Badass Lessons

Pan
It was an otherwise quiet Second Christmas Day when Pan went through the house and took stock of who was around and saw Grace relaxing in one of the common areas. Like usual the priest did not leave his room unless he was fully dressed to include his cowboy boots. This time though he looked like he was on his way out somewhere.
She's going to start suspecting he's up to something when he tells her to get her coat, they're going for a drive. This is the second time he's done it. At least Grace isn't stuck driving this time. They aren't going to the store.
"I been thinking," he says. Maybe he has been. He's looking more spry than he was six weeks ago when he first got back from the Verbena's farm way out in the hinterlands. Improved health leaves him more energy to think. "You know how to fire a weapon?"
---
Fast forward about an hour.
Pan pulls the red Toyota pickup truck that came back with him on one of his last trips up to Denver into the firing range near the state park and parks the vehicle. He looks a bit stiff letting down the tailgate to climb up into the truck's bed and open up the foot locker and remove a black half-moon canvas case and a small blue heavy-duty plastic case. Inside the canvas case is a rifle. The blue case has a pistol.
"Alright," he says with a grunt as he jumps down out of the back of the truck. Claps shut the tailgate. It's cold today but sunny. Pan squints against what's left of the daylight. "Ready?"

Grace
If this weren't something she'd been meaning to do (seriously, how do she and Kalen spend so much time together and yet not ever spend it at target practice?) she might have told Pan where he could shove her coat. Well, possibly more politely than that.
But this was her idea before it was Pan's you see? Just, he's the one who kicked her off her butt and made her go do it, which... okay. Fine.
She's not too talkative on the drive over, but she's not morose about her silence. More just watching the scenery. And when they arrive, she's still in a somewhat good mood. She hops out of the truck with an air of anticipation, because hey... learning something new, right?
"Yeah, I'm good." she says, and shoves her hands into her coat pockets to warm them against the chill.

Pan
At least Pan is content to just drive. In general he isn't the sort of person who feels the need to run his mouth constantly. He doesn't take the solitude or the enclosed space as an invitation to tell Grace all about the Virgin Mary and how her life would improve if she were to swap out Computers for Christ.
In all the time he's lived at the Chantry he's said very little about his beliefs or his paradigm. No one ever questions him on it. Only Sera talks about his prayer and his god as if she isn't afraid of it.
Grace is good and started out good. This wasn't something he sprang on her. She doesn't tell him this and he at least doesn't act as though this was some god-granted calling of his. They were both just sitting around not doing anything. Now they're walking across the parking lot and into a gun range that is busy considering the day.
The kids are off from school all week and plenty of folk took a long weekend to eat up their vacation time. Pan and Grace look a bit incongruous coming in together but the clerk is reading a magazine and doesn't give two shits about their relationship or what they're doing here. The priest pays for both their rental fees and takes their ticket. Hands Grace her ear cans and loops his over his forearm and then they're back outside.
"You ever fire a gun before?" he asks. It's a mild question. Has to lay down some sort of foundation. Grace doesn't strike him as the sort of woman who tolerates people telling her things she already knows.

Grace
"Nope. I always thought if I had a gun, it was more dangerous than without one," she says and shrugs. "I'm not so sure about that now."
She just leaves it at that, but yeah... not so sure about that, what with zombies and ghuls and whatever the fuck that was at the McDonald's. From the way people describe it, like all the animal goo that went into the grease trap in that place just up and decided that death was for suckers...
Grace gives a little shiver.
"So, yeah, I don't know the first thing. Sorry. Well, okay. I know which end the bullets come out of."

Pan
Given his profession and his history it would surprise few people if Pan were a humorless dour thing. He isn't. He cracks stupid jokes and seems to enjoy his own company as much as he enjoys other people's company but it's rare that he actually laughs.
When Pan laughs it shows his teeth and shaves off the excess time from his face and he actually looks the 45 years his driver's license claims he is. He has lines around his eyes from laughing hard and often. This laugh is short-lived but honest. That struck him as funny.
"Well," he says. "That's a start."
They walk down a foot-trodden path and out to their range. Pan sets down the rifle and the pistol cases and a couple boxes of ammunition and hooks the ear cans around his neck to free up his hands. Walks down the lane to pick up the target and move it closer. Around them the shots are close but infrequent. Rifle shots instead of pistol. It muffles the conversation once he's got the target where he wants it and starts to walk back towards her.
"First thing you gotta wrap your head around, talking about guns, is if you're gonna aim it at something you'd better be ready to kill it. I'm talking monsters, demons, zombies. People. Anything you're pointing at. Don't ever point a gun at nothing thinking you're just gonna slow it down, you dig?"

Grace
[Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Pan talks about the real object lesson here: that she'll have to be ready to kill. But that's the thing, right? She knows very well how her mind works in the heat of the moment. It calculates. It's only afterwards that she manages to feel for whoever might be on the receiving end of her coldness.
If she decides that something needs to die, and she has a gun, and she knows how to use it, there won't be hesitation...
She can see it now, spreading out in front of her, possible lives taken, possible lives saved, all because she picks up a gun here and now and learns how to use it. She shakes her head. Damnit, this is just a trip to the gun range. Don't be so dramatic!
"I dig, I dig."

Sera
Perception + Awareness - aka any reason for Sera to show up at the gun range?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Pan
All this fresh air and moving around is good for him. A sedentary lifestyle is awful for someone who's trying to recover from a stroke. Besides the stroke he's had to contend with a massive abdominal injury and a leg wound. Pan moves like a man far older than 45 but his life before the zombie dog attack wasn't exactly sedentary.
Time was the Awakened populace of Denver used to stop by the Church of the Good Shepherd whenever they wanted to find him. Butted heads with the administrative assistant and tried hard to walk through the place ignoring the fact that it felt even more holy than other churches they had been in for the intensity of the light.
That felt like a long time ago. Plenty has happened since then. Grace contemplates her future mindset while standing in the cold-sharp sun. While Pan goes down on a knee behind her to unzip the hunting rifle. He holds it by the stock as he rejoins Grace. Box of shells in his other hand.
"Alright," he says. Hands the rifle to her. "I'll show you how to clean it later. Whenever you're loading it - well. You already know which end they come outta. Point that at the ground while you're opening the bolt lever and loading the shells. It's empty right now."

Sera
There is precisely no reason for Our Sera to show up at a gun range on an odd Saturday after Christmas and before New Year's and her party is probably still going on and god knows why she's out here except Coincidence, except Fate.  
But here she is, on a strange Thursday night, maybe a few miles away when she feels the doubled pull of their resonance and it's not Serafine driving, not Sera at all, because listen, she gives a fuck about people and knows, understands, deeply and immediately just how goddambed disastrous it would be if she were driving.
So: outside, a white van.
Sera's close enough that she can feel them both, beneath her skin, in her blood.  Close enough that she can see them, Pan at least, he is hard to ignore.  Maybe not close enough for them to feel her, but listen darlings, she'll he there soon.

Grace
What's that they say about guns? Always point them at something you wouldn't mind shooting, even when you're sure they're not loaded? Yeah. She makes sure of that one after taking the rifle.
"Opening... bolt lever, yeah," she says, fiddling with it. "Looks like this thing unscrews or something?"
Yeah, total noob here. Pan's guidance, however, gets her to the point where she can start loading shells, and she does keep the end pointed at the ground while doing so.

Pan
Pan stands behind her so he can guide her hands instead of just standing off to the side and telling her what to do. She has on her side the fact that she is used to working with technology and following instructions. If she can put together a computer she can load a gun.
The rifle eats five shells before it offers her resistance and he shows her how to chamber a round. How to take the safety off. The Remington is not as heavy as it looks like it ought to be but it's her first time swinging the stock up to her shoulder and steadying the grip with her non-dominant hand.
"If you decide you wanna use a rifle," he says, "you're gonna wanna practice just holding the thing steady, yeah? Even if you get a scope and a laser pointer, it ain't gonna do you any good unless you can hold it without shaking. Make sure the stock ain't on your collarbone or in your armpit. The bruise ain't pretty."
This is probably when Sera happens upon them: Pan is showing Grace how to stand with her feet shoulder-width apart without putting his hands on her. It involves using an invisible rifle so she can imitate his stance.

Sera
He should put his hands on her.  He should probably put his hands on her.  The best things humans do involve their hands and their bodies and possible substances ingested, natural or fermented but certainly all Part of God's Plan.
Really they are unlikely to notice Sera at first if they haven't noticed her from a distance.
This is a drugs run or a booze rune or a something run. She is not here to learn to shoot a rifle she already knows how to shoot a rifle and moreover she does not care to practice just now.  Instead: something else, the kiss of sensation agianst their senses, their brief and sharpened awareness of her presence in their immediate surroundings.  Maybe they actually see her, leaning against a post, yeah, watching.
Oh Pan.  Shouldn't you teach Sera how to fire a rifle? Hands on, maybe.
Was that a wolf whistle?  God only knows.

Sera
(FYI that is probably my last post.  since bed.  :)

Pan
[perc + aware: WHO COULD THAT BE]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 3

Sera
Here is the reason for the coincidence: the Sexy Elf Costume Store is next door to the gun range.

Seriously, guys. World of Darkness.
Sera
(alright darlings - sleeep for lizes.  nini!)

Grace
[Perc + aware]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Grace
So, Grace tries holding it the way Pan is holding his invisible rifle, trying to keep the thing out of her armpit and away from her collarbone. It's not exactly perfect, which might be why Pan's trying to get her to adjust via mimic.
And then, there's a whistle. And a blossoming distraction which totally ruins what stance she had.
She turns, and there's Sera, watching, and she quirks up a smile before concentrating again on that freaking stance. The rifle barrel swings in the air at the target, not exactly shaky, more like wobbly. At least this time she doesn't have the stock lodged firmly in armpit.

Pan
And Pan too is distracted from teaching by the pierce of that whistle through the air. He doesn't jerk his eyes away from his pupil until his senses tell him who he is and then the rumble of his laugh cuts through the silence in his wake.
"Sera," he says like his voice is shaking its head too. "That's okay, try getting it up outta your--there you go. Alright. If you miss the first time it ain't the end of the world. Just try and get used to the recoil. It's a thirty caliber, yeah? Big shell. Gonna be kickback. Put your ear-things on before you pull the trigger. And make sure you keep your feet apart or it'll knock you on your ass."

Grace
[Dex 3 + 0 Firearms, +1 diff due to being inept at shooting = Hit?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6) ( fail )

Grace
"Okay," she says, letting the rifle droop a bit as she puts on the hearing protection and prepares herself for 'big shell, gonna be kickback'.
She levels the dangerous end at the target, trying to keep it still. But it wobbles enough to make her want to readjust again (get the damn thing out of your armpit, Grace, geez). And then, feet apart, squeezes the trigger.
She's off by a mile, the 'ear-things' do not help nearly enough, and that is a mighty kick from the thing. But it's a learning experience. She grimaces at Pan in fake-despondency.

Pan
At least he doesn't laugh at her. Her fake-despondency has him giving her a bracing closed-lipped smile and closing off the distance to show her how to discharge the spend shell and chamber another round. He has to raise his voice to compete with the ear cans and the echo of the boom despite them. This isn't a roar or a shout. Just an increase in decibel level to compete with the inherent violence in firing a weapon.
"You were real close for your first shot!" he says. 'Off by a mile' his ass. "Don't get discouraged, get that spent shell out the barrel and do the same thing you just did. You're gonna get it this time."
He leaves the casing lying in the dead grass but says nothing about it. They must be saving the ballistics lesson for later. Right now he just takes a couple steps back to give her room to aim.

Grace
[Dex 3 + 0 Firearms, +1 diff Again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Damage!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
"Right," she yells back at Pan, and she's honestly not discouraged at all. Who expects perfection on the first go?
Guns aren't that complicated of machinery when it comes down to it. At least, this particular one is pretty simple, and she's thankful for that. Pan shows her how to remove the shell, chamber a new one, and...
Again with the standing still, trying not to lock her knees and keep her feet apart. And this time, she's got the look of dead seriousness to her. There are a few people whose faces she could be mentally pasting on that target, but really, that's not what she's doing. They're all dead anyway.
She's still wobbly, but this time, she squeezes the trigger at the right time during that wobbly mess, enough to hit the target. Enough to rip it up. She lets the trigger go, and gives Pan a thumbs-up. Success!

Pan
Natural athleticism can make up for a lack of acquired skill. Grace might not be able to blow off a demon's head from across the room but knowing is half the battle. It would seem Pan is content to know her second shot ever in the history of Grace's nonexistent shooting career hit the target and could have slowed down a pursuer who meant her harm.
When she gives him a thumbs up he huffs out a laugh without bursting into that sunbeam smile she'd gotten earlier and returns the gesture. Great success!
She doesn't get to bask in her accomplishment though. Instead of coming over to her and showing her how to eject the casing and chamber another round the priest points to the bolt lever and stays right where he is. Apparently she's going to do that again.

Grace
[Dex 3 + 0 Firearms, +1 diff Again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
[Damage!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Grace
Grace gives him a nod when he points to the lever, and she points the rifle down again to expel the casing. Okay, so this isn't so bad...
She hefts the thing up again, and this time doesn't have to remind herself where not to jab the stock, and doesn't have to remind herself not to lock her knees. She sights down the length of it, trying to keep it steady, and it wavers just a little.
When she gives it her best shot this time, she's not playing around, obviously not. The target... well, there's not much left of it when she's done, and Grace, noob as she is, is a little surprised at herself. Pan, and maybe Sera might be able to see her mouthing the word "Damn," but she doesn't shout it loud enough to hear.

Serafi­ne
The way she saunters sometimes, Sera, like there was only one thing human beings were ever meant to do with their bodies.  Hint: the one thing does not usually involve a rifle.
That's the way she moves right now.
Out in the country, where the fuck ever, the mountains arrayed behind them, the snow-covered front range, cold air sharp in the lungs, the sun spilling that warm but strangely wan winter light everywhere: Sera.
She's fucking underdressed.  She must be freezing.   Thigh-high tights with an opaque vertical black stripe secured by visible garters.  Short little black skirt.  Cropped leather jacket, her hands firm in the pockets holding it mostly-closed, her shoulders set forward against the chill.  Doc Martin's rather than her usual heels, so maybe she knew where she was going after all.
She comes sauntering / scrambling down a slope when the shooting stops.  She's not wearing ear things, and doesn't have a rifle and picks her way through the brush toward them, and doesn't say anything to Pan at all, just sort of tucks herself against him like she expects him to hold her, and flashes Grace the edge of her smile, all red lips and white teeth.
"Nice shot."

Pan
Maybe they ought to set Grace up with a sniper scope and let her handle Thakinyan.
The apprentice mouths the same word that near broadcasts itself on the Chorister's face as he watches her relieve the haystack target of its head and part of its upper body but before he can issue her any sort of instruction other than remember how to do that again in the future here comes a barely-dressed Cultist scrambling down the embankment to join them in the row of ranges.
Pan reaches up to leave his ear cans hanging around his neck before he slips his arm around her shoulders.
"She tells me she never fired a gun before today," he says. "Expects me to believe that."

Grace
Grace grasps one of the ear-things (because it seems that is what we are calling them) and pulls it away from her ear so she can hear Sera. Nice shot. No shit, right? She gives Sera a returning smile. It says something about Grace, and possibly more about Sera that Grace isn't the slightest bit surprised or concerned about the other woman's state of dress in the cold. This is Sera, she's just going to be as bare as humanly possible, Grace has decided.
"Hey, you were watching, huh," she says to Sera. "Checking out my first gun lessons?"
She rolls her eyes at Pan at his comment, "Ha ha," she says, sarcasm-laden. "I haven't!"

Serafi­ne
Sera gives Grace a brief but scintillating little smile that still seems somehow brittle around the edges.  Maybe it's the sunlight, being out here before dark rather than after, without her usual sort of shadows.  Maybe some days are harder than others.
Maybe Sera does not really like guns.
Or maybe she does not like the things that drive people to fire them.
Still, Sera, half-dressed, tucking herself against Pan as he slips his arm around her shoulders, giving Grace that bruised and rather bruising look that is sharp and bittersweet and so goddamned lovely, the lifting her mouth closer to Pan's ear, nudging aside the ear-cans where they hang around his neck a bit with an animal movement of her neck.  "Maybe it's just fate."
Because, you know, it might be.

Pan
"Bah," the priest says to the seer as he rubs her shoulder.
She doesn't wear near enough clothing to keep out the cold of winter but it's fairly warm for the season. The sun helps. They're stood in a bright beam of it that has nothing to do with Pan's resonance. Neither the apprentice nor the disciple are Working right this moment but that didn't stop Sera from tracking their resonances down here.
No question from either of them. Fate and coincidence share space in the same boat.
"I was gonna have her empty the chamber for practice but they're gonna start charging me for dummies, the rate she's going." He thinks he's so funny. "Oye, Grace!" She needs to take her ear cans off. "You wanna keep shooting the rifle or you wanna try the handgun?"

Grace
She does take her ear cans off when he yells, and replies, "A handgun might not obliterate any more dummies."
Practical, this one. She lets the rifle point at the ground again, and just watches Sera and Pan for a moment, her mouth twisting up in amusement. He's a badass, Sera told her once. A badass teaching her how to shoot, not bad.
Like fate, perhaps.

Serafi­ne
Nothing stops Sera, really.
She could probably feel both of them, some days, from a million miles a way.
Sera says nothing about why she's here or where she was going and she is not especially inclined to participate in the firearms lesson.  She's just here for the ride, you know?
Turns her head, her mouth into his shoulder, her eyes halfclosing as Pan rubs her deltoid.  Then Pan makes that stupid fucking joke, with laughter in his eyes and the joke was more old-man funny than funny-funny but the spark in his eyes and his body spikes Sera's humor and she fucking laughs, so she's the one encouraging him.  Opens her mouth and tucks an arm around his waist like - oh, hey! I always hang all over priests - which she fucking does.
She probably wants to kiss him or something, Sera, but that's just how she is.
To Grace: "I can't tell if that's a yes or a no."

Pan
Fixation with the forbidden is one of the oldest tropes in the book. Temptation and the fall of man afterwards is the first story told in the book of Genesis after the prologue of God's days of work. Nobody pays much attention to the Cultist's physical freedom around the priest. Least of all Pan. He seems completely oblivious to it.
One of the first things out of her mouth was a question as to whether he wanted to make out with her in a confessional. Sera got a lecture instead. That's just kind of how he rolls.
"Alright," he says as he takes his arm off Sera's shoulders, lemme show you how to empty the chamber without firing any more rounds. You never wanna store a weapon with bullets in it, yeah?"
It's not as complicated as loading the thing. He makes sure she's paying attention as he aims the barrel into the dirt and pulls the lever up and back fast. She's fired three shots. Three thick metal worms fall into the dead grass and he stoops to pick them up. All this moving around today is good for him. Maybe he'll take up jogging or something after this. Get the old blood pumping.
No, seriously. This shit could be good for him.
He feeds the live rounds back to the box from whence they came and zips up the rifle. Perfunctory instructions as he goes: make sure you got the safety on. Make sure you got all the rounds out before you put it away. Blah blah blah.
He disappears for a few minutes after that to swap out the slaughtered dummy for a new one. Picks up the big hay creature like it hardly weighs anything and carts it back towards the attendant's stand.

Grace
Grace laughs at Sera, at her question of whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that dummies won't explode at the shot of a pistol. "Well, it might be more fun to blow things up, but I do need practice."
And one cannot practice without dummies. Ergo...
Pan shows her how to pacify the rifle, how to make it safer, though she has the sense that it's never really safe. Grace pays attention, right? She watches and listens like a master of watching and listening, a natural student if either of them has ever seen one.
And then, he's off, to go switch out dummies. As he turns to go, she turns to Sera. "He just, you know, said 'let's go to the gun range,' and I've been meaning to learn anyway," she says, without prompting. It's an answer to a question that hasn't been asked.

Serafi­ne
Sera shivers a bit when Pan lifts his arm from around her shoulders to show Grace how to Make a Rifle Safe and maybe it's the cold and maybe it's something else and mostly the movement is suppressed and compressed, centered in her spine and radiant, yes, but Sera does not make a show of it.  She holds it in.  It's just that she's not particularly expert at concealment and alone(ish) now she shoves her hands into the pockets of her leather coat and pulls the front tight around her body as if that might help, while simultaineously opening herself up to the warmth of the afternoon sun.
"Just remember," this to Grace, when she answers that unspoken question.  "That it's not the first answer.  Or even the second or the third."  Sera means: violence.  Weapons, war.  But of course she does.  Sera: wants, and loves and needs, and that is who she is.  "Good to know how to handle them, but don't put too much faith in those fucking things."
Her gaze tracks to Pan, in the distance.  Follows his movement through the firing range.  Flashes back to Grace, then.
"I did tell you he was a badass, didn't I?
Sera: vindicated by circumstance, again.
(PS: Dear Pan.  Sera knows some things even better for the heart than jogging.)

Grace
"Yeah," she sighs. "I gotta say, at first, I didn't really... You know, he feels weird," she says, trying to put the essence of Pan in a way that's not too terrible. Weird. Yes, let's go with that. It's easier than explaining how she feels constantly judged by the cold sun that is Pan.
"And, I know, about the guns, Sera. It's just... I don't have your skills. I can't just make people run away or stop or something, and... and zombies, Sera," she hisses out that last bit in a tense whisper. "I can't hide from everything and just wait until I can protect myself, I have to go out and learn how. But you're right."

Serafi­ne
"Alright," is Sera's rather agreeable response to Grace's protestations, about skills and guns and zombies and begin able to protect herself.  The Cultist looks rather more somber in that moment, the gleam in her eyes quiet, this brief but deep and aching sadness suddenly liminal about her.
"Just remember running away's an option, too.  Sometimes it's the best option.  You don't have to save the world.  Or fight it.  Or blow it the fuck up.
"You just gave to change it.  Even if it's only a little bit."

Grace
"Running away is going to be the best option for me for a long while, I guarantee it, Sera," she says. Whether she'll actually use that option... Well, that depends on who needs saving, right?
She hasn't had the greatest track record at running away from life-threatening ordeals lately. She infiltrated a secret lab, for crying out loud. But you know, sometimes you run away, sometimes you have to help others run away.

Pan
It would appear as though they've found one of the few places where Pan can go from one fixed point to another without running into one of his parishioners or the next of kin of one of his parishioners or someone who remembers him from the Narcotics Anonymous group he used to run or any of the other million places he has been in the last two decades where people recognize and want to reach out to him. Have him reach out to them.
He transports the wounded hay dummy back to the attendant's stand and brings back another one without incident. Carries it like the dense mass that it is and not like it has sentience or cognizance and then he comes out of the distance tall and black-clad like he's got all the time in the fucking world.
Can't hear what they're talking about because he cuts across the galley to park the new dummy with its intact head in the place where its comrade fell. He pats it on the crown like to reassure it before he starts to walk back towards the women.

Serafi­ne
"Just remember that, Grace," Sera tells her, her voice quiet, her dark eyes lifting over Grace's shoulder to track Pan's movement on the range.  Affection in her eyes so deep and dark it seems painful.
For both of them. All of them.Everything.
"That's all I ask."
And without really knowing why or wherefore, and just like that, Sera is on the verge of tears.  She blinks rapidly like its the sun that got in her eyes, and maybe between the two of them they'll summon the grace to believe her.

Grace
For a split second, Grace is looking at Sera with an 'oh shit' expression on her face, and then her gaze flits to Pan, as if to ask him what to do.
She remembers Sera, in the Chantry, on the couch, how tactile the woman is. She reaches out for her hand, and perhaps Sera would more prefer a hug, but Grace's efforts are awkward at best even with this. "Sera..."

Pan
His hands are in the pocket of his coat as he rejoins them. He has missed the entirety of the conversation but given what they went through a few months ago and what is happening now and how he knows Sera to experience everything all at once it does not surprise him that he left them alone for five minutes and now one of them is nearly crying.
"What's the matter?" he asks. Rhetorical: "You allergic to fresh air?"
He knows better. He also saw that blinking attempt to stave this off. Sometimes he's capable of mercy.
"Grace, lemme show you how to load a pistol. The girl at the front desk said not to worry about exploding another target, they got plenty of hay."

Serafi­ne
We will not discuss what Sera would prefer, at least not in polite company.  Grace reaches out, all awkward, for Sera's hand and there's a kind of mercy in Pan's deliberate papering over of the moment and there's even this edge of bright and painful mercy in Sera, see: Grace reaches out for her hand and Sera takes Grace's hand, firm, and squeezes, still firm, all yeah, that helped or even just 'I'm still here or something and then lets go.  Pan asks if she's allergic to fresh air and that tension in her as she holds back the tears or tries to hold them back.
One or two slip by.
They always do.  "Fucking daylight, man," Sera agrees with Pan, giving him a ragged sigh of agreement or commisseration or something.
And Grace: a sharp swing of an expression.  Too bright.
"Kick that dummy's ass, Grace."

Grace
[Perception+Subterfuge = Sera, what's wrong, really?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Serafi­ne
Sera: manipulation + subterfuge
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Serafi­ne
Sera is still in a lot of emotional turmoil after all the recent events and the site of Grace shooting brought it back and that's not really something Sera can suppress.  She tends to feel whatever she's feeling intently and entirely and she's not ashamed or afraid to cry, so much as she is trying to protect Grace at least from her own pain.  And here's Pan and the zombie dogs and Pan's going to go fight a goddamned demon and - and - and -
So yeah, she loves things so much, it is sometimes hard not to cry.  Grace might get the idea that Sera has particularly intense feelings about some people, Pan and Grace especially.

Grace
Grace is usually at a loss when it comes to how to act, how to behave, how to be around people. But thanks to luck or her tendency to joke around or what have you, it usually works out okay. Except for times like this. When Sera starts crying, it opens up unpleasant emotions, and she wants to fix it so that they will stop.
But it seems Sera doesn't want fixing. Grace lets go. Pan's better at this, he does what really needs doing (doesn't he always?). Sera tries to hide. It doesn't work. But Grace just nods, like she's getting the point finally. Just let her be. Let her cry, and ignore that fact, as much as it might hurt.
She follows Pan's lead. "Yeah, okay. The way I'm going, I'll manage to blow it up with a pistol, so that's good to hear."

Pan
Before he leads Grace back towards the galley Pan reaches out a hand to grasp the top of Sera's head. He's done this once before. When she wasn't sure if a certain Etherite was real or the product of too many colliding pharmaceuticals. Patience was not something her head made up and he does not pat the Cultist like he patted the hay dummy. It's a callback without words.
And then he's ambling back to where they were when she came down the slope. Going down on one knee again to pop open the pistol case and show Grace what's going on in there.
"All you gotta do," he says, showing her because the pistol is tiny compared to the rifle,  tinier still in the big priest's hands, "is make sure the safety's on, load up the clip, push the clip into the stock, chamber a round, safety off, point it at the thing you wanna shoot. You don't gotta chamber a round every time, it's a semi-automatic. All you gotta do is pull the trigger. It'll keep firing until it rounds outta rounds."
He demonstrates loading the thing so Grace doesn't have to fumble through it herself. In an ideal scenario she'll practice assembling whatever she ends up getting for herself in her spare time. This is just a crash course. No more fending off zombie dogs and ghuls with mental compulsion and fire rained down from the heavens.
When he gets to his feet again he is stiff from the cold but not unused to it. He spends so much time on his knees the rising doesn't bother him anymore. He hands the gun to Grace stock first and stands behind her to move her hands where they're supposed to be on the gun's grip.
"Like a puzzle, yeah? Now put your feet apart like you done before, only face the target head-on, yeah? Bend your knees a little. You wanna absorb the recoil with your arms. Keep 'em straight so the gun don't kick back and hit you in the face. Alright. You got this."
With that he steps back to keep Sera company.

Serafi­ne
Oh, Sera gives Pan a tight but grateful little smile.  Shining because her eyes are shining and she's blinking against the tears but a couple escape and slip down her cheeks and the air feels bright and hot and cold and charged and his hand is warm and solid and real on the crown of her head.
Her eyes close.
Then he steps away, begins to instruct Grace in a way that gives Sera time to scrub away the tears, her palm against her cheek, time to wrap her arms around her torso, to ward off the cold or hold herself in, it is hard to say.  By the time he comes back, she is under better control and gives him a grateful little bump of her shoulder against his, before she tells him, and by extension Grace, "I gotta go."
And so she will.

Grace
[Dex 3 + 0 Firearms, +1 diff Again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Damage!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
She puts the ear-thingies back on after Pan finishes with his explanations of how to work the gun. Best to keep one's hearing intact.
This time, Pan shows her the way to hold the gun with his own hands, he doesn't use an invisible pistol. And you know what, that's okay. She expected this the first time, with the rifle, and then he went and danced around her with one that wasn't there. It's just a bit uncomfortable, that's all, but this whole thing is just a bit uncomfortable too.
She turns to look at Sera, but the gun stays right where it is, like she's afraid to move it lest she point it wrong. Grace sends Sera off with a smile in that little glance. Okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. For real.
And then... yeah. It's not as hard to keep the pistol from lodging in her armpit at least. That would be quite an accomplishment. She returns to figuring out how to place herself, how to stand, how to brace for the kick of the weapon in her hands.
All that prepping and fixing up and standing correctly seems to do some good, because when she finally does line up her shot and fire, it does its job. The recoil kicks her arms back a bit, but she doesn't allow it to smack her in the face. Good job. Go her.

Pan
Later the story will persist that this was an idea she had been kicking around with Kalen long before Hydra and L'Ultimo Giorno and it was just some semblance of serendipity that had Pan carting her out here to acclimate her to holding onto and firing a weapon. Prayer and insight didn't have nothing to do with it. Just boredom. Neither one of them had anything better to do that day.
And it was a good day. Sera showed up long enough to remind them of the weight behind the decision to aim a weapon at anything. Here it is that the Chorister is showing her how to use one. He who ought to be some sort of champion for the sanctity of all life and the possibility of a nonviolent resolution of every situation imaginable.
Given what passes for common knowledge about the man that would be a crock of shit.
After Sera leaves he comes to stand closer like to keep an eye on her. At least they've passed the discomfort event horizon in case he needs to step in to keep her from shooting herself in the foot. The only thing she's shot so far is the target.
"Good!" he says when she pulls away the earmuffs. "Try pressing the trigger more than once this time, see what happens."

Grace
[Three-Round-Burst! 3 Dex + 0 Firearms + 2, +2 diff]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7) ( fail )

Pan
[i think the dice roller is just broken.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Grace
Well, luck has a way of abandoning even its most beloved individuals, and for Grace, the time has come. She can't blow up dummies forever, especially not with her level of skill. Which, by the way, is still nil, despite the previous success.
She doesn't know why, but the gun jams, goes 'click', stops working. Maybe it's the way she mashed the trigger too fast, or... or something. She looks at it instead of looking down at the target, like staring at the gun is going to solve the problem.
"I... screwed something up. Uh, yeah. Is it... safe?" she asks Pan. Maybe she thinks now it's going to go off at any second or something.

Pan
[damage roll just for shits and/or giggles]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Pan
It's almost like he did that on purpose. He raises his voice to overtake the earmuffs.
"As long as you keep that barrel pointed away from you," he says. Stands behind her to take the gun out of her hands to show her what to do. His arms are long enough he crowds her but isn't actually touching her. "If that happens when you're in the middle of firing at something, don't panic. You just got too many rounds pushed up in the chamber. Let the magazine out. The release is on the side here--"
So she gets a lesson in firing and clearing a jam on the same day. Lucky apprentice.
Just for the sake of testing the gun once the chamber is cleared Pan adopts what has to be one of the laziest shooting stances in the shooting range's history. In general the priest's posture is sloping. He doesn't seem invested in the outcome of this little demonstration. Either he's going to hit the target or he isn't. All he wants to do is show Grace it's possible to fire the gun quickly. That it won't jam every time.
That sometimes the risk of a jam pays off and you shoot your target full of holes. Between Grace's first single shot and the hale of overkill Pan just unleashed they would have killed a humanoid.
"You wanna try again, or you had enough?"

Grace
Okay, so it might be best to end on a high note, but in a way failures are a high note when one is learning. If you just keep being lucky, there is little chance of finding out anything new.
Once explained, Grace takes the gun jamming in stride, watches everything like a good student. Pan fills the straw target full of holes in quick succession, all nonchalant, like it's nothing. And yeah, well, it's Pan, so it probably is nothing to him.
But it's not nothing to her. Grace is a bit worn out, between Pan and Sera, and her own issues. It's just, there's a reason she's out here, and it's not to have fun exactly. When you're shooting straw, that's easy to forget. Sometimes, it leaks through though.
"I've had enough, I think. Still, good day, I think, right? I learned a lot," she says, trying to give Pan a compliment there. "I'm hungry, you hungry?"
It's a total change of topics. And it's totally on purpose. Get Pan's stomach involved and he has reason to leave too.

Visiting Garrett

Lena Reilly
Garrett has had quite the ordeal over the past several days.  It started, of course, with his near-death and near-hideous grease burn-related scarring at the hands of some monstrous creature at your local McDonald's.  When he was brought into Denver Health Medical Center, he was in a near-comatose state and there were people here who feared that even if he did survive, his quality of life would not be something that anyone would wish upon their worst enemy.
There were others, like Ana Sanchez, who knew better.  Particularly when Dr. Morgan took on the psychologist/professor's case.  Some would call it a miracle; others would say that it simply wasn't as bad as it looked and the doctor simply cleaned Garrett up.  Neither is accurate, but perhaps the first would be more so.  And it was only a matter of time before Garrett was largely whole--still in pain, but no longer on the verge of death and no longer hideously burned.
This is not a risk Luke Morgan takes often in the hospital, but when he must...he must.
Throughout it all, Lena has been in the waiting room.  She did so for Pan and she does so for Garrett.  Luckily she doesn't work during the week if she doesn't want to so she's not missing out on any gigs.  She sits in the waiting room for the third day straight; she was there when Kalen arrived and she had told him what happened.  She remained there after Kalen went in to talk to Garrett.  And she waits there still, still dressed in the same hoody and jeans from when she first came here (the same from the restaurant).  She is a little on edge (even compared to how she's been); she doesn't have Sera's fear of hospitals and in fact is used to them, but this is her first time in a medical facility since Hydra.  And she's finding herself around her fellow Awakened, which has put her on edge as of late.

Grace
[Awareness+Perception!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Lena Reilly
[[Oh yeah, that magedar.  Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5) ( fail )

Lena Reilly
[[AHAHAHAHAHA someone's Awareness got turned back off.]]

Grace
Unlike some of the Mages in Denver, Grace has no specific fear of hospitals. She doesn't think them crawling with Technocrats ready to whisk away unconscious people away to secret locales, she doesn't have deeply ingrained phobias. They're not a place to die to her, nor do they weird her out with their static nature.
Doctors, now they can be assholes with God complexes, but that's another story.
So, she's not skittish here. Especially not with her companion in tow. It's good to be somewhat solid when you're bringing a kid to see his dad in the hospital.
"So, yeah, the room should be up here--" she says to Jake, halting a bit as she runs into the wearily pulsing beat. Wow. Must be here for Garrett too?
"Huh," she says, looking around for a sign, for a waiting room. Finding it isn't difficult. And then she leads her charge not to Garrett's room, but to Lena.

Garrett Franklin
It's been a long few days, but in it Garrett's been getting better faster than he has any business doing - there's still pain and stiffness, but the burns and bite are healing at a breakneck pace that leaves the injured man itching as much as anything else.  He still sleeps at least as much as he's awake and drinks insane amounts of water, with his appetite slowly returning to something healthy for him and then more than, keeping up with the rapid caloric burn that goes along with healing from anything that quickly, regardless of the means.
The first couple days, when he was awake, he asked that people make sure his son went about business as usual as much as possible - he didn't want the boy here, upset by the condition in which he found his father.  Better to have him finish out the week before break, and then spend all sorts of time together at home.
Or, you know.  To at least have a couple days without eye rolls and sighs and the like.
In his room now, Garrett is awake.  It's the tail end of dinner time, and so he sits - there's a list of people allowed in, and Lena's probably even on it based on having been there when it all went down.  Kalen is a given.  Grace was grudgingly added by virtue of being the one Kalen sent to take care of Jacob - because of course Garrett wants regular updates.  Obviously, Jacob is allowed, under certain circumstances.
Like now.
[Aware!  I'm not sure if there are mods, so rolling base.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Garrett Franklin
[Minus one, apparently.  Not rolling another, because . . . eh.  Probably shouldn't anyway!]

Lena Reilly
While she's been waiting outside keeping vigil over Garrett, Lena hasn't actually been in to see him while he's been awake.  She's checked on him when he's sleeping, just to make sure that he's okay.  But like with all mages as of late, she's kept her distance.  She doesn't know Garrett well and feels out of place here right now.  But she's still here.
After the Hydra incident, Lena's sixth sense shut down.  It's hard to say (and she herself couldn't honestly say) whether it was an voluntary if subconscious on her own part, or if it had just burned out after she experienced what it meant to die.  In the last week or so it had come back, but this whole incident has buried it again.  And thus, she doesn't know that Grace is coming until she comes into view.
Lena's already read all of the magazines, or at least the ones she cares about.  So she has her headphones in with a laptop in front of her, doodling with a remix.  It isn't any serious work...more something to pass the time.  She looks up when she sees someone approaching and her eyes widen a little, back straightens.  She yanks the earbuds out and shuts the laptop, standing up.
"Oh, hey."  There's a brief flicker of something that might have been an attempt on a smile.  It's gone quickly though.  "Uh...come on, I know where he is.  It's right around the corner."
She picks up the laptop, moves to take Grace to where Garrett's room is.

Garrett Franklin
Jacob, for the record, doesn't look much like Garrett other than around the eyes, where blue irises peer out from a biracial face.  (He doesn't look all that much like his mother, either, but the only person currently in Denver other than his father who knows that is Kalen.)  What he looks like, right now, is a scared teenage boy - not because of the hospital, no.  His father is a doctor, after all, and not just the PhD-ed kind.
"I'm Jake.  Jacob," he offers for Lena, who he's never seen before.  And for Grace, now that he's saying something, "I looked at the map online before we came.  Didn't show the exact room, but did show where the wing is, anyway."

Grace
So, introductions are in order, but it seems Lena's a bit... off. Grace is happy to see her, but not happy to see that she still can't smile.
Not that Grace can blame her at all. Off is sometimes the only appropriate state to be in. She gives Jacob a reassuring if awkward smile, and says, "That's Lena, she's a friend."
And, following behind the Ecstatic, she tries to introduce Jake to the back of Lena's head. "Jake's family. He's cool," she says, mimicking Sera's usual statement indicating the nature of an unawakened person.
It's only when they get to the room that Grace picks up a bit of actual nervousness. Garrett's not actually on a list of people she thinks it would be fun to see. Especially not in a hospital. Maybe... hopefully... he's asleep?

Lena Reilly
Jacob gets a look over Lena's shoulder and also a brief attempt at a smile.  "Hey, nice to meet you."  It isn't much more than that though.  It may well come off as standoff-ish or dismissive, even if it isn't the intent.
They pass by a nurse's station and Lena nods a little to one of the nurses on duty, a hispanic woman.  She gets a suspicious narrowing of the eyes in return.  Grace and Jacob get the same.  Ana Sanchez lets them pass on and a few doors down, Lena knocks and then opens the door to Garrett's room for the other two.

Garrett Franklin
When they come in, Garrett's awake and sitting up; his eyes skim right over Lena to the taller boy behind her not out of rudeness (at least not intentional), but out of parental concern.  "Hey," comes light, easy, comforting - Garrett the doctor first, almost always.  "How'd you do on that chemistry test?"
Jacob, going from scared teenager to petulant son in seconds flat, snorts.  "Kalen made me go, if that's what you're asking.  You gonna make it out of here, old man?"
Garrett rolls his eyes, sighs.  "Glad to see a few days of minimal supervision hasn't changed your attitude any.  Thank you, Grace, for bringing him."  Nurse gossip means he knows that Lena's been sitting vigil, but for now all she gets is a look that says the Hermetic knows, and appreciates.  "Is everyone alright?"

Grace
Grace raises a brow at Ana. Weird. (pot meet kettle). Much to her dismay, Garrett is awake. Talking. To her. And then, her eyes just dart elsewhere.
"Don't listen to him. He asked to come," she says, to the ceiling. Hell, Garrett probably knows that. Jacob is his son. And it's not like this act isn't something that Grace herself has been dealing with over the few days she's had to watch and make sure he's kept fed and at least isn't off sleeping in a tree somewhere, or whatever it is that teenage boys do.
"Everyone's..." she looks to Lena, with a little pause, like... fuck, is anyone alright? "Good, we're good. No more attacks since or anything."

Lena Reilly
The banter between Garrett, Jacob and Grace goes on while Lena stays at the door, curls her hair behind her ears.  This is a group of people who know each other, and she's entirely peripheral to that.  (And that's on top of the usual reasons that she's sketchy lately, whatever they are).  It's the awkwardness of not belonging compiled with the damage of...well.  That other thing.  It's a potent mix.
She holds the laptop to her chest, letting the three talk before Garrett asks if everyone's okay and Grace looks at her.  She nods a little bit and puts up a smile.  It's a false one, but it's still a smile.  "Everyone from the restaurant is okay, except the the shift manager and the guy who was cleaning the grease trap.  And we couldn't have done anything for them anyway."

Garrett Franklin
[Oh, let's go with Awarepathy.  It's Garrett's second nature.  Emotional states specialty, right number of dice this time, I think.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace is afraid she's going to do again whatever it was she did at his place the last time they met, and this meeting will end up going sideways for reasons she can't fathom. She's also concerned for Lena.

Garrett Franklin
No, no one's fine.  Some are better than acting it than others.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, Garrett seems - maybe is - the picture of stability, of well-being, at least on a mental and emotional front.  When he's not . . . well.  There are buttons one can push, but they're few and far between - and now, he's a tired forty-something in a hospital bed, surrounded by his son and mages he only barely knows.
Lena's assessment of the McDonald's situation gets an understanding nod - he'd thought he knew that, but it's always good to have confirmation.  And Jacob's assertion that 'Kalen made him go' gets amusement flickering across his face, so elastic and clearly accustomed to smiling and pulling ridiculous faces.  "Before or after teaching you how to steal a car?"
".....he said he promised you he wouldn't do that," Jacob replies with exaggerated irritation, even as he goes to stand nearer his father - not touching, no, but at a casual near parade rest sort of stance, with his hands linked behind his back.  Now, situated behind his father as he is, it's easier to see a resemblance than it had been in the hall, or in the car, or any other place.
To Lena and Grace, Garrett smiles reassuringly - he knows both are wary and uncomfortable, and it's natural for him to do his best to put them both at ease.  "I owe you both more than thanks, from what I hear.  If there's anything I can do when I'm out of here, I hope you'll let me know."

Grace
As nervous as she is, it's hard for Grace to keep hold back a huffle of laughter at the idea of Kalen teaching Jacob how to steal a car. Stealing cars is easy. If they have OnStar or something like that, you can steal them from a distance. Not that she'd do that or anything, oh no. But it would be fun.
"Oh, uh... you don't owe me anything, really," she says. Now Kalen, on the other hand...
There's just not much that she can think of that would make her want to brave Garrett to ask him for a favor in return. Dire. Need. It would have to be that.

Lena Reilly
Lena continues to watch at the door, and she even gets a look in her eye that approaches envy at the interplay between Jacob and Garrett.  The dynamic of family...she appreciates it.  She knows what it's like, and she envies that they are able to have it.  That in itself is enough to bring just the minutest bit of legitimacy to the faked smile.
"It's fine," she says when Garrett expresses her appreciation.  "I'm just glad you're going to be okay."  And that's all true.  She doesn't know him, or his son.  She barely knows Kalen.  And (if you ask her), no one here really knows her.  But she is glad that she could help, and she would do it again in a heartbeat.
And then comes a beat, and she nods to them.  "Well, you guys have stuff to talk about, I'm sure.  If you need me, I'm gonna be in the waiting room."

Garrett Franklin
"Actually, if you don't mind . . ." the look for Grace is almost apologetic, as is the nod towards the door and Lena's retreating back - it's to be expected, perhaps, that father and son might want some time alone.  Perhaps the Grace and Lena will talk or perhaps not - but as it is, visiting hours are limited and especially so for minors, even family.  "I'll see you again soon, I'm sure,  If you'd like, anyway."
"Pffft, like she wants to be around you, Dad.  You creep her out like whoa."
".....not helping, Jacob."  Or maybe he is - the younger Franklin man humanizes the elder, in a way, even as he makes the impression of 'authority figure' all the more obvious.

Grace
"Yeah, It's no problem, I'll ah... catch up with Lena," Grace says, biting her lip at Jake, like seriously? She's going to tell him off for that later. Something like, Do not tell your dad that I creep him out! Wait... no.. that he creeps me out!
But yeah, Lena, right. "Hey, Lena, wait up... they want some bonding time or something," she calls out to the other woman, and falls away from the hospital room.

Lena Reilly
She doesn't give an answer to Garrett's comment about seeing them again soon, just gives a shrug that is non-committal.  And then she's out of the room.  And then there's Grace following her out of the room, and calling for Lena to wait up.  She tenses a little bit but does slow down, so as to let the other woman catch up.
"Yeah, I figured," she says in response to Grace.  "It's generally best to have family around when you have to stay in a place like this.  Doctors say that it helps in your recovery."  She shrugs.  "I'd say it's bullshit, but you and I both know that the power of having a certain mindset is nothing to scoff at, right?"
It's her attempt at a joke, even if it does fall flat.

Grace
"I'd say it also depends on the family in question, but they look like they..." she purses her lips. 'Get along' really isn't right, is it? "Well, they're close."
She walks down the hallways for a while, silent. Maybe the unstated bit in that last comment says something about her own family.
"So, have you been here since the... thing?" she asks. Yeah, the thing. The horrible McDonald's Monster. "I didn't know you knew Garrett that well..."

Garrett Franklin
[Thanks for the scene!]

Lena Reilly
[[Thank you too!]]

Lena Reilly
Depends on the family in question.  That brings a sardonic twist to Lena's lips, and she nods.  Grace is absolutely right in that respect.  Still, the fact that...
She shakes it off.  Never mind.  Her attention turns back to Grace when she asks if Lena's been here the whole time, and she nods.  "Yeah.  And I don't.  That exchange right there that you witnessed is literally the first time that we've said words directly to each other.  I don't really know him at all, except that Kalen cares a lot about him and Sid is distinctly wary of him."

Grace
"He's like, Kalen's adopted father," she explains. "I don't really know him that well either. I've only met him once."
And it's a bit of a lie that. She knows a lot about him. Too much, actually. Knows things she wishes she didn't know about Garrett Franklin. But actually figuring him out, knowing him as a person? Not so much really.
Grace gives Lena  a bit of a respectful glance, that she's the kind of person to stay in the hospital with someone she doesn't know at all. "Why, though? I mean... why are you still here? I mean, Kalen watches over him like nobody's business. He's not alone."

Lena Reilly
Lena opens her mouth to answer and...nothing comes out.  Which is not to say that she doesn't have anything to say.  She does.  She could probably give far more detail into her thought processes behind it and her emotional response that makes her stay here than most people would be able to.  But she doesn't...she holds back.  Lena was once close to being able to share this stuff and now...
No.
So instead her mouth is open for a couple of moments, and then she just shakes her head.  She has to say something after that.  "Because I just...it's the right thing to do.  Kalen needs to sleep sometime.  And there are other people who need him...the whole film thing.  I just...think someone should be here."
She shrugs it off and begins walking again, toward the waiting room.  "I have to work tomorrow night anyway, and Saturday as well.  From what I understand he's being let out on Sunday.  I don't really have anything else to do until tomorrow so I might as well, you know?"

Grace
"You need to sleep sometime too," she says. "Honestly, it really does help a body heal to sleep."
So, you know... get some, Lena? Please? And there are other people who need you too... But she doesn't say that.
"You're working tomorrow? Maybe I'll come see. Where at?" she asks, because it's an utter crime in her opinion that she has never been out to see either Sera or Lena perform. And she could brave the public, the crowd, for something like that.

Lena Reilly
Grace's admonishment that Lena needs sleep too gets a little shrug from the Cultist, a shake of her head.  "Not as much as you'd think."  And that's actually the truth; sleep is a rarer thing for her and she's learned to be just as fine on less hours than most.  "It's a thing.  Too much caffeine over my life, I guess.  But whatever it is, I can do just fine on a few hours a night."
She nods a little bit in response to Grace's question, looking away from the hacker to a spot on the wall.  "Yeah...at the Beta Nightclub.  It's off Blake Street between 19th and 20th near Coors Field.  Lemme know if you stop by, I'll get you into the booth.  Less trouble dealing with the crowd there."

Grace
"I'd like that, the booth I mean. It's a date," she says, gives Lena a little smile.
It's not that she doesn't notice the glances away, or the awkward pausing or what have you from Lena. But Grace is a creature of awkwardness. Her mind and eyes often drift away even if she's not uncomfortable in the least. And she'd never draw attention or even care if someone did the same to her.
So, she remains friendly and oblivious to whatever might be bothering Lena. If she stopped to think about it, well... Lena's change in behavior would have to be that. And she'd still be friendly and open anyway in response. This place is too public, too lacking in privacy to really talk about such things. But she can be here, for a while at least.

Ninjabread

Serafi­ne
It hardly feels like December anymore, even in the high plains of Colorado.  The sun came out and the temperature hit a balmy sixty-something degrees.  Colder out here, on the eastern slopes of the rockies, outside of the warmth of the city, where long shadows of the rising mountains to the west tuck into the contours of the land but still: warm,
warm,
warm.
That warmth is fading now, faster than it ever would in summer, because the ground is cold, has been frozen through, has endured the onslaught of night after night below freezing, even when the low drowse of the midday sun was enough to tip the temperature upward, and the solar radiation melted whatever lowland snows accumulated during the November storms.
Outside on the driveway: the sound of an engine.  Which sounds like any other engine from a distance.  Sera is not the driver.  When she comes out to the chantry, someone else brings her.  She is sober more often than not lately but nevertheless, the old ingrained habit will not die.
She does not intend to remain sober forever.
Or even: for long.
The kitchen door swings open a few minutes later and Sera and Dan come sweeping in.  Sera is carrying a covered platter and Dan has more supplies, is hefting them with the thoughtless ease of a young man carrying a case of beer and a couple of fifths and other assorted party supplies.
Just in case.
Wouldn't want to run out.
Beneath her breath, our Sera is humming a half-remembered song.

Pan
[herp a derp]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

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

Grace
[Percept+Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pan
On the one hand he promised Sera he would pray inside because the weather is so mutable and the ground so cold and he's nowhere near to retirement age but on the other hand the priest prays a lot. Coming in from outside doesn't get him spending any less time on his knees.
He has the decency not to pray where the apprentices can stumble upon him. His resonance dredges up disquiet in more than a few of them. So he stays in the room he's chosen to occupy while he stays out here.
Sera can feel him Working when she and Dan walk into the kitchen. It isn't just the glaring bright of the wards and ban he's placed all around the place. The shield against mental intrusion that he keeps up that the demon won't hijack their dreams if they choose to sleep here. This is active and now and he's at it when the door opens and she starts to humming.
But he knows she's there. He'll stir soon enough.

Serafi­ne
Perception + Alertness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
Grace can't stay at home anymore. And no, it's not because of bad memories, or lack of funds, or anything like that. It has more to do with the fact that the Chantry now shines like a cold lamp, fortified with Pan's own personal brand of protection.
And she needs the protection.
She's moved a few things here, just the basics like shampoo and a couple changes of clothes, like she's having some extended sleepover until the whole 'demon' thing is settled. It makes it easier now that the semester is over, she no longer has to go into town every day.
Mostly it's quiet, save for... you know... people being sent to the hospital. Let's say, it's more of a punctuated silence. Every now and then, things go 'bang' really loudly.
Like, say, Sera swooping in with Dan, slipping some of that primal charm in with Pan's overwhelming brightness. She looks up from the couch in the living room, where she was busy with a hot laptop set up over her crossed legs. "Sera?"

Serafi­ne
Sera almost always knows where they are.  The others: any others.  She feels them behind her eyes and at the back of her throat, beneath her skin and at the root of her tongue.  She just feels them, they have a like a frequency she hears better than all others.  She just tunes them in.  Pan up there praying, the active brilliance of it, bright behind her eyes.  Sera sets one of the platters down on the kitchen counter and pulls a plate out of the cabinets and it is an absurd plate in the shape of a reindeer and Sera piles some cookies from the platter onto it and grabs one of those fifths as Dan turns around to head back outside and bring in the remaining supplies because the holidays require alcohol, one way or the other.
He pauses to give her a kiss on the crown of her head, grabs her upper arms with his hands as he does so, pulls her back against him and holds here there for a long moment.  Sera closes her eyes and turns her head back into his body and it all lasts no more than a moment.   Grace says Sera? and Sera calls out really rather brightly all things considered, "Yep!" and follows it up a moment later by heading into the living room, her plate of cookies in one hand, her fifth of Stranahan's in the other.
"Grace."  You really can't escape her, Grace.  Sera's path takes her behind the couch and she bends down and presses her mouth to the crown of Grace's head.  Then, she offers Grace a cookie.
They are gingerbread people.
Ninja gingerbread people.
Ninjabread, if you will.

Grace
Since this is Sera we're talking about here, Grace expects a bit of close contact. It's not even much of a 'thing' anymore. Like, if the sun is shining, one will get a tan. If Sera is in the room, one will get kissed, or hugged, or hair ruffled. There's no point in denying it. She's just like, this touchy-feely force of nature. So, the kiss to her head isn't a surprise or even an annoyance. It just is.
"Kung-fu cookies!" Grace exclaims, smiling with some measure of actual glee. "We should have gingerbattles."
She takes the cookie, which is shaped like an angry punching dude complete with icing face and fists, and makes a little 'hiyah!' noise.

Serafi­ne
"Dee made them," Sera returns, giving Grace the edge of a faint but rather sparkling, rather sparking little grin at the noise Grace makes.  Which is girlish and gleeful and lovely.  "Or, I don't know.  Her bakery makes them.  They're a hit with the fucking hipsters."
As Sera is something of a hipster queen, she should know, right.
"I don't remember, have you met Dee?" Circling around the couch, Sera sets the platter of ninjabread cookies down on the coffee table.  The whiskey bottle swings from her left hand as she moves, thoughtlessly a part of her.
It looks like Sera is ready to fling herself into a corner of the couch.  Close to Grace, naturally, except her dark eyes track upward to linger on the doorway, the stairwell.  Pan's resonance behind her eyes, beneath her skin, she breathes him in.
"My housemate.  Our bassist?"  Not that they really have a band anymore.  When the fuck was the last time they played out? "She can kick Hawksley's ass at Scrabble, too.
" - sometimes.  I am glad you like them, though."

Grace
"Yeah, I met her once. I got gingerbread in exchange for Ginger, remember?" Not exactly 'in exchange for', more like it was just there and everybody's the sharing sort.
Grace smiles at the mention of Hawksley and Scrabble. Yeah, bet he is a mean sucker to beat at that game. "Hey, I should challenge him sometime. See if he can beat the master," she smirks. Of course, he probably could.
"It's good to see you, Sera."

Serafi­ne
"Careful what you wish for, love."  It is Sera's own name that brings her attention back to Grace, directly and entirely.  The way Grace says it, perhaps.  There is something both intense and intent about the graze of her dark eyes over Grace's profile, which is a counterpoint to the lazy langour of her really still rather sad half-smile.  So many layers of immediacy.
"Bastard takes that Scrabble shit seriously.  Won't even be distracted by cupcakes, so plan your approach carefully, yeah?"
Then a pause, a noise in the back of Sera's through.  The quieter sweep of her mouth and a certain gleam of - well - something in Sera's eyes.
"Good to see you, too, Grace."
She could ask how things are, Sera.
She doesn't though.  There are still things that Sera just doesn't want to know.

Pan
The women have a few moments to themselves where they share each others' presence and the ninjabread cookies without the priest looming nearby and then a door opens down the corridor and the presence Sera could feel from the driveway steps across the threshold.
He looks as if he's just risen from a nap. That disjointed grogginess born of returning to reality after having spent so much time nestled away from it. He is not wearing his boots inside as he has the last several times Grace has come in from outside. When he comes out he is in his socked feet. Wears black slacks into which he has belted whatever he's wearing under a blue sweater.
Yes. Blue. Try not to faint. It's cold outside.
"Grace," he says. "Sera. ¿Qué tal?"

Grace
"Oh I take that Scrabble shit seriously too. It's strategy with words, how could I not?" She slowly shuts the laptop, and puts it on the table in front of the couch, just because shitty news stories about murders aren't the thing to be looking at right now.
Sera looks good. Sounds good. And while they're talking about Scrabble, there's the subtext of something else. Like, if they're talking about Scrabble, things can't be too terrible. It's a conversation carried without words.
And then, there is a Pan in the room. "Hey, Pan. I have a kung-fu cookie," she says, as if that explains exactly how she's doing. With that, she bites its foot off. Lovely.

Serafi­ne
"You, dormilón."  An edge of irony to the curl of Serafíne's mouth, and edge of intimacy in the affection inherent in the diminutive.  Her gaze cuts up from Grace to find Pan without hesitation, the minute the bomb-bright blast of his presence sweeps through the room.
And she knows he isn't sleepy, knows he wasn't sleeping.  Knows better than most, doesn't she, how far away magic can take you when you're Working.  Knows better than most what it means to disappear into something wider and deeper and greater than yourself.
So, her eyes are on his eyes, then his mouth, then his body.  The priest has filled out since she last saw him.  Not much, not enough, but he looks more like himself than he did the last time Sera saw him.
And in the month since he returned, not once has his sleep been disturbed by a particular drunk and disorderly Cultist who comes to find him when her trip goes wrong or a particular sort of whim takes her at four fifty three a.m.
And Sera looks more like herself, too.  Not wholly.  How could she?  She never will, not even with that bottle in hand, not until she's draining it dry and spinning herself off into some stranger's arms.
"Dee made them."  Sera explains, of the cookies.  "You should have one..
"Or five."
He should come over and give her a hug, too. But Sera does not tell him that.
There are some things he should just know.

Pan
Grace has a kung-fu cookie.
Pan squints out an approximation of a smile and then huffs out a laugh as he crosses the room to join them at the coffee table. He still hasn't gotten around to shaving the beard from his face but it's trimmed at least. He's trimmed his hair so it will not brush his collar either.
And Sera still has a bottle of whiskey in her hand but Sera has had a bottle of whiskey in her hand practically nearly every time he's met her. If she could have gotten away with it she would have brought it into a confessional booth that fateful night back in May.
"Maybe I will have five," he says and he loops an arm around her shoulders to give her a hug. Indicates Grace's cookie over the top of her head. "You go for the feet first, eh?"

Grace
"It's a really delicious foot," she says. "Seriously, Dee is awesome."
Perhaps Dee will always be associated with gingerbread to Grace, now that she's had it twice. Gingerbread, and Sera. Who is more like Sera today than Grace has seen in a while, and that is wonderful.
And also wonderful is Pan's hug, which Grace watches like she's enjoying some kind of documentary on human personal interaction rituals. See, this is what normal people do.
Excepting, of course, that Pan and Sera are not normal in any sense of the word.

Serafi­ne
Pan loops an arm around her shoulders to give Sera a hug and Sera, in turn, wraps her arms around his torso.  The bottle is full, is actually as yet unopened, and the weight is solid against the small of his back as her arms wrap around him.  Sera rests her cheek against the priest's chest and closes her eyes, soaking in his brilliance, inhaling him all-at-once, then shifts in his embrace, turning to stay close to him while including Grace in the immediate sweep of her gaze.
"She's been feeding me like whoa," says Sera, and she has gained weight since her ordeal, put a layer of healthy fat beneath her skin, enough, at least, to cushion the spare frame of her bones.  "Pain chocolat pretty much every day.
"I'll have Dan bring the left overs up here for you, instead of tearing them up for the birds in the back yard."  Then, a tip of her head against Pan's shoulder.  The slightest nudge of her nose.  Affectionate, even intimate.  And still rather sober, for all that.
"You gonna get together with Rafa over the holidays?"

Pan
For the duration of the embrace Pan lets his chin rest atop the crown of Sera's head. Like he's greeting a daughter. Like loss is something that was real in their dyad and every time he sees her is some sort of a blessing for him. Then she folds herself against his side and Pan gives her upper arm a quieting rub and keeps his arm around her shoulders. If she wants to stay rested against him he can stand as long as she can.
"Eh," he says to whether he'll be getting together with this Rafa character. "No, I don't think so. Last I heard he was out of the country. He sent Rosa a postcard from Peru a couple weeks ago."

Grace
"That would be nice. Pain chocolat is... what? Chocolate bread?"
Grace doesn't know who Rafa or Rosa is, and considers asking, before... no. It might be personal.
Instead, she munches her gingerbread man, feet first. Not the merciful kind, to start with the head, Grace. The cookie just scowls back regardless, now angrily punching the air without legs.

Serafi­ne
"Chocolate croissants," Sera informs Grace, giving the would-be VA a lazy, solid sort of grin.  "The real kind, made they way they do in French.  No icing, not too much sweetness.  The chocolate filling dark and maybe a bit bittersweet, all complex and interesting.
"That's what pain chocolat is.  Ridiculously healthy."
Then, turning to Pan, lifting her chin to look him full-on in the eye.  "Get his number from Rosa - I know she has one - and give him a call at least.  You may not remember but he came when you were in the hospital. Had both him and Shoshannah staying at my place, then.
"Just call him, okay?"

Pan
He doesn't remember. Sera can tell that he doesn't remember because she's looking right at him and he isn't making any attempt to conceal the fact that he's thinking about it. Eyes canted slight towards the inside of his skull like he can find the memory in there somewhere. Even Grace who finds it difficult to read people can read this.
This is the son he told her about. Occam's razor. Who the hell else would Sera be on him about contacting during the holidays with everything that's going on.
Pan reels in and releases a breath and gives her a smile. She'd asked this of him once when he'd come back to a central gathering place splashed in his own blood talking like he was simultaneously propelled towards and holding the others back from where they all needed to be. Evil made flesh less than three miles away.
One of them is in the hospital now. A few of them will be going up into the mountains to deal with this demon in not too much time. It's not a coincidence. He needs to call his son.
So he leans down and holds the back of her head still with one hand and plants a dry kiss on her hairline and then steps back like he's going to escort her out.
"I gotta ask you a favor, actually. You staying or going?"

Grace
Ugh. The talk of calling people, especially people who must be family to Pan? Yeah. That brings up memories of the time Sera asked Grace to call her mom, a thing which has not happened yet.
Must the Cultist always be so damn right all the time? Because it's not easy things she asks, yes? Maybe Grace can see that in Pan's eyes, in that roaming thinking gaze. Like yeah, she does that to everybody it seems.
She'll need like... 5 chocolate croissants to get get through that particular quest. For now, her cookie is finished off. Comfort, thy name is sugar.

Serafine
Sera closes her eyes when Pan leans in to plant that kiss at the edge of her hairline  Lifts her face to his, naturally, the way some flowers follow the movement of the sun across the skin.
He asks if she's staying or going, and there's a moment where something quiet and awful and skittish sheans across her expression, visible but only just, like the rainbow hue of oil over water.
"Going," Sera tells Pan, rather quietly, admits really and it is an admission.  Grace and Pan are the only people she might run into here whom she really wants to see.  So: going, naturally.  But the expression subsides as soon as it rises and Sera moves onward.  "Just bringing supplies.  You know I'll do anything for you.  Just give me a minute to check on Dan."
And, so saying, Sera slips out of Pan's embrace and heads back toward the kitchen, disappearing for the nonce to check on the booze she brought.
The important stuff.

Pan
Pan is gone five minutes maybe no more than ten and then he comes back into the house with the Cultist having parried his attempts to help drag things inside but not his request for aid. She would never deny him anything but whatever he asks of her he asks in relative privacy.
Then he comes back inside and he comes back to Grace's little cookie oasis of solitude and picks up one of his own ninjabread.
He goes for the head first. Puts the poor little guy out of his misery.
"I heard there was a bit of a mess up in the city the other day," he says after he's swallowed. "You alright?"

Grace
"I was here when it happened," she shakes her head. "I'm fine, really. Didn't get chewed up or anything."
Someone else did. "You know Garrett Franklin perhaps? He wasn't so lucky."
And you know, as much stupid crap has gone between herself and Garrett, she wasn't happy to hear about that. Not in the least.

Pan
Not the most appropriate thing in the world to be eating cake shaped and decorated to appear humanoid while discussing an incident that involved the consumption of body parts and near-death but Pan is himself human. Humans need to eat.
He finishes off the ninjabread man and relegates his hands to his pockets.
"Truth be told, I never met him," he says. "I take it he's the one in the hospital?"

Grace
"Yeah. He's kind of... Kalen's adopted dad. Anyway. Kalen's been a bit understandably upset about it," she says. She doesn't include herself in people who are still upset over Garrett, though.
"I guess it was just another case of Denver being Denver," she sighs. "I swear, it's like, you open your eyes, and all the sudden everything's all zombies and demons and McDonalds coming to eat you. I never knew Denver of all places was such a hellmouth." I was blind, and now I see. Grease monsters.

Pan
"Eh, it ain't just Denver."
Pan takes another breath and sits himself down on the furniture cat-corner from Grace. Doesn't deign to touch her. His body language is open yet constrained at once. Fingers knit together even though he isn't planning on staying here long.
"Not much consolation, I know. Your world opens up when your eyes do. World itself don't change but your understanding of it, yeah? The things you're willing to see and accept when you do see them? That's all that's making it seem like so much crazy shit's coming out the woodworks now you know what's actually going on. Gotta make sure you're open to seeing as much good. Huh?"
Unsolicited advice. Must be like a vampire. You invite him in once and the house may as well be his from then on.
"How's Kalen holding up? If he's been around the house this week I ain't seen him."

Grace
"I'm open to seeing the good, Pan. I think I am at least," she gives him a little smile. "We're the good. We have to be, otherwise..." Well, otherwise, zombies. Or viruses. Or whatever the end-of-the-world of the week happens to be.
"Yeah, you haven't seen Kalen because he's sticking to Garrett's side," she says. "He can be quite the caring guy, don't let the icy exterior fool you. But he's okay, if a little... protective of Garrett right at the moment."

Pan
"Well, I can imagine why."
All he can do is imagine. He wasn't there and he's never met Garrett. But Sera did say his own son was there while he was comatose in the hospital. This son who didn't know him until he was nine years old. Isn't much of a stretch that a kid Kalen's age would develop filial feelings towards an older member of his own tradition.
"I never noticed the, ah, ice, though. Consider me unfooled."

Grace
"Heh. The first time I met Kalen, he glared at me a lot for getting in his personal space and daring to talk to him," she says, leaving Pan to imagine that one. Grace isn't the kind to get in anyone's personal space, right?
"But, now, he likes bringing me takeout just to make sure I'm eating," she shrugs. "Sometimes, he takes a bit to warm up to a person is all."

Pan
Though he was listening as she explained her impression of Kalen and he even smiled a bit at the notion of Grace getting up in anyone's space enough to offend another person that smile slowly disappears when she mentions Kalen's evolved role in her life. Nods to indicate he's heard her before he shifts gears.
"You eaten anything today besides junk food?"

Grace
"Oh yeah, yeah. Shoshannah makes enough food for an army, you know that," she says. "Hummus is not junk food, right?
"I do hope Sera's eating more than just pain chocolat, though..."
Grace looks a bit pensive. Sera looks better, but appearances are just that, right? She was skeletal not a month ago, and after what they went through... Well, red meat would be a little more preferable to chocolate croissants, nutrient-wise.

Tremor Dervish
The roar of the vintage war era motorcycle crept up on the Chantry like a rapidly approaching storm.  The thunderous chugging of the machine led it up toward the front door of the house before the engine died with one last monstrous gulp of air.  Tremor kicked down the stand and slung his leg off from atop it.
The hollow features of shaved head accentuated his skull, giving him a grim look by default.  It probably wasn't helped any by a few pink polka dots of freshly burned flesh pock marking his face and scalp.  The beast at the McDonalds had slain his leather jacket (at least, it was airing out and the prognosis was not good.)  In lieu of that, he was wearing a heavy flannel shirt which, despite the weather, was unbuttoned and hanging open.  Around his torso was fixed a long stretch of ace bandage that was holding sloppily placed wads of gauze to his others burns.  His heavy biker boots plodded up to the front door where he paused to knock.

Pan
He knows how much food Shoshannah prepares. It's thickening his muscles and pouring fat over them. The reminder and the question both make him burst into off-guard and brief laughter before she expresses concern over Sera's eating happens.
"So do I."
Hope she's eating more than bread and chocolate. It'll do until she's back to her fighting weight but her fighting weight wasn't very high to begin with. Most of Serafíne's calories come in liquid form.
The priest could feel the seer coming before he approached the door but it isn't until the knock sounds that he contemplates standing.
And Pan doesn't believe in hollering across the room to communicate with someone on the other side of a door so he gets to his feet and crosses the room to open it.
"Mister Dervish," he says and steps aside to let him in. "Hi." Not until the door is shut and the younger man has passed through the invisible airlock between outside and in does Pan tell him: "You don't gotta knock next time. If you weren't supposed to be here you wouldn't be able to find the place. That door ain't usually locked."

Grace
Grace tries, once, to save Pan a trip to the door, but then just plops her butt back down on the couch when she realizes what she's doing. Pan's an adult. He can answer the door if he wants to. And besides, the last time she tried saving him a few steps, she only ended up hitting him in the face with her phone, so. There's that.
Her own, more limited perceptions, still notice Tremor. A new sensation. But Pan's not obviously concerned, and apparently knows this person. That's good enough for Grace.
When they appear from the hall that leads to the outside, she gives the new guy a wave, and a little smile.

Tremor Dervish
"Hey.  I get you.  Still feels weird...  Somebody's home and all.  What if I walked in and no one was here?"  The tall, stringy punk shrugged sheepishly as he pushed the door closed with a gentle, measured, certainty that belied his giant hands and stringy, looming form.
"I was hoping to get some news about Garrett.  Last I saw him he was being pushed into an ambulance.  Shit like that doesn't sit right with me.  Back in the day, you might as well have been turning someone over to the 'Crats if you sent them to a hospital."
He watched that portion of the ordeal from a safe distance.  Tremor was not the kind of guy that filed out police reports.  Not without spitting, either on the cop, or the report.  Probably both, just to make sure.
He glanced past Pan to wave at Grace, but, seemed to wait on the other man's cue as to when it was appropriate to move deeper into the house.

Pan
Back in the day, Tremor says. Pan looks over his face and he considers his own words. Like so many are clustering around the base of his throat and he isn't sure which ones to let out into the world. Like folks today aren't still worried about being 'transferred to another facility' and nobody ever hearing from them again.
He goes with: "You remember the War?"
Skepticism or camaraderie depends on the other man's answer but Pan's well into his forties. He's powerful but not of the echelon that disappeared over a decade ago and left the rest of them to fend for themselves. Not even an Adept in the city. He and Garrett are the closest they've got.
Either way he leads him into the living room where a plate of gingerbread cookies decorated to look like ninjas sits on the coffee table and introduces the two silent-waving young'uns to each other.
"Tremor, this is Grace Evans. She's an apprentice. Does stuff with computers and phones and... I don't understand it, but I'm sure you will. Grace, this is Tremor Dervish. He just got into town... must've been last week. Maybe you can fill him in on what's going on with Mister Franklin."
Sounds like he's excusing himself.

Grace
"If we found you by yourself in the Chantry, we would string you up by your toenails to a ceiling fan, and then turn it on," Grace replies, completely deadpan. "It's tradition. Hi, Tremor. Nice to meet you."
The silly nature of the conversation is meant to put Tremor at a bit of ease regarding Garrett's prognosis. And his other fears as well.
"Garrett's still in the hospital, last I heard. He's doing better though, and I guarantee you he is being watched like a hawk by someone really fabulous at killing bad guys."

Tremor Dervish
"Yeah.  I remember."  He confirmed with a solemn nod.  It was hard to place his age.  The eyebrow rings, the punk trappings, that sort of stuff seemed to indicate a youth that his hollow features just couldn't back up.  He was at least old enough to have been on the front lines during the final years as many of the last great chantries were scoured from the Earth.
It was an understatement, his remembrance.
His boots were clean this time.  He'd made sure.  His heavy thunderclap footfalls sounded behind Pan as he followed the man into the living room.
"Nice to meet you, Grace."  He made a smile.  It was a little awkward.  Maybe a little goofy.  It was an honest expression on a face that wasn't intended to, or used to, expressing it.  He provided a nod to Pan that seemed to be acknowledgement of his intended departure.
Now that he was more immediately available to size up, the tattoos snaking down his arm onto his wrist were visible, as was the large, prominent eye etched onto his left palm in black ink.
"I'll remember to wash my feet."  He supplied helpfully, before he paused and nodded again slowly as he seemed to hesitantly take Grace's word for it.
"Well, good.  If things go south, consider this my preemptive offer to help.  He stood his ground, put up a good fight.  Might have been a little overzealous with the Zeus, Lord of Lightning routine, but, hey, it happens."

Pan
At the confirmation that he remembers because he was there Pan clasps a hand onto Tremor's shoulder. It's brief and then they move on. He introduces them. He picks up another ninjabread man. He lingers a moment to make sure they're getting on alright.
Garrett's still in the hospital. Watched like a hawk by someone really fabulous at killing bad guys.
He smothers a smile and bites the head off his second cookie and wanders off into the kitchen.
[i'm turning into a pumpkin. thank you for the scene, guys!]

Grace
Grace kind of raises a brow at the whole 'Zeus, Lord of Lightning' comment. Garrett? The dude's scary enough with his whole, 'I'll just go enter your mind and clean house' routine.
For a description of Grace, well... she's not nearly as noticeable as Tremor. Not nearly as noticeable as anyone, really. In blue jeans and a grey turtleneck jacket, she basically looks like she could belong anywhere, look like anyone. She also doesn't seem in the least concerned about Tremor's appearance, except for one thing...
"So, you were there? I notice you look a little, uh... burned."

Tremor Dervish
"Yeah... when he blew that thing up... it kinda... went everywhere.  And was on fire."  He recalled with a grimace.
"Luckily the only permanent damage on my end was my good jacket and a Iggy and the Stooges T-shirt.  Garret wasn't quite as lucky."

Grace
Grace gets this look on her face like she can just imagine, and doesn't want to. "Eww."
Yeah, eww.
"Sucks about the jacket though. If something took this out," she says, tugging at her turtleneck, "I'd be a little pissed."
Although, why really? It's the plainest thing you could think of as far as outerwear is concerned.

Tremor Dervish
Everyone had a preferred wardrobe.  Tremor didn't think that was entirely unreasonable.  He'd washed other people's blood off that jacket before.  It was a bonding experience.  For all he knew, that was her bad motherfucker tactical turtleneck.
He shrugged.
"Dad used to say... never wear anything to a fight that you wouldn't burn in a dumpster afterward.  He had a good sense for that kind of stuff."
He related his father's wisdom while he rounded a chair and carefully lowered himself into it.  He was likely being cautious on the account of his injuries, but, given his size, it looked like he was being crammed into an ill fitting glove.  His long stringy body folded and finally sprawled out so that he wouldn't have to double over his injury.

Grace
It is her bad mofo tactical turtleneck, actually. And part of that tactic? Looking like nothing special.
"This would stink horribly if you burned it in a dumpster. It's some kind of special plastic. Also, I don't think it burns too well..."
She looks around as if giving serious thought to the idea of burning her clothing. But then, she notices the way he moves, the way he's careful about his injuries. It's something she can do nothing about, but she grabs a cookie and holds it out for him. It looks like an angry guy performing a leaping kick. Red icing eyes glare out from gingerbread. "Have a kung-fu guy."

Tremor Dervish
"Plastic?"  That actually did raise his pierced eyebrow.  The little rings punctured through it washed upward as if floating on a wave.   "Well, 'doesn't burn to well' is good.  I'm finding this out now from experience."  He joked before he flashed a big, toothy grin.
He wriggled to the side in his seat to reach out and take the cookie, which gave him a slight grin.  "Reminds me of a Go-Kamisori-Gama I once met."
He looked at it fondly for a moment before he finally took a bite.

Grace
"Go-Kamisori-Gama? Sounds Japanese," she says, with an unspoken 'but what does it mean' in there somewhere.
This guy, he probably has stories. Grace thrives on stories. Spins them. Trades them. Perhaps Tremor wouldn't want to tell them all, and she gets that more than most. Which is why the question is no demand. She's heard a litany of horrors from one person who went through The War already. Once was enough.

Tremor Dervish
"Mmm."  He emitted, before he had a chance to chew and swallow.  "Ninjas.  Well.  Mage-Ninjas.  They're not really what you think though... Ninjas were early adopters for technology and innovation for most of their history."
He didn't look like the kind of guy that knew a lot about history.
"The modern version are as likely to use ancient mystical trappings as they are cybernetics.  They caucused with the Akashics up until things started to get grim.  I don't know if there are any left in North America, or where they lay politically now."

Grace
She gets this inspired-to-awe look on her face, "Mage ninjas? With cybernetics? Oh wow. Dude."
Grace has been around for just long enough to have only a few good stories. Well, and one very bad story, actually. Pan cautioned her to keep her eyes open to the good things rather than just the bad, but shit... the bad is everywhere.
Cyborg Ninja Mages though? Even if she has to live through the stories of others, it's a kind of living. And she's still new enough to this to be truly awed at times.
So they talk their stories. And eat little gingerbread guys. And maybe Grace brings up the other kind of Ginger, the one that goes on your phone -- to reach out and touch a phone-sex operator's remixed voice command menu. Grace doesn't look the type to have set that up, but she'll explain the benefits and drawbacks of the Denver Mage community's secret encrypted social network.
And gloat. A bit. Perhaps. It is a good story.