Fighting Lessons

Ian
[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

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

Ian
[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

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

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

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

"Careful, I might start fighting for real."

Jae-shin's expression was quietly challenging.

Serafíne
Awareness.

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

Jo Hamilton
[Jo Hamilton uses SPLASH!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lavinia
[Per+aware, oooh?]

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

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

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

Jo Hamilton
She needs distraction free thinking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They just start?"

Ian
[Life 3, Better Body diff 6]

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

Ian
[+1 Dex for 24 hours, woot]

Ian
[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

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

Ian
[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

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

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

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

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



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

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

Ian and Jae-shin.

Cloud.

Wait, what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian
[I suppose we should do this awareness thing]

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

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

And she: claps.

You know: for the show.

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

"Serafíne.  You can call me Sera."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They speak different languages, though.  On every level.

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

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

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

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

--

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



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

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

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

"Oh. Huh."

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

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

Yup. Like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reup, like it was military service.

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

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

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

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

[I'll roll init now. +8]

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

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



(5+1d10)

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

Lavinia
(oops)

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

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

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

{action! Elbow to the ribs]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And damned if she didn't love training.

Lavinia
[action! sweep the leg!]

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

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

Ian
[hahahahahaha]

Lavinia
[Dex3+brawl3, diff 7}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kiara Woolfe, if you please.

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

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

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

"So are you."

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

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

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

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

Lavinia
[Declare!: Splitting-

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lavinia
(and one more, because it goes first)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian
[Dex+Ath -3]

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

Ian
[And they're tied again!]

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

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

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

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

"Want to keep going?"

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

The underdog.

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

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

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

Did he want to keep going?

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

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

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

"Whatcha looking for, Kiara?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lavinia
[Dex3+brawl3=6, diff 6]

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

Ian
[and they tied again, lol, dammit]

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

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

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



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

Kiara
[+1 diff, Kiara Factor.]

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

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

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

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

Ian
[punch 1 -4]

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

Ian
[punch 2 -5]

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

Kiara
What's she looking for.

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

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

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

"Habit."

Ian
[Final score: Lavinia 4, Ian 6]

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

A second.

"Or a name?"

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

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

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

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

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

Grace
[X_X]

Park Weather

Kiara Woolfe
[I'm doing the thing with the sensing because, y'know. Dice.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne
Early evening, midweek, springtime - warm in a way that feels bonesoaking after the long, dark winter.  Now though: my god, the sun, the dogwoods, the tulips and the anemone, the late-blooming daffodils, the iris bristling-green but not yet in-bloom in dark stands around the lake.  The redbuds a bruising blush of magenta, here and there a cherry tree that has just come into bloom or has come-and-gone while you were looking at it: tender tender tendersweet.

Spring.

The park is flooded with people from every walk of life and every socioeconomic strata.  Skateboarders, joggers, frisbee throwers, dog-walkers, dog-runners, dog-carriers, picnickers of both the makeshift and the wellplanned varieties.  Puppet-show creators and street artists and balloon-sellers.  Grandparents running after toddlers, teenagers trailing after the world's most clueless adults.  Bird-watchers, goose-feeders, toy-sailboat-captains, roast-nut vendors and on, and on, and on.  Pick-up softball games and a stray game of intramural quidditch and not one, but two people in Chewbacca suits neither of whom knows the other -

and amidst all this agitation, green-green-growth and exultant tumult a certain creature, laying on her back in the green green grass, dark glasses over her eyes, golden hair threaded through the grass, head back, feet flat on the ground, knees bent, arms spread wide wide wide.

Kiara Woolfe
The warmth had hit her like a freight train. All that deep, deep cold and then suddenly; sunshine. Suddenly the world twisting just so and then - oh. Spring is sprung and there's a poetry to Washington Park again that somehow felt hushed and suspended while the snow fell. As if winter had pressed her finger to her lips and shushed the world and the travelers that once upon a time traversed it. Kiara Woolfe had been one of these - not to say she'd entirely stopped visiting but - her absences had been longer.

Her presence stirring here and there - conversations via Ginger - a flash of dark, wild hair in a Café, a bright red smile across a room - there and then - gone. As if pinched and snuffed out; leaving only the wisps of curling smoke; the suggestion of the Verbena.

That was in essence so very much the brunette's way, however. She was a wilding at heart and as much as the city entertained her there was forever curled around Kiara the notion of something borrowed but for a time from nature. Some sprite that manifested in a flash of sharp white teeth and dark; laughing eyes. Just as it does now - Serafine on the grass and then a shadow sliding across her form. The sensation of rebirth; the tickle at the senses and suddenly -

"Hey, stranger."

- Kiara; sunglasses perched on the edge of her nose; head tilted to the side. Drinking in the sight of the other woman; her fingers idly curled around a bottle of water. Kiara; who smelled like sunshine and coffee; vital and sweet and yet - something else, too. The curl of her lips suggestive. "Mind if I sit?"

Grace
[Awareness!]

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

Grace
The warmth does not hit Grace like a freight train. This Phoenixite loves the warm, and even embraces the hot. It's amazing she manages to get through the winter without freezing a toe off. Warmth hits her like a fluffy pillow. She just wants to roll around in it.

Maybe that's why she's out here in the 'wild' nursing her internet addiction by strolling around with her face in her phone. Or, she could be peeling away the universe's veils and poking stuff on the inside, it's really hard to tell...

But she isn't. At least, not in any way less mundane than anyone else does with their own quantum-tunneling pocket-sized sums-of-most-human-knowledge.

After some fashion, the skittering wanderer wanders inexplicably towards the others, as Mages are so wont to do. Like attracts like, or something like that. But she still doesn't look up from her phone. Maybe she's just not quite aware of them yet, drifting their way like following a familiar scent.

Serafíne
The creature has to feel it from a long way off: that singular sensation - devouring rebirth, the voracious energy of it, but she does not move, does not stir, does not sit-up-and-wave or otherwise embrace the sensation until Kiara's shadow moves over Sera's skin.  Which is already bronzed, as if she had spent those last dredging weeks of winter-to-spring somewhere far, far away.  Someplace with white sands and luminous seas and a golden sun.  St. Tropez or Rio or Santorini or Phuket or fucking Bali.

Maybe it was fucking Bali.

Maybe it was just Jamaica.

Whereever: she has three bracelets made of braided grass and cheap glass beads around her left wrist, tattoos scrawling dark on her fingers, wrists, forearms, her left bicep, curling up her negligent flank, disappearing into shadow or beneath the straps of her leopard-print bikini top.

Next to her head, sweating in a plastic-domed Big Gulp cup, a bright pink Slurpee.  Guarantee you it is dosed with something.

"Hey."  This see, as much to Kiara's shadow as to Kiara.  Quiet really, for a Sera, the edge of her mouth: curving, faint.  This lift of her chin, both subtle and supple, rather hard to see for the angle except for the way it makes her hair slither through the grass.  "I'd mind if you fucking didn't sit."

The glasses are too dark for anyone to see her eyes, but the sense of her attention is clear.  The direction.  The strange, drifting precision.

Kiara Woolfe
There's quiet laughter at that.

At the idea that she'd find offense in it; Kiara's decision whether to sit or not to sit which - frankly - was really no decision at all but an eventuality. She had always had the intention to - it was the tease with formalities she really had no great care for that slowed her descent to the grass. She drops a bag down; it rattles with authority; the contents burdened enough to impact with some weight; to compress the soft earth beneath it before the Verbena folds herself down beside it.

"Guess I'd better fucking sit, then."

Scoops her sunglasses back over her face so her dark eyes are visible. Uncaps the water bottle and tips it against her lips; swallows and watches Serafine out of the corner of her eyes; smiling as she turns her face afterwards. Her mouth is cherry red tonight; the water leaving it gleaming wetly in the gathering dusk.

There's almost something feral about the imagery; the bold, wet, red. She reclines back on a hand and tilts her head - quiet for a beat before: "Grace." A slanted look to Serafine; the edge of humor there around her supple lips. "Have you ever noticed - " Kiara settles down on her side; cupping the side of her neck and pressing an elbow down to support herself; draping across the narrow margin of space between herself and the Cultist as if she had no concern of Serafine minding the invasion.

The way it brought the Verbena's long lashes into greater clarity; the sweep and settle of them against her cheek. The steady weight of her regard through dark eyes. "The way we seem to converge. You'd nearly think it was magic." A slow, satisfied shift of her mouth, then. She lifts her chin.

Watching Sera while she lounges in all her leopard-print bikini-topped glory.

Grace
Grace marches up to the two of them as Kiara is speaking on the oddity of convergences, and Grace -- while still not looking up from her phone -- adds: "It's a consequence, I think. Entanglings, you know? I felt something familiar over here, and my feet must have moved for me."

She puts her phone into a pocket on her jeans, her black t-shirt one with a graphic of a robot in yellow and white, advertising: "Pass your Turing test in 2 weeks! $99"

"What's up. Is this grass taken?"

Serafíne
"Like magic, sure," comes this note of quiet, humming agreement from the Cultist.  Except, somewhere within or around the phrase is something else: something not-querelous precisely, so much as it is contrarian.  Her golden head turns as Kiara descends, as if on a fulcrum.  That same sense of both weight and calibration which somehow both belies and telegraphes her physical state of some-sort of inebriation.

Here's the truth: right now, just now, Sera is really rather stoned.

It's the best way to be stoned, with the sun cracking brilliant above you like the golden yolk of a perfectly cooked egg.

" - but not exactly magic.  And it's not really a consequence.  And it's not really a convergence: it's a choice.  A whole bunch of fucking choices you know?  To walk: towards, instead of: away from.  To be open right?  Somehow and on some level to everything that is.  Or at least, the pieces of it that hit you on your fucking wavelength, yeah?"

The sustained sense of eyecontact: the dark lenses and Kiara's dark eyes just - momentarily - hanging.

Then a glance up.  The frame of her dark glasses a cluster of tiny crystal-eyed skulls: of course.

"Hey Grace."

Kiara Woolfe
Sera is really rather stoned and Kiara is - mellow, to put it one way. Her smile lingering there as the blonde turns her face toward her and their eyes meet; holding there as the Verbena reaches over with her free hand to catch and surrender a strand of hair away from Serafine's brow; her wrist jangling with its usual assortment of brevity in chains and stones and the silver catch and gleam of something resembling a pentagram.

It's no wonder Arionna possesses the dismay for the brunette she does - she wears her beliefs without compromise, Kiara. There's no attempts to disguise her tendencies when it comes to faith - or the lack of it, in certain things.

The Verbena's touch though, where it ghosts along her skin, is gentle. Barely there to be felt stronger than the breeze before - "That depends, what's the password?" This, Kiara twisting back a little; her sunglasses dropping forward onto her nose as she settles back onto her elbow; pushing space between herself and Serafine; toeing her bag out of the way of Grace's invited situation.

"Been a while." This, Grace's actual greeting beyond the initial drawling tease, a thin eyebrow arching. "How's my favorite technological wizkid been doing? Not behaving yourself, I hope."

Grace
"I wasn't really aware of my making a choice, but hey -- I'll take credit for being open to everything," Grace says, smiles down at Sera.

"The password is: I'm sitting on the grass and you can't stop me?" There's a smirk, and then a plop as she adjusts to the sudden downwardness.

"I am totally not. Behaving myself. Ever."

Because fuck that, okay? Grace doesn't reach out to the others in their touchy-feeliness, but she doesn't seem bothered by it either. Doesn't seem so willing to put distance between herself and others these days.

Serafíne
Sera is quite remarkably still as Kiara's arm - with its gleaming cachement of baubles and bangles - shades her face.   That stillness is somehow still very inhabited; immediate; cognizant: aware, implicitly, explicitly.  Though her eyes are hidden, there is still this sense that she sinks into even the impression of contact.  The layers of it, as fine and finely calibrated as the layers of skin, and blood, blood and bone.

Sera tilts the crown of her skull back and back, chin rising to plant a supple, quiet kiss at the base of Kiara's palm.

Lets it go, turns her hidden gaze in Grace's direction as Grace sits in the still-lush grass.

--

Somewhere in the grass: a low buzz-buzzing.  Sounds like a bee.  Isn't a bee.

The hum of someone's phone, low, insistent, which starts over again as soon as it stops.  Sera is patting down the grass, looking for the thing, looking-looking for it as it starts its buzzing chorus all over again, and finally finds it, shades her eyes against the lowering sun to read the screen, makes a noise and then rolls over and lifts herself up from the grass, dusting herself off, this twist of apology in her mouth as she wanders a bit away to take this call thingy.

Kiara Woolfe
"Access granted."

Kiara's smiling as she hauls herself upright in a clink of necklaces and charms; resettling and drawing her legs beneath herself in an adoption of ease. The jeans she's wearing have a frayed patch over her knee; the glimpse of bare skin sliding beneath the denim; the jacket she's thrown on over a black shirt lightweight; the cream offsetting the dark brilliance of her hair where it falls in wild waves.

There are zips everywhere; on its cuffs; the edge of collars; along one side. At some point between this movement and resettling - Serafine rolls over; searches through the grass for her phone; reclaims it and takes the call. Kiara's eyes settle on her; linger there for a beat before there's the lift of her chin and her attention shifts to Grace.

Her fingers toying with the cap of her water bottle.

"Glad to hear it. After everything that happened with our - " There's a pause, a flicker of - what - uncertainty, caution that registers across her features. There and gone. Smoothed over with the slight inflection of humor. " - recent visitors, I wasn't sure what to expect venturing out."

Grace
"I don't think they're out yet. And even if they were, that's no reason to barricade ourselves. I tried not to show them we were afraid of them for a reason. More like, 'you guys are small stuff and we try not to sweat the small stuff'. You know. Just because they have the capacity to kill us doesn't mean they're the worst things I've ever seen. Creepy, though. Eugh."

There, an exaggerated shiver, punctuating the 'eugh'. Grace has opinions on vampires, you see?

She rolls her eyes up to the trees, leans back on her hands. Hey, nature. When did you show up?

"I think I got the message across to them though. We aren't a threat as long as they're not sacrificing people to demons. And it's in their best interests to have us around because we deal with all the shits who pose existential threats to the universe, which includes them. I think it'll be okay on that front. I think."

Kiara Woolfe
Kiara's head lifts, just so, as a couple cross over the grass nearby; their feet lightly trampling the grass underfoot as they pass. She watches them for a moment, the Verbena, her gaze flicking between them as Grace notes the vampire's probably aren't out, yet.

The lights in the park have only just come on; buzzing into existence as if summoned by the Virtual Adept's words. There's a subtle bent to the brunette's mouth; her eyes jump back to Grace. "Very creepy. I'm not a huge fan of the whole 'bend others to your whim so you can use them for snacks' mind games they play, either." Her lips purse; she sits up; rolling thin shoulders as if to shake off the idea of the creatures.

"When it comes to vampires, okay is more than enough." A beat; the edge of her mouth curls. "That and a lot of distance. I don't have the same capacity the others do to shield myself against their games." She drops her eyes to the grass; idly plucking blades of grass between her fingers.

"Things that old, I'm not sure they have the same capacity to see the world the way humans do. It gets - " Kiara gestures with a wrist; splaying her fingers out. Her palm is dotted with the indentations of the ground; the shape of leaves pressed into the skin. " - distorted.

I was a little worried about Kalen, though."

Grace
"I... uh... I could teach you how, but I don't know if it would work well. Maybe ask around? It's really a relief, you know?"

Grace's eyes spot the lights coming on. The sun's setting. The undead will be out soon, and then? Well, they probably aren't suicidal enough to start a war.

"Kalen is... Kalen. He'll do what he likes. And if any of them hurt him, I will anonymously end them." Grace just shrugs, like that's the way of things. "I'm more worried about what his little organization is going to do to him."

Kiara Woolfe
Kiara looks at Grace for a moment; her expression unguarded; open and considering and honest. There's a touch of the vulnerable to Kiara in moments like this. The slightness of her build; the impression of a dimple in her cheek when her smile grows large enough; sincere enough to demonstrate their existence there. The way her hair falls over her face as she finally ticks her eyes away from Grace toward the ground. A delicacy that offers the misleading impression - by physicality alone - that the Verbena is lacking in the capacity to hold her own.

Of course, then - there's the way she shelters herself; draws back; slides the telltale smile across her mouth; lets it settle there that armor. "I appreciate the offer. Maybe Ian can show me a few techniques if all else fails." The notion of learning anything from Ian seems, at least judging by the gleam of Kiara's eyes as she says this, unlikely. Though perhaps the tease is the easiest form of deflection.

"Ah, yes. His little out of town visitor. How's that going for him? He's been unusually quiet on Ginger which can either mean splendidly or he's been chased out of town."

Grace
Grace catches that strange not-vulnerability. Perhaps she misreads. It's an easy thing for her, to totally miss the point of body language. But she tries, you know? So, there's a tilt of the head while she tries to figure Kiara out, and then...

"It's not you. I tend to see things so wildly different from most others, I tend to just say maybe it will work, but don't get your hopes up? I mean, I view mental processes as implicate/explicate order transformations on a fractal holographic base? So. I realize there are chasms to cross. Commonalities exist, yeah. Minds-as-wholeness, that's a concept that's pretty relatable. Or the unification of all minds maybe? I'm not saying no. Not at all. I love sharing."

After that, her eyes wander off to a streetlamp.

"As for Kalen, his out-of-town visitor has yet to land. And Elijah's freaking out, thinking he's got to make the best first impression ever. The only time I ever met a Quaesitor, it wasn't a good experience. But hey, different people are different, no matter what label they like to stick on themselves."

Kiara Woolfe
"No, it makes sense - it's just - " Kiara's expression shifts, as if she's searching to find the appropriate words to articulate herself in the settling darkness. It's bleeding across the park now; the shadows drawing long and low across the ground; the breeze that had felt so pleasant and nice dropping that few degrees to scatter leaves and stir rubbish collecting around trash bins; to raise the hair on arms.

The subtle shift.

Loungers on the grass begin to pick their belongings together; the cyclists wheeling their bikes back toward the winding pathways; the lovers strolling; shoes in hands; arms around shoulders; the dog walkers throwing balls whistling and re-attaching leads in the preparation to head home. Night falls and a different subset of visitors begin to fill the park.

" - The way I view things might not be so compatible - there's a lot of - " The Verbena's head cants; she brushes a gathering of grass from her hands. " - we call it the second sight. It's passion. And emotion. The way we channel it. The place it comes from. It might require a little - " Kiara's mouth twitches; curls up at the edge in that familiar way of hers. "Hard wiring, of a sort."

Her eyes follow Grace's toward the streetlight, then. She grows quiet for a beat and uncurls her legs; stretching out the muscles. Starts to gather her things; scooping up her water bottle; her sunglasses; pushing both into the vestiges of her bag. "In my experience, the harder you try to make an impression, the harder it becomes to forge any kind of connection." A beat, Kiara slings her bag over her shoulder; pushes herself to her feet with a tiny head nod that serves for her notification she means to depart - and Grace should walk with her.

"Elijah's a sweet kid, though. I think he could manage to charm most people without even realizing it." There's the slightest dip in the Verbena's tone; a pointed edge of sharp bemusement. "I mean, he seems to be the only one I've seen Arionna warm to."

Grace
Ahh. Yes. They are out in a place known for vampire attacks, and Kiara has admitted to being unable to shield herself from their 'games'. At least, that's how Grace takes the 'we should both leave' motions. It honestly hadn't occurred to her. She quickly leaps to her feet, and then twists her spine to check her butt to see if she's picked up grass. She has.

It gets brushed off, and her hair gets ruffled just in case any twigs have found a home there. This is also a thing that happens when you allow yourself to get lost in the wilderness of an orderly park.

And so, she follows Kiara, having no idea where she was planning to go just yet. Just it seems like a good idea. Safety in numbers and all that.

"Arionna. Yeah. Elijah's a sweet kid who is prone to mistakes, especially when it comes to young women. I don't think he knows what he's in for, you know? Arionna is a tragic case, but so are most people who go on to be homicidal maniacs. It doesn't excuse what they do. I hope she doesn't go that route, because fuck if I want to deal with a raging misanthropic woman with awesome cosmic power. Again."

Kiara Woolfe
Arionna is a tragic case.

The Verbena's eyes tick to Grace; they were fine ones, all things considered. Framed by long, thick lashes and decorated on a regular basis by Kiara's fondness for heavy; dramatic eyeliner. She fanned a certain sort of flame by painting her mouth bold, brassy reds; her fingernails to match; adorned her lean frame in monochromic shades to offset the effect. Polarizing, some found the brunette with her mouth nearly always provoking a smile and her bright; intent stare.

Yet there was a certain easiness to her company when all was said and done.

Kiara was not a soul to demand confidences or push beyond comfortable silences. She relished the physicality in walking beside Grace; letting their arms brush; taking stock of the lingering park-goers as they moved along the pathways. The Verbena wore dark boots; the heel of each striking the cement with a subdued click as if to mirror the casual intention of their steps.

"Is she? I suppose I don't really know. I've tried to talk to her once or twice, but - " A flicker of something passing over dark eyes; annoyance; resignation. Some degree of curiosity, perhaps. " - I always get the decided impression she thinks I'm something to be endured. Our ideologies don't exactly mesh, in a manner of speaking."

Then: "Elijah seems like the kind who wants to be in love. I get it. I get him. Arionna - " She lets out a slow breath. "I don't know. I guess we just have to hope she knows."

Grace
"She told me some things about herself. When we last yelled at each other. I'd rather just leave it at that," Grace says, walking alongside. The Virtual Adept is plainfaced tonight, a shadow of grays when you catch sight of her. There's just this constant cast of nondescript about her, like the passing person would always have a little trouble figuring out how to describe this person. Male? Female? Short hair or long? In the dark, is she blonde?

"I always get the impression that..."

Grace sighs. Talking about other people, even if they might be a threat? Just. Yeah. There's a reason why she's not going to repeat the specifics about what Arionna yelled at her.

"Nevermind. If Arionna goes Krakatoa, she goes. If not, good. That's up to her, and us talking about her isn't going to fix that."

Kiara Woolfe
Perhaps therein lies one of the differences between the pair.

Kiara doesn't flinch to offer her thoughts, they're not offered with cool-eyed disdain or mustered bravado but - simply. Unadorned by much but her unfiltered considerations. What few experiences lay open to her to dissect the people in question. She makes a quiet noise of assent to Grace's words.

Holds the silence for a beat, not cruelly, or to siphon out any confessions from the other woman. There's a fork in the path ahead and the Verbena skirts to the left; a hand delves into a pocket; returns with a set of keys wound around her fingertips.

"C'mon, I'll drive you home and let you tinker with my stereo." There's a gleam to her eyes that says she's aware of how it sounds; the offer; the sly meaning that could be incited from it, but the proposition lacks any real heat. Her flirtation is punctuated with a twirl of her keys in her palm; the hook of her elbow in offer and she begins stroll ahead.

Gamera-Bot Planning

Grace
Grace is working on a thing. She's sprawled out on a couch in the living room, messing with 3d shapes in AutoCAD. And in her lack-of-artistic talent, the thing she's working on looks a bit like a mutated turtle.

It's supposed to be a Gamera-bot, so perhaps she's not all that off of her target, eh? There's so many parts to being Gamera. It's got to be able to spin around fast, shoot fire out of its mouth, the limbs have to be retractable -- all of those functional elements take precedence over looks, mind you. Which is why the shell is perfectly circular and its legs fairly spider-like. The essence of Gamera is what it can do, though.

On the table next to her is a whole carafe of French-press coffee, because Kalen has so thoroughly rubbed off on her.

And how much are we distracted by robots today, Grace? Can you feel the others around? The wisps of their Workings, and the presence of newcomers?

[Awareness!]

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

Alexander
[Getting Awareness out of the way...]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
[And, while we're here...  Arete - spirit sight.  TN4, threshold 1 for the node.  -1 diff for the node.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alexander
With the seasons shifting and becoming warmer once again, those people of a type to be outdoors are finding their way back out into the forests and mountains surrounding the city.  When Grace arrived, she may have noticed a possibly-familiar motorbike parked on the driveway.  The more familiar sensation of a sliver of frigid time, however, wasn’t present.  Now, though?  It’s starting to make its presence felt as Alex walks across the fields to the back of the house and gets closer.

He knows that Grace is inside – her resonance is picked up on well before her physical presence.  Alexander doesn’t head straight in, though.  He stops by the Node first, looking at the water as he leans his will up against reality and pushes just a little.  Enough for a few minutes.  Just long enough to find Callisto resting nearby, not even noticing his presence.  As things usually are.  He still smiles warmly at her, though.  Maybe one day he’ll be able to talk to her.

The vision fades, just as swiftly as it arrived, and Alexander heads into the house.  He leaves a small rucksack near the door as he enters, dressed pretty much as you’d expect.  Jacket, combats, walking boots.  The jacket comes off and gets laid over the back of one of the comfy chairs close to Grace’s couch, followed by Alex sitting down and leaning back comfortably.

“Hey Grace.  How’re things?”

Grace
"Woah!" Grace jumps a little, looking up from her laptop with wide eyes. She'd been only peripherally aware of Alex, enough that his frozenness could be ignored, lost as she was in trying to figure out a place for the mini flamethrower to go.

"Oh! Hi! Alex, it's you. Not some..." she makes wiggly movements in the air with her fingers. "Thing."

"I'm good, totally good."

Alexander
Alex smirks as Grace jumps, amused at how immersed she’d been in her work to barely even notice his arrival.  “What kind of,” he makes the same wiggle movement with his fingers, “thing were you expecting?  Because if it’s the end of the world kind, it’s probably time I went to visit my mother.”  He smiles, not really expecting anything apocalyptic.  Not unless it’s something very new that hasn’t made it onto Ginger yet.

He reaches over and checks the temperature of the French press.  Given how pre-occupied Grace had been it was quite possible that she’d forgotten that it was there.  Ah, yep – lukewarm and the plunger was still up.  Alex grabs the handle and stands, intending to head into the kitchen to make a new pot.

Before he goes, he asks, “what’re you working on?”  He waits a moment for an answer before heading towards the kitchen.

Grace
"I expect no things, and prepare for all of them. Usually. Today, however, I might have been expecting Godzilla."

She stretches. Good grief, how long has her body been attempting to hold that same position, one leg off the couch, one leg on it with the shoe off, her shoulders scrunched up and her neck bent down?

Ow.

"I'm working on Gamera-bot. A friend of mine is maybe going to make Godzilla so we can have Kaiju battles."

There, now, is a crazed grin on Grace's face -- this is where we get the term 'mad science' from.

Alexander
“I could be wrong, but I think we’re probably a bit far from the coast for Godzilla to pay a visit.  Unless he has a relative living on one of the lakes?  I’m pretty sure you’d hear the roof being torn off the place first, though.”  He pauses for a second, wondering if anybody had thought to check the lakes.  But surely it would have been noticed by now.

Like the nature spirit?  Yeah.  Great.

Grace gives her strange grin and Alex backs away warily toward the kitchen, raising the cold coffee in explanation.  He’s gone for a few minutes, in which the opening and closing of various cupboard doors and the boiling of a kettle can be heard.  He reappears with fresh coffee and a second cup with milk in.

“What’s a Gamera and a Kaiju?”  He sets the coffee and cup down on the table, by Grace’s original cup.  “These things aren’t going to be trying to take over the world, are they?”

It has been an awfully long time since he visited his mother.

Grace
"Gamera is only the friend to all children! He's a giant turtle and he shoots fire and spins around and just when you think he's dead, he was really just in a coma healing up. He's awesome. And I realize I'm fangirling all over a monster movie giant turtle, I don't even care."

Ooh. Alex brings coffee. Well, well. Cops can be good for something after all. She gives him a less crazed grin and accepts the fresh cup, to pour her own.

"My Gamera-bot isn't going to be taking over the world. I'll teach it well. Also, it'll be about the size of a regular turtle, because I don't have a billion dollars..."

Alexander
“Did Godzilla ever try flipping him onto his back?”  Alex leans over and sort his own coffee out.  “Or would that be cheating?

“Isn’t money just numbers these days?  Can’t you just give yourself more numbers than before?  Or is it not quite that simple?”  The hacking?  The magic?  Either.  Both.  He takes a sip of his coffee while it’s still just a little too hot to drink comfortably.

Grace
Grace slides her laptop on the table and turns the display off. It's just not very sociable to keep it running while trying to have a conversation, is it? Is that one of the rules she's so used to breaking? Eh. If you care about rules enough to always ignore them, you care about them too much.

"Money is not just numbers, and that's the part that's tricky. Money is where people think it is. That's why you can have such things as devaluation of currency and hyperinflation and all that shit. If it were just numbers, you could just add more numbers and fix everything. But value? Value of stuff, of names, of a country's might, of a corporation's ability to do whatever the fuck they need to do next quarter -- that's what money's supposed to be counting. And thus, if I were to just hack into my bank and add a few zeroes, people would stop to question where that value supposedly came from.

"They get awfully bent out of shape whenever you mess with money directly, because then how could you label someone's importance if it is just a number that can be edited at will? It throws people's entire value systems into turmoil and messes with their heads, makes them think they won'tsurvive. I'd get chucked into the darkest, deepest hole they could find real quick."

Alexander
Alex settles back again in the chair, crossing one leg.  He’d consider crossing his legs and resting his feet on the chair, but boots.  His hands are wrapped around the cup, feeling the warmth from it.

“And the consensus strikes again?  I guess shifting money from other accounts isn’t exactly a victimless crime though.  Not if you end up with someone’s college fund or mortgage payments.  That would be bad.  I guess I didn’t realise just how… touchy the powers that be got about numbers, or what they really got used for.  I guess that means you can’t just magic a couple of bars of gold into your car boot either.

“That, and probably killing the shocks.”

Grace
"Mmm," Grace says, sips on the coffee. "Not even just the consensus. I could do that without the capital-M Magic. Just plain old-fashioned human fear. Someday though, someday..."

She takes another sip.

"I mean, we might eventually figure out that people and things have intrinsic worth and it's uncountable, so why fucking label it, right? I know I can't wait."

Alexander
“I mean the consensus kicking in with the meaning of money.  No capital M involved.  Everyone gives the numbers meaning and…  well, you know the rest.  Only it isn’t reality bitch-slapping you if it goes wrong.”

He takes another sip of his coffee at the same time as Grace takes hers.  “Can’t say I ever really thought that people were important because of their bank balance.  I thought they were important because they’re people.  I get that it’s not the most popular of views, though.  I mean, what’s one of the first questions people usually ask?  ‘And what do you do?’  Like that’s any more a definition of a person or what they’re worth.”

Grace
"How do you even exist? I mean, as a police officer, with that attitude? You must have so many crosshairs lined up between your eyes right now," Grace says, shakes her head, sips her coffee. "I mean, you saw how they covered up after the vampires, right? Haven't you ever felt like maybe your need to be ethical was going to get you in trouble?"

"Do note that I am not complaining, just you're right. It isn't a very popular point of view."

Alexander
“’To Protect and Serve’, right?  Ok, that’s LA, but it still fits.  It doesn’t say to protect those with a 401-K and serve those with a Black Amex card.  I get just as bothered about some homeless guy getting beaten up as I do some random person getting mugged on the way home.  If anything, I probably care more about the homeless guy, because nobody else is going to give a damn about him.”

Alex takes a longer drink from the cup, now that it’s cooled a little.  “I’m not stupid.  I’ve gone up against spirits and Adepts and who knows what other mundane crap because there aren’t enough other people who can do it, or will do it.  It’s always someone else’s problem.”

Grace
Grace raises a brow. Well, well. Cops can be good for something after all, indeed.

She drinks more of her coffee.

"Yeah, and that's why I like you. Not that that really matters in the grand scheme of things. I know that's been your very heart's desire all your life to be on the friend list of a hacker, but there you go. You can die happy now, I'm sure."

"Thanks for the coffee. I didn't say that earlier, did I?"

Alexander
“Well I would say that I know who to talk to about getting rid of any speeding tickets, but I can do that myself.  I get that I’m not exactly your typical cop, but show me a typical cop who looks for spirits, has seen the river that runs through the afterlife, or gotten half-shredded in a firefight with a psychotic, cannibalistic Mage.  One who doesn’t wear a black suit and have a wide selection of mirrored sunglasses to choose from, anyway.”

He smiles, shrugging.  “I somehow doubt you’re exactly your stereotypical hacker either.  Not if you’re spending quality time with the authorities like this.  ”

“I rather expect to die in a bloody mess somewhere.  Hopefully happy, but I’d settle for meaningfully.”

“And you’re welcome.  How’s Gamera coming along?”

Grace
"Oh, don't remind me. I lose so much cred if it gets around that I drink coffee with a cop," she says, but it's with a full-on smirk. "You sound so much like Kalen when you talk about dying... Personally, I rather expect to keep living."

Oh, coffee, why do you run out? Good thing there is more. And more she gets, stretching over to the carafe.

"Gamera is an idea just yet. I'm planning out where all the things are going to go. And I want to get him to the point where he can retract legs and spin around, because how awesome would that be? But yeah. It'll get there!"

Alexander
Alex laughs, as Grace says that he sounds like Kalen.  “There are worse people to be compared to.  I dunno, call it an occupational hazard of hanging around him too much.  Or getting caught up in his fight against the bad stuff.  I’d really rather like to live long enough to draw a pension.  I’m just not that good, and luck runs out eventually.”  He shrugs, still smiling.  Being killed in the line of duty?  Yeah, it’s been thought about more than once and the idea is something that he’s comfortable with.

“Can you get miniature jet engines?  That would cover the fire and probably have enough push to get him spinning.  Or he might go shooting into the wall and explode.”  He shrugs again, laughing this time.  “Then we keep him in the armoury for a rainy day.”

Grace
Maybe someday, Grace will look back on this conversation and give it a bit more weight, but for today? Death seems so far away.

"I was thinking regular motors to avoid the shooting explosions bit? But the movie Gamera does fly around using jets that come out of his legs, so... hmmm."

"I don't know. Maybe if I cheated a little..."

Alexander
That probably is a train of conversation more suited to dark nights with copious quantities of alcohol, and there are other thing to be talking over.  Like how to fit jets into a robot.

“Well, I won’t tell if you won’t.”  He gives Grace an exaggerated conspiratorial wink across the top of his coffee cup.  “Is there anything in the rulebook saying that you can’t feed little Gamera a little magic to keep him flying?  Who’s your opponent going to be, anyway?”

And the conversation moves back onto movie monsters, their special powers, and how best to squeeze them into a turtle-sized robot.

Pseudo-Apprentice Jo

Grace
It's slightly past noon when Jo gets the text:

Yo! I have waffles! And coffee! I also have a present. You know you want to come over.

It's a trap for a college student if ever there was one, right? Even if Jo has to ride her bike all the way to get there. Dangle enough free food and caffeine in front of Jo and she'll come running -- or so Grace believes.

It's only a bit of a ruse. There are waffles, and there is always coffee. But the present is something she's unwilling to talk about in the relative openness of texts. That sort of thing got her on a Technocrat's watch-list once upon a time. It's time to extend the favor to another newbie who might not know better... yet.

Jo
Jo is a lot like a mouse. Once she knows something exists, it's open season for her little paws. Wait.. maybe not a mouse. Ferret? Rat? The point is, Jo knows there is a place with laser tag, where people with mad realty programming skills reside. That means that she's likely to make a visit a few times...or more...for the lawlz.

Worse...Grace has invited her, with the promise of goods. She doesn't even have to provide services! How wicked is that? It doesn't matter really, Grace is her computer pal, and a mean laser tag player. Jo is quite skilled in her biking, so with relative speed she's already stepping through the door. Knock? Who does that anymore?

"Yo!" Her backpack slowly being slid off her shoulders. "I heard waffles yo! WafflesWafflesWaffles!" She bounced in place, her sneakers squeaking a little on the floor; maybe it's time to get new ones.

Her T-shirt, delightfully placed over a long sleeve, sported the Enterprise with I don't want a relationship. I want a STAR SHIP emblazoned on it in white font. She didn't wait long before she was already making her way towards the dining space she was showed to prior. Because seriously? Who waits for waffles?

"So like, totally was like, kickin it on Aliens. Dude I don't know if you've like..played the new one yet, but it's just like super sweet."

Grace
She's there to let Jo in, to race her to the kitchen, and Grace, mind you, is wearing a shirt that says: "Nothing is Unpossible." It backs up this statement by showing a mermaid holding an American flag, who is riding a T-Rex, who is riding a motorcycle.

"Love the shirt!" she says, on her way up to the kitchen, where a waffle maker stands, along with a couple of pre-made ones ready to fill up.

Grace isn't nearly as fancy as Kalen when it comes to such things as waffles. Oh, of course the syrup is 100% pure maple and must have cost a fortune for the bottle, but she has a tendency by now to ignore much of Kalen's excesses. It would be hard to live with him and not. There's whipped cream too, and some sort of berry syrup too if Jo's of a mind.

"Okay. So. I'm going to tell you the real reason why I invited you up today. Do you know about the Technocracy?"

Jo
"Ah man yo. This is like..the super sweet set up. Man you guys must like, go through like a load of cash like all the time." Jo...goes for all the things. Waffle + syrup + whipped cream + berry syrup. If they had put out a bowl of sugar she might have put that on it too.

"Dude what?" Is what comes out once Jo manages to stuff nearly half the waffle in her mouth. She chipmunks the food, chewing slowly until she can manage to swallow without feeling like her throat might explode. "They like some like..band or something? Caus elike I got nuthin. Dubstep? Or like old school electronica?"

Yes, that is the extent of Jo's knowledge.

Grace
Grace grimmaces at Jo as the understanding that she's going to have to have an uncomfortable conversation topic very soon comes to her. It's not you, Jo. Just, ugh -- Technocrats.

"Okay. So... You're a Mage, a Willworker, a Witch, a Technomancer, whatever you want to call it -- you are that. You have a different view of reality than most, and you use that to make reality do what you want, right?

"Well, I guess the problem is that we all have different views of reality. And we all have a smattering of hubris. Some of us think that our way is the only way. The trouble happens when you get a lot of like-minded Mages in one room together and they manage to convince themselves that their one way must be protected against all others, by force. Onesy twosies? That's fine. We've handled those assholes in Denver before. But get a whole bunch together, and you've got a war on your hands.

"That's exactly what happened. And those of us arguing for plurality -- we lost. The ones in 'charge' right now hunted other Mages down like we were worse than animals. The only reason why we're left alone? They no longer see us as a threat. 'They' are the Technocrats."

It's a long speech. It'll probably take enough time for Jo to inhale a waffle...

Jo
One waffle down and a lick of her lips is how long it takes just for Grace to begin. Not a second after and Jo is dropped another waffle or two on her plate and drenching them in syrup. Lots of chewing on her end. She tilts her head, furrows her brows, scrunches her face, and a whole host of other expressions like she's not sure how to process it.

"Soooo like... You're a Wizard Harry?"

"Dude that'd be like super sweet but like.. uh.. I mean..." She scratches her head, realizing she didn't even bother to truly brush her hair. Huh. That's what she forgot to do. "But like Ok like guess I got this like super weird view of magic and like I mean...like I don't do that stuff. I mean I'm just like, ya know, altering code and stuff. Like..my dad would just call me like super smart or something. Yaknow? Can't like..say I believe in like totes actual magic. Cause like..magic? Totes super weird."

"But I mean ok like say like, magic is real and like all that toes weird stuff, right? I mean kinda like weird to be all 'this way is right' I mean like, without a consensus. I mean..dude that's not how the collective works. I mean you gotta like create a base like framework, but like you leave like wiggle room for ya know like individual differences and stuff. Man these guys aren't like republicans or something right? Cause...well that'd make like totes sense."

"What's like.. with the name?"

Grace
"They don't really believe in such things as 'wiggle room'," Grace says, under her breath. "Magic is real, Jo. I know, it took me a while to understand that too -- to really put that word together with what I do. I mean, I just write code too. That's how I understand it.

"But see, it's like -- I see it like I am hacking some image-displaying code using a specially modified picture -- I touch the bits, I know what each byte is intended to do, it overflows the memory just how I like, and bam -- I have my picture doing nasty terrible things to a server that it was never intended to do. What if somebody else was a fantastic photographer. They say they can do the same thing as me, and all they have to do is take the right picture and upload it -- and all the sudden that server is just as pwned. I tip my hat to them, right? I would never be able to do it that way, and I might not understand exactly why, but obviously it works.

"Most of the others in the city, they use things like -- I kid you not -- glitter dust. And incense. And getting high enough to lose their mental connection to reality. The Technocracy says that that shit shouldn't fly. Not that it doesn't, that it shouldn't.

"And the name comes from techno- and -cracy. Technology is their thing, but so is the -cracy. It means 'rule'. They seek not to free minds using technology, but to rule over them and control them. All of them. Which is why we have to be careful. I once got put on a Technocracy watch list for saying the wrong things via text message. They were watching -- looking for keywords. I almost got caught. Which is why me and the dude I was texting with at the time came up with Ginger."

Jo
Jo put her fingers on her head and ruffled her own hair in a flurry. "Muuuuh!" She let her forehead drop to the counter. "Like don't like make sense and stuff. Like for realsies? I don't... ugh.. Whatevs. " When she lifted her head up she scrunched her brows and licked at her finger, rubbing at a spot on her forehead. "Syrup yo, gets everywhere swear it. Like..like invisible syrup fairy or something."

"Dude they sound like the Borg which was like.. a total misrepresentation of like what you could totally do with the system. I mean like...seriously? See like the borg were all like 'YOU MUST ASSIMILATE' which is like completely liek counter intuitive to like what you should do. Cause like if you force someone into the system, you're totally gunna get rejection and whatevs. Theese peeps be all wrong and stuff. Obvs."

"Ginger? Does it have no soul?"

Grace
Grace grins. "Technically, no. But then, there are some people that say everything has a soul, so who knows. Maybe she does."

"Ginger is a secret communications system. It's what we use to remain below Their radar. It's how we talk to each other about the weird stuff without drawing the attention of people who will shove you in a black van and disappear you if they find out about it.

"And I invited you over today so I can give it to you. Have a happy present -- it's your code-worded super-secret message drop. And your window to the myriad dangers of Denver."

Jo
"Should ttoally give it like some super advanced AI. Like.. Ya know like Skynet but like less murderous and way better like problem solving skills cause seriously? Why not like..send a terminator to like..Sarah Connor's parents like before she's even born? That's totes a better strategy."

She blinked. "OH I GOT IT. They're like..Agent Smith and stuff. Dude...am I Neo? Cause if I am I like..I need better acting skills. Just sayin." Jo stuffed her thumbs in the pockets of her pants. "My very own Ginger. I was totes wishin for that one day. She'll the Ginny to my Potter."

"Show me the force Master."

Grace
"That is the idea. Someday. When I can do that. Kalen wants this place teeming with AIs that talk to each other. I can only explain that he will get his wish, eventually," Grace says, and turns on a heel. She's headed out of the kitchen and off to...

Her office.

Grace's office is a thing of mismashed beauty. Kalen made sure that the walls were painted a gorgeous hue of deep blue, and that stars in constellations were painted on top of that. Cherry-wood furniture lines the room, including a magnificent desk with workshop areas that are currently taken up by robot parts (some of which are the rejects from a recent art project involving robotic fireflies) and one sprawling ivy plant. The ivy plant looks to be under attack by some sort of array of guns. But the ivy's winning. It's got a little nametag that reads: "Chloe 3"

There's bookshelves, but not too many actual books, aside from a few really nice leather-bound journals that someone has decorated with Sharpie marker on the spines to read: "Teh Wall 1" and "Teh Wall 2" etc. Whatever Teh Wall was, it took up a lot of Grace's time and many many journals. Otherwise, the shelves hold such random things as LED strips and a copper fox mask.

And oh, Jo, Grace's laptop is there too, and Grace is rummaging around in a drawer, pulling out cables.

"I'll need your phone or your laptop or whatever it is you have."

Jo
She grabbed her backpack, carrying it with her after Grace. "Dude. DUDE. Like what do you DO in here? Like you gunna make like some killer robotic plant? Cause that's totes what it's startin to look like." Jo leans into the plant, poking at the leaves a little.

Jo blinked and set her bag down, ruffling through the front for her phone and handing it off to Grace. "You guys like code names right?Like for realsies, you gotta have like code names,"

Grace
"I do. Not everyone is into code names. But among my kind, I go by Chimeric01," Grace says, appraising the phone and pulling out the right cable for it. She then connects phone to laptop and settles into the comfy-looking executive chair. It reclines. For if she ever gets way too involved in some coding jam to remember to sleep.

"Usually. There's other names. I've got a lot of them."

"Chloe is an experiment in superpositioned phytopigment-based quantum computing. It's kind of an ongoing project. She doesn't much care, I think, as long as she stays watered. Kalen once suggested we outfit our cats with tiny watering cans and train them to water the plants? But I think it's beyond any magic to get cats to do shit like that."

With that, Grace near zones out for a bit. It's not that the installation is hard. It's something she's done time and time again. But still, there's time involved, and it's time at a computer, so the spaciness just becomes that much more evident in her.

Jo
[int +science- Did I even understand that?]



Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Jo
"Righty roo Ranger Joe." She gave a half mock salute to Grace. "When I'm like, doin ya know things that like people don't like, I go by CIN. True facts. So figure I'll pop by with the same nick cause like yeah! Fame is all cool beans and stuff."

"Huh." She lifted her hands, lacing her fingers behind her head. "Like, super upscale and all that for like this place right? I mean like dude, that stuff is academics grade, like...grants from military grade.Kinda takes all the like.. I dunno magic? Out of it tho. Always like seriously liked the idea of stuff like.. being completely inorganic and like...making like life that isn't like..us. How cool is that?" She poked the leaves again. "Should totally use birds. They can totes fly around and stuff. May more like efficient."

Zoning, Jo gets. She's lost plenty of time before at her computer. So she does a little jig in her place, wanders around the room and generally starts to prod at things. She pulls at the book on the shelf, trying to peek at their contents without actually opening them, and does what people without any understanding of personal boundaries do: get into stuff.

Grace
Grace also has no sense of personal boundaries, and few secrets that don't lie within her head. Those journals are full -- start to finish -- with complicated calculations being done by hand in very poor handwriting. It's hard to imagine why Grace would have done such a thing with a computer handy, but there you go.

"Yeah, well, Chloe is a cyborg plant, so I'm not sure why you think that's not totally magical. It so is."

She reaches out and pets a leaf on one of the trailing vines next to her. "It's okay. I'm sure Jo didn't mean it, sweetheart."

"Ohhkay. So. You may have your communication device back. You'll notice there is a new contact in your list. Ginger. Call her."

Jo
Calculations.

Long hand.

Written out.

Jo just had a nerdgasm. The most beautiful, intense nerdgasm.

She grabbed one of the books and sat down on the ground, moving through each page, skimming the calculations. She used her fingers at times as if somehow she were ticking off each step, lips moving as she did so. She was double checking the math, and doing it with a wide grin on her face. Oh yes, the nerdgasm is strong with this one.

"I mean like, cyborgs are like cool and all, but it's totally way cooler if you like get like sentience without organic material. Like all Asimov and stuff."

She paused long enough to streeeetch her arm out for the phone, scrolling down to Ginder and giving it a go, popping her on speaker phone so Jo could continue with the uh..math.

Grace
Her compatriot, Gadfly, had insisted on getting Ginger's voice perfect. He disappeared before this could happen, but her robotic, stilted speech still drips with sex. She was a phone sex operator in a former life, after all.

"Hello, and welcome. To listen to messages, dial 1. To view text messages, dial 2. To leave a voice message, dial 3. To leave a text message, dial 4. And remember, love is just a dial away."

"The number won't work on a regular phone. It only does that if you have my encryption installed. And if you do call that number on a regular phone, you'll get a phone sex line. We figured, why not? It's the last place anyone would look, right?"

After that spiel, Grace actually takes notice of what's going on.

"That's interesting reading material for you? That was the hazing ritual that took place before I got inducted into the Virtual Adepts. They took away my ability to use any calculating devices, and made me break some encrypted text by hand -- and then, the real test started."

Jo
Jo blinked and looked at the phone before letting out a loud laugh. "Dude. Sersiously? Love. It. Like totes. Totally wouldn't be like thinkin of going all phone sex and stuff. This is like totes gunna be fun. Like super fun. Like suuuper super fun. Dude, who's idea? Yours? Nah I mean, well I.. hrm." She scratched at her fluffy bedhead and hung up the phone. "And it's like all super secrety spy stuff ya? Like, totes just all james bondie?"

Jo lifted her head again and blinked at Jo, giving her another laugh. "Yah. Like Total math dweeb. I mean like..and chess. I'm a killer like chess player. Totes super awesome. But like math too? Always been good ya know? Like. Like never really needed all that stuff much. It's really just ya know practice. Then it just like, happens in like your brain without like totally knowing it." She poked at her head. "Seriously, big old meat machine."

Grace
"Most of the stuff on there is detailing threats, honestly. You probably won't believe half of them. But if someone posts something on Ginger, I wouldn't go out by myself to check on its truthfulness all the same.

"And yeah, obviously I don't *need* a computer. That was part of the point of the exercise. We still need to be capable of great things even if somebody takes away our laptop. It's a survival skill, that. Just, you know, a computer would have made that around a few million times faster..."

Grace takes the cord and wraps it around itself, to stow back in the drawer. Jo seems to be so interested in her little memento. It gives her a little wistful smile. To be so enraptured by numbers -- been there.

Jo
"Tcht. Nah. Computers like, for some people maybe but not like..I don't know. I always thought thehy like slowed me down a little. Like you gotta like put in the numbers and make sure they're like in correctly and all that. Dude if you just let your meat comptuer do it? Like totally faster. Before you know it BASM! It's like done. But like, I'm a freak so.."

"Totes takes the fun out of it too. I mean like, numbers are awesome cause they don't lie right? I mean like you can mess up and stuff, but the numbers don't. Totally super objective. I rock it." She threw up the rock symbol with her hand and grinned."So...What are these like Virtual Adepts? Like..are they like some internet group?"

Grace
...are they like some internet group?

"Kind of. I mean, we started out as the ones who invented computers. Or, at least, we're the ones who made the idea of computers possible. So that was a long time before the internet. You've heard of Alan Turing, right? He was a Virtual Adept. One of the best," Grace says, and there's a note of sadness there. Turing -- had he lived -- would most certainly have continued to spew forth brilliance into the world. It's still a sore spot, his death.

"I wouldn't put down computation quite so quickly, you know? Doing it in your head is fast, but depending upon the calculation involved, there comes a point where doing it all in your head is impossible. Or, will take you several weeks, as in the example you're reading now. Like, take the Universe. Now, that's a calculation that's way too big to fit inside any one head."

Jo
Jo scrunched her face skeptically at Grace. "Dude Turing was like.. he's like the father of like all things like cognitive and AI and stuff. I mean DUDE. So like the Virts peeps are like some like secret society of like nerds? Cause that would be SUPER cool. Like take THAT Illuminati!"

"Tcht! Can totally do it like in your head. Just gotta like... ya know like the idea of like maybe folding space and time to like cut through it and like move faster? Ya know like Event Horizon only with like less murder? If you can like totally hack the system to like do that? Could totes do it! Thing too is, like, if we're just like softwar and astuff, then we can TOTES do it all in our heads. Just gotta drop the DRM."

Grace
"We are a secret society of, like, nerds. That's a pretty good summation, there," Grace says, laughs.

"I do know something about folding spacetime, yes. I still don't think that containing the universe is something my brain is capable of. Yet."

She smiles, returns to her laptop. Starts takking away at the keys with speed.

"I could show you just how much I know about folding spacetime. It's kinda fun. And, also, potentially eye-opening. You should, you know, keep your eyes on me for a second..."

[Corr 3: We're going to teleport now. -1 diff because taking time, -1 diff because Shifting resonance, spending WP because Grace doesn't want to end up inside out.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
[Paradox!]

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

Grace
[Soak!]

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

Jo
She threw out the rock symbol again. "Dude, who's rockin it? I am! I mena like, I never heard of'em. Gotta be like, some secret society."

Jo blinked and scrunched her face up skeptically again. "For realsies? You can teleport?" Jo lifted her hands, using her fingers to pry her eyes open and force them to stay on grace. "Alright dude, I'm like.. all in this."

Grace
Grace is doing something. Jo might not be able to see the laptop screen, but a surge of Grace's winged, shifting resonance fills the air. Maybe she'd be able to pick that up -- the sense that something not quite normal is going on.

With the aid of her computer, Grace is calculating and visualizing the truth. Namely, that there is no such thing as space or time to bend at all, if you look at it right. When one occupies the same point, named "DATA", at the conceptual center of all things, it's relatively easy to skip around and "occupy" some"where" "else". It's a matter of figuring out the right relative positional variables to mess with, and also making sure you don't translate yourself inside a wall, or even fail to replace yourself with your destination's contents when you leave. Nature abhors a vacuum so much, it likes to go nuclear against them.

After a bit, Grace gives the skeptical, pried-eyed Jo a grin, and pushes the metaphorical button.

And she disappears.

From behind Jo, a voice: "Boo."

Jo
There isn't much Jo can do but watch. Watch her work and wonder exactly what she means to do. Maybe she'll move a bloc or something. Like  a tiny one. Or maybe she'll make her some earl grey tea. Hot. Thank you very much. But no, no Grace doesn't do any of that.

Jo nearly jumps out of her skin. She let's out a yelp and leans to the side to look at Grace. No she didn't expect it. No she didn't imagine Grace could move like that. Then her brows lift, her eyes widen and Jo crawls on her knees to wrap her arms around Grace's leg. "OH PLEASE! PLEASE..PUHLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE SHOW ME THAT TRICK."

Grace
See? This is what showing off in front of the young will get you. Leg grabbing. Whatever.

"Ahh! Jo! Okay, okay! I can show you how I do it, but... remember we were talking about the different ways people do stuff?" she says, giving a little shake of the afflicted leg. "It might not be something you'll immediately just grok. But sure. Whatever you want to learn about that kind of manipulation? I can try to teach you. And other stuff too. Like, control over matter and energy, life and the mind -- stuff like that."

See? This is what showing off in front of the young with also get you. Apprentices.

Jo
Jo isn't letting go. She's clinging to Grace's leg like a puppy, or a child, or some crazy techno gremlin. "Shoooow mee... Show me Master Yoda. Or Obi-Wan, or Qui-Gon, like whatever you wanna be. Darth Vader? Whatver like you just gotta shooow me. " She pressed her cheek into her leg and let out a mock coo sound. Finally she let go of Grace and rolled back, leaning back into her palms. "Like for realsies! Totally gotta learn that. I mean like.. dude that'd be super awesome. Know how many people I could like.. ya know...freak out some day?"

Grace
"No."

Grace sighs, lets her eyes wander a bit. "I mean, you can't go around freaking people out. I mean, within reason,  yes. But... I know of a guy who did a little thing once. He rewrote time. He's now in a Technocrat's lab somewhere being cloned or lobotomized or both."

"And that's not to mention the risk of Paradox. Tell me, did you ever do something a little 'weird' and it felt so very wrong afterwards? Like, the thing you were trying just didn't work? Maybe you felt a little bruised and beaten up after?"

Jo
"Duude what? I mean like, I thought they like...didn't see peeps as a threat and stuff? like. Dude who let's them do that?" She blinks up at Grace, a wee bit horrified by the idea. "Man our managerial system SUUCKs."

"Well like, I mean sure ya stay up like all night and then you're like totally drained and you're like not at all yourself for like days. I mean seriously. That's what you get for not like gettin your sleep and all but ya know, totes gotta take the hit! Waaait is this that paradoxy thing you're mentionin? I mean, dude, that's just not drinking enough redbull."

Grace
"Paradox can fuck you up," Grace says, and makes her way over to her computer again. She sits down at her computer again, draws her legs up into it, and sets it spinning.

"It can even kill you. Now, before you get to the point where you can do things that really piss the universe off, like teleportation, you get minor issues. Maybe a bruise. Maybe a nosebleed. Nothing serious. But, like, right there? I could have left my foot behind. I was being very careful, and I put a lot of myself into it, and I could feel the universe basically slapping my hand and saying 'no', but it didn't do anything terrible this time.

"Part of the reason for that is because you're Awake. You can understand what I'm talking about, if not the specifics. Nobody saw me do that except for you. Paradox hurts a lot worse when people are watching. Like, it's as if their internal 'WTF' meters flag some monitoring process somewhere and it tries to keep people like us from doing things that could rip the universe apart. You get that?"

Jo
"Yeh I do. Like, the consensus is like NOPE even though it's like within the programming to do it. So you gotta like totally change the consensus and you change what's like allowed and stuff. Totally makes sense. Cause then the consensus would just like view what you did as a virus or something instead of like, jsut a normal program." She lifted her hand in a peace sign to Grace. "I gotcha homefry."

Grace
"Also -- yes. Technocrats do shit like that. And so, if you do stuff, do it subtle. Don't go around just trying to scare the pants off of people, because eventually, some T-bag is going to find out and try to toast you.

"Or, at least, that's my opinion on the matter. That's not to say you shouldn't ever try Magic or enlightening the populace. In fact, try. Just don't be suicidal."

Grace leans back in her chair, letting it recline and bang into the desk. "Not that, you know, you're going to be suicidal. Just, it pays to know what the dangers are before you leap."

Jo"Well it's not magic really. it's just like...you're just ascending beyond what .. nah I mean like, you're a self-aware program. And once you're like self-aware, you can alter the system. Course ya can't just go willy nilly. System is like governed for a reason." She put her hand sin her hair and fluffed it. "But I getcha I think. Like totes. Don't go like changing the system too much or Agent smith be all like, inf your face and stuff. Don't know how to dodge bullets yet so... totes gotta not be assaulted by agents." Jo furrowed her brows slowly.

"Whya re none of the agents women?"

Grace"Cause Hollowood's a bunch of jerks who think that Trinity should be all we need to be happy? Some of the scariest things I've ever fought have been women. Don't let them fool you. Evil comes in all genders."

Grace is apparently appraising the ceiling as she speaks, lost. Her fingers play with the arms of the chair and she curls her legs up to sit crosslegged, a thing she's fairly sure Jo won't care about. Even if Jo cared about it, Grace doesn't.

"It is Magic. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, yes? What do we call it when something is indistinguishable from another thing? We call them equal.

"Most people like to think of the word 'magic' as defining those powers or abilities which can't be explained. But Magic, like sufficiently advanced technology, has always been understandable. I can explain exactly what I do and how it works. If I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to do it. That's how they get you. That's how they try to say magic is impossible. It isn't."

Jo"Wasn't just Trinity tho! We had like, The Oracle, and Niobe, and like persephone and stuff. But like none of the agents were women. Like were there any villians who weren't just like straight up dudes? Man. Now I feel like totes underrepresented as a villain. Equal opportunity evil! Women can be villains too!"

"But dude...magic is like fairies and Avalon and dragons and shit. I mean I suppose you could totally program that but the consensus would like freak the fuck out! Like WOOOAH A DRAGON. Unless it was Godzilla. Cause yup.." She purses her lips confidentally. "Godzilla is totes super bad. He takes out Mothra any day. Be all like 'What you doin in my space homie!? ' And Mothra be all 'SCREEEECH' and Godzilla be all 'That's what I thought. Totes sendin you back to..whatever.' I think like the consensus would be ok with that."

"Godzilla. OK. Dragons. Nah."

Grace"I rode a dragon once," Grace says, still staring at the ceiling. "He shared my thoughts to communicate with me. And he was as real as you or I."

With that, she swings the chair back down, to be able to see Jo's expression. There's a pause before she continues, because hey -- dramatic effect, right? That's a thing.

"If you view the world as a computer program, why wouldn't it make sense for there to be other worlds out there with their own programming? That's part of what Virtual Adepts get up to, actually. We have a tendency to build simulations. Simulations based on this one," she says, gesturing to the room around her, like hey -- that Matrix reference wasn't a metaphor at all.

"I got stuck in someone else's universe. One with dragons that were very much a thing that that universe recognized as normal. There were other worlds with other rules and... Parts of it were incredibly beautiful.

But see, that's my point I guess? Where do you draw the line? I rewrote the code for that universe. I saw how it was made -- and it was technologically based. But it had for-real dragons. There isn't a line."

Jo"Well like sure, other programs. Like you can totally make other simulations within simulations if you like, assume we're a simulation and stuff. Just like, havin a dragon here would like be weird cause it would like violate the consensus rules. I mean like.. hundreds of like years ago that'd be skippy doo awesome cause like, the consensus said HEY dragons are real! And unicorns and stuff! Now it's like...your concensus is more like judeochristian plus science ya know? So like ya gotta keep it all like confined. I mean like you got fringe groups right? Like your wiccans and stuff? And so like wherever they are, then your consensus would shift and that'd be like OK."

She grabbed onto her ankles, swinging back and forth. "I still think Godzilla is way cooler."

Grace"What about Gamera? The friend of all children!"

Grace leans back and looks at the ceiling again, with a grin on her face. Serious-time is over. Or, perhaps she views Gamera as being just as serious as anything else recently discussed, who knows?

"Turtles are cool."

Jo"Tcht! Godzilla can totes take out Gamera." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Like blinded and without fire. Like totally. For realsies. 100 percent. I mean really, he can totally be a giant turtle. Turtles are cool though. Just not like as good as a giant fire-breathing lizard of DOOM." She wiggled her fingers at Grace, grinning.

Grace"I'm going to have to introduce Kalen to Godzilla movies. That should be awesome," Grace says. "Anyway... yeah. Godzilla could probably defeat Gamera, but Gamera is a turtle, so he wins. Turtle greater-than lizard."

Yes, we're having this argument.

"I should make a turtle-bot..."

Jo"Kalen? Don't think I met them. Guy? Girl? If girl, is she like totally hawt?" She grinned widely. "Dude you make a Gamera bot and like I'll make a Godzilla bot and we'll totally see who wins. Cause Godzilla wins in all areas cause like..fire breathing. dude you can't beat that."

"Well..least you're not like a Mothra fan or whatever."

Grace"Well, maybe not Mothra. But I have thought about making dragonfly bots for surveillance purposes...

"And Kalen is my friend. He's around here somewhere. This place is actually his, but you know -- you're welcome to use it as a home away from home if you like. It's nice and safe. We have strong doors and lots of food and ammo."

Yes, because that's what you tell the young people, Grace. It's safe. Because there's lots of ammunition.

"You know, in case you get in trouble."

JoShe blinked, canted her head just a little and squinted her eyes. "Am-mo?" As if the idea was a little strange to her. Course she still didn't quite understand the danger of being a mage, even if she were told it. No one ever does until they experience it. "Should I like, even ask? I mean you don't like have crazy guns like floating around right? Cause that would be odd."

"So like..I can set my stuff up right? Like my game consoles and stuff? Like my computer and like all that? Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude that'd be like..sweet. We can totally rock out here!"

Grace"Kalen has a gun range in the warehouse next door. It can get a little loud? But headphones are made for that," Grace says. "The laser tag arena is like our combat training grounds. So we can practice with real guns for marksmanship purposes, and fake guns for tactics purposes.

"I don't expect you'll be up to combat. Hell, I am totally not. But still, you just have got to be prepared for whatever, and I mean whatever might come your way. You never know. There is some weird stuff in our world, Jo. Including us."

Jo"Tcht. I'm not weird. I'm just like, ya know, different. Totes not the same. My dad just says I'm like special or something, like too smart for most people and that like, of course I'm gunna like seem weird to them cause most people are basic." She shrugged slowly. "Don't..well I mean I like laser tag but like...and like I play combat games but like I don't really like guns cause like seriously? Too many people think it's like super ok to have them and don't even like...think of the implications or like, take gun safety and yeah all that. so like, for realsies? Not really a gun person and stuff. I mean.. totes don't wanna shoot someone."

GraceOh, the implications. Not lost on Grace, those implications. Of course the world they both live in rarely gives people the opportunity to think about them too deeply before plunging in.

But still.

"Fair enough. You don't have to shoot anyone. I didn't mean it like that. And hey -- you're Awake. Maybe someday you learn how to just tell people to chill out and not try to hurt you? And, you know, have them actually do that?

"Or maybe you're like me, and someday you learn how to just go 'poof!' and not have to worry about shooting things."

Jo"Self-aware." She corrects.

"Or like totally reprogram everything so like they can't shoot it. Like it stops the gun from working and like, ya know, I mean if you can reprogram things then I don't like, see why you can't go like full on. I mean for reals. Like think like big dude. Like BIG. What if you can rprogram people to not like be violent. Dude how cool would that be?"

Grace"Sounds like it would also be a great way to rule over everyone," Grace says, trying to get Jo to think about that one a bit.

"And you wouldn't even know you're doing it, because your subjects would be too docile. They might not even know they're subjects. That's like, the basis to a lot of really horrible outcomes."

She considers for a bit, swivels the chair around.

"Maybe, if it was either that or end-of-the-world scenario... I just don't think that aggression is exactly a bad thing in all cases. What if you get a case where someone is being manipulated or enslaved and they can't fight back, because violence has been removed from their programming?"

Jo"Sure well I mean whenever you like, make a program you're like ruling I guess. But like you're tailoring it to like be better. Mor efficient, less bugs, more effective.. ya know. I mean like if you're going to program violence out, then you'd have to like program even like subtle violence or like coercion and stuff. Hmmm." She tapped her finger on her chin. "That'd be like an umbrella term for like violence..so you'd have to like rule out anything that isn't like for self defense, but then if you program it like right, there wouldn't be a need for self defense cause like everyone would be happy."

"I mean like, if everyone can dow aht they want and like not worry about like being hurt, is that really like a bad thing? I mean sure ya got like societies that like profess to do that, but they didn't even like try to like to do it. And they wer elike dealing with flawed programming. I mean you can't make a program do what it can't do. You gotta like remake it, debug it, ya know. So you can't make programs not like kill one another if their programs say to do it. So you have to debug it, rewrite it to like not have that in its behavioral repertoire."

Jo beamed like she'd just solved the greatest puzzle in the world. "Could totally do it."

GraceGrace nods a little, but then adds: "You could. Nothing is impossible... However, I do hope that you have learned a great deal before you get to the point where you could."

It sounds, to Grace, like one of the worst ideas she's ever heard. But Jo is young. And it is a happy ideal that she wants. Who wouldn't like a life where no one gets hurt, no one ever gets forced?

It sounds great, until you realize the extent of absolute control over a populace that would take. It sounds like the very Technocratic mistake.

"There is a place for everything, including violence and death, I think. Without them, we're even more doomed. It's a strange thing, you know? Growth can't happen without the opposite side of the coin. Although, I will agree with one thing: this world has seen far too much of the violent side. Balance is key. It's simply a difficult path to follow."

Jo"I dunno." She rolled back to lay on her back, thinking over it. "Like, i mean what f you can like rewrite like people to be nonviolent but get like the same sort of like stuff done? Like what if it's not the violence that ya know progresses people but just the realization that like what was happenin before doesn't work? Then all you gotta do is rewrite the sensitivity program, re-calibrate their progress meters and ya know you can totes get the same result. I mean it's still gotta be consensus right? I'm not the collective for nothing. But the collective can't like make that decision if they don't have it as like a possibility. See I think teh BORG would have actually like..worked. But people didn't really like see the like possibilities. They just like used it for a metaphor for colonialism and imperialism. But I mean in the end it was like the whole group that came to like a decision, and they like used a body as a voice."

GraceGrace ponders her trainee for a while. The fractal-like nature of the mind means that they are already a collective in a sense -- all part of the universe's whole. Jo calls it the consensus, and maybe that's more true than anyone realizes.

Maybe we're afraid of the Borg because on some level, we realize that we already are them.

"Try not to think of it like you're rewriting individuals to be nonviolent. Try to think of it as arranging the system such that violence is no longer the easiest path to take. Remove the necessity for it, if you're going that route. Remove money. Cause post-scarcity. If you're going to remove force from the equation, you can't use force to do it. It's rather an oxymoron, that, only writ large, over populations.

"Of course, that still allows people the choice of aggression..."

But that freedom, ahh... Is non-violence worth a damn, if it's enforced?

Jo"Hrrm.."

"Even if you like, remove money, people kill each other for like food and goods and stuff. I mean we still trade. Money is just like.. a token. We use ti as like a symbol. Doesn't like stop the aggression just redirects it or like gives it a different source. "

"I mean here's like a question. Why do we like think violence is necessary? Is it because it's like, natural? Cause I mean that's a logical fallacy right there. Is that like, because it's all we know? Well that's a fallacy too. I mean tehre's no real like obvious reason violence is necessary. Like we say it's necessary for like progress and stuff, but do we know that? Cause we only think that because it's like a pattern we've seen, but we all know that just because you see a pattern doesn't mean like one is like the cause of the other."

"It's like, why do we like need genders and sexes right?Cause like some organisms don't even like have those. AND if we build inorganic life, it won't like need it either. So why can't we program that out? I mean I wouldn't cause you need that sort of like sexual diversity but it's like the same sort of problem. Like we say we need it because it's like what we see and know. Buuuut why? Cause I mean all the other like planets out there, you don't like think there's a planet with like a completely different program running the show? And like it has a completely different outcome? But I don't like think it's as incompatible as a 1980s MAC and a 1980s PC. Think it's more like the two systems now. Some of them have like their own areas, but they are totally interchangeable. Least where it's like important."

Grace"Post-scarcity is what destroys money. Meaning -- goods and food and the like become free because they are infinite in supply. We think violence is necessary because people want things that they aren't allowed to have.

"So allow everything. Allow people to have food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, all the necessary bits to existence. We might still beat each other up for insults, but you know, it would do away with a lot.

"I just think that freedom is a necessary element, you know? We don't need to clamp down on people, we need to open up possibilities that aren't violent ones. People will fall in line like water flows downhill -- because violence becomes the hard path to take instead of the easy. The main point behind intelligence is maintaining a state where one's options are open. I maintain that the second we reprogram everyone into docility, is the second our world is invaded by aliens or overrun by zombies or whatever existential threat du jour it happens to be, and suddenly we realize why that door shouldn't have been closed."

JoJo tightened her lips and pursed them. "Don't know if you can like, make stuff like that infinite and stuff. I mean, I guess you can make like a food materialize and stuff but that like, needs energy. I mean energy isn't like infinite so you got problems there. I mean if you like, if you make violence OK in self defense, then like, it leaves a loop hole for like ya know, bein attacked. But if they can't fight unless defending, then well then you get rid of like murder and stuff cause yeah...."

"Sort of like making the three laws but with people and not like..robots."

Grace"There's four laws. The zeroth law was always my favorite. A robot may not harm humanity, or by inaction allow humanity to come to harm. The highest law. You can kill, you can harm, but only in service of that.

"On that note, would you like some more waffles?"

It's nice having someone to talk robotic ethics with. And waffles are nice too. Grace smiles at Jo, because even if they don't see exactly eye-to-eye, there are always Godzilla-bot vs. Gamera-bot battles and time -- time for everyone to learn.