Retro -- The Fallout

Pen
THE SETTING:

A green field somewhere in Washington Park, clover and the dream of green: green as green only is when man wishes green to exist; green as a fairy's glade, green as a hope of summer. The setting: flower garden nearby, and it's late evening - not dark yet. Darkness will descend during the second act of

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

Right now the sun is sinking, thinking about setting, There is a stage built up in the park for tonight's play, beginning soon--twenty minutes from now.

People are still coming with their blankets, their picnic baskets, their transportable chairs.

THE CAST:

Penelope Mercury Mars has already staked out a corner of the grass and has spread a nubby blanket out, something in grays and blues which looks like the sea and is well-worn, worn-so-well that it is raveling, that the only hope it had to continue its existence was to become a picnic blanket. Picnic blanket, most hallowed of blanket jobs!



*VOTE FOR THE PLAY NOW. BY SHOUTING IT OUT, OOC.

Grace
Grace came with Kalen, bringing the necessary food and drink. She would also consider robots to be necessary, but apparently no -- they are not actually so. Shakespeare did not know of robots. A very sad fact that, with time machines, should be possible to rectify. Why has this not been done yet? Or perhaps it has.

Shakespeare must have had to beat down the time travelers with a special stick made just for future-people. He probably gave it a unique name that would, had he writ it down, have survived the ages.

Shakespeare did know of spirits and wizards though, that much is evident by the play on offer today in the park. It also shows his feelings towards all those time travelers, by making his wizard break and bury his staff and abandon magic altogether.

"Woostick. I think he would have called it that. Or a Magerybopper. You think? A stick for bopping sorcerers?"

That, by the way, comes out of nowhere. If anyone were to ever ask Grace Evans what she was thinking at any given time, it might just be something like that.

Nick
Nicholas Hyde arrives very-nearly-late, particularly for someone well-versed in the Art of Time.  He appears in a whirlwind of dark hair (unfortunately frizzed by humidity) and checkered blue dress shirt and grey tie, fresh from work, and there is a bottle-shaped object in his hand, covered in a brown paper bag.

He halts at the edge of the park, scanning over the gathered heads, and: fortunately Pen's is bright red enough to be spotted quickly.

So he beelines, and soon enough he is about to -

"Oh.  Hello, Grace," he says, lifting a hand in a wave as he approaches and notices the Elite there with his wife.

Elliott Chandler
Kalen Michael Holliday has been a lot of people.  He is, in the end, another person now.

They are about to watch the Tempest.  None of the people he has ever been have watched this play.  None of the people he has ever been understood how to just stop and watch something ridiculous for the sheer joy of it.  The people he has been, likewise, read things to help them survive.

He appears tonight with Grace, calm enough, in jeans and a plain pale gold tee-shirt.  They have enough food to feed a small army.  And coffee.  Two kinds of coffee because some people want dark roast and some people like those blonde coffees.  It is, at least, less complicated than when he brings hot chocolate with about a dozen kinds of gourmet marshmallows.  (But there are hazelnut marshmallows, for Grace to put in her coffee.  And some extra.)

Both Pen and Nick get a subdued, though not hesitant wave.  "Hey."

Pen
Here are Grace and Kalen. Pen lifts a chin by way of greeting once they're close enough for her to acknowledge: cool, welcoming - glad, see, in a way that is quite uncomplicated. She is glad about people. The air is full of possibility; of spirits, of the end of a day; it is sleepless. See how she chases it with the luminous slash of a smile and a raised hand, fingers curved just so. Hello! Come here? Yes no? There's this flick of a look toward Nick because it has been all day long, all long day long, and such engenders longing, and anyway: she is glad in an uncomplicated way to see people knows; she longs in an uncomplicated way for someone she does.

There's a bag of stuff on one corner of the blanket. That includes an environment conscious bug repellent, some fancy cheeses, grapes, bottles; it includes salt and vinegar chips and a baguette. Simplicity.

Grace
"Hello! You like your coffee dark or light roasted? I... think this one is light," she says, grabbing a green thermos out of her bag and shaking it next to her ear, as though she could hear the darkness thereof.

The differences in what people constitute a picnic is definitely on display here, as Grace then unlugs her bag of coffee and stuff all over Pen's blanket. There are multiple thermoses. And marshmallows. And udon noodle take-out. And dumplings of some unknown kind. Also, cupcakes, because Grace decided that sugar was necessary.

There is very little simplicity here, or even a theme beyond "Hey, this might be tasty." Chaos, definitely. Delishus chaos.

And, also, a bit of bluntness, as if Pen and Nick's blanket were already hers to plop down upon. After all, the food and drink are also already theirs.


Nick
Nicholas watches as Grace's bounty spills all over the blanket: dumplings and marshmallows and thermoses and take-out.  A very generous bounty, all told.  It takes him a half a heartbeat, but he smiles up at Grace after a moment and gestures to the expanse of blanket.

Then he hands the bottle-shaped object to Pen, and takes a moment to reach up and loosen his tie and undo the last button on his collar before he sits down and leans over to place a kiss on her cheek.

His gaze then returns up to Grace and the man with her.  "Who's this with you?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott seems a little more hesitant to just take over their blanket, although he does not seem at all concerned that Grace is putting their food out for people he barely knows.  Still, even if he has abandoned the Order, he is fond of Penelope Mercury Mars.  He settles; relaxed enough, yes, but at the very edges of the blanket.

For a second, even though he came with the food, even though he picked it out with Grace, he studies the food as though it seems as new to him as to anyone else.  He still expects something else.  Something more like what Penelope brought.  And wine.  Red wine and a different language.

Denver still seems surreal.  "We met once," he says quietly to Nick.  "Some time ago.  Though I was someone else then, I suppose."  Not that he actually offers anything other than that.  Apparently Nick asked Grace and will get his answers from Grace.

"Penelope," he says.  It is all the greeting that she gets, but there is a warmth to the tone and there is a little smile.  No.  It is almost all the greeting she gets, because now, now that they aren't bound by their Tradition and separated by it (though Pen may not yet have heard), Elliott reaches out across the expanse of nubbly blanket to offer Pen a hand.

Pen
"What a feast is here," Pen says, as Grace begins to unload thermoses and dumplings and cupcakes/as Nick bends down to hand Pen the bottle of (shh, it isn't alcohol, to be consumed publicly; it is in a brown paper bag, which everybody knows is just how people choose to drink juice sometimes in parks on warm summer evenings while the lightning bugs spark and the stars come out peer out slip away from the edges of the clouds which roil on the horizon to the west see and it will be a beautiful sunset once it comes for certain a sunset like a battle between Hell and Heaven a sunset of gold foil rims of luminous and bloody) wine. She sets the wine bottle down but her hand stays finds Nick's arm and then his thigh and then oh good a Nicholas shaped chair.

To Grace: "I like my coffee dark, but I'm not adverse to light. Would you two like to share our grapes, perhaps some wine? Have you two seen this troupe perform before? I hear they are very good, and that Prospero will be Prospera."

"I feel I haven't seen either of you in an age!"

Grace
Grace looks back and forth between the two men in disbelief. They don't know each other. "Kalen, you're so antisocial these days," she says, no disappointment or shaming there, just a statement.

Kalen will be as he is in the moment -- a whirl of changes around an essentially good man.

"This is Kalen. Or Elliot. It depends on what he wants to be called. My partner in crime and business, which is really one and the same when you think about it." It certainly is where Grace is concerned, in so many different ways.

Then, she goes to making a hole in the cupcake box. Managing that, she hands a lavender vanilla bean one over to Kalen, who clearly needs it.

"We are hoping to open a community center here at some point, because Denver needs more counselors before it goes and hurts itself again."

Pen explains how she likes her coffee dark, so Grace examines a red thermos and rolls it over. "This one's dark! There's a creamer tin in here somewhere, and hazelnut marshmallows..."

Nick
There is a furrowing of Nick's brows as Kalen says they have met before, and: it is hard to pin down faces sometimes, when one is continually meeting new people day in and day out.  Grace mentions Kalen, though, and then there is a light of recognition - ah! and Nick nods and extends a hand forward and up.

"I remember you from the meeting now.  Good to see you again," he says, apparently nonplussed as Pen seats herself on him; evidently he is so used to it that it gives him little pause.

Denver needs more counselors, Grace says, and there is another little furrow of his brows and Nick hmms and reaches for a few grapes.  "Were both of you expecting other people?"

Elliott Chandler
"I've been away a bit," he says to Penelope.  "But I've missed home.  And the people in it."

Elliott reaches for Nick's hand once his is free of Penelope's.  "Good to see you."  He smiles a little again, relaxed but for the first time a little unsure and his eyes travel from Nick to Pen, even if he is still, at least in theory, answering Nick's question about who he is.  "Probably Elliott, more than Kalen.  I've left the people I took that Name with.  Enough people know me by that that I expect it will stick with some of them."

"Denver," Elliott says, returning his attention actually to Nick, "Has a way of seeing to it that one encounters others.  We've simply learned never to assume that we will have a solitary picnic."

Pen
The clasp of hands, Pen to Kalen, was firm: gacious. Pen: she leans back against Nicholas and watches Grace's fingers whisper over the thermoses as if she were shaping the existence of dark roast as if she were a trasure-keeper, market-owner, and aren't there legends about Mercurial Elite Virtual Adepts and their caffinated rites in the deep dark hallowed hollow light of their monitors, rites which - fueled so, by coffee - might shed this world and blossom another? "Hazelnut marshmallows?" soft, this, and bright.

Then: "I recall you - " Kalen. A glance fixes him as the subject. " - saying something about community outreach among the sleepers."

And the conversation flows, as conversation will, and Penelope leans forward a touch to reach for thermos or pull out a cup so that Grace can pour some of the dark roast in (drink of shadows), and then:

The temperature does not drop in actuality, but Pen: she sharpens, come suddenly to attention: is as still, see, as ever anything ready to be pulled from a stone. She is studying Kalen. She studies him all through his commentary on the possibility of solitary picnics in Denve.

And then she says, "Why have you abandoned your Name?"

Grace
"We always expect other people. It's the way of things."

Grace just keeps right on going, after Pen's iciness shows up, offering a kettle-shaped ceramic device to her -- it is the creamer. A tube of marshmallows follows, their brown color indicative of something fancier than Jet-Puffed.

"He's decided to go be a priest of like, all the gods," Grace says, and she is so incorrect, and she knows it, and yet -- this is fun. "We've not got room for all the statues. He got me a Buddha one for my room, and I don't even have a room to put it in yet."

A conspiratorial smile at Kalen, there. Come, play this game with me. It won't be that bad, her eyes say. No matter what.


Nick
Nick settles an arm around Pen and reaches for the bottle of wine even as the others are preparing coffee - at night, in the summer, in the park.  Nick will take the wine, thank you.

"A priest of all the gods?" he asks, and here he turns his eyes up to the other man, and there's a sort of easy acceptance in them: curiosity and openness are often the same thing.  "So you're joining the Celestial Chorus, then?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott does not, not really mind Penelope's sharpened attention.  He understands that this must, to her, seem as incomprehensible as it once seemed to him.

Grace tries to play, to seize the threat of an oncoming storm and to wrest from it something gentler and warmer.  There is a smile that flickers briefly, something that speaks more of fondness and indulgence than agreement.  Elliott though, allows Penelope to still see his eyes.  His expression.

Because this conversation is less about Nick, really.  Nick just got caught up in a moment between one Flambeau and one former Flambeau.  Grace struggles to pull away from the seriousness of the moment, but Elliott owes Penelope more than that.  They were family, once.  They might be, in another way, family again.

"For years," he says, very quietly, "Everything I did, everything I was called to do...there is a war whether I will it or not.  I will not try to pretend our world is otherwise.  But over and over and over again, the solutions I had were...."  His voice trails off, and it not only that they are surrounded by Sleepers.  Those Sleepers can almost certainly not hear him.  "They were what they were.  I do not regret what I have been.  Those things needed to be done.  But I was always too late, Penelope.  I was always too late and there was but one solution when I arrived.

"It wasn't enough.  I can't be what I was.  Not anymore.  And what use, your people, for someone who has only horror left for war."  He shakes his head.  "Fuck, Penelope.  There may be circumstances that force my hand, but given the choice...I would never again do the things that I have been forced to do.

"I don't belong there anymore, with you.  You know that.  I think you've always known that."

His attention slides from Penelope to Nick.  "Not of any, I'm afraid.  I just have a very inclusive sculpture garden.  Though you're right, about that second thing."

Grace
Grace fake-pouts at Kalen, because he's decided to be serious and not play along with her. Even about being a priest of all the gods. Inclusive sculpture garden? Pah. The hat one has to wear to be a priest of the All-Fathers has to be enormous and grand(iose). It would be awesome. To make fun of.

"There goes my plans to get you a Pope-headdress for Halloween..."

She obtains herself the thermos of other coffee, the blonde, as though Grace ever had a preference when it came to caffeine. She minds the taste of course, they are all lovely.

"You want a dumpling?" she says, to Pen. Dumplings make things better. Don't they?

Pen

When Pen feels Nick's muscles move, she reaches for the wine bottle and snags it before he. The paper bag crinkles and she sets it between her knees, investigates the bottle's neck and mouth,  ah, a cork and the bottle opener tucked away in the bag with grapes, too far for her to reach easily.

Never let it be said that Penelope is not a poised woman; she is poised, just now, and the thing about poise: one cannot tell whether it is because one is on a narrow edge, or a wide avenue; it is only poise; it might be the same anywhere, and ever. Her eyes are such a grey -- Prospero might've conjured such a color for his seaspray-laced cloak or Sycorax (Circe) might've looked into the scrying cup with eyes that witching; that gloam-drunk; that clear. She swiped the wine bottle but she is listening to Kalen Holliday Who Isn't Any Longer explain his weariness.

Her eyes stay on him as she leans forward to snag the bag; get the corkscrew, unfold it: a shining bit of metal. She hands them both to Nicholas, demurs with a courteous shake of her head when Grace asks her if she'd like a dumpling. She would not like a dumpling, just as she does not want the creamer; she does not take it when it is handed to her, unless Grace looks a though she's going to drop it other; then she takes it and sets it down.

"Why do you think I've always known that, Elliot? What could you mean?" It is easy for her to change names for someone; as long as they claim the name, it can be theirs.

She is poised, sure; that does not preclude passion. It tints her voice; it's there in the cant of her head - the flash of her throat when she glances at the stage, conscious alertness, then brings her eyes back; it's in the very slow circling of her fingertips along Nick's knee. She might not even realize she is doing that - she'd abhor what might be regarded as a superfluous movement right now. 

"Do you believe I hold something in my heart for 'war' other than horror?" 

Beat. "This conversation may not be comfortable for our companions." 

Grace

Oh, the ice descends upon this place, now that both Kalen and Pen have ignored her unspoken pleas to keep this whole thing lighthearted. She's been heavy too long. Going to collapse into a black hole at this rate. One must be determined to avoid that kind of thing. It can suck you in, despair. Looking at abysses and all that.

Grace smirks at Pen when she starts declining to accept gifts. Somebody is getting a never-ending delivery of hazelnut marshmallows to their house. More than one could possibly consume in a day, every day. She'll make it hard to cancel, just for fuck's sake. Don't like hospitality? That's too bad. She's going to hospitality the fuck out you. And just try to complain about being buried in a mountain of marshmallows. Oh, that will be fun.

She pulls out her phone, starts typing. "Hey, Nick? Where do you guys live? I want to send you something. Very important, can't discuss this sort of thing in public, you know."

Well. There will be marshmallows. And a note, which won't arrive via shipment. Wrap a lie in a truth, yes? She does have important things to share. And it looks like she and Elliot won't be welcome on the blanket here for too much longer.

Nick

Pen's demeanor changes, and Nicholas is quiet as it does.  He allows Pen to take the bottle of wine (still paper-wrapped) from his hands, and then moments later to hand it back to him with the corkscrew, and he does this all wordlessly.  There is a deftness in his fingers as he flips the wings on the corkscrew up and works the screw into the cork with a few quick spins of his hand, and then he pulls it free with a pop.

His silence could be mistaken for trepidation or fear: his wife is a passionate woman, and Nicholas is an insightful man, and the current of tension passing between her and Elliot could not go unmissed.

Grace says his name and this draws his eyes up and away from what he is doing, and then there is a little furrow of his brows.  "We don't give out our home address, but I can give you the P.O. Box," he says, his voice tinged with apology.  "What is it?"

Elliot

Penelope's attention sharpens.  It is impossible not to note the shift in the energy, but Elliott seems unconcerned.  Truthfully, he has not faced many beings he would consider more dangerous than Penelope.  Nor, truthfully, more graceful.  Iris was, perhaps, both of those things and he stayed his ground then.  His lack of fear then and his lack of fear now are similar things - to him, neither Iris or Penelope are enemies.

There are, aren't there, reasons he is leaving the Flambeau?

"If I thought you had any love of war," Elliott says softly, barely audible over the crowd, "I would not have offered you advice when you arrived in my city, I would have found the leverage to run you out.  I certainly would not be here now.

"I meant only that I thought you saw what I was just coming to understand then, which is that at some point I was going to hesitate a second too long and someone was going to get hurt.  Perhaps worse.  And that changed, in some respects, everything.  Not because I loved what I did once and did no longer, but because I was no longer capable.

"That my place is between people and things that would make them suffer has not changed.  But the ways in which I can protect them have changed.  Enough that in some ways, our path are divided.  

"Though I do hope not in all of them." 

Pen

There is a spark of reaction: a shooting star is the same thing as a falling star, and both smoulder in the wizard's cup. Her eyebrows perk: eloquent. He'd have found the leverage. She listens. She listens earnestly and with a whisper of tension in her shoulders and the End-of-Afternoon gold is gathered up, growing long in this twilight. Grace and Nick are having their own conversations: sort of. 

Pen. Simply: "I don't know what to say to you." 

Her gaze wicks away as water wicks from a stone. It lingers on the sward where the play is to be performed as she sets her thoughts in order (tries to). Her voice is confessional quiet but intense: of course it is intense (vibrant). "I'm not insightful as some other people are. I wish I was. I don't know how to say the right thing." Now her gaze flicks back to Elliott. "There's probably a right thing to say to you, but Ash and Oak wither if I know it. I should probably say nothing. But I can't say nothing. What should I say?"

"I don't believe you see the Order clearly. And how could you see yourself clearly in the Order if you don't see it clearly? You're speaking as if there's only one way to be. As if the only thing to do is fight and toil in gruesome scenes and watch your conscience chiseled away as you follow orders like tock follows tick and there's only one set of orders; but there's more than one House and more than one way to be. What is our Will for if not the freedom to choose and make what we would. I just -

"Tonight I want to watch the Tempest with Nicholas. I don't want to watch it with someone who I know, freshly know, feels such contempt for one of the more important things in my life. Elliott, I'm sure our paths will cross again. But right now you two should find your own blanket. I'm sorry, Grace. Thank you for the marshmallows and the coffee."

Grace

People are mostly incomprehensible. Kalen... Elliot didn't say the things that Pen's accusing him of. Contempt? Grace is still quite dedicated to bringing the fight to wherever it needs to be, and he holds no contempt for her, only love. Always that. Grace had expected this reaction from some people. Pen? Well.

Suppose that answers that question.

Not allowed to know where they live, not allowed in their general area even. For the present, at least. Until Pen cools down, if she cools down. On second thought, sending her marshmallows might be misconstrued as appeasement.

Grace sighs, looks around at the scattered array of food and drink, starts re-packing her favorites up into her bag.

"We can't both survive, and put these walls up between us."

She looks to Kalen, gives a sad smile. It'll be okay.

"I am going to be sending you both the details of what you should actually be getting worked up about." She lowers her voice. "Apprentices have been getting disappeared from Colorado Springs. The locals think it might be our most favorite enemies."

Sending it to your P.O. box. Because that's apparently safer. Yes.

"He doesn't hold contempt for you or what you believe in, Pen. Otherwise, he'd have contempt for me too. One thing I am not about to do is stop fighting."

The Mall of Doominess

Caleb
Bookstores are not, in fact, libraries. Sure, they encourage you to actually enjoy the books before you buy them but they don't actually ever really intend someone to finish the whole book before they purchase it. It doesn't seem like the best idea. It doesn't seem like a good business model but nobody would sell any books at all if they were shrink wrapped and kept on shelves like they were there just to be protected from dust, like all of them held pornographic ideas that shouldn't be given to people who aren't truly capable of understanding them.

No, who decides what we should be able to handle in our books? Who decides but those who manufacture, but those who bring out the product and sell it to the consumers, because even in information there is consumerism. There is a trade of something monetary for something intangible- the story. The idea. Something that you can't really return, and in effect reading a book in the book store was theft because you took what was truly of value and left its husk; it was peeling the banana, eating it, and then leaving the peel behind. You took its substance and left only the means that it was used to trasport the best parts to you.

Caleb, you see, had a concept of theft. You don't take something that isn't yours but information, but the words, the things that make up books don't really belong to anyone. So, he didn't seem to have a real problem with them. So there he is, forgettable but sprawled out in the aisle of some indie bookstore with aisles as thin and lacking in personal space as a piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. The books are in some particular order, not arranged in the traditional way but in another traditional way- this particular place decided to play with the Dewey Decimal system instead of the standard layout of a place that has the fiction dominating a place.

He's in the eight hundreds. Somewhere between 820 and 830 in a dingy drab olive Army surplus jacket and a pair of tennis shoes that look like they've seen a couple marathons and survived to tell the tale. The staff leaves him alone.

Grace
The mall is not Grace's cup of tea.

It is a temple. A bastion of hyperreality, dedicated to the gods of consumerism. As if churches weren't already bad enough, these things show off what they're really about. Money. Buying. Selling.

Of course, they do try to hide that, a little. Everywhere, there are pictures of happy, beautiful people. If only one consumes enough, one might become like them. Nice, sunlit, happy. It makes Grace want to puke.

About the only thing this place has to offer her is the bookstore, which if any other place in town were selling "Structures: Why Things Don't Fall Down", then she would have gone there. Sometimes, you have to grit your teeth and participate in the fallen world, just to get what you need.

First thing she's going to do is scan this text and upload it somewhere, because fuck having to pay for information...

Grace
[Awareness!]

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

Caleb
[Do I feel a people? Per+aware, -2 because arcane]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Caleb
There is a feeling of something. Something that makes him look up from the books that he may or may not (definitely not) be purchasing. A feeling that makes the wind blow without it actually blowing. A feeling that is slight, a wrongness or a rightness but nothing strong enough to be felt beyond being off. And yes, there is something off in the air. He looks up from English literature and poetry and words, words, words to feel a shift in the winds.

Ultimately, the stag concudes that the snap in the branches is not enough to warrant him looking around too far for too long. There is a spark of creativity, a spark of something that has a keen edged mind and an ear for change. Something that glides along the cutting edge like a whet stone and rolls away the layers of dust and grime to peel back into something new. Not a literal peel. Nothing painful save for the pain that comes with change, with seeing the world grow and blossom outside of yourself.

Olive
[ah, what the hell.]

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

Olive
This bookstore may as well be a library, as far as its layout is concerned. As far as its patrons are concerned, it is a little slice of heaven that smells like binding paste and leather. The occasional waft of secondhand smoke clinging to a flannel shirt or perfume on a stranger's wrist.

She is not far from the 800s herself, having sat herself down cross-legged in a corner. Small space like that almost makes the girl invisible. She is short and her braids make a curtain if she tilts her head the right way and she is reading through a stack of poetry volumes trying to decide which one she wants to take home with her and read until it falls apart.

Grace can tell she's there, still as a fasting nun and as peaceful besides. She looks up at the tennis shoes' passage and lets her nostrils flare though her physical senses are of no use here. For now the slim volume stays open.

Grace
Shit. It's happening again, isn't it? Confluence. She looks up at the ceiling, and glares at it. Universe, you can be creepy sometimes. For fuck's sake.

They aren't people she knows, the resonance isn't familiar. But it's there.

Where once she might have turned tail and fled due to the danger of Technocrats (and there is a danger) now, she wants to stay. At the very least, figure out what these people are about.

There are people here. More people than Mages. Who is who? She looks around, eyes not lingering on any one person for too long, lest they actually look back at her.

Caleb
(Do I physically notice Grace? Per+alert -2 (arcane), wearing glasses so diff 6)

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

Nicholas
Nick is here looking for a present.  Nick has been trawling bookstores looking for a present for months, and none has yet happened upon him.

He is not here, as one might expect, for his wife.  If he were here for Pen it would not have taken him months.  His Hermetic sister (he has two of them see) is the one who is very difficult to buy for.

And normally he probably wouldn't be setting foot in a mall except maybe to try to find a new pair of shoes or a belt, and he probably wouldn't be looking in a bookstore in one, but: desperate times.  (One of his old mentors has told him, often, how the Technocracy has taken to building shopping malls on wellsprings and nodes, and Patricia often spoke of these things with distaste.  Perhaps he might have some bias.)  And so here we are.  The place had come recommended by people who are more knowledgeable about such things than Nicholas Hyde.

He's not there yet, but still walking down one of the aisles with his head down and his hands in his pockets, his thoughts elsewhere.  Sooner or later he'll turn into the bookstore, once he finds it.

Caleb
pokepoke

There is a person on the other side of the shelf, and he isn't meaning to poke her but the book shelves are hollowed things and double sided, so pushing a longer book back to be flush will, in turn, cause another book to be shoved backwards. He pushes again, not quite noticing the place of poking until he realizs he's prodding some be-braided person in the shoulder with a book about... uh... something.

The poking ceases. "Sorry," he whispers, and sounds like an announcer at a golf tournament.

And looking up from that poke he notices a singularly normal and unremarkable piece of wall furniture like himself... but this one is staring at the ceiling. His brows knit together and a frown comes across his face. He looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Grace-

"... what's wrong on the ceiling?"

Olive
Were Grace to have looked at her for very long she would have seen Olive looking right back at her. But Grace decides to look at the ceiling instead and Olive decides well maybe she ought to stand up but then a book comes tumbling off the shelf and bounces off the faux-leather shoulder of her jacket and onto the floor.

Sorry.

She whispers back, "No worries."

And, on knees and one hand, reaches out to rescue the book. A glance at the spine and a glance up at the place from whence it fell. Up onto her knees. She starts to shuffle-walk on her knees around the bookshelf without getting to her feet, which are clad in black Converse sneakers, because of course they are.

Grace
When looking for the weird, don't worry. The weird will come to you. Someone talks to her, asks her what is wrong with the ceiling, and it's...

"The universe. It's wrong."

Way to inspire confidence in people, Grace. Bravo.

"I was just telling it off."

Caleb
"Why do you think the universe is wrong? That seems like a bold statement," he asks this, not in an accusatory way, but rather like someone who was seeking information, like he may well have been holding a notebook instead of a lap full of English literature.

He looks back at the shelf- from the shelf to Grace and back at the shelf. He leans a little to the side, trying to get a better look through the shelf and concludes that this isn't working. Caleb then decides to scoot to the other side to get a better look at people whilst still talking to Grace.

It's not Graceful, though. He doesn't get far with his butt-scooting.

Grace
"Because. I never come here. It's slimy in malls. But every time I do, I run into somebody."

Well, yeah. It's not that uncommon to run into people in malls. Malls are typically full of people. But not Mages.

"What's your name, Mystery Man?"

Nicholas
Nick rounds a corner.  Nick passes the bookstore, in spite of the fact that the windows are lined with bookshelves and old pulp advertisements; this is how deep in thought he is.  Or how distracted by something else he is.  You decide.

Nick ends up somewhere far down the way and realizes he has no idea where the bookstore is.  He consults one of the floorplan maps available of the mall stores, and tracks his path back to the place with a fingertip.

Back he comes.

And then, finally here he is, passing through the front archway.

Caleb
"... if you didn't run into anyone at the mall, I think it would be because the mall is closed."

His brows knit together again. He scoots over again and again before finally deciding to give up on that, get to his knees, and meander to the other aisle where the woman he poked with the book was. He keeps talking to Grace.

"I'm Caleb, what's your name?"

Grace
"Grace," she says. Her mouth curves up a bit when he calls her on the absurdity of what she's saying.

"Well. I run into people all the time. But few who resonate."

She doesn't quite stop saying the absurd, but yes. There is a point to this. The average person overhearing their conversation might come to the conclusion that Grace has a few marbles missing, but she's okay with carrying that burden. She follows along as Caleb walks.

Nicholas
[Alertness?]

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

Nicholas
There's a voice that is beginning to become familiar; many of Denver's voices are, finally.  Regardless: Nick hears Grace, and he hears Grace talking to someone he doesn't know.  By the time she and Caleb are nearing Nick he is at one of the bookshelves in the metaphysics section, arms folded as his eyes scan the titles.

He is not content with whatever he sees, apparently.

Nevertheless, he hears them and so he pokes his head over the top of the nearby shelves to look for them and determine whether Grace is in the mood to be interrupted, and for how long.  Not every social outing welcomes add-ons, after all.

Caleb
"... is everyone else inaudible?"

He... does not get what she is saying. It's clear on his face and he shifts awkwardly from one side to the next, off in his own little bubble of being vaguely oblivious and having, well, missed.

Grace
Grace notices Nick hanging out there. She doesn't understand why he might be hanging back. At the most, she attributes his reticence to something that makes sense to her. The last time they talked, she had to get away before starting a fight. Maybe he just doesn't want to poke a bear.

But Caleb, he is a mystery. A new thing to turn over and see if it is a threat.

"Inaudible to the sixth sense? Yes."

Caleb
[Do I notice Nick as a human person?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[He is not a human. He is a meat popsicle.]

Caleb
"All people resonate in their own way in both a mundane and metaphysical way, they just don't know it yet. They're just not loud enough yet," he says, muses over it and seems like a thoughtful baritone instead of a stern and dismissive one. He doesn't seem to be a dismissive sort. Caleb takes a look around again, past Grace to Nick to Grace noticing Nick.

Nick gets a smile, and a wave. Obviously, Nick and Grace know each other, so they should want to be together and talk, right? Of course right. He smiles like a pleased golden retriever.

Nicholas
Resonance.  Sixth sense.  Nick can catch those words from where he's standing.  And he does indeed remember how things left off last time with Grace; he of course knows that Grace and Pen had a conversation outside the bar, because there is little he and his wife don't share with each other.

Nonetheless, Grace's friend gives him a smile and a wave and Nick, too, smiles and waves at the two of them.  "Hello, Grace," he says, and takes a few steps so that he can find himself on the conversation's periphery.  There is a glance toward Caleb, a friendly incline of his head, a once or twice-over.

Grace
Ahh, good. Caleb is not a complete newbie. She was beginning to wonder.

"Nick. Hello. This is Caleb. I found him just now, wandering the stacks."

There is no friendly smile to greet him, not anymore. Just sticking to the facts for now, because that's how things go. There is more to discuss than just Caleb, but perhaps it's best not to do that in front of someone who might be a Technocratic plant, for all his talk about metaphysics.

Caleb
He leans forward, puts a hand on the ground, and stands up to his rather impressive height of... average. He's a couple inches over five and a half feet tall. Dark hair, dark eyes, and of an indeterminate ethnic origin.

There is a strange sort of tension, though, or rather he does notice the lack of smile from Grace.

"... you're not friends, are you?"

There's always a delay in his voice, a delay when the baritone is talking because it seems like he's taking the time to process what is going around, as though the world is full of data. As though everything is worth noticing and everything is worth latching on to.

Nicholas
"Nice to meet you, Caleb," Nick says, and he extends a hand toward the other man.  "I'm Nick Hyde."

He is not as suspicious of Technocratic plants: at least if one takes him at face value.  His regard for Caleb seems warm enough, at this point.

That is, until Caleb asks a very direct question and Nick's brows furrow in a wince.  He glances sidelong at Grace.  "We're on the same side and everything," he says, "but there's been a little tension recently, yeah.  It's nothing you have to worry about, Caleb."  When talking to people with observation skill but little tact, sometimes honesty is best.

Grace
"What Nick said," she says, because he's better at explaining things by far.

Then, she pulls out her cell phone. Types away at it for a bit.

Grace
Nick's phone alerts him however it is set to, with the following text messages.

Some shit's gone down. I need to tell you about it.

Meet me at Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 203, after the bookstore?

Caleb
There is a hand to shake! Ah, he knows what to do with this, and he reaches forward to take the hand offered and he grasps- firm and comfortable with work. His hands aren't soft. Up down. Up down. Stop. He nods once it's done, a confirmation to himself. Aha! Done right!

"Oh," he says once Nick gives his appraisal of the situation, and there is a lag in that moment before he replies, "I'm sorry that happened, I hope things get better." It's a genuine statement, devoid of all things resembling sarcasm not unlike when you're talking to a four year old. It's rare to have that lack of guile.

Grace isn't saying much, just three words and then whips out her phone.

"Oh! Where did you get that?"

Surprise, delight.

Nicholas
It's rare to have that lack of guile, and the slight curl at the corner of Nick's mouth indicates that he might appreciate it, even.  "I hope they do too," he says.

There is a vibration there in his pocket, and Nick after a moment pulls his phone out of his own pocket and glances at the screen.  He tucks it away again moments later, glancing amused between Caleb and Grace.  "I was here to get a present for my sister, actually, so I can't really stick around.  I'll hopefully see you around though, Caleb," he says.

Grace
He's getting a present for his sister, can't stick around. Sounds like an excuse, maybe, but whatever. That's not important at all. His knowing what she's discovered, that matters.

Caleb asks where she got her phone, and she says: "Online. Amazon."

Amazon has everything, and despite it being a similar interface with consumerist religious practices? At least you don't have to deal with actual people.

"It's a OnePlus Three."

Caleb
"That would be cool, I hope to see you around too, Nick Hyde," all one name. "There's some cool books here, there is probably one she'll like."

Grace tells him it's a OnePLus three... which makes Caleb's brows knit together and makes a frown cross his face.

"So... it's... a four?"

Nicholas
"Hope you both enjoy your day."  Nick waves at the two of them and then circles back around to the other end of the stacks, wandering farther into the bookstore.

Nicholas
Once Nick has left, Grace receives a reply text:

Another day, maybe.  Don't have long today.  I'll text you later and we can meet up in a couple of days.

Grace
There's something off about Caleb. Which is a realization not unlike the pot's upon figuring out that the kettle is black.

"I think maybe that's what they were going for, when naming their company OnePlus."

"You're new here," she says, with a fair bit of confidence. She knows everyone in Denver. "Where are you from?"

Caleb
Where was he from? This makes him think. Makes him legitimately think. While doing so the young man moves to start picking up the books he;d strewn out on the floor and putting them away carefully. There's no hesitation in knowing where they went, though. It's the Dewey decimal system, he doesn't have any difficulty with it because the locations were obvious.

Where is he from?

"... like, my home town?"

Grace
Grace shrugs. "Sure."

"Home town, the last place you visited before coming to Denver... Whatever. I'm curious. Unless you don't want to say."

Caleb
"Fifteen miles outside of Moab. Have you been? Utah's really nice, I caught a ride down here with a couple truck drivers. Where are you from?"

Grace
"I'm from Phoenix, Arizona," she says. "So, pretty close to where you started out, I guess."

Poor kid. As guileless as he is, to have hitched his way here?

"No car, huh? Do you need a ride somewhere?"

Caleb
"No, I don't have anywhere to be. Thank you though," he says to Grace. She says she's from Phoenix and he nods once, twice, a third time as though he needs to log that away in his memory.

"I think I might stay in Denver for a little while. Should I?"

Grace
She grimaces a bit, looks down to some detail on his clothing. "Maybe. It's not any worse than other places are, but... It can be pretty awful. We'll try to keep you safe."

Hi, welcome to the hellhole, just like the hellhole you're from! Want a basket of cookies? Some pumpkin bread?



Caleb
"Safety isn't a guaranteed part of the human experience."

Not hard. Not harsh. Just fact, like he was reporting some grand truth that was clear and curt and concise. The human experience was not rife with safety, this was a myth. He doesn't sound jaded or edged or woeful or pained. His clothes aren't new by any means. That coat looks like it's walked more than its fair share of marathons.

"Don't worry about it."

Grace
"Don't tell me what to worry about," she says, little lift of a smile.

"It's never guaranteed, no. But it can be... lured. With promises of cake. Or maybe safety likes whiskey?"

She banishes that notion, a moment after saying it. "No. Safety doesn't like whiskey. Hah."

Caleb
"I don't think I've ever had whiskey," he muses, "what's not to like about it?"

Grace
"Never? Really? Hmm. Well, it's alcohol, so it can make you feel like doing unsafe things. But aside from that...."

Mmm. Moab. Utah. There's a reason why somebody his age might not have ever had a drink before, right?

"It burns when it goes down. The first drink, heh."

Caleb
"... none of that sounds pleasant at all, I think that safety might be right in avoiding whiskey."

He makes a face like he's really not to sure about this whole whiskey thing. He's doing to have to think about it, and the thought it clearly written across his face that, perhaps, this should be something he should avoid.

Grace
"Up to you, man. My drug of choice is caffeine. You have had coffee, right?"

Mormon test. They are abstinent when it comes to all things addictive.

"Well, that and weed. It's even legal here, so..."

Caleb
He shakes his head no. And then, again, for the legal weed. He blinks a couple of times, puts his hand back in his pockets and shrugged.

"We didn't really have that stuff at home. I didn't have chocolate before I left, either."

Grace
"Do you wanna?"

Look at Grace, right now. Pushing drugs on the poor sheltered newbie. Drugs like chocolate. And coffee. Her face just lights up at the prospect of introducing somebody to coffee, of all things.

"It's okay if you don't."

You'll just ruin her day, is all.

Caleb
"Okay, that sounds good. Just let me get my backpack from the front- do you know a place that makes coffee?"

Oh, does Grace Evans know some place that makes coffee? HA.

Discomfort

Nicholas Hyde
[Init!  +6.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés Sepúlveda
[jfc nick +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas has heard much more recently about Andrés than he has seen him.  The last time he saw the Etherite, it was in a fit of madness: he and Pen had left the man at Kiara's, still raving about spiders and gods know what else, blind to the rest of the world.  For Nick, that had been terrifying, less because he could imagine such a madness for himself than because he could imagine it for Pen.

Well, guilt had him put off checking in just a little longer.  Sometimes it works that way.

By the time he'd texted Andrés it was months after the fact, but it was there: just to check in on him and see how he was doing.  An hour later, here they are in an area off of Colfax, the part that didn't gentrify (or has yet to.)  The bar Andrés had suggested is a ramshackle old building that brings to mind this area's history of colonization and cowboys, though it would be hard to point to what exactly gives it that impression.

A neon sign in the window has a Bud Lite neon sign and another, printed up and over the door, that says simply: BAR.  ("AR," more accurately, since the B is partially burnt out.)

Nick is already there when Andrés arrives, though by the look of his beer he hasn't been there all that long. The inside is dim and full of the sort of people who are given to day drinking at dive bars on Sundays, along with the smell of old wood and stale beer.  Nick is seated in a booth, texting someone on his phone, his beer barely touched beside him.

Andrés Sepúlveda
It takes Andrés a bit longer to get from one place to the other now that he lives out in the damned suburbs. His phone number hasn't changed even if the physical location of his belongings has. No small amount of time has passed since Nick and Pen dropped the addled Scientist off at Kiara's place, and for not reaching out as Nick has, neither has he. Texting goes both ways.

Having two students of discordant traditions and a government job strikes most people as being excuse enough to lose track of social obligations. Andrés is not a man who believes in excuses, but then again, Andrés claims not to believe in plenty of other things the average person accepts as reality without too much pain.

He comes in from a clear, brisk day dressed in his typical weekend attire, loafers and jeans and a bomber jacket thrown over the cardigan he had already thrown on over a button-down shirt. His hair and beard are in need of a trim, and he's wearing sunglasses and a knit cap. Were not for the silver run rampant through his black hair and the self-assuredness of his walk, one might mistake his height as being indicative of his age.

His resonance precedes him, so when he approaches Nick and claps him on the shoulder in greeting it isn't exactly a surprise.

"Nicholas!" he says. "You're alive!"

Nicholas Hyde
It was around a month ago now that Nick chose to climb a mountain in his bare feet with no food or water for three days.  Nick has never suffered a major injury and so it surprised him, how slow his feet were to heal and how slow his body was to recover from the ordeal.  He was exhausted for weeks afterward; the scabs have finally all peeled off his feet for good, leaving the skin raw and pink and scaly.

The Chakravat's resonance precedes him too: and it feels different.  More complex.

Nick is good at looking as though he could fit in just about anywhere.  He is young but not too young, racially ambiguous, and today he is dressed in a pair of grey chinos and a heavy perl knit sweater over a T-shirt: it would be difficult to determine whether he is the sort of man who has been coming to bars like this all his life or not.

A hand claps over his shoulder and Nick looks around, a curl flipping about in Andrés' direction first and preceding Nick's gaze.  There is a little smile that pulls on the corner of his mouth at the sight of the Etherite there.  "Hello," he says.  "I could say the same for you.  How are you holding up?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Forward momentum has Andrés dropping into the booth across from Nick about the time that Nick has started to sight the source of the physical contact. He swipes the cap from his head, then the sunglasses, building a small pile of belongings on the side of the table closer to the wall.

How is he holding up.

"I'm very much alive," he says, "which is more than I can say for some of our neighbors in Colorado Springs."

With that the absence of alcohol becomes a more pressing concern than current events. He drums his hands on the table one two three four five times then slides out of the booth again.

"Hold that thought."

Nick has about three minutes before his compadre returns with tequila that he intends to share.

Nicholas Hyde
Drinking with Andrés is dangerous, of which Nick is well aware: the Etherite is a little smaller than Nick is, but somehow (alcohol tolerance, let's not speak of it as though it is a mystery) can drink nearly double what Nick can.  With fewer effects.

Nick's dark eyebrows arch as Andrés mentions their neighbors in Colorado Springs (he hasn't heard) and he reaches for his glass of beer.  He eyes the Etherite over the rim of the glass as he takes a swallow or two from it, pulling at his upper lip with his lower one to rid it of foam once he has lowered the beer again.

"I - " he starts, just as the other man instructs him to hold his thought, and disappears.

Nick's formerly untouched glass is nearly half drained by the time Andrés returns, and with tequila.

Andrés Sepúlveda
And so he does. One hand is responsible for the shot glasses and the other for the can of shitty Mexican beer he procured to tide him over in between rounds. A shot comes to rest in front of Nick and the Etherite returns to his spot across the table, setting down the beer and lifting the shot in solemn observance of custom.

"Salud," he says, clinking glasses with the Chakravat before knocking his back.

If there were a handbook for dealing with a Mad Scientist, one of the first chapters would warn against attempting to keep up with them in a drinking contest. Their blood is of questionable composition as it is and they have ways of dealing with adverse reactions that the average person does not.

At any rate, once the first round is put away and they're settled in, Andrés is back to the original topic as if they had never left it.

"Does the name 'Order of the Falcon' mean anything to you?"

Nicholas Hyde
"Salud," Nick returns, though his tongue is far clumsier with the word.  The glasses clink, a delicate sound, and they both slug down the drink within a second later.

Nick's eyes have not yet begun to grow hazy, though they will in short order, a combination of the tequila and the heat in the place, the lingering smell of smoke harkening back to the days when it was legal to smoke in bars.  Nick may be good at looking like the kind of man who has grown up in bars like this, and maybe he did, but he doesn't spend much time in them now.  "Crunchy" is the word for people like Nick, when they aren't being called hippies.

"No," he says, chasing his tequila shot with a swallow of his beer.  "Should it mean something to me?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
"If we're talking 'should' in the sense that you're under some sort of obligation to know what it is... no. They're a secret society for rich white boys, meaning it's impossible to get in if you're not--" He starts ticking off the conditions on the hand not currently manipulating the beer bottle. "--rich, white, and young."

Back to the table goes his hand.

"If we're talking 'should' in the sense that that's a desirable state and it's probably in everyone's best interests if--" Some inner thought cuts him off, and here comes the canned laugh he saves for moments like this. "Oh, right. I forgot where I was for a minute. Let me back up. You are aware there was a changing of the guards out in Colorado Springs in the very recent past, and the individual currently considered to be--" Air quotes. "--'in charge' is a Verbena woman who may or may not have killed several newly Awakened Willworkers over the spring and summer, supposedly sacrificed one of her students to a spirit called the Keeper of Secrets, and may or may not have something to do with said secret society for rich white boys? Any of that..." Quick sip of beer. "Any of that drift your way, at all?"

Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyebrows were already raised; they remain in this state as Andrés speaks and continues on to tell him about a Verbena who is sacrificing to a spirit.  "No.  I haven't heard about any of that," he says.  "How did we...how did anyone not hear about that?"

One of his hands drifts upward and begins to wind around and tug on a curl.  Its full length when straightened reaches nearly to his shoulders, though once it is released again it springs back up to where it was hanging about his ear.  "I haven't heard anything from any of the spirits I've spoken to either, though they might have been reluctant to tell me about a spirit like that, if they knew anything about it at all."

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Yeah, I don't know shit about spirits."

Raise your hand if this is news.

"And I wouldn't have known anything about it at all if the girl in HR didn't invite me to a poker game back in June or... whenever it was. I think it was June." Anyway. "A couple of Colorado Springs's cops were there, and Awakened, and were worried someone was targeting apprentices specifically. Angela Avella, she's one of yours. She can probably tell you more than I can about what tipped them off, but when I went digging through their county's ME records, it looked like someone had tried to cover their paper trail. All I was able to find was, like, one strand of hair and half a fingerprint, so I passed that shit on to Grace to see if she could make anything of it. Next time I see her in person, I'm at the park with the kids, she and I start discussing it, they do what they do and blow it way out of proportion and start running around like a goddamn air raid siren is going off, I asked if she knew anyone who wanted to buy a couple of apprentices, she said she didn't, next thing I know those two knuckleheads are banging on my door at eleven o'clock at night because they summoned some dead girl's spirit and she spilled everything about the Verbena woman to them and I'm getting a headache just talking about this."

Deep breath.

"On the one hand, I didn't see Colorado Springs rushing in to help us when Alexander was missing. On the other hand, the fact that Avella knows about this and isn't worried makes me think the kids are maybe... eh... fifteen percent right to be concerned. Not 'freak right out and interrupt Doctor Sepúlveda and Kiara and then bitch and moan when neither of them puts pants on for the family meeting' concerned, but--"

He holds up his fingers thisfar apart and stops talking for long enough for Nick to start digesting some of what he just said.

Nicholas Hyde
"I've been meaning to meet with Angela," Nick says, and his voice is thoughtful, his eyes directed down at the pitted table and at his half-empty glass.  He listens to the rest, and his mouth curls again, this faint amusement that indicates he might be taking Ned and Margot's curiosity in stride moreso than Andrés is.

"Can you blame them?  They're probably worried, if somebody is murdering a bunch of kids who are recently Awakened."

He continues to listen: fifteen percent right, interrupting Andrés and Kiara.  "Are you sure that Angela knows about the Verbena woman?  That she's the one who is behind all of that?"  A beat; a little divet appears on Nick's cheek as he bites the inside of it.  "It's too soon to know what - to know what might be happening for sure, but use of Mind can...well, it's not outside the realm of possibility that she's doing this and has the whole chantry over there blind to the fact."

Andrés Sepúlveda
Andrés pulls a face that seems to say no he's not sure but he has no reason to believe she doesn't know. It's a nuanced expression that dissipates as Nick chews on the soft tissue inside his mouth.

"I--" He says, snapping his fingers and pointing at Nick. "--did not think of that. You're so smart. Let's celebrate."

More tequila, apparently. He gets up and goes to procure it, taking the empties with him. He's not gone as long as he was the first time, and there's no verbal ceremony either. Just a lift and a clink before he tucks away his second shot and starts to play with the zipper on his bomber jacket without any indication that he's going to remove it.

"I called Angela to ask her about the Order of the Falcon, and when I asked her about this Keeper of Secrets, which Kiara tells me is bad news but that she and someone named Will--" He pronounces the poor kid's name Wee-ill, like it's got two syllables. He really could not give two shits about ever getting rid of his accent. "--already have a relationship with, we got on the subject of the dead apprentice's spirit and her pointing the finger at the Verbena woman, Evelyn, and Angela didn't seem too fazed by it. So Iiii don't know if it sank in or not." A quick pull off his beer. "I did send Ned in to see what the deal with the Order of the Falcon is. Since he's got such a fire under his ass about running off into dangerous situations and dragging Margot with him."

Nicholas Hyde
Smart, Andrés says, and the smile that he gets in return is a little wan.  Weary, even, though even if Andrés were to notice (he likely won't), Nick does not appear inclined to offer comment.  When the Etherite returns, Nick is studying his watch, a beautiful bit of steel chased with bronze: a gift perhaps from his metal-working wife.

He is slower to take the second shot, though he does take it, and this one is not accompanied by the little cough that had followed the first.

"I don't know if it sank in or not either," he says.  "But I was planning to talk to Angela soon anyway.  I can bring it up and see if...well, if there's any evidence of control or some sort of..."  And here Nick shrugs.  What he does know is that if those things exist it surpasses his knowledge; he does not yet have the vocabulary though he knows it can be done.

His brows lift again as Andrés mentions Ned, and there is this short little laugh that follows.  "So what did Ned have to say, when you sent him off to join the rich white boys?  Is he back yet?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
[perception: just for shits. DO I NOTICE.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4) ( fail )

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Other than spending all of last weekend complaining because I asked him to do something, he didn't have much of anything to say about it. He did ask for a bunch of James Bond gadgets before he went in, like... invisible ink and wireless vital sign monitoring and a... a... an EMP device that would fit in the sole of his shoe. One of these days I'm going to tell them we're going for ice cream, and really we're going to go to the animal shelter, and I'm going to drop them off at the curb and peel out. I don't care if it's considered abandonment. They're driving me crazy." Beat. "Er."

Okay but Andrés what about the thing you asked Ned to do.

"Anyway, he survived. Got some names, but I forgot to pay attention when he was telling us his boring Naked and Afraid story, so..." He makes what is, coincidentally, the ASL sign for FORGET, with a whoosh sound effect for good measure. That information is gone. "And he got invited to go boar hunting, which... I don't know if 'boar hunting' means something different in English than it does in Spanish, but--" Canned laugh. "--he is so not ready, in either language."

Nicholas Hyde
Invisible ink, wireless vital - at some point while Andrés is telling Nick about these devices his brow furrows just a touch.  It appears to be bemusement rather than judgment of any kind.  "What did Ned expect to do with all that stuff?"  A swallow of beer.  "I guess he could have just wanted to feel like a spy."

Boar hunting, Andrés says, and Nick laughs and begins shaking his head and takes another drink.  HIs beer is going to be empty within the first twenty minutes of them sitting down together.  Andrés has this kind of effect.

"I can't imagine Ned doing either kind.  I didn't even realize there were boar around here.  The kind with tusks, that is."

Grace
Grace thought that she was bad. Well, she is. I mean, when she wants to seriously annoy people into responding, their phones come back to life upon shutdown and won't stop mooing. But the Doc is close.

hey

Hey

nick and i are going to the bar get over here

hey come to the bar

grace

grace

grace

grace where are you

grace i just turned a food processor into a lifespan GPS thingamaboobie it says you're still in your chair

come to the bar

Fucking hell.

Chances are, if she turns her phone off, he'll just turn it on again, too. He'd have that ability, wouldn't he? It's not like the things are alien mysteries, eh? There's always throwing the thing in the toilet, but then...

Why not?

She is trying to be more sociable, isn't she?

Okay, okay, dude, chill. I'll be there.

That doesn't sound... sociable, does it?

:P

Better.

Thus it is that Grace finally meets up with the two of them, having been badgered out of her meditation on the nature of Doritos and Mountain Dew Code Red. The thing that walks into the bar is disheveled, with rumpled jeans and black t-shirt that look like they've just been retrieved from a clean laundry pile. They have.

Andrés Sepúlveda
I guess he could have just wanted to feel like a spy.

"Or an idiot," he says.

For the first time since they sat down, Andrés removes his cellphone from his pocket and starts touching the screen. For someone who can't sit still for longer than five seconds, he's been doing an admirable job of not tearing the label off his beer bottle or shredding coasters or whatever other destructive activities he could be doing with his hands.

As for boars:

"There aren't," he says. "Maybe they go to Arizona or Texas for that. Or maybe I just drink too much. Speaking of."

Having sent Grace what is most likely the fortieth obnoxious SMS in the last hour, Andrés drops the phone on the table and gets up. His beer is empty, and he doesn't grab the empty shot glasses. Either he's not going to bring back tequila, or he forgot about them. It's hard to tell until he comes back.

When he comes back he has a bottle and a glass of beer in one hand and two shots in the other. If Nick protests the tequila, Andrés just shrugs and lines it up in front of himself.

"When you talk to Angela--" Shot. Whoo. "--it's important to know, I think, that the Verbena's name is Evelyn Murray, she has two kids Garret and... some other Yankee na--GENNIFER. With a G. Garrett is missing, Gennifer--oh there she is. GRACIA."

Like she could miss a booth where two disciples are sitting.

"--Gennifer isn't."

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas does not protest the tequila.  Something about the idea of human sacrifice seems to have made him want to drink.  He takes the proffered shot and knocks it back, and he accepts the glass of beer as well.

"Garrett?" Nick asks, and he glances up from his watch and meets the Etherite's eyes as the other man offers up the names.  There is something wary there beneath the furrow of his brows, behind the sharp look in his eyes that glints birdlike in the dim light of the bar.  "Are you sure it wasn't Grant, maybe?"

A long shot, but: perhaps.

"What about Gennifer?"

And here he spies Grace a moment after Andrés calls her name, and he lifts a hand and waggles his fingers toward her.

Grace
It might be easy to miss Nick. He's a bit quiet and unassuming. Andrés, on the other hand...

"Are you done blowing up my phone, man?"

She slides an eye towards Nick's waggled fingers, and... while she thinks hard about what expression to use, the one that's on her face is intense concentration. Maybe anger. But then, oh, there is a confused smile.

"I think Garrett and Grant are two different people," Grace says. "I think. We talking about that shit in Colorado Springs?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Is he sure it wasn't Grant, maybe?

This would be a good time to break out his What Did I Do Last Night-ometer, but he left it at home. So he rummages through his pockets until he finds an old prescription pad from when he was, you know, a pathology resident. Which means it's not only expired, but it's only good in the state of Maryland. Whatever. He's just scribbling on it to jog his memory, not to hook Nick up with a month's supply of hydrocodone.

[mind 1: real quick roll to make sure he doesn't botch this and end up with all of september's paradox punching him in the face i'm going to finish the post in a minute.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 3 )

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Who the fuck is Grant?"

That answers that question.

What about Gennifer?

"What about Gennifer?"

Are you done blowing up my phone, man?

He does not scoot over to make room for the Virtual Adept, which means she either gets to sit next to Nick or she has to shove Andrés, who has turned his attention from the prescription pad, now back in his pocket, to his phone, now being battered by his thumbs.

Bloop.

"What?"

Nicholas Hyde
Intense concentration, maybe anger: that's what he sees on Grace as she makes her way over to the two of them.  Nick doesn't miss it, even three tequilas and a beer in.  He is still the one to make room for Grace when she finally reaches their table, and scoots over to hem himself in against the wall.  It's a decision he may regret later, when he looks back and wonders why he didn't leave when he started to feel drunker than he wanted.

"Yeah, the Colorado Springs stuff," he tells Grace as she sits.

"Grant is a kid who...well, I'll tell you about it later, I guess.  I'd rather focus on this right now."  Deviate too greatly from the topic and they might never return.

"Gennifer...you said that she wasn't missing.  It sounded as though you were planning to say something else, or had more to say about her."

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Oh." A beat. "Dammit, Tequila, we talked about this..."

He takes a slug of beer.

Grace
Nick lets her in. The doc is being himself. All this should make sense, and in a way it does -- extra processing power in her mind being diverted to questions, answered for the time being. No hard feelings anywhere. They're all cool, for now. For whatever counts as 'cool' as far as Dr. Sepúlveda is concerned. She takes the offered seat.

She'd say something snarky about her phone having at least thirty messages by now, mostly 'hey', but Nick wants to stay on target, and that's a sentiment she can get behind.

"Sounded to me like Evelyn might be protecting her son. Like maybe he's a... You know. Up to no good. Mom gets all mother-bear, starts covering shit up, including her son..." Grace shrugs. "Family dynamics playing out with people who have veritable nukes up their sleeves isn't all its cracked up to be?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
"When my kid got caught spray painting the underpass, I didn't turn around and push my apprentice into a rift in the spacetime continuum."

Standards, man.

Nicholas Hyde
"She's sacrificing apprentices to a spirit just to protect her son?  That doesn't add up," Nick says, and his curls sway as there is a little shake of his head.  He is well on his way to tipsy, so a "little shake" is more like a full on jerk of his chin, though he stills rather quickly.

His fingertips are still on the side of his beer glass, and he has yet to sip from it.  "I wonder if...I wonder what Margot and Ned heard from that ghost they contacted.  I wonder if any of the other spirits in the area know about what's going on."

Grace
"Dude, there's some mothers out there," Grace says, and by the tone, she's using the word 'mother' as an expletive. "I'd hate to know what my mom would do if she were Awake. She'd kill people just to keep up the appearance of being normal."

Grace huffs a breath out through her nose. Yeah, that worked out well for her, giving birth to the weirdest kid ever, right?

"Is there any tequila in here for me?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Oh would you look at that someone has to stack up the previous two rounds' worth of shot glasses and exit the booth gee that's too bad. Andrés moves almost comically slow, like Grace is a motion-sensing turret gun masquerading as a person, then bolts from the table.

It means he ends up having to dance around another bar patron to avoid a collision, but he's quicker on his feet than he looks. Being attractive and having an accent lets him get away with more social cock-ups than is probably fair, but given that he's a bit of a madman on a good day...

Well. There's some mild laughter from the stranger and the two part ways without slamming into each other and then he's at the bar and Nick and Grace are alone for a couple of minutes.

Nicholas Hyde
"Well, sure," he says, "but that doesn't...if she were just out to protect her son, I could see killing someone who she perceived as a threat, but I don't...I don't understand why she would perceive the threat from some apprentices, and I also don't see the need for the extra step.  I feel like there's some missing information."

There is still a little furrow to his brow as he bows his head and looks down into his beer glass.  He finally drinks from it as Andrés gets up and leaves the table and somehow avoids scattering both himself and the shot glasses across the bar.

"I guess I'll just have to talk to Angela soon.  I was meaning to anyway."

Grace
"Apprentices may not have much in the way of raw destructive power, no. But they still have access to the most powerful thing of all -- information. Look what Ned and Margot went and did, eh? The word gets out that Apprentices are dying, and all the sudden they all get really interested in what's going on. And thus targets on their backs.

"The fact that a secret-keeping spirit is involved just means there's a piece of information out there that somebody wants kept in the dark. Evelyn's involved, but her son is missing. I don't think she'dkill her son, but then why is he missing?"

Andrés about wipes out the bar on his way to... grabbing more shots? It's a mystery to Grace. But then, that brings up another question -- will he remember any of this conversation tomorrow anyway?

"Be careful. Angela believes the line about this all being a Techy getting trigger happy. She might tell her boss anything we have to say."

Nicholas Hyde
"I'm more interested in hearing what she has to say than in telling her anything," Nick says, and there is a shrug of one of his shoulders that follows his statement.  One of his, though: perhaps he'll feel differently when he meets his Traditionmate face to face.

Perhaps she'll feel differently.  It's difficult to say.

He takes a swallow of his beer at the rest of what Grace has to say, and shrugs again.  "A lot of questions.  Like I said, I think we're missing some information."

Andrés Sepúlveda
He comes back bearing three shots of tequila and no signs of the three already in his system having any sort of effect. He's acting the way he always acts, which if Grace hasn't figured out already means he's used to functioning with his blood alcohol at the level that causes most people to vomit or pass out just means Grace doesn't know him very well.

Again with the lack of pressure on Nick to take his shot. Grace's, however, lands in front of her with a thunk that would have sloshed the fluid over the side if the bartender weren't putting the shots into double glasses.

"Is it later yet?" he asks as he drops himself onto his side of the bar again. Shot. "Because I still don't know who--" He puts up his fist to stifle a belch and then proceeds on as if nothing happened. "--Grant is."

Grace
"I like Angela, don't get me wrong. I think if she were to derail our investigations, it wouldn't be out of malice. I do think she's being duped though, just like a lot of the Mages over there..."

Thunk.

Tequila.

Ahh, good. She lifts the glass and throws it back, because fuck having to think about family. Let's think about how much her throat is on fucking fire.

"Auugh..."

"Grant is... Well, it really depends on whether you mean Grant Junior, or Grant the Third. The Third goes by Nomz, and he is in the care of Sera right at the moment. Grant Junior is a little shit who ran a streaming snuff porn site I deleted, because fuck that."

Nicholas Hyde
A shot is set down in front of him, though Nick doesn't yet reach for it.  He eyes it, though, considering the wisdom of what he is about to do: but he was already lost the moment he entered this bar.  He knew that.  We knew that.  Pen is going to be coming to drive him home.

So he takes up the shot and knocks it back.

"Grant is - well, Grant the Third, I guess, is Grant Junior's son.  He was raised in isolation and helped his father with the coding of the website.  Mostly out of the feeling he needed to pay his father back for raising him, and the fear that his father would kill him if he didn't comply."  Nick blows a hard breath out through his nostrils and takes a swallow from his glass of beer.

"I've been going up to visit him once or twice a week.  Angela was the one who found him.  It's why I was planning to talk to her."

Andrés Sepúlveda
Andrés leans as far back into the bench as he can, which is only about another half-inch or so but he does manage to press himself into the cushy foam to blatantly tip his phone into landscape orientation and fit the other two into the crosshairs of his phone.

"Act like you're having a good time," he says, "I'm documenting how much you suck at holding your liquor and sending it to your wife."

Focus, Dr. Sepúlveda.

"Wait," he puts the phone away again, "how old is this kid?"

Grace
Yup, right when she starts talking about streaming snuff porn sites, that's when Andrés decides to take a picture. Grace, once she realizes what's going on, does not look like she's having a good time. Horrified, is more like it.

So, a tipsy Nick and a weirded-out Grace in that shot, if he took it.

"Dude, no," she says, puts a hand up to protect her face from getting captured like that. He puts his phone away, and yet she's still eyeing him like he might just try again...

"Like, seventeen, eighteen something. He got press-ganged into the family business pretty young though. Like I said, there are some crappy fucking parents out there, man."

Andrés Sepúlveda
"And where is he right now?"

Nicholas Hyde
The expression on Nick's face, in the photo that is sent to his wife, is probably what Pen has begun to expect from outings with Andrés at this point: his eyes are just slightly unfocused, and he is staring off into the ether.  Somewhere off to the side and past Andrés.  There is a glass of beer in his hand.

A moment later his gaze settles on the Etherite again.  "I've had a beer and four shots of tequila!  I can hold my liquor fine."

He takes another swallow from his glass.  "He's...yeah.  Seventeen or eighteen.  He's up in a cabin that Sera has in the mountains.  He's safe, for now.  He's legally dead, though.  We've been talking about ways he can get his life started over again once we can figure out how to keep him safe from his dad."

Grace
"Somewhere. I'm going to have to ask Sera where this cabin of hers is exactly? But I haven't really... uh... had the time."

There's really just... too much going on.

"I tracked Grant Junior all the way to Colorado Springs, speaking of hellholes. He was headed to Texas, it looked like, from some of his purchases. But he started paying for things with cash and went off-grid. I lost him. I'll find him again," she says, pretty sure of herself.

Andrés Sepúlveda
[manip + subterfuge: i'm totally not annoyed that this is the first i'm hearing about this and you people are making me ask questions and give a shit.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 2) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés Sepúlveda
[rolling damage for smacking his head on the bench back]

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

Andrés Sepúlveda
[soak]

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

Andrés Sepúlveda
Andrés is fucking annoyed that this is the first he's hearing about this.

He sigh he lets out to accompany his eyes' ascent to the ceiling is probably the same expression his students see on an hourly basis. That his skull thunks on the back of the booth helps as an auditory cue that he's annoyed, but it also fucking hurts.

"Son of a bitch," he says, rubbing the back of his neck and frowning like the bench did something wrong and not him. "Voy a fumar, regreso en seguida."

And out the back door to the smoking patio he goes.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick can tell, unfortunately, that Andrés is annoyed.  Nick can generally tell when there's a shift in mood, when someone is upset, when someone isn't feeling all that well.  When someone wants to avoid a topic.  Sometimes it's difficult to be insightful.

His brows are already beginning an apologetic furrow when Andrés smacks his head on the back of the bench, swears, and begins to make his way out to the smoking patio.  He makes a low noise in the back of his throat and glances after the other man's back as he makes his retreat.  "Think we should go after him?"

A beat.  "Let me know if you find Junior."

Grace
Voy... go. Fumar? Smoke. Something something something. And then he goes out back. Right.

"I... think we pissed him off somehow."

And that has Grace's hackles up. Whenever people react emotionally in ways that don't make any bloody sense, the fear creeps in.

"He probably wants to go be... by himself? That's the reason why I always leave. When I do. Like that, I mean," she says, sighs. "I'll let you know."

Nicholas Hyde
"I don't think he's pissed, exactly.  Andrés is always kind of ornery," Nick says, and there is a wave of his hand.  Whatever he noticed, he doesn't seem especially worked up about it.  "He'll come back in and he'll have forgotten about it already."

Nick takes another swallow from his glass.  "How are you doing, Grace?"

Grace
"Aside from," she says, wiggles her fingers in the direction of the smoking patio. "I wish I could get these murdering assholes out of my state and get back to.... You know. Stuff."

She looks over at some detail of the ceiling reflected in the mirror behind the bar.

"How's things... with Pen and all? She still pissed off?"

Nicholas Hyde
"We haven't really talked about it, since then," Nick says.  "It's her Tradition business.  If I met someone who had left the Chakravanti, I'm not really sure how I'd feel.  So if she's still upset I can't really fault her."

He drains the remainder of his glass.  "Once we get this cleared up there'll be another thing.  It's that way everywhere."

Grace
If she's still upset, Nick can't fault her. But Grace?

She inhales, still looking at the ceiling behind the mirror. There's so much that's wrong with that whole sentiment. There are people out there who really do give a whole lot of fucks what others are comfortable with when it comes to their own beliefs and practices. That's what started the Technocracy after all, isn't it?

The Traditions are supposed to be better than that. Supposed to be.

But her held breath gets let out as a sigh, not a tirade.

"I guess so," she says, flat and distracted. "When the doc gets back, tell him I'm sorry for whatever."

She slides out of her seat, gets to her feet. "I'm going to go 'voy a fumar' before I say something I don't mean."

Nicholas Hyde
"If you really wouldn't mean it if you said it," Nick says, and a glance slants in Grace's direction as she stands up to get out of the booth, "then that's probably for the best."

He gives his glass a nudge to spin it away from the ring of condensation it is sitting in.  "I'll tell Andrés you had to leave, sure."

Andrés Sepúlveda
So Grace couldn't sit and talk to Nick for five minutes without having to leave. He's not going to hold that against her. Quietly judge her, sure, but he's not a man who holds grudges. He would have to have a far better memory than he actually does, or else not drink to deal with the fact that he is in deep emotional pain and time is taking its sweet damned time healing that particular wound.

He does come back inside, doing so holding the door for a pair of bleach blondes who were out there with him. Both women look like they could bench press him, and they go back to the billiards table they had abandoned while he goes back to the booth.

"Leave?" he asks. "Why'd you have to leave?" Plop. "Sit down, asshole, Penelope's going to be here in like two minutes and it's your turn to buy." A beat. He looks straight at Nick. "I leave you two alone for five minutes..."

Grace
She shouldn't even have asked the question. That was her whole point, wasn't it? That there's too many other, more important things to worry about than meaningless squabbles over who is in what Tradition.

But it does matter to her. Elliot matters to her. Unity among their people in Denver, that matters to her possibly more than anything.

And then, Andrés is back. With bad news. She stops in her tracks on her way out, but only to give him the look of severe discomfort. "Pen's why I'm leaving. I don't want a fight. It's for the best, honestly."

It's your turn to buy, he says, so she digs around in her pocket, pulls out a wallet, slaps a few twenties down in front of him.

Andrés Sepúlveda
And he looks from Nick back to Grace.

"So don't fight with her! Is that... Is that really that hard?"

He missed something, apparently. Pushes the money back at her.

"I don't want your blood money."

Nicholas Hyde
There is a look from Andrés to Grace and then back again.  Nick glances toward his empty beer glass.  Longingly.

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nicholas Hyde
[Oops.  Ignore that roll.]

Andrés Sepúlveda
[he was totally trying to stealthily sober up, wasn't he. LANDO.]

Grace
Her cash gets shoved back at her, so she picks it back up. Promptly turns away from them as the twist in her gut gets worse. Yes. That's pretty much the point of leaving. It would be that hard, if Pen's in a mood to go there. Two minutes? Not much time. She walks over to the bartender and gives lays down the money, to order them some more shots on her dime.

Whatever. Blood money? He doesn't know the half of it.

Bartenders though? They don't really care where the money comes from.

Andrés Sepúlveda
[lol rolling "empathy," maybe we can botch two rolls today.]

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

Kiara Woolfe
You'll never again in your life meet a woman who could so capably stroll into a dive bar (or, in all honestly, any bar in any town) and somehow manage to bring with her the sensation that regardless of time or season; the bloom of Spring and vitality had just erupted right then and there. There's also a particular sort of charisma that flows along with the pagan, it can't be denied.

Those boots take steps inside and there's eyes on the figure with wild, tousled hair and a red mouth. One that curls at the edge when it takes in the vantage before it. The brunette begins to thread her way toward the bar and a hip settles against it.

A thin scarf that seemed more decorative than substantial was unwound from her neck. A familiar figure manifests as Kiara sets a boot on a stool and sets money on the counter. Dark, expressive eyes find her; linger on Grace for a moment and the Verbena pivots just so: "Grace Evans, as I live and breathe." The healer's fingernail slides over a menu, taps something and there's a nonverbal response from the bartender.

Our scene unfolds, the lady enters and orders a drink.

Kiara's attention, momentarily, cast over the other female's shoulder. "Are you engaging in bad habits without me?"

Grace
[Obviously, something has happened between Grace and Pen. What that something might be, Andrés can continue to wonder about. But aside from that, Grace is pretty damned uncomfortable. Never quite at home in social situations, that one, even when everyone involved is perfectly happy and friendly and getting along. Now that people most assuredly are not, she just wants to gtfo.]

Andrés Sepúlveda
He watches her go, his expression neutral save for the fact that he has his tongue pressed into the back of an incisor to keep him from harrying her on her way out the door, and a minute stitch has pulled tauter between his brows. He doesn't know what just happened, but if Nick wants him to know, he'll say something.

In the meantime Andrés sighs, this time without almost cracking his skull open on the sturdy booth wall, and removes his cellphone from his pocket again. This time it's to use as a prop. A stand-in for a tape recorder, perhaps.

"Idea for an experiment," he says.

He still has beer. Poor Nick does not.

One of Kiara's bad habits looks over his shoulder towards the bar, makes eye contact without changing his expression, and waves his sleeping phone before ducking back into the bar.

".......... stop having ideas."

Grace
"Kiara," she says, and the look on her face telegraphs that she is tired, that things are woefully not right. The bartender lines up three shots next to her at the bar. "Save me, and take these with you to the boys?"

"I have to get out of here."

Pen will be here any minute...

"Like, now."

Nicholas Hyde
A sigh puffs out of Nick; blown upward, it rustles through the curls that corkscrew out over his forehead.  He rests his fingertips on his beer as he casts a glance over to the bar.  "Sorry about that," he says to the Etherite.  "She ran into me and Pen when we were at a play last month and had Kalen - Elliot? - along with her.  I guess he's leaving the Order and Pen was angry about it.  Grace is angry that Pen was angry.  That's really it."

Nick follows Andrés' wave to its natural conclusion, the Verbena, and there is a flicker of a pleased smile before he lifts a hand to wave toward her.  She is another face he has not seen for months yet.

"Your ideas do seem to get you into trouble more often than not."

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Okay. Okay okay. Indulge me in one more for the road. The proverbial... the road I'm not actually getting on and using, because I'm not leaving. Just... the concept of ideas, it's leaving. In whatever ideas travel in. One more, ready?"

He might be starting to feel the alcohol a little bit.

"I quit this Science shit, change my name, maybe start, eh... I wear a mustache, you know, so I can twirl my finger around it--" Pantomime. "--when I'm thinking, NOT OF IDEAS, just... whatever normal people think of, what brand of cat food to buy the cat, there's a cat component to this idea, and instead of teaching wide-eyed little baby idiots how to break the laws of reality, I teach... anatomy. Human anatomy. At a community college. In Vermont. Yeah. That's... that's what I should do. There's no possible way that can get me into trouble."

Kiara Woolfe
Some of that easy flirtation ebbs with the look on Grace's face. Kiara's eyes ticking over it and beyond to Andrés and Nicholas for a beat. There's a brief cant of her head, a ghosting smile before her focus returns to the other woman. She ignores her own drink as it's set down in front of her (wine, of course, it had to be red wine for the Verbena) for a moment and her hand finds Grace's shoulder.

Brief, bracing. A sweep of Kiara's perfume. "Of course." She squeezes, just the once. Easy to forget, sometimes, that beneath the glamorous lacquer was another layer. "Go, let me deal with these two. Grace," this, Kiara's parting commentary as she collects together glasses to juggle.

"It was good to see you. Take care of yourself," Another brief survey of her face. "We'll talk, soon."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyebrows arch, waggle as though to indicate that he is ready to hear whatever idea Andrés is about to throw out.  The skeptical slant of his mouth suggests that he is not at all sure about this idea even before he hears it.

"So instead of teaching wide-eyed baby idiots how to break the laws of reality, you'll trade it for teaching wide-eyed baby idiots about bone structure and basic life skills?"  A flicker of a smile, here.  "Are you getting that tired of Science, Andrés?"

Grace
She nods. "Thanks so much. Yeah. We should totally get together," she says. Just not right now... "You, me, a bottle of wine, and a hot spring to dip our feet into? Sound good?"

Right. That sounds really good.

"I think so, at least." A weary smile.

And then, she is officially, finally, out the door.