something about the far-off sounds of laughing children and chirping birds and splashing fountains really brings out the surreality of their existences.

This is the reality into which they have Awakened. It doesn't have to be like this. If Sepúlveda decided he wanted to turn the grass purple, he could. One would have to ask why, though, given the backlash bitch-slap he recently absorbed.

"Edward," he says, "based on my own anecdotal evidence, you're safer here than you are in any of the major coastal cities. You're definitely safer here than you are in Chicago. Never go to Mexico. Not because of the drug cartels, sabes, because of the vampires."

Ned
"I hear punishment with God often comes with lessons yet to be learned."

Like it was read off the back of a fortune cookie. Ned veers clear of the other people pushing and shoving past, doing his level best to remain out of their radar which isn't difficult. Arcane made him the 'third member' of this little party, folks would pay less attention to over someone like the Doc (loud and shit givingless) or Margot (Pretty and Expressive).

"I don't want to move cities or pack up and be elsewhere. I want to be better at protecting myself and others. Distant future is all robots and skynet for all I know. I'm more concerned about Localized Distant, as opposed to global. How to make home..." A hand thrown around at the park "...Denver, safe for us. That includes resisting kidnappings, hostages, eavesdropping and ugliness cropping up on repeat." A pause, Ned's purposefully keeping out of the shade of the tree, to one side, face turned up into the sun.

"...Or at least learn how to anticipate." A hand rises to scrub at his chin. "Entropy's helping with that, though."

Margot
The comment about vampires in Mexico piqued some interest in Margot.  Certainly she'd heard about the Mexican plauge of vampirism before, and she was starting to piece together that some of the monsters and fairy tale creatures she'd read about throughout her youth were actually real.  Nobody needed to tell her directly that fairies were real.  Nobody had to tell her that werewolves were either.  Now, of course, she knew nothing of their mechanics societies or politics just yet, but the 'just yet' was the emphasized point in that sentence.  Margot was a smart little student.  She'd figure all this out given the chance and a point in the right direction.

Ned expressed that he wanted to be able to set up a shop, a home, and keep it safe and protected.  She nodded her agreement, and mused quiet and somber.

"I'm reading about the spirits in particular.  The Gauntlet's just.... there's too much come and go, spirits crossing over and bringing things back.  I'm going to learn to..."  She searched for the right word, and even went so far as to reach into the air in front of her with her palm up, fingers curled, like she could pluck what she was trying to say from the very air.

"...To calcify the Gauntlet.  Shove things back across and then seal off the door they came in through.  I'm close.  I'm pretty sure I'm close."

Then she looked down to Doc and tipped her head aside.  Moved the hand that had been word-hunting to stop her hat from slipping off her head when she did.  "Doc, I think what Ned's getting at is that all of this would be easier, keeping each other safe, if we didn't all go to sleep in different places at night.  The salt on my window sill still only does as much good as my prayers and a rosary would right now.  I can't ward up my home, Ned can't his."

Ned
"...And given your history of 'volatile relations' I would think having outside perspectives around to keep an eye on you, would ultimately be better..."

Ned offers on the tail end of Margot's words. Unapologetic, expectant almost.

Sepúlveda
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

He's going to stick to his contention that the volatile relation in question wouldn't have gone so bad if it weren't for the kids antagonizing the Kha'vadi woman, thank you very much.

For this next bit he sits up, using his core muscles rather than his appendages, more graceful than he looks, and takes another swig once he's upright again. His glasses topple to the grass. He leaves them there a moment.

"The odds of you two doing anything of any use to keep me safe is so small I can't--" He puts on his glasses. Squints. "Nope. Still can't... still can't see it. The odds. Because of how small they are. Your outside perspective means precisely dick to me, Ned." He stifles a burp. "If you two want to come play Sleepover at my hotel room, that's... that's fine, but the first time I hear you two... making out, or whatever it is you do in your spare time, through the wall, no more Sleepover."

Grace
She doesn't pick up on the entire conversation, does Grace. Only Margot's worries about wards, and Ned's about volatile relations. She knows what he means by that, she thinks.

Now, Grace, today, is not the most reassuring sort of person to bump into. Mike makes sure that she sleeps, at least, so she doesn't quite look like she's been pulling so many all-nighters it must be finals season. But she's taut -- tense like perhaps there is something to be worried about out there.

"You guys... Hey."

Margot
"Making out?"  Margot cast a look at the Doc that was all incredulity.  "I'm beginning to suspect that you really do think we're fourteen year olds...."

Then, suddenly, a wild Grace appeared.  For a second time that midday there in the park a voice announced a presence prior to the face and body doing so, and for a second time Margot startled with a small bodily jerk and sloshed the ice of her coffee around when she did so.  Had there been no lid then there's a chance it would've spilled down her arm, but bless to-go cups and their foresight for clumsy spills.

"Oh," she said, sounding relieved when she found Grace to be the person who had broken from the crowd of park-goers to say hello.

"Grace, hey.  How are ya?"

Margot?  She looked okay.  That was really the best word for it-- like somebody who didn't sleep enough and worried way too much but still had enough give-a-shit about perceptions that she stood in the sun and pretended that neither of those were the case.

Ned
"A house, Doc. With many layers of walls between me and whatever pervy nonsense you get up to-"

Ned pauses those words when Grace arrives. He isn't so much surprised as he is changing gears, body moving around in a tight circle to grant Grace a bit more surface area beneath the shade of the tree they are 'lounging' under. His smile is tight, tiny and his attention brief, catching her gaze should she throw it at him, momentarily before lifting his face back into the sun.

"...Suns out. Should put any lingering worries you may have about my undeadness to rest." His smile is a bit needling, though the tone doesn't have enough bite to make it sarcasm. "You need more sleep, Lady." Abruptly delivered, eyes peeling open to scan over Grace's features and frame.

Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda stares at Ned for a good three beats of silence, his brain flooded with so many one-liners that they gum up the entire works. He chases down the remnants with a wash of tequila or whatever the hell he actually has in his flask.

"Gracia!" he says. "How's that OCR scan coming?"

To his students: "A bunch of apprentices have gone missing in Colorado Springs, two out of five of them murdered, and I have a sneaking suspicion whoever did it is paying off the El Paso ME's office, because there's, like, no evidence from either of the crime scenes." A pause. "Oh, shit, did I forget to tell you guys about that? I can't think of what was going on a couple weeks ago that I wouldn't--"

Grace
She can do that, at times -- pop out of nowhere, like the crowd or the background just ejected a person you know. Sometimes, she'll announce her presence by doing something strange in the distance, but that's only if she remembers. It's hard to notice that you are hard to notice.

"I sleep plenty," she replies to Ned. "I have someone making damn sure of that, trust me."

But there, an admission: she needs someone to make sure she sleeps instead of just losing herself in the chase.

"OCRing it, I don't know. I was just going to grab the real deal. I can't stand printouts."

She gives Margot a smile. Don't worry, dear. It'll be fine. "You guys looking for a place to live?"

Margot
If Margot seemed a little solemn earlier (despite the bright sunny summery outfit), that was nothing compared to how very grim she became when Doc began to speak of Apprentices going missing and how some of them had been murdered.  Grace's arrival had been a welcome one, given how a touch of the worry in the corners of Margot's eyes and mouth had faded away, but what good the Virtual Adept's appearance had served to the would-be Verbena's sense of calm was quickly washed away.

"We were out of town."  She said this quick and sharp at the end of Sepúlveda's open-ended musing about what was happening in the past few weeks that may have caused this news to escape his pupils/cabalmates/kids/whatever-the-fuck-that-relationship-was.

Grace's question was absorbed with a brief flutter of hazel eyes back in her direction.  "More like hammering out details for cohabitation," she explained, and then looked back to Doc again with a serious weight to her expression, and dragging her shoulders down as well.

"Isn't anyone besides some paid-off police looking into the matter?  You know, someone like us?"

Sepúlveda
I have someone making damn sure of that, trust me.

"Gross," he says, and takes another drink.

Ned
"...And that never stopped you from Text bombing us before..."

Ned chimes in after Margot, murmuring it with little to no force. If anything, Ned's own concern and worry suddenly goes inward and he seems to pull his attention back from the conversation, allowing Margot to take the first steps in the matter by asking questions.

Sepúlveda
"What never stopped me from text bombing you before?"

Margot
"Distance," Margot sounded clipped and anxious and heard it in her own voice as soon as the word snapped out off her tongue.  She closed her eyes, took a breath in through her nose, then tried again.

"I'm sorry.  Please, though, come on.  What's happening with the apprentices?"

Grace
Grace gives Dr. Sepúlveda the look of pure confusion. "What's gross about sleeping?"

She stops, considers the tree. Still can't figure it out. Decides to drop that thread, because whenever she gets confused like this, it doesn't bode well.

"I am looking into it. Though, I just found out about it, and don't have a whole lot to go on," she says. "Apparently, there were a lot of new Mages in Colorado Springs. There aren't anymore. And whoever's doing it is sweeping their tracks."

Sepúlveda
"There's a Chorister on the CSPD who caught wind of what was happening, she mentioned it to me, I scraped up what little evidence the perp or whoever was helping the perp left behind, I gave it to Grace. We're handling it."

That said: "Hey, Grace, that hitman you're shacking up with, I want to sell him an initiate. You think you can get me an estimate?"

Ned
"Sweeping how? Cleaning kill sites? Bodies missing?"

Ned pauses to stare around at the Normals that are haunting the area. His voice is purposefully low and he takes that moment to step a little closer so as to allow his voice to lower.

"...And how far outside of the Springs do the murders go? Is it just that area so far?"

Sepúlveda
"It's just that area. If you want to help, do nothing. I need to have to rescue you two from a serial killer like I need a hole in my head."

Margot
Grace explained what she knew and what she was doing, and the Doc followed up by cutting to the meat of the topic by explaining the situation in an overview.  It must have become apparent that Margot wasn't handling the toying around very well.

Do you see the tandem at play here?  Margot had begun voicing questions and finding information initially and Ned had fallen quiet.  Now here, where he was inquiring about the murder radius, Margot had discovered silence in turn.  Doc spoke of rescuing them from a serial killer and Margot's jaw clenched, lips pressed thin, and brow furrowed heavily-- a hard scowl at a fresh and horrible memory.

Following that she found a spot in the distance behind the tree to stare into unfocused, and took to slowly sipping the rest of her iced coffee through the straw.  A perfect excuse not to speak as any.  That hard frowning moment disconnected her from the discussion and now she seemed to be tuned out and waiting for it to end.

Or grappling with something in her mind and heart on the spot and trying not to lapse into a panicked state.

Maybe all of the above.

Grace
"He's not... exactly a hit man, and you..." Know that. It's just Andrés Sepúlveda being himself. Right. "Want to sell him an initiate?"

She sighs. The man is incomprehensible at best.

"And yeah. As far as anyone can tell, the murderer left only a partial fingerprint and a single hair behind, in five murders. Something fishy's going on, definitely."

She turns her attentions back toward the actual people, notices the discomfort in the area. "Look, after this investigation shit is over, I have a project you guys might be interested in. I've got some money burning a hole in multiple bank accounts just waiting to be spent on some real estate. An apartment complex, you know? For people like us. You'd be able to 'cohabitate' with a lot more ease, maybe?"

Ned
"You tried looking for the ghosts of the victims? I can't imagine awakened dead, being horribly murdered is going to leave a particularly restful spirit."

Ned and Margot both had some experience dealing with that. Well...once. Unpleasantly. It nearly got them killed by Zombies. That had been....fun? No, wrong word. Regardless, Ned seems almost to ignore the Doc's mention of Serial Killers and rescuing them, directing the question toward Grace....which of course, was probably more to do with Doc's irreverent take on Ghosts and the Spirit Sphere in general.

"Relax, Doc." Ned finally turns to look at Andres. "Margot and I are taking a hiatus from 'rushing in to Scooby Doo things'. The more questions I have answers for though, the more likely I can take precautions going to and from home, incase whoever or whatever this is, decides Colorado Springs is all dried up and wants to make a move to bigger pastures."

Then back toward Grace at mention of 'Money' and 'Apartment Complex'.

"Isn't that sort of putting all our eggs in one basket? And wouldn't the multitudes of conflicting Paradigms make for a Paradox buffet of epic proportions?"

Sepúlveda
Want to sell him an initiate?

At least Andrés thinks Andrés is funny. He takes a swallow from the flask instead of answering and looks over his shoulder to make sure Margot hasn't gone too far away. No remorse in his gaze, though it's hard to tell with the glare over his glasses and the fact that he tries to keep his emotional range between Excited and Annoyed.

You tried looking for the ghosts of the victims?

He flicks his eyebrows and cants his head to one side. No. No he did not try that. Because he has no training in Spirit. Still, it's not a bad idea.

Drink.

Margot
[Get out of your head, Margot]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Margot
Margot's silence stretched out long enough that she came back in around talk of moving on from Colorado Springs and into bigger, greener pastures.  Her eyes had been out of focus and she was drifting nearer and nearer to the middle distance that she stared at, and thusly further and further inward (rescue you from a serial killer.... we don't need rescuing, we just proved that... how'd you handle the serial killer, Margot?  what did you do?  what did you do?  what did you--).

With a sudden sniff Margot came back to, ducked her head and lifted her hand.  The wide brim of her hat hid her face from view so that she could more effectively pretend to be catching a bug or bit of pollen out of her eye.  In reality she was brushing away tears and scrubbing at her eyelids fiercely with her fingertips and coaching herself to get it the fuck together.

When she lifted her head to show her face again she looked like she was about ready to cry, or like she had only just recovered from crying perhaps.  She sniffed a little again, swallowed, but her voice was clear enough and steady enough (after the very first syllable) to pass.

"I don't know... I mean, there would be plenty of wards and watches there, but that sounds like a beacon of magick too.  A big old target."

Grace
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Ned," she says, but the smile on her face takes a bit of punch out of the language. "Paradigms making a Paradox buffet? Paradox happens if you screw up or do something wildly out of bounds, but I've never heard of it happening just because people are living together. Besides, you were the ones just talking about cohabitation -- and you're thinking about doing it with him," she says, pointing at Dr. Sepúlveda.

"I can see the wisdom in not putting our eggs in one basket, but I can also see the wisdom of strength in numbers, and having a place with wards and robot dragon security guards... I mean, that sounds so amazingly wise to me," she says, grinning like she might have a touch of mad scientist to her herself.

She shrugs at Margot. "We're always a target. Anyway, it was just a thought. It'll be there, if you guys change your mind. Or even if you just need a place to go for a week or whatever."

Sepúlveda
[http://i.imgur.com/aMgG2jh.gif]

Ned
"....Nevermind how you even police privacy or respect or courtesy...most of us can barely interact without some sort of friction, tension or sarcasm...and that's just us saying hello..."

Ned climbs down the length of the Tree the Doc is stationed under, settling onto his ass with a grunt. His eyes trail towards Margot briefly at the sniff, perceptions catching the downturn of her mood and the silence that had preceded it but he doesn't comment or mention. Simply listens to Grace's commentary and returns to the conversation.

"Difference between a Cabal and a Commune....appreciate the offer though. We'll keep it in mind." Ned's wiping his hands down the length of his jeans, brow furrowing together. "Back up though. You just started the investigation? All you got was a hair and a partial fingerprint. How many did you say have died so far?"

Sepúlveda
[corr 1/time 2: hang on, doing stuff]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda sighs when Ned starts asking more questions. Rather than repeat himself, he rummages through his pocket to remove a device that looks like a GPS and a calculator had a rough night and starts to punch in... coordinates? Time signatures? It's hard to tell even if you're watching him closely.

From the machine comes the garbled noise associated with a tape rewinding. It's the moment they all just shared together, going backwards on the screen. Ned returns to the tree, Margot goes and comes back. He tilts it so Ned can see the screen when the activity starts to move forward again.

--gone missing in Colorado Springs, the image of Sepúlveda is saying.

He then proceeds to talk over himself, saying, "Damn, my hair looks good today."

--and I have a sneaking suspicion whoever did it is--

"Whoops."

Rewind.

--two out of five of them murdered, and I have a sneaking suspicion whoever did it is--

Yeah he could have just repeated himself with, like, words, but that takes all the fun out of it.

Ned
"....I can do that to...It's called an Iphone, grandpa..."

Sepúlveda
"I'll show you an iPhone, you little shit."

Margot
Margot didn't sit to join the rest of her cabal that they wouldn't outright call one but instead remained standing in the shade that the tree cast.  She glanced down to watch Doc fiddle with some device that literally went back in time and pulled his voice from it to explain to Ned that two out of five missing apprentices were found murdered.  Then they bickered about iPhones.

Margot just sighed and rested her forehead and eyes in one hand, supported the elbow in her other hand.

This moment right here could be the snapshot that their cabal sigil was built off of.  Just take it in for a second.

"Grace," she said to interrupt the two after a second.  "Will you keep me in the loop, please?  I'd like to know how many times a minute I need to check over my shoulder and if that should change."

Grace
It's like watching a dysfunctional family dysfunction, isn't it? Grace's eyes go a little wider, like maybe she's just not ready to appropriately handle Ned and Andrés right now, but then Margot saves her.

Keep her in the loop, she says.

"Of course. Absolutely."

"Um. Also, I'll tell Mike you wanted to sell him an initiate, though I don't know exactly what you mean by that," she says to Sepúlveda.

Ned
"....Wait a minute how many initiates do you know?" Pause. "...Margot's not for sale..." Pause. "Fuck you."

Family Squabbles

Margot
Meet me at 3?  We can get coffee and talk about this?

Sure.  I know a place.

A link to a coffee shop's location in the Sante Fe Art's District was sent over through text messages soon to follow.  It was a Tuesday afternoon and the weather had been fairly chilly-- a hell of a thunderstorm swept through and brought a cold front along with it the day before.  Margot would have ordinarly sat inside on a day like this but at least the clouds in the sky were pale gray and high in elevation, not threatening to dump any more rain upon them anytime soon.  The winds from the day before had stilled too.

With a paper to-go cup from the shop in her hand, Margot was hovering outside in a hoodie and jacket with the hood pulled up over her head-- not far enough forward to hide her face like she was trying to mask her identity (that'd be the best way to draw attention, to look like you were actively hiding anyways), but just to keep the damp cool air off her neck.  Jeans, sneakers, nose ring.  All she needed was a cigarette to look the part of a proper coffee shop loiterer.

When Grace approached, the petite young woman nodded her chin up and lifted a hand to wave.  She would smile, but there was no pretense at play here-- while she was trying to keep Pen and Nick oblivious to the situation that was impossible with the request she was making of the Virtual Adept.  So, it was an expression of grim resolve that greeted Grace today.

Grace
Okay, grim resolve. Meet grim resolve. Grace wanders up in her jeans and grey turtleneck jacket, zipped up the neck, her hair messed up and her eyes tired, like she suggested coffee for a reason.

But when she finds Margot, her eyebrows raise a little. Hi there. She walks over, slides into a chair like it is comfort itself.

"So. You want me to trace someone for you?"

Margot
Following Grace's lead to sit at a table, Margot stopped hovering near the wall like a weirdo and sat down as well.  She slipped into the seat across from Grace instead of beside her-- not many people wanted to hang out on the patio, so there wasn't a need to huddle heads for the sake of privacy.

"Yeah."  A pause, where Margot's jaw set.  "My brother."

The coffee cup moved up, but paused as she thought to add a little more clarification.

"He just got out of prison-- or maybe rehab?  If he's out this early?  Anyway, he called me with a none too friendly message and I don't want him visiting unexpectedly."

Grace
Oh. Grace's head ticks up a notch at this new information. Finally, Margot has decided to provide some.

"Ahh. In that case... I could probably set something up for you. But listen -- would you like something else? To feel more safe perhaps?"

Margot
The question posed had Margot looking up into Grace's face.  With how her eyebrows were raised up, she appeared surprised.  She didn't expect an offer for protections as well, and after blinking a few times the surprise gave way to a softening of an otherwise grim visage.  Not entirely relaxed, but relieved certainly.  Appreciative, for sure.

"Grace, thank you.  Knowing where he is is going to be a big enough help."  She took a sip then lowered her hands to hold the cup nearer to her lap.  Seemed to consider the offer for a moment, then consider how to explain her own thoughts on the matter before finally she huffed a breath and gave an answer.

"This is going to sound ridiculous, but hear me out:  I think that I'm supposed to be facing him on my own, at least as much as possible.  My Avatar, she's a War Goddess, and I feel like this is happening as maybe a test of some kind?  To show my mettle?  It's... a dick move, I think, he's mybrother, you know?  But still."

Another sip, then a reassurance after a pause:  "Ned's helping me prepare to defend myself, and I've been staying at his place until I'm ready, where Luke won't find me."

Grace
"I would be careful about trying to literally interpret what your Avatar is saying," Grace says, looks up at Margot with a bit of worry in her eyes. "Once, my Avatar made me a contestant in the Wheel of Fortune with Pat Sajak and Vanna White."

Just, you know, let that sink in, Margot. Sometimes, Avatars are weird too.

"Everyone on set kept encouraging me to play, including my best friend and worst enemy. My Avatar was saying all these things to me -- do this, do that, do the other thing. The lesson was to say 'no'."

She looks up toward the ceiling, examining the room a bit for people within earshot. Keeps her conversation low.

"Every time, I've had to fight my Avatar, stand up to it, stab it, take from it what I need. You say she's a war goddess. What does she think about you surrendering to her all the time?"

Margot
"I think 'all the time' is a bit excessive," said Margot with a quiet tone of defense, the kind that came with a tiny bit of a sting to her pride.  There wasn't much pride built up in the way of Magickal affairs just yet, but when it came to the matter of the strength of your spine even bookish little things like Margot Travers could get a little touchy.

"I mean, think of it this way:  I've not really been much of a warrior up until this point.  I ran away from my problems and have shied away from violence when I can, either by avoiding the situation, running, or negotiating and talking reason.  I have dreams about Andraste, and when I see her in my dreams she has sharp black teeth and her hair is a literal river of blood.  She wants me to...."

The scowl got heavier here, because she was trying to interpret what her Avatar wanted again and she knew that Grace just cautioned her against it, but there was a loss of other ways to describe it.  She licked her lips, took another quick sip of her coffee, and tried again.

"I suppose I should say that I feel like I'm supposed to become more like her.  I don't feel like I'm supposed to worship her or copy her, but I'm supposed to be her Right Hand.  And I think that she needs to know that I can fight and find Magick in the battlefield instead of just letting my own blood and burning my own supplies."

Grace
"And you think she wants you to kill your brother?"

It's direct, her question. If Margot says yes, perhaps she won't offer guns and ammo...

Margot
At first the silence between them answered the question, filled only by the background sounds of the city surrounding them and the quiet sip that Margot made at her coffee cup.  Perhaps Grace had heard enough and was about ready to just let the Apprentice stew in her own poor choices before the girl sighed and pressed her lips together and looked down at her knuckles.

"I don't want it to come to that.  I want to be able to explain what happened to him and make him understand, but... I don't think that's likely.  I took his arm away.  He--.."

Her voice cracked and she swallowed against the sudden dry patch in her throat.  Took a breath and bit her lip.  Clearly this was a topic she struggled with.  She spoke of it fretfully, like walking on untrustworthy ice, unsure of whether she should bolt across it quickly and hope that she beats the surface cracks or if she should ease around it instead.  Apparently she just found a particularly thin patch of recalling events in her own psyche and chose to skirt around it instead.

"He might be out here to kill me.  And if prison didn't keep him away once it won't keep him away a second time.  I'm gonna... gonna try.  Gonna try really fucking hard with him, but if it comes to it...  If it's him or me, it's gotta be me."

Grace
"Try. Really fucking hard. You want to be able to tell yourself later that you didn't have a choice. You want to be able to mean it," Grace says, eyes Margot's coffee like she wants it. If it weren't for the prospect of sharing germs, she might just go for it.

"I can get you some light body armor," she says, still looking at the coffee, but tugging at her grey jacket like: 'See? This.' "Was going to offer a place to stay, but you've got Ned... Would you like a highly-trained dog?"

Margot
The words of caution about trying very hard, if for nothing more than the sake of her future self's conscience, were accepted with a serious nod.  Margot was listening, and she was taking Grace very seriously.  She wouldn't have reached out to the woman if she didn't think that her words and wisdom carried weight.  Ultimately the actions and decisions would still be her own, but guidance didn't really hurt.

Eyes hopped next to the gray jacket that was indicated, and she smiled.  "If it's not too much trouble, I think that would be handy for this and any number of other issues I'm probably going to come up against in this bright new world.  As for the dog..."  A shake of her head, and the smile turned into more of a grin-- humor, even if only a little, was a healthy thing.  "My apartment's pretty small, and Ned's is somehow even smaller.  I even found someone to keep my pet rabbit, there's so little room for extra bodies.

"I do really appreciate the offer, though, Grace.  I mean, I know we haven't, like, hung out much or anything?  But I trust you, and I'm glad that trusting you was a good choice."

Grace
Grace unzips her jacket down to the bottom, strips it off, revealing the t-shirt underneath. It's the one with the giraffe on the front who's wearing about 10 ties with the line "Trust me, I'm super professional" on it. She hands it over to Margot.

"Try it on, see if it fits. You look pretty much maybe my size."

So, literally the shirt off her back, she will hand over.

"It's cut-resistant. Not easily stabbed or bitten through. Got it for zombies."

Margot
Grace unzipped her coat and shrugged it off and Margot just stared at her in disbelief at first.  The coat had to be held out to her for a couple seconds, maybe even shaken to indicate that Yo, girl, you're supposed to grab this before she finally reached out and accepted the jacket.

"Jesus, Grace, thank you."  Really, the coat off her back.  Margot analyzed the jacket, feeling the material between her fingertips.  Then she set it over the back of one of the empty chairs cluttered around their table and stood up.  Unzipped her own brown jacket, not nearly as sturdy but it was a worn old leather and just a little bit big on her petite frame.  The lining was clean and warm looking, though.  This was also put over the back of the chair so she could try the coat on.

"You can replace it for yourself, though, right?"  Concerned, of course, but Margot was also checking the length of the sleeves, how the jacket sat about her waist and chest and hip when it was zipped.  She pulled the hood of her sweater back up over her head after tugging it free from the coat's collar, then gestured to the brown coat on the chair.  "It's not nearly as awesome, but it's warm...  Not a fair trade, but it's yours."

Grace
"Oh, no. Keep it. I can get another jacket. That's just for expediency's sake," Grace says, waving it off. "I could go for your coffee though."

Also, for expediency's sake.

"About your brother? If he enters Colorado, you'll get a birthday email from me, okay? Consider it the warning. I'm not going to be around for a while -- going up to Colorado Springs to do a thing. You be careful. If you need help, ask for it. Reinforcements are a part of warfare, after all, right? Being smart, tactical, all that."

Margot
The expression on the girl's face showed a measure of discomfort with accepting what she deemed to be such a valuable gift without providing something in return, but she didn't argue.  The coffee that was being requested out of her hand wasn't monetarily worth much but Grace looked as tired as she herself felt stressed, so the still hot drink was handed off without hesitation.

"I'll keep my  eyes on my email then.  And yeah, I have my back-up in place."  She didn't point out the fact that her back-up wasn't her dangerously mad scientist of a mentor, but rather her fellow Apprentice of a cabalmate.  She just smiled gratefully and gathered up the brown jacket in her arms, still wearing the one that Grace had bestowed upon her.

"Seriously, thank you again.  My favors aren't as big as yours yet, but they'll get there, and when they do or even before I'll owe you one, alright?"  She looked like she was getting ready to go-- no doubt Margot had a number of things that she was trying to get figured out and in order before her brother descended upon her.  Who knew how soon or how far away his arrival would be?

But before she went, she felt it prudent to add:

"Oh, and whatever you're doing in Colorado Springs?  I hope it all goes well for you."

Straight to Hell.

Arianna
The only way that Arianna Giametti and Andrés Sepulveda seem likely to colocalize is in establishments that are purveyors of fine (or cheap, cheap works too) alcohol.  They are about as unlikely drinking buddies as ever the Awakened world has seen: he with the sense of cold foreboding wrapped around his pattern, and she with the sense of starlight wreathed around her.  And today she has been drinking enough that her hands and words seem inexorably tied, and she is explaining to him something, as the door to said drinking establishment swings wide, something in one of those expressive languages, languages of the heart, romantic, some call them, she is saying something that requires large and sweeping gestures, and Italian is close enough to Spanish anyway.

What they are talking about doesn't matter much.  The obvious sense of camaraderie and mischief to her, the easy way she seems to make very bad ideas seem logical and well within the bounds of reason?  The absolutely impeccable quality of her dress, aspects of her appearance; this easy and uninhibited sense of privilege and wealth? Those are important.  Those are critical.

It turns out, she is telling him about a recipe.  It could be magical; or it could be a secret family pasta sauce.  Her hands still a little, come up to wrap a pashmina around her neck against the cold of the Denver winter. Because it is Spring; and therefore there is a blizzard.

Andrés
[DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: jamie has 90 minutes on her laptop battery and will have company in 15-45 minutes so her posts will not be top-notch]

Many airports and European bistros have instances where travelers from Spain and Italy have run into each other and had entire conversations without either having previously learned the other's tongue.

Mexican-Spanish is not his mother tongue. It was his mother's tongue and his father's tongue but his father was barely around and his mother -- well. Arianna has none of this information. She does know that he speaks Spanish with an immigrant's fluency and can understand about half of what she says when she lapses into Italian. A match made in Hell.

If she has not smacked it off yet, he has his arm around her waist. Not tight, not possessive, but like he, five-foot-six in his shoes, needs her for balance. He's wearing most of a suit. The tie is gone. He hasn't shaved his face since Saturday. His glasses are on his face. His wedding band is gone.

"Anyone!" he is saying. "Anyone who denies the change of the climate, they have never been to the United States!"

Arianna
She mostly understands him when he speaks; probably a fair bit better than he understands her, and so it brings the conversation back to English more than her tipsy multi-lingual tendencies would otherwise prefer.

"Tell me again, about this Climate Change -- and why, if you have done the proper cantrips; if you have the associated research; why would it be denied?  Change is inevitable, right, this is how your English saying goes?"

There is a flush to her cheeks, a rosy-warmth and healthy looking thing.  It is partly alcohol, and partly amusement. She hasn't shoved him off of her, rather slipped an arm around his shoulder, steadying him further.  Or steadying herself off of him.  Ari is taller by an inch; she is immeasurably more put together.

It is a small miracle that they are not debating the finer points of Hermeticism as they wander-weave down the street, in search of the next pub on tonight's ill-advised crawl.

Grace
She's bought her plant materials today. Those are stuck in the back of her car, waiting for the chance to be used. But then, she found herself in the general area of a number of bars. It's a good plan, right? Drunken hydroponic gardening? She can always get Kalen to drive her home. Or, possibly, just undrunk herself.

So, she walks into the place, and... finds that Andrés is here, by the way the cold slither goes down her neck. Fantastic.

No, it's good to see him, not... You know... I mean, hopefully he's not...

She walks up, squinting a bit, and then relieved once she actually gets a good look. She's got on her usual red (sharp-looking) coat, with jeans underneath. Accidentally fashionable, at best, Grace only teally cares that she's clothed.

"Oh, hey. Dr. Sepúlveda. Nice to see you not naked. Who's this? Also, it's denied somewhat because people don't understand the difference between seasonal changes and climate changes. Fucking senators throwing snowballs to 'prove' it's not happening..."

Andrés
"Gracia! Ignorance! Ignorance throws the snowballs!"

He neither releases Arianna nor addresses the part of her sentence that has to do with his prior nakedness. He does however speak with the hand that isn't latched onto the Hermetic's hip.

"Le presento a Arianna," he says. "Arianna, le presento a Gracia." Lightbulb! He isn't just trying to be a dick! He has a thick accent and is drunk half the time! "If you want to give each other your..." A flailing yet cyclical hand motion. "... your whatevers. Persuasions. What is the w--TRADITIONS. Yes. Do it. I'm not."

Arianna
Here Arianna is, enjoying the company of commoners, arm looped around the shoulders of a most unlikely friend, dripping with the sense of starlight, tripping over the toes of her multitude of languages. She is almost comfortable in how they discuss these pedestrian things like the fate of the global ecology when...

... Grace wanders up.  Ari's eyes flicker over to her quickly; to the sound of a new and unfamiliar voice.  There is a slick of quicksilver to them, something mercurial and unfathomable but clever, but quick, and all together too inviting. Sharp red, bright white, and what can only be assumed to be shades of what was black -- they are at least a complementary tangle of outerwear, if not resonances.  The corner of her mouth curls, slightly, at some inward joke.

"Naked..."  A look to Andres, and then, in something close to Spanish, she says, "You didn't seem to be the sort."  Mirth here; approval or perhaps cleverly covered disdain. It is difficult to tell just now. Hard to see around the teasing in her eyes.

"It is a pleasure, Grace, to make your acquaintance," and though the words are formal, they are tinged with her mood and her slight inebriation.  There is a playful pass at curtsey here, one that isn't going to drop the good doctor on his ass.  She has manners, after all, however occluded they may be at most times.

Grace
Arionna's curtsey. Grace tries to mirror it, with a frown of concentration on her face. She was named Grace, but the name never suited her.

"Arianna. Nice to meet you. Also, yeah. He didn't really look like he had too much of a problem with it either..."

Grace though. A blush comes to her face just talking about it. She shakes her head.

"I guess not too many people can say The Union desperately wanted to make their clothes disappear. It's, you know, bragging rights."

Of a sort.

"I'm with the Elites. You? I've heard the name Arianna around.

Margot
Let us not worry about what Margot was doing prior to this moment.  Let people presume what they will about the time of a 19-year-old girl and what she may dedicate it to (they're probably wrong anyways).  What does matter is that this here was a hot spot tonight, a veritable leyline where Fates and paths crossed over into a patch of concrete and brick in front of a bar in the heart of Downtown Denver.

She was wearing a pair of black boots laced up the ankle, into which a pair of snug gray jeans were tucked.  A heavy brown jacket warded off the chill from the last breath of winter-- accustomed though she may be to chilliness due in whole to her mentor's resonance, she was still human bodied and susceptible.  She had her hands in her pockets and her hair down, left for the wind to tug and pull however it pleased when it whispered.

Ahoy!  Up ahead!  A zap in the air, a chill, a sparkle, a whoosh.  Margot slowed and stopped several yards away, frowning, hesitating, hovering.

Grace, who walked away upset when she saw her last.  The Doc, with his arm around the waist of a pretty stranger in a dress.  He looked properly toasted, so did she.  Her nose wrinkled and she hovered, unsure of if she wanted to come and play.

But that resonance, though....  They would notice, it was like having a battlefield full of carrion and sticky red crawling up behind you.

Arianna
Grace blushes.  It draws a little more of Arianna's attention her way. This could be a good thing; it could be a very very bad thing.  But these are not her usual circles, and so her usual games are held at bay, but only just so.  When Grace says 'the Elites' one of Ari's eyebrows arches just so, lofted a measured amount.

"The Elites? I thought you were a faery race of nightmares made up just to scare good little Apprentices within the Order into behaving just so, lest their wands be taken away and fashioned in ... to...those memory things." Well, this is where it falls apart.  She has likely never held a thumb drive in her life -- not one that livedto tell the tale.

This, though, with the curl of mischeif sharply intact.

"Though do tell, as I am always curious: from whom have you learned my name?"  Oh yes, now, her Hermetic is showing. The grammar; the grammar always gives them away.

Andrés
"It is a popular name," says Sepúlveda.

What else is he supposed to say. He's on the sidewalk with his arm around the waist of an attractive woman who has her arm around his shoulder. Yeah it's well-known he was going to break into the Amaranthine Laboratories and retrieve Alexander Brandt. Yeah it's not so well-known that he contracted clothing-eating nanites and spent three days holed up in an invisible van outside the motel Serafíne the Cultist had cordoned off in case of cases like this.

And then here comes his apprentice.

It has nothing to do with the fact that something goes off in his pocket. It isn't his cellphone. It's blocky and weird and may or may not resemble something Grace saw in the back of the "ambulance" in which she first witnessed Sepúlveda's nudity.

"Shit," he says when he pulls the device out of his pocket. "I gotta go."

Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]

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

Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]

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

Arianna
((ACK! Why double roll, why?))

Margot
[[ Variety is the spice of life? ]]

Grace
"I could take your wand and turn it into a stick-insect robot," she says, a fake-cruel little grin on her face.

"Or, a wifi hotspot," she says, with a horrible evil laugh.

But when he freaks out and starts the other way, Grace looks around, a little alarmed that perhaps Dr. Sepúlveda has seen one of the Technocrats he ran into at the lab. But, it's just Margot. She looks at the Apprentice, quite confused, before looking back at the doctor...

Who's disappeared.

"Huh. I uh, heard your name from Silas."

God, but Dr. Sepúlveda is weird.

Margot
Well, there went the Doc.  We'll say that he blew right past Margot when he bailed out after a quick look at some device (not his phone, though) that was produced from his suit pocket.  When he'd passed Margot there was some brief exchange of words-- Margot looking displeased (wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, quickly shaking her head and muttering back to him).  After a certain point Andrés must have decided that he didn't have the time or it wasn't worth the hassle, because he made a gesture of 'whatever' with his hands and continued past.

Some parting words, though, had Margot looking over at Arianna and Grace.  If at that moment either looked her way as well, she pushed a closed-lipped forced smile onto her face and lifted a hand to wave; the wave looked far more genuine than the smile.  Some people are just poor in their social graces.

She started walking again, along the same path she'd been on, which was now a direct approach of the other two Mages.  Her hands went in her pockets, and in another show of amazing social finesse she greeted the pair upon proximity with a simple:

"Hey."

Arianna
Sepulveda departs, leaving Ari to stand on her own and mark this: she has practice at being inebriated and socially adept.  There are aspects of being slightly toasted that make this easier, that keep that smile and the warmth in her eyes despite the grim resonance coming up behind them.

Have you ever heard of monsters?  Do you know them to be true? Margot feels like monsters and this woman, in her dress and her white coat, in the wake of Andres abandoning her, she seems utterly unmoved by it. As if the monsters trapped in Margot breast are not that dark, and not that unknowable.  She is at ease with them; she may even know their Names.

At an appropriate time, perhaps coupled with the doc's departure, she casts a look over to the source of that sticky, dark and --

See this? A flash of teeth. Polite. Genteel.  So, absolutely, politically correct: a little laugh.  "Oh, yes.  That would be a good one."  This, then, with so many unspoken undercurrents.

"Though I would advise against it."  It is only the thinnest shadow of a warning; a blade seen on edge; only at its thinnest point.  It gives no sense of the sharpness of the thing; that is kept caged.

And this brings Margot, and her closed-lipped smile, and her caged expression, and her hesitance forward.  "Good evening," says Ari; it is pleasant and warm.  That sense of mischeif has been walked back a little bit.  It is colder here, without the doctor beside her--isn't that saying something?

Arianna
((Edit:

I could take your wand...  
*And her attention snaps back to Grace.  See this? ... (and so forth...)

I don't know how I lost that in copy/pasting!))


Grace
Grace gets that. If anyone were to take her instruments, she'd be pissed too. Still, it gives her an idea...

She pulls her phone out if her pocket.

"Hey, Margot. What's his problem?"

The last time Grace said anything to Margot it was to tell her to fuck off. This seems to have been forgotten. Mostly.

She then proceeds to tap away at her phone's screen. Mercurial Elites, man.

Arianna
So you've heard that stereotype, right, about how technology really doesn't get along with wizards? How their cars don't quite run right. How they eschew modern conveniences in favor Older, Truer methods.

This is especially true with Arianna.  She is well and truly cursed. Not that she minds it; technology is querrelsome at best.  But she does the Elite the favor of stepping a little further from her when Grace pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing away. So it will be less her fault when it starts behaving... poorly.

Margot
Arianna's warmth in her greeting wasn't missed.  In fact, it was apparent the impact it had on the little witch.  She appeared relieved, like she was worried that there was going to be some kind of a what do you want? replacing the 'good evening' that actually came.  The tension in her brow lessened, forehead smoothed and eyes relaxed.

Then came Grace's greeting and question combination.  That relief doubled up enough that Margot actually let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and her shoulders stopped being so square and rounded down to rest.  It was good to know that grudges weren't being held over how tense their last encounter was.  That she wasn't being held necessarily responsible (yet) for how her Mentor behaved was nice too, though the question did have her glancing back over her shoulder to where the Doc had disappeared.

"Not a problem exactly.  Some project or another."  She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though to say 'what can you do?'.  He was a Mad Scientist after all.  She was figuring out that the emphasis on Mad and Science in that title was equal but different between words.  She looked to Arianna and smiled a little-- this one far less tense than the close-lipped thing she'd provided when approaching.  "The Doc said you know Pen and Nick, and that I should come say hi.  I'm Margot."

Yeah, Grace just said that.

Arianna
It's fair, this expectation Margot has of her. In different circumstances, that greeting may be just what she gets from the Initiate Exemptus. But not at an establishment that peddles pleasures; not outside of more strictured social circumstances.  Tonight Arianna is downright pleasant.  She is practically polite.  She has not led anyone astray or into mayhem.

"They are among my dearest friends," she says, confirming this for Margot readily. As readily as she had completely glossed over mention of Silas. Take that as you will. "Are you both known to them?"

This, then, ties the three of them together in one question.  It cements the thing. And three points make a circle, so they are cast together in it; they are made immanent and full of omens.  Then for Margot: "A pleasure. Please, call me Arianna."

Grace
"Oh, you...." she starts. The cussing is cut out. "You do too know how to do that..."

She's talking all right. To her phone. Frowning at it. Finally smacks it, like it had a head and she was slapping it.

Suddenly there is a burst of something sharp in the air. She's done playing nice with Mr. Phone.

[Entropy 3: Debugging. Obviously, her phone is possessed. The only cure is some nice, regular, orderliness. And violent smacking. Diff 5 - 1, taking her time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 )

Margot
Grace was busy with her phone.  Something sharp snapped at the air and Margot eyed her and the device she was holding suspiciously.  A keen edge, if you will, stinging and biting.  She knew that some used their technology for their Magick and Grace was among them.

As opposed to ask questions, Margot felt out the air to make sure she wouldn't get caught in a backlash somehow, then returned her attention to Arianna.

"Nice to meet you, Arianna."

Were they both known to them?  Margot glanced to Grace, then shrugged.  She couldn't speak for the Elitist's familiarity with the Chakravanti-Hermetic couple  She could speak to her own, though.

"Yeah, the Doc had a dinner party and had Ned and I over to meet them.  We're in touch now, here and there."  She paused, then added for context:  "Dr. Sepulveda is my mentor."  Left out Ned, though.  Sorry buddy.

Arianna
There is a crackle of energy in the air around her, the hallmarks of working magics and, unlike Margot, it draws up something ever-ready and precise in Arianna. Her shoulders square, and her chin lifts.  Even tipsy, even a little off-her-guard, her attention is cast wide before narrowing back to the Elite at her side.

"Is everything alright?" she asks Grace.  It is clear spoken; it is sharp-eyed.  But there is no obvious sense of danger, and so Arianna's hand strays to a pocket, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her wand, but she does not draw it out in public.  Mark, though, that she is ready.  She is able.

This tension remains, uneasiness, between them as she casts her attention back to Margot. She is surprised at something the girl has said, reaches for the appropriate words to touch upon it. "I... am surprised to hear he is your Master.  I would have marked you for an Older ilk; a greener sort."

Grace
"I've... Met both of them, a couple times," Grace says, absentmindedly, well after the question was asked.

But then Arianna said something else, didn't she?

"Oh. My phone. It's acting up. Like, the touch screen isn't... Touching or something. I think..."

She smacks it again.

"I think I fixed it..."

Arianna
"Oh," she says. Just this. And the singing tension drops out of her shoulders; sluices; moves away is if it were never there. And there is mirth to the corners of her eyes again -- one could imagine it amuses her when, yet again, the older ways are proven to be more stable things, to hold more gravitas. In truth, it is just the stay of some unknown altercation that pleases her.

After all, this is a city on the brink of War. This is a place where an unaffiliated Apprentice was taken, reclaimed again, and they are still awaiting the retribution.

"I'm glad it's better now."  That seems like an appropriate thing to say, doesn't it?  That's practically pleasant.  It saves her from making some sort of patently false assertion about how friends of Nick and Pen were her friends too, or some other platitude.  Arianna doesn't deal in platitudes.

Grace
Her phone is amusing Grace now. Taps get followed by mischevous grins.

Somebody's up to something.

"Oh, yes. It's great," she says. "In fact, I have just made 'Arionna's Wand' into a wifi hotspot."

A grin. This time above her phone screen. At Arionna.

"I'm joking! Joking!"

Margot
"Master?"

Margot sounded incredibly offended by the word-- not insulted by Arianna directly as much as appauled at the notion of referring to him, or anyone really, as master.  She stared at the pretty Italian woman with disbelief.  But then--

"Oh.  Hermetic."  Already wide eyes widened further with realization, and the girl relaxed.

Then she realized there was another question hanging in the air.  Forgot for a moment, because she was distracted watching Grace and her phone.  Stared for a moment, then remembered that Arianna had spoken further of Traditions.

"No, no no.  I'm not into Science like that.  I'm studying ecology, but gizmos and chemistry sets?"  She shook her head and waved her hand.  "I don't have a Tradition yet."  She glanced around.  Nobody was passing near, nobody had exited the bar to bombard them yet.  She wasn't worried about being overheard really.  What, would the Technocrats have a stake out in every part of the city?  Wouldn't being around Grace basically automatically ward her by proximity?  She couldn't doubt that Grace kept a Ward up about herself, especially these days.

"I think I may look into the Verbenas.... Penelope actually said she'd ask a friend to meet me."  The Doc was right-- community was key, wasn't it?

Margot
[[ Sorry for the occasional delay, by the way!  I've got a baby about sooo, heh, you know. :) ]]

Arianna
For Grace: If looks could kill is a stupid saying among willworkers. Looks could, in fact, kill. Looks could flay a mind down to its vestigal redundancies and fail to built it back again. Looks could steal air from lungs; they could turn veins to ice. Looks, man, they're powerful things.  So there is delicacy in the Look that Arianna gives Grace; it is measured; it is precisely as warning as she wants it to be without going further into coldness.

"You are quite clever."

This may not be a compliment.

"Oh.  You are the apprentice for whom Thane is visiting," Arianna says, stringing quite a few things overheard into something more solidified.  This brokers a true smile, a thing that touches her eyes. "I am indebted to you, then.  Because we do miss him, and you have given him good reason to venture out this far."

Grace
"I really did though," a huff of a laugh. If Arianna wants to throw fireballs at her, Grace can take it. In fact, all the serious business the woman keeps putting on her face have only served to egg Grace on more.

"I named my phone 'Arionna's Wand' and turned it into a wifi hotspot."

Because, you know, doing what you're explicitly warned not to do, getting around things by using cheap tricks? It's all a good hacker ever does. Even if the result thus achieved is kind of silly...

"And, I am very clever. It is good of you to notice that. Who's Thane?"

Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Are these two goading each other or what?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Arianna
[Manip + Subter (cunning): Nah, we cool. I'm just a Hermetic.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Arianna
((ACK! Not re-rolls. Double 10s. I am such a M20 newb.))

Grace
[Grace just seems like she's having fun for the sake of having fun. There are some things she takes seriously, like the lives and freedom of people (as Margot has seen). Other people's possessions just don't seem to be on that list.]

Arianna
The serious business face is what is keeping Arianna from being an outright ass and asking, in a jovial and friendly tone, for Grace to let her see: how cool! Because she is so very good at being cunning, and also at being mean. And then getting her wizardly cooties all over the Elite's tech.  This abrupt and perturbed outward seeming is the lesser of the available escalation tactics. Nobody's instruments are well and truly called into danger.

Yet.

Grace's smugness is met with a briefer smile.  And here, then, Arianna's own phone, something anachronistic, and bulky, something that flips and doesn't touch, comes out of her pocket.  Things are typed, keys pressed.  It goes back into her pocket.

It does not remain in view as long as Grace's tech.  It would be unfair to call Arianna's phone "tech" this many years after its debut. The question of Thane's providence, then, is returned to.

"A friend of mine, and Nicholas's and Pen's, who shall be visiting for a brief while."  She says this plainly. So that Grace, distracted as she is with Arianna's Wand (the phone [not the true one]), might still take it up this time.  "And will likely speak with Margot her about her mystical inclinations."

Margot
While Arianna gave stern looks and Grace grinned and continued to play (Circuit Coyote), Margot was quiet.  She looked between the two of them, like she was anxious of tension that may begin to flicker-flicker-flint.  She'd seen a pair of Mages in a fight with one another before, and the aftermath made her puke in her mentor's toilet.  She didn't want to be here if it was going to happen again.

But nothing came of it, and Arianna had addresse her with thanks for bringing Thane back out.  Claimed that Margot herself was a very good reason for him to visit.  The Apprentice looked thoughtful while there was filling in on Thane's identity going on.

"...Recruitment's that important, is it?"  She piped up quietly, and glanced between Arianna and Grace both.  Perhaps a question she sought bouth their views on.

Arianna
"Recruitment?"

This draws a furrow to Arianna's brow for a moment, and for a moment she cares not at all what the Elite has named her phone, or whether Naming is sufficient sympathetic magic to link the named thing to the true thing and thus influence the flow of Ars Essentiae between them -- because that would be impolite. And rude, even by Hermetic standards. And would make Nick unhappy with her. A different sort of unhappy with her than he has sometimes been. It would be counterproductive, however satisfying.

And no, Margot, there will be no great awakened throw down in mystical Denver Downtown.  At least, if there was, Arianna with her stern looks would not be the one to start it.

"I... I would speak to you about this in a more controlled environment, but, and please understand, Margot, that I am being brief not in dismissiveness but of necessity -- Choosing the minds with which you will align yourself is more precious and important than 'recruitment' may belie.  It is choosing the framework upon which you hang your Works, your world view, and ultimately your greatest accomplishments and challenges.  You are choosing the shoulders of the giants upon which you will stand as you move forward in your enlightenment. Do not let any Tradition claim you that you would not proudly claim for yourself, but also do not belittle or diminish the danger in remaining apart."

This for the apprentice; this for the one who will claim Thane's attention and possibly join his Tradition. Every single syllable of this is spoken without slurring; it is imperative; it is crystal clear and shining.  For Arianna is also luminous, and the Order has been a shining City on the Hill to many in its millenia of leadership.

Grace
"Oh, that's cool!" Grace says, to Arianna's reply. Honestly, Margot needs more than just Andrés Sepúlveda in her life.

But, to Arianna's words, she shakes her head. "I don't really think 'recruitment' is nearly as important as just having people you can talk to about your... mystical inclinations. Hell, when I Awakened, I had a bunch of people -- none of them technically minded -- who I leaned on a lot to figure out how to deal. There's a lot of commonalities in what we do, when you get down to it.

"You might find if you want to have that in your life, joining up under a banner is the way to go. You might also not. I know a lot of Disparates in the city who adamantly want to go their own way, and there's nothing wrong with that. A bit more dangerous, yeah. Perhaps. But we're Mages," she says, gets down to a more serious tone herself. "There is no fear we can't conquer."

Arianna
"It is more than a bit more dangerous," Arianna says, on the heels of Grace's opinion.  This, too, is clear cut and definitive.  "But Grace is right: the choice is yours."  It is ominous when she says it that way; it gives the thing the proper weight.

"Keep in mind, though: not all places are so... generous... to Disparates."

Grace
"Then, those places are corrupt. And I wouldn't go anywhere near them anyway, Disparate or no."

Ahh, happy shiny conflict.

"There's a word for people who care about other people's labels. That word is: 'bigot'."

Arianna
"So you have a label then, for these other labellers of people?" Arianna asks. Her mouth twists wrily, eyebrow arched and challenging. It is a dark and dangerous thing.  She has honed her skills in this game against a Tytalan. It shows.

Margot
The advice that she received was soaked up like a sponge.  Margot listened raptly to Arianna, for she was well-spoken and serious and impactful, and her words felt like they carried heavy weight.  She listened to Grace, of whom she's heard in almost every conversation that revolved around the magickal community in this city.  Grace said this, Grace set this up, Grace dismantled this and found this and fixed this.  Margot bore this in mind, and also noted a similarity there-- she knew a lot of people, but none of them seemed to match up with what she felt herself to be.

Then, some back and forth about the pros and cons of Traditions and Orphans and bigots and bigoted bigot callers and--

"I'm a witch."

Margot cut in, over their back and forth.  Glanced between the two, almost sharply (scoldingly, a budding emergence of what Mage she would become when her connection to her Avatar was stronger, no doubt-- when her confidence and Power were given time to grow), and continued on.

"Ned and I, we've talked about this.  We'll find Traditions, it's unsafe to do otherwise.  I've seen what happens.  I--,"  But her phone started ringing in her pocket.  She glanced down at the screen, then sighed and explained:  "It's the Doc, will you excuse me?"

She stepped away.  A brief conversation later (tense back and forth for perhaps a minute or less), Margot sighed and pocketed her phone.  Returned to the others and explained:  "I guess the Doc's gonna get his assistant tonight after all.  Thanks for, y'know, your time and stuff you two."  An awkward pause, for an awkward girl, then-- "'Bye."

And away went Margot Travers, briskly up the sidewalk from whence she came.

Margot
[Thanks so much for playing you guys!  Time for me to bail, I work reaaaal early in the mornings.  Goodnight!]

Grace
Margot interrupts. It's probably a good thing, because Grace was about to go on a rant about how there exists a whole group of people out there who cared so much about the internal thoughts and beliefs of other people that they went and tried to force everyone into 'recruitment'. In their prisons of Primium. Via mind control. And other, even less savory methods.

"Bye," she says, to Margot, who's already leaving, already left.

"I just think... one shouldn't have to give up all that they are, all that they believe in in the process of gaining safety, Arianna. That's what some Disparates would have to do, you know. Your heart chooses. You don't choose a Tradition and then cut pieces of yourself off so that you'll fit. I guess some people do. Because people would treat them like shit if they didn't, in those 'other places'."

Arianna
Arianna's chin is held a little more proudly as she watches the Apprentice retreat up the street and off toward her temporary mentor.  There is some measure of esteem for the young woman held there. The weight and knowing of it is opaque; she does not strive to clarify it.

"You may think whatever it is that you like," she says to the Mercurial Elite. It is not rude, or cold, or even unkind but it is as firmly spoken as Grace is emphatic.  "And we will disagree upon this point: Because choosing a Tradition does not require one to dismember their Will.  It requires one to view the security of the whole community, of the Work we all do and the sanctity of other Wills above the singular importance of the self -- which must sound strange from a member of my own Tradition, but it is the truth.

"The Disparates are selfish; their standing apart makes them vulnerable, and risks common resources to bring them home.  Because we will not leave them to these Others that you speak of: the best among us will not leave to them their consequences.  You can have your opinions, but they are expensive.  They are costly in ways you cannot pay down all yourself."

Grace
Grace has a particular Disparate in mind. One who's in a hotel room right now, in clothes he got from someone else, because all he was left with was a pair of khaki scrubs. A man with scars in his mind now. A man who has given his all to stand in the face of danger for Traditionalists.

"I'm guessing you're talking about Alex? The guy who stood in an alleyway in between a Hermetic and a vampire, willing to lay his life down? The guy who helped cut up a bunch of possessed plant-things in order to save a Verbena? The guy who, when he was a cop, was the kind of cop wholived to put his life on the line every day for other people, Awakened or not?

"He was selfish? Because he got caught and risked common resources? Those were partly my resources, freely given. Hell, I would have given my left leg to bring him back, Arianna. The 'best among us' in your opinion meet a basic standard of human dignity in mine. You don't want to help someone else because they're a Disparate and you feel they are being selfish, okay. That's your right. You choose your own path and all, even if that path leads straight to Hell."

Let the record stand, if Arianna was glaring daggers about her wand, Grace is doing a bit more than that. Every word is sharp. Every gesture. Like the very resonance she carries with her. She wants to hit this woman, to make her feel the hurt her words have brought to the surface, but restrains that.

Arianna
[This seems like a good time for dice.  We don't go full red-head hermetic in public, right?]

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

Arianna
[Awesome.  And we are super chill about reacting right? Manip + Subt (Cunning, because evasion)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Arianna
((Hallelujah! Praise thrice-wise Hermes.))

Arianna
Grace has a particular Disparate in mind, and the association brings everything hot and heavy to the foreground. She is ready to hit Arianna for the intimation; she is ready to escalate a difference of opinion and value structures to violence.

Grace has called Arianna a bigot.  Grace has called the sacred places that she has known Corrupt.  Now she's practically spitting words at the Hermetic woman, sharp words, sharp gestures.  It's the sort of thing that people notice.  And Arianna?

She steps close. She keeps her voice low. It is not heated and spitting and violent like Grace's. It is controlled, and calm, collected and cool.  Remote, even, for all that it will piss Grace off even more.

"I did not speak about your Alex.  He is vouched for; he is claimed.  There are many who would have missed him.  I was well informed of this.  You take offense where there is none given, Grace of the Mercurial Elites."

Ari steps back, she looses the tension in her shoulders.  She smiles.  This is not for Grace, but it is for all the sleepwalkers around them.  It de-escalates the brimming clash of starlight and something winged.

"I think, perhaps, we should take our leave of one another.  You on your path, and mine as straight away it leads to Hell," this seems to amuse her.  The amusement of it cuts through her eyes.  It does not dampen the sense of warning; that Grace is being given grace just this one time; that there are dragons here, and Arianna has kept them on their chains.

Grace
"That sounds like a great idea," Grace says, with finality. Turns and walks away without another word or glance. There is only so much that she can take.

Arianna
There is no tab to pay, but Arianna waits until Grace has left before she gathers her phone from her pocket and types out a short text.  True to form, it likely gets queued for ever in some tech spooler in the sky. It won't matter in the long run. This sparring with Grace has given her time to recuperate from her outing with Andres.

But Ari is a pretty woman, and there is probably some poor unwitting sleeper who will ask her if she is okay. And there will be feigned pleasantries, and politenesses, to keep, which will space her departure all the more from Grace's. Which is probably a good thing for everyone involved.