Life brings with it certain necessities. Food. Water. Shelter. Meet the basics and the needs get more complex. Security. Company. Creativity. Somewhere on the great stairway of needs is that to be clean. To wash and wipe away the dirt, even if water alone isn’t enough to wipe away the stains that are left behind. For most it’s not a complicated matter, to find a shower and a washing machine. It’s not that simple for all. Some have to find other ways.
Health clubs are good, if you can get in. Hospitals are better. Either way, it’s a simple thing to find a shower and get clean. Find the right place and time it right and there’s no rush either. No shortage of hot water. For a while, it feel wonderful. But all good things must come to an end.
Steel doesn’t have much else to do with her day. She has her eye on somewhere to hole herself up and make her own, even if it’s not for long. She doesn’t need to lighten the heavy burden of cash that lies on the rich office workers not so far away right now. Some new clothes would be good – god only knows how old and worn these ones are now – but that’s not urgent. If anything, still looking like a down-and-out is a decent mask to keep most people away.
So she sits on the grass, leaning against the back of a bench, near some pond or other in City Park. There’s an open sandwich packet in her lap, but she’s not eating. Bits of bread are being torn off and thrown to a couple of birds that are hopping around on the grass close by. And our shadow? Black hoodie is on, hood down for now, and worn black combats top heavy boots.
Samir[la la awareness roll]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Serafínealso awareness roll.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2
SamirAnd here comes Samir.
He's on his way from one place to the other. Impossible to tell from looking at him where he's headed or from whence he's come. If he's in a hurry or taking his time. A sharpness to him that suggests he doesn't have time for niceties.
Unlike a certain individual lounging in the grass he doesn't have to do a damned thing to escape other people's notice or fade from their memories. It helps if he's putting forth a concerted effort to do either but sometimes all he has to do is step back into a person's periphery and it's as if he never existed at all. People he has known for years can't agree on what he looks like.
He looks like a typical twenty-something westerner who's on his way to a party on a Friday night. Empty-handed but that may not last longer than anything else ever has.
Steel[Oh, crud, nightmares. I keep forgetting the nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Steel[Awareness too?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneStrange night, stupid fucking park, this steamy dusk-strewn Friday night. Stormclouds scattered menacing at the edges of the sky, through a handful of stars are already coming out in the east, the sun has painted the western horizon with those vivid, bruising colors that - at a certain hour, when a certain light lingers this close to the apex, the crux, the fulcrum of the fucking year - are so real and brilliant and impossible that they seem to shatter the seat and seads and threads one's heart, just for a passing second. Lovely, lovely.
No telling if her heart's shattered, no reason to notice her except: well. For the way the world bends around her and the way she bends into it. They are hardly the only folks out here tonight. This stage on a nearby lawn, this acoustic-folk-rock thing happening, people picnicking, getting stoned, getting drunk, playing frisbee, drinking wine, making out, making up, making hay while the (last threads of) the sun shines.
She has a bottle in hand too: another stranger silhouetted against the darkness, picking her way barefoot over the grass. Coming from the direction of the frisbee game toward - whatever, who knows? she doesn't. Doesn't know her name right now, not precise. But what the hell.
She may be reacting to that sharpness, might've stood up from one of those blankets to intersect that path? She also senses something else, without resonance precisely, breathes out with her, closes her mouth, bites her tongue and is wrenched into line with the stuff-of-the-universe, reaches -
(Watch the Weaving Prime 1. Practiced. Specialty Focus. Dif 3.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne(sorry, lost my first post because I was being dumb, but! it is late for me and I am sleepy so fast-posting is good for lizes and I am kinda include to mostly ignore posting order if cool with all. so post 'em when you got 'em.)
SteelIt doesn’t take long for the woman to run out of bread to throw at the birds that are still hopping and scratching around in the hope for a late meal. With the light and the sound of the city, it’s maybe not that unusual to see creatures that should be roosting away somewhere in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
The box empty, there’s a short blaze while she lights up a cigarette and starts to inhale. Nothing fancy, nothing herbal or otherwise enhanced. Just a straight old death stick. A dimmer glows and fades and glows and fades...
Sam may wander by without notice, but Sera? Oh, she stands out as no mere sleeper. She sees and knows more of the world than the vast majority of the population. And... wasn’t she familiar somehow? Some club over Colfax way? Yeah, maybe.
So there’s no flight yet, but Steel does pull her hood back up. Dyed black hair hidden away with other, more noticeable features. The cigarette continues to glow in the dark.
SamirHe isn't attuned enough to the world around them to make notice of someone who doesn't want to be noticed. Not even a flickering of notice. Something sugar-spun the rain would take away.
One moment he's meandering along minding his own business looking at his phone from time to time because he is young and youth are attached to their goddamn electronic devices. The next moment here comes the young woman everyone notices whether they want to or not.
Sam remembers her. He's not a gambling man but he would be willing to wager she doesn't remember him. He's also going to double down and say he can continue on through the park without anyone accosting him.
Steel[Awareness again, you up to something Sera?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneOf course everyone notices her.
Against the shadows she is another shadow, sharp and shapely and heady and gut-wrenching and soaring and strange and compelling, and she's barefoot and she's walking through the grass with the exaggerated care that could me she is a very, very, very precise creature and cares a fucking helluva lot about where she puts her feet or that could also mean she ate some edibles and drank a bottle of 1995 Veuve Cliquot Rose all by her lonesome nevermind that she has not eaten solid food for a month and a half for reasons of ritual or what the fuck ever.
Not that anyone's noticed.
--
Samir is not getting out of here though. She's on an intercept course. Reaching out for him. Still working. Blood sluicing through her saliva just enough to give her mouth a watercolor crimson frame, but it's the pain she needs, the hammer-and-nail of it to push through.
--
"Wait, stop. Fuck - "
The path is crushed gravel, ouch her poor feet and toes, but she is so clearly talking to Samir. Has a champagne bottle in one hand but is reaching for him with the other.
" - there's something, fuck. Can you feel that? I'm trying - "
Extending (+1 for extensions, -1 for resonance)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 2 )
Steel[There's something there and it's wrapped around this woman's mind and, damn... It's like grasping at shadows. But Sera teases enough of them apart to work out that there's something wrapped around the woman's mind. Something hiding and containing what should be as brilliantly obvious as Sera's own Resonance. The magic, though? Is devoid of taste and texture.]
SteelPeople move, going about their business. Eating, drinking, making some moments of merriness in their quiet little lives. Are they lucky, no have such defined and bordered existences? Or are they poor sods to be pitied, unaware of the cages that they’re not even aware of. Blinkered to their blindness.
The one, though, carrying the bottle and winding her solitary way across the grass. The one who feels more awake than the rest of the sheep in the park. The one with a target in mind? Another who slips from attention so easily that, given the blink of an eye, only the vague memory of a presence remains. Someone the world shadows even more strongly than it does with her.
Steel shifts, but she doesn’t run. She stands and sits on the bench, perched on the back with her feet on the seat. And she watches. She knows that the woman with the bottle is doing something, but is it to do with her..?
SamirIt isn't so much that Samir doesn't like other people touching him. More like he doesn't like what his brain does to the person who touches him later on when he's sitting at home alone. That's another thing you can't tell from looking at somebody. How fucked up they are or aren't.
Their paths cross as they crossed before but this time Sera is reaching for him and Sam is trying to settle an argument with himself. Does she remember him or is she just wrecked off of champagne and whatever has caused her mouth to stain itself the colour of burst summer berries.
She's Working. She's Doing Something. She reaching for him and the words and the reaching and the imploring have him stopping. Eyes wide in the dark. She is so clearly talking to him.
"Um... what? I'm sorry, I don't..."
See: he felt Sera coming. He felt the magick she had worked and the magick she was now working and he isn't an unaware creature but he's unaware of what it is she's sensing or doing and he's read enough on Ginger lately and heard enough horror stories that he's grown a bit wary.
"What're you trying?"
SerafíneA brief cameo in the downshunted light of one of those atmospheric faux-gas lamps, haloed in the darkness reveals her outfit. Silver lame hotpants and a white Sid & Nancy t-shirt, black bra obvious beneath, right arm stacked with rubber and leather and spiked bracelets, left covered in tattoos, even the flash of her hand as she does not appear to give a fuck about Samir's wide eyes or perhaps objection to physical contact.
Sera does not hug him but she does kinda slide her left arm through his right.
"Shhh." Hushed, susserant. And this, to Samir. I mean, maybe he dances away from the way she curls herself against him, but if not here she is, a stranger taking him by the arm and leaning in to him as if she needed something physical, something real, some anchor to keep herself on this plane of existence. And she turns her profile to him, the bridge of her noise against his shoulder, as if it were no more than natural. "Shhhh."
Nothing about her to tell you where her mind goes - how far back, how far deep, how thoroughly dark the place - except for the pressure of her hand against his arm.
"I just need you to watch my ass while I do this, okay? And be ready to run if I tell you to run."
Serafíne(Dropping the Prime effect. Rolling: 1. quick and dirty mind shield to dash off first.
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 6) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneCountermagick: unweaving the strange effect she has identified.
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SamirThe evening is warm but not stifling and Samir is wearing a faux-leather jacket that has soaked up what little coolness the air offers. It glides against Sera's skin as she takes his arm and he tenses with the contact but does not try to haul himself back and away from her. Especially not when she uses words like proper words and not just shushing him like he's going to give them away.
He may yet. Right now he's tense and he's looking around the park. Can't watch her ass in the literal sense because of how she's tucked against him but he can feel the pulsing of the magick come out of the contact between them and his heart is hammering away in his chest and his mouth is dry.
If she tells him to run he'll be ready to run.
He lets the knuckles of his right hand rest against her ribs but beyond that Sam does nothing to reciprocate the touch. He's ready to run right now. He has no clue what's going on.
SteelOh, this fucking city.
All she’d wanted was somewhere to hide away in. Time to settle and gather herself and start to work out what the fuck had gone wrong before. Where people had gone.
But, not. Apparently that was too much to ask for. This woman with the bottle does something, fights her battle and does... something. What comes next, though? That she can feel. The unwravelling of her masking, the shield between her strangeness and the world around her. The extra little help she’d given herself to blend into the background, beneath notice.
She stands. And? She runs. She isn’t one for up-front fights, especially when she doesn’t know the ground or who the hell she’s fighting again. Or, for fuck’s sake, why! Once she gets out of the open she can take to the shadows and disappear again.
Assuming she makes it that far.
[Dex+Ath - so using WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneHer eyes are closed. God she's concentrating and the world devolved into these strange trapezoidal pockets of awareness. Some piece of her mind or her body keeps her: breathing, these short, harsh little breaths and just once she remembers so physically, so viscerally, so entirely that her too-thin frame shudders and if Samir has an ounce of empathy about him, he will sense both her dread and her determination and there's this way she kinda edges her spare frame foreward rather than back like she's shielding his ass even as she holds on to him and does -
does, well, whatever.
(Unweaving. Continuing.)
Can't talk right now. Something nerveless and shockingly physical about her magick, the way it rips through her body. The way she pours herself into it, mouth open a bit because it feels like she is both swallowing and dissolving the effect that so unsettles her.
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
SteelIt’s still holding. It’s still holding. It’s still holding.
It’s still holding, but not for much longer. She needs to get away, but it’s still too open. She can still be seen, it’s way too obvious where she is.
Well, fuckit. She’s gotta do something. Her masking isn’t going to last much longer. That woman obviously knew something about Mind magic – hell, who even know how powerful she was. Steel just wants to get away.
The run slows to a walk. It might not be obvious to Serafine, but Sam might notice her balling her hands up into fists. As if she’s about to fight someone. Or something.
[Dark Streets, Ent 2 Forces 2. TN5, -1 for practiced, -1 for resonance, WP because hell yes. Darkening the shadows between her and the edge of the park.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneSera does not notice.
Every piece of her focus is fixed on undoing that Work. On peeling it apart, on exposing it to sunlight. On something, and god it echoes in her, and god it strips her, willingly mind, so thoroughly bare that even her teeth are aching with the effort.
--
And Samir, what does he know? There's just this strange girl, once again ignoring every convention regarding personal space, tense and aching and frightened and determined, at his side.
The air around her reeking of her magick.
(Countering: continued. Still on the Mind effect that creeped her out in the first place.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafíneSera does not notice.
Every piece of her focus is fixed on undoing that Work. On peeling it apart, on exposing it to sunlight. On something, and god it echoes in her, and god it strips her, willingly mind, so thoroughly bare that even her teeth are aching with the effort.
--
And Samir, what does he know? There's just this strange girl, once again ignoring every convention regarding personal space, tense and aching and frightened and determined, at his side.
The air around her reeking of her magick.
(Countering: continued. Still on the Mind effect that creeped her out in the first place.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Steel[As the last threads of the effect are burned away like smoke on a breeze, the woman's resonance appears in the light of day. The sensation of something Shadowy. Piercing.]
Samir[And Jamie is now officially too braindead to type a proper post. I'll write something amazing about his noticing skills when we pick this up again later!]
SteelThere is goes. The last of the effect torn away, but why the fuck for? All she’d been doing was fucking feeding the fucking ducks.
Time to vanish. It wasn’t her finest work. It was rushed and unsubtle, but hopefully enough. Enough to mask her physical form for long enough to get away from that bloody woman. Enough to make herself hard to find again.
Hopefully enough.
[Dex+Stealth. +2 from Dark Streets, +3 from Arcane.]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 4 )
Steel[Gee, thanks. Nice roll.]
SerafíneThe effect pulls away and the resonance is new and the resonance is fading and the owner of that resonance is disappearing, Running. That much she can sense.
Steel finds the shadows of the park, thickens them. Cuts past picnickers and bike-riding and drunk kids and latenight joggers, breath harsh in her throat.
No one follows.
She makes her escape, or seems to.
No comments:
Post a Comment