Three Mile Island Elly

Ellsworth Rose
It was easy enough to get ahold of Ellsworth (or Elly, as phr0z0ne said he preferred to be called) using the number that Grace had procured.  The 717 area code number connected her with Ellsworth's polite and (from the sound of it) somewhat-harried assistant, who had quickly passed the phone to her boss.  Ellsworth had a breathless tone to his voice when they spoke, like he had just been in the middle of a run or some other kind of exercise but without quite the same level of panting.  It's more the tone of someone who is always rushed, or at least moving quickly enough that he doesn't stand still for long.

When Grace had mentioned it was about Etherite business (however she had done so), Elly had seemed excited.  He said he would love to talk to her about it, but not over a distance.  After finding out where Grace was he promised that he would be in Denver next week.  And on Wednesday evening she gets a call from him, with that same excited baritone, saying that he had arrived and was staying at an old research facility that Society of Ether members sometimes used when they were in town for various reasons or another.  Grace was given the address and promised that it would be secure, and that he would be there whenever was convenient for her.

And that is where Grace and Alicia end up, however they get there.  The building is, interestingly enough, located in the bad part of Denver on the infamous East Colfax.  Right between a strip club and the husk of a Burger King that went out of business years ago is a warehouse, deeply inconspicous from the outside.  It's not particularly big and there is no label on the outside to give it a company name.  The only indication that they have the right place is the address, in block letters above the door to the office, and the fact that there appear to be lights on inside.

Alicia Romero
Given the associates her father kept and the places she's been in her life Alicia is used to seedy  buildings serving as a base of operations if not a safe house for reality deviants who need to stay under the radar.

All the same the first thing out of her mouth when she and Grace step out of the car is:

"Wow. Always wanted to die in a horror movie. Thanks, Internet."

Grace Evans
Grace has never heard of this place. Patience never mentioned it, but the topic never came up, did it? Grace pulls up with Alicia in tow and gives her a raised-brow look at the conditions of the locale.

"Really? After what happened a few nights ago?" she says, trying to make light of the whole 'almost became vampire food' thing. It's okay to joke about, right?

Grace has dressed for the occasion, but don't get your hopes up too high. She's wearing her Edison vs. Tesla Mortal Kombat t-shirt. Tesla is winning, of course.

"This is the right address. Maybe they're going for subterfuge? Right under the nose? Er... neon breast signs?"

Grace shrugs and hefts the laptop bag on her shoulder before going to try the door. No knocking, because they're expected right?

Ellsworth Rose
The door, when Grace tries, opens without resistance and leads into the front office area, which is brightly lit (perhaps to Alicia's relief).  It's nice and organized, if very dusty, and looks like it hasn't been used in some time.  There is some chairs for if people need to wait and some reading material--Time Magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, Highlights Magazine for kids...you know, the usual waiting room reading lists.  Of course, they're also dated 1997, so they're just a little out of date.  But hey, if you need reminding that Gwen Stefani was once considered one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People, you're in luck.

The room is largely silent, which makes the security camera in the corner above the door behind the receptionist area that much more obvious.  The red light is blinking and it orients directly on Grace and Alicia when they come in, with a whirr as it zooms in.  A couple moments pass, just long enough to make them nervous, before the intercom at the receptionist desk crackles to life and the voice of Doctor Rose (made tinny by the older technology) comes across.

"Hello!  Hello.  Forgive me, I'll be right there.  Or you can come back, either way.  I just have to...yes, one moment."  The sound of something heavy being moved across a concrete floor--furniture or equipment, maybe?--follows.

Alicia Romero
She hasn't removed her sunglasses by the time they've breached the front door and she keeps them on for a moment as she surveys the time capsule that is the waiting room. With her arms crossed over her ribs she could hide in Grace's shadow. She does not hide in Grace's shadow. She comes abreast of her once they're through the door.

And then the intercom crackles and she jumps. "Jesus Christ," she says. Breathless and abashed both. Like it's ridiculous to be nervous right now.

That voice doesn't sound as if it belongs to the voice of a murderous madman but if he belongs to the same faction her father did then Alicia already knows she has no idea what to expect. She can think she does all she wants but she knows better. No two madmen are the same.

"We should probably go back," she says.

Alicia Romero
[Let's have her say "come back" for sake of clarify.]

Grace Evans
It's starting to get a little ridiculous with the creepy factor here. Grace's flitting eyes zero in on the security camera when it spots them. Well, hello there little guy.

"That would be Doctor Rose," Grace explains when Alicia jumps. She knows the voice at least.

"Yeah, I know, I kind of want to see what they've got back there... This place looks positively ancient." Well, ancient to a Virtual Adept isn't too terribly long, is it?

Grace leads the way, back into the building, heaving open doors, looking for the (probable) laboratory.

Ellsworth Rose
The camera follows the two as they step around the counter, stopping once they've gotten to the door and returning its mechanical gaze to the front door.  It's a nice, average door that they come to; if either of them look at the receptionist counter, they can see a pot where a plant may have once been, but it died and disintegrated long ago and there is naught but dry earth remaining.  The scheduling calendar is also from 1997 and pretty empty.

As soon as Grace puts her hand on the door there's a click as it unlocks, granting them entry.  The door opens up into the warehouse area, which is...chaotic, to say the least.  It looks like various experiments have been stored here throughout the years and they're everywhere.  There is a makeshift corridor that stretches out before them delineated by shelves that contain spare parts, batteries, proton cells and other, stranger things.  Some of it just looks like junk--and probably is.  Other pieces look incredibly high tech and polished.

The warehouse area is also well-lit, through there are a fair amount of shadows created by the various pieces of machinery.  Once they get past the little corridor of power sources it widens into the entire area where there are pieces of equipment big and small.  A hyperbaric chamber sits in one corner collecting dust, while next it it sits what appears to be a miniaturized jet engine.  Crates abound here and there marked in various languages with various permutations of "Fragile," "Handle With Care" and "Dangerous."

Off to the right is where the screeching sound of heavy equipment being dragged can be heard.  That's where Ellsworth Rose is.  He would probably be considered quite attractive if he had time to take care of himself; he's fit and fairly tall, with short-cut brown hair.  The thing is, he doesn't seem to have that time.  The lab coat he's wearing is rumbled and looks like he's slept in it; the fact that it contains a logo ready "Three Mile Island Research Team Delta" suggests he wore it here.  He's got a five o' clock shadow and under the lab coat is a white dress shirt, slacks and red Converse All-Stars.  The shirt and slacks are just as rumbled and kinked as the lab coat.  He's currently in the process of pulling a long wooden crate across the floor, behind which appears to be a couch.  A comfortable chair sits next by.  Basically, he's clearing a sitting area.  His Resonance radiates out from him...it seems almost sickly somehow, which can't be good for his social life.

"Hello!" he says, still pushing with all his might as he smiles widely in their direction.  "Give me...give me just one moment.  Just setting up...a place...to be comfortable."

Alicia Romero
This is the first time she has been in the presence of another Son of Ether since the Technocracy came and took her dad away. She hasn't taken off her sunglasses and part of that is the fault of the benzodiazepine she took before Grace came to pick her up. Maybe she wants to look the part of the grieving socialite. Maybe she's just hungover from the night before and the light in here is hurting her eyes.

As they come to stand on the other side of the doorway she realizes she still has them on and reaches up with one hand to pry them from her face. Her hand is shaking. She still has makeup on from the night before. It doesn't matter. Alicia looks put together compared to Ellsworth Rose.

She takes in his rumpled appearance and the harried nature of his environment and even if she was jumpy the entire way in here now that she's in a state that is familiar to her Alicia almost seems as if she's going to relax. A wistfulness comes over her that may mean nothing to Grace. Disorder makes sense to her but it's not entirely because of her resonance.

"Do you want help?" she calls down.

Grace Evans
"Hey, look. Cool old shit," Grace says to Alicia, her eyes taking quick glances at everything, including Elly. She did not mean it that way, Elly. But yeah. Grace, everybody.

"Hello to you too, Elly!" Grace says, as if they are old friends meeting again after a while. At that, she walks up to lend her might to his. It probably won't be much of a help, but still. All the same, Grace doesn't exactly smile at the man. They're not here to sit and have a nice happy chat about butterflies.

Alicia, well... she's noticed and not really minded the whole jumpy fragility thing. Grace hasn't really seen Alicia any other way. There was a time when Grace was like that too. It just goes with the territory, doesn't it?

Ellsworth Rose
"No, no, I'm good, I'm..."  He trails off there as the crate--who knows what's in it--snags on an imperfection on the floor and that seems to halt his progress.  He throws his weight into it, but it takes the help of Grace and Alicia to get it over that little bump and from there it moves with ease.  It's only a few more feet anyway, and they make very short work of it before Ellsworth straights up and lets out a short sigh of satisfaction.

"There we go.  Sorry, sorry...I hoped to have it done before you arrived and...yes, well, you see."  He brushes off the front of his lab coat and then extends his hand to the two of them in turn.  "Lost track of time, you know.  Doctor Ellsworth Rose, at your service.  Society of Ether, Utopian dvision.  Pleasure to make your acquaintance...can I get you anything to drink?  There is a bottle of 1967 Chateau Latour that had its atoms split and reassembled by an old colleague that I brought along for the occasions.  It's quite nice.  Although we also have Stash teas, if you would prefer."

Alicia Romero
So they help the scientist move his crate. Once it's where he wants it Alicia smoothes down the hem of her top. She's wearing trainers and skinny jeans and a tight-fitting black t-shirt. She braided her hair and the tail of it has been bound up in a bun at the nape of her neck. Like she's ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

Other than the dead green plastic watch on her left wrist and her father's ring on her left thumb she has no other jewelry. She's carrying her handbag but it's lighter than usual. She must have left the alcohol behind today.

"Whatever you're having, is fine," she says. She seems as if she's going to let Grace steer the conversation. Deferring to authority or age or amount of work put in so far.

Grace Evans
"I'm Grace. AKA Chimeric. Virtual Adept of no current factional alignment. And ah, thanks for coming all this way, I mean..." Grace says, and trails off. He's being incredibly polite, isn't he?

"How'd they do that without releasing the atomic energy? Is it sort of a Planck time thing? Happens so fast the universe doesn't quite get the fact it happened? Or did they have some kind of really kickass energy containment?"

Grace winces once the words are out of her mouth. Not why we're here, Grace.

"Sorry. Don't answer that. I'm not actually here to talk about the awesome science, unfortunately. I'd love some of the wine though, it sounds cool."

She wanders over to the couch while looking at interesting things. It's hard to keep on target here, isn't it?

"So, yeah. What am I here to talk about, huh? I was wondering if you guys had any data on some members of the Society of Ether who have been captured by or are running from the Union. Doctor Khaled Abandonato and Doctor Alethea Morgan."

Alicia Romero
One corner of Alicia's mouth slinks up at Grace's first question. Like she's charmed as fuck by the Virtual Adept's attempt to wrap her head around deviant science. It didn't even occur to her that she ought to ask. She's used to things like this. Takes something truly bizarre to catch her attention and atomic rearrangement isn't that bizarre.

Then she tells Rose not to answer that and Alicia huffs out a half-laugh. The more she's exposed to Grace the more she likes her. She takes a seat now that they're done shuffling it around and sits with her hands between her knees. Ought to introduce herself but she doesn't. She wants to hear what Rose is willing to volunteer without knowing Abandonato's daughter is sitting right in front of him.

Ellsworth Rose
"Grace, of course, of course."  He smiles in a friendly (if someone hurried) way and moves away, heading over to where there appears to be a coffee maker and the aforementioned bottle of wine.  "Chimeric.  The ultimate in gene-splicing, you might say.  Well, Chimera, I mean."  He's speaking as he's working, setting up a couple of mugs (luckily they don't seem too dusty; maybe he cleaned them) on saucers with little bags of honey next to them.  The coffee maker is already on and he pours some hot water in them as he goes on.

"But more specifically, you are chimer-IC and not Chimer-A.  A single organism with genetically distinct cells.  That's clever."  He says it in a way that sounds approving.  "Really, all of us Awakened sorts are chimeric in a way.  Two distinct halves merged into one being."

He sets the mugs and saucers on a tray and pours Grace a glass of wine, settling a selection of Stash tea bags of various flavors there for Alicia to choose from.  It's brought over to them and set down on a side table.  "Take your pick.  Khaled Abandonato and Alethea Morgan?"

He frowns, thinking.  "The names sound familiar, yes.  Dr. Abandonato...oh yes, of course!  A skilled temporalist, if I recall.  I think I remember him from a Society symposium several years ago.  Or was it much longer...I'm afraid it's a bit fuzzy."  He stops there, brow furrowing.  "Or maybe less time.  Temporalists, after all.  But I have some recollection of him, yes.  And Doctor Morgan, you say?  Rings a bit of a bell, yes."

Grace Evans
"I was Chimeric long before I was Awake, though. Hacker alias y'know," Grace says, giving him a smile. The way the guy makes tea, it kind of reminds her of Kalen.

The lack of an introduction from Alicia doesn't go unnoticed, and Grace isn't going to volunteer that information just yet either.

"Yeah. Apparently, from what I gather, he did something rather extreme with the timeline. I've seen his notes, really interesting stuff," Grace says, and sighs. Perhaps this guy isn't who she's looking for after all? She'd hoped someone like Khaled had been more famous perhaps.

"How much of a bell does it ring? Do you know where Doctor Morgan might be?"

It occurs to Grace at this point that she sounds an awful lot like a Technocrat trying to socially engineer her way to a target. But hey, she can prove it somehow, right? She picks up the glass of atomically reconstituted wine, and peers at it as though trying to figure out its secrets.

Alicia Romero
Grace and Alicia appear to have the same thought process. She sits quiet while Rose brings over drinks and concedes that he remembers her father from a Symposium years ago but only vaguely knows anything about Alethea.

She tends to keep her cards close to her chest for not knowing who among them might be a double agent or wired or brainwashed. At this point if the Technocracy is monitoring Rose she doesn't care. Let them come grab her.

"Doctor Abandonato is my father," she says and it sounds like she's blurting it out but that's because she hasn't said much this entire time. "Five years ago he had a huge fight with Doctor Morgan, something about not wanting to meet these two guys who wanted to form a... a cabal, and he yanked me out of school after that and we started moving around a lot. Last winter something happened, and he... fucked up some experiment he was running, and I think the experiment was going back in time and changing things. It's..."

This is why she pops pills. It keeps her from falling apart when she isn't strong enough to Will herself into remaining calm through this conversation.

"I was there when he went back, I remember things different than he does, and he was really sick afterwards, for a long time. The Technocracy almost got him a couple months later, but I Awakened and... and one of their operatives died, and we got away. They caught up with us again in May, and he didn't get away that time. They took him away, and I'm... we're trying to find out what happened to him, if he's still alive or if they've... done something to him, or..." Oh. Hey. Tea. She takes a sip to wet her throat. "They don't have Doctor Morgan, and she might know something, and we were kind of hoping you would know where she is."

She looks to Grace like to ask if that's accurate.

Ellsworth Rose
He looks like he's about to respond to Grace and then Alicia speaks up, explains that Khaled is her father.  In that moment, you can almost see time standing still in his brain for a second.  He smiles brightly at her, the expression being the kind of thing you might share for someone who is part of a brotherhood.  "His daughter.  That's wonderful.  Um...forgive me a moment."

He turns around, goes to a white board that looks like hit has some fresh calculations on it and scribbles down a quick correction.  "Sorry, couldn't be helped.  Now, you said that he did something and it...er, went haywire..."  Fucked up doesn't seem to be in the comfort zone of his vocabulary.  "...and it was Time-related?  That could be problematic, yes.  The Paradox Theorum isn't kind with that.  If the Technocracy has him...but never mind that.  You're looking for Doctor Morgan."

He starts counting on his fingers, thumbs rapid-fire going from fingertip to fingertip.  "When did you say this was?  Last winter?  And was Alethea with him when it happened?"

Alicia Romero
Alicia starts to answer him but then decides to abandon the word. It lingers as a noise in her throat before she closes her teeth and starts over.

"I remember her being there," she says. "But then he... did whatever it was that he did, and she wasn't, and my dad doesn't remember her being there at all. It's hard to explain."

Grace Evans
Now, it's Grace's turn to be quiet. She doesn't quite know what Alicia is looking at her for. It's Alicia's story. It's accurate to a point, though. That Technocratic operative didn't just die, now did they? Grace remembers a tearful confession of murder.

With that thought in mind, she curls her feet up on the couch and takes a drink from her glass -- gives Alicia a look back, like to say this is good wine...

"Temporalist, yeah? The time thing goes wonky, it leaves behind a bit of confusion, I take it."

Ellsworth Rose
"She was and then wasn't..."  He nods, like that isn't unexpected, and walks back over to the white board.  With a deft motion he flips it around to another writing-filled space, then once more to the original side, revealing an empty board where he had just been scribbling.  Useful little device, that.  He picks up the dry erase marker and then starts scribbling equations.

"When Temporal Science goes wrong, it leaves a lot of confusion.  Think about it this way..."  He pauses, and then turns around like he's not sure this will make sense.  He's saying it anyway though.  "When you're doing Science, you're sending an electric current into the universe to make its limbs twitch the way that you want, yes?  In some ways, Higher-Level Science is like sending a current powered by an atomic reactor.  Each of them has their own problems if you melt down of course, but the universe must spread radiation in order to redistribute all of that extra power.  That radiation is the universe's way of restoring equilibrium."

He pauses and his eyes go wide, then he writes something down on his hand.  Saving a quick calculation for his other work for later.  "Anyway when you cause a meltdown in spatial relations, it gets ugly.  Biology is even worse.  But Temporal Science is its own monster.  The radiation forces a realignment of temporal energies and that causes ripples.  These ripples can completely undo things, but nothing is every completely undone.  You can't just snap something out of existance.  Energy doesn't allow it, right?"

He pauses then, looking at them.  "Am I making sense?  I know I have problems with that sometimes.  It's not intentional, but I've had my mind partitioned off to multitask for so long that I sometimes forget which part I'm supposed to be talking about."

Alicia Romero
Wonder of wonders Alicia smiles instead of bursting into tears. Thank you lorazepam.

"You're fine," she says. She doesn't sound fine. She sounds as if the enormity of what her father did is finally starting to sink in. Like it's a death sentence. "I... yeah. It was ugly. He couldn't..."

Nobody needs to hear about the ocular disruption or the vertigo or the fact that he heard and reacted to voices she couldn't hear. That it only tapered off instead of disappearing.

"So... you knew him, right? He wasn't stupid. Why would he do something like this, if he knew it would cause a meltdown?"

Grace Evans
"I don't think it's something you can easily predict. I mean, you can try hard to make sure what you're trying to do is going to work, but sometimes it doesn't matter," Grace says, again pondering her wine, and the atoms within.

"You can do a thing one day and be fine, and try the same again another day and end up with the universe having a segmentation fault with your name on it. Maybe he just thought that whatever he was doing was important enough to risk it."

She drinks again, thinking halfway about Paradox and its inherent uncertainty, and halfway about how she'll now be partly composed of particles that have been split and reassembled, and isn't that cool?

Ellsworth Rose
Grace has her explanation, and it's a valid one.  Ellsworth, for his part, has a different one.  He gives Alicia a little smile.  It's sympathetic, and when he starts talking he begins slow, but it starts to build as he begins to pick up steam.

"That's true, but it's more than that.  He's...so you know that everything has risk, right?  All Science has the chance for blowback, of course.  As I said...Biological Science can get particularly ugly.  Neurological Science can drive you insane if it doesn't come off quite right."  He fidgets a little, sets down the dry erase pen in his hand.  "Temporal Science can be the worst, this is true.  There are a lot of potential side effects and you're not just messing with yourself...you're playing with the very nature of the timeline, right?  I mean, that's huge!  It's immense and that's not the kind of thing you can just..."

He cuts himself off there; he's getting off track.  "What I'm trying to say is, it's big and it's dangerous.  But that's the thing.  Doctor--your father, he...he didn't think--and most of us don't think--that dangerous is a reason not to do something if it's important.  And that's not to say that there's no such thing as too dangerous, right?  There certainly is.  But..."  He gestures with his hands for emphasis in the pause here, "...think about how much could have been good.  People talk about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, and all of that I am become death, destroyer of worlds mess.  And that's valid, of course, but think about the importance of nuclear power and the advances that splitting the atom have led to!  Even I think that, and my entire work is dedicated to studying the effects of a nuclear plant meltdown."

He stops himself and smiles again, a bit apologetically this time.  "I'm not trying to minimize, you understand.  I would never, EVER do that.  But my guess--and it is a guess--is that your father took what he considered calulated risks because he knew the good it could do.  And one of those risks went wrong.  But he couldn't be afraid of that if he wanted to help mankind.  Does that make sense?"

Alicia Romero
"Mm hmm."

Alicia is smarter than she looks. She isn't glassy-eyed because she didn't take a heavy dose of the stuff but she has worn a hesitant if not skittish expression this entire time. As Grace and Ellsworth talk that skittishness evaporates.

"I, um... thank you." A twitch of a smile. Strange to thank the two of them yet she took more comfort from it than she would have from empty expressions of sympathy. "But... speaking of danger. Doctor Morgan?"

Grace Evans
"What phrozone was able to put together suggests that she went to ground in Missouri, but that was back in April. Also suggests that the Union is trying very hard to get her for whatever reason. We're not just talking someone was outed here. They've got a laser focus on Doctor Alethea Morgan," Grace says, and looks over to Alicia. Yeah, this whole thing sucks, doesn't it?

"I was hoping that I could find her. But if she's hiding from the Techs and they haven't a clue where she is, I'm probably going to be totally out of luck."

Ellsworth Rose
"Well, yes.  I was..."  He runs a hand through the unruly shock of hair, nodding.  "Yas.  I was getting to that."

He snatches up the pen again, going back to the whiteboard and starting to write down some more calculations as he speaks.  "You said that Doctor Morgan was present, or at least that we think she was present, as much as anyone can guess at who was present or not with the timeline being what it was, when Dr. Abanadonato's experiment went awry.  It's what I was saying about particles and nuclear reactors and magic, energy redistribution.  Energy dosn't ever go away, you see?  It evaporates and redistributes and spreads throughout the ether, but it doesn't ever go."

He steps back, looks at his calculations and then starts passing his gaze around the warehouse, like he's looking for something.

"If she was present--where is it?  Um, if she was there then the Paradox particules would have attached themselves to her, right?  Depending on what happened from there, she might not have much left, and the Technocracy..."

He starts off in a direction, his voice raising so he can still talk while he opens up a crate and starts digging through.  "...they may not be able to track her the same way.  But several years ago, one of the Society members here in Denver--or maybe it was Prague, I don't recall--they wrote a paper about their working prototype that allowed them to track Paradox energy.  It couldn't eliminate it so its usefulness was limited.  No one needs to track Paradox particles as a rule, yes?  We rather like to avoid it."

He looks up and around, a look of annoyance on his face.  "Seventeen X to the factor of twelve.  One of you remember that for me please, I need to find this and I think I'm on the right track."

Alicia Romero
Three-Mile-Island Elly has been studying the effects of a nuclear reactor meltdown his entire career it sounds like. It didn't strike Alicia until just now that there's something poetic about that. If she wonders about his belief in ghosts or the breadth and depth of his research she's only getting to see the parts of it that have to do with energy redistribution.

She sits forward and rests her elbow on her knee. Her chin on the heel of her hand. Like she's sitting in on a lecture that's become inexplicably interesting.

Or maybe she has to pay closer attention to him to keep up with the fact that his mind and his speech and his motions have him ambling all over the goddamn place. All this time she thought her father behaved like that because he was fucking insane. This isn't helping her with the opinion that her father was fucking insane but there's enlightenment to be found in certain kinds of insanity.

She smiles at the pronouncement that they rather like to avoid Paradox particles. It vanishes when he frowns.

"Seventeen X to the factor of twelve." There. Committed to memory. She frowns too. "What're you...?"

Grace Evans
Grace puts her wine down and heads to the white-erase board. She scrawls out a 17x^12. It looks like eleven x to the power of duck-head. But then, Grace isn't great at penmanship. She erases part of the duck head and tries to make it straight.

"I think he's saying he can make a Paradox scanner," Grace says, and gives Alicia a bright smile.

"If so, our chances of finding Doctor Morgan have drastically improved."

Alicia Romero
Her eyebrows lift. She sits up straight again and wraps both arms around her waist and laughs an uncertain laugh. It's the laugh of a young woman who doesn't want to get her hopes up.

"If he busts out a Paradox scanner I might shit my pants."

Ellsworth Rose
"Mmm, not so much make one as find one, hopefully in working order."  He lifts his eyes up to a crate that seems precariously stacked on top of a small mountain of junked parts, then shakes his head as if dismissing it.  His attention shifts right suddenly and he smiles widely.

"Ah-ha!"  He takes off in a run, nearly stumbling in the process as he heads over to an old, junked car.  It's the outer shell of a Model-T, but even from the outside you can see the steam-powered enhancements made...particularly in the wheels and in a mess of parts erupting out from under the hood.  He throws the door open and reaches inside, pulling out a couple of things and setting them aside.  The third thing he pulls out looks like an old 8 mm camera, the kind with the crank that you turn while filming.  He blows some dust off of it and is looking it over as he heads back, barely managing to avoid tripping over the other pieces he just set down.

"I am not certain if it is functional, but if it isn't I may be able to fix it."

Alicia Romero
When Rose takes off running Alicia frowns harder and turns in her seat to watch him. Flinches when he nearly busts ass on his way over to the car but he recovers and she doesn't have to get up. She chooses to get up. She wants to move closer to see what the hell he's doing.

Once she's up Alicia looks over at the dry erase board and takes in the equations that he's scribbled on it. Looks back to him when he pulls the old camera out of the vehicle.

He may be able to fix it if it isn't functional.

"Do you need help?"

Grace Evans
"Elly, I would ask why they decided to put a Paradox scanner inside of an old camera with a crank on it, but... okay. Whatever," Grace says, with a little huff of a laugh.

Cool old shit. Cool, but ancient.

She watches Alicia and her heading off to help Elly. Must be like old times to Alicia, huh? Or did her dad keep her away from all this stuff?

What would that have been like, growing up Sleeper with an Awake parent? Grace's parents are mundane as all fuck. Even before she Awakened, she'd left them in the dust of her own strangeness. Or maybe that was just a choice. Hard to say.

Ellsworth Rose
"Protoype," he says with a little shrug, coming over to set it down on the crate he had been pushing out of the way when they came in.  "Alden Silas, the Etherite who came up with the design, unfortunately had a bit of a gambling problem."  He gives that apologetic smile that seems to almost be his natural expression, he gives it so much.  "The man loved his blackjack, from what I understand.  And thus he never had the finances to make a full model."

Alicia asks if he needs help, and he nods.  "I may.  If you would keep back for the moment though, I want to open it and see what it runs on.  His thesis in Paradigma did not specify; trade secrets and all.  We Society members can be a very...competitive lot.  If it is powered by something that might explode, I would rather you not get caught in the blast radius."

Alicia Romero
You'd think an Etherite with a gambling problem would devote his studies to Entropy. Randomness Studies. Whatever nomenclature it is we're choosing to use here. If Rose wanted to go on about Alden Silas or his research or the reason his prototype turned out the way that it did she probably would have listened to him.

He's awful charming for someone whose base of operations hasn't been cleaned since Clinton was president.

The prospects of getting caught in an explosion's blast radius doesn't sound all that appealing though. She manages a smile when he tells her to keep back and takes a pointed step away.

Grace may want to reconsider whether she wants to know what all Alicia was exposed to before her Awakening.

"Appreciate it," she says.

Grace Evans
Grace wanders back over to the couch again and picks up her drink so as not to waste the nuclear alcohol. Sera will be jealous. Or just happy as all get out. Or she'll just be Sera. Yeah.

"I think I'll stay behind the armrest. I have faith in you though, Elly."

Sip.

"Why didn't he just make himself some x-ray specs or something? I mean I could cheat at blackjack if I wanted to. Too honest?"

Ellsworth Rose
"Said it ruined the sport of it," he said with a wry air.  He's hunched over, hands on his knees as he looks the thing over.  After a moment he reaches into his pocket and comes out with a penknife, which he snaps open.  He takes hold of the camera and carefully wedges the blade into a grove on the side where it would open up, ready to reveal...

...nothing.  When the case pops open, there's an empty spot where the power source would be.  Ellsworth gives an exasperated sigh.  "Well, that's disappointing.  Now I'll have to figure out what he used as a power source."

He looks back at them, smiling a little.  "The good news is that it looks like it is undamaged.  So as soon as I find his notes, it should be easy to replace the power source unless it runs on Quantum energy or some other such hard-to-find source.  It may take me a little while to sort through this place though."

He says it as they sit inside a distinctly unorganized mass of inventions, experiments and the like.  Yes, a little while.

Alicia Romero
Understatement of the year.

Alicia lets her eyes move around the space to take in the debris and the dusty boxes and the drape-covered who-even-knows-whats. The enormity of the place and the amount of time it would take to catalogue everything let alone find some stranger's notes.

Without asking this time she slings her handbag over her head and drops it on the floor beside the crate they've been using as a couch and closes the distance between herself and Rose.

"Guess we'd better get started then."

Grace Evans
True to her nature, Grace doesn't start looking. Thumbing through a laboratory full of scattered things is not work that's meant for people to do. As in all things, why not make a computer do it for you?

She pulls out her cell phone, and starts running a program that was really the babiest of steps for a newbie Grace. It should allow her to view the room and all its contents, but more importantly, to sort those contents by type.

If it works.

If she doesn't get a segmentation fault with her name on it.

To the others, it might look like Grace has decided to leave them to the work, but hey... laziness is a virtue after all.

[Corr 1, Entropy 2: Sort All The Things, Diff 5]

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

Ellsworth Rose
He looks at Alicia and gives another of those friendly, slightly jittery smiles when she just steps up and declares that she's helping.  And Grace's magic will certainly help them make quicker work of it; there is a lot to sort through and it looks like the previous inhabitants--last here as far back as the late 1990s--were not good at organizing.  But it's a communal safehouse, a place where people can come and hide out for a bit or work on a project, or just even stop in for a while if they want to pass through Denver.

It takes them quite a while--several hours of searching.  Every now and then Ellsworth goes to the white board and writes something unrelated down, then goes back to searching.  But finally, while Ellsworth is half inside a large crate digging at papers, Alicia picks up a sheaf of papers on one of the shelves when they walked in.  Sorting through, one has a diagram of the camera.  It's a hand-written and drawn schematic in messy script.  A line points to where the power source would go, and there's a small cannister drawn out that has scribbled under it "Q-Battery 18.3"

Alicia Romero
"Yo," she calls in a voice gone lively for the woeful short half-life of the benzodiazepine class, "I found something. What's a Q-Battery 18.3, is that a..."

She turns around and holds up the schematic like to flag down Rose.

"Fuck. That's a quantum battery, isn't it?"

Grace Evans
"And I'll bet this lab doesn't have any Q-Battery eighteen-point-threes anywhere eh?" Grace says, maybe a little dejected, because she was hoping to see the thing actually working.

I mean, it's a hand-crank camera, for the love of Tesla.

She does peel her eyes off of the phone to go inspect the notes that Alicia found, because hey -- Paradox scanner specifications...

"Can't you, I don't know, make an AC adapter or something?"

Ellsworth Rose
"Q-Battery?"  He perks up and there's a crash, followed by a grumbling sound before he straightens up out of the crate rubbing at his head.  He makes his way over to look at the plans.

To Grace, it looks like a lot of pseudo-science thrown together.  Miniaturized ether converters, mechanical barometric gauge, lots of silver and copper wiring and a few pieces made out of something called Primium.  Ellsworth takes a look without taking the paper from either of them and brightens, still rubbing at the sore point on the top of his scalp.

"Oh!  No, no.  Luckily not a Quantum battery.  A Quintessential particle battery.  Still not exactly something you can buy at Radio Shack, but I can make one from some parts around here, if I can get access to a Node.  Should only take a few days, I'd wager."

Alicia Romero
She's been in Denver since the middle of May and she only just recently learned that the lot of them have access to a message drop box. That the person she thought was her best friend had posted personal information about her on this drop box.

New-Awakened though she is she doesn't ask what the hell a Node is. She can't help him though. She knows that a Chantry exists but not where it is.

When she looks at Grace this time it isn't for verification. Her eyebrows are raised.

Well?

Grace Evans
"I can get you access to a Node. The closest Chantry isn't in Denver though. It's up in Morrison. A little rustic, but I know some people really like the fact that our Node is essentially a hot tub."

Grace grins back at Alicia. This is totally doable.

"And I needed to visit it anyway... A stupid vampire tried to attack Alicia the other day. I got a little carried away. So now I need to go soak my feet," Grace says, like that's a perfectly normal chain of events.

"The Chantry house has a lot of free rooms, you can stay there if you need to while we get that thing operational again."

As she continues, she'll give him directions to the place, and how to notice its presence. Not everyone gets that on the first try.

Ellsworth Rose
He listens vaguely as he looks over the schematic, committing it to memory.  It might cause one to wonder if he is really paying attention enough to get the directions.

"Vampires?"  He wrinkles his nose, looking thoughtful.  "Well, that's not good.  The vampires, not the blueprint.  The blueprint is fine.  Very elegant, actually.  Gives me an idea actually for something...never mind.  Not important."  He looks between the two of them now and smiles.

"That will be wonderful.  I don't think I will stay there; here suits me just fine for now, and I should clean it up anyway.  But I certainly appreciate being able to access your chantry and Node.  In a few days, I should be done and I can field test it for you, to make certain that it works properly before you take it out."

Alicia Romero
"I really appreciate you doing all this, Doctor Rose. Thank you. If you want me to stay and help put the battery together, I'd... I'd like to."

Although that appears to remind her that she needs to employ manners and some semblance of social skill. Grace might have told him her name before they came out here and she's already told him what her stake in all of this is but that isn't the same thing as properly introducing yourself to someone.

And Grace might as well hear it.

She extends a hand to shake with the Utopian and says, "My name's Adelaide, by the way. Adelaide Abandonato." A quick glance over to Grace and a flick of a smile. It's in the same vein as Rose's apologetic ones. "That's... my government name. You should call me Alicia, though, it's my hiding-from-the-government name."

With that out of the way she steps back to let Grace bid the man farewell.

Grace Evans
Grace shrugs. She gets that. Some people care about setting up in a place with a nice comfy bed, others are much happier sleeping on the couch in a place surrounded by half-realized technotoys. Wow does Grace ever get that.

"That will be fantastic, Elly. You're an awesome dude."

Alicia introduces herself to the man at the end of their visit. Introduces herself as Adelaide, and Grace quirks up a half-smile of approval. Smart, that.

"Of course, I was going to say sometime that you needed a new identity, but it seems you beat me to the punch there, Alicia."

"Thanks for everything. And that wine, too," Grace says, and gives Elly a thumbs up combined with a toothy smile.

Ellsworth Rose
The smile that Alicia gets is warm and courteous.  "Nice to meet you.  Absolutely.  And I would love your help.  It will help keep me focused.  Because, well...I can have some focus issues from time to time."

You don't say.

Grace gets a smile and a nod as well.  "You're very welcome, Chimeric.  Or Grace.  Whichever you prefer, of course.  You have my number still, and I yours so--or Alicia does too, I suppose.  I guess?  Anyway, as soon as we're good to go, I'll let you know so the Chantry can have advance notice I'm dropping by."

Alicia Romero
They'd better get cracking then.

Alicia holds up her fist to bump with Grace before VA leaves and thanks her for the ride and then she heads back into the mess to clear off a space to work.

Alicia at the Library

Grace
The address that Alicia has been given lies outside of town, nearer the mountains, but not far out of the way. There's no ward to protect it, so finding the place isn't as much of an issue as finding the Chantry certainly would be. Its only protection is how mundane it all seems from the outside. Looks like a small office to one side and a warehouse next door, and the only indication that something might be amiss here is the faded image of what might have once been a cow painted on the side of one of the buildings. This business has changed. Nobody's bothered to name it or put up a sign though.

Grace says it's a safe place to talk, in her message. Well, as she tends to say, it's safer.

The next thing that Alicia might notice about the place is the security system on the doors. Biometric locks on this place -- some expensive equipment if all they're protecting is some farming equipment, no?

The last thing that Alicia might notice is how it feels. Kalen's storm predominates, but there a shift in the air, a slice through the lightning.

There are lights on in the building that looks to contain offices.

Alicia
At least it's on the light rail line. She doesn't know how she's going to get back to the house after this is over but she hasn't thought that far ahead yet. Sitting on the train headed towards the mountains gave her time to wipe the eyeliner trails off her cheeks. To freshen up somewhat before she continues the journey on towards the library.

It's nearing nine o'clock at night by the time the five-foot-one teenager comes out of the darkness with half her life in her handbag. Hair unrestrained and a look of tense apprehension on her features.

She eyes the front door in search of sort of a bell or knocker. Starts texting Grace as she sorts it out.

Hey I'm here your door is intense

Grace
Ooh. An (expected) visitor. Grace arrives soon after the text, because let's face it, she is never more than a few feet away from her phone. The door makes a heavy click noise and swings open.

It doesn't look any more like a magic stronghold on the inside, but considerably nicer. Kalen cares for such things as paint on the walls and matching furnishings. On the inside, it seems more polished. Almost like a Hermetic lives here.

"Hey, Alicia. I'll show you to the library, eh? I made tea."

She just assumes that the unrestrained hair and tenseness is just Alicia -- you know, the girl who has been through a lot lately? Grace isn't one to comment on someone's appearance. It would be hypocritical for the one whose own hair looks like it was styled in a wind tunnel.

No, she just turns toward the staircase and starts to show the way.

Alicia
"Cool."

She doesn't appear to be making many assumptions about the building or its location or what it does or does not look like lives here. Granted her voice is quiet and a bit on the flat side like she's just woken up and isn't too happy about it.

Once the door is closed behind them and they're turned towards the staircase she goes on:

"So I kind of found out who owns the Black Orchid. That place's been open for like, twenty years and the owners have clubs in three other cities and one of them is on the board of directors for this organization in Miami, they help troubled youth or something."

Grace
"Oh, really?" That got Grace's attention. She makes a 'huh..' face and then continues on, up to the second floor and down the hall.

"I wonder if it's more like help themselves to troubled youth," she says, and opens the door to... a library of grand strangeness. There is a white lion statue. Also a machine that looks like it's based on a table, only the top is folded at a 90 degree angle and wires to the various electronic parts (cameras, and whatever unidentifiable else) wind up the sides.

There are also books. Books on various topics in various languages, ranging from college textbooks to Grace's collection of science fiction and tomes bound in heavy leather with indecipherable titles crowding the (expensive-looking) shelves.

On the table in the center of the room are two teapots and some mugs, because Grace didn't know what kind of tea Alicia would like, and tea is good. Somebody will drink it.

"Red one's chai, the other is peppermint," she says, and strides over to the table to pick up her phone and check it for something.

She gets to her chair (not the couch) and curls up with her (already prepared) mug. Gives Alicia a little smile. "Don't worry. We'll fix this. Kalen assures me that vampire hunting is a fun activity. I would like to know where you found that nifty info though, eh?"

Alicia
I wonder if it's more like help themselves to troubled youth.

Alicia snorts. "Yeah. Probably."

She takes a moment at the bottom of the stares to look around at her surroundings. To take in the decor and the spines of the books. Easy enough to get distracted by the spines but they're here for bigger things.

With the invitation to choose which flavor she wants Alicia pushes her hair back from her brow and picks the peppermint pot. Pours a mug as Grace assures her that they'll fix it.

"You know," she says. "The Internet. I looked up the club and saw the website didn't have an event schedule or pictures or anything so I was like 'Oh, that's weird' and just kept looking. I've got some websites saved in my email if you want to check them out."

Grace
Ohh, does she want to? 'Visit' some websites perhaps? Read their email? The thought brings a smile. "I'd love that, actually."

She sips her tea. Chai for Grace, because that earthy sharp spice has a tendency to kick the brain into gear. Peppermint too, to a degree, but it lacks caffeine, ahh.

"Hmm. I don't know if Googling vampires is anything like Googling the Technocracy. There are dangerous things to search for out there, you know? But probably not," she muses, and sips, and where did that come from, Alicia?

Alicia
"I used a proxy. If the... vampires or whatever they are decide they want to look for me they're gonna have to start in South Korea."

She considers Grace's tone but doesn't latch onto it. She only knows what Elijah has been up to by gathering scraps from different conversations. Whatever her understanding of his misstep is it isn't a complete understanding. Just enough to be raised-voice angry at him.

Before they change gears she sits down on the couch cat-corner from Grace. Rummages through her bag to find her phone with the hand not holding the mug. She rests the butt of it on the arm of the sofa so it doesn't scorch her palm. When she speaks again her eyes are on her screen.

"So Kalen's been vampire hunting before, huh?"

Grace
"Ohh yes. It's how he Awakened, actually. He was a 'troubled youth', aka dinner. Suddenly he just knew how to get away. Ran the vampire into a speeding truck," Grace says, and mimes a figure with two legs (her free hand) getting smashed by a truck (her tea mug).

"And I do get the idea that after that, it wasn't the last time he fucked up a vampire's night."

Alicia
One would think after what she's been through that Alicia would be able to summon the empathy to at least look up and show some astonishment that that is how the older reality deviant came to realize his power but she's pulling up files on her phone and copying URLs into SMS and only catches the finger-puppet show in her periphery.

But then Alicia's Awakening involved the Technocracy breaking down the door of a hotel room and her possibly killing one of them before escaping with her father so who the hell knows what it would take to impress her at this point. The just-woke-up grogginess isn't accurate anymore. Now she just looks tired. Spent even. It's been a trying few days.

She sets the phone down in her lap. Several seconds will pass before their carriers decide to pass off the data and Grace's phone makes a noise to notify her.

"That's crazy," she says in the dull voice. "So what's he wanna do, go From Dusk Till Dawn on the place?"

Alicia
['a dull voice,' not 'the dull voice.' Come on fingers.]

Grace
"I'm not sure yet what the plan involves exactly. We might be wanting to share this information about the club owners to others, though. You know, in Miami and wherever?" Grace says, and picks up her phone again at the bleep.

"I'm... probably not going to be there for the whole Dusking Till Dawn anyway. I'm not so great at the whole combat thing. But hey, we're making a laser-tag training arena here, so maybe..."

She gets to the info that Alicia sent, and makes another 'hmm' noise.

"I wonder if Ian or Lena know anything about that club in New York. At the very least they could let whoever they know back there know that Dolphin may actually be a vampire den."

Sip. Ahh.

"This is cool. I'll post it up on Ginger..."

Alicia
At the news that Kalen of all people is turning his library of solitude into a freaking laser-tag training arena the girl looks as if she's about to smile. The thought comes to her and the tension around her mouth lessens but she does not actually smile. Dark brown eyes are almost sad in this light. She blows on her tea and takes a sip.

To the idea of Ian or Lena getting in touch with the people in New York the Orphan nods. It isn't as if it's up to her. Maybe she just appreciates knowing what's going on.

Which brings us to Ginger. Hark.

"Is that the message board you were talking about last time?" she asks.

Grace
"Yeah," Grace says, and makes with a bit of sheepish grimace. Last time, she had to let Alicia know about Ginger in the worst way possible.

"But you know, mostly, it's the place where we post about threats to the people in Denver. So everybody knows not to go to the lake until we have the plant zombie problem figured out, or whatever."

Plant zombie. Yes.

And ohh, Alicia. If only you knew that side of Kalen, it wouldn't be a surprise at all. He wants to turn that white lion into a robot (or possibly just animate the stone). He wants to Awaken his servers so they have each other to talk to. He wants to give the office security system an AI with a voice that talks. He wants topiaries outside in the shape of dinosaurs. He wants to foment revolution.

There are reasons why Grace stays here.

Alicia
The plant zombie problem. She doesn't even flinch. She looks at Grace with the same tired-eyed sadness as came into the warehouse with her and tries to smile but doesn't quite manage. Covers the failure with another sip of her tea. She drinks her tea noisy so to spray the liquid over her palate and taste it. Doesn't just belt it back like she's trying to absorb the warmth fast as she can.

It also doesn't have alcohol in it. So there's that.

"I... also... found a picture. Of Doctor Morgan." Oh okay Alicia we thought you were looking up vampires. She flicks her eyebrows like to stave off an incoming reproach and goes on, "I don't have any, and I thought it'd be helpful, you know, since I gave you some of my dad, if you had one of her, too? It was kind of hard to find. I can send that to you, too, if you think it'd help when you go to talk to that guy."

Alicia
"Or if you wanna put it on Ginger, or whatever."

Grace
Hmm. Well, at least Alicia had the sense to use a proxy. Better than nothing, huh? And she's not yet claiming to have gotten a nastygram from a Technocrat.

"I would really rather you... take me with you if you're going to do more looking into that?" Grace says, and weary worry crosses her face. "We've had some... issues before. You know, I helped make Ginger because my mentor and I ended up on a Technocratic watch list for sending instant messages around with the wrong words inside. People have been targeted for the search terms they used in Google. I wasn't really kidding there," she says, and it's not an admonition. It's not saying 'you did wrong, Alicia.' It's just a warning.

"If we go together, I could teach you how to do things a bit more safely, eh? Like, one proxy is good and all, but fifteen with different encryption wrappers along each step is better."

She's not saying no, at least. Just, there is that worry. Bringing all this up reminds her of Elijah and the mess he's in now. That Technocrat is watching him. The very idea...

"I'm sorry I haven't been back with any more info. Three-Mile Island Elly isn't picking up his fucking phone. I'm going to have to start getting creative. And hope he doesn't have a brain zorcher attuned to Correspondence magic or something."

Alicia
And Alicia understands. If anyone would understand it's the daughter of a Son of Ether who landed himself on the Technocratic Union's Bring This Motherfucker In Right Now list after he went back in time and changed the way history panned out. One does not simply ask Google what it knows about Technocrats or people that the Technocrats are actively trying to find.

Not until the apology comes does Grace manage to bust through whatever scar tissue formed over her tonight or the other night or all together. Alicia finally smiles.

"Don't be sorry," she says. "I should've started looking right away instead of... running away and..."

Sigh. She takes another sip of tea.

"Here. Let me send you this." She focuses on her phone again for a moment but keeps talking. "I wanna help you. So... whatever you want to do to make it so I'm not being a dumbass about it, I'm... you know, I'm not awful with computers, and I already know about... locations, interference points or whatever, I don't know what you guys call it. Is that Correspondence magic?"

Down goes her phone. Another delay before the photograph of Alethea Morgan goes to Grace's phone.

"I don't want to bring them down on anyone here but I don't want to just sit here with my thumb up my ass while you do all the work, either."

Grace
"Correspondence is like..." Grace says, and pauses. Hmm. "Well, it's different for everyone. But the way I like to put it? Location is an illusion created by our mammal brains so we don't have to process all the information at once. Volumes don't really exist, it's all actually a two-dimensional holographic data array that some other Mages like to call the Tapestry.

"But you know, you talk to someone else, and they'll say it was the spirit of the wind weaving souls into threads of warp and weft and other shit I don't understand." Grace shrugs.

"To me, everything is connected because everything's all in the same spot, actually. But that's the basic idea behind Correspondence. Everything's connected, everything corresponds, so use that connection. And, you can use it to make sure your connections aren't being wiretapped."

She pauses in the spiel to check her phone again. Alethea Morgan. The picture was on the web for some reason. And Grace kind of sort of wants to hack the server it was found on so that she can determine why. But it is a help.

"You should be on Ginger. If you want it. You could post what information you want then. I removed any mention of you from the thing, but the disappearance of your father is an issue that affects all of us. That, and if anybody sees him or Alethea, it would be nice if they weren't overlooked, you know?"

Alicia
Alicia considers this. Nods her head but almost-frowns a second later.

"He didn't disappear," she says. It isn't sadness. She's numb. She must have taken something on the train coming over here. An even keel is what she was going for. Youth doesn't come preprogrammed with wisdom. "The Technocracy hunted him down."

Irrelevant. They're talking about spheres and Ginger.

"Yeah. Alright. Do you have to install anything, or is it just a credentials sort of situation?"

Grace
"No, he didn't. I suppose I use the term because it sounds nicer. Because I don't want to force you to relive that because of my poor word choices. Truth is, I really suck at this. Talking to people," Grace says, and sighs. "I mean, you'd think..."

But no, Alicia doesn't really want to talk about that. Grace understands. She's been in that place where not talking about a thing is the only way to deal.

"I do have to install something, but it's pretty easy to set up. You just need my encryption software, because that's half the work of providing end-to-end encrypted data transfers, right? We could do it now, even."

Grace shifts, body stiff after sitting so strangely in her chair. "But yeah, it's designed to avoid detection and to avoid having any easily traceable link to any of us. That doesn't mean it's completely secure. I mean, with enough resources at somebody's disposal, any system can be tracked. But I've done the best job that I can to make it safer than just a text message."

Alicia
She sits and listens to all of this the halting explanation for why she uses euphemisms and how it is that Ginger works and the limitations of the encryption software. Alicia nods. It's mute consent. She unlocks the phone and hands it over to Grace.

It's a burner. A drug dealer phone. Some cheap thing she picked up from a gas station that can access a 4G network and process as much data as she's willing to pay for.

If Grace decides to start the install then Alicia doubles back to the conversation's divergence point.

"I'm not a kid," she says. "And I'm not... I know I've been... sensitive, or whatever, in the past, but that doesn't mean you have to tiptoe around it. Maybe I don't want to talk about it, but I didn't want it to happen in the first place, and it did anyway, and it sucks. Sugarcoating it sucks even harder, so if we're gonna talk about it, I don't want to sterilize it. That's all."

Grace
Grace twitches a hand up to the offered phone, then gets up and puts both her phone and Alicia's on the table. Without a word, she's gone out of the room, as though perhaps it was something Alicia said?

But no, very soon she's back again with a cable and a laptop and a weak, pathetic little smile. "Okay. Usually people don't outright tell me how they want to be treated, I just have to guess. That gets... exhausting."

She goes back to the phones and hooks Alicia's up. As she works on setting up the program, she gets chatty again.

"When I've had my own trauma, I've always liked to ease into the subject sort of? Mostly because people would unintentionally hurt me and I wanted to test the waters before diving in and finding out there were spikes on the bottom of that particular pool.

"I just like for people to take what I'm going through seriously, and let me emote how I'm going to emote. None of that 'don't be sad' bullshit, or 'you're too angry' bullshit. Or even worse, the 'you have to be happy for my benefit' bullshit."

She just types and swipes her finger across the touch pad like she's not actually talking about trauma coping techniques.

Alicia
Thus far Grace has not stricken Alicia as the sort of person who would walk away and not come back without a word if something she said had been too blunt. That day in Elijah's apartment both of them had said some things that were not entirely tactful and they had made it through that exchange just fine. She sits in her chair and drinks her tea and does not look surprised to see Grace either leave or come back.

Of course guessing gets exhausting. Alicia returns the smile. It is not pathetic but it does seem as if she has to force herself to get it to the surface of the pharmaceutical pool in which she's floating.

Or even worse, the 'you have to be happy for my benefit' bullshit.

"Yeah. Fuck that." Since this install looks like it's going to take a while she goes ahead and asks, "Do you know Sid?"

Grace
"Mmmhm. I know Sid. Speaking of traumatic experiences," Grace says, and no, Alicia she does not mean it like that. It just sounds very much like it. "Well, this once, I was attacked by some shitty wannabe Mage killers. They got their hands on some Technocratic tech. It was a virus like Ebola only worse. The first time I got a look at it was right after they'd infected me via robot wasp, because really how iconic and ridiculous can you get? Robot wasp?

"Anyway. What I saw then was scary enough. It used your immune system against you. Every time your body 'killed' a virus particle, it would duplicate. Magically assisted healing did the same. It was just like being eaten alive. And then it started going after my brain.

"Sid is a biologist. A really fucking good one. She synthesized a cure. I owe her everything."

So, you know, Sid's a major asshole sometimes, Alicia. And sometimes not. We can be both.

Alicia
So Grace is not the person to talk to about Sid being a split-personality weirdo. Got it. The context is still helpful and even if Alicia's expression does not change Grace can see she is watching her and listening and this in one sitting is more of Denver's past than she has heard the entire time she has been here.

"Just wondering," she says. Her tea is gone. She considers the dregs and then sits up and leans forward and refills it. "So, um... let's say Three-Mile-Island Elly does return your call. Could I go with you?"

Grace
"Absolutely you can go with me. If he calls back, I'll let you know. But I'm going to try again tomorrow, and maybe this time put a little more of something noticeable in the effort? It might work. You can come with."

The typing stops. Grace seems pleased with her efforts, and disconnects Alicia's phone.

"I've put the contact in your list already. You now have a number for Ginger. If you call it, now that you have my encryption on your phone, you can say the words "Hello Ginger" and it will open a hidden voice command menu. From there, you can view or leave messages as you please."

The number is 1-800-FAT-GRLS. Yep. Grace is contributing to the delinquency of a minor again.

And, if Alicia tries it out right now, she'll get the standard Ginger sexy-robot-voice menu spiel of:

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

Alicia
Of course Alicia tries it out right now. She dials the number and waits to hear the menu. Might as well take it for a test run while she's got Grace here to make sure she doesn't fuck something up.

"If I hit 2 it's not going to store anything on my phone, right? It's all remote?"

This before she hits 2 to see what's up in Ginger Land.

Grace
"It's all remote. What's on your phone is just some encryption software you picked up on some forum somewhere. Hah," Grace says. "Somebody would have to know to dial the number, know to give the password, in order to really use it. And there is no sensitive data physically stored on the phone, no."

Of course, Alicia, Denver is a hellhole. You can tell by the messages left behind that things here are not quite pretty.

Alicia
And she does look at the messages left behind. Frowns at a few of the titles. Whichever one she goes for first Grace cannot tell but by the amount of thumb-scrolling she does the older reality deviant can tell she doesn't click on the most recent thread. Maybe she doesn't want to know what's going on in the thread about her dad.

"Fuck," she says. "Why couldn't they have picked him up in Seattle? Nothing happens in Seattle. I liked Seattle."

Maybe she's trying to be funny. She rolls her eyes and terminates the connection and looks back up at Grace.

"Thank you. Seriously. I'll... do you want me to say anything, about any of this, or should I just put new stuff up if I find it?"

Grace
"Really? Seattle?" Grace says, as if she's actually pondering. It's in the same half-joking sense that Alicia used. "There's already a thread up about all of this. I'll let you decide what you want to add, okay?"

Because really, that has been the point all along, right? Giving Alicia a decision? A say in what story gets told and what she wants done?

"Hey, do you want to stay the night? It is kind of late, and this place has extreme doors as you saw. We have plenty of couches, and Kalen buys the most fantastic couches."

Because, you know, he buys them specifically to sleep on. And Kalen's the type to care a lot about whether a vampire could break his doors down.

It is a safe place to talk or to just be.

If she doesn't take the offer, Grace will just assume that since Alicia found her way here, she can find her way away from here as well. Maybe they'll sit and talk for a while longer. Maybe Alicia will go 'home' right away. It doesn't honestly matter, not to Grace anyway. It just matters that she was able to help, and didn't manage to totally ruin anything by some miracle.

And tomorrow, when they talk to Elly, the reason for the talk will be there.

It has been good. A better night than a number of recent ones at least.

The Black Orchid

Dinner and a Show
RULES (Full credit to Kai via Damon as always):

1. There is no post order, but please only post once for each post I make unless I say otherwise.

2. Please try to be timely on posts: in other words, 10 minutes or less to post and if there is combat (which is likely, more on that shortly), declare/roll in 2 minutes or less. I will give a polite warning if we start getting too late with these.

3. You are free to multi-task, so long as you can abide by the above strictures.

4. This scene may will end up with combat taking place and as such, there is risk to your PCs.  The potential risk is physical, psychological, mental AND spiritual.  (Which I like to call the Holy Quartet.)  If you decide you want to bow out based on that I am completely fine.

5. Please PM or IM me with anything you want to be off-limits; phobias, triggers, themes, etc.  Also PM with any relevant Merits or Flaws (Nightmares, Phobias, etc.) or any active magical effects (wards, Life enhancement, et. al) your Mage has going on your person.  If you need to roll those, or Nightmares or the like, do so now.  If none of these apply, no need to PM me with “None”

7. Please keep track of your own health, Quintessence, WP, etc.

8. If someone wants to make an IM Chat, I would appreciate it.  I have spotty luck when I try.

9. We are at the Black Orchid, a nightclub in downtown Denver.  Description post incoming!

Kalen Holliday
[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Elijah
[did we survive last night?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Dinner and a Show
The Black Orchid isn't what you might call a "pure dance club."  There's dancing, to be sure; the back half of the establishment is a separate room with a dance floor, with purple neon and black lights providing the sort of trippy illumination that is sure to send dancers into a frenzy, epileptics into convulsions and acid trippers into moments of insanity or enlightenment.

But it's not all about the house music being played and the bodies twisting and writhing to the beat--a beat not as effective as certain DJs, but solid none the less.  The nightclub contains a bar area in the front for people who are just trying to find a chill night out.  While it doesn't cater to the goth community, there can often be at least a small contingent of the darksiders found in a corner; maybe it's the name.  Ravers, college kids, hangers-on...really, you can find any sort of nightclub person here under the low light and energetic atmosphere.

Sunday night is, perhaps to people's surprise, rather busy.  It's one last chance for the crowd to get their weekend partying out before heading back to their day jobs, classes or whatever they have going on for the rest of the week.  The woman behind the bar, an attractive girl in her late twenties with a wide blonde streak through her dark hair, is being kept busy but seems to be handling her work with the practiced ease of someone who's been doing this for years.

Alicia
The thing about a city big as Denver is she can go out several times a week and not hit the same place twice. One night she might be in a club that only plays modern dance remixes and the next she might wind up in a dive bar where all anyone there wants to do is quaff down pitchers of beer and shoot pool. Half the time she doesn't recognize anyone out and half the time she does.

Tonight she's hoping she doesn't recognize anyone but you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at her what she does and doesn't want. She has an of-age bracelet around her wrist and nothing in her hands. Maybe she's had her beer and her shot already. Hard to dance with a full drink in one's hand.

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Elijah
Elijah Poirot hasn't gotten drunk in the better part of a week. That was an entire week of being sober. An entire week of being sober and present and very, very aware of the fact that he made some less-than-stellar choices. As such, he'd found himself seeking other means of self-medication transcendent behavior. At some point, the behaviors went from medicative to meditative. Right now, all he wanted to do was just be, to move and feel as things came and went and passed through.

There was a club- the Black Orchid. It's not a pure dance club, but it's good enough for him. It was alive and busy on a Sunday, so why not invite people? So out went a text:

Come dance, it's Sunday @ Black Orchid. The music's decent!

He didn't expect anyone to text back, but he could revel in the anonymity of crowds and the feeling of a collective heartbeat.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen likes music.  And, to a point, he likes crowds of people and dancing and music.  Of course, last time he went out to a club for dancing it was great until he was being pulled into another reality.  And he'd had a date.  But hey, as disasters go showing up to a club without a date is probably a lesser disaster than getting sucked into some nightmare reality.  And, even in Denver, how likely is getting sucked into another alternate reality?  It isn't even the grand opening.

So Kalen is at the line where people sometimes flow across in waves of dancers into the relative stillness of the front area, leaning back on the wall, half-finished drink with a bunch of fruit speared on a brightly colored plastic skewer embedded in crushed ice.  He's scanning the crowd, watching how people drift and ebb and flow.  Now they are in lines at the bar, now the front is full, now the people have spilled into the dance floor.  Magnetism.  Gravity.  Tides.

But, at least for now, he's more interested in watching than joining.

[Watch crowd - Perception plus awareness or alertness (it's the same number of dice so I'm rolling without an answer)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Alexander
It’s the weekend and, like so many others, Alexander is here to escape.  Just for a little while.  Escape from the day-to-day – walking the beat, the traffic, the city, bills...  Escape from the supernatural.  It’s a chance to forget about everything and just let go.

He’s not running on any of the illicit substances that others in the club might have snuck in or taken before they arrived, but he has worked through a couple of beers.  He’s not drunk by any stretch of the imagination, but he has had enough to just start to relax a little.

So he’s in the back of the club already, lost somewhere in the dance floor and lost somewhere in the beat.  For those who might come across him, he’ll be in loose, black combat trousers and a black t-shirt with UV-reactive strips tracing out wings.

Why here?  Why not?

[And per/aware - he's not completely lost]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace isn't here because she wants to be. Grace is here because other people are here, and not because the workaholic and professional crowd-hater decided it would be a fun diversion.

She only ever does this sort of thing when asked. And then, they had better be cool people who ask. It's a good thing she knows a large number of cool people, or else she might stay at the office planning and preparing forever.

Tonight it's Elijah who asks, and since her side project at the moment is developing a monitoring system that he could put on all of his devices to tell if some asshole is trying to directly access his shit? Well. Okay. Going to a club to make sure Elijah's not being watched fits in with that whole sort of idea, doesn't it?

So she arrives at the Black Orchid wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that has a mountain printed on the front in white, framed in geometric abstracts. Over that is her light gray jacket, unzipped.

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

Grace
[Oh yeah, and that was Awareness like everyone else]

Elijah
[per+aware, because that seems like a good idea]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dinner and a Show
Just about everyone has their sixth sense in play, which causes them all to ping off each other of course.  The chaos of Alicia scrambles against Elijah's tumult.  Kalen's storm envelopes those feelings (being doubly strong) and a chill settles over the whole thing thanks to Alexander.  As Grace arrives, she slices right into place with her shifting, sharp edge.  Maybe it's fate that they all seem to fit together on this night, like pieces of a puzzle.

Of course, that puzzle comes with its own jagged edges as of late, so maybe it's a recipe for turning lead to gold, or perhaps its the Lament Configuration ready to open a door to a place you never want to go.

But the mages in the nightclub aren't all that they sense.  Amidst each of their individual references, there is the pure energy of the crowd.  Emotional resonance is as much a thing as magical resonance, though it doesn't usually register with that something special that sends the sensation down your back, draws the attention of that Awakened part of you.  This somehow seems just a bit stronger than you might expect.  It's a good feeling though.  Invigorating.  Joyful. even.

Alicia
And her senses are as open as they're going to get so she could feel if someone in the crowd were not what they appeared on the outside. So far as she can tell anyone with pale skin or dead eyes just doesn't get out much or is on something. That isn't anything she can tell from looking at a person. From following the hunch her gut gives her.

When she feels her ex-best friend out there in the crowd somewhere she ignores him. She ignores also the storminess of his mentor and the knife-like movement of the woman she walked out on a week ago. Feels something frozen and ignores that too.

Alicia is not in the center of the dance floor. She's off to one side in a pocket by herself. Anyone who has tried to dance with her over the course of the last several songs she's flitted away from. Only as that joyousness comes over the room does she lift her eyes from the inward oneness with the music and everything that comes over a person when they're dancing.

That's all she gets though and even if it catches her attention she thinks nothing more of it. She twirls around and dances further away from the concentration of resonances she can feel on the other side of the room.

Elijah
He's oblivious, aware that Alicia is here but unaware that he is an ex- anything, though that would no doubt change in a matter of moments. Though, no matter what he wanted to do, Elijah had something larger on his mind.

There was a hitch in his movement. A pause. The young man took a second, licked his lips and cleared his throat as though he expected something to wash a taste out of his mouth. There was a way to go about that, and with little fanfare the young man made his way to the bar to order a drink. His focus wasn't on getting a drink, but rather trying to tap into the feeling of things breaking down around him- a feat that would prove damned near impossible without that sympathetic connection to whatever it was that he needed to feel

[Entropy 1: Sensing entropy, +3 diff because he literally can't put a finger on what he needs.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alexander
So the DJ may not be the greatest in the city, but the tracks merge together reasonably smoothly and there’s no dead air from the sound system.  Perhaps they’re not able to pull the crowd along on an emotional trip, but maybe there’s something extra in the room tonight.  Not something that exactly stands out as Awakened to Alexander, but its effect is still felt.

Alex, too, feels the resonances of others moving around the room.  Some he knows well, others he’s at least acquainted with.  One he’s completely unfamiliar with.  And?  They can carry on doing whatever they’re here to do.  There’s no End of the World, no mind-screwing situations with spirits and plant/zombie things and...  No, none of that.  They’re just here to have a good time too, and that’s exactly what he intends to keep on doing.

So unless one of those familiar sources of resonance happens to bump into him, they can damned well do their own thing and leave him alone.  Just for tonight.

Because tonight?  Is joyous.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen shifts from stillness to movement with all the warning of a lightning strike.  He finishes the last of his drink, for all that the traces of syrup and sugar fail to drown out the sense of grit and the taste of death on his tongue.  He drops off the glass and winds his way through the crowd to Alexander.

Not with the kind of purposeful long stride that says they have a problem.  No, that is not a thing you telegraph to a crowded nightclub.  He gets close to Alexander and then with a playful smile he leans into Alexander, his lips practically brushing his earlobe, tone all breathy and warm.  It's a sharp enough contrast to the actual words.  "Find out if anything has happened here recently, would you?  Your resources here are likely better than mine.  I'm going to go check the thing I can check."

Alexander has only a few seconds to respond before Kalen is pulling away to head for the bathrooms.

Grace
Oh, it is happening again. It's a crapshoot as far as these sorts of things go isn't it? Either all these resonances that she can put a face to are going to have a nice night out and nothing happens, or they're being drawn here for a reason. This universe may never have spoken to her directly, but sometimes it makes its will known in bizarre ways.

Go here. Do the thing. Go on, do it.

In any case, Grace walks in and immediately her eyes peel off of the ceiling and onto the crowd to look for Elijah, and where would an Elijah be? Oh yes, bar. That makes so much sense.

She walks up, taking a beeline straight through the crowd which does not seem to exist to her, and says, "Hi. I got your text."

Dinner and a Show
Alicia, sweet Alicia, dances with abandon away from her fellow Awakened.  That just so happens to bring her closer to the bathrooms, off to the left side of the dance floor, and also happens to be the way that Kalen is headed.  It's going to be a bit of a trek for the Hermetic though; he has to maneuver around the side of the dance floor, or go directly through and either of those is going to take some time, especially as he takes a few moments to enlist Alexander's aid.

Elijah makes his way to the bar and works his magic, spiking his Resonance as he does so.  That's right about when Grace goes up to find him and say hello.  The bartender looks over in her direction and gives a little nod.  She's good at making sure anyone coming up gets a chance to spend their money.

"Hey, what can I get you?"

Meanwhile, back to our young Orphan by the bathrooms.  As she twirls in that direction, she finds herself bumping up against someone who is just making his way along the edge of the dance floor.  The collision is not so hard as to knock either of them sprawling, and when she turns to see who she has come up against she finds a man in his late twenties.  He's attractive, to be sure, in that put together-yet-rebellious sort of way.  Longish hair, just enough to brush the tops of his shoulders.  He clearly has some Asian blood to him, a defined jawline and a quick smile over brown eyes.  He's dressed just a little out of sync with the rest of the crowd in a hoodie over a button-down red shirt and jeans.

Instinctively, he reaches out to steady her with warm hands.  "Hey, sorry.  You okay?"

Elijah
"Can I get a coke?"

There was something wrong. There had to be something wrong because Elijah wasn't getting completely shithoused at that juncture, even though he did have the band that said he was more than allowed to do so. A nice, believable lie. He turned his attention to Grace and he stepped in. Smiled because there was a familiar face; the smile didn't reach his eyes. There was tension in his breathing. Elijah stepped in and spoke quietly.

"Something's going on on the bathroom, or something already happened there, I don't know, but something… it feels like the flow of the world's break down has gone to shit… wanna go check it out with me?"

See, look, he's using the buddy system.

Alicia
"Oh, shit."

If you're going to stagger around like a baby giraffe you have to accept that at some point you're going to run into another person on the dance floor. Or the edge of the dance floor near the bathrooms. Or in the actual bathroom. Alicia is not a graceful creature. Maybe she was once but spending four years cramped up in a car or inside with the one overriding instruction being stay away from the windows doesn't do much for one's dexterity.

Anyway: she bumps into someone. It happens to be an attractive male specimen in an age range near enough to hers that it would not be creepy if she were actually old enough to drink but Alicia is not actually old enough to drink so they shouldn't be serving her alcohol sorry Alexander bartenders and bouncers don't tend to argue with official-looking pieces of plastic.

Instinctively she jumps back from him before he can get a good grip on her.

"My bad." Laugh it off. That's a good idea. "Yeah, I'm good. Excuse me."

She appears to want to go back the way she came.

Grace
The flow of the world's break down has gone to shit? In the bathroom? "Odd place for that. Whatever it is."

She looks around trying to locate bathrooms, finds them across the dance floor. Somebody's talking to her, and she figures out after a few seconds that it's the bartender.

"Oh, nothing, I just have to um... go to the restroom."

Yes. And she's taking Elijah with her. Whatever miss 'tender thinks of that isn't really her concern at the moment.

Alexander
Chance rolls its die and suddenly it’s no longer the music that’s sweeping Alexander up.  It’s a storm and, for a few seconds, he’s in its eye.  The other dancers carry on oblivious, joyous, alive.  Alexander freezes for a few moments as Kalen whispers to him, leaving him out of sync with the music.  Dissonant.  Different.  He doesn’t say anything, just watches as Kalen turns and drifts away through the chaos.

He stands there watching him work his way through the crowd, thinking.  Thinking about how easy it would be to turn around, keep dancing, forget about everything.  Honestly?  It’s very, very tempting.

But he’d agreed to work with Kalen and Alyssa, to fight the nasties that the more mundane parts of the city don’t know about and, even if they did, wouldn’t often be able to do an awful lot about.  He hasn’t felt anything off, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t.

So he works his way towards the side of the dance floor, completely out of sync with everyone else.  He gets elbowed a couple of times and almost covered in someone’s drink before he gets there.  But he is there, and there is a mirror and...  He closes his eyes and takes a breath.  He doesn’t want to do this, but...  He looks.

[Spirit sight.  Diff 4.]

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

Kalen Holliday
Kalen slips into the crowd, and then through it as best he can.  There are tricks, but whatever he can taste that is dark beneath all the joy...perhaps it would be better to wait.  The others are here.  Alexander knows there is trouble.  Grace...Grace knows how to get the hell away from trouble.  Alicia, too, probably.  Elijah...well, this is why we pray to Saint Jude.

So he winds through the crowd toward the bathrooms and listens for screams.  Fire alarms.

But real danger...real danger doesn't always make a sound.  Sometimes it is silent as cobras.  As being slowly buried in snow.  The lingering echoes of Resonance here...it may be that whatever he senses has already taken its prize and gone.  A pound of flesh.  A soul.  He does not know.

He does intend to find out.

Dinner and a Show
Elijah and Grace make a beeline to the bathrooms, which is where Kalen has just managed to enter.  The Hermetic slips inside and he doesn't see anything that immediately sets him off.  Still, he can't escape that feeling...the chill of a grave.  Now that he's closer, he picks up something more, too...it almost feels like Alyssa actually.  The tang of copper at the back of his throat, mixed in with that moldy dirt.  As he gets to digest that wonderful sensation, he gives a quick look around and while nothing seems initially amiss, he does note something on the ground next to one of the stalls, in the grout.  It looks like a relatively fresh stain, something dark and black-red.  Cleaned already, but you can never get that stuff fully out.

Alexander gets close to the mirror and does his thing, his magic pinging as he looks across and sees what he sees.  As Elijah and Grace are coming around the path that Kalen did, Elijah's Entropic sense picks up that the feeling has moved.  It's right on the edge of the dance floor, near where he feels the chaotic Resonance he knows well.

Alicia moves to slip away from the guy, but there appears to be something in her reaction that catches his closer attention.  Or perhaps its something else about her that strikes him as interesting.  His brows knit as he gives her another look over, shifts his eyes slightly and focuses his attention on her.

"Let me get you a drink.  It's probably my fault, I bumped into you.  I should make it up to you."

[[Something something dark side, diff 4]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )

Alicia
As of the moment before he locks eyes with her Alicia is still assured of the fact that this is a crowded place and she can get away from this guy because what could he possibly do to her with all these people around. That there really isn't anything she needs to be afraid of even though he's focusing on her. He might be on something. Guys tend to be on something in places like this. That's how she met He Who She Is No Longer Talking To.

But that's her father talking. Depending on who you talk to her father brought on his own bad end by mucking around with the timeline. Maybe if he hadn't been batshit crazy none of this would have happened. All his paranoia got him was shot and dragged off into the back of a van.

This guy is perfectly charming. Probably harmless. Her common sense shuts off about then. Fuck it. What's the worst that could happen.

"Ohhhhh," she says like she has to think about it. She doesn't. As she makes her decision she flips her hair back off her shoulder. "Alright. Make it up to me."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen slips into the bathroom and the air tastes like blood and death.  He scans over the room.  No monsters immediately apparent - check.  Blood-stained floor - well...damn.  He moves to the sink closest to the blood stain and starts to reapply his glittery eyeshadow, at least in so much as he opens a container of it and is looking at the mirror.  He doesn't put any on though, just murmurs softly to himself, breathes in, and then breathes out over the little container of loose iced lilac powder.

He watches it drift in the currents from his breath, watches the way invisible currents of wind send the sparkling dust into curls and abstract shapes.

[Time2/Prime 1 - trace backward from now to see what happened there plus Watch the Weaving because reasons - extending - WP D=5 [2(Sphere)+3(standard)] (I think I need three suxx?)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Elijah
he stops, he had been headed to the bathroom, but there was something at the edges of the dance floor and that feeling wasn't right, and then he could feel Alicia.

He has no idea. He has no idea that she is furious with him, that she doesn't trust him anymore, that they are no longer on good terms in the slightest but his sense of oh fuck no is going off and Elijah took Grace's hand and started heading for the direction of the feeling again, "c'mon, it moved. Someone did something, it's like… it feels like disease, but not quite, and whatever it is, it's going to pass itself on, I think… I really don't know, but it's like decay is concentrated and this isn't good." He was having a moment, with that he made his way towards where he felt the feeling going.

Inhale.

Take a moment to recenter.

Exhale and continue.

Alexander
Alexander looks into the mirror and pushes, forces reality to do as he wants just like Sera said they sometimes had to do.  He feels the change and turns away from the mirror.  He sees...

He squints, cocking his head, forgetting the music and feeling the spirit of the music, of the place, and of its inhabitants.  Of which there are a few more than he had been expecting.  He can see but he has no way of interacting with any of the spirits he sees unless they choose to.

But first things first.  He fishes out his mobile phone and taps a message into it.  No point in trying to make a call in here – they wouldn’t be able to hear each other.  And then?  His altered sight it already fading away into smoke.  So he faces the mirror again and pushes harder.  This time, it’s going to damned well last.  He wants to take a look at things on his way back to Kalen.

[So, spirit sight again.  TN4, Aiming for 2 succs so it lasts this time.  What do we need to keep WP for anyway..?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
[WP Diff 7 = Can we look at all the things?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace doesn't know what is really going on, aside from the word of Elijah, and "the flow of the world's break down" means little to her. She hasn't been perceptive enough to notice anything but a new, different resonance.

And so, as she wanders her way over, she pulls out her cell phone.

And then, Elijah starts dragging her elsewhere. "Hey, if it is, what are you going to do about it, huh? Punch the disease in the nose?"

She drags him right back. "Let me take a look at what's going on first?"

[Corr 1, Prime 1, Entropy 1, Forces, Matter, Life 1 -- WTF is Elijah Talking About? Diff 4, spending WP.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Dinner and a Show
The guy--we'll call him Derrick, because that's his name--smiles warmly, oh-so-friendly, and slips his arm around Alicia's shoulder.  "Come on.  I know the bartender, she makes this amazing thing with Agrum, vodka and a chili pepper.  I promise, you won't be disappointed."

And that's when he starts guiding her off the dance floor, toward the front of the place.

Meanwhile, Elijah is trying to advance forward to what's close to Alicia, trusting what he's already sensed.  Grace prefers to trust her own experiences and tries to pull Elijah back as she taps on her phone to pull up a read on her device.  Whether Elijah lets himself be yanked back is up to him, although they did at least get close enough to see Alicia and her sudden friend from behind.

Meanwhile, Alexander makes his effect last a little bit longer so he can solidify his vision of the spirit world (and the Restless Dead floating around the vicinity), and Kalen in the bathroom looks back in time.

Alicia
Only so much as she can feel them in the air can Alicia claim to know who among her acquaintances are here and it isn't as if resonances are exclusive to the caster. A couple weeks ago she'd met someone who felt like Elijah only stronger. Senses can lie to a person. So far as she can tell she's alone.

And it doesn't matter if her friends are here or not because the guy puts his arm around her shoulders and it's nice to be able to fit against someone's side like that and know they know nothing about you. At least she might rationalize it's nice if she were of her own mind. All she knows is she wants to go where he goes and the agrum vodka chili pepper situation sounds amazing and he's amazing too.

She puts her arm around his waist. Maybe she's drunker than she thought she was.

"I love chili peppers," she says.

They have to shout to make themselves heard over the music. Everything they say sounds more than a little inane.

Dinner and a Show
Grace's cell phone screen beeps with the data she's asking for, and it is a lot to process, or at least to read through quickly.  She gets an overview of the location with Correspondance, sees the full layout of the club in her mind.  The life...so much life around, though there is a distinct black hole where the man with Alicia stands.  Instead, the readings are similar to what Elijah mentioned.  It's strange...that form there is both completely lacking in the ability to break down and yet suffused with entropic energy, as you might imagine a disease of sorts.  It's not the same way you could necessarily feel a disease, breaking down the body.  It's more like entropic energy that is lacking in that vicinity isn't there only because it's concentrated, ready to pass itself onto someone else.  And then maybe to someone else.  And so on.

There is also, she detects, a strong sense around Alicia's emotional aura, like she's distinctly enamored of the man for some undiscernable reason.

Alexander
After sending a slightly vague warning to Kalen, Alexander pushes his will against reality once again.  There’s no hesitation this time – he’s already seen what’s here.  Or, rather, there; on the other side of the Gauntlet.  He wants the vision to last just a little longer this time.  So he focuses on the mirror.  Sees the other side of it come together under its surface and holds it there...

Once again, he sees the inside of the club with its extra customers and this time the vision is a lot stronger.  Not deeper, but longer-lasting.  And so he starts his journey towards the bathrooms.  There is a small detour, though – he wants a closer look at some of those spirits that he’s seen in the room.  There seemed to be something about them that he wants to get a closer look at.  So he scans the room, looking for the fastest way to get to the bathroom while getting that look.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen mutters a soft curse.  He pulls out his phone, frowns at Alexander's text, and then starts tapping at his phone as he walks out of the bathroom.

She was alive.  It let her live.  It let her forget.  It let her walk away.

He remembers a creature of malice.  Hunger.  Horror.  Flesh dripping off of its bones like melted wax.

He remembers saying that they needed to convince the Technocracy they weren't all threats.  Weren't, by virtue of being Awakened, monsters.

He remembers the taste of the grave.  Of death,

He remembers when the line between what was and was not a monster was so clear to him.

The truth is not so easily swept into bold lines now.  Arranged in neat rows.  It is still defined, but with edges like lacy fjords.  Rivers.  The curves in the leading edge of clouds.

He moves slowly toward a relatively clear space at the edge of the crowd, still tapping on his phone.

Grace
Alicia is in grave danger. For once, it appears not due to a Technocrat. No, we have something Else.

On her phone's screen is a mix of jumbled everything that only makes sense because she wants it to so badly. But the story it tells? That man, it looks like he has stopped himself in place, let the little cracks and fissures of imperfection well up like potential energy around him. Not breaking apart -- not yet. Waiting. Tensing up like the stress on a fault line.

And that decay-made-stasis is wanting to spread.

She goes to text messaging then. And Kalen gets a note.

There's a guy following Alicia around in here. She's waaaay more attracted to him than she should be. Need to get them separated pronto. He's v bad news. Danger = yes;

"That guy, with Alicia. He's the sick one," she says to Elijah. "She's... got some kind of spell on her or something? I don't know. She seems to like him a whole lot."

And why wouldn't a young girl like a handsome fellow like that, Grace? Who knows? Must be a spell or something.

Kalen Holliday
TXT: Trouble.  Trouble with fangs.  OMW - wait!

Elijah
"But Alicia's over there-" he insets as he follows along with Grace. He wasn't going to pull her any more than he already had, and the woman knew what she was talking about, but Elijah replied to this as though the fact that Alicia was across the room and somewhere was what made all of the difference in the world to him. He wasn't the jealous type, because they were just friends (were being the operative word. THey were friends, not are friends)

But, with that, Elijah let go of Grace's hand and muttered… something to himself. Words he tried to remember and hold onto desperately, the little bits of what-have-you that he had learned, that he still practiced and guarded jealously regardless of whatever happened.

"Well, let's go say hi to her, then," and with that, he headed over Alicia's way.

[Prime 1: is there magic going on here that I can… I don't know… maybe unweave?, diff 7 because he doesn't technically have his focus yet.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Dinner and a Show
Derrick grins when Alicia says she loves chili peppers, a slow, easy and amused expression, though to her it doesn't seem condescending in the slightest.  "Well, you're in luck then."  They're just off the dance floor and crossing to the front bar when something seems...off.  It's hard for Alicia to put finger on it, but Derrick's charm has dimmed, just slightly.  For a moment she might wonder what she's doing walking off with a stranger, but the moment passes.  The hold isn't quite as strong as a result though, and the reason seems to come from a familiar Resonance right behind them.

Derrick looks over his shoulder around at that moment, and she can feel him tense.  He looks directly at Elijah and if Elijah has never seen someone wish him dead, he's seen it now.  Derrick's lip curls and he starts steering Alicia toward one of the side exits.  "You know what, I've got a better idea.  Let's go get a drink somewhere else.  I know someone who does the chili pepper drink even better."

Kalen comes out of the bathroom and goes to the edge of the floor, where he can see Grace and Elijah further down along the edge.  Alexander comes into view near him as he approaches one of the spirits to get a closer look.  The ghostly young woman looks back at him with a forlorn stare, pale and lacking in color.  Dead eyes, pallid skin and completely bloodless.  He sees no obvious wounds in them, but it's not hard to guess by their pallor that they might have died due to blood loss.

Alicia
[WP: pull your shit together, woman]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Alicia
For a moment her common sense rears its head and tells her this isn't the hottest idea in the world. But this moment like every other moment in the world goes on its way and leaves her here and then she's back where she started. Enthralled with this man.

She tosses her hair out of her face when she realizes the stranger is looking back. She tries to look back too but his arm is across her shoulders. Even if she can't see him she knows he's there. Whether or not he realizes it she's pissed off at him. Whether or not she realizes it she's in danger.

Ignorance is only bliss in the moment. This one will pass just like the moment where she thought she might want to make a better choice. It isn't a choice she's capable of making. There are worse things out there than Technocrats and Alicia never learned to shield her mind from those who would try and hijack it.

"Okay," she says. A hint of hesitation before: "It's too loud in here anyway."

Off to the side exit they go.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen slips his phone back into his pocket.  He can see Grace and Elijah.  He takes a deep breath and murmurs softly, scanning over the rest of the crowd.  Is that thing still here?  Can he sense it?  Or its magic?

[Watch the Weaving: D=4]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 9) ( success x 2 )

Elijah
Derrick gave Elijah a look like he needed to curl up in a ball and die. And die quickly at that. Elijah, for his part, gave the man a knowing look. His eyes narrowed slightly and there was the move to the exit- a move that Elijah tried to head them off for, despite his lack of athletic prowess. Something told him that if Alicia made her way out the door, she wasn't going to be coming back any time soon.

Alexander
As he’s working his way around the club, Alexander feels his phone buzz in his pocket.  He fishes it out, reads the message, then rolls his eyes.  Also: friend?  Elijah?  Grace?  The other chaotic resonance in the room?

Alexander closes with the spirit of a woman who, he’s guessing, had died in the club.  He only knew a little about spirits – what he’d picked up from spending time with Alyssa – but that little included the habit of hanging around where they had passed away.  Sometimes.  As a guideline, maybe?  But this woman?  Seemed to have no inclination to go elsewhere.  No inclination to do anything at all.  He reaches out a hand as he passes, as if to touch her shoulder, and mouths, “I’m sorry,” to her.

Kalen?  The storm is closer now and he looks round to see him looking over the crowd.  He moves beside him, leaning in to whisper (yell?) in his ear.  “Do vampires exist?  Something’s been draining people dry in here.”

Grace
Alicia's over there, and Grace is over here still looking like any other weirdo with her phone out texting away at the club. Until Elijah starts over to say hi.

"Kalen says to wait!" she says, but doesn't go to grab for his hand, doesn't physically try to stop him. She knows how she'd react if someone were to try that on her, you know.

Still. What are you going to do about it, Elijah?

For Grace's part, she's got that Code up on her phone, has watched it, can see that whatever spell is wrapped around Alicia wavers in the chaos of Elijah's wake. Aha, so that's what you are going to do eh?

Well, no harm in trying a little of that too, right? Hopefully? To separate these symbols over here from these symbols over there, yes... She acts as though it is a strange game on her cell phone, her fingers tracing out lines of where she wants to block and prod and mess with.

[Prime 1: Get your hands off that Apprentice! Diff 4, spending WP!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Elijah
[Dex+athletics, because crowd surfing is not your expertise]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Dinner and a Show
Derrick the vampire (c'mon, we're pretty sure he's a vampire at this point) had the advantage before, but now he's getting ganged up on.  And while a vampire has any number of physical, spiritual and other threats at their disposal, the odds of numbers don't bode well for him when stacked up against a group of mages.  He has Elijah, brave and thinking only of helping Alicia, moving quickly through the crowd to cut him off.  He has Grace working against his mental powers to lift the spell from the young mage, for whom God only knows what his plans are.  (But they can't be good, right?)  And he has Kalen tracking him through the crowd--and track he does, as he sees the web of dark, decaying bands of a magic (of sorts) wrapped around Alicia, holding her to him.  They are falling apart, but they aren't there yet.

Derrick swears under his breath; he's done making this incognito.  He starts to move quickly, trying to get to the door and more or less dragging Alicia with.  "Come on," he half-growls, and Alicia can see fangs at his teeth now.  Being subtle took time, and slowed him down a bit.  It looks like he and Alicia are going to hit the door at about the same time as Elijah.

Alicia
[wp: uh oh]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Derrick's Str+Brawl]]

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

Alicia
With the door in sight she blinks once or else her senses come up out of the darkness and grab hold of her. No notion of how it is that the others have helped her to shake off whatever it is this guy did to her but they'll have time to debrief later if she can manage to get away.

The door is in sight and she realizes he's dragging her. That's when her sense of self-preservation finally kicks back on.

"Hey--!"

And he half-growls at her to come on and she sees a flash of teeth in his mouth that are longer than they're supposed to be more like the canines of a predator and her eyes go wide with a fright that threatens to paralyze her.

It doesn't paralyze her. She still has a voice and she can still struggle against him.

"GET OFF ME!"

[lol str+brawl]

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

Alexander
Kalen seems to have a direction in mind, tracking whatever he’s feeling for towards the exit.  Towards the debris-throwing resonance of Elijah and the strangely similar feeling of chaos emanating from a woman he’s not met before.  One thing stands out – a man has his arm around her and she obviously doesn’t want it to be there any longer.  He glances towards where Grace’s sharp, shifting resonance is coming from and she seems equally intent on the man.

Two and two, in this case, make for someone being dragged away against their will and a number of the other Mages taking an interest in stopping that from happening.  So he follows Elijah’s example and runs, as best as he can, through the crowd.

Alexander
[Dex+Ath - finally, something he's good at!]

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

Kalen Holliday
"Yes," he says to Alexander, his eyes on the dark bands of magic twining around Alicia.  "Has Alicia.  Dislikes fire.  Go.  I'll be right behind you."

[Forces 2/Entropy 2 - Dramatic speaker fail!  (We hope with sparks and wildness - but no catching sparks - hence the Entropy)  D=5 | WP]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Elijah
"What the fuck are you?" he sounds bewildered, but he made it to the exit at about the same time as Alicia and Derrick. Derrick the… vampire? What the fuck, that's a thing? He cocked his head to the side. For a second, Elijah was confused, but the confusion gave way to a plan.

"Look, dude, it doesn't even fuckin' matter what you are, because if you don't let go right now there's going to be some serious consequences, so I suggest that you rethink the current plan of action. She is the last person you want to fuck with in this club."

{Manip+intimidation?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 10) ( success x 1 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Fangy-fang WP]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Grace
Seems there is some benefit to whatever Grace is up to, in that Alicia is struggling, making a scene. Good. Good.

Grace looks up from her screen to the noise. Let's be frank, Grace knows what she's good at and what she isn't. Starting fights isn't that. Doing shit on her phone from a good safe distance? Sure.

So far, so good. But if this thing is running around starting shit by taking over people's minds, it might be a good idea to make sure she can continue doing shit from her phone from a good safe distance.

Shields up!

[Mind 1: Mental Shield, Diff 4, WP!]

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

Dinner and a Show
Alicia throws off her mental manipulation and suddenly sees things for what they are; she's being dragged out of a nightclub by a creature of the night, or at least some psycho with fucked-up teeth.  And as might be understandable, she tries to break free of his grasp.  There isn't much in her efforts though, try as mightily as she can, and he holds fast to her.

They're all converging on him now.  Before he can get out the door the speaker system above the door bursts into sparks, causing him to draw back with an instinctive hiss.  Elijah comes out of the crowd and gets up in his face, trying to intimidate him into backing off of Alicia.  It's not effective, but you really have to admire his willingness to throw himself into the face of danger, don't you?

Alexander comes up behind Elijah, having just broken out of the crowd and Grace starts weaving security measures around her mind.  Wise little VA.

In response to all of this, Derrick might be expected to act like an cornered animal might.  He's smarter than that though; he recognizes the danger he is in.  Or at least the potential for danger.  He moves to throw Alicia into Elijah so that he can flee.  This isn't a fight he particularly wants to do in the current odds.

Alicia
If the creature is going to throw her then she's more than happy to take the out but she isn't going to let Elijah catch her if she can avoid it. Not as if she's got a natural dancer's grace or the mass necessary to overcome his strength. But if she can't avoid hitting Elijah then she can at least push off of him the second she's got her own gravity back.

She gives a shout as he throws her and she's breathing hard and fast by the time she's released. Eyes wide and hands shaking. She has no idea what just happened or what almost just happened but as she looks around she sees three people she recognizes and one she doesn't and it doesn't matter how much she trusts or doesn't trust any of them. This isn't their fight. She doesn't look to them for help.

Must be she's done running away from people who can kill her.

"Hey, ASSHOLE!" she says before she goes after him.

Kalen Holliday
Init [+5]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Dinner and a Show
[[Init + 6]]

Alexander
[Init +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Dinner and a Show
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Grace
[Init + 6]

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

Elijah
He would have caught her, but she didn't seem too keen on being caught. Elijah inhaled sharply, reaching out to catch Alicia's arm at the very slightest.

"Alicia, wait!"

… what the fuck was he doing.[5+1d10}

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Alicia
[+5]

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

Dinner and a Show
[[Initiative Order!  We declare in reverse.

Grace - 12

Alicia - 11

Elijah - 9

Alexander and Derrick - 7

Kalen (due to tiebreaker of higher die pool) - 7]]

Kalen Holliday
[Go after vampire and Alicia.]

Alexander
[Let's take this outside - tackle through the door]

Dinner and a Show
[[Run out door]]

Elijah
[Try and keep Alicia from pursuing a freakin' vampire]

Elijah
{doing this via (drum romm) the world's shittiest graple)

Alicia
Well this is an unexpected development.

"Don't TOUCH ME, Elijah!"

She sees him moving to grab her and tries to get out the door before he can do so. If she loses sight of the guy who almost abducted her because Elijah wants to get handsy she's gonna be pissed.

[action: evade Elijah so she can continue following Derrick]

Grace
[[Tracking Vampire on Google Maps wheee]]

Elijah
[OMGpleaseno. Str+brawl]

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

Alicia
[dex + ath: WEE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace
[Corr 2, Prime 1, Mind 1: Tracking the vampy! Spending WP!]

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

Dinner and a Show
[Dex+Athletics]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander
[Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Alexander
[Dex+Ath to stay on his feet]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Dex+Ath to stay up]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander
[And some damage - str3 + 2..?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Soak]]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Dinner and a Show
[[One bashing halved to zero.  Damn vampires.  And Kalen runs out the door behind Derrick, Alex & Alicia!]]

Dinner and a Show
The door, as it turns out, leads into a side alley.  You might suspect that it's the kind of door that opening would set off a fire alarm, but it doesn't.  The alley that Alexander slams Derrick into,  both of their bodies crashing hard into the door and throwing it open, is about ten feet across and Alex's effort shoves the vampire hard into the other side, catching him off balance.

It's immediately after that Alicia, after evading Elijah's grap with an angry shout, pours out with Kalen racing out after her.  Elijah remains just inside (but can get out easily), while Grace is staying safely inside as she gets a bead on the fanged escapee.

Dinner and a Show
[[Same init order, reposting:

Grace - 12

Alicia - 11

Elijah - 9

Alexander and Derrick - 7

Kalen (due to tiebreaker of higher die pool) - 7]]

Kalen Holliday
[Run to open end of alley with the intent of blocking a vampire in if necessary - snatching up anything that looks like a good melee weapon on the way should such a thing exist.]

Alexander
[Leg sweep - stay down!]

Dinner and a Show
[[Vampy's getting angy.  Hissing in Alexander's face--WITH STYLE]]

Elijah
[Run outside! Being outside is good, right?]

Alicia
Once she's burst through the back door and skittered to a stop Alicia looks around and realizes she doesn't understand what's going on. The tough-looking guy with the UV-light wings on his shirt has jacked the other guy into the wall and she's not sure if he's going to arrest the guy or kick the shit out of him or--

Fuck. This is why she carries a purse everywhere. Alicia tears open the handbag's flap and rummages until she finds her switchblade. She doesn't intend to use it but this could turn bad real fast.

[action: draw weapon.]

Grace
[Extending!]

Grace
[Corr 2, Prime 1, Mind 1: Tracking the vampy! Spending WP! Extending!]

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

Dinner and a Show
[[HISS.  Cha+Intimidation vs. WP.  (It's supposed to be Wits+Courage but no Courage so WP it is. +1 diff due to being knocked off balance from tackle]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
[Sweep - Str/Brawl diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )

Alexander
[Dam - str+4]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Soak]]

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

Dinner and a Show
[[Dex+Ath]]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
[And WP for the intimidation.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
[Spending WP, that is]

Dinner and a Show
Grace keeps tracking from inside while Alicia pulls out her knife.  Alex does a nice sweep kick that nearly knocks the vampire to his feet but it comes as he's getting hissed at and suddenly he's possessed of an overwhelming fear and need to run, which he just manages to keep at bay.

Elijah is now outside and Kalen is blocking the exit, having found a lead pipe.  Congratulations, mages.  You've cornered a vampire!  [[New init, same order]]

Kalen Holliday
[Prime 2: Enchant weapon D=5 | WP | Q for effect]

Dinner and a Show
[[Split action: Punch Alex and run]]

Alexander
[Tackle again.  Stay.  Down.]

Elijah
[try and figure out what precisely he knows about vampires because WTF. Hopefully int+occult?]

Alicia
If Elijah's just going to stand there he's going to make himself useful.

"What do we do?" she asks with no small amount of panic in her voice. Holding onto the switchblade with the metal trembling for the force of her hand's shaking. Stabbing a goblin climbed out of a mirror is one thing. Stabbing a human is another.

[life 1: oh are you scared? better scan that Derrick motherfucker to see if he's high or something. base diff 4, -1 quint to lower diff, spending WP bc botching sucks.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
[Extending!]

Grace
[Corr 2, Prime 1, Mind 1: Tracking the vampy! Spending 3 Quint to drop it down! Extending!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 4) ( success x 2 )

Elijah
[Int+occult, diff 7]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Elijah
What does Elijah know about Vampires?

It turns out, he knows a surprising amount about vampires.

"That is an honest-to-God vampire," he starts, "unless you can bless that switch blade or maybe decapitate him then we're kind of in a weird way," he said. He was nervous, but he wasn't sure what to do. "Guys, we can't-you can't just-fucking- kill something in an alleyway."

[action: block vampire guy's exit in the event that he runs]

Elijah
"So, I say? We don't do shit."

Dinner and a Show
[[Vampire punches Alex.  -2 for splitting action.  BP has gone to Strength]]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dinner and a Show
[[Damage: Strength 3 +1 for BP + 2 for succ]]

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

Alexander
[Soak!]

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

Alexander
[Tackle this you little git]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
[Dex+Ath - staying on his feet?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

Dinner and a Show
Dex+Ath

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander
[Damage...  Str+3]

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

Dinner and a Show
[[Soak]]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday
[Prime 2| WP| Q]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Dinner and a Show
Grace tracks.  Alicia scans the man with her Life magic and sees nothing alive about him.  Elijah moves to block the alleyway alongside Kalen.

Meanwhile, Alexander and the vampire continue to fight.  Alexander gets a hard punch to the face that is certainly going to leave a mark and knocks the vampire back against the wall while Kalen enchants his lead pipe, empowering it to potentially become a lethal weapon.

Kalen Holliday
[Split action: give pipe to Alex//light cigarette]

Dinner and a Show
[[Pull out gun and point it at Alexander, then hold action.]]

Alexander
[Hands up, holding action]

Elijah
"If you shoot, the cops are going to show up, just walk away, dude. Nobody's gonna stop you."

[action: try and fast talk vampire into NOT SHOOTING PEOPLE]

Alicia
Alicia's eyes go wide and whatever thoughts she might have had about arguing for the rights of vampires to go on about their nights so long as they don't hurt anyone go out the window when the gun makes an appearance.

If y'all think Elijah is bad about not thinking before he speaks then y'all haven't seen Alicia not think before she acts. Or maybe this is Alicia doing something even stupider to try and trump the stupid thing Elijah is about to do.

She sprints forward to put herself between Alexander and the gun. The blade is an extension of her hand but she doesn't brandish it yet. She sounds terrified even as she's trying to be brave. What she really wants to do is hide inside with Grace but:

"LET HIM GO!"

[action: moving.]

Grace
[Extending again!]

[Corr 2, Prime 1, Mind 1: Tracking the vampy! Spending WP! Extending!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alexander
[Crap!  Hold Alicia and turn to put him between her and the nutter with the gun]

Dinner and a Show
[[WP]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Elijah
[Manip+sub]

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

Dinner and a Show
Derrick brings a gun to a fist fight--but then, it was about to become a pipe fight, and more than a pipe fight at that.  Either way, it instantly changes the complexion of the situation.

Alicia throws herself in front of Alexander and Elijah tries to talk the vampire into just going.  Alex, in terns, moves to turn Alicia and put himself between mageling and handcannon.  (Okay it's not a hand cannon, it's a Glock 18.  Still.)

And Derrick, for his part, doesn't shoot.  The situation frozen--at least, for this instant--he takes a few steps back, out of hand-to-hand combat range with the gun still raised.  [[His held action: step away.]]

"Jesus Christ.  That's all I've been trying to do, kid."  That's what he says to Elijah.

Kalen Holliday
[Hold action]

Elijah
[action: take a step away from the mouth of the alleyway]

"Could you put the gun down? Since nobody is going to do anything to stop you, there's no need to have it out, right?"

Alicia
All Alicia had wanted to know when she came tearing out the door after the guy is what the hell he thought he was doing. Now that she's gotten her answer the situation has gone beyond what he was going to do to her. The man who'd tackled the guy is over a foot taller than her and it takes no effort to scoop her off her feet and turn her around so she isn't making an ineffective human shield anymore.

Of course she starts wriggling and swearing like a pissed-off cat. She wants to keep her eyes wild as they are on the guy so nothing else catches her by surprise. Once the adrenaline wears off she's going to be in a bad way but it's still coursing metallic through her veins.

Her nostrils flare and her teeth grit when she hears Elijah's voice again. Total coincidence. Ignore the fact she's still got the blade in her hand.

Grace
Grace is the only one who's decided to wait inside, so she's the only one who doesn't yet know that somebody was far more prepared and brought a gun. She doesn't know that now might not be the best of times to wander over to the doorway and see what's happened.

So that's what she does.

Grace, looking bleary-eyed and unsteady comes across this scene: Alex is hugging Alicia, who looks incredibly pissed off about that. Kalen is smoking a cigarette at the end of the alley. Elijah is stepping away from the guy with a gun. Congrats, Elijah, on looking like the least crazed individual in their group.

"Ohh, shit."

Alexander
Alexander lets Alicia go and turns back to face the man with the gun, arms outstretched to the side.  He keeps his distance but keeps himself between Alicia and Derrick – she had been his prey, after all.  His breath is heavy and he’s still on edge, shoulders rising with each inspiration.  But he’s seen the aftermath of fights where someone pulled a gun before.  It doesn’t end well for the person standing on the wrong end of it.

So he stands there, watching the vampire warily.  Meeting his gaze, eye to eye, if the caution is mutual.  He works his jaw, feeling the pain and the ache where the bruising will show up in the morning, and spits a gob of blood onto the ground near him.  He doesn’t say anything, just gestures with his head that the man – what was a man – should leave.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen watches the vampire, eyes steady,  Smoldering.

But he does not move to stop it.  It just wants to leave.  He's outlived enough friends.  He's willing to let it go.  For now.

Dinner and a Show
Everyone's glaring at him or expecting him to shoot, imploring him to just go.  The vampire lowers his gun when it's clear that no one is about to try and kill him in that moment, then shakes his head.

"Word of advice.  Some of my kind who are far more willing to use lethal force own that club.  If I were you guys and wanted to keep breathing?  I would keep out of it.  I don't want to think about how many people have died in that place, and neither should you."

He keeps his distance as he maneuvers his way through the alley toward the exit.  Maybe he knows what they're capable of and maybe he doesn't, but he's apparently not willing to take the chance that they have some magical tricks up their sleeve.

Elijah
He meant well. That was all one could really say for him most days, that Elijah meant well even if his actions lacked wisdom. With little fanfare, he headed out of the mouth of the alley once Derrick left over to Alicia. he was concerned, his heart was beating too fast and he knew something wasn't quite right but he needed to figure out what it was. he could be a terribly perceptive creature sometimes, but some other times? He was practically clueless.

"Hey, you guys okay?" because he wanted to know, because he needed to know. He could check on the dead later, he could get more information later, he could find out what was going on later but right now he needed to be present and he needed to be in the now. Now had people who were injured.

Alicia
For the duration of the guy's words of advice Alicia stands in the tall man's shadow getting her breath back and staring at him. He doesn't look like vampires do in the old movies she used to watch. Or like how they were described in the old novels she's read curled up in library chairs pretending she didn't have to eventually leave.

Ignorance. Bliss. Blah.

Elijah asks if they're okay. Alicia sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes and folds the switchblade back up on itself. She's out of there a moment later herself.

Grace
Okay, so this is not one of those days when they just find themselves in the same place and have a good time is it? No, they just happened to all show up at the same night to a vampire club. Fan-fucking-tastic.

And now, she's really glad she got that lock on the dude. Magic trick up her sleeve? Hah. A bit too late to be careful about that.

She shuts the door behind her, because nobody in the club needs to know how close to deadly this just got, and walks over to Kalen to show him what she had been up to on the inside.

On her screen, there is what looks like Google Maps, or at least some kind of mapping program. She rolls her own half the time. But look here, there is a little blinking red dot -- and now it's on the move.

"Yeah, Alex? You good? Everybody good?"

Kalen Holliday
And then it offers them information.  Information that meant if it wasn't lying, it probably could have called for help and this would have gone very differently.  "Do you always let them go, like you did the girl earlier tonight?"  He keeps watching it, carefully.  But he's done with fighting for the evening, he's moved to judgment.  And in this case, perhaps something like forgiveness.  Or at least a stay of execution.  Perhaps.  

Alexander
For his part, Alexander stays pretty quiet while Derrick walks away.  There’s a physical sag, though, when he’s out of view.  Elijah is coming to look after Alicia; at least he’s assuming that’s who he’s interested in.  Alex has only met the man once and he hadn’t been overly sociable at the time, so it’s pretty unlikely that he’s the one Elijah is worried about.

So he walks to the side of the alley and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes and running his tongue around his mouth to make sure his teeth were all present and correct.  Nothing missing or loose, his eyes open again and he looks over to Kalen.  “So how was that for a first outing?”  Of two thirds of their little cabal, he means, trying to make light of what just happened.

The adrenaline starts to wear off and he sinks down the wall to sit on the ground.

Elijah
She rolls her eyes and leaves, folds his switchblade up and Elijah finds himself standing in the alleyway. He didn't have anything to say, anything to really think until…

It hits him precisely why Alicia might be mad at him, and it's the last thing that he wants to do but he doesn't stick around and the young man turns around to pursue. This is a bad plan. This is a terrible plan but he can't let her walk away just yet and-

"Alicia, wait, let me explain, please?" he tried to follow. tried being the operative word.

Dinner and a Show
He stops to look at Kalen, and offers something a little like a nod, a little like a shrug.  "I always try.  I won't try to say I'm always successful, but it's been a long, long time since I lost control and...lost someone."

He pauses there, smiles slightly.  "Seriously though.  I'd get a couple blocks away at least, before they start peeking outside and wondering what you're all about.  You don't want to catch their interest."  The gun is dropped to the ground and he walks away.

Alicia
She at least waits until the exchange between Kalen and the vampire is over before leaving. She doesn't want to leave before her almost-captor does. So she is not screaming over anything when she does start screaming.

But she starts to walk off and Elijah asks her to wait and she spins back around. Adrenaline dying off and leaving a rancid tang in the back of her mouth. Clung to her teeth like too much sugar.

"FUCK YOU, Elijah!" she says. Her voice is tremulous. Her eyes are not shining yet but they start to as the tirade goes on. She points her folded-up blade at Alexander: "I don't even know who that guy is, but he knows my name, and whatever you told everyone about my dad, and I don't even wanna LOOK AT YOU right now! I TRUSTED YOU." She starts to walk away but then figures she'd better sling one more insult at him before she leaves: "ASSHOLE."

Very mature, guys.

She kicks the gun aside as she leaves the alleyway.

Kalen Holliday
[Per+Subterfuge - Are you for real like some kind of humanitarian vampire? | One last WP because this is important]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [WP]

Kalen Holliday
The vampire gets a faint nod from Kalen.

And then Kalen turns and pulls Alexander back to his feet, or at least tries.  "Not bad at all," he says.  "My first one of those I didn't handle half so well.  Come."  And then he looks over at Grace.

"We'll talk about that soon, Kit.  But...brilliant."

Alexander
I'd get a couple blocks away...

With a sigh, Alexander hauls himself back up with Kalen’s help.  Facing one vampire who just wanted to get away is one thing.  Facing up to possibly more with nothing against leaving blood stains in the alley, beyond the waste of food?  That would be bad, especially with two of them already heading out of the alleyway.

“What was all that about?”  He nods towards the open end of the alley, where Alicia and Elijah had disappeared.  “They a couple or something?”  He begins to head in the same direction, along with the others.  His jacket was still in the cloakroom, but it didn’t have anything of any importance in it.  And given the warning, he had no intention of walking back in to pick it up.

“I’m suddenly not in the mood for dancing any more.  Coffee somewhere?  Preferably far away from here.”

Grace
"Alex, when I can finally convince you to obtain a certain redhead, you will understand."

Grace shrugs at Elijah. Sorry man, but you know, that was bound to happen some time. Even if Grace had done nothing. Hell, especially if Grace had done nothing. Eventually Alicia would get Ginger too, and then what?

"And yeah, we need to get the fuck out. Coffee? Is... okay. I need some," she says, but then she also doesn't look particularly pleased about the choice of going to a coffee shop. They're cursed. As are nightclubs. Why the hell doesn't something ever happen in a bookstore?

Elijah
"I didn't tell everyone everything about you, Jesus, I tried to get help and shit lot of good that did," he replied with exasperation. defensive, because he's had to be defensive for the past week. He pursued, because he wasn't going to just let her walk away. He wasn't going to let this lie, and he wasn't going to take the opportunity for her to hang up on him.

Walk him into traffic, maybe, but not hang up on him. Not avoid him. Not avoid this argument because there had to be something he could do to fix this. Naive thing that he is, thinking there's some way to repair trust so easily, that some things aren't damaged forever.

"I know I hurt you, and if I could take it back, I would, but I can't. That's the last thing i wanted to do, I swear-"

My, this was awkward. There was a vampire down the way, and a club full of people and the restless dead licking at his attention but all Elijah could think of was how he had fucked things up with Alicia.

[per+aware, how do I fix this?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Kalen Holliday
"Fae...."  He sighs.  "Go back to the church.  This is not a fight you can have here."

He nods to Grace and Alexander.  "I could make us coffee."  He turns to Alexander with a very slight smile.  "Then you could even clean up with soap that doesn't smell like lilacs.  And maybe have some ice for that."

Alicia
If Elijah thinks she's going to turn around and come back again he is sorely mistaken. She almost turned into dinner for a humanitarian vampire and then she tried to run between a complete stranger and the barrel of a gun. It's time for her to go back to wherever it is she's been sleeping lately. Nobody but Kalen knows she's been outside the city. Maybe he can guess where she lays her head these nights.

She's walking her ass back towards the light rail station. And Elijah is hurling words down the street without an answer.

Other than the middle finger that she holds aloft for him to see. But she doesn't have to turn around to flip him off. She turns the corner a moment later.

Elijah
My, this was awkward, and it was an argument they couldn't have in public. Hell, it was an argument they weren't ever going to have. He just watched as she walked away. She just kept walking away. For the first time in over a month, it would seem that Elijah was listening to someone. Head hung, he nodded.

"Yeah, okay Kalen," and, with that he headed to the parking lot to pick up his motorcycle and drive home.

Alexander
“I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s away from here and sells something vaguely caffeinated.  With something sugary.  Pie, maybe?”  He nudges Kalen with his elbow.  He watches Alicia and Elijah argue as she walks away and he follows after, ever the optimist.  Part of him keeps an eye on them – on her – to make sure she makes it away safely.  The other part?  Wishes they’d stop arguing already and stop drawing attention to themselves.  It’s not like there’s a potential nest of homicidal and hungry vampires close by, after all.

Wherever Kalen happened to park, Alex will follow along.  He was always planning to drink tonight, so his bike is tucked away at home.  Coffee awaits, somewhere far from here.