Alright, before we get started, the ground rules!
1: If you need to get my attention, pm me. I may or may not see things in the group chat.
2: Try to post in a timely manner. Under 20 minutes would be preferred, but I'm not going to police anyone unless a notably long period of time goes by.
3: If at any point we enter combat, declares and rolls need to be made in under 3 minutes unless you have an issue that needs dealing with.
4: If anything happens in the scene that you find personally upsetting or triggering, please let me know!
5: I may be scattered, distracted, or delayed while I type posts, look things up, etc. Please be patient if this occurs. (I am also more than likely going to take longer than 20 minutes to make some posts. Just depends on how much information I have to convey.)
6: Have fun! Have lots and lots of fun!
EntropyOn a Friday or Saturday night, places like Beta Nightclub might have a line going halfway down the block. It was one of those clubs - the huge, trendy ones that everyone always talked about. The ones that always booked the best DJs and hosted special events on a regular basis. But of course, even the best clubs were at the mercy of the ebb and flow of downtown traffic. Tonight, the place was about a third full - hardly a crowd for a club this size, but respectable nonetheless. Outside, the hum and pulse of bass could be felt in the air, emanating from the building's brick walls. An attendant stood just inside the front door, checking IDs and charging cover. She was tall and blond, with a pierced lip and a bored-but-polite smile on her face.
Inside, the place was lit with a cool blue light and the sound of the house music coming from the dance floor filled the place with booming noise. There was a well-stocked bar on one side of the dance floor and a handful of booths against the walls. A staircase led up to the second floor lounge area, which looked down on the dance floor from above.
It was about an hour after the place had opened for the night, and the energy level was just starting to build a decent momentum. This is what Jim, Sid, Mara and Serafine would find when they arrived there. Maybe they'd all come at once, like magnets drawn to a pole. Or maybe they'd arrive separate and staggered, each one wandering in on their own time. Regardless of the hows, the point was, they got there. This was often the way of things, with the Awakened. Sometimes things happened, and whatever forces existed in the world simply drew them to the right place and time.
SerafineSomewhere out on the dance floor amidst the Tuesday evening crowd - which one hopes makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in numbers - a blonde. Probably a bottle-blonde, although her dark roots seem almost as artificial. Wholly black, especially evident on the right side of her skull, where she has shaved a long strip following the curve of her skull above her right ear. Otherwise her hair is long, loose, curling like snakes around her lean frame. She's wearing a white t-shirt with Johnny Rotten's face snearing from the two-tone screen printing, oversized, a military style jacket, with enough elaborated details that it could serve as the beginning piece in someone's custom steampunk costume, a black skirt short enough to show off the garters holding up her thigh-high fishnet stockings, and heavy black boots with silver-wrapped heels. The solidity of the shoes belies their height.
Sera pushes through the crowd - cuts through it, really - with two drinks, one in either hand. Holding the one with her hand wrapped around the outer rim of the cup, her arm braced to keep strangers from jostling it and wasting the alcohol by spilling it on her. Lifting it to her mouth for a drink. One each of the evening's custom drink specials, and oh, it looks like she's ferrying the second to a friend somewhere in that crowd.
But no, she's just planned ahead, see. Has her second drink ready for whenever she finishes the first one. Is letting the vibe of the place wash over her, the noise and the movement and the light show, the bodies in motion around her, acclimating at the moment. Little else.
She's alone, tonight, Sera.
At least, so far.
It's not just the sunglasses at night that make Jim quite the sight on his way through downtown's thoroughfares toward - and he doesn't quite know it yet - Beta.
The Ecstatic makes his way up to the club in his short shorts, or rather a short grey bathing suit (American Apparel of course), their hem coming more than halfway up his sinewy thighs, and a tight fitting short sleeved white linen shirt with his thin wallet crammed into the front breast pocket. His flip-flops make a slappity-slap noise with each step, similar in its rhythm to the clopping of a horse's gait.
And maybe on top of all of that it's his age, in his very late 20s, he might be a bit older than the place and, by extension, neighborhood's crowd. But as soon as he feels the rumble of music in the air, like electric thunder, his already relaxed demeanor melts into it like sand dissolving and foaming at the edge of the tide. Dancing not with, but in, its steady rhythm. His hips may not be gyrating (just yet), but every step, every turn of his head, every motion is synchronized with it.
"Yeah, this is the place." Knowing it is exactly where he's meant to be.
"Alright, dude, yeah... Listen, I'm not going to say I know the DJ or ask you to get that promoter I went to college with or whatever. That chick's wearing booty shorts and fuzzy boots. And I don't see a no shirt, no shoes, no service sign. Come on," holding his hands out, cracking a smile, and waiting for the attendant to either give him a hard time or let him by.
"Alright, dude," the girl at the door says. "We don't have a dress code." Jim looks for a moment like he might get embarrassed at his presumption, but cracks up at himself instead.
"Duh," is his answer, or at least the only audible one over his own laughter.
At least his dress makes it easier for the bouncer to frisk him on the way in with Sid. Yes, somehow he'd convinced her to come along with him. And he's not exactly sure how. Maybe she felt bad for making him chase her through the Museum of Nature and Science - actually, she'd managed to lose him once or twice when he veered off chasing an interesting placard or exhibit that caught his eye.
And when they get inside, he's a bit happy that it's not completely packed, though he's still careful about how he walks through to the bar, making sure no one accidentally squishes his toes underfoot.
Mara AndrewsAmerican clubs were a pain, the minimum age to drink was a painful twenty one, a twenty one that Mara simply hadn't reached yet. It was a goal, a check point a mere few months away, but as with every club she'd heard about and had a desire to get into..she had to chance the fake ID she carried with her.
So it was she stepped across the threshold of Beta Nightclub dressed in that same red leather jacket she wore to the hole in the wall a thigh length red skirt encased her legs and a dark purple shirt that formed to her torso with enough piping and sharply angled fabric pieces to be the staple of any cyberpunk designers fashion line. To top it off she wore a pair of silver bullet earrings and a pair of military inspired heels...she hoped it would be good enough to pass muster.
The threshold crossed, the night still young by all but the most strict of standards the bald young woman stepped with confidence up to tall blond attendant just beyond the door and flashed her ID, holding it up to hand it over if necessary. A confident smile spread across her lips, and her eyes warmed just enough to show that she was supposed to be there. Nevermind the fact that her heart was dancing in her chest, and the adrenaline was spiking ever so slightly at the subterfuge, that was all just part of the fun after all.
"It's gonna be a crazy night...I can just feel it." She said to the attendant, providing small talk that could be the thing that gets her through, or gets her tossed out.
Sid RhodesStrangely, it wasn't difficult for the Ecstatic to get the timid, painfully shy Orphan. The trick is in the surprise of it. The unplanned nature of it all. That's how most of their day has gone, after all. Ran into each other by chance in a park. Decided to go visit DMNS on a whim. And from there, who knows. They do, of course, but they're the only ones.
Another factor that helped convince the woman to go with him, a little boat caught in the wake of something bigger, faster, freer. She's still riding her high. This high of hers is not chemically induced, unless one considers the large amounts of dopamine her brain produced as a result of visiting a place of SCIENCE (and nature). That and his so far easygoing nature have compelled Sid along from one place to another, the pair wandering around the city in a way she hasn't since she arrived.
It's hours later now, and they're still wandering together. Close but not too close. Distant but not too distant. At least they are for now. When the gates into the club (probably fairly ordinary by an ordinary person's standards) loom large and menacing above her, they seem to appear from nowhere. At least to Sid they do. "Uh," she says, gawping in a way completely unlike how she spent the afternoon in DMNS, but it's lost. Jim is already talking to the woman checking IDs about the dress code. There isn't one, she hears, and she's not sure right now if that's good or bad for her. She's dressed as she usually is, old tee, blackish grey with a faded yellow Batman emblem stretched across her chest despite the shirt being obviously oversized. Tattered and faded jeans, ratty old sneakers. Her bag has been left somewhere, probably on the floor of her truck wherever it was last seen. That's alright, she's got her wallet in her back pocket and the ignition key in the front one.
"Uh," she says again, a little more urgently this time, but Jim is already making his way inside. Sid stands there on the pavement for a moment longer, casting about wildly, though her choices are few and far between. Either make her way by herself all the way back to her truck, or brave the crowd inside. No matter the size, it'll be too large and oppressive for her to handle.
"Ah!" is the last thing she says, hurrying after Jim.
Sid Rhodes[Magidar: ON (awareness)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 8) ( fail )
Jim Thompson[ Do I sense a disturbance in the funk? Perception + Awareness. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Serafine(Perception + Awareness!)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1
Mara Andrews[Feel the power. (awareness)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4) ( botch x 2 )
SerafineSo, it's a club on a Tuesday night and there's music. Sera has not one but two drinks in hand. Let's be fair: they are not the first of her evening, but neither are they the tenth or twentieth. And the drinks here - the custom drinks, advertised in neon scrawl on boards that glow electric under the blacklights - are watered down, more mixer than alcohol, festooned with extras like pineapple slices and clove-studded slices of lime and locally preserved cocktail onions. What one expects.
But there has been something unsettled about her for three nights in a row. She spent one sober and she spent one stoned and now she intends to spend one drinking, when she feels the brush of both un- and -familiar resonance against her senses. Stops, midway through the dance floor, abruptly enough that she loses the top third of her spare drink onto the shapely back of an owl-eyed girl in a skin-tight red minidress, but has completed the arc of motion and is weaving her way back through the crowd on the dance floor toward the front entrance. On a weekend night, things might be crowded here around the bar. Six or seven deep, pressing through for their orders, spilling in from outside, suddenly engulfed by the overwhelming noise from the sound system, the sensory overload of all these damned people.
Tonight, she arrives, well, just as Jim and Sid and Mara have talked their way through the bouncer at the door. Even with their senses closed, Sid and Mara cannot mistake Sera for anyone but the singer from the other night. The same hair, the same black-rimmed eyes and long-long legs. She's not quite as sweaty, yet, but she has two drinks in hand already and is sipping from one. So, check three.
Watching the door like she's the fucking party planning committee. Lifting one drink to her mouth via a vague toast to whomever she sees first. Offering the second to whomever looks like they need it most.
Jim ThompsonMaybe Jim hears her squeaks of protest and ignores them. Maybe he doesn't. Either truth serves his ends, because it gets her through the door and into the club. And it might be the former, because he slows once he's inside and has glanced back to make sure she's followed, leading her - if she's continue following, that is - the rest of the way toward the liquor dispensary.
The bar.
He turns back again, toward her, once they're at the counter.
"Do you drink?" He doesn't shout, but does raise his voice, mouthing the words in an exaggerated manner to make sure if she can't hear him, she might still understand. He does put a finger up to his own ear, pressing his tragus near-flat into the canal. A trick to help him hear her answer, and one someone who has spent some time in places like this might know.
Jim's features grow decidedly darker in the extreme lighting of the club, shadows cast and lasers causing the illumination to come from strange angles. His dirty-blonde-stubble-filmed face and mustachioed lips move strangely in the strobes, and his Ray Bans (gold-detailed wayfarers) reflect the colors in their concave mirrored blackness. His relaxed features seem content with the new situation, and coupled with the psychedelic energies that bleed from mind, he seems a monolith that soaks in the erratic energies and magnifies them back out into the surrounding ether.
And some of these energies pique his own senses. As he waits for her answer, his head turns to look for the source, while his third eye seeks them out along a different spectrum of the Tapestry. He spots two more women, and if Serafine should pick up on his own resonance, he's already looking in her direction as she comes over, trying to catch her eye.
Though that's probably something she's use to happening at places like this, looking how she does.
But she does lift her drink in his direction, and his answer is to raise his fist, thumb and pinky finger jutting out. Gnarly, is the body language he puts out into that same ether, in return, before taking the drink and returning the toast. "Namaste."
Mara AndrewsThe attendant smiled in return, and Mara knew she was in. She took her ID back sliding it into one of the pockets of her jacket and walked on past her smile growing, sliding from warm and confident to something ever so slightly arrogant at having bypassed yet another age check, at this rate she was on her way to a perfect record before the age of twenty one.
But ahh karma, karma loved moments like this, when you were riding high on success, it was then that Karma reared its head and reminded you that the world would always win in the end.
Mara stretched out her senses as she strode into the heart of the club...and in that moment she stretched a little to far, she felt more then just the others around her, she felt the spark of the awakened, and impossibly the spark of every sleeper in the club in the same moment. It was like a flashbang of existence screaming through her skull and in that moment she staggered through the moment clasping her eyes with one hand.
Even in a club that was barely a third full this would spell disaster. The normally graceful Akashic careened into a woman not three steps from Serafine. The woman slamming into her escort, who thankfully was solid enough to keep them both up.
"Sorry, Sorry....fucking strode in the eye." Mara apologized as she righted herself and in that instance noticed Serafine watching with drinks in hand. The young woman laughed as she quickly stepped away from the couple she'd interrupted and stepped up to her fellow magi.
"I did say its gonna be a crazy night. These are excellent signs."
Sid RhodesThe person who looks like they need a drink the most...Well, that's probably Sid. The woman had seemed out of place enough in a seedy little bar only just filling up for a night of loud loud music among the hipster crowd. The club is a different beast altogether. A different kind of place filled with different kinds of people moving to a different kind of sensory overload.
That's what it is that makes her seem like she needs that drink. The sensory overload. She winces at the noise as though it's too much for sensitive ears and no wonder. She's always so quiet, like a mouse trying to hide out in corners, unnoticed. But it's more than that. The music, the heat, the bodies, the noise, the vibration of the beat shaking her sternum, it twists something inside of her, some uncomfortable locked away thing she hasn't thought about in--
Despite hours spent in his presence, Sid isn't prepared to reach out for the man's hand. He slows down to make sure she's there with him still, not lost to this crowd the way she'd been momentarily lost in the museum, and when she's close enough she reaches out and grabs hold of a fold of the back of his shirt, clutches it in her fist like it's a lifeline, her only hope of making it through this place alive and in one piece. When they've stopped and he's mouthed that question more than spoken it to her, Sid startles, then shakes her head in the negative rather than risk losing her voice shouting over the din.
She looks around, and it's only then that she notices the other women. First Serafine, offering her drink while beside her Jim is making hand gestures. Then Mara. Sid's gaze doesn't stay on that one for long. They cluster together and she can't help but think of their earlier conversation. They're not moving, and so Sid releases her death grip on Jim's shirt, leaving a wrinkle in the linen.
EntropyThere was a boy down the bar a ways. He looked right around legal drinking age. Dirty blond, pale blue eyes, light tan, slim and wiry. His hair was a stylish mess, and he had on a white tank top and skinny black jeans. If one happened to glance his way, they might mistake him for a model - he had that look. Pretty. Sharp features. Tall without being too tall, and just the right body shape to fit all the fashionable clothes. But if he was a model, he was lacking his entourage. Point in fact, he was lacking company altogether.
The boy sat alone with a drink in his hand - something clear and nondescript. Whatever ice may have been in the tumblr had melted by now. When Jim and the others had arrived, he'd been staring into his drink with a look of morose worry on his face, the skin below his eyes sunken and dark from lack of sleep. But as the Awakened wills gathered together near him, he lifted his eyes and took a sudden, sharp breath. There was a pause that lasted the span of barely half a minute as he stilled in place, caught somewhere between conflicting impulses. Then he jumped off his barstool and pushed past a few other patrons to approach the gathered magi.
His eyes did a quick scan of the group, taking them all in one by one, then going back over each in turn as though he couldn't quite make up his mind who to address. Finally his gaze landed on Jim, whose energy felt the strongest. "Are you... can you help me? Please, people are missing and I don't..." he stopped to cast an anxious glance around the club. "I don't know what to do. Who to talk to. But someone has to know something!"
SerafineJim did not have to work hard to get Sera's attention. The lights and lasers across her glasses, the warp and weft of his resonance in the Tapestry stronger, more vivid and immediate than those of the (slightly) more familiar Mara and Sid. So: Jim claims the second drink. Layers of purple and yellow in strange striations, with a long, old fashioned plastic drink stirrer topped by a representation of Sears Tower in Chicago to cut through and mix the layers.
She is holding her own drink by the thumb and forefinger, around the outer rim and lifts it fractionally higher as he responds to her toast. "Sláinte." - with a creditably feigned Irish accent, is what he gets back, a wry curve to her mouth as she takes another sip of her own drink, rock-candy pink. With a rock-candy swizzle stick. Most of her red lipstick has come away on the plastic cup.
The next glance takes in Sid, behind the psychedelic stranger, holding onto his shirt. Allowing herself (somehow) to be dragged here in his wake. Sera's eyes flash between them, her brows rising in a neat little movement. The lost-lamb and the guru. Some quirk of her half-smile suggests that she approves, but then she's leaning aslant to hear Mara pronounce to them all that the signs are excellent for a crazy night.
And that stills Sera's expression abruptly. She cuts a sidelong, straight look at at the Akashic, already oddly off-centered, her dark brows drawn close over her eyes even before the boy from the bar barrels up. Hovers around the group before charging forward towards Jim, requesting help. The faintest of shivers shudders down her spine and she tosses back that sickly-sweet drink all at a go.
Licks her lips clean of the sugar, after and looks ready to reclaim the one she put in Jim's hand a moment ago.
Jim Thompson"Places, everyone. Curtains up; hit the lights," are the first words out of Jim's mouth, and should be able to Sid hear them, they would relate very much to their earlier conversation.
Next, Jim's hand reaches out and rests on the young man's shoulder in a reassuring gesture, his other one placing the drink onto the bar before it rises to his face, raising his sunglasses. His eyes are a bit bloodshot from one illicit substance or another, but they squint to focus on the boy that presents himself. He is, in but a moment, planted firmly within the moment that has presented itself.
The contented smile he almost always seems to wear melts away, but it's far from a stern look he returns Jake. It's one of concern and sympathy.
"You look like you've been through the wringer, dude. Let's start with what you know, and we'll see if we can't help you out," breaking his gaze on the boy only long enough to look left and right, seeing all the people gathered around them, lost in their revelry.
Still...
His gaze returns to the young man, and he jerks his head toward the booths - cushioned banquettes waiting to be put to use later in the night when people have worn out their dancing shoes. One happens to be empty and not laden with cast off belongings, jackets, bags, etc.
"Do you want to sit down and talk? Bring your drink." He goes to pick his own back up, though since setting it down Serafine may have already swooped in to grab it.
Mara AndrewsMara was starting to rue her seemingly prophetic words. She'd mean't it all in good humour, but oh how the world loved to play games. Games that the four of them were now being drawn into.
When the young man steps up and makes his inquiries Mara listens intently, taking in the details and breaking them down. The smile that had rested upon her lips since striding into the club dialed back, taking on a comforting look for the young blonde man in distress.
She remains silent however, letting the unknown man do the talking. Instead she cast her gaze outwards, watching their surroundings discreetly. The man in his flip flops and shorts gestures towards a booth and Mara takes that as a sign to start moving.
She keeps herself just a little ahead of the others, playing the vanguard as she found a path for them to walk, arms gently pressing people out of the way to form a corridor for the other magi a dazzling smile used to smooth any ruffled feathers at their passing.
Sid RhodesThey are gathered, clustered, their resonances swirling around, combining, contrasting and harmonizing. Sid can't sense it as well as she sensed Jim earlier in the day, but she knows that it's there, that it's happening. People are already being affected by it, for better or worse.
And then there's the stranger, barging up to them from some place down the bar. Sid, noticing him too late, stiffens, takes a step to the side, her arms awkwardly trying to decide if they should stay at her side or wrap around her upper body. She's close enough to hear Jim, but barely. The fact that they're thinking back on the same thing does little to quiet a sudden onset of nerves.
Something is going to happen, she'd said. Maybe it's starting now, or maybe this is something else. Somehow, though, she doubts it. The others, at least two of them, adopt looks of concern and worry for the sake of the stranger. Sid only looks as she (almost) always does. Tense, wary, watchful. Jim isn't the only one who casts about their surroundings, making note of the closeness of revelers, though Sid's reasons are probably completely different.
Mara starts to move, leading the charge to the empty booth. Sid holds back, unintentionally playing rearguard, keeping her head down and her gaze averted. Being last gives her a seat at the outer edge of the booth, with space to move and breathe and, should she need it, a quick escape.
EntropyThe boy seemed agitated for a moment, tensing up a bit when Jim settled his hand on his shoulder, but he took a couple of breaths and steadied his nerves, giving a slow nod. "Yeah. I mean, yes. Please. It's been fucking weeks and you guys are the first..." he trailed off, wary of being overheard. "You must be new. I haven't seen any of you before."
Jim asked him to bring his drink, and he ducked back and grabbed it without thought. Then he darted through the sparse crowd toward the booth that Mara had picked out for them. When he got there, he slid back to the edge of the bench opposite Mara, pressing his shoulder against the wall to make room for the others. His fingers tapped out a quick staccato rhythm on the surface of the table while he waited for everyone to get situated. Here the noise was slightly muffled due to the floor-to-ceiling panels the closed them in on all but one side. The music still beat loudly in the background, but they could at least speak without having to shout.
"So um, I'm Jake. I'm not like you, but I know what you are. My girlfriend, Shelby... she's with the Cult of Ecstasy, and she taught me..." here his voice cracked, and he stopped speaking to take a large gulp of his drink. "She taught me about a lot of things. But then she disappeared. All of them did. Her whole cabal is just gone. And I've been calling and looking and.... nothing. I just need to know. I need to know what happened. I mean, maybe they're hiding or something. But I don't know... I have this awful fucking feeling. She said she'd call and she always calls. And she seemed really stressed out the last time I saw her. She wouldn't tell me why, but I knew something serious was about to go down. I could just feel it."
SerafineJim speaks up, reassures the kid and redirects the group. And sets down the drink that the lanky Sera started eye as soon as she drank her own down to the last drop of whatever-it-was on the slowly dissolving rock candy swizzle stick. The liquour leaves her tongue the same candy-pink as the drink itself. Perhaps the purple-yellow will create a similar striped effect.
Swoop on that drink she does. She picks it up rather unconsciously, feeling the movement of her heart in her chest. Listening to the background beat of her pulse, which is out of time with the six/four signature of the dance music in the background at the moment. Sips experimentally, recognizes her error only when Jim reaches for his drink again.
And hands it back to him, with an apologetic twist of her mouth.
One that does not quite chase away the sense of taut awareness around her eyes.
Jim directs the kid to bring his drink. Sera decides that they may need a few more, and cuts past the others, sidling up to the bar, incising her narrow hips easily between a pair of barstools. One empty, one occupied. Tuesday night's lightly staffed, so there's still a delay at the bar, but people rarely ignore her when she requires their attention, and so it is now.
The minute or two extra alone at the bar are well spent. Sera closes her eyes, tastes ash in the back of her throat. Glances up while the bartender fulfills her order, tipping her head back so her long hand falls down the center of her spine. Squints through the glare of lights at the faceless frames looming above the balcony, then picks up her order and follows the rest to the banquette.
What she has is: a bottle of Patron held by the neck in one hand, and a highball glass full of lime slices and four or five shot glasses stacked carefully in the other. She sets them down and slides her way into the booth in time to hear the Jake's story. Jake reports that he has this awful fucking feeling, and for Sera it is a cold knot at the base of her spine now.
She hasn't poured herself a shot yet, though one's coming. Instead, she pushes a free hand through her hair, pulling it back in a way that emphasizes the close-clipped line on the right side of her skull, pulls it all out of her face, glances at each of their faces in turn. Sid last, and sidelong, and longest, mind, then cuts a look back to Jake.
"Your girlfriend. What'd she look like?"
That's not idle curiosity, but Sera's energy is banked in it. Held back, contained inside her skin.
Jim ThompsonJim listens intently, his own drink cupped between his two hands, once they've assembled in the booth and Jake begins to share the trials that have left him looking so worn down and worried.
Serafine, tequila in hand, sets in with a question, but Jim puts a hand out on the table toward Jake. Doesn't touch him, but he does pat it on the table in a reassuring manner, right where he's drumming his fingers anxiously. "We're going to try and help you out, okay?" An eyebrow raised at the question, to see the boy - to Jim this is a boy - and his reaction to this. To see if it calms him. "We're going to find out what's up. Don't worry, and try to think clearly." Gesturing to his drink. "Take a sip and a breath." And, whether Jake does so or not, he sets in with his own line of questions.
"You said you hadn't seen anyone else. Like the rest of her cabal. Who else was part of their cabal? Have you checked out her apartment, or her usual hang-outs?"
He pauses, letting those first questions settle into the young man's head, for him to tumble over, before again interjecting with another inquiry. "Was there anything she was working on? Anything she might've talked to you about in the past few weeks that seemed out-of-the-ordinary."
Mara AndrewsMara leads them to the booth, but she does not infact sit down immediately. She lets the others slide into the booth first, and once they are all in even then she doesn't sit down properly.
She leans against the table, her hands resting on the table top as her backside rests against the tables edge.The lean she had adopted was casual, almost playful, but to those close there was a tension in her body, the sort of tension that one expected in a tightly wound spring.
Her back is to the other magi, her gaze outwards at the surroundings, at the press and grind of the people on the dance floor, to the huddling masses at the bar and the few groups who orbited the seating area's.
Her gaze might be outward, but her ears are keen to listen to what was happening behind her, the conversation caught as she turned her gaze from left to right. There are no quips, no added remarks from Mara now, all of the bluster and bravado replaced by a quiet, intense focus.
Sid RhodesSid sits at the end of the booth, sits right on the edge of it, one leg leaned outside, its matching arm hanging loose at her side. That is, until Mara takes up her lean against the edge. The redhead looks up suddenly, startled to find her there and not...somewhere else. The other side of the booth, maybe. Looking to the side, to the person beside her she frowns, winces really.
Warily, she scoots one inch, two inches, maybe a fraction of an inch further into the booth. She doesn't gauge the distance exactly, but it puts Mara and her boothmate about equidistance away from her. And of course, she slides her feet so the heels bump right up against the booth's bottom paneling.
While she's trying to get her self situated as comfortably as possible (impossible, it's absolutely impossible), the others begin their questioning of the boy. What'd she look like, what was she working on, that sort of thing.
"Where," she starts, stops, tries again. "Where," a little louder, but not quite audible yet. Leaning forward, squeezing her eyes shut, she shouts, "Where did you see her last??"
Who even knows if they heard her that time. She sits back, cheeks red with the effort of public speaking in a loud place, and folds her hands tightly in her lap.
EntropySuddenly, there were all these questions for Jake to answer, and he looked between Sid (whose sudden shout seemed to startle him,) Jim and Serafine, then over to Mara briefly, noting the expressions on their faces, before he gave a light nod and finished off the rest of his drink - taking Jim's advice. The kid was doing his best to hold himself together - to act as though the world wasn't falling apart around him - but it was clear that his emotions and mental stability had been on a steady decline for some time now. He had that raw, harried look - fingernails gnawed to rough stubs, eyes exhausted and a little swollen.
He looked like someone who'd lost the person he loved. Either his grief was all-too-genuine, or he was a very good actor.
"Shelby's 32. She's about average height, like 5'6". Black. Short-ish, sort of wavy hair. Really pretty. She was at my place the last time I saw her. We had dinner and hung out. She spent the night. And she was distant. Stuck in her head, you know? She said that she had to do something, but that she'd call me when everything was settled. I asked, but she wouldn't tell me what. All she said was not to worry. That she had things under control, but obviously that was a lie. I mean, if it really wasn't a big deal, she wouldn't have kept it from me." He licked his lips. The skin on them was dry and a little chapped despite the warm weather.
"She didn't say anything about the rest of the cabal, but I haven't seen any of them either, and I have some of their numbers. I called the ones I could. All of it went straight to voicemail. There's... five others. Six, including Shelby. They run the chantry, but she stays with me more than she stays there. I think she's been fighting with the chantry-head lately. Jai. He can be kind of old-fashioned. He wouldn't even let her bring me there, so I don't know where it is. I just know it must be towards the edge of the city. Or maybe outside of it. Takes her about half an hour to get here when she's been out there.
"I've checked all the places she likes to go. Asked all of her human friends. No one's seen her. No one knows anything."
Sid Rhodes[ACTIVATING EYE OF SAURON: percept+subt]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 5, 8, 8) ( fail )
SerafineWhile Jim speaks, while Sid struggles to speak, then finalloy shouts a question, while Mara watches the rest of the club, Sera unstacks the shot glasses and pours one for herself, one for Jake without question, then, what the hell, keeps pouring until she's poured out six shots.
Here's the rub with those tequila shots. The salt shaker the bartender insisted would be on the table is not on the table. She takes one of the six shots anyway, licks the webbing between her right thumb and forefinger (there is always salt on the skin), where the curl of ink on her palm is evident, and tosses it back. Swallowing the burn as Jake launches into his story.
Takes in the signs of his disshelvement in separate looks. The gnawed to the quick nails, the redness to his eyes, the curl of grief behind the his voice and slides closer, nudges his thigh with her own. Nudges a shot in his direction, too, then reaches for his left hand with her own right, curls their hands together, palm to palm, skin to skin if he'll allow. She glances up, across the table at Jim, then back at Jake's profile. The alcohol is beginning to warm her veins, but there's still a thoughtful furrow between her dark brows.
Jim ThompsonJim's glasses still perched atop his head where they'd been slid to rest earlier, his eyes are focused on Jake and his words. As the boy takes his advice and takes a drink, Jim is happy to grab the tequila he's already been eying in Serafine's vicinity when she's done pouring. He's not rude about it, but he actually sneaks a quick gulp down his gullet before refilling the glass in case a toast is in all their future.
It's coupled with his earlier drink, the one in his hand and quickly disappearing, and Sid will know he's stacking its tantalizing touch on top of the spliff he'd puff-the-magick-dragon'd earlier in the evening.
As much as he'd told Jake to take a drink and relax, he can only imagine what number he's on and how deep his liver is. Playing intoxicated catch-up, trying to level out his own disconnect with Jake - and therefore find connection - he can feel the edges of his being begin to loosen and drift across... No, deeper into the Tapestry. Feel the vibration of its fibers, in his toxified bloodstream and in the air between him and Jake.
Looking at the boy's red eyes as he speaks, he tries to see the woman he speaks of's reflection there. See where he comes to the fore in his mind's eye. And as the flash of insight, the remembrance of past encounters, flashes across the boy's mind... Tries to tie it all together to the present and let the moment explode out in search of Shelby...
A Big Bang of sensation, he muses as the alcohol's effects wash over him, a smile as he thinks again of his earlier conversation with Sid.
[Arete 3, base difficulty 5 (Mind 2 + 3 for a coincidental effect) -1 for sympathetic magic (Jake), -1 for researching lore or information on the subject (Jake's answers to all their questions about Shelby) = minimum difficulty of 3. Spending WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 5, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Mara AndrewsSid's movement couldn't help but be caught ouf of the corner of Mara's eye, as Sid slowly inched her way to a more comfortable position the bald woman's gaze turned from the side and regarded the redhead with a quizzical look, one fine brow raised before she shook her head and smiled at the activity.
But then Jake's story began to unfold, one of lost love, lost friends, and news of a chantry that might well be unguarded, or even worse, overrun by who knows what form of horror. The others might not notice the look that creeps across Mara's features, a brief hint of displeasure and sadness that weathered away that casual smile she wore for the rest of the club.
When Serafine pours out the shots she hesitated for a brief moment, before she let a hand which till now had been melded with the table, move to take up a shot. She tipped it to her lips, and let it drain slowly down her throat before she set the glass down near the edge of the table, leaving it within the reach of her fingers.
Always good to have a weapon hand after all.
Sid RhodesJake tells his tale. Sera pours shots for all of them, plus one. They all do their part, except for Sid who is just too shy to do more than raise her voice for one question to be heard over the noise and thump and grind of the club around them.
Sera starts them off, licking her hand for the salt she'll find there. There'll be more than that, surely. She'd been dancing, after all, there'll be sweat and salt all up her arms if she really wants to keep going that route. Jim next, drinks twice. Sid glances at him sidelong, brow twitching briefly, but it's...it's not exactly worry. And it's far, far from judgmental. She knows there are other things coursing through his system, things that make his eyes blood shot and his limbs looser.
But that's his life. His choice.
Sid, she leans forward, leans a little across Jim and slides the last shot glass her way. That may seem surprising considering all the things she's waved off lately. No to Sera's whiskey, no to the drink that went to Jim instead. No to the stuff that Jim offered her earlier. Yes to this?
She slides that shot glass closer to her, liquid sloshing, leaving a little spattered trail in its wake. Then, without pause or hesitation, she knocks it back like she's no different from the others, like she's been doing this for years. She doesn't even wince as the liquid burns down her throat. She rolls out her shoulders, ignoring whatever reactions come from the others, tips her head to the side and returns her attention to Jake.
SerafineOf course Sera feels the wash of Jim's working over her senses; she might've known what was coming when he gulped down his shot and refilled the glass to be ready - for a toast, or whatever comes.
Then her eyes cut neatly back to Jake's profile, and she does say something. Finally, quietly, " - are you sure there were just six? I had a dream the other night, and there were twelve? People or - "
piles of ash. This she doesn't say. One hopes that Jake is too lost in his grief to note the lacuna in her remark. From the rest, though, Sera is not hiding that there is more to her dream that 12 Awakened Apostles milling around in white robes.
"I saw some others, too. Outsiders maybe. If I describe them, can you tell me if you know them at all? If you've ever seen them?"
EntropySerafine slid a shot of tequila in Jake's direction, and he reached for it without thinking, but paused before putting it to his lips, as though suddenly remembering some instinct toward self-preservation. It was clear in that moment just how hopelessly outmatched the young man really was, sitting her amidst a group of powerful willworkers who may or may not be trustworthy or even friendly.
They could, in fact, be the very cause of his lover's disappearance. He really had no way of knowing. And that spoke to his level of desperation.
When she touched his hand, he pulled it back nervously, looking at her as though he could somehow discern her motives with but a push of his will, the way that Shelby might have done. But he couldn't. So he looked down at Serafine's hand, exhaled softly, and dropped his own back into her grasp, choosing for the moment to accept her small offer of comfort.
He didn't seem to notice or realize that Jim was using him to cast an effect. No, that wasn't entirely true. For a moment there, his head gave a twitch, and he rolled his shoulders as though he'd felt something crawling along his skin. But if he knew what it was he was feeling, he didn't say anything.
Finally Serafine asked her question, and that was when he drank the shot, downing it in one go like he'd done it a thousand times.
He shook his head. "I'm sure. There's six. Shelby, Jai, Becca, Will, Apollo and Lisa." Then he went suddenly still, staring at her with a wary kind of intensity. "Tell me about your dream. All of it."
(She'd said were. She'd said are you sure there were just six.)
SerafineThis is the second time in as many days that she has told the story. The first was in the locked office of a Church, to a priest whose faith she does not share. Now, in a booth in a bar - no, a nightclub, the sort with DJs and dance mixes rather than live music, a bottle of tequila and a handful of strangers, including one who's just searching for his missing lover.
"I was in a strange place. The world was entirely gray, covered in ash. No sky, no stars, no wind, no clouds: just nothing. Sifting ash and a soundless, unmoving sky.
"Then a sign, with the number twelve, and a girl in the center of a twelve-pointed circle. Sixteen, pale-skinned with a spray of freckles across her nose. She was crying, and she asked me for help, but before I could answer a stranger came and said something to her. He was older, late 40s, perhaps, charming in a way no one should ever trust, but everyone always does. She took his hand, and they disappeared into a cold white mist. When she looked back at me, her eyes were as white as the mist he came from.
"And she was no longer crying."
Jim ThompsonOne might think that Jim would seem distant at this point, at least those that realize his mind is drifting into the ether of space and the nonexistent veil of distance that clouds deeper connections. Especially those that might feel it. But he is still very much in the moment, listening to Jake.
The way the alcohol slows his pulse, relaxes him further, though at the same time awakens his senses and loosens inhibitions both of the superego and Awakened psyche.
And as Serafine adds her two cents - or, actually one cent, as she holds something back - his weaving becomes a bit more complicated. Layered, much like the drink that Serafine had given him earlier. Trying to reveal what threads of destiny she might've glimpsed. Just as that drink is layered below the shots, above the comfortable blanket of THC beneath it all. And just as such, another sphere of understanding - this one of fate, destiny, of death and decay and also of clockwork order - is layered over the other magic he's brought to bear.
And something needs to stir it all, a pestle of his own energies plunged into the cauldron of magic and muddling it into a more powerful concoction. Leaving Serafine to keep him talking, or at least keep him at the table. Luckily, it seems she's given him a great reason to.
Beneath the surface, Jim is a mad scientist of substances and the insubstantial. But above it, he simply slides another shot his way, this time raising it to his lips to slowly lip it once or twice, before putting it back down onto the table and leaning forward.
Leaning forward to continue listening to (and more importantly anchoring his magic to) Jake and his mind's reaction to the story Serafine shares.
[ Extending the effect at +1 difficulty, and using a dash of Quintessence to negate that and keep it at 3. Can't spend any more WP SAD FACE. And not spending any successes to be subtle... Because he needs those successes for finding this chick or what happened to her. ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Sid Rhodes[percept+aware: do I sense anything? (probably not =[ )]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Sid RhodesThe others, Sera and Jim, they're the talkers, the comforters. And Mara stands quiet sentinel, green eyes watching the club goers, the partiers living it up on a Tuesday night.
And Sid.
Sid sits at the table, eyes cast to the empty shot glass that she rolls between her fingers. The alcohol twists its way down into her stomach, hits it like a burning bomb and explodes outward, relaxing her muscles. Warming her already warm limbs. Loosening the knots being in a place like this ties through her core, tangling up her senses.
And so her awareness opens, and she feels them again. Mara, Sera, and...Jim. Jim is up to something. She can't tell what exactly, but she slants him a glass from the corner of her eye, watching him now. Watching him while Sera talks about her vision, of 12. A sign with twelve, a girl in a twelve-point circle. These things that Sera says, Sid isn't knowledgable in the occult, she can't read what these things, these symbols and signs, mean.
But she can tell that Jim is working something. The feel of it is unfamiliar, but his resonance swirls and pulses in the air around her as he slides another shot toward Jake. Sid's head cants, her brows knit slightly, and she peers at the young man, thend own at the table. At the bottle and the glasses. Leaning across again, this time she grabs more than just a glass, she slides the bottle closer, looking at Jim's face as she moves and resettles herself. Okay? the slight lift of her brows asks.
Then she's the one pouring the shots. One for herself (that stays in front of her, for now anyway) and one for each of the others.
Entropy[Per+Subterfuge - is Sera holding something back?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Jim ThompsonJim very suddenly lets go of the glass. Raises his eyebrows in revelation. Sits back as the image imprints itself on on the back of his eyelids even as he finally closes them. Raises his hands to his face for a moment, rubbing at his own temples. It hadn't been a true exertion of will. No marathon, just a slightly more complicated recipe than he'd -
Well, he hadn't really been sure what to anticipate, so you couldn't really say that.
But the movement and expressions of his face are as much a reaction to what he's found - to the result of what he'd done - as it is for effect. To assert himself into the conversation. Because for Jim, few actions serve a single purpose.
And Sid and Serafine might sense the workings of magic wash away, powers returning to the some-would-say-rightful place in the universe and Tapestry.
He looks across the table at Jake. Honest and withholding in his demeanor, poured in equal measure.
"Now, Jake. I think I may have found something. A place. Someplace we should all check out. But I'm not going to say any more than that, because I don't want you going there on your own. I want you to get some rest. I want us all to get a bit of rest before we go and check it out. I've stayed in the now, to focus the search. Once we're there, I can try and take a look at the then." A pause, his hand out again, trying to lend a bit of his own strength to a consor of his own Tradition.
"Is that okay?" Only saying it after he's given his rationale, given his own decision regarding sharing what he'd seen.
[ Manipulation + Awareness-as-Empathy to try and convince Jake that Jim's way is best. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Serafine(I, er, am good at many things, but am not so good at lying, yo.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
EntropySerafine told the story of her dream. Or rather, she told a condensed version of it, wishing more than likely to spare him the pain of what her full vision might reveal. As Jake listened, his brows furrowed in anxious confusion.
"No, I don't... I don't know what that means. I don't think I know a girl who looks like that. And the man could be... anyone." There was a long pause as he took a breath. Exhaled. He was about to speak again when Jim interrupted, and at this, the boy went dead-still, as if he couldn't decide which emotion he needed to feel in that moment and had landed somewhere close to shock.
Perhaps they'd expect him to disagree - to say no. They needed to go now. But the thing was, he'd been putting scenarios together in his head for weeks, and he'd heard Serafine's insinuation of past-tense (whether she meant it as meaningful or not,) and he knew full well that Jim wouldn't be suggesting that they wait if he thought there was any chance of finding Shelby alive at this place - wherever it was - that he'd managed to track down.
So the consor looked around at the strangers beside him - at all their comforting and sympathetic expressions - and then he looked down at his empty shot glass. And he said nothing.
And finally, to Jim, he simply nodded.
And that was how he would remain for the rest of the night. Still and numb and silent. He'd follow them back to Jim's apartment, and moments after arrival would find himself asleep, curled onto his side on Jim's couch.
He wouldn't dream. Or if he did, he wouldn't remember. And that was a mercy, really.
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