to be better people. [alexander]

Kiara Woolfe
So, here is our scene: it's a motel room. The curtains are mostly drawn but for a gap where they don't quite meet in the middle, a chink where the light spills across the gap between two double beds. Alexander is laid out on one, the other has rumpled sheets as if it had been slept in but its occupants had long since left.

The room smelled faintly the way motels do, like old smoke and detergent and too much starch on the bed sheets. An old TV set in the corner, a fridge and kitchenette, a bathroom with the door half opened and towels on the floor. At some point in the last few hours, somebody had showered. The room clung to the stronger aroma of motel shampoos.

Those ridiculously small, cheap bottles.

What else is felt is: resonance. Serafine's lingers in the walls here and another, too. Fainter, traces of something stoic, psychedelic (Jim). Alexander's rescuers had no idea why Serafine chose this place, why she has a room paid up in cash here - perhaps Alexander does, perhaps he knew the Awakened that would come out here to the outskirts, with nothing but drive through chains and semi trailers in the parking lot.

-

It's late, middling to early, the light that trickles through the window is faint and pale gold. The sort dawn offers. Outside the snow has stopped falling for a moment but there's a crispness to the air; it's cold enough that the figure sleeping in a chair across the room has a blanket curled around her.

That Alexander's still form had been likewise covered.

There's a gurney pushed against a far wall; a black bag (a body bag?) folded over it. A medical kit on the table beside the sleeping woman in the chair.

And her: rejuvenation. Pulsing energy.

-

Wherever Alexander was now, it felt miles from a sterile room in a Union facility.

Alexander Brandt[WP, just because it might make a difference to what I'm writing.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander BrandtAlexander is slow to wake.  It’s not the first time in recent memory that he’s climbed out of a drug-induced unconsciousness, although this one was maybe deeper – harder to pull away from.  For all intents and purposes, he had been dead to anyone who saw him.  Oh, he had been warned that there were plans for his release.  But he had thought there would have been some kind of warning when it finally came down to it.  Some drug slipped into his cell for him to swallow, waiting for him to finally commit to whatever plan had been put together.  But those thoughts were a long way away, just at this moment.

He had been resting on his cot, meditating and daydreaming as his endless amounts of free had allowed him to do, searching for some kind of freedom.

Now, as consciousness approaches in fits and starts, it’s the sounds of the room that come to notice first.  The hum of the fridge, the banging of the pipes from the next room over.  Some vague rumbling, maybe a nearby highway and the flow of traffic along its asphalt surface.  They’re ordinary, mundane, run-of-the-mill sounds.  But they seem important.  Why are they important?

Alexander dips back into unconsciousness again for some amount of time.  How long?  Who the hell knows, he’s lost track of so much over the past months.  But it is a dip, and the curve back up into wakefulness bends a little higher.  This time, there’s more sensation.  There’s something familiar about the beige scrubs he still wears, but the feel of the mattress under him and the blanket over...

He finally tries opening his eyes.  The light is, thankfully, dim.  The light passing through the curtains, an occasional ray of light passing through the chink in the curtains from a nearby neon sign, it isn’t a shock.  Alexander lies motionless, just staring at the curtains.  Thought still feels a little disconnected from body, but it’s slowly coming together...

Memory comes slamming back, and it’s almost a physical thing.  The meeting at his station, his brief waking only to be shot down again...  the repeated counselling, the invasion of his mind... 

There’s a moment of panic when he thinks that this might all be some sort of game.  (Still might be!)  A moment which pushes him up from the bed, pushing the blanket back which bangs against a lamp on the bedside table and knocks it crashing to the floor.  A moment where he almost rushes for the door, breaking for freedom.  He isn’t completely lost to the panic, though.  The window, the crack in the curtains, is enough for right now.  Rather than the door, it’s the rest of the way to the window that Alexander rushes.  He stands there, pulling the curtains back to look out at the world.  Breath catches in his throat, and he doesn’t realise that he’s holding it.

Kiara WoolfeThe lamp crashing to the floor startles the woman in the chair to wakefulness. She'd been dozing, rather fitfully, for the last few hours. She doesn't make any sudden movements, the brunette, but rather watches with a half frozen sort of tension as the Orphan rushes to the window.

Drags the curtains back.

Sees: a Jack in the Box. Semi trailers and trucks and what must have passed for a swimming pool attached to the motel when the weather was warmer. Now, the tarp was covered in a fine layer of snow. The fence around it had a sign that declared it was closed for the winter. The world outside this room seemed: normal. Utterly unchanged. Cars speeding by and the low buzz of a TV in the next room over; footsteps banging overhead.

There's a rustle of clothing and the brunette in the armchair sits forward. The blanket sliding off her shoulders, revealing scrubs not so different to the ones Alexander found himself still wearing - the last vestiges of the disguise Kiara had adopted to rescue the Orphan.

"Welcome back."

There are dark circles beneath the Verbena's eyes; her hair a wild tangle around her features. She looks: drained, the pagan. But alert. If she's some hallucination, if this all was some new trick to beguile him into believing what was happening: it felt very real.

Down to the stale coffee resting on the table beside Kiara. "You're okay, Alexander. We got you out. This place is safe. They can't find us here."

A beat: "How do you feel?"

Alexander Brandt[WP, same reasons]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander BrandtThe window reveals that little corner of the world, with its ordinary burger joint and its ordinary trucks and ordinary trailers and its ordinary weather and it’s all perfectly ordinary and mundane.  The sky – god, the sky, the sight of the dawn above this shithole town somewhere on the outskirts of the city... If he hadn’t been holding his breath, still hasn’t realised that he has, it would have caught then.  Both hands resting on the glass, Alexander rests his forehead on the glass and just looks out.

Looks out, at least, until there’s a sound from behind him.  Something soft that, the movement of clothing and the slip of a blanket, but from Alexander’s reaction it would seem like something closer to a gunshot.  He turns, swinging round on the spot, to place the noise.  There’s someone there, a figure dressed in scrubs.  The same scrubs he’d seen after waking the second time, surrounded by guards with a medic disconnecting him from a fluid drip.  There’s tension in his frame, something wild and uncaged and ready to spring.  For Kiara, or for freedom.  Fight or flight.

Welcome back.

There’s some familiarity that halts him.  Some part of his unconscious or subconscious or some other part of him buried beyond his control.  This isn’t some faceless medic, some unknown person sent to repair or monitor or... There was a familiarity in the voice and the movement, in the resonance coming from her and, hell, even from the resonance woven into the walls of the room.  It was all familiar, and it did feel real.

So Alexander doesn’t charge her, doesn’t leap for the door.  There is an exhalation, heavy and sharp, as his body’s need to breathe finally wins out and as it starts to really register through the dregs of whatever substance had been running through his body.  The tension is still there, he’s still prepared, but there’s pause as his eyes dart from her face to the surroundings.  The gurney and the body bag...

“I know you.”  Consideration begins to slip into his eyes, pupils wide and eating in the light.  Alexander hadn’t had a massive amount of contact with Kiara, but there had been some.  “Horse.  Right?”  The tension slips a little more, although the movement of his shoulders gets a little more rapid.  There’s a break in the eye contact as Alexander looks around the room, checking the parts that he hadn’t noticed in the moments since waking, before meeting her gaze again.

“I...”  A simple question, asking how he feels.  Four simple words.  The answer, not as simple.  “...don’t know.”  There’s another break in the eye contact, a studied look down at his hands, which he bunches into fists to check the old scabs on the knuckles.

Kiara WoolfeI know you.

Kiara's dark eyes rove his features, there's a sort of captured tension to the way they do, her body poised there on the edge of the armchair.

Horse, right?

There's a flicker of some quiet release there; a loosening of tension around her mouth; drawn into furrows across her brow. "Right." A smile edges across the female's lips and she rises from the chair, turning to idly fold the blanket over the arm. The pagan's clothing is faintly rumpled and her hair is perhaps a little longer since the last occasion they'd had to meet.

He doesn't know how he feels. Kiara seems to have been expecting about as much, when she straightens and turns back to face him, her expression reads a clear amount of empathy (perhaps too, this was another reason it was her here, now, when he awoke and not her partner in crime for this rescue).

The healer had, among her virtues (depending on who you asked), a good dose of bedside manner.

He's examining the old wounds on his knuckles. Kiara's eyes drop to them, she makes some quiet noise, a hm of recognition. "Right. Your knuckles. We didn't heal them for you. We could have, but - I figured once we knew you were okay, it was better to let you sleep off the drugs in your system."

Softer. "They dosed you up pretty well." Tinged with anger, though. There's a tremor of it that twinges at the edges of Kiara's words. She pushes the fall of her hair over her face. Moves toward the tiny kitchenette and detaches a coffee pot, holds it under the sink and begins to fill it up. Continues to speak, too, as if her voice could fill up the voids in his memory, could coax his lingering uncertainty out and replace it with something rooted in memory; strengthened with familiarity.

"Are you hungry? Serafine set all of this up. There's coffee and - " Kiara sets the pot on, turns and leans into the sink for support. "A lot of alcohol, shockingly." A brief smile. A thread of something perhaps he can catch hold of.

Serafine. Her propensity for everything in abundance. Stocking this room up with what was needed by her estimations. "We weren't absolutely sure how long you'd be out but I wanted to be sure someone was here when you woke up. In case you had questions ... " Kiara's eyes tick back to him.

Alexander BrandtKiara begins to move around, to tidy a little, as Alexander studies his hands.  Nothing had changed, they had been slowly healing since... They had been slowly healing.  As the body does, repairing itself after damage.

We didn’t heal them for you. 

It was no small thing to twist the world to fix the body, he’d seen it often enough to know that it was possible.  But these wounds were small and already well on their way to healing.  He rubs his hands absent-mindedly as he turns back to the window.  The room is cool, given the weather outside and the cheap way the place had been put together, but he still opens the window.  Enough to let the cold air flow through and into the room, and it’s a moment that brings Alexander’s eyes closed again.  Another simple thing, another ordinary sensation, but one that he hadn’t felt in months.

They dosed you up pretty well.

There’s a pause, there.  They’re facing away from each other – him towards the window, her towards some part of the kitchen.  Alexander’s mouth opens, taking a breath as if to speak, but no words follow.  The breath turns into a sigh, and it seems that her words go unremarked.

They had both changed since their last encounter in the park.  Her hair had grown a little, and so had his.  The scruff around his jawline had grown a little – it hadn’t been shaved back too long ago – and his hair had grown out.  A fringe draped down, tucked back behind his ears where it would reach.  But, more noticeable, was how much less of his there was than before.  He had been fairly solid, could have been an imposing figure if he put his mind to it.  But he’d lost weight, that much was obvious under the scrubs.  Alexander turns at the question about whether he’s hungry, and he turns towards the little kitchen.  Resting back on the sill of the window – still content to feel the bracing cold breeze blow over his back – there’s another pause.  Another flash of wariness, but it’s something that subsides again quickly.  She attempts a little humour, but it doesn’t get a reaction from him.  Too soon, maybe.

“Yeah, I’m hungry.”  There’s a glance down at the floor, maybe something unvoiced, before a question does surface.  “How is... everyone?”

Kiara WoolfePerhaps it will seem strange to him, once he's had time to process everything that happened. To hear the story told from varying angles. The rescue. The risks taken. Perhaps the reality that Andrés and Kiara had offered to be the ones to go in and reclaim him. At least, as far as the latter went, there seemed no good reason why she'd have done it.

Put herself into a situation like that for a man she barely knew. Knew enough, maybe. Trusted not to be her enemy.

Maybe it will be enough to convince him that whatever side of whatever sort of war they might have been dragged into fighting, the brunette standing across from him is on the same side. Maybe it will, but - it's too soon for that. The edges are too raw, bruised and tender and sharp-pressed upon.

Her attempt at banter passes over him and she doesn't, for what it's worth, press the issue. Seem offended. Merely waits for a beat, studying him with those fathomless eyes of hers before they too pass away and she nods, once. Breathes out sharply.

Decisively. He was hungry. Appetite was a good sign.

She turns toward the refrigerator and pulls the door open, there's some rummaging around inside; the rustle of a plastic bag and then a small plastic container comes out. One of those take away sandwich kinds with pre-cut triangles of bread inside. There's a handful of candy bars in the Verbena's other hand and she sets it all down for a beat: opens the container and studies the neat little prepackaged triangles.

Turkey and rye and who knew what.

How is ... everyone?

All he can see when he asks is Kiara's back; the set of her shoulders, the line of her neck. Can sense the pause, though. Can likely see it, the way you can sometimes. The natural consideration of a complicated answer: "Everyone is okay. Mostly." She turns with the container in hand, carries it over to him. Some twist of humor when she says: "I can't vouch for the nutritional value in that."

Alexander works for the Department, he's likely seen worse.

"Worried about you, but - they're good. You can ask them yourself soon enough." She folds her hands into the pockets of the scrubs. Hooks her thumbs at the edges. "This motel room is warded, you can stay here as long as you like. If you need time to process everything. I sent word out last night that we had you."

She frowns down at the worn carpet. "We'll probably have to get everyone together, figure out what comes next. But - " She lifts her eyes, gestures at the sandwich. "You should eat. Regain your strength."

Alexander Brandt[Int+Med]

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

Alexander Brandt[Arete, Time 1, sensing Time.  Base diff 4, +2 because meditation is a new instrument for him.  -1 for Flowing resonance, as it fits with his paradigm?  So winging it.  But lookee, new dice!  WP, because.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Alexander BrandtThe world, with all of its boring mundanity seems somewhat surreal.  Unreal.  Not quite as remembered, maybe.  But it’s something that Alexander seems to cling to, right now.  The simple sensation of flowing air, of the cold – he’s shivering now, but he doesn’t make any move to close the window or grab a blanket to cover himself more – is important.  Not wonderful, although that might be debatable at another time, but certainly grounding.  Little anchors that hold him in place.  In this place.

Kiara works in the kitchen, putting coffee on to brew and fishing through the kitchen for something vaguely edible and nutritious.  Alexander has turned back to the window, looking out of it without really seeing much of anything.  He focuses on the sensation, the flow of air around him.  It’s a tool to clear the mind, as much as clearing the mind is a tool for something else.  There’s one way that Alexander has changed, and it’s one that might not have been noted too strongly by Kiara so far.  It didn’t seem to be any surprise, though – there had been no suspicion that he wasn’t who they (he?) thought that he was.  But that sensation of things being Frozen was no longer there.  No slivers of a moment hanging in the air.  No glacier in the mountains.

No, the glacier had melted.  As Alexander reaches for the first time in way too long, there’s a feeling of reality rearranging itself slightly as his Will pushes against it.  Somewhere alongside the pulsing, rejuvenating landscape of Kiara’s presence, there runs a river.  Something intrinsically elemental and moving and changing and Flowing and ultimately Boundless.  Without beginning.  Without end.  Alexander reaches out, no longer confined by the perfected work of the Union lining the walls and sucking any trace of dynamism and change out of the air.  He reaches out into the flow of Time and stands there, motionless, as he lets it wash over him.  He had been without a specific time for so long.  There had been some hints, towards the end, but now...  Now he knew exactly when he was.  Another anchor cast out.

Alexander stands there motionless, as Kiara gathers her words and begins to speak.  The Work, standing in that flow of Time, is almost overwhelming after so long.  The connection, right now, seemed so much stronger than it had before.  Not, exactly, as if he had more control over it.  More...  More like that very first day awake, when everything had seemed to have a little more colour to it, and a little more depth.

He is listening, though, and feels her approach.  She might notice the shivering, now, the hairs standing up on his bare arms to trap what heat they can there.  Alexander sounds almost distracted – he is distracted – but asks, “Mostly?”  He can imagine who wouldn’t be ok.  Kalen, probably.  Kalen, ready to tear the world apart.  And Grace?  The last time they had spoken, they hadn’t parted on the best of terms.  Now, at least, there was the chance to put that right.

Kiara holds the sandwich out, and a few moments after Alexander notices and turns.  There’s an attempt at a smile, something grateful, but it’s forced.  Something habitual, but not quite empty inside.  The plastic wrapper is taken and one of the triangles pulled out.  Half of it disappears into his mouth, and he turns again to look out of the window as he chews.

There’s a pause, between mouthfuls.  “What comes next?”  There’s another pause, mouth open ready to speak, but the thought is gone again.  Another comes.  “Do I just get on back to my life?”  The rest of the triangle hangs in air, held part way to Alexander’s mouth.

Kiara WoolfeThe Verbena's sensitivity to the energies, to the base elements that made up the Tapestry; wove magicks together has grown stronger over the last several months.

The pagan's affinity for Primal workings have left the traces of her presence as a far more potent thing. The sense of Kiara, the wash of her essence is palatable. They often said it, about those Awakened who trained in the use and manipulation of Quintessential energies - that they began to radiate that very sense of Otherness that separated them from the Sleepers around them.

It had already been there, about the earth witch. That particular sensation she brought with her into a room. The way she stirred the hackles of a neighborhood dog being walked. The turn of those dark eyes of hers toward you.

The curl of blood red lips.

Now, it simply felt a little clearer, she would need to work a little harder to mask herself from those who would be drawn to it (her). Alexander's presence has grown stronger, too. The sense and shape of his Working as it flows out and cascades over the motel room; the tendrils of his casting. The Verbena's head tilts just so.

The hairs on her arms rising.

She moves away, after a moment, fetches two cups of steaming coffee. Makes some brief apology about the lack of milk. She holds her cup between her palms and blows on it to cool the contents before she takes a tip; swallowing and glancing at the Orphan as he asks a question.

The question, really.

There's some flash of empathy, perhaps even pity, there before she replies. Eyes on her coffee, on the heat rising from it. "Do you think you'd be able to? Just - go back to everything. I may hate everything they stand for, but - the Union isn't dumb. They'll figure out what we did, the question is: what will they do about it?

The Police Station, your apartment. They probably aren't safe right now." Kiara's eyes find his. "Ginger's gone. Grace confirmed it. She's covering what needs to be covered, but - anything we had linked to it, has to go.

I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers. We got you out. That was what mattered. Whatever happens next, whatever we have to do. We'll figure it out. For now - " The Verbena breathes out sharply, sets her coffee cup down behind her. "I think you should stay here. At least until I can contact the others. Bring them here.

We can decide what needs to be done." The Verbana reaches out, tentatively, to set a hand on Alexander's arm. Wordless comfort, perhaps, if allowed.

Alexander BrandtAlexander’s push against reality went a little further than he’d hoped.  It was intended to be a momentary thing, something grounding.  The effect lingers, though, the feeling of tide and flow and change clinging on for a while longer.  It’s a reassuring presence in the background.  Like some sort of supernatural comfort blanket.

Coffee is brought over, with a comment about the lack of milk.  It’s something that is waved off, unimportant.  Even if he had been a stranger to black coffee, this isn’t important.  It isn’t a problem.  The plastic packet with its single remaining triangle of industrially-produced sandwich is set on the sill, freeing his hands up to take the cup from Kiara when it’s offered.  The steam rises, curling in the cold draft, and it’s something Alexander watches before taking a sip from it.  It’s something else, something simple, that grabs his attention.

Another pause, as steam rises and time flows and the life of the city continues outside the small motel room.  It’s time to think, to arrange words into something resembling order; time to find something to say that won’t catch.  His reply to the question:  “Maybe.”  There’s doubt in his voice, but there isn’t an automatic rejection of the possibility.  Maybe it was something he could regain: that ordinary part of his life, that something that grounded him.  As to what they will do?  There’s silence there.  A second, two, three and then simply: a shrug.

Kiara tells him that his place, his work, aren’t likely to be safe.  Another shrug.  Ginger is no more, and that gets a curious look.  But, again, nothing more.  There’s nothing more to be said.

Alexander shows some doubt when Kiara says that he should stay here.  There’s a flash of something feral, there; a flash of something that doesn’t – won’t be – caged.  One set of walls won’t be swapped for another; one jailer for another.  This isn’t an instruction, though – something with threat and force behind it – but just a suggestion.  He gives a brief nod as Kiara suggests bringing others here.  It’s probably safer, for the moment.  At least until certain things are a little clearer in his mind.  Certain, large questions that have yet to be asked, let alone answered.  He does make a request, though.  Clothes.  Something he can wear, maybe so these fucking things can be burned.

There’s a touch at his arm, and it draws out another intake of breath.  How long since a touch had been anything other than...  The breath is shuddering, stuttering, as it draws in.  His cup of coffee is clumsily set on the sill, knocking the plastic container and making it fall on its side.  And then?

And then Alexander turns and wraps his arms around her and, eyes closed and clinging onto her as if she were the last person alive, he remembers a fragment of a conversation.

We need other people to be better people.

Kiara Woolfe[Just cuz! Life 2, Coincidental. Base Diff 5, -1 (Resonance), -1 Quint.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kiara WoolfeThere were questions that still needed answers.

Questions for Alexander that he'd have to find answers for, search his memory for about the facility he'd been taken to; the interrogations and conditioning they'd subjected him to. There would be questions he needed answers for, too. From them. Questions that, right now, the Verbena who stands across from him with her warm dark eyes and gentle touches cannot answer for him.

There were, after all, reassurances that weren't hers to give.

No matter how badly she wishes she could.

Kiara Woolfe was a healer, by calling as much as trade. Fixing and mending what was broken was what she did and she did it, often, without any pretension of gratitude being returned her way. Didn't always expect or necessarily need it. She believed, the pagan, wholeheartedly in the righteousness of the Cycle. In what was natural and needed and balanced in the universe. Life was not made to be lived without risk, without bruising and tearing.

Humanity would never be a creature without flaw. That was the infinite value and heartbreak of them.

And they were, at their core: not so removed from humanity, these Awakened, that they did not break and bend just as surely.

Alexander wraps his arms around her and there is a moment of surprise; a quiet expression; a small, startled noise that rises in the brunette's throat before her arms curl around the Orphan. Before she slides her palms over his back and there's a flood of soothing energy, after a beat. Kiara's touch seeping beneath the scrubs he wears; infusing his bones and muscles and skin with a tingling; spreading warmth.

Soon enough, the chill he'd felt is forgotten.

"It's okay." She murmurs into his shoulder. And, at least in the moment, it's easier to believe it may be. "It's going to be okay."

daring rescue mission. [andres, liz ST]

The Dice:

Sepúlveda

1) APPEARANCE + CRAFTS

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Sepúlveda

2) WITS + TECHNOLOGY THE FIRST

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

Sepúlveda

2a) REROLLING THAT IS BULLSHIT

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6) ( fail )

 Sepúlveda

-_-

I'm rerolling one more time. If he botches this he deserves whatever happens.

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Sepúlveda

Okay whatever dude enjoy your trip to Room 101.

3) WITS + TECH THE SECOND

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Sepúlveda

4) WITS + SCIENCE

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Sepúlveda

5) This is either Manip + Subt or Char + Expression and he doesn't have either Ability. WHEE.

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

 Sepúlveda

... are you serious?

Sepúlveda

6) WITS + MEDICINE assuming "Frankensteinian Technique" is not an applicable Specialty.

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Sepúlveda

Okay that's it.

kenna

Witnessing ALLA this.  Including that goddamn botch, Doc.

Kiara

[Okay! Firstly, let's get the magicky stuff done.

[Life 2: Cosmetic Alterations, Vulgar Without Witnesses, Base Diff 6, -1 Focus, -1 Taking her Time, -1 Quint, maaay extend.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Kiara[Extendin'. Earn that Paradox, Kiara.]

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

Kiara

[Once more, since we're going all out. You only invade the Techocrats once.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Kiara[Int + Computer, first roll]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kiara[Int + Computer, second roll]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Kiara[Manip + Subterfuge. I can't even.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Kiara[And the second! Not leaving this to chance. ALL THE WP.]

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

Kiara[Wits + Medicine, this one at a +1 Diff]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Kiara[Annnnd, one more Wits + Med, this one at regular diff.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Kiara[Okay! That's it, so she's successfully transformed herself for the scene and also earned *squint* I think about 3 Paradox.]

AndrewWitnessed!

amaranth
They disperse, each to their chosen task.  Within a handful of days, a week, perhaps a fraction more, they return with thoughts, ideas, answers.   A location; not simply a magickally protected void in the city map, but a target - a certain wing, underground.  A number: for both subject and study.  Knowledge of something else (a change) of which they were unaware.  The ward number; the room number.  A date certain when routines will be disrupted enough to ensure that strangers.

An ally whom neither Kiara nor Andres have met or will meet, but who has provided the with security badges, names and clearance; transfer orders for a certain subject.  Parking passes for the underground garage.  They are informed that the subject will be sedated, as any would for a land-transfer.  They must make arrangements to remove him without drawing undue scrutiny.   This is a highly classified project, so few have access to the wing.  Once the subject is removed, the records will be scrubbed.  Agent Weston has already received his own transfer orders.

To Novosibirsk.

This is what they have; and little more.

amaranth(Note:  dice are in emails!)

amaranthThe staff of the laboratory, hospital wings, and offices of Amaranthine Labs at the Colorado School of Public Health were officially notified that all were expected to report for their regular shifts (day or night) on a certain day (Tuesday, March 15, 2016) or night mid-week (Wednesday, March 16, 2016) when operations deemed the disruption to normal routines and potential impingement on the ordinary life of the public to be at its lowest point.  No one, of course, was given the exact time of the drill, nor the precise nature of the emergency that would be simulated on that date.   The memorandums were terse but perfectly clear.  The directive came from levels within the organization high enough questioning the order might have drawn the wrong sort of attention: so there was grumbling, but nothing beyond a few sarcastic jokes over whatever passed for a water cooler among their kind.

--

Kiara and Andres have a much tighter target.  That is, if the information in the packet left in a waterproof envelope taped to the interior of the toilets in the lady's room at Zook's Coffee and Ice Cream (which: what the fuck?) can be trusted.    Inside:  a very small gadget.  Three identification badges, another small gadget with a hook-hanger that clearly suggests the shape and form of a parking pass hung from a rearview mirror.  Instructions (written, not drawn) regarding lab access.  Date-and-time suggestions that mirror the dates of the emergency drills of which Grace learned (seemingly) independently.  A set of transfer orders for Subject 88123-123 to Facility HK97-321, that is also marked HIGHLY CLASSIFIED.

The information is conveyed to Kiara and Andres with enough time for the pair to make arrangements.  The former to alter her appearance; so secure for the pair of them appropriate(ly untraceable) garments that will allow them to slip into the stream of completely ordinary people, the latter to create (as if by DO NOT CALL IT MAGICK GODDAMNIT) an at least temporarily serviceable facsimile of an ambulance in which they can travel.  The badges are left in a safety deposit box, shielded by correspondence and other wards that the warders remove only at the last possible minute before Kiara and Andres leave for their mission.

There is a point certain beyond which none of them have been able to scry successfully.  A certain border of US 40 and some cross street, where the rather service-ably modern(ish) bulk of the UC Denver School of Public Health's CU Anschutz Medical Campus  occupies 2-3-4+ (??) blocks.  Dominated by a big semi-circular brick building with the bulk and presence of a mid-20th century lunatic asylum / fallout shelter, onto which have been grafted newer and shinier and more modern wings, all glass and steel.  Night and the campus is largely dark.  A few lights in what passes for the patient wings of the specialized facilities, elsewhere office suites all lit up as janitorial staff clean up from today to get ready for tomorrow.

After circling the campus once Andres (the technician to Kiara's supervising physician, and therefore, we assume, the driver) finds the secured entrance to Amaranthine Labs, marked not by the company's name, but by a subtly embossed insignia on the parking gate.  Which opens, perfectly naturally, thanks to something embedded in the parking pass, transmitting their clearance to the security guard sitting in an observational kiosk behind bullet proof glass.    Once they are in the underground parking garage, a voice asserts itself in the ambulance.  The source appears to be the parking pass.  The speaker: the guard in the kiosk.

"Park in Bay 2.  Door A.  Be prepared for security check and ready to present clearance and orders."

Presuming they follow instructions, they are met just inside the swinging double-doors of ambulance bay 2 by a pair of alert young security personnel.    One has a handheld device ready to scan their ID passes.  The other has... what looks to be an ordinary clipboard.  He looks stoic but she gives them a brief, perfunctory but professional smile.  "Orders here," she is holding out the clipboard expectantly and there is something about it that makes it clear she wants them to affix their orders to the device (??), while Carl scans their security badges.   "Carl'll check your clearance.  The usual drill."

Kiara

She's made minor adjustments to her own Pattern before, the Verbena. The occasional wave over her hair to invoke a particular style; the reduction of blemishes; the eradication of a virus building in her system; the modulation of her breathing; the dismissal of a particularly woeful hangover. She'd gifted herself with gills, not so long ago now to dive beneath the waters in Hawaii and rescue a long forgotten artifact.

But - this is another level.

The woman who meets up with Andrés to rescue Alexandr Brant is not the brunette he last saw, rather, she is a platinum blonde creature with pale eyes and a slightly rounder face than the Kiara he knows is beneath the glamour somewhere. Her cheekbones are not as sharp; her nose wider and her hair swept up into a severe knot. She's wearing the clothing of a medical professional and when they climb into the (I-can't-believe-it's-not-magickal) vehicle the Etherite has conjured, she puts a pair of half-rim glasses on.

Her only other hint of jewellery is a watch on a slender silver band.

It is an impressive disguise, if nothing else.

-

"Nice ride, Doc." She compliments when she slides in.

At least she still sounds like herself.

-

Perhaps they talk en route to Amaranthine Labs. Maybe Andrés puts the radio on and they listen to the banality of FM radio. Perhaps they ride in (near) silence, each lost in their individual considerations on where they could have been spending their evening. Kiara's thoughts, as they glide through city streets are mostly shapeless things; her fingers folded in her lap over the transfer orders.

If she is tense, the disguise face of Kiara does not betray it. Streetlights reflect off her glasses.

When they turn into the parking bay there is time for a brief look at her companion's newly clean-shaven features.

Time for a under-breath here goes nothing before the pagan schools her stranger's features into a stoic mask that reads polite, if detached, acceptance of the routine at hand.

--

The usual drill.

The blonde that slides out of the ambulance looks as if she's done this procedure before. She offers over the papers with a crisp authority and returns the female's smile with one of her own. "Evening." She greets, and presents her badge to Carl while her associate does the same.

She smooths an imaginary wrinkle out of her clothing.

Routine. Nothing but paperwork. The words drum in the Verbena's head loud enough to drown out the doubts.

Andrés
When Andrés picks up Kiara it is in a vehicle that had been, two days earlier, a shitty white Ford van. It's now close enough to a Union ambulance that they can drive on in without too much difficulty.

"Thanks," he says. "... Doc."

Getting in isn't the part that concerns the Etherite. It's getting back out.

He's sober for once or at least as sober as Kiara has seen him. He'd shaved his face and popped in a pair of contact lenses and combed his hair. Same fellow as was at the Chantry meeting but he looks like a medical technician now instead of a doctor.

Normally he wears a wedding band. Today he doesn't. Make of that what you will.

On the way over he chatters on about something he read in the paper the other day. Something benign. Nothing concerning what they're about to do. Just two people going to transfer a reality deviant to his new facility. Doo de doo.

Once they're there he does his level best not to appear nervous if he even is nervous. To look at him he's not. If he just expects something to go tits up he won't be surprised when it happens. They both look like they're supposed to be here at least.

Deep breath:

"Daring rescue time, motherfuckers."

And Andrés follows Kiara's lead.

amaranthThe young woman takes a moment to fuss over the placement of the orders on her clipboard, frowns over them, then fusses again.  Meanwhile, the young man reaches for their badges and scans them with a device no larger than an iPhone.  Something flashes over the screen when he scans Kiara's that pulls his already dour mouth slightly further down at the right corner.  Then there is Andres.  Another something-of-a-flash.  He steps back and shows the device to the young woman, who whistles, low, glances up at both of them, and then: straightens her spine.

"Sorry this is taking so long.  The frequency dampeners down here always seem to interfere with the - " a sudden, supple, electronic glow that seems immanent rather than sourced.  "Oh.  There it goes."  She lifts her chin and gives the other officer a subtle nod.  He holsters his own device and retreats back to the guard station while she offers them the now-glowing blue clipboard and a stylus.  "Just need you to initial here, here, and here," she says, indicating three separate locations to Kiara.  She repeats the instructions to Andres.  "And then a thumbprint - " another indication, "here and we'll get your clearance set up so you can access the restricted area."

The other officer has returned by then, with two small bugs he offers to them.  Their function isn't immediately clear, but neither officer seems to think it a mystery and neither offers instruction.  It is Andres who notices first that both officers have similar insignia affixed to lapel or collar.

"Fair warning, we are slated for an emergency drill sometime this evening.  You clearance gives you priority and if you require additional assistance the override code for team members is Control Alpha Eight Niner.   Control channel's always monitored, but most of us hang out on Denver's Finest."

After all of that, she hands back the orders and gives them fairly clear instructions to the secured lift that will take them to the restricted wing of the facility.  "Give us five minutes to get your clearance set up."

--

It takes them no more than two minutes to follow the empty, antiseptic hallway past a junction with another equally empty hallway to its terminus at an elevator bank with four separate lifts.  Three of the four have standard up/down buttons.  The fourth though -

- cameras, everywhere.  Five minutes to get their clearance set up?  It is a long five minutes.

--

Eventually: the small control panel leading to the secured lift comes alive at Kiara's touch.  Her: thumbprint, matched to the signature from the device attached to the lapel of her scrubs.  The lift arrives; the doors whir open, smooth and silent.  The interior smells faintly of vanilla.  Two strangers are already inside, apparently having come from the schools of public health, above.  They are in the midst of a conversation -

"That's what I'm saying, if you just try to impose that shit from above, it never works.  You've got to speak their language.  You've got to get in there - "

- and glance up, somewhat startled, give those strange-frozen smiles one gives to strangers, then resume the conversation in quieter tones.

" - and make it make sense from within.  It can't be this top-down structure.  What we ended up doing to teach the infection control protocol was to find community leaders - not the political leaders but the social leaders - and teach it from the inside out.  Every projection I've done says we got the outbreaks under control from 40 to 65% faster, and saved hundreds, maybe thousands.   You really need to read Ementalier's paper on the topic.  Evidence for these best practices - "

The elevator opens again.  Not their floor.  Both of the other occupants exit, with one backward glance, the conversation fading between them.  Between them? Amongst them, at least if Sepulveda's assessment of the 'bugs' is correct.  They are identification badges, transmitters, and communication devices.  Whether he can operate one correctly - another story entirely.

--

Another fifteen seconds, that supple hum, and the doors open again.  The restricted labs.

--

There is another security checkpoint immediately beyond the elevator bay.  Down here, the secured lift is the only lift that serves the floor.  Three corridors branch off beyond the security kiosk behind locked and closed doors.  Here, the guards scan their identification cards again and buzz them through one of the sets of double doors, this time with much less chatter.  Directions, and the day's security codes, and no more.

This is what Andres fucks up: unhappy with the slow-response of a Technocratic Device to the day's security codes or perhaps convinced that he has input the information incorrectly, he repeats the code.  Nothing, nothing.  Then again: this time, the screen flashes once a bilious green.  Andres feels something like a small shock, really no more than the brief bite of static electricity, but Kiara takes note that the door is, in fact, now open.  The first try was all that was necessary.  With so many of these Technocratic things: it works, or it doesn't.  The circuit is open, or closed.  There is no gray area.

--

They come to the cell in which Alexander is being kept.  One guard outside is playing Crossy Road on a tablet.  He also requests their orders.  Fits them to the device.  Glances up at them with a bit of apprehension (he is thinking of Agent Weston.  He is trying to remember to forget the subject behind the door.  He has already received orders for a transfer to Miami, an assignment he much prefers to Novosibirsk.) then back down.    "Subject received a titrated dose of the Orpheum cocktail thirty-four minutes ago.  We calculate a minimum of four hours, seventeen minutes before the first signs of life return.  Subject may be combative on emergence from hibernation.  Within the facility, subject's identity is highly classified.    You are to reveal it to no one.  Got a body bag and a gurney inside for you and far as anyone here knows, you're retrieving a radioactive corpse.

"What you do when you get back to your own rig, well.  That's your business, not mine."

Kiara
He's playing Crossy Road on a tablet.


It's funny that this, of all the things the Verbena's taken in throughout this rescue mission thus far, feels the most like some dirty, unclear line being stepped over; being seen for what it is as she does. The Technocracy, the Union ... the Enemy, as she knows them; that bone deep, grief driven hatred of them jangled down to its root. It changes from black and white to murky grey.

The evidence of humanity, of such banal, normal activities here - its distressing. It's bizarre as hell and if anything were going to disrupt their plans (other than that damn door) it's the sight of it right there, at the door to Alexander's room.

(She wants to scream and throw his damn tablet across the room).

--

The bugs.

The sterile hallways and elevator banks and all those cameras.

The way down feels (is) a sort of torment all its own. Kiara can feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder-blades, beneath her scrubs. Her palm itches as they stand behind two strangers calmly (professionally) discussing tactics for changing the status quo. Seeding belief among the masses from within. Kiara will remember their voices; the fixed smile she'd returned; forced her facial muscles to shape; the eerie normalcy of it all long after tonight is over.

(Assuming she doesn't wind up inside one of these nice numbered rooms).

--

"Understood." Her voice sounds tinny and far away, when she does speak, casts one of the first glances she's allowed herself Andrés' way. There's a body bag and a gurney inside. They're going to reclaim Alexander as if he were nothing more than a corpse.

She nods assent. They're here, there's no going back now.

AndrésThe moment the keypad zaps Andres for hitting its buttons too many times would be the moment a certain Mercurial Elite would point to as evidence that she was right about his personality and its suitability for this sort of operation. It doesn't impede their progress. It just confirms for Kiara something she may have already been beginning to suspect.

After shaking out his hand, they move on.

This place does not cause the visceral response in the Etherite that it does in the Verbena but then again the Society of Ether used to belong to the Technocratic Union back when it was still called the Order of Reason, when they were still called Electrodyne Engineers. If they're caught, that won't matter.

Once they arrive at the cell, he adopts an at-ease stance with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped loose behind his back. His propensity is to fidget.

A radioactive corpse.

His eyes flick up to Kiara's face to catch the glance she gives him. On camera it looks as if he's waiting for permission to proceed with his job. Deferring to rank.

amaranthKiara nods assent.  Andres glances at Kiara as if for permission, deferring to rank.  The tablet glows the same electric/electronic glow.  This time, the guard does not request thumbprints and initials in triplicate.  He makes three quick notations, cocks his head as if he is listening to a far-off voice (hint: he is), finishes the third notation with a flourish and returns the set of orders to Kiara.

And then, there's this awkward moment.  An interruption, an interregnum.  Kiara waiting and Andres waiting and the guard... waiting too.  Looking at them somewhat expectantly, until finally he just says: "Uhm, I don't have clearance to open that door."  Brief pause.  "I think you do - "  and beneath that suggestion, (and this is modestly transparent on his face), he is frowning at them and is entertaining the brief and mildly heretical question: what if they don't?

One or the other of them figures it out: a thumbprint and a thumbprint and a hydraulic sigh and the door whooshes open and they see inside the small cell in which Alexander has been held for the past... weeks.  Yes, weeks.  He is still and unmoving on the cot, scabs on his knuckles, dressed in a loose set of scrubs.  Thinner than he had been.

The promised gurney and body bag are indeed just parked just within the cell.

KiaraThe last real occasion Kiara Woolfe had to come in contact with a body had been her mentor's. She's seen variations of gore, since. Smoldering and dismembered things in a park. The pitiless black of a Nephandus' eye. Stitched pieces of her associates back together and scrubbed more blood off her hands than perhaps any young woman should have need to before they were even thirty.

The gore and blood and physicality of it doesn't connect for her any longer: not in the moment. Not when that awful hesitation passes between Andrés and her and the guard and the door glides open to reveal Alexander on that cot.

Maybe she will berate herself later for the slip up with the Guard but as soon as they figure it out, the brunette-now-blonde is in the room and supervising the dead man's shuffle of the Orphan into the body-bag. She doesn't think about who it is, it is, in the moment, rather imperative that this woman in scrubs with a sombre, severe expression and cool, measuring eyes moves in and smoothly assists in securing the body into the bag.

The zip slides over Alexander's face and there is a reprieve in that.

"Subject secure." She works to inject a certain amount of tedium into her voice. It seems easier to play along, in this skin. "Let's go."

She sweeps back out the door. Best to leave your sentiment in that cell until this is over, Woolfe.

amaranthAlexander is larger than both of them and he is: absolutely dead weight.    They have a modest struggle to make the transfer from cot to body bag to gurney.  The guard outside the door might have guessed they would, given their relative size compared to the subject in question.  Or perhaps he had not made such a guess.  It is not uncommon for members of the order with clearance high enough to be involved in a secretive operation to have some sort of strength enhancement, mechanical, medical, pharmaceutical, or otherwise.

The room itself has a strange feeling to it.  A sort of humming absence that makes it feel even colder and more clinical than the corridors outside.  That must be the Primium on the walls.   So it isn't just the body that seems dead, but the air itself.  Neither of them attempts a flare of life magick to determine whether or not it really is a living person in deep hibernation or an actual   corpse they are retrieving.  Wouldn't be wise to risk it now that they're inside.  If this has all been a warning of some sort, an elaborate and macabre hoax, intended to return to them a body, they will know that soon enough.

So they hope.

"It's done."  The guard mutters into as they wheel the body back out.  Ridiculously, the gurney has one slightly squeaky, slightly bum wheel and the error in it seems all the more absurd in the sterile hallway.  There are, further down the hallway, other doors, closed and locked.

There are no other guards.

--

It is a long way back the way they came.  The first security check; the second.  Three strangers gathered at the secure elevator bay, two with Starbucks cups in hand, chatting quietly.   "I'm just trying to figure out whether to start a new generation or not.  I need at least an hour and a half to get through it.  You'd think they could give us a ballpark or something for the drill.  I'm supposed to give a talk on my results in three weeks we're trying to get out ahead of the summer weather, I mean, the last thing this country needs is a new epidemic of birth defects and  - "

Two thumbprints.  One body in a bag on a squeaky-wheeled gurney.  Two of the strangers listening to the chatty researcher flick their eyes over the body bag, glance up at Andres, Kiara as they are wheeling it into the elevator, then glance away again.

Everything in reverse, right back to the ambulance bay and the security kiosk.  One last check with the same pair of guards they saw coming in: the glowing clipboard, the presentation of the orders.  The initialing of documents.  The guard waits expectantly for the bugs and badges to be returned.

KiaraSomehow, it's worse on the way out. The glimpse of an end to their little staged rescue mission makes every sterile corner and squeak of the gurney's wheel seem harder to bear. Sound abrasive and distorted to the Verbena's ears; makes her want to flinch behind her glasses. To her credit however, she resists. Maybe to the extent she bites down on the inside of her cheek, tastes the blood in her mouth.

Finds the tactility in the pain and the sensation of it comforting.

--

They stop by the elevator bay, two glance their way and the Verbena meets the eyes of one. Offers a brief, curt nod and follows the gurney bearing her associate into the elevator, papers tucked under her arm.

--

She half expected there to be music playing as they glide upwards. Soft, background noise as obscure and jarring as the fact they were wheeling a comatose Orphan in a body-bag out of a facility on a gurney with a squeaky wheel.

The inside of Kiara's cheek throbs as they greet the same guards they'd encountered climbing out of the faux-ambulance. She passes across the documents without hesitation, initial here. Sign there. Bugs and badges unclipped and handed over. Manages a have a good evening to the female security guard with what could have passed for professional courtesy.

All that remained: getting Alexander in, and getting out.

Andrés
This is the part of the operation that would have the Etherite convinced they were fucked if he were letting himself access what's left of his limbic system.

It isn't as if it has gone entirely smoothly thus far but the fact that they got in and got Alexander loaded onto a stretcher and are in the home stretch ought to bring a sense of relief to them. It does not. Until they are out of this dead spot of a building, and are certain Alexander is not bugged in some fashion, Andres is not going to relax.

Even if he does look bored out of his skull. Like this is just another day at the grind for him. Schlepping a corpse from one building to the other. He makes eye contact with one of the fellows who glances back at them and gives him a What are ya gonna do shrug before looking ahead again.

That squeaky wheel is proof enough that the Technocrats are just as flawed as anyone else but every time it makes a noise Andres wonders if they aren't about to find out someone in the course of this operation decided this was a fortuitous opportunity to betray the fuck out of both of them.

At the last checkpoint before they get back in the ambulance and drive off. Andres removes his bug and his badge with all the enthusiasm he's displayed thus far. Signs whatever he has to sign. Lets Kiara answer whatever questions they have to answer.

His hands are steady as he, when he has some sign to go ahead and do so, opens the back doors of the rig and starts to load the gurney into it.

amaranth"Okay then," the female security, "I think that's everything."  She is handing off the site-specific security pieces to her co-worker, glancing at the insignia on her clipboard/tablet.  Quick flick of her eyes at the body bag.  Neat little shadow then, in that particular moment, across her brow.  She glances back at them, on some cusp between apprehensive and aware and hushed, really the way one is in the presence of death.  "You guys have a safe - " she is saying as they are loading the body into the rig.  This is a parking garage, all concrete, and her voice has a depthless echo in the solidly grounded space.

Her partner, though.  Listening.   Mutters something to her, not in her ear but in her proximity and she glances back to Kiara and Andres with a wave.  Quick and supple.

"That's our drill.  Better get on the road before we're on lockdown.  Be safe."

--

They get back into the rig and: drive.  The ambulance: rises, rises, rises out of the underground garage.  Past the final guard.  And: up, up up.

KiaraThey drive and the ambulance rises.

They slide out of the underground garage and into the night and somehow, the glint of starlight and streetlight and the resurfacing feels like a layer of suppression being peeled away. But - it does not quite give over to relief, not yet.

Not while they were still within the limits of the facility.

Kiara's seatbelt clicks into place and for a tense few seconds all she can muster is to stare into the rearview as the entry to the garage grows smaller and smaller behind them, her fingers curled around the edge of the belt. She can't keep her eyes from the mirror long, but her cheek continues to ache and her shoulders feel tight with a thrumming tension.

Breathe, Woolfe.

She does, a hiss escaping through her lips. A look shot across to Andrés. "Nothing yet." Alexander won't stir for another hour, maybe two, if her timing figures out. The question was - where on earth in the city was safe to take him.

AndrésA bit of shuffling around. They did not come up with a comprehensive plan as to how they were going to handle the extraction let alone who would sit where when but Andrés loads the gurney into the back of the rig more or less on his own and he clambers into the back and hauls the doors shut behind him more or less by himself.

If Kiara climbs into the driver's side that's all the better. If she gets in on the passenger's side he's in the back already unloading his equipment to prepare to examine the Orpheum-infused body and ensure he is just infused and not expired. Beyond that: if the body is bugged he wants to be able to tell the body is bugged. He doesn't trust the Verbena to locate a bug. Call it intuition or experience. Matter tends to be a Sphere far from the average Witch's experience.

At any rate:

Nothing yet.

"No shit," he says without malice. He has the body bag unzipped now and is introducing his stethoscope to the cop's neck. "Drive fast, drive far. This place is giving me heartburn."

amaranthNothing.

One block.  Two.  Three and they are starting to feel safe.  Four and the city unfolds around them, in all its unutterable chaos.  Four and five and now they are skimming past Sand Creek Park, where Kiara and Nicholas summoned a murder, the interstate above them like a ribbon of uncertain light.

Everything left behind: everything, everything, everything.

amaranth?

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés[matter/prime 2: you good, bro? -1 diff for taking his time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 9) ( success x 1 )

Andrés[come on, doc.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

KiaraDrive fast, drive far.

The Verbena's foot depresses the accelerator. She speeds up, but within limits. There would be no justice in coming so far and bringing Alexander back if all of it ended with the police pulling them over for speeding. Still, she zigs and zags where she can, sliding between cars and weaving through the traffic - outside, lights flash overhead and the city unfurls around them.

She has no clear direction, the pagan, but to keep the momentum up. But to take them as far from those sterile rooms and inane conversations about disease and outbreak and changing things from within as she can. Soon enough, though, there does seem to be a route sliding into place. There is a sense of purpose to the route Kiara takes, turning here. Diverting there.

Across the city limits and out again, toward the outskirts.

A tick of her eyes into the rearview where the Doctor was pressing a stethoscope to Alexander's neck. Her jaw tense. "How bad is it?" His state. Whatever they'd done to him. The Verbena's eyes return to the road and she focuses on it; her eyes have changed color, from pale blue to their regular brown. Her glamour was slowly wearing off. "I'm taking us outside the city if we need to - " she trails off, frowning.

Need to, what? Destroy what they'd created? Pull bugs and who knew what out of Alexander's body? The choices, apparently, were endless.

Andrés"It's not bad."

No emphasis on any of the words. She can hear the frown in his voice but cannot tell at what it is directed. Others might refer to what is draped over the Orphan as magick but he has other words for it. If it's keeping him subdued he's content to leave it where it is. Suffuse as it is he would have to circulate the man's blood if he was hoping to remove any tracers from his blood that might be there. He does not trust that there are no tracers in his blood but how the fuck would he know there aren't any. He isn't versed in the study of Correspondence. At all.

"... I don't think it's bad. Keep driving."

He scrubs his hands down his face. This is the part of the journey that begs the question: Now what?

"Did the collective think this far?"

If the answer is 'no' she knows what his answer is going to be. She had better hope the answer isn't 'no.'

amaranthAlexander isn't breathing.  Not that Andres can see on site.  Thus far, he has confirmed that Alexander's 'corpse' does not seem to contain a bugged implant.  There is still the matter of the parking pass hung from the rearview mirror of the ambulance.

 Except there is not.  The pass proper begins to... disintegrate when they are four blocks out from the UC Schools of Public Health.  A self-destruct mechanism.  Apparently: their allies (Allies?) are not interested in allowing the Traditionalists an opportunity to reverse engineer their tech.

Around them a chilly, snow-laden March night.  The flat city unfolding, golden on the plains.  The teeth of the mountains.  With the go-ahead, Kiara heads toward an anonymous, cheap motel on the outskirts of Denver proper.

After fifteen - twenty minutes, Andres feels a ... bit of an itch.  Near his left ear, on his neck.  Within approximately twenty-five seconds, his entire shirt has... fallen to pieces, to nothing.  Disintegrated, just like the parking pass.  And his pants are starting to...
KiaraIt's not bad.

Then:

... I don't think it's bad.

Kiara curses.

Under breath and quiet, as she tugs her hair out of the confines of the updo she'd secured it into for the extraction. Her features have begun to change, too. It's a strange sensation, like subtle knives sliding around beneath her skin; her cheekbones shifting, her chin sharpening. The cursing doesn't seem directed at Andrés, rather her agitation has a more focused recipient.

It would be enough to make a Chorister blush, that whispered recitation of disgust. It may have been enough to convince a frightened villager they'd been hexed, in another time.

"Hang in there, Alexander." She instructs. "There's a motel up ahead. Sera paid in cash, warded the hell out of the room. We can hold up there at least long enough to figure out what the hell they've put in him." Kiara's fingers grip the wheel.

"And get it out. After that - " She doesn't say we'll figure it out. She doesn't add that it all hinges on whether or not the man who currently didn't appear to be breathing made through this (relatively) unharmed. There would be time for formulating their next move, time for blame and disbelief and inter-tradition politics.

For now: she drove.

AndrésDon't blame his lack of shame regarding nudity on his ethnicity.

His grandparents on both sides were prudes. If his father were around more he might have a better bead on how his father felt about the matter. His mother was a nurse. She didn't give a shit about busting in on him or his younger sisters when they were growing up but if she forgot to lock the bathroom door while she was in there he'd get holy hell slapped out of him. Usually with a sandal. He was well into his twenties before he could abide the sight of a sandal.

Anyway.

Someone within the Amaranth Laboratories rigged the keypads to tag an offending party with fiber-consuming nanites and being as he had been the last person to get zapped by a keypad it isn't exactly a shock that he's the one whose clothing starts to dissolve.

"We know what the hell they've put in him," he says. "Santo Cristo, you're acting like they're from Neptune."

This, as his clothing is dissolving.

"You, ah. Might not wanna look back here until you toss my jacket back."

amaranthThe motel is a motel.  That's what its sign says: MOTEL.  It is lost amid a chaos of other similar structures: old, low, concrete.  There is an outdoor pool in the parking lot, now covered with snow.  A half-dozen semis and a set of small soccer goals pushed up onto the walkway between rooms.  A Jack in the Box and Frisch's Big Boy and Carl's, Jr. and on and on in the parking lot.

The room is on the first floor.  Sera gave Kiara the key,  When they get there, if and when they get inside, they might feel another resonance, different from Sera's, lingering in the walls.  Stoic and psychedelic, among other things.  It is no accident that she picked this place.

 For now, though, a half-full parking lot.  Snow drifting between the tractor-trailers.  The world muffled, shifted, changed.  The wind sharp, bright and cold.  The stars up there.  Andres with his clothing disintegrating in the back of the rig.
amaranthHOW MANY DAYS IS ANDRES NAKED?

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Andrés[I just want to recognize that this is the best dice roll title I've had in my three years of Mage'ing on this site.]

Kiara[Awareness, etc. Cuz!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara"Doc, I attend sky clad festivals. Nothing you've got going on back there is going to offend my sensibilities." This, with raised eyebrows into the rear-view mirror.

She does reach over and toss his jacket back to him, though. If she catches sight of anything, she has the grace not to comment on it, though all things considered, it's probably not the top of the pagan's list of pressing concerns, glimpsing Andrés naked.

They pull into the motel and the Verbena is careful to park as close to the room number on the key Sera had given her as possible. The engine ticking as the brunette leans forward over the wheel; her eyes roving the drifting snow and covered pool and winking lights of the fast food chains.

"Hang on."

She instructs and they're moving again, shifting. She reverses them into the spot and kills the ignition.

There's a precious moment now to breathe. "I'll get the motel door."

AndrésIt may well not be her sensibilities he's afraid of offending. May be he doesn't give a shit about anything he may offend. He wants his jacket because there's a cold front blowing through. Doesn't matter. Whatever prankster nanite has implanted itself in his skin will consume it in a few moments.

She tosses it back. He holds it over his crotch and midline. It does not last long. That is all the catalyst he needs to consider what Spheres and what strains of fabric this shit is honing in on.

In the meantime Kiara brings them to a place that once warded the people of this city against a member of the Fallen. It will ward them against the Static.

He holds the jacket over himself until it gives out or until Kiara comes back to undo the doors. Whichever comes first. Worst people to see naked in the back of an ambulance. He is shorter than the average female among their constituency but Kiara can read all of the muscles in his upper body and some in his lower limbs. That which is not covered by the disintegrating jacket. This is a problem. If he were trying to seduce her this is not the path he would take.

I'll get the motel door.

"Great!" he says. As if he isn't about to be nude in another thirteen seconds.

amaranthThe parking lot is still except for them.  It is the middle of the night; a handful of lights are on.  The low-hum of the highway.  Inside, the room is still, quiet.  The low-throb of Sera's resonance, felt from within rather than without. No indication to Kiara or Andres why she chose this room.  Only Sera and Dan know that she has paid the rent on it for ... nearly three years.

She does have the money to spare.

She always hopes, doesn't she? that Jim might come back.  Might need it again: a place to crash.  A place into which to disappear. A bathroom.  An old CRT television and a microwave and a fridge.  Which is: stocked a bit, heavy on the booze, light on the food.  Because.

Now they need it.  inside, two double beds.  A place to put Alexander's body.  Enough time for Kiara to engage in enough life magick to confirm that he is: alive, absolutely, and not a corpse.  Then there is the awkward interregnum, waiting.

 They can amuse themselves however they want.

AndrésMaybe the jacket she tosses back to him lasts the extent of the ride. Maybe it doesn't. His concern is not so much for his dead-turned client but for the driver. The driver is concerned with the road ahead. She knows where she's going.

Alright. Jacket over his crotch so long as it lasts. So long as it lasts. If it does not last her clothes are intact. She can go in and get the key and the pass and let them in and they can both struggle the corpse-that-is-not-a-corpse into their room.

Blame it on whatever you want. His heritage or his age or his tradition. His prime physical condition or the fact that despite his deplorable social ability he is still a disgustingly attractive man. His junk is covered when they wheel Alexander into the warded room. Either by his discarded jacket or some other bit of clothing. The body bag.

Once the door is closed though the adrenaline kicks in. Andrés grabs Kiara by both jaws and kisses her square on the mouth.

Nothing in it that she does not want to be there. He is a once-doubled creature halved by virtue of his other half dying after all.

And adrenaline. Let's not forget adrenaline.

Andrés[JAMIE IS GOING HOME SHE LOVES YOU BOTH <3]

KiaraKiara Woolfe wasn't shy about many things. If the brunette had an inclination to seduce the good Doctor, the chances were fairly strong that he'd know about it. She'd had a reputation in New York and it hadn't particularly occurred to the Verbena to mind. That had not, overly much, changed since she set foot in Denver with her wild hair and blood red lips.

It would have been a stranger thing, perhaps, to meet a self professed witch who had inhibitions about embracing all facets of life. Nudity, sex, heartbreak and death.

Andrés was married to one of Kiara's kind, after all: he knows full well what to expect from a Verbena.

-

Kiara pulls the doors open on the back of the van; her disguise has disintegrated likewise; though she still wears the glasses she'd procured. Her hair is a violent tangle around her face and her expression, when she sights him attempting to shield himself from the frigid temperature, ventures somewhere south of drastically amused.

Her eyes glint.

"Let's get him inside."

-

There is no manner that it isn't awkward, piling Alexander's dead weight into the room, carefully laying him on the mattress. Kiara sheds layers and pushes her sleeves up. Leans over Alexander's body and carefully flits her hands over him; touches his face with a surprising degree of tenderness.

Surveys and declares him whole (enough) and safe enough that she can finally (desperately), put her mind into some semblance of ease.

Turns around and is -

promptly kissed.

-

The door is closed. Alexander spared. And adrenaline was a hell of a thing.

sand creek park. [nick, liz ST]

 twilight
Rules:

- I don't have much time tonight, but you are my priority!

- ask me for difficulties before you roll.  I may elide / narrate through some bits, I may ask for rolls for others.

- this scene is largely based on what your characters would do, so I'm going to ask you either for OOC direction or IC direction as to where they are starting and what their primary goals are (learn info? set up a distraction?  et cetera?)

- if you ever do not understand something I have written but think your character might, feel free to ask for clarification.  I may offer to let you roll to learn more.

- you can at any time ask to roll detection / knowledge rolls if you'd like based on the posts.  they won't always get tons of info!

twilightThe mercury still dips below freezing at night and each and every frame and edge of the day is ccool or chilly or cold or frigid depending on one's perspective and state of dress but 'round about three p.m. basking in the warm rays of the sun, surrounded by the golden waves of prairie grasses, the low scrub trees, that sense of: space, openness, the mad, endless dome-of-the-sky that inspired some pioneers and drove others mad mad mad.  Well, here is Sand Creek Park.  The odd sign about construction projects through summer 2016, but otherwise greenspace naturalized enough that the grass is left to go wild, naturalized.  Sand Creek proper is low and flat and undulent through the landscape, dark and cold where it runs through its rocky course, and hard to see in the flat sea of waving grasses except when one stumbles upon it, or where a pedestrian bridge arches high over.

Hard to believe a Technocratic lab is little more than a golf course away.

Kiara WoolfeThere's a fine tension here. An undercurrent of it, it rattles through them, rattles bone deep.

Being so close to them. The Verbena can almost taste it; their unyielding trudge toward so-called unification and strength. The idea that Alexander was with them, that they were working to bury their mechanics beneath his skin and twist and distort all that he was to suit their needs had, at first, nearly unwound Kiara Woolfe's carefully built armor.

It kept her safe, you see. That emotional buffer. Kept her from striding across that gently trickling creek into their turf. It was keeping a many great things at bay for the brunette right now - things she carried in those dark eyes of hers when they ticked over the parkland as they arrived; their movements seeming unnaturally loud and echoing.

There were insects singing in the wilder grasses growing by the creek. The Verbena paused only long enough to pass a flashlight to her companion and direct him a slight, brief check of her mouth upward at the corner. Still red, that mouth.

Tonight it feels brazen in a different way - a slash of bold declaration. The pendant around the female's neck glinted as she moved toward the water's edge; adjusting the strap of her backpack.

The insects quieted as they drew nearer, watching.

[Awareness!]

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

Kiara Woolfe[And, activating Mind Shield! Base Diff 4, -1 Taking her time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas HydeNicholas called in sick to work today.  It is not the first time he has done this in order to pursue some Awakened agenda, nor will it be the last; and yet it seems to him as though the space between these occurrences grows nearer and nearer.  Last year he went on administrative leave from his old job for nearly three months, and when he came back he was so changed and Quiet-riddled the Sleepers in his life all assumed he had cancer.  It was the only explanation they had for: holy shit, man.

He is not quite so phased by being this close to a Technocratic stronghold.  Nicholas works in a hospital; the risk of running into a Union operative, and the assumption that they perhaps even share some beliefs and aspects of paradigm in common, is a part of his day-to-day life.

Today when he arrives he is also carrying a backpack.  Some of his more cumbersome items (the yew staff, in particular) are resting at home in his study; it's fortunate the park is nearby since he will have nearly everything he needs to assist.

Maybe he's a little nervous, today, evidenced generally by fidgeting, by sometimes plucking absently at the curls at the back of his neck.  Can she see it?  Nick doesn't work around other mages familiar with his preferred Sphere very often.

They arrive at the creek together.  His movements are not loud and echoing; he might as well be floating over the landscape here, as though he already stands with one foot in this world and one in the next.  They come to the river, and Nick draws in a deep breath that inflates his lungs down to the very bottom and expands his shoulders and chest and lungs.

[Mind shield for Nick too.  Base diff 4, -1 taking time. Extending if necessary.]

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

Nicholas Hyde[Extending.]

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

Nicholas Hyde[Aaaaaand awareness.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

twilightIf there is some monstrous construct, some mad, consumptive, mechanistic, devouring amalgam lost somewhere in the orange glow of Aurora's ambient light pollution (on snow-bound nights, doesn't it all feel a bit nuclear?  some assault, some war at the edge of the horizon: Kiara feels not a lick of it.  She's open to the sky and oh there's Orion finding a way to shine through the haze and here is the murmur of the creek and the rush of the brace of interstates surrounding them quite as low and susserant as the coursing of any waterway and hum, hum, hum.  Come summer the noisy chorus will be loud and lewd, the rush and need, the drive to consummate, god, something, anything, before the sun falls away from the earth again.  To be remade, reborn: perpetuated.

Now though.

Now.

Not many in the park afterdark.

They cut through the popular jogging trails heading for something perhaps deeper.  Somewhere where the seams between the worlds are thinning, thinning, thinner.

Night all around.  Prairie grass rustling in the constant wind.

No evidence anyone knows they are here.

(Gauntlet is generally 7-8 in the park.  Kiara's awareness roll is enough that they can probably hike to an area where it is 6-7 at least at night.  it would be higher in daylight.)

Kiara WoolfeIn some ways the solitude feels worse. The normalcy to it; being in the open; surrounded by the soft grasses and beneath the sky. It feels like belonging and home to the pagan. She feels as much a part of the earth beneath their feed and the lush, verdant growth all around them as she does within her skin.

The essence of the brunette was twofold, here. A thrum; the pulse of nature; her perpetual, never-ending cycle. Nicholas takes the time to breathe when they reach the water's edge and the Verbena stands silently for a moment; staring out into the distance; her shoulders straight, a trace of that lingering agitation drawn into the curve of her spine.

Her fingers fall away from the quartz around her neck. "It feels wrong, doesn't it." She offers simply, quietly. Her eyes shifting to rove Nicholas's face. To search it, before she looks back over the water. "It feels like there should be something more. This close." She takes a few cautious steps off to the side and then gestures up a small crest.

There's a gentle gust of wind that sends the smell of summer-turned earth their way; traces over their skin as if to beckon them on. "I think we'll have a better chance up there, through those trees."

Kiara Woolfe(feed = feet, I can spell, honest.)

Nicholas HydeThey've reached the water's edge and as Kiara looks over at his face Nicholas seems to be scanning the water itself, for a moment.  There is something in the Chakravanti's demeanor that could lend the impression that he is not particularly paying attention as they walk through the park: there are points at which his eyes seemed to be focused on nothing, or when they are looking at something that neither of them are talking about.  They go unfocused, hazy.

Nick needs other people; they are a tether.

As Kiara speaks it draws his eyes over to her, and to her comment he only nods.  "They might even have some sort of operation here that's being concealed.  It's close enough, and there isn't a lot of other green space on their campus."  Perhaps he might not otherwise have been so suspicious but: construction projects.

Kiara leads them on, and Nick follows, shifting the shoulder strap of his bag.

twilightThey have to hike to find it.  In the dark, unfamiliar ground.  The sea of grass helps.  Easy to see where others have tramped then down, particularly when winter keeps them dry and dormant.  What trees are here are low and scrub; lonely, scrabbling outposts, strange little copses grown up where the water table is high, where an old half-forgotten oxbow of the stream has become a boggy wetland.

Thirty minutes, forty minutes, and: here.

Kiara WoolfeWhile they hike, Kiara's narrow beam of torchlight bounces across the grass. Casts a strange, feeble little yellow orb arcing out. She keeps it low, focusing on swinging it out before their feet so they can navigate around the wild grasses that have thrown themselves into re-growth everywhere their roots can reach. Straining even where they've become trodden and flattened by constant human traffic through the park.

She speaks, after a few minutes of silence. She has a melodic voice, the pagan. Somehow sweet for all the ways she clearly was anything but. There's a sense that perhaps she does it - talks, murmurs into the rustling trees and the gurgle of water - for the sake of distracting them from the task at hand as much as anything.

"There was another Node here, you know. Not here, but - out in the trees. In the wilderness. Annie - one of the Cabal at the Chantry - took me out there once. There's a clearing where the world just sort of - stops." Kiara's movements slow and she waits for Nicholas to catch up, glances at him.

The torchlight sliding along her arm, shoulder. Casting shadows into the lines of the Verbena's face. "On the other side, through time. It's just a void of nothing now. After they came and tried to take the Node. It was too wild for them, though. To powerful. It wouldn't yield." A flare of something like pride at that. A vicious sort of satisfaction that fades soon enough as she begins careful steps forward again.

"So they did what they're good at. They destroyed it. Killed more of us. Left the earth stained with blood." She stops after they've walked onwards a good way; dipping into a silence not fraught with but stained at the edges with a particular sort of grief. One not entirely hers but - felt. But understood.

"I think this is it." She turns a small circuit, the Verbena. Sets her pack down carefully. "I think we might be able to reach across here."

Nicholas HydeNicholas keeps pace with her easily enough, and even though he is in motion there is this stillness to him as the two of them follow the waterway.  When she glances at him he is watching her, has met her eyes because he senses that she is about to tell him more and there aren't any words needed to ask her to continue.

He is all smoke and cinder here, illuminated on one side as he is from the bright beam of the flashlight.  He belongs here, moreso than he did when he went with her out past the rocks, to the deep red landscape that could've belonged to another world.  There is a flicker of something on his face as he listens: some connecting of dots perhaps, some flash of insight or understanding.  Regardless, he is not surprised by what he is hearing.

"Andrés told me that happened."  Maybe she has to think to remember Andrés, the Etherite at the meeting: loud, effusive, arguing with Grace.  "What I don't understand is the why of it.  The Union disagrees with us but they...that kind of violation..."

And he is troubled here, and he stops because they have reached a place where they could reach across.  He, too, swings his pack off of his shoulder.  "You've more experience here than me.  I can follow your lead."

twilight(no reason for me to post again here.  i'm going to head to bed.  one of you email me please the transcript?)

Kiara Woolfe"Verbanae. They hate us with a particular kind of frenzy." There's a tick of dark humor to the way she offers that, lowering herself to her haunches and undoing the straps on her pack. She sets the torch between her teeth for a moment to extract a small number of items. Thick-set candles and a bundle of herbs rolled together, tethered with twine (sage, by the scent). A packet of incense, a purple pouch, cinched together with a black tie (dried leaves within this).

The tools of a healer; those of an earth witch.

She's surpassed the need for them for what they're here for tonight; can manifest her connection to the other side without her herbs and invocations but - habit keeps them on hand. "We were the guardians here and they knew better than to try and turn any of them."

Kiara's eyes gleam in the near-darkness. "We don't make good converts. And when they do manage -" A beat, a sharp breath out. "Well, better to violate the land than let it tended by us, apparently." She rises up and begins to etch out a circle of sorts; finding points around them. "I can erect a sort of - barrier, before we attempt to connect. To keep whatever we find a safe distance from us.

It won't keep everything out but no spirit will be able to cross it without considerable regret."

Nicholas HydeNick sets his bag on the ground and lowers himself to his haunches, whereupon he unzips the bag and begins to pull his own items from it.  These largely seem unrelated to his work, in all likelihood: a bottle of water, a first aid kit, the flashlight that he has set aside.  Good items to have on hand, at least.  There is also a string of bags that he draws from the pack, small pouches tied to one another.

And he listens.  There is another glance in Kiara's direction, attentive and sharp-eyed, as she offers her thoughts on why the Technocracy would have preferred to salt the earth rather than leave it in the hands of the Verbenae.  It is not beyond the pale, this thought that they would hate Kiara's Tradition to such an extent that they would destroy a node.  They are ancient enemies of one another, after all.  "I'm sorry about what happened," is what he offers, quietly.

"I can help you create the circle," he says, as he rises again to his feet.  The leather bags he has draped around his neck and shoulders now, mostly for ease of access.

Then, "I've mostly worked with animal spirits and ghosts, which I find easier to make offerings to and communicate with.  Less so with nature spirits, if those were what you thought to consult.  Do you have any specific requests of me?"

Kiara WoolfeHis acknowledgement of the loss receives the regard of her fine dark eyes on him for a beat.

There's a firming of her mouth as if the mention of it; the loss of life; women she'd never known but who she had shared a common belief with was a pain she did not quite know what to do with. And perhaps, given more recent events - she does not. She simply offers a tiny smile, a cant of her head and begins to sprinkle something around the same lines she'd just etched out into the earth.

"I thought perhaps we could summon a raven spirit. Or crow. They tend to know a lot about what goes on around them. This might be a good place to find them." Kiara's eyes tick around them. Her torch resting on the ground illuminates a beam of light across which tiny whirls of dust dance. "I could try and talk to Her, too. See if the wind will listen for us, what the water's seen." There's a beat as she fetches her bundle of sage. Begins to unwind it.

"If need be, I may be able to awaken something nearby. Something must have seen." Kiara's mouth constricts into a frown. "I just hate the idea of Alexander being - " She stops herself short, pushes herself to her feet with the sage and a pack of matches in hand. "I usually walk the boundaries of the circle to cast it." She offers.

Nicholas HydeNicholas is not looking at her when she looks at him.  His attention is roving over this little grove by the river, the beginnings of her circle and how very different places like this look in the black of night.  The thin dark hallow of him fades into the scenery here, as though he'd been painted in by some Victorian artist in a particularly somber mood.

"We are well acquainted," he says, when she mentions crow and raven spirits.  "I usually keep things on hand to trade with them."  What things those are is anyone's guess; who knows what he has in the little leather bags.  (Though he is quite well aware that spirit frequently favor things that have no material value or worth or even shape: and crows like secrets.)

He nods, accepting her method of drawing the circle and taking this in stride.  It is still something he is beginning to learn to use; he is, perhaps, in a period when he is at his most flexible with certain Arts.  So he moves to stand opposite her, so that they can each walk half the length and meet.  Duality in all things.

"Who is the Her you mentioned?"

Kiara WoolfeKiara seems surprised, for a moment, to be asked about Her. She pauses in walking the boundaries of the circle; spirals of smoke follow where she steps, the sage now burning and the packet of matches safely stowed in the pocket of her jeans. "I suppose the easiest way to describe Her is to say - nature. Everything around us is part of her. The Goddess. I believe that she speaks through the elements.

I hear her, sometimes. In the wind. Or see her, at bonfires during celebrations." There's a vague familiarity to it, the way the brunette speaks of this sentient presence. It was, one supposed, not unlike the way others spoke of their God. Their deities.

This then, was the pagan's own. The old Gods and Goddesses. The revered of the earth itself. Old magick, that of blood and drums and sacrifice. The traces of it are there even now - in the way the Verbena treks around the circle; cleanses the space within it with gentle, precise movements, draws blood where she bites down hard on her lower lip. There's a prickle of stirring energy; a shifting as Kiara's resonance begins to seep into their presence. A surge of rejuvenating energy; one shared with the only remaining Node in the area.

And beneath it, a steady pulsing.

[Magic Circle time! So I think this is Coincidental? Prime 2, Spirit 2. Base Diff 5. -1 Using Instruments when she doesn't need to (Spirit), taking her time -1 + WP. Basically raising a 'shield' around them that will keep any nasty influences at bay while they converse with the spirits.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 6, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Nicholas Hyde[I halp.  Base diff 5.  -1 for using an instrument, -1 for taking time.]

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

Nicholas HydeNicholas winds the other half of the circle, and he is also moving slowly; there is this occasional deep breath as he draws in the sweet scent of the smoke.  He keeps pace with her, maintaining the same distance so that they could look across the circle toward each other at any point.

Which is why she can see him glance at her as she speaks of the Goddess she follows.  There is some familiarity there, as he listens, no sense that any of what she is describing is new, at least in concept.  Nicholas has worked extensively with the Verbenae before; respects them even, on some deep level, even if it were not already apparent from the similarities in how they are Working together just now.

"I believe my Guide to also be a goddess," he says, "though I'd be less inclined to call Her nature."  Which is the way of things sometimes, when one is speaking of things that are ancient and harken back to the first memories: they are so distant that they become ineffable, even to those that they favor.  The quest for understanding, though, is always a worthwhile one.

He draws no blood.  He breathes in, breathes out, and shuts his eyes; a sort of walking meditation.  His resonance is this quiet bloom as his consciousness expands outward, this air of the sacred and the unknowable.

Kiara Woolfe[Whoo, so that's a total of 6 Suxx for the Magic Circle. Go, team!]


twilight
It is as dark a night as one will find in Sand Creek Park.  The moon is absent and the clouds have cleared away.  The ambient glow is ever-present on the horizon: impossible to forget the labs, the facilities, the hospital a holes of golf away: but beneath the loose sky and among the dark grasslands below: they work.  They have come deep enough that they have to push through the waving grasses like ships through the sea, but so they do.  The circle is drawn: physically.  The landscape means that it lingers physically even as they feel it taking shape, their resonance twined, the magicks woven together like reeds.

Kiara WoolfeIt feels like a key, turning in a lock, once the circle is cast. The faint hum of energy surrounding them; rising up around them in a small diameter on all sides. Kiara presses her fingertips to the bundle of sage and snuffs out the smoking tip; moves quietly over to her pack and carefully replaces it inside.

There's a sobriety, now, to the witch's movements. As if the casting of the circle had signaled some change in her demeanor. The dark eyes that find Nicholas, twin glimmers in the twilight, are full now of a steady sort of determination. "I think we're ready now," she offers and rises to her feet, gently brushing dirt from her knees.

"Crow won't be able to cross the circle but hopefully he'll be willing to bargain information. You've dealt with him before, you can speak for us, once he's here if you like." Her mouth curls a touch, she holds her hand out to the other Awakened.

"Ready?"

Nicholas HydeNicholas always has a sort of sobriety to his movements; there is no discernible difference in him once that quiet hum of energy seems to spring up around them.  If anything, perhaps there is some tension that has crept into him just now: he is unused to Working with an audience, or speaking to spirits with an audience, especially not when that happens to consist of someone who is more experienced than he is.

Still, he levels a look at the Verbena as she rises to her feet and he says, "I'm still learning to summon.  If you call him here, I can speak with him."

There is this glance to her hand when she offers it to him, this moment of quizzical hesitation: unsure of its purpose.  But he places his hand in hers, nods, and says, "Ready."

Kiara Woolfe[Right! Let's do this. I think ... we're gonna roll with Spirit 3 to Summon and add in Prime 2 to assist with drawing Crow over. So, we're starting at Base Diff 6, -1 for using Instruments, -1 for taking her sweet time and -1 for using a Quint. GO BIG OR GO HOME. May extend! I think they'll need a few suxx to get Crow's attention. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kiara Woolfe[Extending! +1 Diff and adding a WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kiara Woolfe[Once more for flavor.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

twilightNot silence here, but the distance of human-crafted sounds give their circle a strange sense of isolation that should feel rare in an urban setting: anywhere, except - god, it is night, and it is not quite as hard as one imagines to become lost in a cityscape, after full dark has fallen, particularly this close to one of the doorways of the year.

What is that near?  That noise that feels like woosh and lift, shadow-against-shadow with this fey hint of gleam, that shadow-without-shadow-without-shadow because tonight there is no moon.

Breathe in: and there.  Stippling the bare limbs of the nearest scrub oak, this impression of - oh, a half-dozen dark-winged birds, roosting in the trees.  Gleam-of-a-querying eye from the other side of their well-cast circle.  And:

?????????

This push of query/question that embodies so many all in one.  Who/when/how/why?

And, perhaps also: what do you have for me?

Kiara WoolfeIt takes time, to summon a spirit. Not - endless time, they don't quite have that to spare but - time. There is a drawing in of focus required, you understand. A need for this small, lean woman with her wild hair and eyes to pull at the very fabrics that knit their worlds together and unravel them. To part the seam between and draw out one that resided on the other side.

There was good reason why the Spirit touched Awakened often seemed so displaced - at any given moment prone to staring off into space; to gleaning things that were not quite there. For the Umbra, such as it was, was a profound spectacle to behold - hard to ignore that much wonderment, once your eyes had seen it once.

Kiara grips Nicholas' hand at one point; her eyes fixed ahead; at some point in the inky darkness. There's a thickening; a syrupy gathering of energy and then - the swoop of wings. They are, quite suddenly, not alone and being observed by a gathering of crows nesting in the tree branches.

The Verbena's fingers loosen and she turns dark eyes to her companion. Her expression seeming to read: you're up, batter.

Nicholas HydeNicholas, when he has spoken with spirits, has typically engaged them in this random way: whatever happened to be in the area he was.  It so happened that crow spirits and raven spirits and coyote spirits happened to find him, more often than not.  He does not know how long he walked in the dead lands when he was there, but he knows they became as friends, or as close to friends as something otherworldly can really ever get.

His gaze is intent as Kiara grips his hand and focuses her eyes (unfocuses them? who can really say) on the black that surrounds them.  The swoop of wings: his fingers loosen too at that moment and he looks around toward the winged birds that are roosting in that tree, from the other side of the circle.

"Hello," he says to them, and there's this way that he talks to them without pretense, as though they were people.  The two of them are battered by questions, which merit answers, in their turn.  And then, "Nicholas Hyde, and this is Kiara Woolfe.  I've met others like you before, and I know you're clever and quick, and I know how much you know.

"We called you hoping you'd be willing to trade.  Secret for secret?"

twilightSecret for a secret?

Secret for a secret.

There is something elegant and elegaic about the dark shapes shrouded amongst the bare tree limbs.  This sense of communal awareness, of communication, of chorus that ripples from one suggestion to another, dancing through murder, each to each.

At last the foremost among them rears back and opens its body up to the full width of its wingspan, and rears back and takes such soaring flight only to swoop back downward, hopping and backwinging like it intended to land just outside the circle.

And so it does.  Somehow the waving grasses sink all around the creature.

Gleam, that eye.  Finally:

Assent.  Secret for a secret.  and

Tell me what you know.

Greedy thing.

Kiara WoolfeKiara watches on as Nicholas speaks to the spirit(s). Her stillness could either signify tension or grave, total consideration and a look spared the Verbena's way speaks far more of the latter. The edge of her jaw in the moonlight a finecut thing; she's all hollows and dark, shining eyes.

When Crow assents, when he dives and settle-hops to the ground near the edge of the circle, then Kiara stirs and glances at her companion. Their secrets were a precious commodity and perhaps, given their nature, not to be shared without considerable caution. "We can each offer something," she says quietly, with a tinge of some unidentifiable strain in her voice.

"The more we do, the more he may be inclined to offer back." There's a beat, then Kiara walks to the edge of the circle proper and lowers herself to a crouch; observing the spirit's gleaming, bright eye. "Hello, Crow." The brunette murmurs and then leans in. Her body perched there at the edge of the circle.

She says something, the pagan and then after a beat, pulls back and rises again.

Nicholas HydeGreedy thing: he had expected no less.  Finding something equitable, that's always the trick; bargaining ethically, without giving away secrets that aren't his to give away - that's the other.

"I will.  Do you know anything about the tower back that way?"  And here, a significant look over his shoulder toward the Technocratic compound.  He can only imagine how it looks to them: he has never been to such a place, not in the Umbra.  An infinite network of steel and glass, perhaps.  "The web.  We want to know everything you know about it."

He watches them with steady eyes, hair dark as one of their wings.  Perhaps they, too, think he is a greedy thing.  He watches as Kiara moves forward, whispers to the murder.  "I'll offer more once we know what you have to tell in kind."

Kiara WoolfeThis is the secret Crow receives from the Verbena: Our friend was taken hostage and when I heard he was the first thing I felt wasn't pity or fear but envy. To be that close to them, to look them in the eye and have the chance to destroy them.

I want to watch them all burn. I want to exact revenge for my friends. And for myself.

twilightWe know it.

Ruffling, rustling, the murder responds.  The foremost of them bobs its head.  That whole and strange and oddly human movement, the too-intelligent gaze.

An echo: rising, whistling, whispering, brightening, query after query after answer after query:

Spiderhome.

Another frission, this dark, lyrical glance from Nicholas to Kiara, Kiara to Nicholas, back again.
--

Everything we know is much and little.  Ask what you will and we will answer.


Kiara WoolfeThe brunette's arms fold over her chest and for a beat she frowns into the distance, as the spirits mention the tower; call it the Spiderhome. The spirits of stagnation and the cities; spinning their webs across great divides of gleaming glass and steel.

She exchanges a look with Nicholas, then presses: "We seek someone inside the Spider's domain. He feels like Ice. Frozen things. We want to know what protections there are to reach him. Where are the dangers?"

Nicholas HydeSpiderhome, they say, and Nicholas, this is the first time he's heard it described as such: he had some sense of the way these places looked to spirits, from things he has heard others say.  He had perhaps been unaware until now of how apt his conceptualization of the place was.

The crows rustle on their branches, and Nicholas shifts his weight from one leg to the other, folding his arms as he thinks.  Perhaps he is still thinking of what to offer in return; it is not a decision made lightly.  "We also want to know the best way to reach him, the most direct and with the fewest dangers.  Are there any places near the web that they haven't touched - any safe places?"

twilightThere is a sense of cessation there.  Kiara says that they seek someone inside who feels like ice and there is another flutter from within the murder, ths humming, humming query that comes back to them, in a ricochet:

Many frozen in spiderhome.  Frozen-one-who-sought-and-changed is the friend-you-seek?

Another bristling from within the murder, which feels like a shivering sense of refusal or disagreement, some sense of disorder.   They do not know the best way to him; where he is being held, except in the heart and here there is something else: an impression from the murder that has flown-over spiderhome, that sees it from above the spinning web of the grid, that sensed this person and this change, some surging change like growth growth growth (flowing and boundless) from deep inside.  Later: Kiara and Nicholas will be able to transliterate this impression of space into at least a certain (still large) wing of a certain hospital south of where they stand.  Another sense of being: beneath, buried, perhaps - perhaps?  Belowground?

One of the murder tells them that noplace is safe but again: that bristling of disagreement, a rustling rising of a secret coming to the surface:  The Greenway.  Oak still lives.

Scoff.  Slumbers.

Lives.

The dangers?  Many: myriad.  Stasis, says one.  Death, says another.  Devouring.

Kiara WoolfeFrozen one who sought and changed is the friend you seek?

Kiara's mouth softens a touch, tilts up at the edge into a slip of a smile; she inclines her face. Nods, briefly. "Yes, that's our friend. He was taken and we want to bring him home." There's this tiny fleeting tremor in Kiara's voice that registers on home. As if she were uncertain of saying it aloud, as if, deep down, she knew there may well not be a home for Alexander to return to.

How did you simply pick up and resume a life after what he's been through, anyway?

Oak still lives. Slumbers. The Greenway.

The Verbena's smile fades a little. "Oak can help?" Aside, to Nicholas. "They might be referring to Greenway Park. It's not that far from here." Then, her dark eyes back on Crow. "I can awaken Oak from his slumber."

Nicholas HydeThe Greenway.

There is this sharp glance to Kiara then, something that Nicholas tries to shadow more or less as second nature but cannot quite.  It is a thing that sounds significant to him, even if he is fully unaware of the area.  Fortunately, Kiara expounds, lends color and form to the sketch he is beginning to lay out in his mind.

He heard Kiara's uncertainty too.  His jawline is firm: Nicholas had expected to find the man changed.  If you wish to be reborn, first you have to die.

"It sounds like we're headed to Greenway next, then."  And he takes a few steps closer to the edge of the circle, regards the murder in his somber way.  "Thank you, Crow.  You've been very helpful to us.  Is there something specific you would have of me?"

Kiara Woolfe[Enigmas + Intel]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde[Enigmas + Intelligence]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

twilightThere was dissension amongst the murder because they were debating whether or not a certain oak (somewhere: perhaps close) was even alive.  It sounds a bit like an old wives' tale, as much as a secret.  But: if that oak is in a nearby park and if that park is threatened by the technocrats, slumbering is the only way that spirit has of surviving.  Waking an oak spirit (which is tied essentially to its rooted-tree) would probably be the death of the tree and its spirit.



If anyone needed a distraction the murder might be the best way to go: they are mobile!  and can fly over/away, but I am not sure that they need that right now since they aren't attacking (yet).

twilightThe murder seems to confer amongst itself and they returns to Nicholas.  It wants: one shiny secret.   And two tears.

Nicholas HydeThe murder confers, and Nicholas steps closer to speak to them, and one bright eye regards another as he leans toward the edge of the circle, his hair preceding him and just brushing that invisible line.  He'll whisper a name: someone who will die perhaps tomorrow, perhaps three days from now, because this is the sort of thing he heralds, and this is the sort of thing he knows.

Whatever else he whispers Kiara cannot hear.

And when he straightens back up and steps back from the circle, he inclines his head to the flock, this easy however somber courtesy.  And as the flock leaves, one hand has found the bicep of the opposite arm, and he runs his fingers over the fabric of his sweater: this self-soothing gesture that perhaps betrays whatever nervousness he'd felt, either speaking with Crow or simply speaking with anything in front of Kiara.  We have mentioned that until now Nick frequently worked alone.

"Do you think there's anything we can do for the Oak?  I think if we Awaken it, they might kill it."

Kiara WoolfeWhen Crow takes his leave, his murder a flapping of wings that linger and then vanish into the night; their raised circle likewise diminishes, it's purpose served. There's a sense of crackling disruption and then - stillness. Kiara stands for a moment, her fingers playing over her lower lip. She seems lost to her own thoughts; the breeze rolling in and casting dark strands of hair into a wild display over her shoulders.

"I'm not sure. Right now, it may be wisest to let him sleep. We can always try and assist him after we have Alexander back, if we need to." A pause and the Verbena's fingers sweep back the fringe from her brow, she moves to begin collecting her belongings, the sense of urgency has passed but they both know better than to linger too long so close to the Union's stronghold.

"They said Alexander was felt in the heart. Deep down. Maybe he's being held underground somewhere in there." There's the sound of a zipper being drawn and the Verbena shrugs her bag over a thin shoulder, flashlight in hand. "I'm meeting with the Doc to discuss what Grace found out, maybe she knows something we can tie it together with. I got the impression it's in one of the wings.

Maybe there's a lab under the ground. We could find schematics. Grace might be able to help. Whatever we do, however we move on this - crow might be our best bet if we need a distraction."

Nicholas HydeNick, too, leans down to begin gathering up the things he brought with him and place them back in his pack.  It's fortunate enough that they weren't needed.  He still has his ear tilted toward Kiara, who is talking about the implications of what Crow told them.  There is this slow and slight nod of his head that accompanies his other movements as he places the kit and sundry back into his bag.

"Underground was my assumption too, from what we heard.  I think Grace could probably at the very least find a way to get a map of the compound, if not any specifics about where he's being held."  There is this soft exhale that accompanies the last word; perhaps Kiara can hear it from where she is. "There's no way to get around the danger for the team that goes in to get him."

His wife was to be among that team.  Perhaps the crease that has appeared on his brow has something to do with that.

"I agree that Crow might serve as a good distraction.  It won't come for free, but I think it would be able to cause enough chaos to draw personnel away from wherever the team needs to go."

Kiara WoolfeThere's no way to get around the danger for the team that goes in to get him.

She could say something about that. Offer some reassurance, some commentary on the talents of the combined effort. That if she's part of the extraction team she'll do her best to keep his wife safe. But she knows better than to offer promises. Kiara Woolfe knew, perhaps with an intimacy she wishes she didn't - how few you were ever likely to be able to keep in their lives.

Instead she's quiet for a moment, watching him. There's this faint glimmer to her eyes where they meet his. "No, there really isn't, is there." An edge of a smile and she gently brushes his shoulder with her own as she begins to pick a trail out of the park. "C'mon, let's get out of here before our friends over there start paying attention."

A beat, as they carefully navigate out, a gesture of sorts: "If it's any consolation, this isn't the worst situation we've faced. Remind me to tell you about the vampire war we nearly got dragged into." Their voices fade as they crest the hill and soon after - the insects begin to sing in the grass again.