Ms. Gray

Ms. Gray

Okay. so:

- this scene comes three days after the last one.

- danger is unlikely, but could happen. i don't know what your characters plan on doing they could be really, really dumb, what do i know?

- questions, ask me.

- any effects you want to have done ahead of time, any other preparation you think they might do, now is the time.

- based on rolls we have already done: pen has a dream roll in effect gives +1 to politics / lore - technocracy. pen has a corr / prime no follow rote going on. sera has a corr / prime / time - no follow / no scry now or later rote going on.

- any other effects you wanna initiate (dampening resonance, et cetera?) mind shield? magickal equivalent of arcane? anything else: feel free to roll now!

Kalen Holliday

[Watch the Weaving d=3 (4 -1 personalised instrument) // 4 suxx target because duration]

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

Kalen Holliday

[And extend - now d=4 - WP because Mages think that should be gone through like whoa]

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Ms. Gray

Mind Shield - Sera. Dif 4-1 (personalized instrument)

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (2, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ms. Gray

Mind Shield - extension. +1 / -1 taking time.

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ms. Gray

Sera: Mind Shield on Pen. Mind 2. Dif 5 -1 -1 (personalized / time)

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Ms. Gray

Extension.

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Ms. Gray

Three days later and they meet at the chantry and the hour is early early early early ridiculously early (so says Sera who is cranky before it is still before noon and she had to get up and get dressed and shower and drive all the way out to Morrisson (DAN DROVE, SERA NAPPED) and her crankiness is a cover for something else, the ratcheted anxiety that has asserted itself more sharply, more presently, with each passing day.

Forty-five minutes later and they are back in Denver. Rather a long way from the likely Technocratic complex that Kiara and Nicholas scouted spiritually this night past, and really (the way things go) rather close to the neighborhood that Sera and Dan call home.

Zook's Coffee and Ice Cream, which shares a building with the Denver Puppet Theater. Twenty-seven minutes after one p.m. on a modestly warm March Saturday. That's where we begin.

Penelope Mars

Today is the ambush -- of diplomacy. Fuck yeah! The goal: to woo an ally who is already an ally, if the rite was successful, untampered with, Good, but doesn't yet know it.

The night prior she considered the Technocratic Union and its Conventions and she considered what she had heard of a faction within the Union which does not want to stir the sleeping embers of their feud into something too too hot and she considered, also, the rumors of someones working within, which the rite has confirmed, and thought on what signs and by what Names such a society might be known - and then she had slept. Dreamt. Just before she met Serafíne and Kalen the Flambeau for their diplomatic mission (ambush), she cast a warding and when she shows up to meet them there is this. Her resonance: sheathed, tucked away, ace up a sleeve - diamonds (she is not a cheater), the glint of a possible weapon all that power: given over to secrecy.

Scrubbed of her resonance, Penelope is still something of a Presence.

Study of a Flambeau, sans resonance.

Here she is: red hair braided into a crown, some waving tendrils loose around the face, bangs pushed off to the side; the same silver-gray coat the inside an interlocking pattern of green leaves with frock-coat cuffs rolled back. Beneath the coat, a tunic with a collar that skims her collar-bones and falls to mid thigh. The coat is belted by a belt with a belt buckle that wouldn't be out of place on a runway, or in a painting: you know the type. Modern-day, updated legend: myth: circles. The tunic itself is simple and also rather modern (but the Echoes), and the leggings are High Fashion leggings, another Morrisian design on those. Her boots are high. There's a knife in one, probably. She has a purse which is more of a satchel, hangs at her hip, is easy to reach within: and within a few odds and ends, just in case she needs some instrument other than her wand (up her sleeve in truth: sheathed, just like her resonance). She is wearing a ring on the finger of Mercury and the finger of Saturn (and her wedding band, which never comes off, on the finger of Apollo - sing love with a golden lyre), and a ring again on the other finger of Mercury.

Composure is belied by a troubled shadow in her eyes, which will remain regardless: she is too earnest, too open, for there to be no shadow.

Pen's suggested (it's always a suggestion, never a demand) plan, as she expressed to Sera and Kalen on the way over, is not very Ocean's Eleven. Identify the potential ally, strike up a conversation with this person, quickly establish credentials We-Know-You, This-Is-What-We-Are-Interested-In, and try to make a deal.

Anything more Machiavellian or Byzantine at this point in time will have to come from the other two.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen arrives at the House having already cast what little magick he plans to cast today. There might be more magick, counter-magick and striking magic and whatever else. The truth though, is this: the Technocracy has Alexander. Kalen assumes that anything he could give away is compromised. Alexander knows all of the places he could go, knows his Resonance. They can take what they want from Alexander's mind if they press hard enough. What good will warding do him now?

Instead he comes ready to watch for magick. If their potential contact or anyone else is attempting to do anything with whatever knowledge they have gained, that may tell him something. That he will respond to.

There is, of course, the matter of what thoughts he might have on their negotiation. Those might be relevant. But then, he does not intend to lie. His last few dealings with a crisis have taught him that honesty is good and that violence is not necessary and his priest tells him these same things. Take away misdirection and violence from him and you get what?

The young man in jeans and a mottled grey and purple sweater that is practically begging to be touched and that brings out the green in his eyes. No weapons beyond those that cannot be separated from him. This afternoon is for diplomacy and ice cream. Tomorrow, or later today, perhaps Kalen will be all monochromatic and razor-edged. But not now.

He's in agreement with Pen's plan; neither more complexity or duplicity suits him. At least not for the moment.

Ms. Gray

Sera does not have any Machiavellian plans. She has no Byzantine schemes. She may have a dress from the Dolce and Gabbana Byzantine collection, but that not mean she knows what a Byzantine scheme would be, except perhaps: intricate and gilded. This is new and strange and foreign and she has within her mind and heart a piece of the seeking shaped by the work, pushed to the point where such a conversation would be most propitious.

Dan asks questions. Like: "Are you all three going?" and "Where do you want to park?" and other questions about logistics and appearances and The Way This Will Work. He flicks a thoughtful eye over Pen's get-up and then glances at Sera. She is wearing a sweat-shirt turned inside out and denim cut-offs and fishnets when they show up to the chantry, but when they leave he has convinced her to change into skinny black jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt and gloves, yes gloves, to cover her tattoos. Her hair is its native brown, long and curly, and the remainder of her tattooes have been covered with make-up or bandaids or something.

--

They all prepare in their own way. Two cars, both rentals. One is left in the parking lot if needed for easy escape, and that is left before their quarry even arrives at Zook's Coffee and Ice Cream. The other lets them off a half-block or so (or more?) away from the location. Sera is seeing/remembering; waiting, listening to some ineffeable point in time before saying: okay. Now.

Inside, an attractive young woman with (natively) blond hair and cool gray eyes sits tucked in one of the far corners of Zook's. She has been here working for an hour and a half.

The staff do not complain. She always leaves an excellent tip.

Sometimes she reads, quietly, steadily, meditatively. More often, she works on / frowns over a Microsoft Surface, folded out to reveal its neat little keyboard, or up to just the touchscreen. At a certain time on a certain day, that device dings. She has a new email. Something in it makes her mouth tighten. She looks up from the device, and away, at her reflection in the glass.

She counts to ten.

Ms. Gray

Then she counts to ten in Swahili.

Ms. Gray

Then she looks back.

Penelope Mars

Serafíne is seeing/remembering. Okay. Now. Pen has given herself over to events and to a certain trust so: they go, Pen's stride goes long and she gets first to the door to the coffee shop and ice cream parlor, will hold it open for Kalen and for Serafíne. Meanwhile: give both the street and the restaurant an alert and absorbent glance. How gray her eyes are; how dark. There could be anything out there: there could be anything in here.

"Milkshakes will be on me today," she says; and if she sees nothing suspicious, only a woman who may or may not match what description Sera was able to give Kalen and Pen three nights ago, she asks Sera: "Do you see our friend?"

Because - well, one hopes there is a friend, hm?

[And we'll have a Perception + Alertness roll. -2 diff for Acute Sight.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ms. Gray

Per + Awareness - Ms. Gray

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is content, here and now, to let Pen lead. Pen is like some wary mythic knight; he trusts her to walk first into danger. All of the training he has been agitated others in Denver neglect to recognise, she has. And she has a willingness to strike too. He might wait, and he might wish that she had waited; but he trusts that if she senses danger Pen will respond.

And so, the potential ambushes are left to Pen. He does not search out potential threats and exits and entrances and where all the cameras are. He steps through the door Pen holds open with a faint smile about the milkshakes and then his eyes scan the crowd for one target, alight, and linger.

[Perception + Empathy - WP b/c first impressions are the most important]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ms. Gray

The blond woman with the tablet appears calm and well put-together. There is, however, a small frisson of frustration evident in her at the moment. Something about the way her brows are pulled together. Something about the cut of her mouth. The way she holds the device she has in front of her.

Ms. Gray

Pen declares that milkshakes are on her and Sera gives a tiny little smirk. Too early in the day for her to want to eat anything but they have smoothies and smoothies appear to be the name and title they have given to their milkshakes. Whatever. Instead of charging at their target, the trip wait in line and order something. The lunch rush is past; there is a low murmur in the air and some sort of singer-songwriter album on the PA system and a perky young man behind the counter who takes their orders and takes Pen's payment and proceeds to make whatever they have ordered while the trio stand at the counter and Sera confirms the target to both Pen and Kalen with a flick of her eyes. Even dressed down - looking rather younger and perhaps a bit more plain than is her wont, even with her tattoos hidden and her resonance dampened, Sera is a presence in the room. She flirts a bit with the kid behind the counter. Winks when he offers her a perfectly civilized cup of tea with her own little teapot, both of which she picks up and carries as she heads over to Ms. Gray.

Flashes a quick, incisive smile. "Mind if we sit?"

Ms. Gray's pale brows rise. The gesture: precise. She takes in Sera and she does it head to toe. Then Kalen. Then Penelope.
Something there: some knot of a breath, let go. Bemused.

She looks back at Sera. "I haven't much time, but you're welcome to join me."

Surreptitiously, she glances back at Pen again. That get-up. She probably has crystals in her shoes, tumbling around her toes.

Penelope Mars

Pen does - indeed - have a willingness to strike. But she is also sipping on a milkshake by the time they've approached Ms. Gray (and there. Even the Union cannot escape the mythic threads which run bright through the world: cool gray eyes, intellect, everybody knows the sign of the goddess), which does not exactly seem like prime leap into action position. Maybe that's part of the idea: seem disarmed, be disarmed, and later one will be disarmed.

The surreptious look: Pen catches it; it dredges up the beginning of a smile, some gleam in her own gray eyes (still troubled [shadows]), and she sits beside Ms. Gray and leaves the other side of the corner table/booth for Sera and Kalen. The silver-gray coat drapes over her thigh with casual glamour and she does not yet set the milkshake down: it will leave a ring on the counter.

"Thank you. You have the air of a regular; is the food here good? I'm Kat, by the way." She is, too, Katabasis being one of her names, and the she deems most appropriate to the moment. She offers her hand; the one she hadn't been holding the cold milkshake with.

Then: "We are Traditionalists; we were hoping you would consent to a conversation."

Kalen Holliday

Pen sits beside Ms. Grey and starts talking. Kalen settles across from Ms. Grey with a blueberry milkshake and no magickal defenses and he smiles at her a little. It puts him in position to watch her eyes. Puts him in position to strike straight at her while Pen strikes from her side, too. He does not anticipate striking. He met once, he is almost certain, another Technocrat in another coffee shop and they were, for about forty-five seconds, allies of a kind. No one was shot in a coffee shop then and he expects no one will be shot (or otherwise physically attacked) in a coffee shop today.

This will be more complicated and will need to hold for longer than forty-five seconds, but he has faith. Hope. A ridiculous willingness to find humanity in monsters. Given that they've kidnapped Alexander, he might certainly be willing to cast the Technocracy as monsters at the moment. He might be a little less inclined to forgive.

Still. He and Serafine once saved a man from a spirit of justice by convincing the ghost of the child child he murdered it didn't need vengeance. He brought a flower to a sea witch. Forgave this entity that...long story there. And then, layered with those, other stories. He can believe in Ms. Grey.

Assuming that Ms. Grey does consent, Kalen offers one of his hands across the table to her. "Elliot."

Ms. Gray

"Mmm." Ms. Gray murmurs. In response to the name and perhaps the question: about the air of a regular, about the quality of the food. This may be a note of agreement: why yes, the food is reasonable. Or yes, I come here with some regularity. I have found that I am able to work without disturbance, here.

Until now.

Pen does not set down her milkshake. Sera, however: sets down her tea. Feels awkward holding it with gloved hands and Ms. Gray gives the gloves a mild glance. Assumes that is another eccentricity of these throwbacks. Vestigal, superstitious.

A moment's consderation from Ms. Gray. Then a nod: of agreement. "A brief one," she reminds Penelope. Wonders if these strangers understand that they are no longer necessary. That the sun will continue to rise and fall and fall and rise, with or without their prayers. " - but yes."

This mild flick of her gaze up from those gloves; across the table. She reaches up - delicate gesture, this - and takes Kalen's hand. "Dr. Deidre Gray." This mildly expectant pause. She works in circles where she expects her name to be: often, recognized.

Penelope Mars

[Oh, oh. Wits (One Jump Ahead specialty totally qualifies, yeah?) + Politics (Tech! - thanks Dream). Now is the time to Know Things That Can Be Useful, right?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Ms. Gray

Idealism is a remarkably strong thread in the Technocracy. The belief in humanity, in a path-forward, a rising tide lifts all boats, et cetera. Certainly a Technocract disposed to not-murder Traditionalists, to aid one, to be On Their Side would subscribe to such an idealistic philosophy. But would also be burdened with / struggling again, an often-oppressive and many-layered bureaucracy that constrained her ability to act and to actually live up to her own ideals.

Penelope Mars

Pen considers Deidre. The cadence of her voice. The neatness of her measure. Pen's gaze stays on Deidre's face, and there is this true thing: House Flambeau has a strong feud against the Technocratic Union. Another true thing, of course, is that flesh and blood is weak, and the heart wants what it wants. She glances once at Kalen, consideration there too: splits a tiny tendril for Sera, and then all for and back to the Conventionalist. She says:

"I will be as brief and direct as it is possible to be and still be successful in convincing you to aid us in our endeavor. You have one of ours locked up in your facility; he works for the Denver Police Department and is slender of power but a good-hearted defender of - " Brief pause: this spark of a smile, and she is ardent. The resonance is sheathed but it is an Echo of the wizard's heart and the wizard's will. The smile is not good humored; it is grave.

" - people unable to defend themselves. We want him back; we want there to be no overt war in Denver because an apprentice was snatched - " Emphasis. Pen is invested in Alex because he is a person and she cares about people (too much), but she is more invested in the rest of it: rumblings of an Ascension War, rumblings of War period. " - or because somebody wants to be promoted in a spiritless bureaucracy and the easiest path to promotion is fomenting trouble, dismay, and bloodied lunacy. We want to know that somebody on your side is against the mindlessness, the muddying of the human spirit, which comes with such conflict."

"What do you think of starting up pointless war-in-the-streets between yours and ours; making Denver a battlefield? Would you not rather focus on saving lives; on ingenuity? What do you think of the cop - can you help us retrieve him?"

[Charisma! Expression! Beguiling Specialty! Willpower!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is gentle with Deidre's hand. Gentler than usual, not so much because he is hesitant as because Deidre's delicate movements remind him of hummingbirds. Though, he thinks of word in Spanish. Kolibri. He has Named two people for hummingbirds, in two languages, and he adored -adores- them both. He has seen neither for some time. He is not certain one still lives. He knows, that in at least some manners that make anything between them impossible, one hasn't been alive since well before they met.

That delicate movement conjures up bits of poems and live music and flashes of brightly colored feathers. Pen is speaking and Kalen is not so persuasive or so charismatic or so....

For decades he wove his will into lies and violence; and yet, here, he has stripped himself of those things. The only things he really has to give Deidre in this conversation are honesty and faith and hope. He knows that. He came here with his mind open because if those things were all he had, there was no reason to hide them.

Those things were meant to be seen. Luminous like stars. Whole swarms of suns.

"We are not always in agreement," he says quietly. "But we must all want a better world. One we don't have to keep tearing apart." He meets Deidre's eyes then, if she lets him. "Help us?" Pen might be asking because Alexander is a person. Kalen is asking for a much less abstract kind of love; Alexander is, after all, one of the only people he considers family that he has left. Even so arguably as he still has Alexander at the moment.

Ms. Gray

Ms. Gray listens to Penelope and watches Penelope and there is a mild degree of neutrality in her pale gaze. A curious lilt to her chin, the faint rise of her brows. Something clear and - searching about the way her eye tick over Penelope while Penelope favors her with such a clarion call.

There is - beneath that part of her that is meant to rise to such calls - an abiding skepticism. It serves her well, you see: questioning assumptions, refusing received knowledge. An insistence on empircal evidence. She thinks, when she cares to, that their kind are absurd holdovers from some ancient evolutionary course. The coccyx, the appendix: some shadow of once-necessary organ that has been reduced to superflueity and will eventually simply correct itself.

"His arresting officer was transferred three days ago. There may be a small window of opportunity in the next three days. We may be able to clean up the records enough to allow him to return to his former occupation.

"For that, though. You will owe me a favor."

She still has the tablet out. Slides her finger across it and executes a program, then snaps it shut.

"Come back tomorrow. I'll leave a packet with Lola at the ice cream counter, after three p.m.

"And do not attempt to follow me. The first lick of reality deviance and the deal is off."

With that, she fishes out a tip, stands up, picks up her perfectly sensible tote bag, and takes her leave.

Ritual

Serafíne

After the chantry meeting: Dan tells Pen and Kalen that Sera will need some recovery time. They'll regroup in 24 to 36 hours, then? Here at the chantry.

An imprecise amount of time later, then, and what we know is that it is no longer morning full of new light, but evening. Lengthening shadows and all the strange, too-bright warmth of the early spring day all but gone.

Sera and Dan meet the others at the chantry. Sera is just-awake, sitting on the kitchen counter drinking whiskey-laced tea from a travel-mug. Slightly better than just-awake, because she has had a shower and her hair is a loose damp twist of curls swinging half-way down her back. She's wearing a metallic silver micro-mini dress beneath a cropped-and-altered tuxedo jacket, with her usual assortment of spikes and studs and safety pins bristling in her elfin ears, and a bicycle chain and intertwined with a long strand of golden south seas pearls wrapped around her neck. Earbuds in one ear wind beneath her ear to the right pocket of the tuxedo jacket and she's kinda moving a little bit with the music she hears. Mouthing the words while Dan packs a cooler and a re-useable shopping bag with supplies. Pours water from the just-boiled kettle into a thermos already prepped with a concoction of 'shrooms. The usual.

"We can take two cars, if you want?" Dan tells them. No need, really, for three. "Follow me."

---

It is a rather long drive from the chantry back towards Denver. Full night has fallen by the time the little caravan (if there is a caravan - Dan is happy to drive them all) is winding its way through a posh neighborhood in Cherry Hills. Here every house feels like it is trying to become an estate, and the it is not simply the communities that are gated, but each individual house.

Kalen has been here before. Only once.

Pen never has.

There are gates, the looming bulk of a largely dark and apparently and perhaps obviously uninhabited house. It has a century-old solidity to it, an impressive, comforting bulk, the details of which get lose entirely in the darkness. Lingering impression of wards that Sera will renew, and strongly, tonight before they start to cast.

If Pen and Kalen have followed rather than joined Sera and Dan in the third-degree of separation rental car he picked up sometime that afternoon, Dan opens the doors to the empty garage so that they, too, can park there. Out of sight-and-mind.

Inside, an impression of grandeur shrouded by shadows. High ceilings, empty corridors leading only into darkness. The lofty suggestion of an elegant stair rising rising rising. What little furniture remains is mostly covered by dust shrouds, which create odd, looming shadows all around.

Penelope

In Morrison, Pen is:

on time in a silver coat the interior of which is an interlocking pattern of green leaves because as warm as it is it is still cool enough when the wind blows for such coats. The cuffs of it are sharp, pointed: frock-coat cuffs, rolled back with glamourous nonchalance. Her trousers are fitted, some durable fabric of another gray, only a touch of embroidery on the pockets, and her boots lace up almost to her knee, gape a little there with piratical [Wizardess] swagger. The kind of boot which holds a knife. The kind of sleeves which hold a wand. Or is that vice versa? Rings on every finger, some of them Hermetic in nature [Enochian carved against the bands, pressing into her skin, kiss of other languages: and so. She likes secret rings, the lady of the lake with her clear dark eyes and her hair as red and burnished as any devotional offering to Mars (this is the trick)], one of them most certainly not.

Pen: likes Serafíne's outfit. Asks what kind of tea Serafíne is drinking. Greets Dan and Serafíne with equal warmth, and when the topic of rides is discussed (briefly), the two Flambeau take one of Kalen's cars (Pen rocked up on a motorcycle. Kalen might need a ride home, afterward).

--

Out of sight and out of mind the economy car the Flambeau rode in on is parked.

Pen: regards this place - not with awe, precisely; but surprise. "Whose is this?" Because she has been to Serafíne's home before and so a querying glance for Kalen, here; is it his? Is this the compromised Library?

Pen is also: direct, and frank, says: "I will assist if and how I am able; direct me as you see fit." Her assistance will be that of a consor's, likely: make certain the mood isn't broken; get the lights.

Her assistance will be that of a soldier's, held in reserve: watchful, observant, just in case.

Penelope

ooc: ahem. "Flambeaux rode in on." plural.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen arrives in well worn-in jeans, faded from a near-black to grey, and a thin dark red athletic hoodie with thumb-cuffs and a dandelion yellow lion rampant embroidered onto the side of one sleeve. There are magical tools on him; though, for Kalen, magical tools are things like the pack of cigarettes tucked into a pocket and the knotted hemp bracelets tucked beneath his sleeve. There are more things in the Jeep, but not things he expects to need until the day is closer to over.

He is quiet in the chantry. Quiet on the car ride. His greetings are subdued, though they are not cold. He is drawn inward enough though that he reached out to touch none of them. But then. He has always been reserved with contact with Dan. Has never really reached out for Pen.

"This," he says quietly when they arrive at the house. "This is Hawksley's." He glances over the abandoned house. "Was, perhaps. I never...." Knew what to make of Hawksley. Of the way he wanted to be close to the sense of Hawksley without the actual experience of talking to Hawksley which was never easy. "We were never close."

She puts herself at his disposal, Pen. And it makes him smile a little. "Of course. Thank you." There is a formality that echoes his training, but there is something in that thank you that is warmer than his training. A legacy of something else.

Serafíne

Kalen tells Pen that the house is Hawksley's. This perhaps: beneath the bulk, as they are winding through to the kitchen or the emptied-library, which soars, enormous, banks of windows on either side, open, open to the sky. And Kalen tells Pen that he and Hawksley were never close and maybe they are in the kitchen now, packing/unpacking items from the cooler, the 'shroom tea, all of it, and there is a studiously neutral glance from Dan and Sera gives a neat little twist of her shoulders, confirming what Kalen says. The house is Hawksley's. The house was Hawksley's, whichever the fuck it is.

She does not remark on whether they were ever close.

--

She just leads through the winding corridors, past the ballroom, maybe, or the indoor pool, the fucking theater whatever: and surely somewhere there is a corner of the abandoned library or some nook, some study or den with a fireplace and leather couch or two from which the dustcovers have been removed, where her own resonance is strongest, where some of her things are still littered, like oh hey! that pair of fuzzy cookie monster slippers tucked beneath the leather couch, whatever.

She would like a fire in the fireplace: something about the comfort, the warmth. Certainly one of the Flambeau will oblige and if not, hell. Dan has one of those easy-light logs he can lay in the grate. No she doesn't need it to cast, she just needs the 'shrooms and her own intentions, her memory and Kalen's too, and all of this will take some time. First there are wards to be cast and wards to be strengthened.

And then -

Serafíne

Mind Shield: Dif 4 -1 (using a surpassed instrument.)

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

How about an extension!

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Correspondence 2 / Mind 2 / Prime 2 (Warding against: scrying; resonance sensing; magick detection from without) Dif: 5 -1 (surpassed instrument) +1 the dampening bits are opposed to her resonance, -1 taking time.

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Extension:

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Extension: -1 quint.

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 3, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne

One more extension,

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

One more time.

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

(Ugh, you guys. Like an idiot I was typing my post in this window and lost it.)

Serafíne

(Ugh, you guys. Like an idiot I was typing my post in this window and lost it.)

Serafíne

It takes Sera hours to cast those wards, visceral more than enthralling, gut-wrenching, a solid fuck-you-don't-see-me to the universe or at least the Technocrats. Liminal: too. Slipping definition, finding someplace between this world and some other world, that almost refuses to be seen, and that is hard for her. There is nothing hidden about her magick, but: fuck.

--

When she is done with the warding (which is boring to watch. No ritual: just urge, desire, demand, change), Sera has to go pee, and Dan insists she eat and drink something and she wants whiskey or tequila and he wants oj or gatorade so maybe instead there are cocktails and conversation in the shadows and then there are cigarettes to be smoked (she wants one: outside in the garden, the curling impression of cloves-and-spice in the air) and then she says: the scrying should be done from the garden. They should be beneath the stars. Everyone is beneath the stars, even Alexander, wherever he is right now. Time to start casting again. Sera is still hallucinating. She has surfaced from it and now she is ready to sink back into it. She reaches out a hand, to Kalen.

Penelope

Penelope provides the fire, albeit via more mundane means than otherwise; she wishes to reserve her energies, just in case there is a breach of the castle wall; just in case she needs to conjure fire later and turn some far-flung, long-distance machine-man's metal bones into salt or the oil which lubricates their system into water or, fuck, the electricity which delicately connects muscle and synapse to fire. Penelope provides the fire and is not bored and there is conversation when there is opportunity for conversation and what ifs and hopes and there is quiet consideration of what might come and hope. There is hope, because Penelope does believe in the ability of human beings to transcend (ascend) expectations and Penelope believes that it is possible to forge an alliance with erstwhile foes and Penelope believes:

oh, Penelope believes in the human spirit; that through it the Golden Age will come again. Something. Out beneath the stars, the Adept of the Order of Hermes (which is only a Disciple, elsewhere), Penelope takes a deep breath:

readied, and steadying, and ardent.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen lets Pen tend to the fire and lets Sera put up Wards around them. He stays near the fire, watches the way shadows and warm light flicker and dance against the walls. Lets his awareness of what is real slip into something more immediate and something more present. Less present, too, maybe. Though his eyes drift now and again to Serafine. The way the light plays over her cheekbones and catches itself in her hair.

There was a closeness between them once. And once a distance. Kalen has been so many people since both of those things were true. It isn't the same way he watched her once, as though she were some divine thing he had no real hope of catching hold of. There is also no sign of whatever betrayal he had perceived on her part; that wariness and that distance is gone too. Light writhes against her skin and his skin and the skin of everyone else in the room and the skin of the world and Kalen watches it with fascination and no judgment.

And then they are out in the garden and he remembers starlight, remembers one of the first times that they spoke and remembers that she remembered enough of that to have Dan read to him about a lightbulb. He remembered it enough to buy her a Christmas present that he still hasn't given her months later, but he remembers that too, glittering and celestial. He does not get it now.

There is smoke drifting here. Cloud shadows drifting across stars.

Sera reaches out a hand and Kalen does not look away from her. Not now.

Still, his next words, softly spoken, are undeniably for Pen. "You can trust Dan," he says softly. "If there is anything of which you are unsure." Because Kalen might have appreciated what Pen offered. Might have accepted it. But his magic is too immediate and too intimate to involve someone from outside it. To involve someone who needs words or instructions.

Kalen reaches out and takes Sera's hand. Slowly closes the last distance that he had left to linger between them. And the physical distance, yes. That too.

And ,as he takes a breath to reach out to something divine and holy and golden, gazing into Sera's eyes, he smiles. And this might be about finding Alexander and their situation might be entirely fucked up, but this moment is magic and echoing with power and promise and for the first time in days he means it when he smiles.

Serafíne

Correspondence 2/ Mind 2 / Time 2 / Entropy 3 - Finding: a potential ally who will help them with Alexander (if such exists) and making it an auspicious / fortunate moment to approach sometime in the near-future. Difficulty - 3+4 (Vulgar w/out Witnesses). -1 sympathetic magick. -1 oracular ability. -1 personalized instrument.

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (5, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

(Threshold: 8 successes or more.)

Kalen Holliday

[D=5 (7-1 oracular ability-1 personalised instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4) ( fail )

Penelope

[I think you get 2 suxx there for taking time?]

Kalen Holliday

[Or, D=4 for sympathetic magic. So. Less fail.]

Serafíne

Extending: +1 dif!

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

Kalen Holliday

[Now D=5; WP this time because reasons (as if Sera doesn't already have it)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Serafíne

One more time: going for extra successes to find a moment when the person they seek is most disenchanted with the idea of kidnapping and confinement and most ready to help them.

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Kalen Holliday

[d=5; still WP because now would be a bad time to break a spell]

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

Penelope

[Meanwhile, doo-de-doo, Prime Sight. I wanna see how this ritual is made! -1 for personal instrument, -1 for time taken.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

What happens is: they are outside and they have something from Alexander. Some scrap of memory: for Sera it is the feather of an owl that once had a broken wing, for Kalen, perhaps it is something else. They join hands and Sera closes her eyes and somehow at once she is sinking and rising, falling and straining, opening, opening, opening. She imagines herself - no, she is - losing all but the most golden kernal of her consciousness into the ineffeable vastness of lakashim and also still absolutely, entirely within her skin. But:

she feels bright, pierced through, pulled apart, shattered and remade and open, open, open. She's breathing and she's hallucinating and half-dreaming, Alexander as she last saw him, near-dawn, exhausted, frustrated, frozen. Alexander as she first saw him: shattered and newly awake and alone on an empty mountain road. Alexander as he is wherever he is, where he does not belong, where she refuses to leave him, and and and - something else, some forward push, the strange and terrifyingly numinous threads of the future, all the worming possibilities, as infinite as any others:

and,

and,

and,

exhaustively mad hours later: a single resolving impression. Blonde hair and cats-eye glasses. Professional attire with a hint of the hipster: a peter pan collared cardigan over a polka-dot blouse. The gleaming scroll, unreadable, of a laptop open in front of her in as she sips a perfectly ordinary pour-over-coffee on a perfectly lovely afternoon three-days hence in a public square beneath a strange and warm spring sun. She's looking up, she sees some thing. She -

(Sera will share the details when she comes to. But look: see. They have an option. They have a choice.)

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is easily immersed in rituals. Easily falls into magic and connection and lets his power entwine and enmesh and entangle with others. Well, let us be honest, with some others. But he has always fallen into rituals with Serafine as easily as rain falls to the earth. As easily as snow and starlight.

It is no different now.

When the ritual is over and the echoes of their magic are fading he looks up at Penelope. He does not know what Serafine saw, but he knows that she saw something. He does not rise and he does not speak; though he seems to refrain from both of those things less because he cannot do them as because he simply does not chose to. Whatever this ritual took for him to cast, he is not close to beyond doing either of those things.

Instead, he offers Penelope only this: a brief, triumphant smile.

[Sorry. I was waiting on our post order, like an idjit.]

Penelope

How interesting it is to watch other Mages Work together. Here is a Cultist of Ecstasy and here is a (?) Hermetic (with a great deal of Cultist Influence - or so the rumors have it). This is a complicated ritual with many moving parts. How does a Hermetic observe? A Hermetic observes with both eyes open; with an invocation, shaped from nothing, except the wand at ready (readied, always; be a weapon, Flambeau, hot-hearted) and a word, and: perhaps she could replicate this exact ritual later.

She will remember it; she will remember the way the bands of power fit together, anyway, the way they (unrestrainedly) reach out. Kalen's brief, triumphant smile finds a gleam in Penelope's eyes - dark under the starry sky, her red hair wild; and when Serafíne tells them what she saw, Pen is all poise and all frank directness.

How much time do they have until the auspicious moment? Pen will want to have plans; somebody who will not be there, but who will know what is happening: daring does not mean reckless. Pen will want to have plans;

but Pen is hopeful, see. And so are they all who are willing to reach out to an enemy, to find the chink in their armor, to believe beneath that armor there is something human and living and willing to give.

Counsel/Council [In Progress]

Sera

Some morning some strange stupid ordinary morning; sunlight or maybe shadow-fall, dark clouds, the strange anemic light of a clouded wintry morning and a jeep (circa 1990s) with Colorado tags and nothing else to distinguish it pulls up outside a certain luxurious home set away from the others on its own acreage. Normally they'd come bearing gifts today there are no gifts. Gatorade and an acid hangover and a Sera and a Dan. He was able to sleep, a bit. She wasn't. Still has that jittery rawness that comes in after a certain kind of rush, sick-ache in the back of her throat, her head, her body. Sick-ache elsewhere, too, someone underneath her skin, enough that he has to coax her a bit down out of the Jeep's passenger door. Pulls her into a hug and kisses her on the crown of her head and she curses beneath her breath, resists because something in her was meant to resist.

They head inside. Sera and Dan find Annie and have a talk with her. Then maybe all of Trinity. Dan puts tea and coffee on and starts cooking something potato-y. Sera curls up in the kitchen while he cooks. She expects, hopes, that other mages will start arriving soon.

Grace

[OOC Note: If you are known to Grace yet (Except Alex, because she thinks he's mad at her and will instead tell Kalen to do it for her), you will get a text message at the very least with some nonchalant message like "What's up?" or the like, since the original Ginger message said that people should "Check on their friends and family". She knows Pen and Nick don't have Ginger yet, so would not follow that up with a line about having "Spoken to Ginger lately?" but the point of all this is to make sure that everyone she knows knows about the meeting. Sorry ALL YOU FREAKING NEW MAGES WHO ARRIVED WHILE SHE WAS IN AUSTRALIA. You get nothing. ;_;]

[[ Addendum OOC Note: Rolls for that Corr ward

Grace @ 12:06AM [Making a Corr ward about herself! Corr 2, Diff 5 - 1 for taking time.] Roll: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 9) ( success x 3 ) Grace @ 12:07AM [Extending, with WP!] Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 1 ) Grace @ 12:08AM [With Actual WP!] Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP] Denver @ 12:20AM ~♥~ Welcome to Dedicated Dicing Den, I love Vesta. ~♥~ Vesta @ 12:20AM [Witnessed!] ]]

Of course, Grace attends, but not until after she has texted everybody to check on them and generated a somewhat solid ward about her to keep the sneaky spies out. She knows all about that sort of thing, being a sneaky spy herself and all. The wording of that IMPORTANT message has her unnerved. Not too many things are of the type that can't be spoken of on Ginger. One of those things is the War.

She really vanished to Australia for almost a month to relax and try to forget anything that had to do with the return of the Technocracy (and Vampires and a band of Stupid Wizards) as an actual, pressing threat to everyone's continued existence. It wasn't fear that drove this, or avoidance (as if Australia were some mythical land without Technocrats, right?). It was preparation. In order to stand up and keep fighting, you have to occasionally indulge in self-care. For Grace, this meant doing a lot of penguin-watching. In other words, she had expected such a call to go out, in just such careful language for quite some time. Preparing for it only makes things slightly easier.

The first thing she does upon arrival is try to find somebody who will tell her, right now, what is actually up. What has changed the precarious balancing act Denver's been going at for months now? So of course she wanders into the kitchen. There was mention of breakfast, after all. Someone is cooking. Aha, that someone is Dan...

"Dan. I love a good breakfast potato and all, and I love you for making them," she says, and then turns her attention more toward Sera. "But what's going on?"

Sera

"Alexander was kidnapped by a technocratic agent." It is Dan who answers Grace, his voice low and steady over the sizzle of peppers, potatoes, onions. Sera's tired, quiet. Still the suggestion of hallucinations at the edges of her vision from the drugs she took to access Lakashim. Feels so strange to be back, anchored in her body, in a solid room. "right from his precinct, a few weeks ago. He didn't answer some texts or return a call, so Sera scryed for him. Thought he might've gotten lost or maybe hurt, hiking or whatever. When she couldn't locate him in the here-and-now, she searched for the last time she could find him in the timeline."

The consor looks up from the mildly meditative work of cooking.

"Let's see who else shows up. Probably best if she doesn't have to repeat the story too many times today, you know?"

Grace

Grace's eyes go wide and stay that way, before she raises a hand to her mouth, and those eyes start darting in different directions while she thinks of what to do. She knows people to talk to. She can hack the enemy. She can do things, and she wants to do them all right now immediately, except that nobody else knows.

"Oh."

Words just aren't the best, most easy thing right now. Her insides are churning too much. Wide, searching eyes find Sera, and she approaches slowly, reaches out with her arms. Sera may be still hallucinating at the edges. Maybe this might seem like one -- Grace willingly hugging another person? But yeah. Yeah.

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas is in attendance, perhaps with Pen in tow.

He hadn't had occasion to go out to the chantry yet - though perhaps this is not exactly true. He has meant to go, in the way people mean to check out the cool art museum right across the street for months and months after they move in; and yet things have a way of coming up in the life of a busy mage. He is with Pen again! They have a new place in a new city! He has a new job! He is meeting new people! There are rumblings about Technocratic presence from everyone he has spoken to! So: chantry is on the backburner.

The smell of cooking breakfast and brewing coffee greets him, and his stomach rumbles. The sight of Grace and Sera, both among the few new people he knows, brings a slight smile to his face as soon as he has followed the sound of voices into the kitchen: there are hugs happening. Nick does not yet understand that the context of the hugs is terrible and potentially tragic. Dan he does not know: he catches the man's eye in one of the moments that he looks up from the stove, and nods to him.

It does not take him long to figure out that Sera is minimally responsive right now. His expression becomes concerned, questioning, as he looks between the three people present. He says nothing, preferring to take context from what they are doing; there is, after all, the tacit understanding with meetings like these that things will be explained.

Kiara

The front door opens and closes with a hushed urgency. As if even in doing this much, it was trying to play tribute to the reason for their gathering together like this. The sound of buckles and leather and boots and that sudden flutter in their bellies. The swoop and flush of inspiration anew; the bloom of hope - that's what the Verbena felt like, you know. That all was not lost because here, nature was still thriving. Here in narrow shoulders and a slim figure with long, wild hair as dark as her eyes.

She cuts an impressive sight, the Verbena known (and to a few, unknown) as Kiara Woolfe.

She's dressed in black boots that don't quite reach her knees and jeans and a flowing top; the material looping and gathering at one hip so it falls over the other; hangs against a shoulder. There's a rattle of jewellery that accompanies her - lips made up with a bright red shade part a little as she reaches the gathering; hand to the doorframe.

Overheard, perhaps. Some of that last.

"Sorry I'm late." She has eyes for Serafine, the pagan. They flicker over the others, though. Pause on Grace, Dan. Nicholas (and Pen) warranting a hitch of her eyebrows. Uncertainty. Surprise. She's somehow always surprised by newcomers, as if Denver should somehow have been impossible to discover.

Sera

Well, Grace is reaching out to hug her and Sera, who is now seated on a counter or a table or a stepladder, which is to say: seated, but seated on something that is definitely not a chair, opens her arms. What else would she ever do when approached with a hug? She smells likes cloves and ash and snow and orange juice (orange juice!) and the morning-after fumes of a long, long night. Dan might've napped while she was scrying, but Sera has not been to sleep.

Hell, that's usually the case if she's up at this hour: it simply means that she has not yet been to sleep.

Somewhere in there she kinda - rouses, right? Contact is so very necessary for the animal-in-her, and she presses her nose into Grace's hair. Something strangely bracing about the solidity of that contact, of her spare frame and the strange, undeniable strength if not of her frame, at least of her resonance. The promise of: magick beneath her skin.

--

Dan, cooking. He's a tall, skinny guy with blond hair and a blond beard and tattoos covering his arms. He's wearing skinny jeans and a plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms. If he started yesterday evening with a bow-tie, he has since untied it. Gives Nick an appraising glance: up and down, you see. Just so, while still somehow managing to attend to the peppers, onions, and potatoes in the sautee pan in front of him.

"You must be Nick." With a glance, you know? Sera tells him everything. A quick smile, crisp and warm framed by the beard, and then: an apologetic shrug with a glance at the pan in explanation. "I'd offer you my hand, but - "

They're kinda full.

Then Kiara joins them, and Dan is pouring breakfast onto both a plate and a platter, and says, "Kiara. Have you met Nicholas or his wife, Pen?" Deftly making introductions all the while. "There's a loaf of ciabatta warming in the oven. One of your want to grab it? We can sit in the dining room and we'll fill you in."

As Sera disentangles herself from the unexpected Grace-hug, Dan steers her toward the Gatorade in the fridge. Electrolytes or something. Sera makes a face and grabs both Gatorade and whiskey, which Dan helpfully points out sounds like the world's most disgusting combination. Well then: Sera will put it in her tea and just skip the Gatorade, anyway. Who says it works? She thinks it's a myth. She prefers: magick, anyway, when the time comes to heal her hangovers.

Kalen

Kalen has been, also, in Australia.

He was, briefly, back in Denver to meet with other Hermetics. Stopped off in Santiago on his way back to Grace and penguins. There are pictures from those first few days, before he told her what he knew about the coming war. Not that she would not have known. There are many people in the world that Kalen will hide from and lie to when it suits him, but Grace is not among them.

Sun or no sun, Kalen is still pale. There is a little dusting of very faint freckles over his cheekbones. His eyes are, if anything, more haunted than when he left. Kalen Michael Holliday is as terrible at vacations as he is at being Flambeau; though, one of those is a more recent development than the other.

He is quiet as he surveys them. There are no warm, excited greetings. A faint dip of the head to each of them, and then he is getting coffee. He holds Grace's eyes perhaps a few seconds longer than anyone else's and he brushes against Kiara as he slips past her, and in that this is unlike the grim and withdrawn creature he was when he first arrived in Denver; still, this is Kalen a little guarded, and a little quiet, and entirely reminiscent of what he had been haunted.

Nicholas

Once Nick is there only a little longer, people he does not recognize (as though he'd recognize so many) start to filter in. He is standing near Grace and Serafine, his arms folded across his chest, his limbs loose in a way that belies his actual feelings about this meeting. See, he's picked up on the fact that Sera has been up too long, that there is some whisper of a Working that she wears in her hair, wound around and beneath her skin. These things in conjunction with a meeting everyone is invited to: they usually mean something.

Dan, the person who is in front of the stove, catches his attention with: You must be Nick. The Chakravanti appraises him then, perhaps searches his memory and the relatively few conversations he's had since arriving in Denver, before returning with, "You must be Dan."

He goes to grab the loaf of bread that is warming in the oven, after a momentary pause to cast around for a mitt. As much of an impressive (foolish) entrance it might make to grab it barehanded with nothing but magic as a barrier, Nick is not that sort of mage, in any sense. Mention of Kiara's name draws his eyes to the woman that entered shortly after he did, and there's a glimmer of recognition there.

The bread he sets on the counter, close enough to Dan for convenience but not so close that he'd risk inadvertantly burning himself on the pan. "Hello, Kiara. And - ?" This, to Kalen.

Kiara

The brunette's eyes are a very dark brown. They've been highlighted today with liner and the lashes that frame them and drop, briefly, against her cheeks as she feels Kalen sweep past behind her, are curling and long. A lovely creature, by all accounts, Kiara but the manner she cut a brief, bright appraising look Nick's way reads a fair amount into there being far more to her than a charming little heart shaped face and cheeks with a tendency to dimple when she smiled.

(Only honest smiles drew them out, that being said).

"Hello," it's a murmur as much as anything, a hand idling to bury itself in all that dark hair and cup the back of her neck. "Welcome to the party." A notch up of fine dark eyebrows; one wings just slightly higher than the other and while Dan assembles plates of food - the Verbena kicks off from her resting perch and sets herself up with a glass of red wine. Unhooks a glass and pours it out, delivering the rich aroma into the mixture Dan's efforts had already let loose.

"That," a gesture with her glass here, Kiara's rings gleaming, toward the man who had pressed in behind her upon entry. "Is Kalen. Can I interest anyone else?" She sets the bottle down, the Verbena and leans into a counter out of the stream of activity; holding the glass against her body without any particular fuss about sampling it. Her tone is light enough, but beneath the glamor of it (not even magickal, this time, just posturing, just brittle play-acting at some notion of normalcy from the earth-witch) there's a sense of tension; lacing into her shoulders, the set of them. Her fingers curled around the stem a little too forcefully.

"It sounds like the occasion for it."

Sepulveda

He is not late. He was invited only by association and his associate such as she is arrived ten minutes ago. Came into the kitchen and started garnering information and he traipsed the periphery of the property smoking a cigarette and having an argument under his breath with himself.

Maybe Nick saw him on the way in. Kiara may have. Kiara is attuned to this land in a way he will never understand. Tried to understand. Kiara may have known Hinata who went by Eloise when she went by anything but that's a story for another time. At this time the Etherite who came as Grace's plus-one is chain smoking.

He is a forensic pathologist. A medical examiner. A doctor. A Scientist. Shouldn't be smoking. Does anyway. That is irrelevant. In time he finishes his cigarette and does whatever it is that Disciples of Matter do with their cigarette butts and lets himself into the Chantry.

A short man. Five-foot-six in his shoes. Came from an inquest this morning so he's wearing a navy blue suit and a white shirt and a conservative tie even though he hates ties at all let alone ones with still patterns he had to comb his hair and trim his beard didn't have to but he chose to and he's wearing black-rimmed glasses and a wedding band on his left hand and soon as the door's shut he's surveying the room intruder that he must think he is.

Everyone is in the kitchen. He calls out as he walks. A deep voice belies a slight frame. Light accent.

"Marco?" He follows the smell of food into the kitchen. Green eyes find Nick and then Grace. Eyebrows flick. Greeting in it and also expectation.

He expects Grace to introduce him since she's the one who ran his background check. He will absolutely take a glass of red wine. Breakfast be damned. He has two apprentices. They won't be joining the congregation. They have work and school and a propensity for freaking out at the slightest hint of impending doom.

Grace

Grace has been happy, up to the point where this call went out. Vacation agrees with her, when she's allowed to be somewhere very warm and work on her Work. Right now, though, she looks like she just got punched in the gut. When Kalen's gaze meets hers, she tries to hold on to it, tries to tell him with her eyes that everything will be okay. He's going to be... even less happy. Let us hope that the emotional outcome doesn't lead to doing anything rash. Not that she expects it of him, but still.

She's about to accept Kiara's offer of wine when Dr. Sepúlveda shows up in the entryway to the kitchen. For the life of her, she can't quite grasp that it's her 'job' to do introductions until a few painful seconds have passed. Maybe he has to look at her and cough.

"Oh, yeah. Um. This is Andrés Sepúlveda. Doctor. He's with the Society of Ether. Andrés, everybody. Everybody, Andrés," she says, with sweeping arm gestures in his general direction. Sorry, dude. Your invite to this shindig came courtesy of a Mercurial Elite with only the weakest grasp on what normal human interactions entail when she's on the scent like this.

"I could use some wine," she says to Kiara, and then seems to change her mind immediately. "No. Actually, no." She puts her thumb knuckles up to her eyes and leans on the counter like she's got the biggest headache. "I don't need to do everything that needs doing while drunk..."

Pen

Pen did arrive with Nick!

And then she was quiet, because there is a reason she is nursing a very strong cup of coffee as if the coffee'll have enough edge to scrape her into brightness. Quiet is relative. Chain-smoking Andrés got a what's up outside. Grace also got a what's up, probably coupled with big concerned eyes given how worn the Mercurial Elite looks. Pen's a softie. Serafíne and Dan, two Good Mornings, an incisive little this is really early isn't it? look for the former, but of course it is because 'meetings' like these are never good news you see that doesn't change one city from the other. Nick didn't get a what's up. Kalen got a wiggle of fingers, a half-smile.

There's a certain wistfulness to her regard of the wine, wine's as red as rubies in a fairy tale or it's the color of a gown the color of stars, but wine and coffee don't go together, do they? Then again, dare not!

Anybody she doesn't know gets the (semi-full) introduction, Penelope Sylvia Mercury Mars bani Flambeau ordo Hermes. There don't seem to be too many of those. Neat.

Pen is: mistress of languid aplomb, at least right now. Asks Dan if he needs help, chopping or any such thing, carrying plates into the dining room, c'mon people give her some busy work.

Sera

Dan wasn't really cooking for a (the) crowd, so the spread laid out in the dining room, or maybe the living room, is modest. He just wanted to get some solid food, some carbohydrates and potassium, some liquid other-than-booze, back into Sera's body as she is coming-down from whatever-it-is she uses to fuel her magick. The ciabatta, though, that's a good sized loaf, not exactly loaves-and-fishes but it's not exactly a loaves-and-fishes crowd.

It's Dan who starts,

"Alexander hadn't responded to a couple of voice mails or texts. Sera was concerned he might've gotten hurt while hiking or something, so last night she decided to scry him out. But she couldn't find him anywhere."

They're sitting close to each other, though at the moment Sera is not inviting touch the way she is often wont to do. No, something about her scrubbed-raw senses has her in want of: space, boundaries, singularity. Feels so strange to be one, when sometimes you can be: all, every, any.

"So I looked back," this is Sera, and if she looks as if she has not slept for quite some time, well: she has not slept. The edges of the room have a sort of brilliant smearinenss to them and everything from her temples to her fingertips aches. She doesn't mind the ache. In fact, she invites it. "Searched out the last time I could find him.

"Several weeks ago, Alex was approached at the police," a slight handwave. Unlike the rest of the western world, Sera has never watched a Law and Order marathon. She doesn't have a ready lexicon of crime-show language, " - thingy by a guy who said he was an FBI Agent named Paul Mason. Wanted to have a chat with Alexander.

"Took Alex into a room inside the place and started asking him about a 'case' he was investigating. Showed Alex a picture of Leah. Mason said he was investigating Leah for the murder of twelve people, and asked if Alex had seen her.

"Alex was pretty clever. He managed to answer without lying, without really answering, but Mason was not taken in. He kept questioning Alex, pushing him to give her up - or, well," this narrow hitch of the creature's spare shoulders. The movement framed with an elegant simplicity. "testing him, right? Weston asked Alex another direct question. Alex tried to leave.

"But Mason shot him with something: a tranquilizer, maybe. Alex tried to run, but the guy came after him and the drug he'd used was pretty fast-acting. Alex started to shout, and he went for his gun but they were grappling over it and he couldn't really get it out of the holster. He still managed to get a shot off that went into the floor before he passed out.

"These other cops came running. Mason convinced them that Alex had gone nuts while they were talking, that Alex started talking to someone who wasn't there and was going for his weapon and that Weston had to do tackle Alex to stop him from hurting himself, then Alex passed out. Mind magick, yeah? The cops believed Mason.

"They called an ambulance.

"The paramedics - two women - started toward the hospital, but changed course halfway there. Drove East instead, toward Aurora. Kept going until they ended up in one of those boring-ass looking developments with the low bland buildings and the sod and the fake ponds and shit. Dan says it sounds like a research park, and we put it together to be close to the UC Denver schools of public health and dentistry. That's where I lost track of him. The vision closed-off and I couldn't find him anytime, after."

Grace

After Sera's spiel, Grace chimes in, perhaps sooner than the impact of all that has really hit. She's been waiting to get a few things off her chest, although she's still speaking to the kitchen counter.

"So this means, if you knew Alex, you're in danger. He also knew where the Chantry is, and he had Ginger, so chances are they know we're having this meeting right now."

She doesn't stop to explain Ginger to those who don't have it. Priorities and all.

Her head comes up, and her eyes flit to people, but seem to pierce through them, until she settles on something non-living -- non-emoting.

"I know a guy. Mercurial Elite who has been watching the Technocrats in the area. I'm going to find out what he knows. And then I'm going to hack their shit to within an inch of it's life if I can. We'll find out what we need to get him back."

She says these things with conviction, like she is going to do them, and if anyone had any ideas about stopping her, they have another thing coming.

Sepulveda

Sepúlveda did in fact stare at Grace and give a bit of an open-armed You gonna introduce me or what? gesture when she didn't do so within about five seconds. File that one away under the Virtual Adept living up to her name.

He's silent during Dan-and-Sera's explanation and the clearing of things off Grace's chest. Keeps one hand in his pocket if he has been offered a glass of wine. Keeps both hands in his pockets and fails the Don't Make Music with the Random Coins and Other Jangly Junk test.

"So..." A hand leaves Sepúlveda's pocket to scratch at his beard before he goes on. He's a hand-talker. "If they know about all this, the Chantry and the Ginger and all that, how are you so sure they aren't expecting you to try to 'hack their shit'?"

Grace

It was a long drive to the Chantry with the doctor in tow. Grace has the feeling it's going to be even longer on the way back.

"By that logic, they're expecting everything, so we should do nothing. But I'm open to other ideas if you have them."

Sepulveda

He points at her.

"I'm going to ignore your unsound accusation of logical fallacy for the moment. We can discuss that later." Yes, Grace. Yes it is going to be a long ride back. "Other ideas!" He indicates their fellows with a sweep of an arm. "You have a room full of associates who I'm sure are very bright and more than capable of gathering data and contributing to a plan that's a little more nuanced than 'Go in the back door and hope they don't notice or do anything about it.' Like, where's your support? What are you gonna do if it does go wrong, and you don't find out shit, and now we gotta go after you and Alex? Where's this building they took him to? Can we use, eh, what do you call it, social hacking to get additional information? What about a two-pronged approach? Divide and conquer, eh? That's how they get new members, they pick off the ones who want to be cowboys."

Nicholas

Nick listens to the long explanation Sera offers, largely without expression: no surprise, and no fear. He is still digesting when she finishes, and when Sepúlveda and Grace begin their back-and-forth. He does not know Alex. Nicholas knows of Alex, but due to his and Pen's habit of rarely Naming those they run into even when they discuss - well, he doesn't know that yet.

"I think it's clear that this meeting was called because we have no intention of leaving a man to die," Nick says, and this is perhaps directed mostly to Grace. He did not miss her defiance of them, the lifted chin: and it's true, in many chantries there would be discussion of whether or not, in fact, they ought to retrieve Alex. "So I'm glad to skip ahead with you to planning." A pause. "It sounds like first we need to find out where he is. How much do we know about their operations in the area? Has anyone met or seen any of their operatives?"

Kalen

Kalen was expecting that the news would not be good. This is a different shade of horror from perhaps what he had thought that he would encounter. Still, this is Alexander. Whom he has referred to as both his brother and his griffon; among those in Denver, only Grace has also been referred to with any kind of possessive terms. His fox. His Virtual Adept. His partner in crime. And here she is, ready to charge in.

In these moments, he can remember a girl who did not yet know that she would be this marvelous creature. He has always known. Though, perhaps, not which of all the possible variants on that creature she would be. That, to him, is irrelevant. It is only all the blazing possibility crackling at the edges of his awareness ready to be made manifest he is drawn to. It plays out from there as it must.

There are other worlds and other lives and he does not believe any longer that any loss can be eternal. Love can be eternal. Hope can be eternal. Perhaps struggle and war and horror will also prove eternal. So:

His fingers tighten on the mug cradled in his hands and he is quiet at first. He listens. He breathes. And, let us be honest, he prays. Of course he does.

But then his attention is wrested away from divinity and faith and abstract concepts to a single moment, through a series of related moments, and then to this particular moment. Nick's cutting into the exchange between Grace and the doctor earns him a brief smile. It even hits his eyes for a second, because whatever is going on, Kalen can feel a dizzying array of emotions at once. Usually does, in fact.

"I can request a detailed report of the findings of another member of the Order who came here to assess the Technocratic threat and weigh our options for war. We can speak with one other contact I am aware of, others with have them, and reassess from there with the full whole of what we know from there. If he was dead, it would seem improbable that any such effort would be being made to hide that fact; so we may reasonably conclude that he is alive, at least, for the moment."

Kalen has to take a careful breath before he speaks again. Measured. Controlled. As though this control could possibly extend to his thoughts. To the too-fast pulse he can feel in the hollow of his throat. "What we cannot reasonably conclude, is that the person we reclaim from them will be the same person that they took." What he is not willing to conclude is apparently that they will be unsuccessful. Reason can be damned there, apparently.

"We will need to be prepared not only to find him and to go out and get him, but to handle whatever complications there might be." Whatever complications there might be. You know. In case Alexander's mind has been overwritten. His memories taken. Kalen does not elaborate there.

"If that is not something that we can do here, there is somewhere I can take him. Though, Alexander would prefer, undoubtedly, to remain here. This is our home."

Pen

Pen is alert and attentive. And sitting, now. Ankle on her knee, legs crossed like a man's, one hand on her ankle. Nicholas has heard about Alexander, Pen has met Alexander, but Pen doesn't connect Serafíne's story with anybody she's met.

"Two rumors going around could be factored in here.

"One, and I personally count this as confirmed fact because of its source. The Technocracy's lab in Denver has recently had a 'fairly sizable influx of personnel.' This could actually serve us quite well. New staff means unfamiliar faces, an unclear pecking order, and loads of paperwork. Even if the lab in Denver happens to be hyperefficient and without flaw, they can't all be untouched by the callous hand of human error and now there are some new guys. This provides us with a -- decent -- stage to enact a Daring Extraction. Send someone in, undercover, to rescue this fellow, outfitting this someone with all the advantage we can scrounge together. In and out. Difficult, yes. But… with the right information - " Naturally, flicker of her attention to the Mercurial Elite here. " - and enough gumption, not impossible."

"Two. And this one really is a rumour. Possible allies on the inside now, the inside being the Technocratic Union, the rumor being there is a group made unhappy by the choices the Union is making… especially as relates to igniting another Ascension War. Now if this is the case -- be prepared, ladies and gentlemen, for heavy speculation! Obviously, this one would be a really nice rumour to confirm. If this is the case, and members of this faction are already in Denver, could we presume they would be interested in a Traditionalist taken in for questioning as this Alex was? And, presuming that, could we not presume they might be on his side? Or, if not on his side, open to persuasion?

"What I'm getting at here is IF we have Magi skilled in Entropy Time Correspondence, if we have friends of Alex's who might possess some meaningful personal effect could we not roll the dice practice some form of -omancy and, using Alex, or rather the idea of him and the fact of him, to sort-of boomerang find these potential allies and make contact with them.

"We can presume he is being held somewhere heavily warded," and this time her graylight eyes flicker-flame in acknowledgment of Serafíne. "I wouldn't be surprised if the Union's facility was in the UC Denver school of public health and dentristy, but this is because my prejudice says there cannot be a more thoroughly boring and yet also terrifying fortress for 'Reason.' The other member of the Order who Kalen mentioned should know."

Wandering, Pen. Refocus: "Anyway. Although Alex's person would be always heavily warded those we might contact will not be -- and thus vulnerable to a Find You Out spell."

"Be nice to have somebody already on the inside to help with that Daring Covert Extraction."

"As for his current state of mind, how much of a threat is the Union likely to deem this Alex? What is he like?"

Kiara

The Verbena frowns down at her glass as Dan begins.

That frown only intensifies when Serafine chimes in and by the time she's done the brunette's knuckles are almost white from the ferocity of her grip around her wineglass. There's voices, then. Grace and the Doctor and then over to others but all Kiara can truly hear is a ringing in her ears and the hot trickle of anger.

Worst fears can come true, too and this has (always) been one of hers. Only she had made certain assumptions regarding who would be the one taken. Perhaps that had been a gross sort of egotism on Kiara's behalf, to imagine she'd be the only one they'd target because of course they'd position the cross-hairs on someone like Alexander, with his connections and the ease of access to him.

Of course.

"Dionaea muscipula," she says quietly, after a sip of wine. "The Venus flytrap waits for insects to trigger not just one, but two tiny receptors before it springs shut. It waits for that exact moment. It's very clever." There's a sharp inhale, the Verbena lifts her eyes. "I agree with the Doc in that we need to be cautious about how we do this." A cut of dark eyes to Sepúlveda. She'd handed him off a glass of wine earlier - half the pagan's is already consumed though the flush that's risen to her cheeks doesn't seem entirely of its doing. There's a degree of anger in the Verbana, a tremor of unvoiced fury present there.

She pauses, waits for Kalen and Pen to speak, then, head tilted at the latter, says with the slow framing of forming speculation: "Advantage like altering their appearance. A new employee, a recent transfer. It would be incredibly risky, but - not impossible." A beat. Kiara's narrow shoulders curl in, she seems, momentarily, quite beaten down by the goings on, her fingers lifting to touch her temples, eyes closing briefly. "This building where we think he may be being held, it's possible that I can see into it from the other side. Step across and gain some insights.

I may be able to get some help from the spirits in the area, too. They see a lot more than we imagine."

Sepulveda

His wife was Verbena. Some of the gathered know this already. Some of the gathered know what befell that woman already.

Sepúlveda's anger is not Kiara's anger. Though his love belonged to her tradition their furies do not well from the same spring. The Etherite does not seem angered by this though by the sounds of it he is informed.

As Kiara speaks he listens. His glass is as emptied as is hers. His eyes flick to Pen's after she has finished speaking.

"This new laboratory." The fuck does he have to lose. "I'll go." For those who don't know: "I work for the county, as a medical examiner. I have some training in Mind. Say I go in after this Alexander, under official pretense. If I had another backing me up, I could gain some intelligence." A beat. Aimed towards Grace: "Do not mistake the Technocrats for gods, Gracia. They have the same hot blood as do we; they have no choice but to cooperate, though, eh?"

Sera

"Alex is an apprentice." Sera answers Pen's question, "He's an orphan and he's always seemed pretty straight-laced to me. His magick isn't strong enough to break reality. I can't imagine that he's a prime target for the Order. Ever. Kidnapping him and holding him - "

Flat-mouthed, here. Something sharp and angry cuts through the scrim of her exhaustion. Her small hands are fisted and there is something something something -

Dan cuts in. "The way we see it, there are two ways we get Alex back. One is go get in there somehow and take him back. The other is to get them to give him back, and hell, maybe to think it was their idea to give him back all along. If we have to do it the first way, it sounds like everyone here is willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.

"But if the second path is viable, it seems like it's the safest for everyone here, and especially for Alex. Hell, if they let him go, there's no reason he couldn't resume his own goddamned life and job. Now, I don't know much about the internal workings of the Technocratic Union, but I watched a helluva lot of the original X-files, so I am pretty convinced I have some idea about how shitty, controlling bureaucracies work. If we, somehow, get the less militant faction to frame this Agent Weston as a crazy Fox Mulder type, kidnapping innocent fucking apprentices who are suspected of nothing more than being wrong-place wrong-time wrong-day, maybe they can force his release."

Dan takes a deep breath: inhales through the nose. Exhales the same way. These little gears turning as he marshals his thoughts.

"We've got what, two - " a glance at Sera, " - maybe three ways back to them. That guy who contacted Will last summer. This - entity? - who's been in contact with Kalen. Which, I'm not sure I really understand? And Pen's idea, which I think Sera has the magick to pull off if no one else does."

"Grace, I think it's fair to conclude that Ginger is compromised, but they don't know that we know. Maybe you start putting your hacking skills and magick to work by making it seem as if we are still using it. If they've cracked our code and we know they've cracked it, we can use Ginger to feed them false info, or false leads, or hell, just string them along until we really need to feed them something. I'm also thinking that maybe you could do something with any compromised phone numbers: some kind of rote spell to replicate pre-compromise use. You know: make it seem like someone's still calling, texting, surfing the 'net just as much as ever. Amplify the noise they have to sift through to actually find us."

"Then there's Leah. If you haven't met her, you probably shouldn't. Best to be able to say, truthfully, that you don't have any goddamned idea who the girl in the picture is. But I don't know: maybe we take it another step. Maybe we fake her death far away from Denver, dramatically and convincing enough that the Order mothballs their investigation of her for another five years. That, I'm not sure if it's achievable, or what we'd need to make it real enough to convince the order. But it would give her - and us - and maybe Alex - some breathing room.

"I mean, if it has to be daring rescue, it'll be daring rescue. But maybe it doesn't have to be."

Kiara

Oh, she wants that. Dan is discussing going in and taking Alexander back by force and there's that scratch and illumination, like a match-head drawn against the side of the box. That flicker of fire that dances through Kiara's dark eyes where she stands cradling that wine glass against her chest. She's silent for much of this - the debate, the turning over of decisions and probable routes.

In her mind's eye she sees it: the reckoning.

The laboratory up in flames, Alexander freed and the others - fleeing like rats from a sinking sink. Cowering and ruined.

There's little room for mercy in the Verbena's fantasy, in the hot-blooded whiplash of it as blood and vengeance play out their pretty imaginings in her grim little tucked in expression; the fine pull in of her brows as she pours another glass of wine. It trickles out with a tidy little glug, droplets of dark red painting the sides of the glass.

Then she frames the bench with one hand. Lets the wine scrap away the edges; dull the roar of payback. The jangle of it against her nerves; pulsing in time with her heart.

It doesn't have to be a daring rescue - but part of Kiara Woolfe desperately wants for it to be. "Faking her death might not be impossible if it comes to that. With the right tools. Manipulating certain aspects. It just has to be convincing, not perfect." She lets her eyes tick to the Doctor, then Kalen. "There are ways we could probably pull that off." Kiara doesn't offer details on what that idea might require. DNA altering. Pattern changing on a base level.

"Especially since at least two of us have medical training." Her dark eyes tick away, she breathes in sharply. Says no more.

Grace

She squints at Doctor Sepúlveda. He must think her extremely stupid. She never claimed they were gods, so why is he telling her that? Except if it's to tell himself, even as he signs himself up for an undercover mission -- with his inability to say five sentences without pissing somebody off. Martyrdom complex? Maybe. He's also the one most likely to pass himself off as a scientist, because he, well, is one. If he's willing, Grace won't argue with that.

But, Gracia?

Nevermind. Arguing is a distraction.

Sera gets a quick nod. It was already in Grace's plans to use Ginger for whatever it could, be it passing messages to whichever person now holds Alex's phone, or spreading disinformation. Making it look like it's being used would be easy enough. Generate some fake threats, generate some fake messages about the fake threats.

"I can do that. I can also try to confirm if Ginger has been accessed, although if they're smart, they're hiding that. Anybody who has it, though? Might want to ditch your phone. At least, for a while. There's protections in place to keep the network from being sussed out, but anything's possible."

Usually, that is a good thing. Anything is possible! Go, ride your T-rex into the oceans of possibility! But it goes both ways.

"Kalen can provide you a replacement," she volunteers, for him, because she can, and because she knows him well enough to realize that's about as much an imposition as asking him to grab her a beer from the fridge.

She's not so much thinking about it when she wanders over in Kalen's direction. It's just a thing that happens. She bumps up against his side, like a cat showing affection. No arms, no hugs, just that. It'll be okay. It'll be okay -- that's the thing that she's trying to tell herself.

Pen

Kiara's head-cant and the slow dawn of speculation. Advantages like, the Verbena says, and the spark of some acknowledging light sifts up through Pen's serious eyes. Quiet thumb and middle-finger snap, ending in a Yes Like Those finger-gun point. Sepúlveda volunteers. Pen leans forward. Rests her elbow on her knee, chin on her thumb, forefinger curled around her mouth. Serafíne. Attentiveness. Dan. The bells of Ys are drowned and silver; they only peal-out sorrow, fog-drenched and soon-lost; shadow-dappled, salt-wave sea.

During all the listening, she takes the top off her coffee spares a quick glance into cup damn it empty puts cup back down on the table. Pulls a moleskine out of her coat pocket or a pencil out of her bag and makes a few illegible notes.

"Let's see. I have Andrés and Kiara - " Questioning flick of a glance. (?) " - interested in the physical role of going in to rescue Alex. I have Grace manipulating lines of communication we might now expect the Union to now have access to or be aware of to spread misinformation and miscommunication. Grace: might you also use your contacts to attempt to get information on Technocratic protocol in this city or elsewhere? Risky, but an appropriate use of 'hacking,' I think. And that goes for anyone who might have contacts with knowledge of the Union's ways. If we do send Andrés and Kiara or whomever in to the lab, we will want to arm them with the very best ability to spin bullshit into gleaming sterile badges of Technocratic union. That is, belonging. We also want the least danger possible, yes?"

"I believe with what we have discussed what IS most clear is that we should make a concerted push to see about ... well, if we have ourselves, or if we have more than ourselves. To that effect we have Kalen and a partner, or even better, two partners! exploring one avenue of information. Sera, and a partner or two, exploring another. Even if no one else has the power to pull off such a boomerang pow-chicka-plao Finding, surely there may be some who are not quite as advanced but are able to Work with you and lend their support to the ritual?"

"Huge help in case of daring rescue, huge help in case of daring rescue that involves lying and getting them to 'give' us your Alex. I'll be honest here: I don't believe we can convince the Union in Denver to just release Alex back to his old life sorry old boy about that misunderstanding dust-off dust-off. I'd like to be flexible here: if it looks like we can arrange something to that effect, great! But there are no 'innocent fucking apprentices' to the Union. There are potential recruits, there are Sleepers, and then there are those who are dangerous. I believe we are to them what Nepha - no. What Marauders are to us. Or rampaging Spirits. Too dangerous… a problem to be solved."

Her spine straightens a little: oh! Struck by remembrance! Right!

"Speaking of problems to be solved and spirits, earlier you - " (Kiara) " - mentioned talking to spirits and potentially going over to the Other Side in order to get perspective on the area in question. I don't know if I'd personally recommend going across just in case one got stuck in -- I don't know: I don't know what kind of anti-spirit Magick wards the Conventionalists might have put up. But I like the idea of knowing what they know or having some sort of spirit ally on tap to distract the Union with at a key moment or, or, well in reserve for later if needed.

"Nicholas here is adroit when it comes to dealings with spirits. Perhaps you two can come up with something together?"

"As for Leah, I like where the discussion is going. I have let's see hmm Andrés, Kiara, and Kalen? on 'fake a body' duty. Leah and her cabal should probably be told about that plan and they can probably, should - certainly, help with the faking of some outrageous magickal - " Pen wiggles her fingers " - Leah catastrophic burn-out elsewhere."

Her forehead crinkles: concerned and her mouth slants to the side. Fingers go tap-tap on her ankle.

"What are we neglecting to think of...?"

Glance around.

Nicholas

Kiara's head-cant and the slow dawn of speculation. Advantages like, the Verbena says, and the spark of some acknowledging light sifts up through Pen's serious eyes. Quiet thumb and middle-finger snap, ending in a Yes Like Those finger-gun point. Sepúlveda volunteers. Pen leans forward. Rests her elbow on her knee, chin on her thumb, forefinger curled around her mouth. Serafíne. Attentiveness. Dan. The bells of Ys are drowned and silver; they only peal-out sorrow, fog-drenched and soon-lost; shadow-dappled, salt-wave sea.

During all the listening, she takes the top off her coffee spares a quick glance into cup damn it empty puts cup back down on the table. Pulls a moleskine out of her coat pocket or a pencil out of her bag and makes a few illegible notes.

"Let's see. I have Andrés and Kiara - " Questioning flick of a glance. (?) " - interested in the physical role of going in to rescue Alex. I have Grace manipulating lines of communication we might now expect the Union to now have access to or be aware of to spread misinformation and miscommunication. Grace: might you also use your contacts to attempt to get information on Technocratic protocol in this city or elsewhere? Risky, but an appropriate use of 'hacking,' I think. And that goes for anyone who might have contacts with knowledge of the Union's ways. If we do send Andrés and Kiara or whomever in to the lab, we will want to arm them with the very best ability to spin bullshit into gleaming sterile badges of Technocratic union. That is, belonging. We also want the least danger possible, yes?"

"I believe with what we have discussed what IS most clear is that we should make a concerted push to see about ... well, if we have ourselves, or if we have more than ourselves. To that effect we have Kalen and a partner, or even better, two partners! exploring one avenue of information. Sera, and a partner or two, exploring another. Even if no one else has the power to pull off such a boomerang pow-chicka-plao Finding, surely there may be some who are not quite as advanced but are able to Work with you and lend their support to the ritual?"

"Huge help in case of daring rescue, huge help in case of daring rescue that involves lying and getting them to 'give' us your Alex. I'll be honest here: I don't believe we can convince the Union in Denver to just release Alex back to his old life sorry old boy about that misunderstanding dust-off dust-off. I'd like to be flexible here: if it looks like we can arrange something to that effect, great! But there are no 'innocent fucking apprentices' to the Union. There are potential recruits, there are Sleepers, and then there are those who are dangerous. I believe we are to them what Nepha - no. What Marauders are to us. Or rampaging Spirits. Too dangerous… a problem to be solved."

Her spine straightens a little: oh! Struck by remembrance! Right!

"Speaking of problems to be solved and spirits, earlier you - " (Kiara) " - mentioned talking to spirits and potentially going over to the Other Side in order to get perspective on the area in question. I don't know if I'd personally recommend going across just in case one got stuck in -- I don't know: I don't know what kind of anti-spirit Magick wards the Conventionalists might have put up. But I like the idea of knowing what they know or having some sort of spirit ally on tap to distract the Union with at a key moment or, or, well in reserve for later if needed.

"Nicholas here is adroit when it comes to dealings with spirits. Perhaps you two can come up with something together?"

"As for Leah, I like where the discussion is going. I have let's see hmm Andrés, Kiara, and Kalen? on 'fake a body' duty. Leah and her cabal should probably be told about that plan and they can probably, should - certainly, help with the faking of some outrageous magickal - " Pen wiggles her fingers " - Leah catastrophic burn-out elsewhere."

Her forehead crinkles: concerned and her mouth slants to the side. Fingers go tap-tap on her ankle.

"What are we neglecting to think of...?"

Glance around.

Yoga in the Park is for Weirdos

Lucas Reed

[Dex+Ath]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Lucas Reed

The sky above Washington park was densely clouded, casting a blanket of grey over the surrounding landscape. People often likened that kind of weather to broody or depressed moods, but Lucas wasn't really the type to prescribe emotional weight to the clouds. The sky and the earth were as they were. They existed beyond meaning or emotion. And today, he was perfectly content to practice his craft in the park - regardless of the quality of the light. The air was on the cooler side of warm and slightly breezy. Not bad for yoga, really.

Which is what he was doing at this precise juncture. He had a grey yoga mat rolled out over the grass, and was stretching his small, agile frame into a scorpion pose, legs curved up over his head as he balanced on his elbows. He was dressed for the occasion in black athletic shorts and a white tank top. A small bead of sweat trailed its way down the side of his temple, past the corner of one eye and down the curve of his cheek. Dimly he registered it, but paid it little attention.

Kalen Holliday

[How distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen associates Washington Park most strongly with one spirit and one person; neither of whom are present at the moment. He misses them both, but one of them is in the Umbra and one of them...well. That's complicated.

Lucas is here though. Arranging himself into shapes. Kalen knows more about yoga in the abstract than in practice, though he has a passing familiarity with it. He did, after all, live with Kharisma.

He approaches Lucas slowly. and pauses a little distance away to wait. Only Alexander gets Kalen waiting inches from his face. When Alexander believes that he is who he is and will let him-

Here.

Now.

Kalen directs his attention off of that mess and back toward Lucas. Yoga would probably not be the worst thing to happen to Kalen right now, but he makes no attempt to join Lucas, even so. Just goes still and silent and waits for for Lucas' attention.

Serafíne

(Awareness, yada.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lucas Reed

[Awareness, wee]

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

Lucas Reed

It was not so much that Lucas didn't notice Kalen. Indeed, he was aware of everything around him. All of the patterns - living, material, sentient or less so. They existed as part of the greater universe, like water rising up to create a wave (briefly,) before sinking back into the vast span of the ocean. One of those waves felt like Kalen.

Lucas held his pose, balancing calmly despite the quake of muscles in his arms and his core. That was part of it - the stretch, the pain (the sweat.) After a while, he uncurled carefully and settled into a lotus position, leaning back on his palms to regard Kalen.

"Evening," he said, smiling. Did he remember Kalen? Of course. He remembered everything. Luke looked around at the park, taking in the trees and the flowers and the scattered visitors. "Nice day, hmm?"

Serafíne

"That is so fucked up, what you're doing to your body right now." Kalen shows up and waits for attention; like a cat or something. Standing there. He could be whistling. Maybe he should be whistling, but the lingering, man. Someone might have something to say about that.

Instead, someone has something to say about scorpion pose and said someone is wearing denim cut-offs with fine threads dangling over the spare meat of her well-tanned thighs, a sleeveless off-white lace vest-thingie with dangling fringe over a too-small American-flag print bikini top and drinking something from a plastic cup: grotesquely green. She's not glowing but: sweating, the way people do when it is humid and summer-hot and has the most amazing Grecian sandals, leather straps wrapped all the way up her calves and thighs. She is thin enough that it is noticeable to strangers and perhaps remarkable to those who know her now, who have known her through other times and traumas, though perhaps not thin enough yet to make her appearance alarming. Just: sharper. Honed. The delicate hollows framing her clavicles deeper, the long bones of her frame all the more evident.

"I mean seriously. I'm pretty sure those bits aren't supposed to be pointing in that direction, you know?"

And what does she feel like? The edge of something, some framing thing, beyond or perhaps before definition, gut-wrenching and compelling in the same breath. And also: the sense of soaring beneath the summer sky, sun soaking you right down to the bone.

"I don't mean that thing right there," Lotus position, which Lucas has since assumed, "I mean that shit you were pulling before. Even though I'm pretty sure that your toes aren't meant to point like that either."

This after she has clambered over a park bench from behind and taken a seat on the spine rather than the seat. Because she felt like it.

Kalen Holliday

"I think that definition varies rather widely, but I'd say so," he says to Lucas. And, now that Lucas is no longer twisted into complicated poses he approaches a little.

His eyes shift to Serafine, and he dips his head in a little nod. "Serafine." He smiles faintly, as he says her name, but that is all. Tonight he makes no move toward her, not to touch her and not to offer his arm.

Kalen settles on the ground not very far from Lucas, just beyond easy reach. And leaves them to hash out how the human body should move without any interference from him.

Lucas Reed

Lucas felt like memory. Dreams. Bright, vivid colors and old, lingering recollections. Moments in time, kept safe. Treasured (akashakarma.) Sera told him that what he was doing to his body was fucked up, and Lucas just laughed quietly. His eyes - wide and dark - held an edge of some remembered secret.

"I wasn't aware there was a rule-book for the human body." After a pause he offered his name. "Lucas Reed." To she and Kalen both, he said, "Bani Akashayana." He used the true name, not the version they were likely used to hearing.

"Did you end up buying any paintings?" he asked Kalen, one brow lofted in curiosity.

Serafíne

(I just wrote a REALLY great post and lost it. So gimme a sec!)

Lucas Reed

[Awww, that is such a massive bummer when that happens. :( ]

Serafíne

"'course there's a rule book for the human body. There's a rule book for every fucking thing," the creature contends, and there is a sense of contention about the words. The deliberate sophistry of debate, the seeking-of-clash. She smirks, too: quick and sure, the mobile sweep of her elegant mouth, the spark of clear-challenge in her eyes. "Mind, I'm all for breaking the rules. Breaking the idea of them, hell, breaking the frame of reference that demands and requires rules in the first fucking place so in theory I am on your side, except that yoga shit is fucked the fuck up."

She curls one half-bare shoulder, up, down. Eloquence in the simple form of her body, the way she uses it. "I had a friend who was into it, though. He used to do it in the park in the mornings with a bunch of other weirdos. He was a pacifist. Pretty badass for a pacifist, but you know."

--

Then, see. Kalen: he says her name and she lifts her chin and returns the glance and says hello with the gesture and hello perhaps with her eyes and there is something sharp about her, this ever-present awareness, but tonight the usual penetration of her gaze is: banked, withheld, kept in check. Doesn't say anything back, and that is a choice: to keep herself for herself, by herself, and to herself. An edge of something that feels like -

- oh, hell. what would you know about it?

The edge of her smile, maybe, but only the edge.

--

She doesn't introduce herself, but Kalen said her name. Maybe she assumes she has already been introduced.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen's attention lingers on Serafine for the greeting more than anything. Beyond that, his attention wanders between the two of them as their discussion continues, and there is no real response. He is paying attention and he is present, which is, at times, less clear. But he is not part of their debate and he apparently has no desire to be.

He settles back a little, onto his elbows, and allows his attention to settle on Lucas at the introduction. There is a little nod when he gives his Tradition, though Kalen is apparently as interested in offering formal introductions as he is debates about yoga.

"Well, Grace thought they were some kind of hideous interpretations of penii." There is a quick flash of a smile. "It was apparently that kind of night. So, none for us." None for us, he says. Not none at all, perhaps.

Lucas Reed

"Mm, perhaps he and I would get along. I teach yoga. And I'm a pacifist. Sometimes I even come out here with my class in the morning, like a bunch of weirdos." Lucas grinned and winked at Sera. Whatever he thought of her assertion about rules, if in fact he thought much of anything, he didn't engage her on it. People believed what they believed.

Kalen's response to his question was carefully worded, a fact that did not entirely escape Lucas. He rolled his head a little, regarding Kalen with a curious expression, but didn't pry any further into the matter. Neither Kalen nor Serafine seemed inclined to offer proper introductions, (though Kalen had already given an informal one) which was notable, though not necessarily worrisome. Mages could be a guarded lot. There were pieces of Luke's identity that had not been offered either.

"I've seen a few paintings that involved hideous depictions of male genitalia. They were actually pretty interesting. Definitely not for everyone, though."

Serafíne

"Maybe you would, but I dunno. He also liked to get high. Tossed back tequila like a motherfucker. Like I said: he was a badass." Her smile is a curl of remembrance, quickened, slipstream, slipsliding into one of those between sort of places the human body seems meant to hover within: sorrow / joy, or bitter/sweet. Quite simply: Sera misses Jim. Misses him sometimes with her body and sometimes with her soul and sometimes with their cross-section. Her heart quickens and oh, she allows herself that ache. Allows herself to feel that ache, but there was so many others inside and within and around and beneath that one that it makes her heart stop sometimes. And there is a moment there where her face is canted away and her body is framed just so against the gray, lingering light, mouth open, eyes distant -

And the conversation continues beneath and around her and then they are both talking about hideous penii and whatever it kind of interrupts and spikes through her strange twinge of nostalgia and also grosses her out a little bit. She breathes out sharply, takes another sip of her kale smoothie, and stands.

"I gotta go."

And so: she does.

Serafíne

(sorry kiara! is my bedtime! here in a few minutes!)

Kiara

(oh its fine I'll just cry into my soup. ;) )