Halima Rahal

Riley
[Morning routine:  Alter Ego, Mind 2, taking all the time in the world, threshold 4, diff -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Riley
[extending]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Riley
[and again, NO GUTS NO GLORY RILEY YOU DIDN'T NEED BRUNCH]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Riley
[Riley has 6 "resonance stealth" to last the scene, otherwise she registers as a Sleeper until she casts/takes down the effect]

requiem aeternam interrupta
RULES (Full credit to Kai via Damon as always):
1. There is no post order, but please only post once for each post I make unless I say otherwise.
2. This is gonna be a pretty laid-back one-shot, but do try to be timely on posts.  Within 10 minutes and if there is combat of some sort, declare/roll in 2 minutes or less.I will give a polite warning if we start getting too late with these.
3. You are free to multi-task, so long as you can abide by the above strictures.
4. This scene...frankly, is more mood than a lot of risk.  However, there is some potential risk depending on what the PCs might do.  I don't anticipate combat but you never know; psychological and mental risks are ALWAYS in play with my scenes.  :D If you decide you want to bow out based on that I am completely fine.
5. Please PM or IM me with anything you want to be off-limits; phobias, triggers, themes, etc.  Also PM with any relevant Merits or Flaws (Nightmares, Phobias, etc.) or any active magical effects (wards, Life enhancement, et. al) your Mage has going on your person.  If you need to roll those, or Nightmares or the like, do so now.  If none of these apply, no need to PM me with “None”
7. Please keep track of your own health, Quintessence, WP, etc.
8. We are at the Denver Museum of Natural Science.  Figure out why you're there and post yourselves in!]]

Fr. Echeverri­a
One of the teenage boys who belongs to the after school program at the Church of the Good Shepherd got into a fight with another boy from the city school district not in the parking lot of the Denver Museum of Natural Science but in the food court. They hadn't even purchased tickets to go in. The story goes that the boy who isn't a parishioner was sitting at a table with his girlfriend when the boy who is a parishioner walked up to him and pushed him out of his chair.
His mother is dead and his father works one full-time job and two part-time jobs to support him and his three sisters. His father called Father Echeverría after museum security called him. It was either he go down to the police station or someone come in and physically collect him. The other boy is eighteen years old and doesn't want to press charges.
The priest has several hours between the noon mass and the afternoon mass. If something happens he can just have Deacon Zavala do it.
At the time of the incident Father Echeverría is walking out of the museum with a sullen-looking sixteen-year-old boy at his side. The priest is dressed all in black and has his hands in the pockets of his slacks. The boy wasn't wearing a jacket when he showed up. He has the priest's barn coat on now.

Riley
Why in the world would Riley be at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science?  Probably for the science part, but there's not a lot there that appeals to her personal interest in science.  Nature, history, these aren't really her "bag" see.  There's a health science section on the third floor that comes kind of close, and a space science area on the main floor that comes a little closer.
Maybe it's just curiosity that has her wandering inside to the line to pay $15 for a ticket to wander around some more.  Maybe she picked up on some unknown resonance and decided to discretly check it out.
It's none of those things, really.  The building is a new place she's never been into before and she wants to explore.
She's through the line now, standing on the second floor landing between the escalators, not looking at the people (not really) but looking at the massive skeleton of a whale suspended over the first floor.
And seeing people through the gaps in its bones.  Just another person in the crowd, a tall woman with long brown hair, a too big nose, dressed in a light jacket, t-shirt, jeans, and black-and-white Converse high-tops.  Exploring.
[awareness!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
Grace is at the museum today because it's been too long since she's been. No real reason per se.
Obviously, when there is no reason for anything, the universe still has its own reasons, its own way. Mages appear when they need to.
She's on her way in when Pan is on his way out, with what's obviously a bratty kid in tow. One of the shepherd's flock gone astray and pissed off about that. Been there, oh yes.
The Adept is dressed in jeans and that grey turtleneck jacket, innocuous and hard to remember to the Sleepers around them. She waves to the priest, but his charge will likely not even notice.

Serafi­ne
Here is the flash of something absolutely surreal: just outside the glass doors where the patrons and hurrying out and hurrying in - a Cultist of Ecstasy.  She is smoking a cigarette.  The cigarettes has dark blue paper and a gold foil band around the filter.  Her long hair is pulled back from her face and twisted into a thick and rather messy brad.  She has a thick spike through the cartilage of her right ear and a bar that pierces her left ear in an artful three-places and she's dress for the cold in, you know, summertime clothes.  Denim cut-offs and herringbone-patterned thigh-high fishnets held up by black lace garters and a loose white t-shirt over black lingerie and cropped leather jacket because why the hell not.
Sera is talking to A Guy and A Girl, cupping her tattooed left hand over her cigarette as she takes a pull.  Laughing about something.
She just woke up.
It is breakfast time.
God only knows why she's here.
No wait, maybe God does know.

Fr. Echeverri­a
[perc + aware]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Serafi­ne
Per + Awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

requiem aeternam interrupta
They've all found themselves here at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on this chilly Sunday afternoon for their own reasons.  Pan is here dealing with, shall we say, congregational concerns.  Riley and Grace have both showed up out of a sheer Hey, this seems like a place to go today mood, to explore and see new things (or revisit things they've seen before).  Sera is drawn here for reasons only God (or whatever power is Out There) is aware of; the point is that she's here.  They're all here on this day, barricaded against the cold outside or just venturing out into it.
The DNMS is host to many exhibits, and they bring no small number of people to gander and ooh and aaah about the anthropological and geological wonders that surround them.  Today it is a little less occupied than it might otherwise be; maybe the cold has kept them away, or perhaps it was just a sense that today was a day to be Somewhere Else.  Either way, there are still people here wandering through the various floors and looking at the different exhibits but not as many as you might think.  There are the Sleepers that Sera is speaking with outside, the boy that Pan is leading out, the employees who wish they were home nestled in with a blanket and some smattering of other people.  But it is only the Mages who feel it.
Riley feels it first, but Pan and Sera (and Grace, too) aren't far behind.  It's muffled, but it's there, sparking up in the upper floors of the building and arcing its way down.  The more experienced trio get a sense of a hole being ripped in the fabric of mortality and a shining warmth pulling itself through; it glows against their mind, invigorates them.  It's like birth, but ancient.  Grace, for her part, just gets more of a general ping that swells in the back of her mind.
It's coming from the third floor.

Riley
Riley feels a jumble of things all at once.  The first is a tension, because there by the door she senses a collection of resonances, one of which is at least a little familiar to her now.  Mages, here?  Of course here.  Here in Denver there is Grace and Man-Candy and Lena and Adam, so it stands to reason that there are others.
And then she feels that something else, something Other that feels like it's raining down on her head.  Invigorating, well that's nice, but what is it?
She pulls out her phone and, well.  She turns to look back over the railing, across the main lobby to the front entrance where she senses that cluster of people and yep, sure enough, Shit is that Grace?  Well, so much for a planned meeting under more controlled conditions.
And so much for keeping herself hidden until she susses out the Awakened situation.  Because when Riley pulls out her phone she thumbs the screen on and she pulls up a custom-made application.  Something that will let her see the Code, and what sorts of bugs and glitches it has in it today.
As she Works even this most minor of Workings, the air around her begins to shift, so slightly as it leaks through the barrier she's erected.  Just the faintest thread of something inexorably mercurial.

[Watch the Weaving, Prime 1, practiced]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 3) ( success x 1 )

Riley
[nix that, I forgot who I was playing, Riley ain't got no Prime augh!]

Grace
Ohh, Grace-senses tingling. She takes a quick breath, and looks around, to Pan, to Sera (who she's just noticed loitering at the entrance, and what the Hell?)
It's happening again, isn't it?
Freakish metaphysical weirdness, and a group of mages all 'happening' to be at the right place. Gee universe, would be nice if you could put a little notice on her calendar once in a while -- 'Weird Shit Today, 2-5 PM.'
She doesn't feel the invigoration, the birth of something shining and warm -- she just knows it's something strange. And she hopes it's not demons crawling their way through the IMAX screen in this place. Shit.
In any case, she makes her way inside, because even if it is demons crawling their way through the IMAX screen, it's not like she can ignore that.

Riley
[for the record we're calling that an ENTROPY scan instead of Prime because Niko is an idiot today]

Fr. Echeverri­a
He doesn't have a hand on the boy's elbow or shoulder because he's trusting him to walk out of here on his own. Because the priest can remember being sixteen years old and angry at the entire world and willing to fight anyone who had slighted him even if that person were his friend. His anger made him susceptible to the slightest kindness. Drew him to people who understood him and he thought he could understand. That's how his son happened. Ignorance coupled with loneliness. His son grew up without a father because of his anger.
So he understands this kid. Has sympathy for him even though the kid doesn't grasp that his own father is trying very hard to provide for them. No way for him to understand this without growing up or having kids of his own but Pan would like very much for this kid not to have kids.
As he walks of his own volition he has no need to lay a hand on him.
But then something opens up upstairs. Pan sees in quick order Grace and Sera but his alarm and the sharpening of his senses supersedes his desire to great them proper.
"Manny," he says to the boy. Puts a hand on his shoulder now. No one else notices anything is wrong but they may yet. "I left my phone in the security office. Go sit in the truck."
"But--"
"Go."

[mind/prime 2: empathic projection.
coincidental. he's going for compliance here, hence the prime. diff 5, -1 because idk is 'intense' an appropriate resonance? i can supplement this with intimidation if he fucks it up.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Fr. Echeverri­a
[OOPS MY FINGER SLIPPED]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafi­ne
"Oh my fuck," Sera mutters not precisely beneath her breath but around it.  It has been a strange handful of weeks and Sera - who has a surreality all her own - is just there, sharing a cigarette with a guy who moonlights as a bartender at The Abbey and pays the bills with a job at DMNS, where he hides his many tattooes beneath a button-down, long-sleeve white shirt, which does not really hide them.  And he is Talking About something and Sera is not really sure what he is Talking About or what he has been Talking About for the last... well, for the last god-knows-how long (two or three puffs of the cigarette) because she's feeling something; feeling it open up in her; feeling it swell and crack and bloom.  Feeling that warmth, that -
- Sera tips her head back; there's brick or glass or something behind her.  Sera tips her head back thinks about kissing That Guy because he's still talking while she's just being.
And then she does kiss him.  Straightens up and reaches for both of his lapels and pulls him in and breathes out her smokey, spiced breath onto his beared cheek, her eyes closed, her senses open, burning, burnished, bright.

[Mind/Life/Prime 1]

Her cheek is smooth; his bearded.  His breath is warm and a bit humid and a bit sour; she can feel the radiant heat from his skin and he opens his empty hand and reaches out instinctively to steady her, grazes her hip.  She's never come on to him before, not more than she comes on to most people, and there's a startling intimacy about the moment that catches him on the cusp of awareness, has him taking in the view of the lawn on this cold spring day with a new - not appreciation, no.  Perhaps merely: perspective.
Then Sera sort of nuzzles him and lets him go and snuffs her cigarette beneath a booted foot and goes inside.

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
Manny would normally, perhaps, argue with the good Father about having to go sit and wait in the truck while the priest went to go get his phone.  He would say that he can just go home on his own perhaps, or deliver some sort of snark (built on the back of being an angry teenager with hormones marinating his brain) about how someone can lose their phone so quickly.  But the priest's command takes hold and the Sleeper sighs, heading off to do just that.
Meanwhile, Serafine's Guy is caught unaware by the sudden intimacy, and is caught just as unaware when she steps back and heads inside.  That was certainly unexpected, and he's not sure what to do from there.  He thinks about it for a moment and then lets her go.  He needs time to process that little bit.
Riley lets a little bit of her sparkling aura, that inexorable but mercurial nature slip out ever so very slightly and she gets a fix on something, while Grace heads inside.  They're all inside now, and...
Nothing is crashing through the museum.  This is no Ben Stiller movie and no Tyrannasaurus Rex skeleton is playing havoc (or even chess).  Its up above them though, so who knows what terror may be awaiting them (or what Sleepers may in trouble) that far up.

Fr. Echeverri­a
He stands still long enough to feel a sense of assurance that Manny is going to sit in the truck until whatever is going on upstairs is done going on and in that amount of time Sera has decided to come inside.
"Hey," he says to her in the distracted tone of one who's listening very hard to something going on a distance away. As soon as she's within arm's reach of the priest Pan takes hold of her hand and matches her pace. They're going upstairs.
Doesn't ask her if she felt that. If Sera didn't feel that she can ask him. He knows she uses physical contact to help her with her pagan rituals. If she wants to do anything on the way up, well. You're welcome.
Pan though has to reach into his pocket to find his rosary.

[prime 1: SUP WEAVING WHAT'RE YOU DOING BUDDY -1 diff because practiced]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 4) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Grace can feel the brightness of Pan's righteousness as he tells the boy to leave. But she can't help but look at Sera when that kiss happens -- can't help but stare, even though staring at kissing people is totally not her way. Sera's entrancing, draws all eyes and all attention to her.
There is something else, something familiar on the back of her brain, something... but she doesn't know Riley well enough to place it, and certainly doesn't know what Riley looks like.
Between the two Disciples, she makes a choice of who to go to first -- Sera, of course. Sorry Pan, but Sera's the one Grace makes a beeline toward upon entering the museum. Pan joins them soon enough, though, and it's not like Grace minds.
"Hey, guys," she says, when she gets close enough. Follows them, because hey if they don't know what to do...

Serafi­ne
"Did you feel that?"  Pan is the first magus Sera encounters inside the museum, after he has divested himself of his teenaged charge.  The kid is disappearing out doors still swinging from her entrance and Sera herself is going to slip an arm through Pan's and slide up beside him.  Except, he's reaching for her hand, wrapping her hand is his, which pulls her back from whatever is Above to the here and now, for just a moment.   A glimpse at his profile and they're already in motion, Sera walking closer to Pan than is strictly necessary or perhaps even proper.
Her pagan rituals, you know.
And then Grace, "Hi Grace," Sera says and sort of reaches for her like to pull her into the World's Strangest Threesome (not like that, darlings.  Minds sharp and clean please.)
Someone somewhere wants them to Pay and Sera swipes an AmEx and lo they are through.
"It's just - being born.  Being reborn, you know?  Recreating itself, so fucking warm.  Older than anything I know, too.
"Than anything I can imagine."
Sera tells them, the both of them, as they climb.

Riley
There is a community in Denver that Riley is currently not a member of.  Her invitation got lost in the mail, maybe, which means boo no decoder ring.  But genuine boo because three Mages are gathering together to probably help each other out, discuss, suss, plan, et cetera, and Riley?
Riley's the loner on the second floor stepping onto the escalator to go up a little further, to get let ooff on the floor where Egypt's on display next to the dinosaurs and oh, well, hm.  Maybe this isn't a Ben Stiller movie but they are Awakened so anything is possible.
She pulls up a program on her phone and looks for other Minds.  Not Sleeper Minds, not even Awakened Minds, but if they're possibly dealing with Other Sentience Riley would kind of like to know ahead of time, y'know?

[Mind Scan, same as before]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Sera says it's being reborn, recreating itself, and it's warm. Older than anything. Grace puts two and two together and it comes up dinosaur.
"They have an allosaurus skeleton up here on the third floor. I don't know if it would be such a great thing if one decided to recreate itself," Grace says, and then stops herself. These two may not know what she's talking about "Allosauruses are the meat-eating kind. Big enough to bite a person in half."
Could be worse. There are dinosaurs capable of swallowing a person whole. That's not what we're talking about here, just scythe-claws and dagger-teeth, in a body about 1.5 times human height.
Sera reaches for her, tries to draw Grace into the group hug they've got going, but where she usually gives Sera great leeway in the whole touchy-feely thing, she's pretty damned reluctant to be drawn into a tight huddle with Pan too. She'll hold somebody's hand, sure...

Fr. Echeverri­a
If anyone had sent out invitations to join the Denver Awakened population Father Echeverría would have thrown it in the shredder with everything else he wants nothing to do with. Communities cause nothing but headaches. He didn't receive an invitation though. He found a Dreamspeaker girl who thought she could sleep under bridges and on park benches with all of her earthly possessions strapped to a bicycle and call it a day. It wasn't long before heathens were falling asleep drunk in pews in his sanctuary and calling him to ask for help with Nephandi and demons and dead Archmagus's bones.
Enjoy it while you can, Riley. Enjoy it while you can.
The three of them are held up brief at the customer service counter because apparently you have to pay for the privilege of entering a museum. The girl at the register already knows why the priest is there and he has the neon-colored paper bracelet around his wrist so Sera only has to pay for herself and Grace. It really is like the most demented date ever.
Up they go.
"I did feel that," he says in response to Sera's observation.
And then he picks up the pace. Drags the girls with him. Doesn't say anything to the notion of an allosaurus coming to life because it's hard to climb stairs and talk at the same time. By the time they get to the third floor he's breathing heavy but it isn't anything to worry about. He's just forty-six years old and doesn't exercise.

Riley
At the top of the escalator, Riley stops, steps automatically to the side as she looks down at her screen.  It shows a map of the floor she's on, with little blips for certain people (why yes, she did learn a thing or two from Mssrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, and then digitized that idea), and the one that is the most interesting is one that is quite large and in the block to the left of her.  Riley looks up, looks to the left, glances back over her shoulder again to see the strange trio...taking the stairs?  She frowns, her mouth quirking to the side.
Alright, girl, you're in Denver now, time to play nice.  She only enjoys her solitary anonymity for a few moments longer.
Riley steps back, leaning back into the shiny metal rail between the up and down escalators, and she waits.  Looking at her phone still, switching over to another application.
And as she does she lets the shield around her mind - around her resonance to be exact - disintegrate.  Revealing her to the others to be exactly what she is, which isn't so different from what they are.  Maybe Grace recognizes her now, or recognizes the feel of her seeping through a wireless connection as they worked together to crack a code or five.
"There's something over there," she says, once they're within range, not looking up from her screen.  "Something old old old-" and there she breaks off because she finally does look up, and over to a man in his mid-forties who looks like he could be older, huffing and catching his breath.  Pushing up from the railing, Riley says, "Hey, is he okay?"
Meanwhile, that process is running in the background.

[but before that she scried from a short distance, and took a little bit of time to do it, so Corr 2, diff -1 (time) -1 (practiced), dropping a WP, don't know how many suxx she needs so she'll be running this until she hits it I guess?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafi­ne
"If it's a person-eating dinosaur come back to life," Sera says, half-way up the stairs, laughing just a bit.  "I say we let security deal with it."  Laughing more than a bit.  She's still holding hands with Pan, but Grace escapes her reach.  Slips away from Sera's reach and holds herself apart and that's fine.  They hoof it up the stairs, Pan going faster than he should.  Sera's humming a bit beneath her breath, leaning into Pan and peering down the hallway in the direction of the Thing Coming Into Being.
By the time Riley rocks up, Sera is distracted by something else, the far-away look of someone... elsewhere.  Riley's presence does not register, not fully, not yet.
Sera has tipped her forehead into Pan's shoulder as he catches her breath and is feeling for the loose, abortive swirl of the Things superficial thoughts, the drift of them, the moving current -

[Mind 2: surface thoughts?  Aka: feeling snacky dude?  Difficulty: 5.  -1 (focus) ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
[[A Thing]]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
[[Oh crap, sorry.  ANother thing first, to see if that thing happens.]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
"Wait..." Grace stops, tilts her head, looks over Riley (looks how she peers into her cell phone, how she feels so suddenly like a silvery rush). "Riley?"
She fishes into her laptop bag for her cell phone, and quickly rattles off a text to a certain number, just to be sure.
It's you?
The answering noise from Riley's cell phone is enough to answer that question.
"It's okay guys, I know her. She's one of us."
So now they've got two Virtual Adepts staring into their phones while a potential resurrected, reborn something awaits on the third floor of a nature museum. Sounds about right.

Serafi­ne
"Fuck."  Sera curses quietly beneath her breath; perhaps just audible enough for Pan to hear her, close as they are.  "I was trying to see how well disposed it was to us.  Right?  Like maybe it was just hungry or whatever and the order of the day was to fucking run.
"Whatever is in there is brilliant; like, just - this sense of vast awareness, and it knows we're here.  It knows I was looking; it pushed me away before I could sense anything more than a feather and a heart. "

Riley
Riley is looking at Pan when Grace steps around him and spies her.  The Initiate offers the Apprentice a flash of a grin and a, "Heya, sweetheart," and then one of them is digging around for a phone while the other is glancing down to there's again.  The process needs another minute to go through, the image on her screen - she has a smartphone with a nice wide, flat surface, a surface that is currently black with green digits (letters, numbers, symbols) blinking in and out of sight, slowly slowly slowly creating what looks like an ASCII image.  It's almost there, almost shows the glass cases with their ancient unearthed mummies on display, and maybe whatever presence is inside there.
"I'm looking inside now," a glance up and around, the museum is quiet but hardly empty.  She steps closer so that she's folded into the group now, part of them and yet a little apart.  There is a stud - tiny and silvery, winking when it catches the light - in her left nostril.  Her hair is down but pushed back enough to expose her left ear, which bears silver studs lining the organ from lobe all around the cartilage.
"Just...about...got it..."

[extending c'mon girl!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 7) ( success x 1 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
[[The other thing again]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
The four of them converge, and Riley makes a little bit of introduction by way of pointing out that she knows some of what they know.  Also, checking to see if Pan is okay.  But she's keeping an eye out to try and see remotely into the other room, while Sera is trying to tickle at the surface thoughts of whatever's inside.  That provokes its own reaction.
But we'll get there.  First, introductions.  Riley gets pointed out by Grace, who gets a feel for the other Virtual Adept's aura and then confirms it with a quick text.  Mages, meet Mages.  And Sera gives them a quick heads up to the fact that whatever it is was able to push out her attempts to take a look at what was floating on the surface of its mind.  They're working together for the moment, and Riley manages to get her screen to pop up a look at the inside of the Egyptian exhibit.  It's like having a spy camera in the room, only the spy camera is positioned in the best possible vantage point in order to see the entire room.  What Riley sees on that smartphone screen gives her a moment's warning before the rest are about to see it.
There are several exhibits in this Egyptology room.  The source of the overall room (which is not far from the stairs the trio of mages came up from) comes from two women, found wrapped in linen in painted coffins over 3,000 years ago.  With them came several of these people, as scientists worked with the doctors at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center to examine them via X-Rays, CT scans and the like.  These two coffins have been within the room; one open, one closed.  The one that has been left closed did so because it frankly wasn't quite as impressive of a specimen for display.  Fascinating from a medical and anthropological standpoint, sure.  But its sister sarcophogus had a more visually dynamic creature.
What Riley sees is that both coffins are open.  One of them is empty, and someone is making their way out of the room.
The Virtual Adept doesn't have a lot of time to warn them, maybe just enough to get a word out before the person comes into view.  She (because it is a she) isn't wrapped up in bandages and sporting the kind of ancient weathering that Jack Pierce so famously emulated on Boris Karloff in 1932.  It isn't even like the CGI decay on Arnold Vosloo as he battled Rachel Weisz and Brenden Fraser.  The woman's skin, in fact, is clear and smooth, without injury or weathering.  It's darkened, the color that one would imagine the people of Egypt to be, and she is short, around five and a half feet.  They can certainly see that there is nothing approaching any level of injury on her, because...well, she is frankly not dressed.  Any bandages or the like were probably removed from her or dissolved years ago from study and weather.  She doesn't seem to be ashamed of it though (and thank the gods that no one is around to see them talking to the nude Middle Eastern woman because wouldn't THAT be awkward); she is more intrigued by the four of them.
And when she opens her mouth to speak...well, oddly enough she speaks in clear, albeit accented, English.
"You're wizards.  Are you waiting for me?"  She seems unsure what to make of it if they are.

Riley
Riley does try to warn them, that what she sees is a room with a missing body that's supposed to be on display - weird, so weird putting the dead on display.  Well, the room isn't missing a body, it's-
"Someone's-"
And then there she is, the strange Middle Eastern woman completely naked and in public.
Riley's brows lift and her dark eyes widen.  "What the fuck," she says, voice quiet with surprise.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she shakes her head.  "Do you think," but no, don't even finish that question, Riley.  You're a smart woman.  That was a feeling of something being reborn and revitalized.  The mind is vast and ancient.  And a naked woman appears from a room where a sarcophogus had been recovered and is currently empty.
Do they think she came out of that sarcophogus?  Yes.
"She's supposed to be in there," she says, voice low, filling the others in quickly.  "Preeeeeetty sure she's one of the mummies retrieved and brought here for study and display."
This woman says that they are wizards and asks if they were waiting for her.  Well, what did Winston Zeddemore teach her all those years ago?
"Maybe?"  It's not an enthusiastic YES but then the woman didn't ask if they were gods, did she?

Grace
"Okay, well, at least you're not an allosaurus," Grace says, having poked her head up from her cell phone in time to see the arrival of a naked woman. Riley fills them in, and to Grace's credit, it doesn't much phase her. A mummy. Okay. Shrug.
"We were, sort of, waiting for you. But we didn't know what you'd be," she adds. "Hi."
Yeah. Hi, to the nude Middle Eastern woman who just walked up at the museum. Grace honestly doesn't care about that part. Just relieved she's not covered in scales and with five pointy ends.
"Who are you?"

Serafi­ne
Sera does not continue hanging on to Pan.  Honestly she is now half-expecting an intelligent, malevolent, magickal man-eating dragon or whatever sort of skeleton it is they normally keep on display in these parts (this sort of museum is not one of Sera's regular haunts under any circumstances, whatsoever, so the difference between dinosaurs and dragons is will night indistinguishable to her and anyway she probably believes more in dragons than in dinosaurs), something humid and sloughing with compound eyes whirring with a vasty and primordial intelligence she can hardly comprehend and beneath that, beneath that, beneath that an awareness that feels equal parts bright and dark, inhuman and alien and hungry.
Wouldn't you be hungry if you had just dragged yourself back into existance?
Sera fucking would be.
Of course, Sera always Wants, remember how she Wanted after a thirty-day fast from sex and drugs and even the simple pleasures of ice cream and toast, imagine how much she would Want after 3000 years as a corpse, or whatever, dragged around the world chained in the box in which she had been bound.
And Sera, Sera Sera Sera, Sera steps out from Pan's side advances on the woman -
"Jesus Christ, did you just will yourself into existance?  Just drag yourself back here again?"
- toward her really, already taking off her own leather jacket to hand over to the stranger.
"I mean, I didn't know I was waiting for you.  I just went for brunch and a Bloody Mary or seventeen and saw Eric while I was walking and he was headed to work and we started chatting about this show that his ex was putting on at Gallery Twenty-Seven and before I knew it we were here and I was having a cigarette and
"bam.  Fuck.  So no, technically no, it's a goddamned coincidence but Jesus fuck.
"I'm Sera.  We should probably get you outta here.  You can put on my coat.
"Hawksley's gonna be so fucking jealous."

Fr. Echeverri­a
Pan would have ignored Riley's comment about whether he was alright anyway. They have bigger things to worry about than some middle-aged guy getting winded walking up two flights of stairs. It's just that none of them know what it is until moments before it steps out to great them.
Only Riley sees what's inside the room and before she can tell them what it is -
The priest slackens his hand just before the punker decides she wants her freedom back. Doesn't come forward and take control of the situation. That's not how he tends to operate. So long as it seems as though the younger women aren't making anything worse he's fine with just standing back by where Riley is and observing.
Oh Sera. Just what a visitor from three thousand years ago needs to hear soon as she wakes up. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck fuck.

requiem aeternam interrupta
They all have their reactions to this woman standing in front of them, and they're understandable.  Riley and Pan, they're taking in the situation in a measured way.  The Virtual Adept says Maybe and the priest lets the others do the talking.  Meanwhile, Grace and Sera are more direct, more forthcoming.  And this all makes perfect sense.  Riley is someone who has hid her Resonance to date, so of course she would be more likely not to reveal information right away, to wait and see.  And wait and see is the good Father's jam.
Sera, though, she's ecstatic and she offers a lot of words in response.  The woman smiles oddly, not quite sure exactly what the Ecstatic is saying--she understands the words, but not the context--but she also seems okay with being confused.  It's almost as if she's used to it.  She takes the offered coat, looks it over and then slips it on.  She still isn't exactly covered, of course.  There's a whole--well, let's say she's a walking below-the-waist indecency charge waiting to happen.  But it's something, at least, and she rolls her shoulders, looks at the jacket to see how it fits.
"Thank you," she says to Serafine, gratefully, before she looks at Grace.  "I am Halima Rahal.  This..."  She frowns a moment, like she isn't sure quite how to explain it.  "You are not Children of Osiris then.  But something like them, perhaps?  Ahl-i-Batin?  Taftani?"
Her knowledge of Western Traditions seems to be off the mark.  And finally, she asks,
"Where am I?  This does not feel like anywhere I have been."

Riley
[Internet, tell me things!:  int+comp (data retrieval), diff 8 -1 (ability apt)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafi­ne
"I'm Sera, you're in Denver, and I figure we should get outta here."
Sera is blissful, though she's not wholly certain whether all of this is happening at the moment, or whether she is hallucinating.  Either way, she embraces the moment.  With that last bit Sera's turning to the others in a sort of inquiry and reaching to peel her t-shirt up and off.  Beneath it she is still slightly-more-decent than Halima Rahal is now: she's now wearing her usual costume of cut-off denims and a bra.
"Here," handing off the tee to the - you know - newly Awoken whatever-she-is - and making a gesture with her hands.  "Wrap this around your waist.  It'll at least cover your ass.  Hey, did any of you guys drive?"
A glance at Riley with her phone.  "Is there a back door we can get out?"  Back to Halima Rahal, then.  This quick slicing smile.  "We should probably get outta here.  Some asshole's bound to wonder why you're up and out of your coffin."

Grace
"No, we are not any of those. The Ahl-i-Batin are gone," Grace tells her, and where Grace picked that little bit up? She's not telling. The Ahl-i-Batin have been gone for a long time, which means...
"This may be a shock, but the better question might be 'when am I?' You're in a museum. A place for antiquities."
Which means... you were an antiquity, oh naked woman.
With that, Grace turns to her phone again. and why? Well, to pull up Google Maps, and ask plaintively for it to give her a map of this place. Is there a back door that they could run to?

[Corr 1: Whereami? Spending WP because 1 Arete is asking for botch.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Riley
The eldest among them are hanging back, one waiting to see how this shakes out, the other shutting down a program and opening up a simple browser.  Riley is looking up the name, Halima Rahal, one ear pricking at Children of Osiris (Oh really?), Ahl-i-Batin (Jesus that's old), Taftâni - Riley lets out a surprised laugh.  If any of them is an agent of chaos and potentially vulgar magic, well, maybe it'd be her.
Then she glances up, glances down no wait looks up because the woman with the half-shaved head and the thick messy braid of blonde hair is undressing.  "Uh, you know there's a gift shop downstairs, right?  I'm pretty sure they'll have shorts or a towel or something."  Because the last thing they need is not one, but two people wandering around getting them noticed by the cops.
But Sera is free to do whatever because Riley's screen is white with search engine screens and ohhhhhhh.
Those expressive brows lift upward again, and then crash down in a frown.
"Hey," she says, sidling closer to Mr. Tall Dark and Too Fond of Johnny Cash.  Her voice is low and she's holding her phone over so he can take a look at what she's found.  Apparently Halima Rahal hasn't been dead a thousand years.  She's only been missing for about sixty.  She's leaning in to Pan, moving so that her left side is facing him if she has to, because he's the closest, Sera's over there, and Grace she knows is still pretty low level.  Keeping her voice down to just the pair of them, Riley asks, "You wouldn't happen to know how to look for curses or bad Effects, would you?"
Oh, someone's asking if she knows a way out.  Grace is on it, but Riley looks over her shoulder and says, "A back door's going to have an alarm, but I'll see what I can do."  But before that, she looks back at Pan.

requiem aeternam interrupta
There is an easy back door exit that they can get to, though they'll have to get down to the second floor to do so.  There's no exit out this high.

Fr. Echeverri­a
Pan does reach out and tilt the phone away from Riley so that he can read what's on it. That appears to change his opinion as to whether the women can handle sorting out what to do with her. Maybe they can look back and answer the question that Riley is asking him. But Grace is on her phone and Sera is trying to cover the nude woman's ass.
He's wearing black slacks and a button-down short-sleeved shirt tucked in and belted. If he were inside the church right now he'd have a collar on. An alcohol-abusing no-account gringo punk who didn't have a career during the time when most of these women were young enough to begin developing an interest in music isn't what he aspires to when he gets dressed in the morning.
Concern over crowding and overwhelming the woman gone now he hands the phone back to Riley and says "Thank you" in a voice she's hearing for the first time. It's husky and accented and that's all he says to her before he walks over to the Egyptian woman.
"Sera," he says as he crosses the floor, pulls out his keys, "the truck's parked outside. Pull it around back. There's a bag in the backseat, it's got a change of clothes in it, she can change when we're downstairs."
Just ignore Manuel.
As for their guest:
"Miss Rahal, hi, I'm sorry. What everyone's saying is you're a long way from home and we're gonna try and help you." He doesn't put his hand on her shoulder but he looks as if he would if she were clothed. His eyes don't drop below her chin. He's had lots of practice dealing with naked women recently. "What's the last thing you remember?"

[entropy 1: are you cursed or something? +3 diff because he's not using his entropy focus FUCKING SMOKE ALARMS, -1 diff because quintessence, does illuminating count here for appropriate resonance? -1 diff for that too.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
Halima nods when Sera introduces her, says that she's in Denver.  She actually seems to know the name of the city, for what that's worth; she smiles appreciatively when the T-Shirt is offered and takes it to cover her lower extremities.  "Thank you.  I don't wish to draw any undue attention to myself."  The sentence comes with a wry smile when Sera suggests that someone might wonder why she's up and walking around.  "I would imagine that would raise a lot of questions.  I am sure that it already will."
She nods to Grace, not surprised that she's in a museum.  The idea that the Batini are gone does strike her, though.  The delicate (newly-regrown) eyebrows knit together, and for a moment she seems hesitant, unsure how to take that.  But there isn't a lot of time to focus on that because in the meantime Riley has shown Pan some relevant information and she's planning to hack their way out the back door and Pan is stepping forward to elucidate her.  She listens to him as she finishes covering up all the parts of her that would cause her to be thrown in jail.
"Yes, I gathered as much," she answers to him.  "As to what I remember..."  She pauses, as if she isn't sure how to answer that.  "In this world?  It was 1953.  I was in Cairo.  That is...a difficult question to answer, I am afraid.  My memories are not entirely linear.  I have been wandering the realm of Duat--the underworld--for however long it has been."

Grace
The familiar Google Maps interface goes up on her phone, but apparently Grace is able to zoom far further than most. Her fingers zoom in and in and in and in, and suddenly instead of streets and maybe the shadow of the outline of the museum on her screen, there's walls and exits marked, as well as a scrollable 3D interface for the floors. Soon enough, she finds what she's looking for.
"Second floor. There's an exit toward the back of the second floor," Grace says, showing Riley while she's at it. They'll need to know where to go.
Then, Riley goes on about shorts or a towel, and Grace shrugs and unzips her turtleneck. She's got a t-shirt underneath, so she's not going to scandalize anyone, going around without clothes.
And that T-shirt? It is a darker gray than her jacket, and has a design on the front like this: http://img1.etsystatic.com/029/0/6153077/il_570xN.565328593_23or.jpg
"As long as we're stripping to take care of Halima, one of you can take my jacket so we don't get arrested. I want it back though. I don't know that we have time to go down to the gift shop."
Ever practical, Grace.

Serafine
Sera accepts the keys easily, flashing Halima a quick half-smile, turning to accept the keys from the priest's hands.  Rising to the tip-toes of her Doc's to brush a kiss across the edge of his cheek with a tender, rather intimate murmur of assent as she does so.  Slides the ring around her index finger and breathes in the sense of all that light, then exhales with a sigh.
"I'll bring the truck around."
PAN IS LETTING HER DRIVE SOMEWHERE.  PAN IS LETTING HER DRIVE SOMEWHERE.
Probably because it is midday and she doesn't seem especially altered but still,
PAN IS LETTING HER DRIVE SOMEWHERE,
which stops her, not precisely then, when Grace is offering Sera a jacket so that she will not get arrested for wandering around the museum in a bra (hint: Sera always wanders around in a bra, and never gets arrested) and Sera takes the jacket.
It is a boring jacket.
Sera therefore leaves it unzipped.
Anyway, Sera takes the jacket and the keys and gives Halima et al a Ta and turns back to the stairs and starts down them and only remembers the last time she got to drive Pan's truck when she's half-way down the stairs, and that knowledge, that memory is sharp in the back of her throat by the time she gets to the first floor and starts out toward the parking lot, intending to bring the truck around.
She doesn't know about the kid won't know until she gets there but what the hell.  Sera's a charming creature.  She speaks Spanish.  She'll find a way.

Riley
Grace is looking for a backdoor, Sera and Pan are talking to Halima, and Riley?  Well first she is impatiently waving away Grace's phone.  "We should scatter.  Someone take Halima out the back, anyone not necessary to that can go out the front.  I'll take down the security for a few minutes, long enough for you all to get out.  I'll contact you after."  She flashes Grace a quick grin that is maybe meant to be sort of reassuring?  It's a brilliant sort of smile that Riley's got, a charm that pulls people to her, drawing them in like a magnet.  It is part reassuring but mostly it's excited.  This thing she's about to do?  Break into the security system and take it down for even a little bit?  This is the sort of thing that she lives to do.
Then the lanky woman is heading to the side, shifting her laptop bag so that when she finds a bench and settles into it the bag is resting in her lap.  Then out comes her laptop, simple on the outside but oh so shiny on its inside.  A custom build, because that's how Riley rolls.  Nondescript outside, amazingness within.
She unfolds the device and wakes it up, and gets to work.

[Corr 2: O, Security Systems, Open Your Gateways To Me (getting into the security system to SHUT IT DOWN)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
Okay, fine Riley, don't figure out which door you need to take down, just wave Grace away like a gnat. Suppose she'll just take them all down, and... whatever. The disappointment doesn't exactly show on her face, but yeah -- it's not like the one thing that Grace can do in this situation just got waved away by someone she was trying to be cool for or anything.
And then, Grace gets grinned at, because Riley is about to do something legitimately cool, and yeah, that doesn't help.
Her tradition-mate makes some sense with the scattering idea, so she goes to Pan and shows him the map instead. Surely his techno-ignorance doesn't extend itself to computerized maps, right? Everyone knows how to read a map.
"So yeah, just go out this way... I'm going to go try to help Sera find the truck," she says, and ambles on downstairs. Really, the strongest among them should go with Halima in case there's trouble, she reasons.

Fr. Echeverri­a
The priest has an awful lot of questions.
Knowing that she disappeared in 1953 and hearing her say that that is the last thing she remembers. That she's been wandering the underworld. Witnessing her calm as she emerges nude from a sarcophagus. Hearing the names of long-dead traditions. This is something they're going to have to discuss at greater length later.
Not right now. Not in a museum during business hours when he's got a teenager in the truck and security could respond to the downed door locks any moment.
Pan doesn't know how any of that works. He can sense Riley Working behind him but he doesn't attend to it. He turns away from Rahal to glance at the phone screen Grace tilts towards him. He doesn't quite know what he's looking at but he frowns the way he frowns when he's reading anyway.
"Okay," he says. "We'll be right down."
That settles that. The door Grace pointed out is very close. He puts a hand on her elbow without glancing down. No point risking seeing something he doesn't need to see.
"Vamos. Come on."

requiem aeternam interrupta
Sera may wander around in just a bra and not get arrested, but she's certainly not getting particularly pleased looks from security people that she passes when she makes her way down to the first floor.  They can't call the police because she's not actively indecent but it's very, very likely that she would be asked to leave and not come back (they have children here, the manager would say) if she wasn't already on her way out the door, heading off to the car in order to deal with poor sixteen year-old Manny who has no idea what this barely-dressed white chick climbing into Pan's car is doing.  But she has the keys, and it probably won't be difficult for her to convince the kid that it's all fine, she's a friend of Pan's or however she approaches it.  The car heads around toward the back.
Grace points out the door, and it's a piece of cake for Riley to hack her way through the alarm system, aided by a bit of magic.  The social dynamics between the group is noticed by Halima, but she doesn't say anything because she knows she has a lot to learn still about all of them before she can make a complete picture.
And then, Pan's hand is at her elbow and with a slight nod of her head, she's letting him guide her along.  This is their dance right now, and she's willing to let them lead.  The path to the back door is untroubled; they pass by a couple security guys walking along, but outside of Halima getting the same kinds of looks Sera received, no one questions them.
The back door opens with ease, and they're heading out into the chill air.  Halima squints at the bright light, is surprised by the cold.  She knew of Denver.  She didn't know it.

Riley
[int+comp]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

requiem aeternam interrupta
[[Fade/Pause/Whichever]]

Wheel of Global Thermonuclear War

Joshua
It's a bright, sunny day in Denver.  The weather is in the mid-sixties--warm, but not so warm as to be uncomfortable.  There's that cool breeze running through the air, brushing over the grass on the lawn and sending it wafting gently sideways.  Children are coming home from school, laughing and playing and fighting and doing everything that children do because now, FINALLY, they're out of school for the day.  (They'll repeat the process tomorrow.)  It's a good day for taking the dog for a walk, or getting the bike out of your garage and dusting it off for some exercise.  For going to the park or the zoo or one of a baker's dozen other places.
This, of course, makes complete sense.  Because Grace is inside.  She has a lot on her plate and at the moment, there isn't a lot of time to go outside and enjoy the gentle warmth of the sun on her face.  Maybe she's working on one of her books, or scanning books and converting them to good old optical character recognition.  Maybe she's doing more research into her Ghost Wheel problem.  Hell, maybe she's doing a little of all of the above (this is Grace, after all).  The point is that while the sun is bright, the air is clear and fullfilling and an electric energy makes its way through people unconfined by four walls and a ceiling, our favorite Virtual Adept is ensconced firmly in doors, at work on her computer.
And that's when it comes.  It starts with a shifting in the sound of her computer's fan; it kicks into a higher gear, sends off a mechanical hum of sorts.  And just as that happens, amidst all of the other windows on her screen a terminal window pops up and a sentence spells itself out with a high-pitched, rapid-fire ba-da-da-da-da over a mechanical ticka-ticka-ticka sound that an old Intel 8080 might make:
GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN. SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?
A monochrome blue cursor box blinks on the next line, waiting for her response.

Grace
Grace closes her eyes slowly and groans. The Adversary? GW? Fallacy of Impulse? Has to be. They're playing Gandhi, and this is a line from Wargames. She did say they were going to break out the nukes sooner or later, didn't she?
I don't want to get nuked. I'll play anything but Thermonuclear War. Well, almost anything. Maybe you can tell me something first? Why are you so interested in me? Why am I getting random people reading my future?
Because, hey. If she's going to get an audience with The Adversary, may as well start with the questioning. She has so many questions.

Joshua
Grace understandably assumed that this is related to her recent problems.  After all, didn't a past message tell her that they wanted to play a game?  It might very well be the same, though this the style here is a bit different.  The terminal window is specifically tailored, that sound as the letters appear on the screen a new touch.  The Adversary seems to have decided to style it all up, if that's the case.
There is a second's pause, and then block cursor moves again with the bleeps and tickas marking its passage:
I DO NOT WANT TO READ YOUR FUTURE, PROFESSOR.  I DO NOT KNOW HOW.  AM INTERESTED BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO PLAY A GAME.
Blink-blink.  Blink-blink.  Blink-blink.  Blue on black, staring back at her.

Grace
Grace is sitting on her bed, her legs knotted together to provide a desk for her laptop. She's traded out her jeans for pajama bottoms at least, but that just means she's got nowhere to go.
She twists her lips into a thoughtful expression, and sock-clad toes wriggle behind the laptop screen. These fuckers do so love being cute, don't they?
What's the game called? Fallacy of Impulse? What does that mean?
In the meantime, she pulls up another program -- the Program. The interface through which Code can most easily be seen. And, she attempts to start it.
[Prime 1: Watch the Weaving Code -- What's this now?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (5) ( success x 1 )

Joshua
The Code is there for Grace to see, but there's distortion.  It's oddly encrypted; when she tries to look, it's like equalizer or volume bars swelling to a height to cover what she's looking at.  It matches with a rise of that humming sound inside the computer, like the hard drive is speeding up its racing spins, working harder.
I'M SORRY PROFESSOR.  I DO NOT KNOW THAT TERM.  BY DEFINITION, IT WOULD BE A POORLY-REASONED ACTION IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT.  DOES THAT HELP?

Grace
Grace's brows crinkle together. Not even Ghost Wheel was able to encrypt their doings so well. The humming noise from her computer is... distressing. Are they trying to kill her machine? Perish the thought!
You really don't know do you? Who are you?

Joshua
There is another second's pause, as if it's computing Grace's response.  The hum quiets slightly, the hard drive returning to a normal state of operation.  That second extends to another, and another.  There is a moment, perhaps, when Grace worries that the other end of the conversation has disconnected.  And that's the exact moment when the answer blears its way across the screen.
I AM SORRY, BUT YOU ARE CORRECT.  I DO NOT KNOW.  I AM JOSHUA.
Whether it's in the room she's in or another, the television suddenly turns itself on.  The sounds of a game show audience cheering and applauding can be heard coming from it, along with a daka-daka-daka-daka-daka-daka sound, like a wheel being spun.  Showcase Showdown, perhaps?  Is Drew Carey or (if it's a rerun) Bob Barker on the screen?  Grace can't tell from this angle.

Grace
Joshua. What game do you want to play?
It's just then that the television in another apartment (Grace does not own a TV) turns on. Cheering, applauding, the turning of the wheel. Revolutions.
It could be that someone just got home and turned on the set, but... when dealing with weirdness of this nature, it's never wise to just assume coincidence.
Wheel of Fortune? Fortuna?
Her brow raises again, and one might mistake her for a Spock at this rate. So, she tries another tactic -- to at least see what's going on with that distortion on her screen. She might not be able to clear it away, but she should be able to tell if someone is interfering -- inserting complexity into what should be understandable.

[Entropy 1: What's this distortion then?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (9) ( success x 1 )

Joshua
Grace tries to look through the Code and see the source of the distortion, but Fate and Randomness don't quite provide her with enough leeway to discern the identity behind that distortion.  There is certainly some sort of outside interference, after a fashion.  She does, however, get a sense of...a building, outside of her apartment.  Through the walls, where that television is.  She also hears that whine rise.  It seems closer somehow...maybe it's not within the computer and the hard drive.  It's more of a ringing in her ears, a deep reverberation that oscillates.  Rises and then falls.  Rises and than falls.  There's a flash of something that passes over her eyes, like the computer monitor that is her vision flickers.  Was there someone standing there, next to her?  She can't quite make it out.
Through the walls--clearer than it would normally be, perhaps the neighbors have the TV up too loud, she hears a familiar man's voice, give a name.  Another voice--gender difficult to tell, says, "H!"
"I'm sorry, there is no 'H.'"
Joshua's letters tick their way across the screen:

WHAT GAME DO YOU WANT TO PLAY, PROFESSOR?
1. CHESSS
2. TIC-TAC-TOE
3. CHESS
4. BACKGAMMON
5. POKER
6. HANGMAN
7. JEOPARDY
8. WHEEL OF FORTUNE
9. THEATERWIDE BIOTOXIC AND CHEMICAL WARFARE
0. GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Joshua
[[Option 3 should be CHECKERS]]

Grace
Woah. Shaking her head, she tries to clear it. Her vision's going (like a vision) and the hum in her oscillates. "Joshua" is doing something to her.
She closes her eyes, the eyes that cannot be trusted. That hum. It all started here, in this very room didn't it? Long ago, last summer -- with a humming inside her head.
"I'm sorry, there is no 'H.'"
Her eyes open again, and the menu appears. Wheel of Fortune. Definitely let's go with that, before Global Thermonuclear War.
8. I choose Wheel of Fortune. Where are you? What are you doing to me?
She asks the question because she's getting a little concerned that Joshua might be already weaving 'his' way through her mind, shutting down her vision.
Or, could be something else.

Joshua
The block cursor flashes for a couple moments while it computes Grace's response.  It hangs there, like a pregnant pause, processing the data and comparing it against what it should do in return.  Don't you love how fast 1980s computers are?
You that sensation you get sometimes when your eyes don't blink quite fast enough for you not to notice, and everything goes dark for half an instant?  That time, almost (but not quite) imperceptibly small, when your world goes back for a second?  Sometimes, if you're not expecting it--because let's face it, we don't notice every time we blink and get used to it--you might think the power has just shut off.  And before the impulse can even turn into a coherant though, everything's back of course.  That's the sensation Grace gets.  Everything's black for just a moment and then it's all back.  The only difference is that the television is louder.  She can hear the tika-tika-tika-tika-tika of the wheel spinning and the clacker hitting the posts louder than it was before.  The sound of the audience cheering and clapping is suffusive, almost like it's everywhere at once, all around her.  Are the lights brighter?  There's a bit of glare...
LOADING WHEEL OF FORTUNE...
There's a moment where Grace hears the MIDI tones of what would surely be an early Commodore 64-style rendition of the popular game show's theme and then the glare from above shines too brightly.  She can't seem to see...the applause is so loud...
And then, with a blink, her eyes clear as a stagehand adjusts the light up on the catwalk of the set.  She's standing at a mini-podium in front of a giant (you guessed it) glitzed-up wheel on the ground.  There are two people standing on either side of her.  One of them, she realizes with a shock, is Callum.  On the other side is Kalen.  They're both dressed up and camera-ready, both smiling.  Kalen, of course, is leaning slightly against his mini-podium...the leg and all.  They're on the set of that very game show she elected to play.
To Callum's left is (because who else would it be?) Pat Sajak.  The audience cheers as Pat looks at his notecard.  "All right, Grace...go ahead and spin!  Your clue is: "The Winning Move."
Vanna applauds right along with the crowd, smiling brilliantly.

Grace
Callum is dead. She watched this man die. Watched blood ooze out of his destroyed brain.
This isn't real, but she is no stranger to visions. Some fear-spike rears up her spine, that if Callum is here, then her Hydra visions have surely begun to bleed into her waking life again. That she's surely going to die painfully here in a few minutes.
But waking up in a TV game studio has never been one of the scenarios on offer from the wyrm with many heads. Kalen has never appeared, smiling or otherwise, in her nightmares.
"No."
The winning move. Wargames. Joshua. The only winning move is not to play.

Joshua
There is no doubt in her mind that Callum is dead.  He was fully, one hundred percent gone as they ran by him, escaping from that place of pain and death and disease.  And yet, she doesn't remember falling asleep.  (But do you ever when in dreams?)  And he certainly seems real.
But he's also not there to torment her, or at least he doesn't seem to be.  He's looking warm and friendly, which--let's be frank--he never really was.  Hell, Kalen can be warm and friendly but what he's doing seems just...OFF.  Playing to the camera?  Really not his thing.  And yet it doesn't feel like a dream or a vision, does it?  What does a vision feel like?  Do you know when you're in one that you are, or do you just think you're going insane?
Either way, she gives her answer: No.  And when she says that, it's like she just punted a puppy for a field goal.  The audience's cheering is cut off, with a couple audible gasps.  Kalen nearly falls over and Callum is stunned into silence, his face going particularly pale against that red hair.  For a moment, you can almost hear a pin drop.
"But...you have to," says the Hermetic.  And the dead-but-not-dead scientist on the other side of her nods, agreeing.  "He's right, Grace.  You said you wanted to play.  It's time to play."
The wheel sits in front of her, the pegs around the center jutting upward like sharp peaks in the mountain sky.  Someone beyond the cameras, shadowed because of the lights shining on them, turns and walks out of the studio, the door swinging shut behind them/

Grace
She points at Callum, "Fuck you and your idiot fucking face," she says, because it feels good.
"No, I don't have to do anything," Grace replies to Kalen. "I choose what I do, you hear me?"
Jesus, it's like talking to the angel on one shoulder and the demon on the other -- with Grace stuck in the middle. Only instead of offering options, paths, there's only the one they want to funnel her to.
She looks down at the wheel, reading the 'prizes' on offer. The way this seems to be going, it's likely to read: "Death! More Death! Free Trip to Hell!"

Joshua
It does feel good, we're sure, to be able to tell Callum that.  And there's a moment where he almost seems like he's about to smile, impressed by her, but it's overwhelmed by being surprised that he got told off.  Just off to the side of the cameraman, she can see someone pushing what must be a censor button in conjunction with her profanity.
It's TV, after all.
"Do you?" asks Kalen, in response to her charge that she chooses what she does.  "I mean, do you really?  Do you make your choices or are they made by something else?"
The different strips of prizes aren't prizes after all; they're odd shapes, strangely asymmetrical.  She can't make them out at first, because perhaps she's not familiar with the more obscure ones in front of her.  As her eyes slip around, she realizes what they are.  They're the countries of the world, each and every one.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Grace," says Pat Sajak.  "It looks like you're playing global thermonuclear war after all."
And that's when Kalen smiles...a more genuine, Kalen-ish smile.  "Looks like you chose well."
The door slams shut off in the distance, with a resounding boom.

Grace
The Wheel of Global Thermonuclear War, eh? Her confusion rises. Well that's not right. This can't be real, can it? It certainly feels real. She's forgotten how this was supposed to be a vision. Kalen tells her she chose well, and she gives him a crooked smile back.
Just then, the door slams, the sound of a bomb. But she didn't spin the wheel.
She tries to step off of the podium, but she's wired into some microphone apparatus, which she detaches from herself. But, before she leaves, she looks that guy next to the camera straight in the eye, puts that microphone to her lips with one hand, flips off the camera with the other, and says "Fuck. You. Censor this."
I mean, if you're going to rile somebody, censors are a fairly easy (and satisfying) target, aren't they? Telling you what you can and can't do and say, even if it hurts no one.
She drops the mic, because of course she does. And then, it's off to find those slammed doors.

Joshua
And just like that, when she flips off the camera the audience is cheering wildly again.  She might as well have just won that new car that is surely sitting behind one of those moving wall dividers.  Vanna applauds, Pat smiles brightly.  Even Kalen and Callum are clapping for her.
But there's no time for that, because she is walking past the cameras and heading for the door.  It's one of those large double firedoors, with thick grey metal frames and a push lever to open.  Light is cracked from underneath the door, and a sign pasted on each door reads "EXIT," but someone has used a thick red permanent marker to put a question mark at the end of it.  Maybe some disgruntled intern who was particularly pissy one night.

Grace
God, Callum smiling and clapping for her has got to be the creepiest damn thing she's seen... this month. If it wasn't for him, all the smiling, applauding people would be getting a more animated response from her, but all she really wants to do right now is try to mash his head into his mini-podium, to wipe that smile off his face.
Better to just walk away.
He's dead. Rotting. No more smiles for him, except for the skull's.
She stomps off toward the door, and looks up at the "EXIT?" sign, decides to open the door first and look outside before just blindly rushing through it. Where is she? She can't remember how she got here...

Joshua
The door swings easily, opening out into a remarkably plain hallway.  The set she's walking from (and of course, the corresponding doors) seem to come right at the center, meaning that the grey-painted walls spread out in either direction.  At her left after about forty or fifty feet, there is a set of doors, identical to the ones that she stepped out from, behind which sunlight can be seen.
At her right?  The hallway goes down and then turns ninety degrees to the right.  The sound of a ringing phone pierces the air from that direction.

Grace
Grace looks to the left and right, not remembering this place. There's a phone ringing somewhere to the right. Someone's calling. It's loud. Seems like it's for her, but how would it be?
She starts pacing off in that direction, trying to find the phone.

Joshua
The phone is ringing, so of course Grace goes off to find it.  It's a natural reaction for her, after all, and why wouldn't it be.  She follows it down the hallway, away from the exit and deeper into the bowels of the building.  Someone is calling for her, and Grace is going to find out who.
As she turns around the corner, the hallway continues ahead it goes on for a while, the ring getting slowly louder and louder as she gets closer to it.  The walls themselves are slowly shifting color, from that neutral gray to a deep, dark red.  It's a gradual change; first it's merely a richer hue and then hints of the blush start to appear.  Before Noel realizes it the walls are deep crimson.  And the ringing is ever-present...louder, almost ear-splitting at this point.
As she comes up to a final turn down the corner, she sees a poster on the wall.  It's a framed poster, the kind you might by in a mall print shop.  It's a mystical-looking piece of art; Grace might not recognize it right away.  The circular object painted in the center has eight spokes and at the South, East, North and West points are the letters R-O-T-A, with alchemical symbols inscribed as well.  A Sphinx sits at the top of the object while clouds appear in four corners with winged and reading people and animals sitting on each cloud.  On either side of the print are two items: a gleaming sword and a glittering shield.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING.  It's right past that turn.  Has to be.

Joshua
[[And in case it wasn't clear: the sword and shield aren't part of the painting, they are an actual sword and shield mounted on the wall.]]

Joshua
[[Noel, Grace.  Either one.  Both.  Y'know.]]

Grace
The walls turn slowly red, like a sunset bleeding into them, like a gradient. #777 - #A00. Like blood.
If dream this is, then it's only natural that the walls would turn to red. At least, it's natural to Grace anymore.
There appears before her a poster on the wall, with a wheel and a sphynx, clouds and letters and symbols of mystic significance, she's certain of that. And then, a sword and shield. Why these things would be in a television studio are beyond her, but reality has moved into that dream-like state where everything feels as normal and real as ever. Even when it isn't.
What are those symbols for? She's seen this somewhere, hasn't she?
[Int 4 + Occult 0, diff 6 = What is this poster eh?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[3 more dice for Academics!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 7) ( fail )

Joshua
Grace has maybe seen this picture somewhere before.  It takes her quite a while to narrow it down, and that persistant ringing doesn't help.  It's almost like it's calling for her...or perhaps warning her.  It's hard to tell which of the two it is as it oscillates between high and low tones of the ring:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooo-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooo
But then it comes to her.  She's seen it in one of the many books that she's been scanning, one of those images that she has sloughed out.  It's a Tarot card, one of the Major Arcana.  And of course it is; it's the card popularly known as the Wheel of Fortune.  Unfortunately, Grace has been scanning more than she's been reading, and the picture was just something to cull from the file at the time.  She doesn't recall quite what it means within the tarot.

Grace
Ahh yes, the Wheel of Global Thermonuclear War. Wait... no...
Wheels. Wheels turn.
And then, she goes to free the sword and shield from the wall, if they will be. In quests, it's rarely wise to refuse a gift, isn't it? The noise sounds less like a phone ringing, more like an alarm now. Danger. Arm oneself accordingly.
Even though, you know, swords and shields aren't really her thing. Are they anybody's thing anymore, outside of actors and SCA enthusiasts? If the pieces will come off the wall, she'll arm herself with all the awkwardness of a gangly person who's completely untrained, and continue onward -- into the red.

Joshua
Wheels do indeed turn.  Grace has perhaps been learning a little of that metaphysical concept, of fate and the circular nature of the universe.  Perhaps she hasn't.  Either way, she at least recognizes what the poster is and she takes the weapons.  They come off with ease, fitting comfortably in her hands.  The shield nestles against her arm; the sword shimmers a little as it rests in her hand, weighted as if it were just for her.  And armed, she ventures further ahead.
It doesn't take long from here; the pay phone is just around the corner, up against the wall.  It rings with that same tone...high-low-high-low.  Awaiting her.

Grace
She walks over to the phone, puts the sword carefully on the floor, and picks up the receiver. She's going to be defended first, offensive second, apparently.
"Hey," she says, into it. Not 'hello' or 'yes?'
"You calling me?"

Joshua
The phone receiver is warm when she picks it up.  It's not scalding or painful, but it feels like it might if it was out in the sun on a warm day for several hours.  There's the click as the depressor comes up, the earpiece lifted out of it, and then she puts it to her ear and demands to know if she is the person sought by whoever is on the other end.
The response sounds like the hiss of a snake.  It's a breathy, S sound, accompanied by the harsh sound of a growl.  But it's all in one, like one mouth made that noise.  One voice.  It burrows its way into Grace's brain, sticks back in the amygdala where fear conditioning takes place.  It's an ancient, primal sound, the kind that mankind has been genetically trained to be afraid of the way that some animals are trained to be guard animals, or killers.
"You tell me," comes the hissing sound.  "Am I, Graccce?"

Grace
[WP! Fear is the mind-killer. I am not an animal, gom jabbar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )

Grace
Fear. It's a straight shot from ear to hindbrain. Threatens to overwhelm the reasoning, but Grace is no stranger to fear. Every night she deals with Hydras. Has to wake up and keep on going.
"How adorable," she says to the entity on the other side of the phone, though her heart races automatically anyway. It's something to be pushed aside. "You going for your Lord Voldemort certification?"

Joshua
"You tell me," the voice repeats, this time in response to the wisecrack.  Only it's not coming from the phone; it's coming from the hallway in front of her.  And it has to be in front of her because--wait a minute, how is she at the end of a hallway?  The maze has shifted on her and she is in a dead end.
It comes into view slowly.  She sees one serpentine head, at the same level with her own head.  It's smiling, or at least she imagines it is.  Do snakes smile?  The eyes are half-lidded, watching the Virtual Adept lazily.  And then the other head comes into place.  And then the other one.  And the other one.
And they just.  Keep.  Coming.  Eight hears, coiled out from one body that slips into view.  Every night she deals with Hydras.  Now, she faces another one.  A very literal one.

Grace
"Ohhh, 'you tell me'. How many times do I have to kill you? I know if I lop off a head, two will grow back, that's how this works, isn't it? I know, I know, 'you tell me'," Grace says, holding the shield in front of her, just in case. The receiver gets dropped -- dangles there from its pay-phone cord.
She goes for the sword, not to slay the beast, just to have it in hand. More than ready to not use it, really. Also, more than ready to test the chopped-head theory.
"How about this? I'll tell you something, okay? I tell you to go away and leave me the hell alone."

Joshua
The sound that comes forth from the heads--ALL the heads--is a low, hissing, growling laugh.  More of a chuckle, really...idly amused, the sound of a creature that is deeply confident of where it stands in the present circumstances.  The first head she saw rears up, looks at her consideringly, then speaks.  There's a familiar sibilance in that voice, the way it seems to capture multiple sounds at once.  It's almost like the oscillation of the phone, the hum of her hard drive.  The way the letters from Joshua flashed across the computer screen with both beeps and ticks.
Wait, she recognizes it.  The tones.  It's her fellow competitors on the game show she walked away from.  Angel and devil, she said?  They're embodied in one here.
"Poor, poor Grace," it says with that double voice.  "Do you think that you can handle all of us?  Are you really that good?"

Grace
Grace's mouth quirks up a wry, cruel smile.
Seems she doesn't have much of a choice, with all the gifts she's been given. Sword, shield, and a back to a wall. They are gifts to her. And the way out is through.
Talk-time is over. She's decided this thing needs to die, and she's not the kind to monologue to a dead thing about why it needs to.
But in her thoughts, she echos a hope that maybe, if she does manage to kill it, the hydra won't stalk her dreams anymore. Maybe this is the last time she'll have to face the damn thing.
Maybe this time, she won't be the one to die.
So she screams -- not in agony or fear, but in response. Yes, she really is that good. The sword, she swings at one of the heads, not to decapitate, but to split down the middle. Cutting off the heads makes them split into two, so maybe splitting them into two will have the opposite effect. Mathematical inverse logic as applied to mythos.

Joshua
[[Okay, so here's what we're gonna do for combat!  First of all, CINEMATIC.  No initiative because I say "no initiative."  Your Melee attacks will be done via Intelligence + Enigmas, Dodge with same.  You soak with Willpower + Arete.  Damage on the sword is 6 + successes.  So roll an attack!]]

Grace
[Int 4 + Enigmas 1 = RAAAAAH! I cleave your head!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[6 + 1 Success = Damage!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Soak]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Bite #1]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Damage #1]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Bite #2]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Damage #2]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Joshua
[[Bite #3]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Joshua
[[Damage #3]]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Willpower 6 + Arete 1 = Soak#1]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Willpower 6 + Arete 1 = Soak#2]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Willpower 6 + Arete 1 = Soak#3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
Grace gives a scream--more of a primal battle cry than anything--and drives the sword directly down at the center of the creature's body.  It's an unexpected attack on the monstrosity's part and the shining, razor-sharp blade slams down on the hide.  It leaves a mark on the hardened skin, but not so much as to be damaging.  But it's set the creature back on its heels, trying to reorient.
And it's no longer playing around, no longer taunting the Adept.  Three heads, with baleful yellow eyes and fangs dripping saliva, wind in to strike.  The first of those is deflected by Grace's shield, knocked aside on pure instinct.  The other two find their mark and sink in, one into the shoulder and the other into her leg.  But even these don't tear into her like they might, because Grace realizes after she moved to attack that the shield has covered her in armor that replicates the protective item's shining silvery color.  The fangs pierce flesh and bring pain, but it's not nearly as bad as it could have been.
The creature rears up, preparing for another multi-faceted strike.

Grace
Now she definitely looks the part of a dragonslayer, doesn't she? All glinting and silvery. Looks are about as useful to her as shoes are to a printer, but you know... Go forth in style, eh?
Its fangs draw a hiss from her, but little else. She dissolves in her own blood too often to scream over something like that. At least this time, she's not helplessly waiting for death to come. It's a change of pace.
With the sword, she lunges to its heart, trying to keep her shield between herself and its heads.
[Splitting action: Attack and Dodge -- Attacking first at -2]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Dodging at -3]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 4) ( fail )

Grace
[Damage! 6+1 Success]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Soak]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Joshua
[[Bite #1]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Bite #2]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
[[Bite #3]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5) ( fail )

Joshua
[[Damage #1]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Joshua
[[Damage #2]]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Willpower 6 + Arete 1 = Soak#1]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[Willpower 6 + Arete 1 = Soak#2]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[+2 attack dice as per direction!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Damage +1 die!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Joshua
They're in full-fledged, life-or-death combat here.  One might even imagine you would hear the Mortal Kombat soundtrack playing over the whole thing...but no, nothing that gauche.  This isn't a sequence of flippy kicks and blocks and techno music; this is a vicious, violent struggle to see who will prevail.
Grace's strike hits true, but the plating around the creature's ribcage doesn't quite give way.  But they're at a stalemate because Grace has sent the creature into a defensive mode, meaning that one of the three attacks misses the mark completely and the other two are unable to pierce the shining armor.  They remain locked against each other, Grace's blade against Hydra's many snarling heads.

Grace
Again, she goes for its heart, again she keeps that shield held to protect. Someday, surely, one of them will fall. And she's not going to let it be her.

Grace
[Splitting action: Attack and Dodge, attack first at -2!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Dodge at -3]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Damage! +6]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[+2 Damage!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
[[Soak]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 4 )

Joshua
[[Bite #1]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Joshua
[[Bite #2]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
[[Bite #3]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
[[Damage 1]]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
[[Damage 2]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Joshua
[[Damage 3]]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Arete 1 + Willpower 6 = Soak #1]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Arete 1 + Willpower 6 = Soak #2]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Arete 1 + Willpower 6 = Soak #3]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Joshua
She devotes herself to a singular focus: strike the heart.  And that seems to be the key.  For even as the various heads strike at her, and one pierces painfully deep into her side, she ignores them.  They're distractions, driving her away from the true target.  And that target is right in front of her.
The blade strikes true.  It pierces through the thick, leathered hide and the Hydra roars--all of its heads roar.  They call out in agony, an ear-splitting shriek that assaults all of Grace's senses.  She can feel hot blood from the creature come forth, dousing her as the pierced heart pumps as strongly as ever in those first moments of the wound.  Grace hates blood; the sensation makes her sick.  But this isn't her blood.  This isn't Sid's, or Serafine's, or Lena's or even the memory of blood that she gets when Alyssa comes by.  This is the blood of her nemesis, and as it flows over her it brings a Resonance not of coppery stickiness but of triumph.
Today, she has slain a Hydra.  She pushed aside all the things that tried to distract her from her goal, the many flittering obstacles here and there that tried to draw her attention away.  And she faced down this creature...and won.
This isn't being showered with gore, even if she might (or might not) feel revulsion and a turn of her stomach at the smell and the taste.  This is being reborn through the eye of creation, of life and blood and pain and light.  And in a single instant, so short that she might even wonder if she saw it, the Hydra flickers into a humanoid form.  She's swear they were smiling.
And then, free and clear, she's back at her computer.  There is no terminal window from Joshua; there is no Wheel of Fortune playing in the other room.  There is no blood, though the energized feeling it gave still runs through her body.  There is just her, and she feels that much closer along her path.

Grace
She blinks at the screen in front of her. Homework. Her breath still comes fast, and her heart is pounding in adrenaline rush -- not to mention the rush of victory.
There are occasions when homework inspires such, but not often, and not like this.
What the hell was that? Grace doesn't know this, doesn't understand visions or dreams (if dream that was) and yet the first flash of insight came in a vision -- that the world is not what it appears. It came in a humming buzz and different voices. And the way she feels right now, feels like it did back then. Like having touched the face of the universe and realizing it was herself she was reaching out to...
Victorious. Fulfilled. Alive.
Homework can wait.

In the Arms of a Serafine

Serafi­ne
Sera made it no more than half-way down the staircase to the library tucked in the chantry's basement the first go-round.  This time, there is no one about to offer her a hand as she negotiates the stairs, drunk or stoned and wearing those heels.  But isn't she always drunk or stoned and in those heels.  And doesn't she remember the blood Grace dreams of every night.
And weren't those screams sobering.
--
A hand on the door.  She's swaying a bit, but -
"Grace?"

Grace
Grace hugs her knees to chest. She rocks herself slowly back and forth on the couch in the library, eyes open. It's quiet now, no screams, but she can feel them coming. Inexorable. Like the swells before a tidal wave, the blood-filled visions of Hydra have started to come. And go. And come again, worse.
Right now, she's hugging her knees to her chest because the floor has turned red and started to swim. And like some child's game of The Floor is Lava, she's certain that if she just doesn't touch it, it'll be okay. For a few minutes more.
There's a voice at the door. Sera's voice. Grace isn't entirely certain that it's the real Sera and not some fake vision-Sera come to torment her (or to die with her) but Kalen was supposed to bring Sera, wasn't he? Surely, this is the real one. If not, there's no one down here anymore to care about her talking to things that don't exist.
"Yeah? Come in?"

Serafine
"Hi Grace."
The door opens.
The door closes behind her.
Sera somewhere and somewhen between the door and the section of the library Grace occupies - sunk to the floor or perhaps one of the armchairs, knees pulled up firmly to her chest - Sera steps out of her heels.  One and then the other.  She remembers how to do that, how to leave things behind.  If Grace is curled up in an armchair, well, Sera tucks herself into the right arm and braces her swaying-self with an outflung hand planted against the spine of the chair.  If Grace is curled up on the carpet, Sera folds herself to the ground.  Without the heels - which Sera wears with a fuck-you sort of confidence - she is really rather small.
Skin and bones and a beating, furious heart.
"Waking nightmares, huh?"  Sera inhales.  The library seems so close and sharp, suddenly.  Those controls at the entrance almost - clinical. "Tell me what you feel.  Okay?
"Tell me what you see.  Whatever it is, I can take it."

Grace
Grace puts her head in between her knees, looks down into the darkness so created by her crumpled self. "Right now? I see you. You just sloshed through all the blood on the floor," she says, waves a hand at all the blood. Her voice is still scarred a bit from all that screaming, but some of the wavering in it isn't from simply wearing out her vocal cords.
"I feel like..." she starts, but the need to breathe crowds out words. So she takes a few quick (too quick) breaths before continuing. "Like it's not safe being awake anymore. I always knew if I was awake, the dreams were over and I could just...
"Am I going to stay like this?"

Serafi­ne
"I can't make the hallucinations go away," Sera tells Grace quietly, with a certain degree of authority threaded through her smeary voice.  "Right now, you're just going to have to weather them.  You're going to have to bear them with me.  It's like a bad trip, see.
"You just need to get through it.
"I'm going to make you feel safe.  Safe and sound, and I'm going to take away your fear.  Okay?
"Then I'm going to help you sleep.  And I'll stay with you all night long, 'til you wake.
"I know someone who can help if you're still see things then.  Okay?
"Now stretch out; lay down.  Get comfortable so you can sleep.  I'm going to lie down with you."

Grace
Sera says she can't make the hallucinations go away, and Grace shuts her eyes tight. Well, fuck. It's like a bad trip, but Grace has never had a bad trip, really.
She doesn't want to look at Sera. Doesn't want Sera to see the fear in her. She's going to die again. Soon.
But then, Sera continues. There's things that can be done. Grace can be soothed, can be assisted, can be taken to someone with the ability to fix it.
"Okay," she says, into the jean material of her pant leg.
Sera says to lay down, and she's just contemplating the motions that will bring her there, when Sera says she's going to lie down too. Grace's hands unclasp from around her legs, stiff with tension, shaky. "You're what?"
Even so, Grace does start to stretch out on the couch, stiff and hesitant. She isn't saying no.

Serafi­ne
"I'm gonna lay down with you."
Easy to smell the smoke in Serafíne's hair, all rich and sweet and spicy.  Easy to catch the scent of the whiskey on her breath and her skin.  Sera is perched on the arm of the couch and her posture is almost negligent.  She is all long arms and long legs, this physical ease to her even when she's drunk enough that stairs are treacherous without railings, and the world is starting to unsluice itself all around her.
Her eyes are dark and spare and quiet and settle on Grace, who is all stiff, stark with fear, hesitant.
"Nothing's going to come for you while I'm here. I know you're afraid; I can taste it in the back of my throat.  It's okay to be afraid, but I'm going to get you through this.
"Do you trust me, Grace?"

Grace
Grace stretches out on the couch at last, lying down on her side. She shuts her eyes then, squeezing them tight against the rising red tide of the room. It smells coppery. She can almost taste it.
"I trust..." she starts, but cannot finish. There is blood in her mouth, and she must hold her breath, can't speak like this. Instead, her hands come up to her eyes, pressing tight against them, and her legs want to curl up again.
It's just a vision. Just a vision. The sensations are just that -- random neuron firings, nothing else. But the blood surges warm around her, tastes like metal in her mouth, and she has to force herself to breathe.
Then, it feels like the bubbling rasp of blood flowing into her lungs. She coughs.
Nothing will come for her, except for her own mind, Grace thinks. Her broken, malfunctioning mind. It will come for her at the end.

Serafi­ne
Grace stretches out;  Sera follows suit, sliding from the arm of the couch onto the cushions beside Grace, kicking out her legs and shimmy slithering down the couch alongside the Virtual Adept.  Maybe the scent of smoke, of cloves and burnt sugar, of tobacco and whiskey, of Chanel No. 5, which is the scent Sera has chosen to pair with her usual mixture of skin and sweat and salt and alcohol and smoke, maybe these many and myriad scents are not enough to slide between the stutterstep moments of Grace's waking nightmare, but there they are.
Sera settles beside Grace; also on her side.  One arm tucked beneath her narrow frame, the other reaching to wrap around Grace's arm and shoulder, holding her.
Holding her.
And Sera bends her head, rests her brow against the back of Grace's skull, nose against Grace's spine, close enough that each breath stirs the fine hairs on Grace's skin.  There is nothing else to say, and so Sera says nothing.  She breathes, and she breathes Grace in, the sour tinge of sweat and fear, the gut-wrenching seizure of it all, enduring, entire.
The humming begins beneath her breath; lingers in her throat, behind her mouth.  If Grace is in any state of mind sufficient to pick out the melody, she might recognize it as a song that Sera has sung for her before.

Serafi­ne
Mind 2: empathic projection.  Safe/sound.  Difficulty: 5, -1 (resonance);  -1 (focus).
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 3, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
It's difficult to feel safe in the midst of drowning in a lake of blood. But then, there is Sera, and Sera is Magic. Her song is relief itself, and even though Grace is drowning, she doesn't much care anymore.
There is Sera, floating in the red sea, holding on to her, smelling of smoke and cacophony and blood. Her lungs burn with the effort of breathing, all thick and bubbling and full. And yet, she can still smell. How odd.
The tightness with which she's held her body shifts into slack.
She doesn't mind the arms around her, the feeling of breath at her neck. For once, the other things going on in her waking nightmare are far too distracting for her to even register these things as something to flee from.

Serafi­ne
The song quiets; changes; deepens.  The words are a wish; are a promise; are a prayer, and the words hardly matter.
Safe.  Safe.  Safe.
Safe and sound.
The song is a prayer to the moon and a promise to the body; it is an invocation of mercy and mercy, now, is all Sera can offer Grace in the midst of her hallucinations.  Oh, Sera remembers dying; this is not something she has forgotten, some pain she has failed to remember, some loss she has subsumed into her skin, some disaster she has wiped clean.  Some darkness she allows beneath her skin but only in shadow.
Sera does not hallucinate, and she does not have nightmares, and she does not remember her dreams, but she remembers what it felt like to drown in her own blood; to tear herself open and to be torn open, again and again and again.  Locked in a sterile white room,
dying
alone, alone, alone.
Grace will not die alone.  Not tonight.  Tonight she's safe; tonight, she's safe and she's Safe and she's safe.  She is whole and she is sound.
The song begins to ravel, pulls itself into its component parts; sloughs itself to pieces.  Sera's brow against the base of Grace's skull, her breath warm, her right arm worming its way beneath her body.  Sera, wrapping Grace up in her arms, finding her way out of her skin, into another's.  Beneath another's.
The hallucinations do not disappear; Sera cannot banish them.  But the pain.  The sensation of it -

Serafi­ne
Mind 2: extending.  Difficulty +1 (extending)  -1 (taking time.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 4) ( success x 1 )

Serafi­ne
And:  Mind 2 (empathic projection - safe and sound)/Life 3 (call it panacea.  Sera is taking away/taking on the physical sensations of Grace's hallucinations on her own body.)  Difficulty: 7.  -1 (focus)  -1 (time)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Serafi­ne
Extending.  Difficulty +1  -1 (Quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafi­ne
Extending.  Ditto.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
Grace opens her eyes, breathes. And for a change, she isn't breathing blood. She can see it, she knows it's there, knows what's coming, even, but no -- it won't touch her.
It's like she's floating around somewhere else, watching this happen to someone else. Like it's a movie of her life. Separate.
"Sera," she says, when she can speak again. "Whatever you're doing, it's working."
Working, indeed. But Grace doesn't know how -- doesn't know that what Sera takes, she puts upon herself.
Her skin begins to crack open, to spill its contents into the sea of blood, but Grace doesn't feel it. Can't know it's happening, unless she looks down at herself.

Serafi­ne
"I know."  Sera says; will, perhaps, even remember saying, though her lungs are full of fluid and her skin is tearing itself open and her body is wretched, debilitated, ruined.
She can't breathe.  She nuzzles Grace.
She keeps Working, and pushes every sliver of herself into her Work.
"I know.  Close your eyes Grace.
"Go to sleep."

Serafi­ne
Extending.
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 10, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafi­ne
Stamina: (this feels bad).
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
She's floating on nothingness, sensation taken, safety assured. It's so easy to start to drift off again, once the adrenaline wears itself out. Sluggishness takes over when the chemicals of panic abate.
There's a hum, and arms around her, and breath at her neck, and blood everywhere, but none of it matters, none of it reaches awareness. It's like Grace has been numbed to everything that feels wrong.
Even as her body sublimes, piece by piece, the blood lake digesting her whole. There's nothing to feel. Nothing to fear.
There is only darkness behind closed lids.

Serafi­ne
(Paradox.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( fail )

Serafi­ne
(Take that consensual reality.)

Serafi­ne
And Sera.  All night long she does nothing but drown.

July: The Poisoned Cup

Grace
[Nightmares, please don't botch, please don't botch...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 5, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
It's been a week since the incident when Grace lost her sanity. It's something that the Fallacy of Impulse people had down pat about her in their predictions -- her mind had broken. But, as the days went on, as her nightmares failed to bleed into the waking world again, it would seem this insanity was a temporary ordeal.
The more days that pass, the easier it gets. Even if sleep never is, and waking is harder.
But there is another prediction. An omen. A date. There's no telling how long this relative peace is going to last her, but Grace has an inkling it's all going to go to Hell again in July.
Because they were right once.
They'll probably be right again.
Right at the moment, Grace is curled up in a (expensively) upholstered chair in the study of the Warehouse, barefoot and tangled of limb, with her laptop in the mix lighting her face with phosphor glow.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen arrives back at the warehouse from...god knows where.  But he has takeout, this time Italian.  Both meat and vegetarian lasagna.  Garlic bread.  Mozzarella sticks. Cheesecake.  He starts setting the things out so Grace can get to them, then settles into one of the chairs.
He seems absolutely unconcerned about the upholstery.
"Hello, Kit."

Grace
Blink. Blink. Apparently Kalen apparated in while she wasn't paying attention. With Italian, because he always comes bearing gifts of food. She's regained what was lost to the Hydra, but Grace suspects that fact won't stop him from delivering her food.
Well. It doesn't hurt that he has great taste in take-out.
She gives him a smile, perhaps one worn down by stress and remembered pain, but bright enough.
"Hey. That smells good," she says, and untangles her legs out of the knot she had them in -- puts the laptop aside for a moment.
She grabs the thing of mozzarella sticks, and goes back to her laptop. And it's not to slight Kalen, though it might seem as though he's being ignored for a few seconds.
"Hey... um..." she starts, apparently weighing her words. "You ever have any ominous dreams about me? Like, prophetic ones?"
There's a mozzarella stick in her hand by the time she gets the words all out, and when she realizes that, she bites it in half.

Kalen Holliday
"Never prophetic ones, no."  Kalen says slowly.  "Why?"
He leans over to grab a mozzarella stick, but that seems more to be doing something than because he is terribly interested in it.

Grace
So. Ominous dreams, just not the type to come true. Right.
"Well, it's about Mysterious Internet Stalker. The forum, it has some --" And this, this is where it starts getting weird. Because why?
"It has some prophesies about me in it. Some things that have already happened, and some things that haven't yet. You said you'd help me in this if you could, and well... Like I know a thing about prophesy. But you kind of do. Right?"

Kalen Holliday
"Well.  Anything that you see can be changed.  Sometimes...sometimes it is very difficult, but no future is entirely certain.  I can try to see into your future.
"But..what do the prophecies say?"

Grace
She looks over at her laptop, and takes care of the second half of her mozzarella stick by eating it. Greasy hands get wiped on her jeans, and then she grabs her rig and turns it around so Kalen can read.
"Remember how I said their initial message to me was a little weird, with their 'L. Marshall has been sentenced to the Turing Test' line? How I said it might have something to do with poison?" she says, and then lets him read.
The prophesy, the one she had to pry out of an encrypted and mind-twisted data dump reads as follows:

The Poisoned Cup. Better be careful here.
Verdancy Ascendant + [long string of numbers = July]. Pin-Point July. First shadows go long and lightning in shadows? Lightning or electric shocks? The metal will react. That will happen for the rest to happen + snark a lot of snark + noodles? I think this will be v d4ng3r + Sleeper Cyclops. The cup is the danger but is it touching the cup or is it drinking the cup = will she drink? I think that she will drink even tho remembering I think that the ?? bees what the fuck the bees will still sing that song. The bees are going to sing after the shadows spark that will be the end of it. But first loss? Lost. Lost memory book-opened up. I predict eyes not These but other eyes and they will move like a stutter or fucking shaky cam? Not alone I predict that shoes and shadowless and ok after that a period of rest. Hibernation. Hiding, but only if the eyes are watching. Poisoned cup I wonder. Too much there and gum on the shoes sticky. NO FIREWORKS THO. More darkness tenebrous than anything. Address? [There is an address here - it is for a restaurant near the University.]

Kalen Holliday
"That...does appear to be at least a little bit ominous."  He frowns and rereads it.
"It's like a dark mirror Grail quest?  Lightning and shadows."  Again he rereads the message.
"I can try to look but I'm not sure I'll get much clearer information.  Do you know any of these references?"

Grace
"Well, I'm pretty sure I know who 'snark a lot of snark plus noodles' refers to," she says, and gives him a smirk. Just in case he doesn't get it though, she points at him with another snagged mozzarella stick.
"The address is a restaurant. I've been there before, but I certainly don't remember any bee lightning."

Kalen Holliday
"I think, regardless of what I can or cannot see we just be cautious.  Or spend all of July in Australia."  He's probably joking about Australia there.  Probably.
He finally remembers he has a mozzarella stick and takes a bite of it.
"I'm more interested in the cup and the bees and the shadows and the metal."

Grace
"The eyes. Someone's going to be watching me, like... I'm going to have to hide somewhere, like at the Chantry with wards up," she sighs.
"Like I said, I know jack about prophesy, or how to interpret this. Sounds like the writer of this thing didn't know how to interpret it either. I wouldn't mind spending the entirety of July in Australia, mind you, but I don't know if that would change anything, you know? Maybe going to Australia is what we do to cause this to happen?"

Kalen Holliday
"Yeah.  Prophecy...it is an uncertain thing at best.  I'll see what I can do, but we may not be able to really understand until closer to July."

Grace
"I know... I just," she sighs, looks up at the ceiling. "I've been avoiding telling you about it, because I didn't want you to worry. But it's not like you're not directly referenced in the fucking thing or anything, right? I'd have to tell you eventually."
She continues chewing on the oh-so-convenient finger food that is fried cheese.
"I just wanted you to know. In case you ran across something, or one of the references suddenly makes itself clear. Or you have a dream. Or whatever," she says, mouth half-full.

Kalen Holliday
"Thank you."  He smiles.  "We'll figure it out.  There's time before July."

Grace
"I'm sure it'll be fine," she says. A beat. And then, "Okay, that's a lie. But still."
Even so, there's a smile for him in return.
"What's new in your life? Mine continues to be interesting, I know."

Kalen Holliday
"I'm trying to understand having friends.  Still confused.  Of course, it is pretty awesome, so I'm okay with that."
"I think Ryne is a vegetarian."  Wait.  What?  That sequence makes sense to Kalen, anyway.

Grace
"What are you confused about, regarding friends?" she asks, a touch of amusement passing over her features.

Kalen Holliday
"I've never really had any.  It's kind of a new, weird thing."

Grace
"Well, welcome to the club. People are weird. Not that vegetarianism is weird, I didn't mean that," she turns her laptop back, putting it away, so Kalen doesn't have to stare at that fucked-up prophesy anymore.
"Sometimes, it hurts to have friends, too. But it hurt a lot more not having them I suppose."

Kalen Holliday
"I rather like it."