On Avatars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Huh," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What've you been up to?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, that would about summarize it, kid.

[Frog Huntin'!  Perception + Alertness]

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

Sepúlveda
"Well..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that the chips are down?)

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

(Help yourself, the Fates sing.

Hell with the rest.)

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

(The Fates are bold:

Even the one that loves you best.

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

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

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

Let's see.

[Am I aware?]




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

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

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

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

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

Conversation, though, that didn't require eyes.

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

"That's not what I was saying."

Oh, look at that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
















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

Sepúlveda
(Jove hates the soft return tag)

Sepúlveda
[awareness!]

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

Sepúlveda
That's not what I was saying.

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

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

Wait a minute. Here comes a distraction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"July, you know? Useless month."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unhinged, maybe. Confusing, yes.

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

"And yeah, what about Avatars?"

Speaking of Mages and catnip...

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

So there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"See you guys around."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The corners of her eyes crinkle, and she shrugs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strive, strive, strive.

The Tempest (In Progress!)

Pen
THE SETTING:

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

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

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

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

THE CAST:

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



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

Grace
[THE TEMPEST! WOO!]

Grace
[If everyone is waiting for everyone else to vote before posting their long entry doodad, so am I. Voooooooote!]

Nick
[Tempest it is!]

Elliott Chandler
[I'm down with the Tempest!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

Nick
[Was this all a pre-arranged invite setup ICly?]

Grace
[Nope, Grace just said hi, noticed there was a blanket, and was like "Of course they mean me to join them."]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peregrine

Grace
The last time Grace set up here, she was tracking the purchases of one Grant Kherrington Junior as he made his way through Colorado. Seems everybody is moving through Colorado these days, no? Strange that he would be so on the heels of Lydia...

Still, it's not much to go on. Once he's settled down somewhere, used that money to rent a hotel room, something -- she can act on it a bit more... decisively. For now, his finances go on permanent watch. She will set up a warning program to notify her when he so much as buys a pack of chips at a gas station.

There's other things afoot than just this guy. There's also the matter of the murdered Apprentices to get to in the meantime, while she waits.

the keeper of secrets
She expects him to settle down and, to a certain degree, he does. The older man seems to be doing his work just fine before he stops in Colorado Springs. He rents a motel room halfway between Denver and there- the Colonial Inn.

Rented the room for a total of sixteen hours, it seems. Yes, it's one of those motels.

The thing is, though, that this is the last purchase he makes. After that, the man is just... gone. No activity on his accounts. No money going to or from. It's like he just decided to halt.

Grace
Non-digital money is the worst. I mean, money is already the worst, but at least with digital funds, it's easier to track. No, this guy probably went cash -- but why Colorado Springs? Of all places?

Something clicks around in Grace's head. Maybe she's not dealing with two murderers after all? Well. It's worth a shot.

The next target on her list is the El Paso County medical examiner's office. Cracking into this place should be fairly easy -- at least not as hard as trying to bust into a Technocratic establishment, eh? Let's find out where that evidence is...

Grace
[Int + Computers, diff 8 - 3 (Chloe!)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

the keeper of secrets
Grace hsa no trouble looking and getting into the digital records in el Paso county. The warehouse that happened to be housing all of the data from these two particular murders happened to be housed on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. This is a public department, though, and while the security was pretty good this was only because the system itself was so antiquated that someone with a lick of sense would have had the worst time trying to get through it.

What she does find, though, isn't that evidence is being kept from people, it's that there's so little of it. There's the hair sample that they found. The bullet casings. A note about the partial finger prints and the ongoing look into the national databases to try and find a match.

There's another body that seems to pop up with a bullet retrieved that matched the La Croix murder (and just as damaged and hard-to-place). That body belongs to Jacqueline Paix.

Grace
Government servers suck ass. It has to be something about all the equipment being bought from the lowest bidder, and all the software produced by somebody's nephew on the cheap. This place, man... this place! Somebody was anal about making sure their Windows Server 2003 was fully patched, oh sure. And then loaded screensavers, games, and about fifty Internet Exploder plugins on it. On a server.

Somehow, Grace just doesn't think they're going to find that print in the national databases. Just a hunch.

Whatever, right? They're just not as capable as she. And they have her little hair sample. It's time to go bending the universe to her will for it...

[Corr 3, Life 2 -- Teleport some DNA samples! Diff = 6 - 1 (taking time) - 1 (personalized focus)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Extending!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

the keeper of secrets
Grace easily receives the hair sample and it is transported ever-so-carefully to the place that she is doing her work, likely sealed away and carefully held up in some place that it wouldn't contaminate all of her other things. What she notices is that the hair has been bleached. That the hair, for anyone else, would be so degraded that they would have had the worst time finding it.

But there it is. All pale and blond and holding of secrets.

Grace
The first thing she does is to index the DNA data of this hair's tiny root -- to save it off, because this is going to have to go back to the medical examiner. If she ever needs it again, it'll be nice to not have to go through all that work.

All told, a normal human's DNA is about two thirds of a gigabyte in terms of storage. A tiny amount, for something so intricate as the instructions for growing and maintaining a person. She could compress it down even further, if she liked...

[Life 1, Scanning the hair for DNA. -1 Quint for making it a permanent data file. Diff = 4 - 1 (Personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Now, of course, comes the fun part. Since the medical examiner wasn't obviously bribed, it looks like the owner of this hair is something special. Just going in and finding them could be difficult and dangerous in itself.

But there's nothing quite so dangerous as a Mage who's had time to prepare for eventualities.

First, a mental shield, to keep herself from driving her car off a cliff in thralldom or something.

[Mind 2: Shields Up!  Diff = 5 -1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She spends some time getting together and focusing, rewriting the mental parameters and essentially putting up her own sort of firewall from mental attacks and what-have-you. It's so common, so much something that she has done that this is just the nature of the beast. Just the nature of what she is and how she operates.

Grace
Next, in case they try to break all of her things and leave her helpless, a little protection against corruption wouldn't hurt. Solidify her equipment against the forces of destruction? Sounds like a good thing to do.

[Entropy 3: Underclocking -- Make her equipment 99.999% uptime guaranteed! Diff = 6 -1 (taking time) -1(Personalized instrument)

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Grr, that is so not good enough!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
[And that should have been TN = 5... disregard that last roll.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Grace
Fun fun fun. Facing off against an unknown element? Perhaps now is the time, eh? She takes a breath, and steadies herself before leaping back into the universal code.

Once you have your hands on some juicy data like this, it's just the first step. The next is doing something with it. She doesn't know what's going to be on the other side of her little wormhole though, and that's got her, well, shielding her mind and her computer for starters.

Not knowing can be dangerous. Knowing can be even more dangerous.

Oh well.

[Corr 2, Life 1 -- Trace the strand back to an owner. Diff = 5 - 1 (taking time) - 1 (personalized focus)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She goes to take a look at where she is going and what she is doing. She peers forward to see what is going on with this particular person and she does, in fact, find him. He is at a bar in Colorado Springs. It's a nice enough bar and the man is tall and fit and relatively charming. He seems to be hanging out with some friends who are also relatively charming and monied.

Trust fund babies, it would appear. Or the kinds of brokers that you would see in American Psycho. Whatever the case, they seem reasonable and normal enough for people who may or may not have committed murder.

Grace
So far, no fireballs. Good. Also -- Colorado Springs. What is with that place? Right now, it seems to be taking the brunt of whatever curse used to land on Denver.

For now, she watches him -- tries to ascertain a name or some other information that would be helpful.

the keeper of secrets
She doesn't seem to find anything, though. A lot of people seem content to call him Wiley. Like the coyote.

Grace
Wile E. Coyote, Super Gen-i-us. This guy, though... He doesn't look like a coyote. More like a pampered poodle.

When she's tired of watching the inanity of rich guys at a bar being themselves (talk about the banality of evil) she takes another stab at it.

He's got to have something. Some plastic whatsit has to be on him, right? An id card from his alma mater, a credit card, a driver's license -- something. Or maybe not. It's worth a try though, just to get a bead on him.

[Corr 2, Matter 1 -- Looking for something small and plastic on this dude. Diff = 5 - 1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

the keeper of secrets
She doesn't get anything that has identification on it, much to her chagrin. She would have expected to get information and the lack of information is incredibly suspect. She gets a little credit card from one Elizabeth Palor that is all black and shiny and high limit.

And another card that is simple, white, and has embossed lettering on its pearlescent front.

Peregrine.

Grace
Weird. Very weird, this guy. Guess if you pay enough, people will overlook the fact that you don't have any ID to drink with. Guy doesn't even have a cell phone on him.

He is very obviously not named Elizabeth Palor, unless he is a she doing an incredible drag king act. And she has no idea what the background behind 'Peregrine' might be.

So. It's come to this. More inanity. He has to leave sometime, right? Go to a car, go to a residence, give her something more to go on...

the keeper of secrets
And she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And it takes awhile before one of his friends drops him off at a very expensive looking flat in the city proper. They tell Wiley goodbye and he walks himself up to the front door of his place only to ring the doorbell. The stoor is then opened by a pretty blonde woman who looks at her equally blond room mate.

She beams. He grins.

"You got in, didn't you?" she asks.
"Yep."
"Ohhhh, Wiley, this is great!" She hugs him and drags him along inside. He laughs andstarts to dig for his wallet, shows her the card with pride.
"What about La Croix, what about him?"

Wiley falters and shakes his head, no

His blonde housemate looks sad.

"Well, can't all be winners, can they?"
"Yeah. But hey! We got where we are and it's good."
"Daddy says hi."
"Sonny says hi back."

She laughs and drags him off to the bedroom and, presumably, Grace gets an eye full of rich people sex.

Grace
Some people are voyeurs. They like this kind of thing. If they had access to the all-seeing-eye, that's all they would do with the rest of their lives is watch other people have sex.

That's not really Grace's thing. She's investigating this guy for murder, not his cunnilingus skills. Ugh, gross. UGH GROSS. She winces when she realizes what's going on here, and severs the connection.

But, not before finding out where he's sleeping tonight. So that's a consolation.

He got in. Somewhere. To Peregrine? La Croix did not. He has a father or father-figure? Maybe it's time to hit up Angela. Ask somebody who knows Colorado Springs, and what might be going on there.

For now, Wiley and his address have been noted.

Order in the Chaos

Ned
These days, life was becoming serious. Or at least, in danger of becoming serious.

Even transition as those who opt to be when life becomes too mundane, civil or routine, there is room for a bit of a step back. A carefully executed measure of 'Fuck off, World, i'm drinking tonight' and that seems to be where Ned has found himself.

The Bar's name is the Lilyput. Someone was being funny when they looked up fairy tales, because half of the bar's patrons, which number at most, six or seven, are the burly types, with too much beer in their guts and too few words that belonged in any language proper. The beer was piss poor at best while the liquor was ancient with gummy rims and a butch dyke bartender that wore notches of ink along her inner arm for each of the drunks that had called her as much over the years.

But! The place had pool tables that rarely saw use. Pool cues that were slightly warped and a rack of balls with two '8s' and a lot more stripes than solids. It was here, Ned found himself, edge of downtown, sighting down the length of a freshly chalked pool cue, aiming up on one of the Eight balls. Which was odd, if only because all the other balls looked like they were still on the table.

There was an untouched pint of something sitting on the corner of the table, over the pocket, like some obstacle to be paid mind. The shot he was looking to take was four different banks and a fleeting hail mary suggestion at the First of three orange stripe balls to be sunk in a distant corner.



Ned
(Entropy 1: What're the odds? Diff 4 - 1 for Quint)

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )

River
The place had pool tables that nobody ever saw, and when she walks in the door that is the first thing that she sees. The first thing that she looks at- pool tables. Eyes go from the pool tables to the exits (two, three if you count the window. She could make the window if she needed) to the bartender with the piss poor beer selection. River's lips turn up at the corners.

Maybe she doesn't belong here. She's a bit too femme for the standard clientele, raises the average appearance of the patrons by a significant portion. Not that it's hard. River isn't short or tall- maybe five and a half feet tall in a comfortable dress that hits mid thigh and a pair of boots (because she knows better than to wear sandals in a place like this.) She doesn't have a lot in the way of shoes- it was either the boots or the pair of emergency flats. Didn't feel like wearing those today so it was the boots.

We digress. Nobody cares about her boots so much as what she does next. Swings by the bar to order a beer in a can (can't fuck that up, even if it's Natural Lite). Eyes keep going back to the pool tablle.

Pays cash for her beer with a little smile and saunters along that way.

Must be slumming it.

Ned
"....Cues are crooked. Balls put the normal rules out of play. Gonna have to get creat-...ive."

Ned's talking. River's on her way over and she's a peripheral glimpse. No one in the bar had moved more than a few feet in any direction since he'd arrived, making her stand out without even a stare cast her way. He's thrown the first shot and watched the probabilities peel away as the ball banked once, twice, a third time, only to sail wide on the fourth bounce with a frown.

It's only as she gets within a few feet that his eyes slip toward her, lining up another shot (Purple, Solid, caught in a nest of raibow stripe soldiery for protection). The boots are given a glance (more like the legs in them) and the outfit a second or two longer than a glance before he's raising brows and eyes toward her features. A quick smile that's doused (Like he was resisting some reflex from long ago), gaze switching to the can in her hand.

"Smart choice."

Then he's down to lining the shot up again, brow furrowing and dancing amid the balls of the table with a carefully executed regard.

River
She raises her can, takes a pull and doesn't make a face. At least the beer isn't warm, and that she can count as a blessing. The woman came here to play pool, and that was what it was worth. Gaze pulls from Ned to the table again. To the balls all spread out nice and neat and clean- she likes games like this. Comes down to math and numbers and skill.

Not quite the way she likes cards, but close enough.

"Guess if you brought your own you'd be in trouble. Nobody likes a hustler," River tells him. Replies, even, and her tone is conversational.

She has an accent, a lilt and pattern to her speech that only comes when English isn't your first language. Perhaps from some Spanish speaking country but hard to place when you haven't been all over the world to find the specifics of her speech patterns (they're Cuban, though, if one is curious.) River does flash a smile back at Ned, not at all an impulse she curbs.

"Try the other end?"

Ned
"....Odds play themselves in predictable patterns. I came here for the chaos tables like these can provide."

The next shot sinks the purple. Splits the guard of two of the stripes just to get at their general, who goes down spinning into the corner pocket, leaving the white ball to slowly spin toward the nearby pint glass he's left on the edge. It trembles slightly but doesn't fall and his gaze rests on the piece of glassware for a calculating moment. He huffs and turns to look at her, reaching for the chalk on his way around the table again.

"Gets me in better shape and provides more interesting odds." A pause, his brow furrowing, gaze slipping around to the various bodies in the bar. Few are paying attention, none of them either of the two youngsters by the pool table. The Dyke butch is watching some small TV she keeps behind the counter, chuckling to herself at whatever's there.

"...You look like you belong in a club somewhere. Or a penthouse." If these were the old days Ned might have lined that up with a line suggestive of something. As it stands, he leaves it there and that makes it sound more like a question than a pick up. He finshes chalking the cue and re-adjusts the pint glass. He didn't like the odds of it falling, apparently.

Grace
[Awareness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

River
[Entropy 1: Hows this business going to pan out?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

River
He says he's getting in better shape and it provides more interesting odds. River takes a second, seems like she's fidgeting. One step, two step. Side back. Stop. Little but rhythmic and intentional. She's more focused on the table than him at that juncture.

River doesn't speak idly. Looks at him directly when he says that she looks like she belongs in either a club or a penthouse. Doesn't shy away from eye contact and takes her time to come up with words. They're all chosen carefully, not tossed out in random array, not pushed around like she has dozens of things to say or like she is a verbose creature. No, River Vasquez says what she means so she takes her time saying those things.

"It's laundry day," like that explains everything, "I didn't know where I was going until I started driving. This seemed like the right place."

A second.

"Red in the side pocket is your best bet right now."

Ned
"Quick to decide, shy on plans."

It sounded like a platitude or a phrasing of some sort. Ned chuffs a soft laugh that doesn't last long. His gaze falls to regard the table, brow furrowing at the shot she is suggesting. He slips around the corner with the pint glass, leaning away from it to ensure a lack of contact. His gaze takes in the banks he'll need to take to pull that off and he frowns, eyes slipping back up toward her quizzically.

"...Are you kidding?" A disbelieving quirk of a smile. "Because the Green stripe is a much safer bet."

River
"Green stripe sets you up to be blocked by the eight ball, too much of a risk. I don't know how hard your standard stroke is, but if you err on the rough side you'll be in a world of trouble," she says, knowing and like she knows the facts. They're looking at the same field of play, though.

Walks around the table slowly.

"If it errs right, though... green stripe's safer."

Grace
The presence of interesting people inside this dive bar was felt before she stepped inside. Truly, her entrance might not have happened had she been a little less aware of these eddies in the universal tide. She halfway expected to find Elijah/William in here with his tequila or something, but no. It's River and Ned. Her head cocks, a little sideways smile when she sees them playing pool.

Her t-shirt today is a grey thing with the words "Can't stop, won't stop," superimposed over the symbol for pi. Yup, she is that kind of nerd.

She doesn't go directly over just yet. At the bar, she asks the tender for a beer and tips the woman suspiciously well for someone dressed in holey jeans and sneakers. Money never seemed very important anyway, and now? Well, now it might as well be Monopoly money, except that collecting Monopoly money actually means you win a game, at least.

There's a pool game on, thinking of...

Ned
"...You always plan for things to go wrong?"

Ned doesn't sound perturbed, more...dismissive. Almost casually comfortable in his airs. Entropy was something new, afterall and he was swinging the hang of it. Slowly, but surely. If the air around him was a touch monitored and a touch stuffy for it, then so be it. He settles forward, lining up the shot carefully, gaze following the bounce of the balls in the future toward the predicted ends and scenarios they were both seeing.

The cue slides back and he pauses. His brow knits and his eyes flick again and again, following the paths he's laid out. A moment later and his footing shifts, aim adjusting behind the white ball again, to localize the Red. The eyes do their dance once more and there's a brief hint of something under his features. The knitting smooths and he pulls away from he shot without having taken it, regarding her fresh, new and....intrigued.

"Alright. How do you know that?"

River
You always plan for things to go wrong?
"When you are aware that the worst possible scenario is something you can handle, anything else is inconsequential."

And she- radiant and resolved like an unconquered sun- stands and observes. She's not something that belongs here, too bright. These kinds of bars don't flourish in sunlight; their fruits grow best under cover of darkness. It's strange to see her at this particular bar. Grace has seen her at bars before, but she usually goes somewhere... nicer. She ended up watching Zombieland with Grace and Samir the last time these two went out to a bar.

Overall, it was a good night.

She raises her beer to the Mercurial Elite, a salute to get her attention before attentions go back to Ned. Direct and focused. Her expression goes playful.

"Predictable patterns. The curve of the cue is just an added complication, but there's order in the chaos here. You just have to look harder at it to notice."


Ned
(Wits 4 (Quick Thinking) + Investigation 2)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Ned
"Looking harder narrows your focus."

It's chiding. Almost. A touch self-deprecating as well and there's something there beneath the surface that catches on his face a moment, before submerging again. Probability suggests trauma has the best chance, while a bit of brooding to stir her to weak-kneed lust is the secondary suggestion. He lines up the shot, gaze falling into the table and takes it.

Red goes down after two solid clacks and the white ball sits clear of the first of two 8s, the second a haunted presence hovering infront of his pint-glass pocket. He leans one hand on the table, eyeballing that pint glass and then, with a face like sharp nettles under the feet, turns to regard her again.

"Narrowed focus means you miss the rest of it. Maybe even the best of it-" He interrupts himself when he follows her gaze to the bar, brow knitting and mouth hanging open as he spies Grace. A 'huh' suddenly escapes him and the brief recognition of the familiar woman puts several pieces into play about his 'New Friend'.

He's turning back toward her and suddenly the game is something brand new. His features are a touch flat and his regard is...not hostile but well-guarded.

"Who are you?"

Grace
Grace returns the salute in kind, and walks over to the assembly of people busying themselves by whacking balls with sticks. Humans, man. They'll do anything for a distraction. There's so many variations on the "whack a ball with a stick" game, you'd think they were obsessed.

"Order in the chaos? Mmm," Grace says, as though she's answering Ned's question and asking one of River. It could be both.

"This is River. We're roomates."

River
She sidles up to Grace, gives her a little hip bump in greeting. She assumes familiarity, yes, and it's fun to make some casual contact with Grace because, well, she thinks Grace is fun. She likes hanging out with her room mate. She transfers the beer to her other hand, consider's shaking Ned's but decides against it.

Almost does put her hand out, though, comes close and it's obvious.

"River Vasquez, probability enthusiast."

Ned
"Quaint."

He says it without the vitriol to make it sarcastic. Instead, it is delivered somewhat flatly and his eyes adjust to settle on Grace, jaw working a slightly circuit around as if he's rolling some piece of gristle between his teeth.

"That mean the two of your are in a Cabal or just...shacking up and keeping out of each other's way?"

A pause, his eyes falling to the pool table again, the angles explored with careful plucks and glances.

"...And how's the hunt going for that serial killer...Any new info.?"

River
"... it's not me." She tells Grace.

Which is possibly the worst Chakravanti joke ever.

Ned
"...If it was we'd be having a different talk..." Second worst.

Grace
Shacking up. With River? Wrong Chakravanti, she thinks to herself, the humor of it making its way to her face. "Oh, hah, no, I mean... It's just a roomate thing, not a... Hah!"

Not either of those, Ned.

Then, the topic changes, and Grace is still smiling awkwardly when he says it. Serial killer. Yes. Right. Readjust the face for that.

River follows all that up with a joke, and -- screw it. Whatever you want to do, facial expression. What. Ever.

"Ahh, no. I'm afraid it's kicking my ass along with everything else. I've got my claws in another killer, if that's any consolation."

River
"You stay busy when I'm out of town, what's going on?" Brows raise for a second nad she takes a pull off of her shitty, shitty beer as though she has no problem with its flavor whatsoever.

Casual nature aside, the question is direct and wears an undercurrent of seriousness.

Ned
"It isn't."

Ned's frown at Grace is deeper now. Another one? He stares at her with something akin to Paranoid insight, Entropy flicking off her facial features which have one the route of slackened honesty, making the probabilities of her joking around rather slim.

"You telling me there are more than one? Or is this just...a separate one in addition to the one you're having trouble finding."

He flicks his eyes toward River, brow perked.

"Five dead...Initiates was it? Someone scrubbed the crime scenes pretty heavily. Left behind nothing more than a partial print and an eyelash or some such. According to Grace and confirmed by The D-....my Mentor. That's as far as anyone went with it though."

If that information doesn't sit well with Ned, he wears it like the colours of a favoured sport's team. Plainly and with greed.

Grace
"Busy busy, yup," Grace says. "Mike's in town for a reason, you know. Moral support and all that." She sighs a bit.

"I had some other mess to clean up before I found out about the murders. I found a... bad site. Live streaming snuff porn. Been fixing that. And yes, prepping the stuff I need for taking on a Mage murderer."

She looks at her beer. It doesn't seem quite enough. She drinks it, though. Of course she does.

River
"Mike's in town?"

Just a little too quick with that. River shakes her head, puts a hand up and continues on with the thought.

"Sounds like somebody is getting paid off to scrub the scenes. If it was magickal tampering they would have been thorough. A professional doesn't leave tracks."

Ned
"Last i checked, there's more than a few of us in town might help with all that. Might be time to share the wealth of information a bit, yeah?"

Ned's next shot cracks sharply, the Eight ball vanishing into a pocket with little fanfare. He sets the cue on the table and then moves over to his pint, eyeballing it suspiciously. River's surprise around the pool table draw's Ned's glance toward her, then down and away. He drains a chunk of the pint before setting it on one of the end table's nearby with a ghastly look on his face.

"Suddenly remember why I quit."

He turns to look back at the other two, brow knit, part in disgust with the beer still on his tongue, partly for the topics being talked about.

"What's been done so far to track the Killer? The Worker one. Beyond investigating the scene." A pause. "..And who's Mike?"

Grace
"They're both Worker ones, Ned," Grace says, and ugh, this beer is awful. Yeah, someone tortured a Mage on live television. Let that scenario play out in your head. Guess what happened?

"I used to have a way to make sure everybody knew about these things, but the fucking Techs got it. I have been trying to make sure people know, but starting a bunch of phone conversations talking about murder is a great way to get the NSA breathing down your neck too. Been there, done that."

So. Doesn't that make you feel so comfortable, Ned?

"Mike's ahhh... Well, he's my boyfriend."

Ned
"....Then you're talking to the wrong ones."

He clucks his tongue, sharply, eyeballing Grace. "Because most of the 'old guard' I've run into are more concerned with keeping secrets and playing careful then actually doing something but they seem to be the only ones who actually get any of the info..."

Ned scrubs at his brow for a second.

"Am I up to date on the Colorado Springs deal? Eyelash and Partial Print? Any remains of the bodies themselves? I.Ds or Names?"

Grace
Grace squints at Ned. "Right. So, if I remember right, you found out about it what... a day after I did? What was I supposed to do, call you up an hour after I found out -- from your mentor no less? Here's an idea for you -- why don't you help me 'share the wealth of information'?"

Nobody has ever accused Grace of keeping secrets, playing careful, and not doing. The polar opposite, yes. Definitely that.

"You think I'm here to slack off? I think I kind of need a bit of a break, considering I've been doing pretty much nothing else besides dismantling some of the vilest shit you can imagine. Like, an hour ago, Ned."

She blinks. Looks away.

"You are up to date. I'll have more stuff soon. But I don't know any more than what the Doc does right now, I'm sorry." And she means that. It weighs on her. Will another die because those who were looking were too slow?

Ned
"No I'm telling you to broaden. Your network fell apart and you're running off-grid to keep ahead of those tracking you down and not even your Roommate knew any of this before this particular moment. No one's telling you to do what you're doing, but you're doing it anyway and that's..."

He pauses. Going back in time briefly to a conversation he had with someone. He had a lot to say about 'Purpose'.

"I think you're here to do something right but you've got a lot of obstacles to go around to do it. Problem isn't who is doing the talking the problem is who's listening and how many obstacles you have to go around to get them to do so. Keep doing that. They need to know but...I'm not an obstacle. I'm not going to get in your way and I get the feeling there's a few others who don't know, that might feel that way as well."

Ned's tossing a five down on the table next to his beer. A five and some change. Cheap was cheap, expected.

"I need to have a talk with someone. I have your number, I'll send along a Text and in the meantime, try to sort out some method of communication that isn't digital....Meantime, you find anything else out-" He digs around in his pocket for a pen, snatching a napkin from one of the dispensers "-write it out and put it in this P.O box. Outside of the uni. Slower than a text but more secure in the end, yeah?"

He thrusts the paper out at her, brow perked.

Grace
She's a little perturbed by him, yeah. The 'old guard' in Denver includes her. It includes people she's been through a lot with. But, when he says that no one's telling her to do anything, she gives one of the 8-balls a sardonic grin.

"Nobody tells me what to do," she says. "Ask Mike about that sometime."

Michael MacCarrick. Adept of the Chakravanti. Master assassin. Receiver of at least one epic rant about how he was not to tell Grace to back down. When she says nobody, she means it.

"I'll make sure you're notified," she says, taking the address for the P.O. box. "If I use the mail, I'll send you a text back, Okay? Just so you're not, like, checking it every hour or something."

Ned
"One Letter. Your choice. Digital Voodoo....or something like that."

He grins back and stuff his hands in his pockets, little more than a nod offered because hey. This wasn't the good bye. This was a 'let's get to work'.

Making Myths (Red Room SL)

flux
There is work to be done.

Ther eis a video that is still floating around the web, being slowly copied and shared and disseminated in a fashion that all things do. It is a slow moving virus, but a virus none the less. Something that replicates and moves along because people are digitally making out and swapping data and there is a chance that slowly, ever-so-slowly, it's gaining popularity and becoming another one of those urban legends on the deep web.

There is a chance that there are offline copies, now, but those are unreachable. The online copies though, the things people are most readily accessing, are still out there. Because seriously, who burns CDs anymore?

Grace
There's something not quite right about removing data from the internet. It's possible, right? For someone like Grace, especially. But there's something about the internet itself that refuses to be silenced. The Streisand Effect is a thing. People don't like to be told no. It's something that resonates deep in the recesses of Grace's very heart, that. And yet, here she is, saying no. At first, she decided not to, but Angela was right. There are other people out there who will understand exactly what happened to Lydia.

Sometimes, people's lives are more important than ideology.

She's got her hack on in the parking lot outside a Carl's Jr, leeching wifi and prepping a small hen-and-chicks plant for its moment of glory -- being the processor in her quantum computer.

[Life 2, Entropy 3, Forces 2 and Corr 3 -- Plant-Based Quantum Computing. Diff 6 - 1 (personalized instrument) - 1 (taking time)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Extends!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
[Computers, Diff 7 - 3 (Chloe) -- Accessing Sasha's botnet]

Dice: 9 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Grace
[I should have double-10'sed that, but hey.... Overkill much?]

flux
(Yeah, no, you got in just fine. LOL)

Grace
The first step is to go back to the root -- Sasha. From there, all the branches and leaves of video virus sprout. The fact that he built a botnet into the video makes things so much easier. The first few steps are going to be nicely easy. The next -- tracing which places the video has been uploaded to afterwards? Not so easy.

She finds it to be simple, really. Surprising, how many people out there had access to Mortis Cafe. Even more surprising how many of those decided to download a video from the site and let it infect them. Works out in her favor though.

In order to avoid too many questions, she goes for a less obvious route than erasure. Corrupted hard drives happen. Make it look like a consequence of that virus that went unnoticed so far. It's not like these people have much worth keeping on their computers anyway, right? Fucking snuff porn enthusiasts...

flux
This is the kind of network that should have been hard to access. Sure, Grace was a Goddess with a computer. She could have broken into the NSa's records right now and seen the cell phoen record of every global citizen with the kinds of skills that she had- the woman has successfully hacked the Technocracy before and got away relatively unscathed.

There were a lot of stupid whales out there, and there were a lot of easily found copies of that file that Sasha put out there. Corrupting the people's hard drives shouldn't have been a problem in the slightest and she could find computers from across the globe- some real and some virtual and some with genuine IPs and some with spoofed ones, all available for the pickings.

Only a moron would keep this thing on their connected hard drive.

Grace is just culling the herd.

Grace
[Computers, Diff 8 - 3 (Chloe) -- Trimming off the first branches of the tree of suck!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) [Doubling Tens]

Grace
Not everybody is so dumb as to access the dark web without a prophylactic. Some people surely did not fall for the Trojan Horse, and these are the ones that Grace goes after next. Mirror sites, shared resources, places where the file sits waiting for some other rube to download it and get ensnared. For these, she corrupts the file. It is no longer accessible. It errors out. It might as well be gone.

For all their security, Grace susses them out and cracks their hashes with the help of a computer that can try every possibility at once. Thanks, Chloe.

Again, not too much of a problem, for her.

The next step, though? May be a little tough. The real pros like to hide, as she does, behind trails of dead ends and multiple proxies. They like to encrypt and encrypt and encrypt again, in chains and shells that you only know are empty until you get to the core and have to backtrack. People with real time on their hands can slip between all the cracks in the dark.

They're also going to be the ones asking the most questions when their shit goes missing. Well. Life is tough, isn't it? Viruses are sneaky things...

[Computers, Diff 9 - 3 (Chloe) -- Trimming off the second branches of the tree of suck!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

flux
This comes from the simply curious. The people who clicked on something because someone said it was a real WTF video. This is the work of users who found something interesting and kept the tradition alive. Sometimes,t hese people are information hoarders. Sometimes, these people hoild onto the knowledge they have like precious treasures but not precious enough. Hold onto it because it was interesting but, usually, this stuff goes the way of the original Mr. Hands video. Sure, you could find it, but mostly can't nowadays. Grace is working along to make it more like some of the lost footage of the internet. The things that people saw once but can never really pull up again.

If you destroy the data, did it ever really happen?

Real pros like to hide, yes, and she's hunted down a real pro before because she is one. These are the kinds of people who were on par with the young man who started this mess, the one who decided to upload the video and take it out of people's hides for the sake of revenge. Sasha isn't an isolated young man- there are worlds of people who are like him. These are the people who understand that you win some you lose some.

Eventually, over the course of several weeks, Grace is fairly certain that she got the existing copies of the file off of the web, perhaps a little disturbed by how easy it was. Perhaps a little disturbed by the fact that it appears she had an easy task ahead of her.

No, the only copies of this video that exist are the ones that she can't touch without specifically knowing who has it and specifically being able to teleport the specific offline storage space out her way.

Grace
It's the making of a myth, at this point. She'll keep an eye on it, watch to see if the offline becomes online again. But mostly, people should forget, in time. They might not forget that it happened at all, but what did they really see? A "Red Room" video that gets conveniently edited as soon as actual damage is about to be incurred? I mean, it's an obvious fake to begin with.

This is what Grace hopes, anyway.

The next thing on her list (it is a long list, by now) is to ensure that Vivid Xxxtreme isn't a business anymore. She's called Mike, by this point. Told him about the worst of the lot, in hopes that he takes care of good old Doc Brad. She has faith in him. He kills people quite well. And she is turning out to be quite the killer of organizations, herself.

Let's take another one down.

flux
Vivid Xxxtreme is a business that had the unfortunate fortunateness of having a lot of enemies and a very good IT support team. After the little break in that Sasha and Grace pulled, it would seem that security got an upgrade. Nothing that she couldn't handle, of course, but enough of an upgrade that it was a bit of a headache for her to deal with.

Well, a headache if she were drunk and had two working fingers.

She's found some pretty prevalent shell companies before, little offshoots and sites that all worked under the Vivid Xxxtreme brand name. The Leather Library Archives was one such company that was bought out as of late, specializing in vintage BDSM that was actually 100% above board before being taken over. Hijab Hotties, which ran out of Pakistan according to the website (which actually ran out of Pakistan, Ohio), was another shell that seemed to exist only to launder money.

With quite a lot of digging, the name Grant Kherrington Jr. came up.

Grace
Grant. Lydia had mentioned a Grant, hadn't she? Someone, perhaps the only one, who was nice to her during her ordeal. It's not exactly a common name either.

Who is Grant Kherrington Junior in this scheme? It deserves a bit more poking around, doesn't it?

Grace
[Investigation 0 / Int 4 = poking around about Grant Kherrington Jr.  Diff 7 + 1 (because 0 Investigation). Spending WP because...]

Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

flux
What Grace finds is a little bit of interesting information while she is digging.

Grant Kherrington Junior (Independent film director)was married to scream queen Elizabeth Bartlett- an actress who was pretty prominent in the indie horror scene in the 1980's and early 90's who also did some documentary work herself.  She was cast to play Gia Carangi in the movie Gia and filmed some of the initial scenes before she got pregnant with her son- Grant Kherrington the third- and backed out of the movie

She was set to play Satine in Moulin Rouge and had some of the scenes filmed before she and her son died in a rather violent home invasion. Grant Kherrington Jr went from indie film production to working in the porn industry. Even then, he bowed out a few years later and became artistic director of vivid Xxxtreme in 2014.



Oddly enough, around the same time that Mortis Cafe came into being.

Grace
Elizabeth Bartlett. Sasha mentioned that Nomz's mom was a scream queen... someone who isn't around anymore. Bunny. Elizabeth 'Bunny' Bartlett? A rather morbid thought comes to mind. A violent home invasion sounds like the perfect cover-up for what typically goes down at Mortis Cafe.If that's who we're dealing with -- they say her son died, right?

Maybe that was just an excuse to keep him out of school?

There's another name on her list, then. Perhaps another who needs to be.... recycled.

Grace
[Computers, Diff 8 - 3 (Chloe) -- Kill the beast that is Vivid Xxxtreme. Strip accounts and steal identities, woo!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]

flux
It's done, easily enough she knows that it is only a matter of time before the company falls apart, before the money making beast is dismantled and the employees revolt. Once people realize it's hemorrhaging money it'll be too late. They won't be able to maintain their servers and assets will be sold off.

People who took their money and ran may have disappeared, but there's always a trail for that. Not everyone in this Hellish operation knew the extent of its depravity.

In a month's time, nobody will remember that the company existed save for videos saved on their hard drives and a twelve dollar refund for people who bought lifetime subscriptions.

Grace
Once the hit is done, it looks like nothing's happened at all. It'll continue looking like that, until the finance guys catch on, and then... Well. There's nothing they can do, really. A lot of their funds were illegally sourced. Crying about losing will only bring questions they can't answer, and by then they won't have the money to successfully buy their way out of justice.

There is no justice, really. None that can be found in the so-called 'justice system' at least. There is this, though. And this feels... close enough. The wretched business will die off, and perhaps some of the corrupted-to-the-core people running it along with.

Speaking of which.... What is Grant Kherrington Junior up to these days, she wonders?

Grace
[Computers, Diff 7 - 3 (Chloe) = Now that we have all the info on the finances, what is Grant Kherrington Junior spending his money on?]

Dice: 9 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

flux
It doesn't take a lot of doing. Someone may have set up other accounts for him that aren't in his name but, for the most part, it would appear that whoever did that did such a good job that even Grant doesn't know where all of his things may be. Maybe his assets exist physically, but it would appear that the digital ssets are pretty impressive.

His last purchase it would seem was a check for two thousand dollars written to a private investigator- Evan Michaels. He's spent a few things on gas receipts and fast food. It would appear that he's moving his way out of Montana and towards Texas by way of Colorado.