cauchemer(Rules: uh, obey me. No, seriously. Anyway.
Setting: in and around Skyline Park, close to dusk. It is movie night. There are plenty of people, quite a diverse assortment, picnicking or heading to restaurants or walking back from restaurants. There are food trucks all around too. People have their blankets spread on the grass in front of the movie screen, and kids are skateboarding around the block fountains. Food trucks around include Korean BBQ Tacos and Grilled CheeseWhiz and Everything's Crepe and so on.
Might want to work them closer to the fountains but I can work with anything you lay out there. :D )
ChoiA phone call or text message was all it took to summon Maxine out to play. They'd exchanged phone numbers, as people their age are wont to do after spending an afternoon chilling and doing things they shouldn't in the park. Something to the tune of Hey, there's a movie night at Skyline Park. Let's crash that bitch, there's food trucks. and Maxine said she would be there with bells on.
Sure enough, parked along near the food trucks and big enough to be mistaken for one by the less-than-alert pedestrian, was Maxine Choi's big orange van-- AKA, home. She had found Alicia in the crowd, a text of Where the fuck are you and an answer of some landmark or another helped expedite that process (thank you, technology).
Hey! / Hey. / You want food? / Yeah man, I'm fucking starving.
And that's how they wound up waiting in line at a food truck. Korean BBQ tacos, Maxine insisted. She'd even pay if that's what it took to talk Alicia out of not experiencing that with her. Chili would have waited in line with them, a foxy little black dog that kept close and tight to Maxine's ankles to avoid being stepped on by people in the crowded square.
When food was collected and they were walking back to find a place to watch the movie that was soon (enough) to start, Maxine picked up one of four tacos on her plate and prepared to bite into it. First, though, she posed the question: "So, Elij' told me that he was going to introduce me to some folks." Because Maxine just launched into shit like that, proposed topics casual as a tortoise and happy as a lark. "You know the sort of folks. Do you know them too, though?"
Crunch.
"Shit that's delicious, you need to try it."
RomeroLandmarks are a surefire way for short folks to pick each other out of a crowd when they're close enough to see some distance but not with giants around them. Since that day in the park Alicia has meant to call or text Maxine but life moves fast when you're drunk and high all the time.
She isn't drunk or high when she climbs atop a half-wall to make herself taller that Maxine will see her. When the two girls spy each other the one with the long-long hair waves and clambers back down.
The water bottle Alicia carries into line with her doesn't have water in it but it's metal and what is inside of it sloshes just like water. Occasionally they pass by people who reek of pot smoke. It's summer. If there are rules for outdoor behavior Alicia is going to ignore them.
So they come to walk along and Alicia waits until she's bidden try the thing before she picks up her taco. Until then she masks her reaction to hearing Elijah's name by uncapping and slugging from her bottle.
Crunch.
"Fuck me," she says with her mouth full. "That's amazing." Focus Alicia. Chew and swallow. "I know a few of them, but I don't know where they all hang out other than the bookstore or the park."
Choi"What, they just hang out at the park? Like, it's their turf and this is West Side Story?"
She grinned, as though she was the funniest thing in the world. She had a sip from Alicia's bottle if it had been offered up, but wasn't carrying anything of the intoxicating sort with her. Well, unless you wanted to call a cigarette of that variety. She had one out and tucked behind her ear. She was going to wait until they were done walking through the crowd before lighting, so she could avoid the fuss that tended to come when you trailed caustic smoke under the noses of many people.
"And right? BBQ and tacos, you can't go wrong." Another crunch, more munching. They neared the fountain, which was kicking up a misting bit of a splash. Maxine was veering toward it for the cooling effect. She was dressed in a pair of khaki-colored cargo shorts and a black tank-top, and a few multi-colored bobby pins held her shaggy short hair back from her forehead.
When she finished swallowing her food, Maxine followed up with a more sincere question. "Does someone own the bookstore, then? What's it called?"
RomeroAlicia has Phobia: Heights and Catlike Balance bc I am an asshole and she also has Concentration IDK if they're applicable or not yet but fyi fyi
Choi[Deranged Flaw- Panic Attacks]
RomeroIt figures she would understand a reference to a musical that came out before either of them were born. If Maxine had referenced anything come out in the last five years she wouldn't have a clue. That isn't the timeline they're living in though. Alicia can laugh at that joke. Maybe laughs harder than she ought to because she's delighted to have understood it.
Alicia is wearing a knee-length black cotton dress printed with pink-and-white flowers. Her shoes are black sandals with leather straps that make her look like she could have been a gladiator a few thousand years ago. Her hair is unrestrained and she wears the strap of her handbag diagonal across her torso.
Of course she shares her booze with Maxine. It's some fizzy vodka cucumber situation that she threw together before she came out here. The ice not yet melted. Vodka is instant liquid courage.
"An Arch Key?" she says. Carefully enunciating each word. "Or Night Owl, I don't know. Some guy named Adam runs it.
Choi"Adam, huh?" Crunch crunch crunch. "Well I'll be assed if that isn't a forgettable name."
Maxine was memorable, in her eyes, because it was a name that sounded like old lace and probably smelled like Wind Song perfume. She's been told before that it was the kind of name that belonged to a woman who was over six foot tall, as wide as she was tall, regal and imposing. Maxine Choi had laughed through her teeth and insisted that it was the perfect name for her, in that case, and that she should go home and high-five her parents straight away.
Chili trotted along nearby, and as Maxine slowed to a full on stop near the fountain she stooped down to share some of the meat from her taco with the little dog.
"Might have to look into that, then." Once the dog had plucked the meat from Maxine's fingertips, delicate and cautious with just the front teeth in use, the petite and rather androgynous teenager straightened back up. "Y'know, I don't think I ever asked: are you from around the Denver area? Or did you blow in on the wind too?"
cauchemerThe movie-night crowd is pretty diverse. Teenagers acting sullen, parents lugging three 2.4 children and all the trimmings downtown from the 'burbs. Retired couples who are down there in the grass spreading out handmade quilts and unpacking the most exotic delicacies from honest-to-god picnic baskets, the sort with cubbies for honest-to-god crystal wine glasses because do you really want to drink a brilliant Bordeaux on a delicious little Syrah out of plastic? I don't think so.
Kids from the southside, from the projects, from everywhere, spread out, eating, chilling, hooting, flirting, jerking off (okay, maybe not) making out (for sure).
--
Cops are visible at the edges of the crowd, here and there. Just a handful, leaning against the lampposts and the planters, drinking coffee and chatting with strangers and keeping an occasional eye on the crowd to step in in case of pickpockets or - whatever. There's always something, when people mass themselves in hot cities on summer nights.
Always something.
--
And it is indeed, a rather warm night.
Too warm for the trenchcoat the redheaded kid trailing along - not behind them precisely, but parallel - is sporting. That is surely why he's pasty, sweating a bit.
Maxine goes from strolling to a fullstop to share some meat with her little dog and the kid sort of bumps into her, gives her this quick, startled look. "Jesus fuck - " low. "Watch where you're going, bitch."
RomeroThat day in the park when Maxine had been lying out in the grass waiting for her drawers to dry they hadn't talked about themselves much. She had wanted to hear about the storm-watching took place beneath the overpass and they had smoked a joint and made fun of the other people in the park and pointed out the clouds and talked about meteorology and how it's so weird and cool that the stars are still up there even though they couldn't see them but there wasn't a lot of biographical information assimilation going on that day.
It was just as well. They reach the fountain and the spray is nice on their bare arms.
She's finishing her first taco when Maxine asks The Question. By now she's used to it. Or she thinks she's used to it. At any rate she doesn't have to answer it. Some ginger in a trench coat is giving Maxine static.
A trench coat. In July. Alicia frowns and stops walking because the kid is giving her maybe-could-be-a friend static. If they were back in D.C. she would have itched for a fight. Now she itches not to draw attention to herself.
"Just ignore him," Alicia says to Maxine in a tone just as low.
[perc + AHAHA SHE DOESN'T HAVE AWARENESS]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Choi[Perception + Awareness: That's okay, Maxine has plenty!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
cauchemerThe kid is pale(r) than he should be. Holds that trenchcoat closed tight in a way that just feels wrong. There's something about him, but Alicia cannot quite figure out what it is.
cauchemerThe kid is pale(r) than he should be. Holds that trenchcoat closed tight in a way that just feels wrong. There is the faintest hint of something esoteric about him. It is not strong, more like a lingering malaise, the odor of a woman's perfume long after she has left the room.
Sulfurous.
Something about his belligerence feels both - desperate, and somehow, explosive.
ChoiMaxine hadn't been paying mind to the man in the trenchcoat. She knew full well that people would put up with some intolerable shit for the sake of their fashion choices. She figured, Hey, the boy is pretty damn pale, maybe he's just one of those kids that huddles around a computer finally come out to play for once. She'd dismissed him entirely.
Up until the point that he bumped her, she'd been watching Alicia instead while working on her second taco, waiting to hear where the girl was from if not Denver. When the boy had bumped into her, though, his arm heavy against her shoulder and flank, Maxine had stumbled a step back. She was a slight thing, after all, unprepared for the contact.
More than that, she was unprepared for the presence of the pale red-haired young man. Alicia had told Maxine that she should just ignore him, and Alicia already had a pretty good idea that her newfound friend would probably listen. From what she's seen of the other girl, she didn't have much of a temper, not much violence to her really. But she was bold, that's for certain. She'd blinked and stared at the young man, but the way she stared was interested more than offended. Intrigued. As though she wasn't worried about what she'd heard, but rather what she was seeing.
Her lips had parted some, she realized after a second that her jaw had slipped and mouth was beginning to hang open. She played it off with a bite into her taco, and glanced briefly to her left to meet Alicia's eyes. The gaze was held long enough for Maxine to bounce her eyebrows up and down a few times significantly, then Maxine spoke through the food in her mouth while turning her head to look at the very disgruntled fellow.
"Aye aye, Cap'n. I wasn't moving, but I can see how that was my fault."
Her speech cleared, as she'd swallowed halfway through her sentence. Her head tipped to the side, and she glanced down at the plate of tacos before picking one up and holding it out as an offer. A peace offering, in a sense, but also an offer for trade. A taco for an answer, because she asked while extending her arm: "What are you hiding, Firecracker?"
cauchemerOne of those nights where it feels like the carpet is somehow unrolling beneath your feet and somehow you're just careening forward, gathering momentum, building into - into -
The kid's pallor is the sickly sort and there is sweat enough in his hair and on his skin that it is starting to form its own watershed. Droplets combine to make rivulets that snake down his cheeks, along the side of a rather-sharp nose. His eyes are bloodshot, adam's apple prominent enough that even inobservant Alicia can see it bob as she speaks and draws his attention - direct, full of menace -
- then Maxine pulls it back. He holds the trench closed with his left hand, tight, but the right is free and he lashes out with it at the taco she holds out as an offering with enough force to crack the shell or even send it flying.
Then gives her the finger.
"You should listen to your friend. I said fuck off."
Something dark beneath his nails.
RomeroMaxine waggles her eyebrows. Alicia's eyes go wide.
Yeah. She's weirded out too. She doesn't know what she's supposed to be doing. Still hasn't figured out what she's done in the past that's let her do what she's done in the past. Been terrified and been touching someone else and been drunk or smoking or or or.
Right now her heart is pounding beneath her breastbone and she's tucked in close to Maxine like to tell the world there's two of them. Breathing fast and her fingertips haven't gone numb from the alcohol yet but she's holding the slim canteen in one hand while the other comes to rest on Maxine's shoulder.
"Max," she says in a low pleading voice.
By now it isn't a plea not to get involved. It's a plea to sort out what the hell they're supposed to do. With great power comes great responsibility but their power can barely help them find their way out of a wet paper bag.
[scan time! awyeah! going for life but tack matter and prime and spirit on there too for shits. i like to call this cocktail WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (3) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
ChoiThe taco was slapped not entirely out of her hand, but it jumped and jerked enough that the contents spilled onto her hand and wrist. It was hot, so she made a quiet curse in a language not English (French, if you bothered to catch or pay mind) and hastily put the rest of the taco back on the plate, then shook her hand out some.
Near her ankles, Chili stood stiffly and bristled black fur along her back. Didn't growl or make a sound, but watched the boy sharp and anxious.
Maxine glanced briefly to Alicia again, then looked back forward. Her eyes nearly crossed as she focused entirely on the finger, on what was caked under his nails. If he was willing to hold that middle finger up for the full five seconds that Maxine was going to take to study it, then so be it, but either way Maxine would ultimately blink, refocus on his face, then shrug and say:
"Fucking off now." She lifted the taco-juiced hand and started to lick the sauce from her wrist and pinky finger as though it were an ice cream cone, and began to walk backward along the fountain's edge, away from the fire-haired and furnace-powered guy.
Her eyes didn't move away from him while she walked. As she went, she spoke quietly-- the sounds would be lost in a crowd, but Alicia was keeping near enough to be able to hear words that sounded old as ages spoken in a voice that was pitched much lower than comfortable speaking. The words sounded like they had the intention of invocation.
[Scanning as well, but with Spirit Sight! Spirit 1, Prime 1 too, I suppose? Focus-- Chanting!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (8) ( success x 1 )
cauchemerAlicia has a sense of his blood. His heart. His heart, beating. He is: keyed up, alert, consumed by some goddamned passion. Feels like someone about to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, doesn't he? He is also, not precisely whole. His back is covered with snaking scars, a few still raw but healing welts. Other, finer, a latticework over his torso. Razors there, though she does not know it. Just the precision, the webwork of it. The reflected pain.
cauchemerWhatever he is, whatever is riding this strange boy, Maxine knows assuredly that it is not otherworldly. It is not some driving or driven entity. His rage and his pain and his - whatever is wrong with him, whatever is driving him - is rooted in this world.
Poirot[Did I sleep okay?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 2, 6) ( fail )
cauchemerHe smiles wide, the kid. There is something lashing about the expression, and it isn't a genuine smile, so much as a showing of teeth. Still, Maxine backs off - fucking off now she says - and that gives him this little dollop of a rush and he breathes out all heady like it is done, like he is -
like he is -
like he is whereever the fuck it is he is going.
Tense as the confrontation between them is, well. No one around them has seemed to notice much.
The red-headed kid turns around, swallows hard, still holding his trenchcoat closed with his left hand, tapping the fingers of his right together with his thumb in a rushed and arrhythmic fashion that betrays his stress.
Surveys the crowd with those bloodshot, shifting eyes.
They all swim past him. Smear past him. They don't even fucking matter. He's looking for the perfect place.
The perfect -
RomeroShe doesn't want to weird the kid out. He seems like he's on edge as it is and Maxine is distracted with her chanting. This would be a good enough time to let him keep on walking but whatever her wide-open eyes tell her lashes at her like watching another person take a beating.
Despite the threat of tears ever-present in her life Alicia wears black eyeliner and black mascara. It keeps her from looking the sort of tired that party girls tend to look after too many days in a row without proper sleep or nutrition. Keeps her from looking sad. It's a paradox. Black is known to be a sad color.
As Maxine busies herself with her chanting Alicia fumbles for something else to help him. She doesn't know this kid. Just that he feels like a fatal leap about to happen.
"Hey," she says. Tension in her tone makes it clear she's trying to snag his attention. This is how people get stabbed or shot. Alicia is still a kid. All her father ever taught her to do was run away. She tosses a glance at Maxine before she takes a couple quick steps forward and puts her hand on the redhead's shoulder. "Wait a second?"
[extending that ish. trying to pick up matter/prime this time. +1 diff for the extending. DON'T MAKE ME REGRET NOT SPENDING WP KID.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (4) ( fail )
Poirot"Quit moping," Jenn said.
It was true, Elijah Poirot had been moping, and a mopey Elijah is about as sad as a sad circus lion- something nobody wants to pay to see, but is ultimately entertaining because it's ever so productive and willing to bite things. Having succeeded in avoiding his job for the last three days (it turns out, he found, that you really can call in crazy to work, but we digress), Elijah felt the need to celebrate with a free movie (because poor) and Korean barbecue tacos (because he probably won't live long enough to regret what this is going to do to his stomach lining).
Last night, the water poured in to a hospital room. Things floated up and orderlies passed by. Never had he wanted a room mate worse than at that juncture, but the water poured in and his body, like stone, failed to float. His mind wandered until-
"Hey, she's here!"
"Huh?"
"Alicia, go talk to her," Jenn said with a shove.
"Wha-huh, no!" Elijah, however, couldn't exactly get away from the shove. Jenn's attention flickered to a cute blonde down the way who had been staring at her tattoos for the past fifteen minutes.
"Uh, yeah, no, you've been blowing up her phone go talk to her. You're a useless wingman when you sleep shitty, now go," Jenn pulled him down to her level and kissed him on the cheek in much the same way you would a brother.
"Ugh, fine," now, he had to try and not sound excited. Jenn shoved again and ran off to go talk to someone else.
Which left Elijah to go approach the retreating Maxine and the person he'd not been able to get ahold of the past few days.
"Yo, Maxiiiiiiine," kind of like Adriane, but less Stalone.
Poirot[Awareness, -1]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
cauchemerThe red-headed kid is pale(r) than he should be. Holds that trenchcoat closed tight in a way that just feels wrong. There is the faintest hint of something esoteric about him. It is not strong, more like a lingering malaise, the odor of a woman's perfume long after she has left the room.
Sulfurous.
ChoiAlicia had asked Maxine to ignore the boy, but the moment that she'd begun to back off, to watch the boy and see what he did, her companion stepped forward in her darling dress with her darling hair and asked so-sweetly, so concerned for him to hold on, to wait. Maxine herself flicked her eyes toward Alicia, furrowed her brow just the tiniest bit, and looked back to the red-haired man again.
She had her jaw set in a way that jutted her chin out. Chili was staring down the man, untrusting.
Maxine had taken a breath and stopped her backward meander, apparently unwilling to just keep ambling away while her friend stepped forward instead. She'd sucked in a breath and was perhaps about to say something, but then her name rolled its way over the crowd in a drawling half-heareted impersonation. The petite Korean with the short choppy hair, all bobby-pinned up, held that breath and looked around with quick sweeping scans of the eye.
Elijah was tall, distinct of face, easy to pick out of the crowd. Maxine answered by baring teeth in a wide grin, but the expression didn't really reach her eyes so it looked more like a simple baring of teeth and not much else-- strained instead of joyous. Something about how she jerked her gaze back to the man clutching his coat closed, how she looked at him with eyes widening and jaw tightening still, suggested that she was in the middle of something and Elijah's hailing had distracted her.
Still, she kept that chanting under her breath, ended the old language on a single note that was low and deep enough that it vanished in the din of the crowd. You could only hear it if you were close enough to feel its bass.
[Extending the scan-- +1 diff to extend, +1 diff for distracted]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
cauchemerMaxine: The magic continues; wraps her vision, warps her vision, from spirit to the flesh, to the substance of the universe, the bright web of energy from which everything else must be formed.
What she sees around the young man are no more than remnants. He has been around magick. He has been around Willworkers. There is nothing, now, that binds him. It is all wrapped around him, warped around him, like the filaments of a broken web. The only piece of it she understands for a certainty is the manipulation of time. That is the smallest part. Whatever else: was stronger, more enduring, but those are magicks beyond her ken. Still, the hint of sulpher and something else, harder to know or define.
cauchemerEverything. Everything. He is letting himself slide into the moment, feeling it become all glassy. Why does every heart beat seem like a new goddamned universe when we are poised on the edge of -
Then Alicia touches him.
Hey. What a second -
The kid was staring at the step-blocked fountain. He was going to climb it, water and all, he can already feel himself rising, he's imagining the moment when everyone starts whispering, when the crowd begins to ripple with rumors and strangers start turning and but someone's touching him and he wheels on Alicia,
furiously
forgets to hold the trench closed and lets go because he wants both fucking hands free to shove her and that's what he does.
He wants to send her sprawling.
--
The trench is buttoned, mind. But enough of it opens up that Maxine, Elijah, and Alicia can all see the explosives in the vest he wears beneath it. Thin wires snaking out of all the pockets, taped together to go up his sleeve and down to a detonator taped on the inside of his left wrist.
--
"Don't TOUCH me."
[Action: Shove Alicia!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5) ( fail )
RomeroAlicia has the same reaction most people would have to being in the midst of a pleasant evening only to have danger come rushing up to meet them. She's survived enough close calls in her young life that one would think she'd be an old hat by now.
One person in this crowd knows she has callouses on her hands not from playing too many video games or from working outside. Bone and skin have rubbed the meat between them to form a hardness where her hands gripped a pistol once. More than once. They're fading after two months without lessons but Alicia knows how to fire a gun.
Doesn't mean she knows how not to freeze when she sees a kid trying to climb his ass on up onto a fountain and do fuck knows what once he's up there. He tries to shove her and all he does is make her stumble.
Stumble and freeze and tunnel everything else around her so the only part of her brain functioning is the part of her brain wired into the rest of reality. She's scared out of her mind but it doesn't occur to her to run. Just to stand in place and plead with him.
Her voice is shrill with fear but not loud.
"Then WAIT A SECOND."
PoirotHe couldn't think far enough ahead to think to tell Jenn to run. The kid is too pale, had a smell about him like sulphur and it made Elijah's stomach turn- perhaps because of a memory or perhaps because of the knowledge of something else entirely. He doesn't know enough about explosives to know how much is there, but he knows enough to know that it is just enough to make a point.
And isn't that what people want? To make a point?
There are things Elijah knows. He knows that he is not explosion proof. He knows that Alicia and Maxine are still in explode-right-now range and he does not particularly like the concept of his friends being splattered everywhere. So, he does what any sane person could do, he dials 911 and waits. Waits as long as his mind will let him wait until he can hear that familiar what's your emergency question. He just waits until there isn't dead air and ringing before blurting - "there'sabombatskypark"- and shoving his phone inside of his vest pocket.
"Oh, shit," he curses, and Elijah makes his way to bridge the gap between the people there about as quickly as he could because this wasn't going to end well. No, no this was not going to end well at all.
Choi[Well, I for one don't like being exploded: Rolling WP, diff seven 'cause BOMB!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
ChoiWhat Maxine saw happen occurred in different spectrums behind her eyes. She could see the physical happening-- see the bodies move, see the boy turn toward the fountain and grab the ledge on the lower level of stacks as though to pull him up. She could see Alicia reach for him only for him to twist about and pull his arms back in toward his chest. She watched him piston them forward as though with every intent to blast Alicia backward with the sheer force of his hate and insistence not to be touched. She watched weak-wrists and arms that she guessed to be skinny in those coat sleeves fail to even budge the girl.
She also saw another side of things, too. Maxine's pupils widened, took in so much more than what others could see. The low, undulating note that warbled and wavered in her throat and chest sent a frequency out, created ripples so that she could see what bounced back. It peeled and crumbled the Sleep from her eyes, and let the Light shine on through. She could see how that Light fizzled and refracted off the man, could see how a different but tied-in current warped and broke from its standard flow around him too-- like a rock in a smooth flowing stream disturbing the current.
While she may have fallen forward into the brilliant warmth of the Light That Made The World, she could still see the physical. So the explosives strapped to the man under that trench didn't go missed at all.
Her heart slammed in her chest, slammed in her ears and head and kicked her back away from the Light, caused her to blink her eyes and shift her focus back forward and onto the scene at hand. Sensing the disturbance and tension in the air, Chili yapped three times sharply before Maxine silenced the dog with a quick crouch and hand closing over the animal's muzzle to hold jaws closed. "Tssst!," was the sharp hushing sound that she made for the animal.
Elijah had seen too, she noticed. He was headed over quickly, cutting and pushing his way through the crowd-- a crowd so heavily drowsy with their own Slumber that they hadn't even noticed anything going on. She licked her lips and set the plate of tacos down on the fountain ledge, then stepped forward to be beside Alicia again. Didn't reach out to grab her shoulder or wrist or hand, but shoved her own hands into her pockets and set a look of what seemed to be disappointment (but had panic, threading and sharp as a needle-sewing-seam shining hard underneath) onto the man.
"Hey," she added, "so I promised to fuck off, but I can't now, sorry. But hey, man, what happened, huh? Who fucked with you?"
cauchemerDo-di-do.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
cauchemer"What!" The kid, explosive (hah!) snaps wildly at Alicia, all frustrated menace, all some goddamned thing.
There's a fever pitch to his frustration, a wild edge that she can still taste, where she feels his heart beating, wildly, as if it were right in the back of his throat. "What the fuck does your worthless fucking ass think you fucking want you stupid fucking bitch - "
His arms swing wide open, this great predatory sweep giving presence and immediacy by the dark weight of that trench coat he sports and he looks right at Alicia then sideglances right at Maxine with a distinction that marks them both out even as Maxine sees and sees and puts down her damned tacos and turns back to him -
Those wide-flung arms though, leave him scrabbling, like he's lost hold of something he needs right now, and he is patting the edges of the sleeves, mutting nothing that makes sense, when Maxine addresses him and he snaps, "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You don't know shit. No one does. I'm gonna show you all.
"I'm gonna show all of you."
--
Meanwhile, Elijah makes a call. Connects with 911. Reports what he reports to the people to whom one reports such things and not long after (heartbeats?) the edges of crowd are shifting. The cops who were drinking coffee and chatting up locals are talking into those little radios they wear on their shoulders and craning their heads, searching through the dusk and dark for any signs of disturbance.
Romero[perc + ahaha]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 5) ( fail )
Choi[Perception 3 + Awareness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Poirot{per+aware-1]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
cauchemerSomething around the kid: sulfurous, transcendent, molten but not of him. Sharp and sudden in the air. She does not know and cannot tell where it is coming from, but it tastes like the threads of old work she Saw.
cauchemerSomething around the kid: sulfurous, transcendent, molten but not of him. Sharp and sudden in the air.
RomeroThe word 'fuck' like all spices has to go into a dish with a delicate hand or else it loses its effect. Maybe he would have had her at 'worthless fucking ass' because there aren't a whole lot of insults worse than this to say to a young adult but he keeps on going and Alicia looks like she pities him.
Pity won't stop him from blowing her up along with everyone else in here. She believes the world will go on without her though. It's gone on without plenty of other people.
"Show us what?" she asks in a voice brimming with tears same as her eyes brim. Makes it hard to talk. "How the FUCK are you gonna show anybody ANYTHING if all you do is HURT THEM?"
Okay now she's getting loud. He's scrabbling. She saw the detonator on his wrist. She tries to grab his other wrist so he can't press the thing without getting creative. Maybe hitting out at her will buy them enough time for the police to pull their heads out of their asses and nobody will get hurt.
Brilliant, Alicia.
Choi[Well, I know what I see, but what does it mean?: Intelligence 4 (Will let ST decide if Mind Wide Open specialty applies) + Enigmas 2]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
cauchemerwhat she feels now is resonance: the distinctive resonance of a willworker working his or her will. three notes she can taste in the back of her throat, centered on that kid, yeah. And no one within the area feels like that to maxine, but somehow that Work is still happening, here and now, right in front of her. the spheres: are spheres she does not know.
PoirotElijah hadn't hung up the phone yet. Sure, it was in his pocket. Sure, he wasn't certain if the operator was still there, but the edges of the crowd for the police were starting to move and he found that despite himself he wanted to be a lot more calm than he actually was. Maybe it was because he'd dreamed something horrible, maybe because he heard every morning since he was sixteen to live, live because tomorrow he would die and this? It looked like tomorrow was showing up and god dammit his knees wanted to give and he wanted to throw up but Christ this was a rush.
"Whoa, whoa dude, I get you wanna teach everyone a lesson but calm the fuck down if you want to do it… you're in a freaking fountain fighting with people in a trench coat."
There was a purpose in that. He had his cell phone in his pocket. he hadn't hung up with 911 just yet. If he said it loudly enough and clearly enough maybe the police would get the picture or someone would relay that little tidbit of information.
Romero[dex + lol alicia what are you doing]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
ChoiSoon enough Elijah was by their side as well. Three teenagers, possibly four if you counted the red-haired man (Maxine wasn't confident on his age, but he could be 19 as well) stood together by the fountain with something as serious as a public bombing and massacre on their hands. Alicia was very focused on the here and now, the possibility of the boy getting a hold of that trigger again and following through with his crazed plan to show them all.
Elijah was talking to the boy, asking him to calm down. Alicia had surged forward to try and grapple the boy's wrists, and Maxine's lithe frame went tight beside her. The boyish girl didn't move to stop her friend, barely even turned to acknowledge that another had joined them.
Rather, she stared at the man in the trench coat, not with the pity that Alicia carried, not with heavy fear that would glue her attention onto him with a primal need to track her death every step of its way to greet her. She wasn't even looking at him to hear and accept the words that he shouted at her. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know shit.
Oh, but Maxine did know shit, didn't she? She was watching the air around him, seeing something fizzling and crackling, incredibly atune to the ebb and flow of Light and the Power it carried and All It Created even if she didn't have the skill to reach out and touch and mold and bend any of it (yet). But she was smart, incredibly so. It was frankly astonishing the brain power in this girl, considering how little of it she tended to let on. Yet, if anyone were able to take a second to look into her face (and let's face it, that second wasn't available), they would see the gears spinning fast and efficient like a well-created and maintained machine.
She twisted her head to look around, as though searching for someone. Her brow furrowed, and she looked up to the sky, then back down to the conflict happening in front of her.
"Puppet," she said quietly at first. Then, again, louder, for Alicia and Elijah and even the young man to hear: "Oh those tendons and those fuses, they're just strings. But who, oh who, is pulling them? And from where? From when?"
cauchemerdo di do.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
cauchemerThe kid is fixated on Alicia, pupils sharp and narrowing. Sneering a bit when he sees her tears. Christ, of course she's crying.
"How the fuck do you think anyone ever learns anything. How else is anyone going to wake the fuck up to what is really going on in the world - look at these fucking jackasses - "
And he is really starting to get going on this tangent when Alicia grabs his wrist and he jerks it back and jerks it hard snarling because now he knows what the fuck this stupid little girl is trying to do and he's caught between one edge and another, this great, swinging pendulum and she's crying and there are tears in his eyes too and he
hates
hates
hates
"LET ME GO."
Snarling. Spittle frothing on his mouth, jerking his arm to try to get it out of Alicia's grasp, contorting his other hand trying to reach for, reach for, reach for the detonator. Something, he catches something with the crook of his pinky, all awkward, and starts edging it awkwardly into his grasp.
--
The kid is ignoring Elijah. Ignoring him, hardly notices Elijah trying to "calm him down" heh heh heh. At the fringes of the crowd, though, the word is going out and there is more focused movement. Elijah can hear the feedback of a transmitter, that crackle-crackle-hush of dispatch. The crowd is starting to thin around them. Not panic, yet, no. No one is telling people exactly why they are being asked to leave the plaza, just that they are and they should do it quietly please ma'am and thank you.
--
For Maxine, that sense of magick, the threads of it, only gets stronger, tangled all around the kid.
(Kid: Jerk free!)
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
PoirotNope. He didn't much care for the fact that the kid had an arm free and he couldn't quite remember where the detonator was, but he knew that this was a bad, bad idea. He didn't want anyone to get blown up and the crowd was thinning and that seemed to be a good enough plan, yes?
the first thought was omgtackle, but then, in a moment of brilliance, something told him that tackling something or someone with an explosive vest on was not at all like it was in the movies and those things probably explode a lot easier than they look- and they look like they exploded pretty easily- so, plan B (the much safer option, considering) was to counter the man jerking away with an equally awkward attempt at grappling.
"Fuck!"
Poirot[faaaaahk! dex+brawl, -1, +wp]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Romero[jesus christ elijah
prime 1: watch the weaving. -1 quint to lower diff.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( fail )
Romero[backlash unless liz wants to do the honors]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
Romero[HAH SUCK IT REALITY]
RomeroThis is the part where Alicia does as much as she can do and then as much as she can do isn't good enough. She's actually crying now instead of just shining with the threat of crying and it doesn't get any better when the kid yanks his wrist out of her hand and Elijah comes running forward to grab the kid.
"ELIJAH!" she says and her voice is a rung alarm. She steps back then. What the fuck is she supposed to do she doesn't know what's going on where the fuck is -
"Max, what are you talking about, I don't..."
Choi[Prime 1-- Watch the Weaving, oh yes watch, Song as focus]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (6) ( success x 1 )
Choi[Correction! Runes as focus.]
cauchemerShe sees the threads of Work. She does not know the spheres, but she can see them in action: not on the boy, no. Not on the kid at all. But: in the air, and on the wires leading to the detonator. She does not know enough about the spheres to know what is happening, but she understands that the work is both immediate and small and supple, performed from some great-distance, and close-to-complete.
Choi[Willpower, oh Maxine you can do this toots.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
ChoiMax, Maxine, Maxamillion, Miss Choi Are You Paying Attention?
Maxine had refocused to the sky. She was watching something that others can't see, making a proper loony bin of herself while people began to take notice of the struggle. Her eyes were as wide as she could get them, and her hands crept out of her pockets and dragged arms behind them as though independently climbing toward the heavens.
As she did this, she hummed that note again. Her fingers were curled around a pair of small stones, clenched into a small fist while the other hand was splayed with open fingers. None could see, but on those stones were carved and then inked black runes as old as the words she'd uttered before.
"There's someone, something, and They're calling the shots. Not this--"
But then she froze. Previously she'd been rolling the stones in her fist, blatantly ignoring the spectacle she was making of her strange behavior. Her eyes had trailed from the sky down to the man again, landed on his chest, and then found themselves sharpened by not fear, but realization, and then panic. The need to race away, to run, to cover her head and go flashed clear as day in her eyes and her face, her limbs locked in terror like she was a deer in the headlights just for a hanging second and then--
"It's going to blow." She looks to the two, drops her arms down and crouches to drag Chili hastily up to her chest. "RUN!" This, she screams for her friends.
"IT'S A BOMB IT'S GOING TO BLOW RUN AWAY GO!"
This, screamed for everyone else around, as she heeds her own advice.
cauchemerdo-di-do.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
cauchemerAlicia is holding on as much as she can, openly crying now, but the kid jerks himself free and Elijah grabs for him instead. The gesture - well, the necessary effort means that the leadwire of the the detonator he was trying to edge up into his grasp slips a bit and -
The cops are closer. Elijah senses one behind him - the presence of a solid human body. Alicia and Maxine can see him - a tall African-American guy, with one of those physiques that has a solid layer of well-earned fat over a solid layer of muscle won by hard physical work not reps in the gym. The officer puts a hand on Elijah's shoulder and he smells of coffee and Old Spice and his voice is all rumbly as he says, quietly, calmly,
"It's alright son. You did well. We'll take it from here."
That's his left hand on Elijah's shoulder. The right has his service weapon drawn, and trained on the redheaded kid.
--
And that, is exactly when Maxine shouts, screams -
IT'S A BOMB IT'S GOING TO BLOW RUN AWAY!
--
There's so much happening all at once. The milling crowd - people were starting to get interested, some were being steered quietly away by police, but there's no more quiet. People turn and look and start to run. To stampede.
The kid takes advantage of the shifting momentum (they are buffeted by panic on all sides) to well and definitively jerk his arm out of Elijah's grasp this time and that officer is still training his service weapon on the redheaded kid and his partner is back further, now beating ineffectually against the movement of people in the other direction, in some direction, in any direction at all and Maxine and Elijah have two, three, four fractional seconds to start to run, if they intend to run -
ChoiPrecious companion hugged to her chest with one arm, the second arm pumping along with slim legs in loose shorts, Maxine ran for her dear life.
PoirotTurn around and run. Now.
RomeroAlicia backs away and she keeps backing away but she doesn't turn and run. She turns her head and just enough to see that Maxine and Elijah are running and she lets out a breath she hadn't known she was holding when she sees them run. Gratitude to a deity or deities in which she does not believe and then she swipes the back of her hand across one cheek to clear the saltwater.
cauchemer- so they run. Join the tumult of strangers, also running, in every direction as the tumult rises all around them and over them and the kid is triumphant but they don't see the moment of triumph on his face, don't see the way he casually reaches down and unbuttons the trench coat to show off the vest he made. Fishing vest he bought at REI, that's the base for the whole goddamned thing.
He's smiling, the kid, strangely calm, still seating unphased by the gun leveled at him and unphased by the police officer who stands and holds it leveled even as the explosives are revealed, unphased by the panic and the screams and the way rumor rolls like a wave all around then, absolutely unphased.
And now he has access to the detonator, now he can take his sweet time. The officer is talking to him, all calm, see, trying to talk him down and the kid's smiling at him in this way that will, in the aftermath, seem eerie, but in the moment the officer thinks seems rather hopeful, like maybe he's getting through to the kid, but -
no
The kid gets the detonator in hand.
Squeezes it with his thumb.
Closes his eyes, like he's on the side of the angels now.
- and click clickclickclick
(nothing happens. nothing happens! nothing happens.)
"YOU. FUCKING. BITCH."
--
This part Elijah and Maxine and Alicia miss. The kid reaching for a weapon. The officer sort of tackling him. Precision tackling, like a linebacker launching himself at one of those practice linemen, deep and low, see, going for the legs rather than the chest, stopping the kid from getting the gun out of his fucking pants, what a stupid place to keep it. The other police sweeping in, somehow turning that heedless flight into something, well, manageable. Sending the running people running right, shielding them, fanning out, a wide net, looking for more: more bombs, more shooters, more strangers.
Needless to say: the movie will be canceled tonight. Ambulances come. There are people who were injured in the flight, none seriously. The bomb squad comes, too, to remove the vest from the kid and so on. This aftermath is to be glimpsed only from a distances, framed by the smearing lights of ambulances and police cars and fire trucks, which will distort the night until the wee hours of the morning, and then some, long after the redheaded kid arrested, folded into a police car, and driven away.
ChoiMaxine had raced away, but heard the screaming of frustration and rage and the distinct lack of an explosion. She twisted to look back, stumbled, and reached out to grasp some part of Elijah-- arm, shirt, belt, whatever was within reach-- to haul him back as well. Her footsteps went heavy and trotted her to a stop, even if she was buffeted tremendously by the bodies that rushed away around her. Chili was disgruntled but knew not to take the risk of finding the ground-- she'd surely be trampled. Maxine kept her cinched in to her chest with the one arm.
Eyes swam through gaps in the crowd, found Alicia's hair and dress nearer to the scene, saw her intact. She'd ride out the crowd's rush away until it abated enough for her to try and call Alicia over, to get Elijah to help if she could.
After that, the evening simply had to be over. Maxine said aloud: "Nothing tonight should top that, I'm scared that something might try if I push it." So, after making sure that the others were okay, or at least able to tend to one another's requirements for comfort, Maxine would duck away. After that, she frankly just wanted to get to her van and drive away.
PoirotIt hits him when he's running that he doesn't see Alicia. Oh fuck, oh fuck, he doesn't see Alicia and he turns to look for her. His instincts are telling him to run but he doesn't know where Max went, he doesn't know where Alicia went and his mind was reeling and oh god, oh god, oh god this was all going to blow. This was going to go up in smoke. And then?
Nothing.
He was in the crowds, and in the med and disaster of others, he was in his element. Amidst that tumultuous mess of people, he was at home. Not at ease, because when was home ever an easy place to be? But he caught a feeling of a hand on his belt, and he turned to see Maxine. He took her hand and weaved through in hopes of finding Alicia. Eventually, hopefully, he does.
"Hey," it's all he can really say, accompanied with a laugh that borders on mild hysteria because-well- we just saw why.
Only at this juncture does Elijah have the presence of mind to hang up his damned phone.
RomeroThe last time someone told her to run she hadn't wanted to run. Maybe in her dreams she doesn't run. Maybe if she could go back in time and do it again she wouldn't have. But Alicia can't go anywhere in time but where she is at present and if she dreams at night she doesn't remember them when she wakes up only sees the white ghosts of salt dried on her bottom lids staring at her in the mirror.
She doesn't know exactly how far away she has to be to be out of the blast zone but she backs up what she thinks is maybe enough. She knows there isn't just one zone. Shrapnel does more damage to bystanders than the detonation itself. That much she knows. She knows she's near enough to hear the kid call her a bitch but she doesn't feel anything when he does it. Later she will but she doesn't know that. All she wants to do now is go back to her motel room and sleep.
Maxine and Elijah ran. Alicia stands watching until the kid is on the ground and then she walks away from the fountain and away from where they went. She is short. She can slip away into a crowd when she wants to.
This doesn't feel like a happy ending but Alicia's starting to get the idea that happy endings are bullshit.
