Realistic or Modern BEING HUMAN - CHAPTER II: SLOW DECAY

[Mqueserasera]

Ginny Grey
Streets​

Ginny Grey had decided to have a profoundly deep conversation tonight. As for how hard it would be for her to accomplish this sudden objective, she had come to the conclusion that in a place like London, with countless people of different backgrounds and greatly deviated from the norm, having a world-changing discussion by randomly wandering the street would be pretty much inevitable. Though the young girl had to admit, her idea of what makes a conversation deep was vague at best. Obviously, it had to be on difficult matters like politics, technology or abstract theories like how to best clean a tea stain on a tablecloth. The last one was surely a matter of great arguments, how else could Mrs Henderson manage to go on and on about it for days on end? She wasn’t as confident about how it should be conducted, the amount of times she had seen people exchanging fancy statements politely before an audience almost equals the times she had witnessed supposedly smart people stabbing each other with their forks on the dinner table.

Our girl wasn’t much of a thinker but definitely a great doer, so she embarked on her quest with an insulated bottle filled with hot herb tea and before long had reached the main street. London at night even on a Monday was lively as ever, but the people and their hasty steps left her slightly discouraged. So many people yet no one seemed interested in stopping even for a little while to spare a moment for her, they were people with clearly defined goals in mind, on the process from A to B in their own different paces. Compared to them, her sluggish steps felt like those of a dwarf among humans. But her aimless wander tonight wasn’t out of sheer impulsiveness, her own goal hadn't had any progress lately, lost in a circle without making any step forward; she needed a fresh idea, a brilliant one, one that she couldn’t think of on her own. Game-changing perspective often came from the most unexpected source, the problem was if it was unexpected, how could she expect to find where it could come from?

Suddenly, Ginny found herself in a dark alley, the busy sound from the busy street was left behind as she went deeper inside. Even with the garbage bins lined up along the wall with many kinds of unidentifiable trunks, there was still enough room for one or two to comfortably squeeze through. Occasional light came from a restaurant’s backdoor when the employers throwing out their trash, but everything mostly lay in the dark. The smell wasn’t particularly bad as she had expected, to her at least since she had a developed smell resistance after her past experience. The small girl halted her step in a spot where the smell was most foul. She wasn’t really bothered by the smell as much as the movement in the dark. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could recognize a person under what could be called a makeshift tent: a dirty tarpaulin was hanged one end on an old shopping cart and another on a collection of boxes and poles. He looked as comfortable as one can get in a home like that, and without care too as he gazed out to the girl who had been staring at him for a while.

With the bottle ahead of her, Ginny approached the man. “You mind chatting with me for a while? We can share some hot tea while doing so.” She grinned to hopefully show her friendliness.

“I don’t mind the tea.” He grumped his grumpy voice and moved his body a little as if to make some space for her to sit down without actually moving an inch away. Ginny recognized the gesture as a welcome sign and proceeded to sit down beside him on the dirty ground without any hesitation.

As the old man leisurely sipping the tea after struggled to open the bottle in his half sitting, half lying position, Ginny started the conversation. “Hm… what can you tell me about yourself, Mr…?”

“Nothing.” He said with his hand firmly wrapping around the bottle, refused to even say his name.

Ginny certainly wouldn’t let it end like that, it wasn’t easy to find someone without anything better to do than talking with her. Ignoring his tone, she carefully chose a topic anyone could participate in. “I have only been in this country for a month but everything is astonishing! I mean, even normal people seemed way better than the well-off people in my old place, surely that must be the work of your wise Queen, I have heard of a lot of good things about her.”

“That’s right” The man chuckled, suddenly in a talkative mood “God save the Queen. She lives in her bloody castle with her bloody servants while I’m down there sleeping in literal trash.” He gulped down the tea again, this time more aggressively. “I’m their useless trunk though, perhaps it’s fitting enough that I’m here.”

“You worked for the Queen before? Were you a soldier?”

“Fought in Goose Green, but I’m here after a nasty divorce, alcohol did the rest. Bah” The man dismissingly waved his hand “Let’s not talk about that. You familiar with soldiers? Not the first thing one would think of a government worker.”

“Something like that.” Now it was Ginny’s turn to evade the question. It wasn’t her favourite topic, to say the least.

“Heh, you did say you came from another country” The man returned to enjoy his tea leisurely. “I don’t dislike you people but try not to mess around too much, you’re out of your water now.”

“I’m used to it.” said Ginny without thinking. “Oh… I mean, um, it’s not that bad” She stuttered, for a moment she was lost in her thought. The deep conversation she expected was different, but somehow she felt like she had learned something from it. After some more thinking and over half the tea bottle down his throat she asked. “Say, do you hate your country for abandoning you?”

“Meh, I could hate the world itself and nothing would change, wallow in misery sounds easier.” The man said and handed her the bottle “Go home already little girl, the bottle’s emptied. The world and the Queen don’t care whether you like them or not, everyone gotta live for themselves first.”

And the profoundly deep conversation ended like that.

Ginny's night activity complete

 

[Avari]

The early hours of the morning were the time that John Clayton hated the most. The bars were all closed and everyone was tucked up at home, safe and snug, with their families around them.
Not him though - he had no family. Not anymore. Sally had died six years ago, and the only thing waiting for him in the draughty flat that had been their home was a cold bed and silence. People kept offering him advice to get his life back on track - maybe buy a dog, get a new job, take a holiday - see a therapist. None of them understood that Sally had been his life. They hadn't needed anybody else, which he guessed is why they never had kids. And after he retired they had such plans to see the rest of the world - Tokyo, Paris, New Delhi. But then she had gone and died on him, and despite all his medical training he hadn't been able to do a damn thing about it.

And so he had started to drink.

He was walking, or rather staggering home. The streets of London were deserted, and there was an oddly cool mist enveloping the area - which was sort of odd, considering the time of year. The street lamps offered little but a hazy glow through the murk.

John hadn't felt scared since his wife had died - he didn't think he was capable of being scared anymore. But right now he was scared.
Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. He couldn't shake the horrible apprehension in his gut. Even in his drunken he could tell something was off.
Even at such an ungodly hour, there were people walking the streets of London. Where the bloody hell was everyone?
He found himself wondering if the city was under attack from some unknown enemy, if the mist contained some substance that worked on the fear center of the brain. Chemical Warfare? Anything was possible these days - he'd read about it in the Daily Mail.

He was walking through an alleyway when he heard the noise.

John stopped and listened. The mist was like a blanket, not only blurring his vision but muffling sound too. he had to stand still for several seconds before he heard it again.

A pattering sound. A distant growl.

John blinked, squinting. Was it some sort of wild animal? A stray dog? The mist was now so thick, all he could see was a pale blue light a short distance ahead of him. Perhaps a neon sign from one of the shops?

He hesitated for three seconds, then stepped forward. Part of him wanted to go home, to crawl into bed and pull the covers over his head, but a greater part of him felt the need to reach the heart of this mystery. But the closer he got to the dim blue light, the greater his sense of dread. It was like a steel fist around his lungs, cutting off his air, making him feel dizzy and sick.

The blue light was getting larger. It was almost as tall as him. He noticed two bright crimson orbs near its top. The mist finally parted before him, and he saw what he had been approaching.

John felt all the blood draining from his face as he suddenly realized what he was looking at.

It was a Wolf. But was closer to the size of a horse. It was shimmering and opaque, as if it wasn't entirely solid.

And it was staring at him with blood red eyes.

It bared its teeth in a snarl, and took a step forward.

Whimpering in terror, John began to stumble away. His body felt heavy and awkward, as though he was wading through sludge. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, and could feel his breath tearing at his throat.

He didn't get far.

The Ghostly wolf leaped forward with a deafening snarl, it's gigantic jaw open wide. Claws outstretched.

John stumbled and fell, and squeezed his eyes shut.

At least he would see Sally again soon.

But the Wolf's teeth never touched him, and just as suddenly as the terrible cold had appeared, it left him. He could hear better as well. The sound of distant traffic and chatter.

John slowly opened his eyes, to find himself flat on his back in a dark alleyway with no ghostly wolf or creepy mist in sight.

"Wha....what happened?" He wondered out loud.

"You are very fortunate." A voice replied, causing him to jump out of his skin for the second time that night and snap his head around to its source.

A woman in dark clothing was crouched down a short distance away - a small bag slung over her shoulder and her bright blonde hair tied into a ponytail. Her yellow eyes seemed to be fixated on a manhole cover just in front of her, that she gave an experimental poke.

"A Lycanwraith. A wolf spirit, looking for a soul to possess. It must have decided to flee when it heard me approaching."

John stared dumbly, his mouth wide open.

"What?"

The blond girl sighed as she rose to her feet, and shot him a disdainful look as she approached.

"Please do not move, I will be with you in a moment."

John thought she was going to help him up, but instead she grabbed an empty beer bottle that was sitting abandoned on the floor and gave it a quick inspection.

And then she promptly hit John over the head with it as hard as she could.

The glass bottle shattered with a loud, painful crack and John promptly slumped backward unconscious.

Lisa took a quick moment to gently roll John's body over, and checked for a pulse. She could smell the alcohol on his breath from a mile away - which was actually rather useful. When he awoke, he would think the whole thing a drunken moment of madness and stumble home, no worse for wear.

Lisa sighed as she glanced back to where the ghostly wolf had been standing - directly above the Manhole cover she had been poking. It must have fled back into the sewers, and with the sun due to rise shortly, it wouldn't be able to return for some time.

So, there was a vengeful Wolf Spirit loose in London. How stimulating.

And she already had an idea of where it had come from as well. The thought wasn't entirely pleasant.

She had a lot to do.

Perhaps she'd give Tannur man a call. she had been meaning to speak with him anyway, most as well kill two dogs with one rock as the saying went.

Lisa vanished around the corner of the alleyway and out of sight.



LISA'S NIGHT COMPLETE ​

 

[IG42]

Tannur

Returning to the tattoo parlour after yet another exasperating encounter with the seer girl Tannur breathed a sigh of relief as he found that his first silver haired headache hadn't wandered off again. Entering the shop he approached Silver and tapped her shoulder. "Come on Silver. Time to go home."

She didn't notice as he entered, too busy sketching out a new design, and as he tapped her shoulder she flinched, sending a line through the design. Not that she seemed to care, closing up the book.
Before practically tackling him in a hug.

Forced back a step by the glomp attack Tannur grunted in surprise but smiled slightly and patted her on the head. "Nice to see you too."

"I can't wait to wear my own clothes, and sleep and eat and-" Stopping her chatter, blinking a few times as she thought back to the last time she had eaten something.
"Tannur, I haven't eaten since breakfast. I need to eat soon or... Or I'll die!"

"You didn't even get lunch?" While he'd been used to irregular mealtimes that had rarely been by choice before. "I'd have thought are dear charitable Hero would've at least shared, or you would've just taken some of his." Leading Silver out of the tattoo parlour before her ornery boss showed up, rooting around in a plastic bag he was carrying for a moment he handed her a small pack of cheese pastry sticks he had saved from being thrown out at work. "Here give those a try."

Taking the cheese sticks and biting into one she wrinkled her nose.
"Bleh. Gross."
And yet she carried on eating. She was hungry, and it was... Somewhat edible.
"I wouldn't want the Stupd Hero's food anyways." Even though she had been perfectly happy eating food the 'stupid hero' had made last night.

"Didn't you say his cooking was better than mine this morning?" He said still feeling a little offended by that comment while leading the way into the nearby park.

"....Um. Well, yes, it is but..." Trying to think of an argument before she's saved by her own refusal to enter the park. Where the same old lady as yesterday is sitting there, feeding the birds again. Grabbing Tannur's arm to pull him away.
"We don't go this way anymore. We have to go a different way."

"What? What's your problem? This is the easiest way home. Is this how you got yourself lost?"

"It might be." Taking another step back, glaring at a particular pigeon with white speckled wings. "They're evil." Still not specifying who she's trying to avoid.

"Who is? Did someone threaten you?" He looked around for a possible threat then tried to follow her gaze but didn't see her looking at anyone in particular.

"The pigeons. They're rude, and stupid. And that one keeps asking me for my food." Hugs her cheese sticks close, glaring at a pigeon that's hopping closer to them.

"Yeah well people keep encouraging the damn things don't they?" Keeping dogs and cats he could understand but feeding random vermin like these people did made no sense to him. "Come on just keep walking and it'll move out of the way."

Giving him an annoyed look, she sighed and started walking. "I hate you. And pigeons."

Walking half a pace behind Silver to make sure she didn't wander off course Tannur sighed. "It's just a bird it's not going to hurt you." Taking a slightly exaggerated step towards her nemesis it flew away out of fear of being stepped on.

"They all hurt my ears..."

Rolling his eyes he managed to get them home without too much trouble, putting the stuff that Silver wouldn't be able to eat without preparation or simply wouldn't want to eat in the more accessible places he quietly stashed the snacks elsewhere when she wasn't looking.

As soon as they got inside, she was diving for the small pile of clothes that were hers, digging out a black tanktop with a white pawprint emblazoned on it and some ragged denim shorts and went to the bathroom to get changed.

Her hair was dripping wet when she came out - the shower was probably evil, but it was still far too hot for her liking, so a sudden downpour of cold water was... Somewhat acceptable.

Letting her freshen up first Tannur waved her over and handed her a drink. "So Silver, I talked with the Hero and your capacity to get lost is bad enough to actually make us agree on teaching you some stuff so that you can actually survive on your own for more ten minutes around here."

Giving him a blank look, just staring for several seconds, before she just shrugs. "I don't care."
"If I don't know something already, there's no point knowing it..." Mutters under her breath - "If we were on Aether I wouldn't be getting lost, anyways."

"Well we're not on Aether are we? And you would get yourself lost, you just had the tools to survive there anyway." Taking a moment rub his eyes he went on. "Look people here are expected to at least be literate and being able to read a road sign would at least mean you could find out where you are."

"I would so not get lost! I could always smell my way back, because you stink!" Clearly about to either through some sort of tantrum or sulk - or even run off again -
"I don't have to be literate, or read or do anything! I wanna go home!"

"If we don't make this work that home will be gone forever!" As far as Silver knew they'd gone to Earth just to lose the Hero and it wouldn't surprise him if she was wondering why they were still there.

"Gone... Forever?" Ruby red eyes widened, but then she rolled her eyes. "That doesn't make any sense. You're being stupid." And yet, there's a hint of hesitance to their words - she trusts him, perhaps more than she should, considering his rogueish nature...

"Oh hell." He probably wasn't meant to tell her but Silver needed a reason to get off her arse. "The details are...weird but we didn't come here just to escape, we're here to look for a lost city and if we fail Aether will be destroyed."

"A whole city? Why don't we just take this one?"

Caught off guard by the inane question Tannur floundered for a moment. "W-well it can't just be any city we're looking for this one in particular, there's something in it we need to get."

Nodding - she can find things, that's something she can do. "What are we looking for, then?" Not that she believes his stupid story or anything, but she looks a little more interested now.

"I'm not sure yet Lucr-Lisa said she'd be in touch to explain more, I guess she's just waiting for the heat we raised to die down a little before making a move so for the moment we keep doing what she said and lie low and that would be a lot easier if I didn't have to come up with an excuse for why you can't read or write when someone inevitably asks."

"Hmph. I still don't think I need to learn how to read. It's stupid!" But then she says, very quietly...
"But if it really will help I might try. But if it's annoying, I'll stop right away and never even think about reading ever again!!!"

Glad to have grabbed her interest without bribery he still drove the point home. "Well that would be a shame, then me and the Hero would have all the chocolate he was planning to entice you with to ourselves."


"Chocolate?" Now that's even more important than not getting in the way of ... Not letting Aether dissolve. Much more important. "How much chocolate?"

"Well that would depend on how much effort you put in, as long as you keep trying it'll keep coming."

"Reading's still stupid, though." Clarifying that, even though she's most likely going to give it at least some effort now.

"Can we eat now?"

Chuckling a little at her one track mind he pulled a biscuit out of somewhere and tossed it to her. "Yeah yeah, let me throw something together." Going through the cupboards he set out a couple of pans and grabbed various ingredients to start cooking.

Tannur night complete
WillfulWren

 

[Avari]

WEATHER: SUNNY | HEAT WAVE
UPCOMING EVENTS: N/A
NEXT FULL MOON: 28TH AUGUST

NOTES:
HEAT WAVE: It's real hot today. Being in the sun may be a bit much for certain characters.
Meetingwords is currently down, please plan accordingly. This week might be extended to compensate.
koala - Elena will receive a summons today for an interview at her local police station Friday daytime, regarding her witness statement.​

 

[Avari]

​

They sat in the Jewel Piccadilly cocktail bar and watched the hustle and bustle of the street outside. Kaysen had previously brought a few members of the team here for what they’d all thought was an evening jolly, recognition for the hard work they’d put in during that unpleasant Succubus business, or maybe a team-building exercise.

Sod all chance of that, Sarah Bishop had realized afterwards - it was just that the Jewel afforded a clear view of the entrance to Piccadilly station, and it had been an ideal camping spot for a rogue Abnormal that Kaysen had been hunting that evening.

She probably should have guessed it when they all saw Kaysen practically glide into the bar with defensive spray and a taser, because they obviously weren’t designed for a fun night out on the town. In the end, Agent Bishop didn’t even have the chance to finish her pasta.

Now they took the same pavement table as that earlier night. A couple of city types - striped shirts, pint glasses and clouded minds - sprawled at and adjacent table and leered at Sarah. Kaysen propped himself down on a metal chair and fished his smartphone out of his coat pocket to check for messages. By sitting next to him, Sarah got the same clear view of the street - an ideal spot on a summer day like this. The tarmac was releasing the day’s earlier heat as shoppers charged past with too many bags on their race back to car parks and into the shade.

She and Kaysen were served by the same good-looking waiter who had served them on their last - admittedly brief - visit. Her mental notebook told her his name was Enrico. Late twenties, second generation British-Italian, with stereotypical roman good looks and a rather unique east London accent. He worked at the bar with his dad. Kaysen had teased him that his tan was fading the longer he stayed in England. Enrico could speak fluent Italian as well as English - which Sarah discovered when Kaysen cheerfully said something to him in Italian that made him blush and stammer for a full minute.

Sarah ordered a lemonade. Kaysen ordered water. He paid for it as soon it arrived by placing a few coins into the ashtray on the table.

“So we can leave in a hurry if we need to.” Kaysen explained when she asked. “We can hardly lead by example if we take advantage of small business owners. It’s bad for the economy.”

Sarah fingered the coins in the ashtray. “Exact change...no tip?”

“That’s bad for my economy.”

Throughout this, Kaysen’s eyes never left the street. He obviously wasn’t going to let this target slip past as Sarah made polite conversation.

Sarah let her eyes linger on him for a while instead of the street. Kaysen had told her once that he drank water because it kept him hydrated, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Despite his minor celebrity status, incredible fashion sense and a few odd trinkets in his office at HQ, Kaysen didn’t really seem to have much in the way of worldly items. Sarah wasn’t even sure if he had a house - he seemed to stay in his office every night, working into the early hours on some project or another. He had a big presence, and yet if he vanished there would be little evidence left behind. Though he would leave a big gap in her life. She had never had a boss like him before. She had barely worked with him a month and could already never conceive of leaving him. Or Losing him.

Kaysen sneaked a quick look at his phone, then at Sarah, then back to the street.

“I know I should be flattered...but shouldn’t you be watching for our target instead of me?”

Sarah snapped her eyes back to the street, suddenly self-conscious - she must have been blushing, as Kaysen let out a small chuckle. She responded by kicking him under the table. The pair continued to chat as the sun slowly crawled across the sky - the topics ranging from politics to books they had been reading.

But Kaysen’s eyes never left the street.​

AGENT BISHOP (Civilian clothing)​

 

[Larry]

Ludwig von Löwenburg
Location: Bedroom, Tuesday, 7th August, 09:30 AM.
Time of day: Morning time.
Mood: In between two minds.
Mentions: peachuu , MagicPenguin .​

I swear if tomorrow is another bloody warm day, Ludwig inwardly railed as those familiar, accursed rays made way through the curtains and ruptured the last vestiges of sleep that the young Englishman desperately clinged to. Yawning, feeling the full extent of his lethargicness after arriving home late the night before much to his parents astonishment. That strange meeting with Roland that eventually turned into a competition between himself and Quinn was to the forefront of his mind whilst the 'conversation' with Tom, if one could call it such a thing, skirted in the outer recesses of his consciousness. Pulling the duvet across whilst simultaneously hefting his legs up into the air and subsequently launching them towards the ground in one, upward lifting motion, the young man draped the curtains to opposite sides before pulling the string to let the virgin sunlight bathe the bedroom in a warm glow. Realising that today was going to be yet another day with no need for a jumper, Ludwig quickly discarded his grey pyjamas for an outfit more suitable for the near-volcanic heat that would last the entirety of the day. Given his rationale, the young man attired himself with a light-grey polo shirt alongside a pair loose-fitting, light-blue jeans accompanied with a pair of Nike runners. He was never one for fashion but a lot of the time the young man felt he looked respectable and that the clothing choices were practicable plus given his rather sizeable physique, they seemed to work well enough. Rushing down the stairs, the young man quickly grabbed his bag packed to the brim with stationary and books before darting out the house at breakneck-speed.

Ludwig wasn't outside the door of the house before the heat suddenly weighted its piercing heat against the young's man rather sensitive, pale skin. Oh wow, the young man thought as a sweaty palm rose to wipe away sweat from an already sweaty forehead, that hits you right away. Notwithstanding the fact that his initial destination was to drop off that history book on the Treaty of Verdun back to the library AND then to the university, the only consolation for enduring this otherwise insufferable heat was that there were only two lectures for the day, one after the other beginning at twelve O'clock. The heat did nothing to dissuade the crowds of people going around there daily business within Kilburn proper, wearing all varieties of clothing and in some instances, types a tad bit too racy for the young man. Every so often the glance of a woman would make their way towards Ludwig but given the lad had no such capacity for registering these instances, he walked on as solemn as ever. Instead, his eyes wandered to the ways in which birds of many a feather and colour would call to each other or flock from tree-to-tree or amass themselves into one great, amorphous mass of wings and beaks. But that wasn't to say that Ludwig didn't watch out for his surroundings as he weaved in and out of people making their way down the street.

As he entered the familiar confines of the Kilburn Community Library, Ludwig expected the familiar face of Mary to greet him but as it turned out, the person occupying the reception desk was somebody different altogether. Auburn-brown hair done up in a ponytail with bangs covering her forehead though slightly longer where it nears her face, chestnut-brown eyes flecked with sprinklings of green alongside a palish complexion similar to his own. Her face was naturally free from any sign of fatigue or stress, no lines nor frowns made their mark upon her forehead and a demeanour of pure concentration was signalled through the organised way in which she slid effortlessly from working on the computer to talking with people entering the premises. Her outfit was obviously chosen with the weather in mind, so soft colours such as white and light-blue were prioritised in her choice of jumper, T-shirt and jeans which hid what one would call a subdued curvaceous figure. Would you look at that, I can't recall the last time the library brought on new employees, Ludwig thought as he approached the desk. Placing his bag on the ground as he shuffled around for the designated book, the young man realised that there were some serious organisation problems with his packing. Finding the book on the Treaty of Verdun, he zipped up the bag, throwing it over his shoulder and placing the book on the desk.

"Ludwig," the woman said without looking up as she organised the various documents before her.

The young man looked puzzled at the affirmation of his identity by the stranger.

"That's correct..." the young man answered slowly, crossing his arms as he sought a clarification to how she knew of him.

"Mary told me that a blonde, solemn-faced young adult would most likely arrive to drop off a book relating to the Carolingians," the lady responded, looking and greeting Ludwig with a soft smile, "You seemed to fit the profile perfectly."

"It's nice to know I could be of service."

"She seems to be fond of you though, if I must say; spoke of you as the "brightest young historian within the vicinity of Kilburn". Is there a semblance of truth to that statement?"

A hint of annoyance managed to sneak its way onto the face of the young man but through channelling enough willpower that even Hal Jordan would find vexatious, Ludwig managed to prevent the appearance of a full frown from forming on his face. "There is, although there are some people around me who presume to contest that particular title," the young man commented before turning to set out for college.

"Alright Einhard, I'll no doubt see you here either later today or tomorrow," the woman replied with what Ludwig knew fell was a smirk.

"Likewise, not-bloody-Mary."

A cheeky grin split open the young Englishman's face; it never occured to him how much of a bona fide comedian he could be should he put his mind to it.

[Ludwig Day Activity=Complete.]​

​

 

[MagicPenguin]

Roland Fairchild
Jim's Tattoo Parlour
8:15 AM

Roland carefully browsed Youtube on the shoddy old computer behind the front desk while Jim quietly tinkered with the tools in the open workstation in preparation for their next appointment. Silver was not there yet; as was usual for her, she was running late. He didn't think she'd ever shown up less than fifteen minutes late on any day except for yesterday, when he'd been there to keep her on track. Roland wondered if the pigeons were giving her trouble again or if she'd just gone running after another stray soda can.

"You really think this'll work, kid," Jim suddenly asked, breaking the comfortable silence that previously enveloped the room. The rotund bald man in his black leather riding jacket was uncharacteristically quiet this morning. His face seemed as angry as ever, but Roland had known him long enough now to see the glint of uncertainty and unease lurking behind his grumpy eyes.

"I don't know," he replied, "but if you really want to make something useful out of her like you said, this is about the only way I can think to do it. It's worth a try."

Jim just grunted.

"Just remember, if you fuck this up, I'm taking all the cost of the chocolate out of your wages. That place you bought from isn't cheap, shithead. I know she likes chocolate, but did you really need to go all out and buy the most expensive stuff you could find?"

Roland rolled his eyes. "You were the one who recommended the place, remember?"

"Tch. Fuck off."

Before Roland could say anything else, the bell above the front door rattled and his wayward co-worker and one-time bitter enemy stumbled in through it as easily and carefree as if she were 15 minutes early instead of 15 minutes late.

"Silver," Jim growled, his hands balled into fists. "You're late. Again. Bloody fucking hell, what did I tell you I was going to do to if you were late again, girl?"

"I'm not late," The girl protested vehemently, then frowned. "Well, maybe I am, but I have a good reason!"

Not elaborating what that reason was, though there was a hint of smug triumph in her grin. She had spent at least twenty minutes sitting high up in a tree listening to the pigeon's chatter, trying to get used to them. It was a mess of gossip and judgement called on every random passerby that had made her laugh a lot and brought more than a few curious stares, before she remembered that she had a place where she was meant to be and jumped down. But she had done it, and she wouldn't be getting lost anymore.

Jim grit his teeth and started turning purple. Roland rolled his eyes. "Is this a goddamn joke to you, SIlver? Do I need to dock your fucking pay, AGAIN!? If this keeps up much longer, you'll be paying me to work here."

"Oh, wow, I'd get to pay you? Does that mean I could fire you? You're far too rude to keep around..." Sticking her tongue out at Roland. "I'd get rid of you, too, Stupid Hero."

Dumping a plastic carrier bag next to Roland that - if he bothered to look inside - would reveal the clothes she had borrowed from Marcus.

Jim ground his teeth in frustration and then opened his mouth to say something, but closed it before he could and looked at her curiously. "Stupid hero?" He turned to Roland. "What the hell, Ron? You have pet names for each other now? You guys seeing each other off the clock or something? Do I need to worry about workplace productivity going down 'cause you can't keep your dick in your fucking--"

"No!" Roland shouted, cutting him off. His face was so red that now he was the one who looked like a tomato. "Why would you even think that? Get your mind out of the gutter, you dirty old goat!" Light, it would be like taking advantage of a two year old, and a murderous one at that! His skin crawled just thinking about it.

Strangely, instead of making Jim even angrier than he already was, that insult only got a long, loud laugh out of the man. What in the seven hells was wrong with this idiot?!

"Whatever, man," Jim said, wiping a tear out of his eye. "I'll leave her to you. Don't fuck it up, y'hear?" Without assigning Silver any jobs as he usually would, he went back to the work station, preparing for the next appointment and laughing under his breath all the while.

Silver just looked confused, looking between the pair of men, before she just shrugged. She already knew they were stupid, so she shouldn't pay too much attention to what they said.

When he was out of earshot, Roland spoke low to Silver. "You need to watch your mouth. I'm not the hero on Earth. I'm just Ron. Got it?"

"You were the stupid hero before. With Staxos." She pointed out, pouting. "You're always gonna be a stupid hero."

"Just use my name here, will you? And don't mention the high sentinel anymore either. We have to keep all that secret. I don't need you leading that Kaysen fellow right to us because you couldn't keep your mouth shut." Roland hadn't seen the news conference live, but he read about it in the paper before he left for work this morning. "If that happened, we'd be stuck here forever. No more going home to Aether. Ever. Get it?"

Shaking his head ruefully at the petulant pout she shot him in response, he decided to let it go for now. He had more important things to discuss with her this morning. One had to learn to pick his battles wisely in order to deal with this girl effectively, he'd learned early on. He opened his backpack and placed the plastic bag Silver handed him inside of it. Then he took a large plastic jar out of it, followed quickly by several books and writing implements. The jar was full to the brim with assorted candies, most of them colorfully-wrapped chocolates of one kind or another. On the front, it had displayed the logo from the store from which Roland had bought it, "Wacky Willy's Wild Chocolate Emporium." He held the jar up for Silver to get a good look at, but well out of her reach.

"Do you know what this is, Silver," he asked her sweetly.

As soon as she saw the jar, she went completely still, eyes narrowing - her manner was more than a little reminiscent of a cat having spotted some baby mice. Rather than answering him, she just tried to make a grab for it.

Roland laughed, moved the jar high out of her reach, outstretched his free hand and placed it on her head. Her hands reached for the jar above her, but his hand on her forehead prevented her from moving any closer to it no matter how she tried to push or stretch her arms.

"I can see that you do. Yes, it's chocolate. But not just any chocolate." Roland's eyes narrowed dramatically as he went on. Over the course of the next sentence, his voice started low and got theatrically higher and higher in volume with every word. "This is undoubtedly, unquestionably, indisputably the best chocolate anywhere in all of Britain. Isn't that right, Jim?"

Jim looked over his shoulder at the sound of his name. "Huh? Oh, yeah, that shit's like fucking crack cocaine. My kid can't get enough of it. Won't find anything better outside Belgium." If he noticed the scene of one apprentice holding the other at arm's length as she tried to either nab the jar or bite the first while trying, he gave no sign.

"See? The best chocolate you've ever tasted. And I would just love to give the whooole jar to you, Silver. You just have to do me one teeeeeensy tiny favor first. Can you stop squirming around long enough to hear what it is?"

She snarled, baring her teeth, but went still, muttering under her breath, "I don't want to do you any favours, stupid hero."
And yet she's still staring longingly at the jar.

"Oh, come now, don't be like that," he replied, consciously ignoring her purposeful use of the name he explicitly told her not to use. If he took her bait and responded to it, it would only encourage her to use the name more often. Pick his battles wisely, he reminded himself. "It'll be easy. All you have to do..." Roland gestured to the book on the table "...is learn how to write the letters a, b, c, d, and e. And learn what sounds they make. If you can do that by the end of the day, " Roland hefted the heavy jar of chocolate in his other hand, still out of the girl's reach. "Then this whole jar will be yours. Just look at the pictures, and you'll have no problem."

Roland opened the book and showed her how to complete the pages of the work book. The first few pages were on the letter a. The first page displayed pictures of things that started with a like apples and apes and acorns and so on and so forth. The last pictures were a series of images of a hand drawing, in order, the lines and curves necessary to write the letter in both capital and lowercase forms. The pages that followed were exercises to test the learner's ability to both write the letter and recognize the sound it made when read aloud. Roland quickly demonstrated exactly how to do each exercise for Silver until the book moved on to the letter b.

"And then you just do the same for all the letters up to e. That's this one," he said, flipping to the last page of the e section. "See? Easy. If you finish all of those pages by the time work is over, I'll give you the jar. Think you're up to it?"

Silver was glaring daggers at the book as she remembered what Tannur had mentioned last night. They were trying to make her learn to read. The very thought of it annoyed her, making her grit her teeth and ball her hands into fists.

People had tried - and failed - to teach her to read before, but making her do something she didn't want to do was much harder back then. If they tried to bribe her, she could always find some way to steal the thing she wanted. Keeping a determined shapeshifter away from something was a difficult task, after all. But right now, all she could really do was glare at him and mutter threats under her breath.

As soon as they were back on Aether, she'd kill him.

But for now, she'd have a look at the book, looking at the pictures before quietly admitting...
"It does look pretty easy..." Smirking at him. "If someone as stupid as you can do it, it can't be too hard!"

Roland only smiled. Pick his battles. "That's the spirit, champ. If you need any help at all, you can ask me or Jim any time. Not that you would, being the genius that you are," Roland said with mock admiration in his tone. "If you look on the computer over there, you'll also find some videos I pulled up about these letters. Just in case you need a little extra help." They were actually for toddlers and pre-schoolers, but she didn't need to know that part.

She was already scribbling away furiously at the book with murder in her crimson eyes. Whether the desire to kill was for the book or for him, he had no idea. Roland didn't even know if she'd heard his last three or four sentences she was so focused.

"Welp, I'll leave you to it, then!" Roland took the jar of candy over to where Jim was half-preparing for the job and half-listening to what was going on while pretending not to be.

"That went better than I expected," the man grudgingly admitted. He had an uncharacteristic look of approval in his eyes when he turned to Roland.

"Yes, I agree," Roland said, placing the jar on a nearby counter, directly within Silver's line of sight. If she got bored or frustrated and looked away from the book, she'd be sure to see it; he hoped the sight of it would be enough to motivate her into continuing should her enthusiasm flag. "Now let's see how long she sticks to it before she tries something sneaky."

"Right," Jim said. "And maybe, just maybe, I can finally fucking concentrate long enough to show you the ins and outs of how to use all this shit without sawing someone's motherfucking arm off," he said, gesturing to the inks and the guns and the other dangerous machinery on the table in front of the clients' chair. The other benefit to teaching Silver this way was that hopefully she'd be too distracted to cause any of her usual mischief. She wouldn't be drawing any more designs for a while, but that was something Roland could cover himself as necessary.

Jim went on. "I want to have you working on real people instead of just paper in the next few months, Ron. You have the talent for it, and Christ knows I could finally use the extra set of hands." Roland was surprised by this, but pleased. The thought of learning to actually tattoo people was enough to make him forget for a second his usual overpowering desire to return to Aether as soon as he possibly could. "Well," he said to his boss, "we'd better get to it, then." And so they did.

Written with WillfulWren

Mentioned: IG42

Roland's daytime activity complete.

 

[WillfulWren]

Silver Ferae - Jim's Tattoo Parlour
Co-Written with: MagicPenguin ​

She had been sat there for what felt like forever. A was complete, and she had at least started on B before getting bored and starting to doodle. Most of the doodles involved a red haired figure and what was hopefully tomato ketchup.

Sneaking glances over at him every now and again, waiting until she was certain he'd completely forgotten all about her before she slipped from her seat and started walking - oh so casually - towards the jar.

Her boss and her co-worker were looking away from the jar now, absorbed in giving a lady a tattoo of a thorny rose all across her back. If the stupid hero noticed her moving toward her prize, he didn't let on at all. Quietly, Silver slowly reached her hand out toward the jar, her fingers inching closer and closer to her desired prize, stopping only occasionally to intermittently glance at the back of her torturer, who remained unaware of her.

With a triumphant smirk, her hands began to close around the jar of chocolate -- only for her to jump back with a startled yelp when something buzzed right by her face and embedded itself in the wall just next to her with a nice, solid thunk.

Sticking out of the wall by the blade, its handle vibrating back and forth, was an extended pocket knife with white and red casing. There was a red snake-like dragon decorating the handle, and the monster's face seemed to be glaring at Silver. When she looked back at Roland, she found him looking straight at her now, smiling and green eyes glittering. Jim's eyes were wide as teacups, locked onto the knife his apprentice had just hurled. Roland walked over casually and pulled the pocket knife out of the wall with a sharp tug, leaving only a thin indent where the blade stuck itself. He retracted the blade and slipped it back in his pocket.

"Taking a break, Silver?" he asked innocently, planting himself between her and the jar.

"No! I'm... I'm done! I did the stupid work!"
Or at least one letter of it.

"Oh? That was fast. I'm impressed! Why don't you show me?"
"Fine, here!" Practically shoving the book at him for inspection.

He flipped through the book and quickly shook his head.

"You only did A, Silver. You have to do up to e, remember? And look. You got this question wrong here. This is a picture of an orange, but it doesn't start with the 'a' sound, does it?" He handed it back to her. "Why don't you try again?"

"I don't want to try again! I already did what you told me to do, and I don't have to do what you say because you're the he-" Stopping herself short, remembering his earlier words about not going back to Aether, ever.

"The worst. The absolute worst, and I hate you."

"Now, now. You're not giving up already are you? Not you, the little genius? I thought this was easy!" He looked over at the jar of chocolate speculatively. "Maybe you don't want this chocolate as bad as I thought you did," he mused, seemingly to himself. "Perhaps I should just get rid of it, then...Maybe I'll give it to Marcus instead. He can read, and he likes chocolate too."

"Marcus would share it with me. He's my brother!" She protested, but there was a hint of hesitance to her tone. She didn't want to share it. Silver sighed, taking the book back, and saying, tone cold as ice:
"I hate you. I hope you get hit by a truck and the pigeons eat your stupid ugly corpse. And because you're so stinky and awful, they'd all die and ... And that would be great!"

Roland looked over at Jim and the client in her chair. Neither seemed to be paying attention, but the hero leaned in and lowered his voice for only Silver to hear anyway.

"You know, Silver, I may not look it now, but you're looking at a man who, when he was younger than you are now, once climbed down the side of a castle tower, scaled over the outer wall bare-handed, and swam across a wide moat all so he could go to a tavern in town and play dice instead of attend a lesson from his private tutor. And I'll tell you now what my father told me then after the soldier he sent to that very same tavern to await my arrival bundled me back to him bound, gagged, and tied to the back of his saddle in an old sack: 'don't try to bullshit a bullshitter.'

"So the next time you think you have a clever idea, just remember this: whatever it is, I already had the same exact one 16 years ago. It didn't work for me then, and it won't work for you now. If you want the chocolate, put in the work like you agreed to."

He let his voice go high enough to be heard by the others again. "Now go," he said in a no-nonsense tone and pointing to her little desk in the corner.

When Roland went back to Jim and the client to resume working, Jim stopped for a moment. "Hey, Ron, you nearly took her fucking nose off with that thing. I didn't even see you pull it out."

"Yeah, man," the client added. "Don't you think that was a little much?"

"Nope," Roland responded simply, then handed Jim the tool he needed to continue the woman's tattoo.

The albino glared balefully at him as she returned to her place, moving onto the letter B.

B for Bastard Hero.

Silver Ferae / Day Activity: COMPLETE​

 

[LoneSniper87]

Writtin with MagicPenguin

Ana Kochenkov
Jim's Tattoo Parlor
8:30 AM

Ana walked through the commercial district, a light grin on her face. Not only did she manage to switch shifts with a co-worker to give her today off, but she was back on the streets. Maybe not her streets, but it still applied. She owed nothing to no one, and was free to do as she pleased. The woman wore light colored jeans, anda black long sleeve that a Nirvana album on it. She picked up idle chatter, a force of habit at this stage. She was on a mission, but not to kill. No. Simply, to get a tattoo. She finally spotted the place, smiling to herself once more as the shadow entered.

The bell made her wince, chiming upon her entry, but she quickly masked it, looking around and spotting Roland. "Hi." She said, looking at them. "I'm looking for a tattoo... I believe I've come to the right place... right?" She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans, thumb brushing over her wallet.

Roland smiled and walked briskly over to Ana. He seemed at ease, though there was an odd sense of urgency in his step if you knew him well enough to see the signs. "Well, hello, ma'am, and welcome to Jim's Tattoo Parlor. Where the customer is always right and the price ain't bad, either." As he spoke, he grasped Ana by the arm and spun her around so he could get close enough to her to whisper without the boss behind him overhearing.

"Don't let him trick you, Ana," he whispered conspiratorially. "He does good work, but Jim's tattoos cost a Light-cursed fortune." Roland looked meaningfully at his own tattoos, the dragons crawling up his arms. "The bloody tyrant will trick you into getting something too expensive for you to pay for and then force you to work off your debt until the day you die! Get away, woman! Before it's too late! Save yourself and get away!"

"Oi! Ron!" That was the boss. Jim, apparently. He had a very dark glower on his face. "You got something to say to me you ungrateful fucking punk?!"

Immediately, Roland straightened and turned around to face the man. "No sir, not a thing! I was just telling my friend here how exemplary your work is and how well you've been teaching me how to do it." He turned around to look at Ana again, his urgent tone turned all to professionalism now. "Now, miss, just what kind of tattoo were you looking for today? You can have a look through our design booklet over here or show us a picture if you have a custom design in mind." For all his salesmanship and apparent attempts to entice Ana into buying a tat, his back was to Jim, and the boss couldn't see the deliberate and exaggerated way Roland kept eyeing the door so that only Ana could see him do it.

Ana smiled to her friend, admiring his attempt to dissuade her from this. "I see you really care for your work. I'd like something... personal. If you don't mind me taking a look at the book. But, if I can't find anything, perhaps you could draw it for me? My art skills are abhorrent." She said, moving to the design booklet. "Maybe something on my back or arm..."

Roland shook his head and shrugged his shoulders in a resigned manner, as if to say, "I tried to warn you."

"Personal, eh?" he asked out loud. "Like what?" He grabbed a notebook out from his backpack in the corner and flipped through until he found a clean page.

She paused at the question. "How much do you know of me?" She asked, calmly, as if asking the weather. "Because Im thinking something of my past."

Roland raised his eyebrow and then eyed Jim, evidently wary of saying much of anything in front of the man from Earth. Or in front of anyone, more likely; her past was not the sort of thing you talked about casually in front of even people from Aether who knew about it. Perhaps sensing Roland's wariness, Jim grunted and stalked off to check his tools again so they could speak privately. "I've heard the rumors. I know enough," he said carefully, yet sympathetically. "Did you want something specific, or...?"

"Someone I used to know... I'd like something to rememember that by... What we shared..." She said, softer, looking at him.

He looked deep into her eyes, rubbing his chin. "I understand," he said finally. "Wait here." He leaned close to Ana before he walked away. "Watch Silver," he said under his breath. "If she makes any move toward that jar of candy, start throwing sharp objects. She has to be able to see it, but she must NOT be allowed to have it." With that, he went over to a desk in the back and, deep in concentration, started sketching and coloring.

About 20 minutes later, Roland returned and showed Ana the result of his work. "Here. What do you think?"

What Roland drew was something that none on Earth would understand the true significance of, but it spoke deeply to Ana's troubled past. Unbeknownst to most, Ana was the exiled princess of the Aetherian nation of Cloudtop. Before she changed her name and her lifestyle, she was betrothed to a member of the Fairchild family, some distant cousin of Roland's. A wrench was thrown into this when she met and fell in love with a man from the Cainhurst family. The Cainhursts and the Hinokah were bitter ancestral enemies; a scandal of the kind their affair brought on was unheard of. Her father promptly disowned her and her adolescent love was lost to her.

Roland apparently knew at least some of this, despite her attempts to keep it hidden; unlike many others, though, and unusual especially for a prince of his high noble upbringing, he did not seem to find the thought of a Hinokah and a Cainhurst together to be abhorrent, nor feel any ill will for the spurning of his cousin. What he'd drawn was the banner of the Hinokah, a character of Cloudtop's native language drawn in blue, encircled by the banner of the Cainhurst man she loved, a fiery red ring. The unholy combination of Cainhurst and Hinokah banners would raise eyebrows on Aether for many reasons, but it looked like an ordinary tattoo on Earth.

She did as told, watching Silver with her normal keen eye and didn't stop until she heard Roland return. She glanced down at the drawing, smiling softly at the image. "It's perfect..." While he had gone she had been thinking over the old love. Yes, she had been told regardless that she would marry a member of the Fairchild family, whether she liked him or not. At least Roland is tolerable compared to the sniveling brat that was his relative. Then she met the man from Cainhurst. It was wrong, and she was already learning to fight... She shook her head. "Surprised you remember that, doubly so you know it was me..."

"I only know what I've heard from rumors and whispers, he responded. "I can never fully understand what you've gone through, Ana, but I do know something of what it's like to be the pariah of your family," he said softly. "The uncultured lout who prefers hunts and swordfights to balls and banquets. To be forced to marry a man you don't know over another you truly love all because of some conflict that happened centuries before your birth...It must've been awful.The duty we were born to, you and I...it can be stifling. Suffocating. I get that. But with this, you can wear your past as a badge of pride rather than the mark of shame others would have you believe it is." He smiled. "Believe in yourself, Princess Kurisu Hinokah, and have pride in who you are and where you come from. Don't let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn't be, who you should or shouldn't love."

Roland gestured for Ana to take a seat and showed the design to Jim standing nearby. "A Japanese character, eh? These are awfully popular with your generation, y'know, Ron?"

Roland blinked. "Japanese?"

"Yeah, I get requests for these all the time. The ring of fire around this one is different, though."

"That's...an interesting coincidence," Roland said with a note of puzzlement.

Jim didn't seem to notice his confusion. "Welp, we better get to work, little missy. I think this'll be good on the shoulder. That work for you?"

Her smile broadened as she walked with him to the chair. "Perhaps the shoulder blade?" She asked, putting her hand on that spot. "But you are the professional, whatever you believe is best."

"Shoulder blade it is," Jim responded pleasantly. "This is going to hurt, but it'll be worth it. Try to stay as still as possible. Understood?"

She nods, pain being no stranger to her.

"Now pay attention, Ron. This can be a difficult spot to mark..."

The pair got to work, Roland watching carefully and handing the boss tools as necessary and Jim explaining what he was doing and why so his protege could understand the ins and outs of the job.

She'd sit there quietly, not flinching or making any noise as they did their work.

After a long and sore couple of hours, it was complete, she smiled, gave her thanks, with a quiet look of appreciation towards Roland as she paid and headed out, much better despite the ache in her shoulder.

Roland smiled back and waved as she walked down the street on her way.

Ana's Day Activity Complete.

 

[Avari]

Lisa and Tannur are on a rowing boat in the middle of Hyde Park's lake. The sun is high in the sky and beating down. Children are playing around the lake, and numerous people are in boats of their own - enjoying the sunshine. Lisa has removed her hoodie, and is wearing a light vest instead - she has a book balanced on her knees and is wearing a pair of large shades. She has also produced a small battered looking radio, that is quietly playing some classical music. A large empty duffle bag is by her side. Tannur is rowing.

​

"I am impressed that such a simple concept can be so stimulating." Lisa observed as she turned a page in her book. The cover was a worn green, with the faded gold font introducing it as Mathematical principles of natural philosophy.
"Listen to this: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" - That really is quite wonderful."

Rowing aimlessly Tannur watched his queen or some aspect of her reading. When Lisa had called him and asked to meet he had taken a minute to recognize her with the unexpected change to her appearance, still at least she was acting a little more like the Lucrezia he knew instead of a confused child. "I wouldn't say all reactions would be equal, if someone tries to punch me in the mouth but I dodge and kick them in the balls I'd say I came out on top."

"When something happens, a force of equal magnitude happens in the other direction." Lisa replied dryly, with an obvious expression of disappointment on her face as she slid her Sunglasses back up her nose and leaned back on the boat's stern for support.

She lazily pointed a finger at one of Tannur's oars.

"-Which is why your rowing is working. You pull the oars, the water pushes back, which pushes the boat- and thus we move forward. You see?"

Following the pointing finger he watched the oar for a couple of strokes. "I think I get it but that's just how it works, if you push against a wall you go backwards does it need a book that thick just to say that?"

"Everything in this realm is based on the law of mathematics. You might say it's the language of the universe."

Lisa closed the book. "So yes. It does have to be that thick."

Tannur was about to make a snarky comment about what was really worth learning but decided it would be rather hypocritical after having to argue the point with Silver the previous night.

"Speaking of thick, I require your assistance with something."

"So I'm not here just because you wanted a boat trip and couldn't be arsed to row yourself around? I'm honored"

"Something like that." Lisa glanced at the far shore. A large group of ducks and a few proud white swan had congregated around a small family who were sprinkling nuts on the floor for them.

"I need one of those."

Looking in the same direction Tannur did a double take. "I'm flattered you'd choose me but I don't think I'm ready to be a father, or did you mean one of the birds?" He said with a smirk.

"Yes. I require one of the water fowl. It is why I brought the bag." Lisa nodded, straight faced.
"The park attendants frown on this sort of behavior, so i require your expertise in...precise theft."

"So you need a duck? Aren't you a bit above bleeding birds like a hedge witch?"

"I do not intend to bleed it." Lisa explained, looking somewhat distasteful at the very notion.
"I need to perform a exorcism and require life force. I am restricted by location in terms of available animals. Pigeons and rodents are too small. Dogs, cats and other pets are difficult to take without arousing suspicion. And I don't fancy having my eyes pecked out by a swan."

She glanced furtively at the shore.
"They're surprisingly.... vicious."

Taking her word for it he eyed the birds. "Alright then, well firstly we're going to need to get one away from those people and then some kind of distraction so no one notices the racket I expect it'll make when we-though I expect that'll turn out to be me grab it."

Lisa nodded as she began ruffling around in the duffel bag she had brought with her.

"What are you even planning to exorcise anyway? Hope it's more interesting than some of the ghost stuff they show on that TV thing." He really wondered at the intelligence of the people here when there were so many shows of people wandering old houses jumping at creaking sounds and saying there were ghosts about.

"I was walking home from my new workplace when I encountered a man being attacked by a ghostly Visage in the shape of a wolf." Lisa explained as she continued to search her bag. Apparently it had far too many pockets, when she frowned.

"... I believe I made an error."

"Forget something? That's not like you."

"No," Lisa replied, resuming her rummaging.
"Do you recall the body of Daniel Payne. The Werewolf?"

"Mr half and half? Yeah, I thought you dealt with that mess."

"I was still suffering from the trauma of birth and acting erratically. It's quite possible I sent his corpse to an undetermined location nearby to prevent the chance of infection rather than destroying it."

Lisa produced a small plastic bag filled with oats and tossed them to Tannur.
"It's simply a hypothesis, but there is the possibility that the paranormal event I witnessed may have some connection to him. The sewer the wolf vanished into is directly connected to the one beneath Covent Garden. This is to feed the ducks by the way... Bread is not healthy for them."

"Right birth...that." Tannur shifted awkwardly at the memory of the dramatic transformation/resurrection he had witnessed. "So you think you accidentally flushed him down the drain instead?"

"That is not... Inaccurate."

Catching the bag with one hand he looked at it quizzically. "I doubt bread would kill it before you're done with the bugger, why does it matter?"

"It's to feed the other ducks. They're skittish creatures. Also personal enjoyment."

"Enjoyment? Since when did you care about some random birds? How much of Lucrezia is there in you really?" The Shadow Queen he'd known had always had better things to do than concern herself with random animals, Silver had been the closest thing to an exception.

Lisa regarded Tannur for a moment as she considered.
"I am a separate entity to Lucrezia. You might consider me her sister for simplicitys sake. She used a small part of her soul to create me, so that she could have an agent overseeing London while she searches the world for Odania. If you are looking for an exact percentage of how much of Lucrezia is in me - I don't know. As such I do not expect your loyalty or companionship. I am simply...Lisa."

Lisa raised carefully to her feet and gestured for Tannur to do the same as they swapped positions.

"I'll drop you at the shore. Do not scare the children."

As Lisa took the oars he watched her thoughtfully, obviously she'd been 'born' with enough knowledge to survive but he wondered if she had just been left to muddle through everything else.

--LISA/TANNUR? DAYTIME COMPLETE--
Written with IG42​

 

[Shotgunpenguin]

Juniper Arc
Juniper's apartment/Streets of London

Juniper struggled, thrashing her limbs as she tried to draw breath from her burning lungs. Her eyes watered as the object was pressed tighter against her face, further stopping her from breathing as her assailant watched quietly and without remorse. Desperately, she struck towards the unknown person in an attempt to save herself, but was met with only air as her vision darkened. This was it, she was going to die without even seeing the bastards face. Her eyes slowly closed on her as the world around her seemed to fade away as she slipped into unconsciousness.

Throwing herself up from her bed, Juniper gasped for breath as a black object was thrown from her face, shrieking as it flew to the wooden floor at the foot of her bed. Reacting quickly, she rolled out of her bed and reached for her spear, cursing when she realized that there was no such weapon nearby. Rushing over to the object that was suffocating her the anger in her eyes bored down on the form of her new kitten, who was now staring back at her with it's own wide eyes. "God damn it Lisa, you nearly damn killed me!"

The startled kitten continued to stare at her in confusion as she groaned and went to pick up the cat, only for it to dash away from her and shove itself into the corner of her kitchen. The most recent addition to her home, the stray that she had picked up last night had explored all of the crevices of her home last night as she tried to find a name for it. Perhaps it was a subtle form of resistance, or just straight up pettiness on Juniper's part, but after staring into it's catlike eyes she settled on naming it after Lisa. It was...slightly cathartic being able to yell at her without fear of retaliation, even though she would never act like that in front of her queen.

"Fine, stay over there if you want. I should be the one giving you the death glare, not the other way around." Sighing, she went through her morning cycle as she passed by the mountain of discarded clothing. Having run out of clean clothes a day ago, she was forced to shift through the pile until she found something that would pass as clean. She would have to take her clothes pile out to the river to wash them, a task that she was not looking forward to as she picked out a light pair of jeans, a black and white stripped top and and a black and white pair of running shoes. Idly she held up a black jacket, before shaking her head and throwing it back on the pile. "This heat will be the death of me, how do these people deal with this every day?" After that it was a quick cold shower, discarding the last of her bandages, making a note to procure more and a warning to Lisa not to claw any of her limited furniture she was off to work.

When she finally arrived at the store a light sheen of sweat was already forming on her as she placed her bike on the rack and walked inside. Lucas was there, looking at something on his clipboard when he spotted Juniper. Waving her over, he gave a smile as he greeted her "Hey Juniper, nice to see you. Is your mom out of the hospital yet?"

Juniper paused for a moment, before remembering the lie that was fed to Lucas as she returned his smile "Not yet, they want to keep her for the day at the very least, just to make sure they did not miss anything." Lucas clasped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a light shake "Good to hear. She was very lucky to get away with only a few scrapes. By the way, it's a scorcher today so there's some cold waters on the way out if you want one." He gestured to the door where a large metal bucket filled with ice contained a multitude of waters.

"Thanks Lucas, you're a lifesaver." With a nod Juniper moved on to collect her packages for the day and confirm the route she would have to take. Fortunately most of her packages were only a short distance from each other, if she rushed she could get done early. Grabbing one of the waters on her way out she placed it in the carrier on her bike and set off.

She was able to deliver half of her packages before she had to pause, taking deep breaths as she rested under the small amount of shade the building was providing. The water that she had grabbed was all but gone, a fact that Juniper loathed as she tossed the empty bottle into a bin and massaged her legs. They felt stiff as she rubbed them, attempting to work some of it out before pulling out her phone and checking the time. Good, at the rate she was going she could finish her route and have the rest of the evening to lay back down in her cool bed and sleep until the temperature outside was bearable.

As she stood there, staring at her phone she remembered something. She had wanted to ask her something the last time they met, but never got around to it before she had to leave. Well, she was already a bit ahead of her schedule. A quick call wouldn't be too much of a problem as long as she kept it short. Scrolling to her contact number, Juniper pressed the call button and waited. "Lisa," she looked around and let out a sigh before continuing "I need a favor from you."

Mentioned: Avari
Juniper's Day Activity: Complete

 

[Pilgrim59]

Scarlet Sommerfeld
Arryn's Apartment
August 7th, 2018 (Early Morning - Dawn)

Interacted: Arryn ( MagicPenguin )
Mentioned: N/A
​

The Heat (Part 1)​

[Dream Sequence]

Red, white, and black, the colors of a decaying power, unfurled before the lady in red. Mozart's Requiem, the puppeteer of her graceful dance, relinquished his hands to the luminescent lights that doused the void in time with the echoes of a haunting choir. With every step she took, the gray knights that stood in her way were all tainted by the crimson banners that tore through their flesh and bones. Disfigured mortals, whose visages were left broken in fear only fuel the elegant lady's crazed smile. The air was heavy in its course, as insurmountable brass casings rung throughout the embellished hall, while the modern arms of war performed their choruses of war in vain. The red lady fleeted pass the corridor, of which was laden with the corpses of her victims. As she trod the forbidden realm of the German's last bastion of defense, she took into sight the golden eagle that boasted its wings before her. The streams of blood flowed forth around the kindred, like silky shawls that complemented her crimson dress. Glints of amber slits parted her black sclera, resembling a pair of gems that parted the Styx - a fraudulent dealer of the void in the form of an elegant woman. A distorted, but firm voice gently brushed her back, almost as if it was a physical stroke upon her exposed shoulders.

"Feasting in your dreams, aren't you a naughty one?"

The lady's hand retracted upon her upper right arm, feeling the warm sensation of her glowing tattoo. She was neither disconcerted nor perplexed by the eerie voice. An unfamiliar, yet intimate inflection to the woman, as she deemed it. As the encroaching shrouds of darkness embraced her, the voice grew ever louder - ringing obnoxiously within the comatose spectator's ears.

"It's about time you wake up, don't you think? O' Red Queen of Edelweiss..."

[Reality Sequence]

A loud gasp echoed within Scarlet's room, as she struggled for air. The choking sensation upon her throat was as vivid as it gets, accompanied by the sluggish sensations upon her arms and feet. Sweats dotted her face, as if the vampire was recently waterboarded. Scarlet tried to reason with her recollection of thoughts and emotions. She was torn apart by the ecstatic feelings of her nightmare, and those of her fragmented state of mind as a human. London, bed, and closed curtains - these things quickly snap the unstable girl back to reality.

The water tap unleashed a hail of cold water that gradually washes away the vampire's thoughts. Scarlet's cinnamon locks of soaked hair drooped gloomily beside her forsaken eyes. The girl was wandering the barren lands of her past, having been reproached by her unpleasant dreams. She eventually emerged from the bathroom, with a slight sigh to accompany her gloomy state of mind. Scarlet distracted herself with the usual hygienic inspection and labor for their shared apartment, stretching her troubles as far as she could, while seeing to the cleanliness of their shared spaces. While she found comfort in the void of silence, the creeping warm embrace of the heating room was making her quite uncomfortable. Scarlet put on her dress and checked her phone, with a displeased expression to add to her morning cup of emotions. The weather app only serve to fuel her irritation, as dictations of high temperatures were obvious in the warm embrace of the living room. Sunscreens, shades, and sunhat, her common equipment to combat the blazing sun, quickly complemented her attires, as she made her early leave to tend to the gardens.

Upon her approach of the apartment's back alley, Scarlet rolled up her sleeves and took the watering can into her hands. Quickly and swiftly, the girl oversaw the garden's watering, before scurrying back to her apartment. She closed the door behind her, just in the nick of time, where the sun had began to cast its rays across the city. While her expeditious return had spared her from the sun's punishment, the heat that she had sustained was anything but pleasant to the vampire. She caught a brief respite, while running by her thoughts as to how she could even go to work later in this condition. Scarlet was less keen on dragging herself through the blazing street, and measures had to be taken.

"A parasol! And perhaps some long sleeves... " the girl mumbled under her breath.

(What means could I possibly procure to get to work? Now that the day encroaches? Perhaps I could use my powers... No. With that detective running about, that would be the end of me. An absence leave? No. I must stay the course. Where adversaries present itself, I shall surpass with all my might.) Scarlet thought to herself, as she exhaled slightly.

The abrupt sound of a closing door caught Scarlet's attention, as she paced herself towards the living room. As she had expected, her roommate was already awake, alongside his canine accomplice. The kindred was quite curious about Arryn's hurried steps, as if he was trying to leave the scene without bumping into her, very much so like yesterday - or so the girl thought. Instead, she was met with an inquisitive, yet oddly lax greeting from the man. She studied his eyes briefly, before putting up a smile, curious as to what he had to say. As the hot morning encroaches, a heated sensation crept up on Scarlet, as she leaned on the corridor, shying away from the pools of sunlight that resided upon the wooden floor, at the urgent behest of the transparent windows. Little did she knew, the consequences of her lax conformity was like that of the trespassing sunlight - eager to unveil the dark shades of her past.

[Scarlet's Day-Time Activity In-Progress 1/2]​

 

[MagicPenguin]

Arryn Bennett
Home
6:12 AM

With an excited bark, Hogan ran figure eights around and between Arryn's legs as he emerged from his room, dressed with hammer at his side and ready to head to the construction site for another day of work. "Careful, little guy," he said, stepping as carefully as he could to avoid stepping on his friend. "I get it. You have to pee. C'mon, let's go." With another bark, the pup abandoned Arryn's legs and ran full speed down the hall to the front door. He was a little bigger than when they'd first met, Arryn observed. He'd only known the golden retriever a little over a week now and already he had grown taller than Arryn's ankles, nearly up to his shins. Golden retrievers were typically larger dogs, he knew, and grew fast. In a few months, Hogan would probably be up to his knees, if not taller. Arryn wondered again who could have possibly wanted to get rid of such a well-behaved pup so badly as to just abandon him in the street for anyone to find and adopt. The dog had his mischievous side, sure, but he was already house trained, and smart as a whip when he wanted to be. With another bark, Hogan brought Arryn's attention away from his musings and back to the present. Filing his questions away for another time, he went to the peg on the wall in the hallway where Hogan's leash was usually kept and, curiously, found it absent.

"Now where did your leash get to, boy," he asked, scratching his head. Hogan merely pawed at the door again impatiently in answer. Taking him out without a leash was just asking for trouble; no way Arryn was going to do that. He entered the kitchen adjacent to the hallway and looked in the likeliest locations for the missing leash. Not on the table or the counter. Not on top of the fridge. He checked the hallway closet--both of them--and saw no sign of it inside of either. Nothing on the couch or the side tables in the living room. Arryn wracked his brain, trying to think of the last place he'd seen it. It had been yesterday morning, just before he left for the forge, he recalled. He'd given it to Scarlet and asked her to walk the pup in a rush to get away from those questioning eyes of hers. He quickly suppressed a shudder at the thought of those. It was odd, though; Scarlet usually seemed so organized and on top of keeping everything neat and orderly that he would have thought she'd put the leash back on the peg when she was done with it.

Arryn glanced at her closed bedroom door and took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself. There was only one place he hadn't checked. He hated to wake his roommate up at such an early hour when he knew she didn't have work until later, but Hogan had to pee and desperate times called for desperate measures. He approached the door and lightly knocked. "Scarlet," he called softly. No answer. He knocked again. "Scarlet," he called a little louder, "I'm sorry to wake you, but have you seen Hogan's leash?" He waited. Again, no answer. With a gulp, Arryn gripped the door knob and turned it slowly. Very slowly. He sensed a pressure on the back of his neck, as if someone were watching him, waiting for him to trespass so they could materialize out of no where and grab him from behind. He could feel his heart beating faster, hear the blood rushing in his ears as he suppressed his urge to breath more heavily. He swallowed again and pushed the door open just a crack. Desperate times.

Peeking inside, he was surprised to find the bed cleanly made with nobody in it. Scarlet wasn't there. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding in, suddenly very relieved for some reason. Where could she have gone so early in the morning, he wondered? He stepped inside to see if the leash was in there, though why it would be, he had no idea. The heavy curtains were totally drawn and the room was nearly pitch black. It took a moment for Arryn's eyes to adjust. When they finally did, he took in his roommate's living quarters. The desk was polished so that it seemed to shine even in the darkness. On top of it were several books arranged neatly. The bed was so well made, the sheets and blankets so unmarred by any creases, that he wondered if Scarlet had ever actually slept in it at all. Oddly, the open closet revealed, in addition to Scarlet's own clothing, a green jacket that seemed much too large for her. Probably a family member's; a brother or a father or maybe a friend. Or, perhaps, a boyfriend's, he thought with slightly reddened cheeks.

One thing he didn't see lying anywhere, unfortunately, was Hogan's leash. Arryn sighed in resignation, about to walk out, but suddenly, he was gripped by...something. This was Scarlet's room now, but last month, it had been Daniel's. He'd taken all of his old friend and mentor's things out before Scarlet arrived to make room for her, but somehow, his presence still seemed to permeate every corner of the tiny bedroom. Momentarily lost in his grief, Arryn plopped himself down at the desk chair and just sat. Sat and thought and remembered. He remembered the day they'd come to Earth together, met Rose together, helped each other adjust to a strange new world with strange new ways. He remembered the last words the old man had said to him. Daniel's deep voice seemed to echo from the depths of Arryn's memories, so vivid he could hear it as if they were standing side by side even now. Always forward, Arryn...

Woof!

Arryn was startled from his thoughts by a tiny golden shape sniffing about the room curiously. His desire to pee seemingly forgotten, Hogan sniffed at Scarlet's bed and ducked down to stuff himself firmly underneath it. "Hogan! Get out from under there! That's rude, you know!" The dog paid him no apparent heed. Growling as if to himself now, the entire upper half of the puppy's body was obscured by the sheets hanging off the low bed. His tail wagged enthusiastically and his back legs scratched at the carpeted floor for purchase. With a low, determined whine, the dog clumsily pulled himself back out. When his head re-emerged, it was dragging something square out along with it, though it was too dark for Arryn to tell what it was. It wasn't a large object, but it was heavy enough that little Hogan had to struggle to drag it backwards over to where Arryn was sitting. "Hogan..." Arryn exclaimed, exasperated with the rude little dog's antics.

When he reached down to pick the puppy's find up, he quickly discovered that it was another book, though a little larger than most of the ones lined up neatly on Scarlet's desk. He should just put it back with her other books and walk away, he knew. That would be the responsible, neighborly thing to do. Instead, curious, he opened it and found that the book was actually a photo album. It was full of photographs, all of them pictures of Scarlet in different settings and in clothing of different styles. Arryn looked at them in slight wonder; he knew what photos were, perfectly depicted real-to-life images of whatever you pointed a camera at, but, still relatively new to Earth, the whole concept was still amazing to him. As far as he knew, there was no magic on Aether that could do anything quite like it no matter how long one studied, and everybody on Earth just seemed to take it for granted. Below each photo was a note about a year and the place the picture was taken. Arryn's eyes widened even further as he looked more closely at what had to be some kind of crazy mistake.

"Light, what is this?"

The years under the photos ranged from 1917 at the earliest all the way to the present. They were taken in places as varied as Germany, France, Russia, Asia, America, Africa...some of the countries Arryn had never even heard of (Bangkok?), though that was probably not surprising given his otherworldly origin and consequent ignorance of Earth. There were dozens of them, many faded and worn and in black and white. Yet, for all that stretch of time, for all those different places, no matter how she dressed herself, no matter her occupation or who she was with, Scarlet herself looked...

Exactly the same as she did now. Right down to the piercing, penetrating green eyes that seemed to dig into the depths of his soul, even through the photographs.

How was this possible? Before that moment, if he had been forced to guess, Arryn would have said that she was in her mid twenties, if that. But some of these pictures were a century old, and she was not only alive in them, but she looked not a day younger than she did now. The blacksmith's head spun. He had no idea what to make of what he was seeing.

The sound of a rattling doorknob came from the hallway. "Crap!" Hogan jumped at the same time Arryn did and he chased his tail anxiously while Arryn scrambled to shove the photo album back underneath Scarlet's bed where the pup found it. In a panic, he made sure everything was exactly the same as when he walked in, picked Hogan up, and rushed out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him. He placed Hogan back on the floor just in time to see Scarlet emerge from the hallway with that matronly smile of hers.

Arryn forced himself to relax. "Oh, good morning, Scarlet! You're up early again today, aren't you?"

The glinting emeralds that were Scarlet's eyes tugged at the man's heart, as if she could see through his recent deeds. Her gloved hands were covered in dirt, as she held onto a small, glimmering trowel. An impish smile stretched across her face, accompanied by her inquisitively raised brows - like a killer making ready to lunge her gardening tool into Arryn's heart.

"Guten Morgen to you as well! Why, of course! How else would I catch you in the act..."

Arryn tensed unconsciously, but he managed to keep his hand from impulsively flying to the hammer slung at his hip.

"... of walking Hogan in the morning?" Arryn's tension quickly dissipated. "Fufufu. I would very much like to walk Hogan in your stead, Arryn. It's the least I could do, since you have to work early. Fufufu."

Scarlet said, with an erratic pause in between her sentence. Despite her vigilant eyes and stance, her evident return from the gardens upon her choice of attires and gardening tools slightly relieved Arryn of his troubled thoughts. The girl squinted her eyes as the sun began to rise beyond the barriers of windows, as she took it upon herself to get some water from the kitchen counter. While it had seemed normal for one to get a drink from the counter, Arryn's recent discovery in his roommate's chamber had instilled suspicions and wariness upon his thoughts. Scarlet was shying away from the windows in the living room, he thought. On top of that, her room was pitch black. A realm of absolute darkness that accomodated such an eccentric and hygienic personnel of interest. Averse to sunlight?

While Arryn pondered upon these thoughts, Scarlet's turned shoulders had concealed her shrouded face of intrigue, beneath the casted shadows of the cupboards and the tall fridge. She could see a certain sense of uncertainty and trouble in the man, that she had yet to decipher. Before long, she found herself back at it again, but this time, there was little else she could do initiate her own questions, as she herself have yet to uncover the secrets behind her recent findings in his room. The German remain patient and braced herself for what Arryn had to say, as she quickly gulped down a glass of water. Little did she knew, that their little game of hiding and seeking secrets had escalated - this time with both the players on the field grasping tightly onto their opposition's secrets.

As usual, Scarlet's eyes seemed to try boring themselves into the depths of Arryn's soul so they could rip his secrets out of him for all the world to see. The blacksmith didn't shy away from them this time, though, only stared right back with a relaxed stance and a frown and cool green eyes of his own. Instead of eying her warily like prey in the presence of a vicious predator, he looked at her more like she was a rubik's cube that he hadn't quite figured out how to solve yet.

A woman who'd been alive for over a century without aging? Aversion to sunlight? Now that he thought of it, when she first arrived two days ago, hadn't she asked explicit permission to enter the apartment before she walked in? Each taken on their own, these three facts could each be explained away somehow or other. Maybe it was an older relative in the photos, for example. The other two were not indicative of anything in particular besides Scarlet's eccentricity and politeness. Taken all together, though, these three facts painted a picture that sent a shiver up Arryn's spine. Even on Aether, there weren't many explanations to account for all three of those things at once. In fact, there was only one that jumped immediately to Arryn's mind. She couldn't possibly be a...? But there was supposed to be no magic at all on Earth! Did that mean...if she really was a...a...--Arryn couldn't even make himself think the dreaded word--But if she was one, did that mean Scarlet was from Aether too? She had to be, he thought with wonder. If she was what he was thinking, how else could she possibly be on Earth at all?

Arryn opened his mouth to ask her directly if she'd come from Aether. The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he found that he just couldn't make himself say the words no matter how sure he was that she must be. He closed his mouth again and rubbed his chin, keeping his searching gaze fixed on her.

The woman's calm facade masked her puzzled concerns. The labyrinth of thoughts stretched out before her, as if she was looking at a completely different person. What had seemed like a caged prey that trembled before her was now steadfast in his ways, as the two locked gaze in dead silence of the breaking dawn. While Scarlet has yet to discover the catalyst of Arryn's discrepant and defiant eyes, she concluded from their little standoff, that the man has something to say. It was barely a passing of a night, and the man grew out of his initial tendencies to shy away from her watchful gaze. Could it be that her relentless ways of prying about his personal life have sparked a fire within him? Or perhaps her negligent hubris had left behind crumbs of her own rugged past? Either way, it was clear to Scarlet now, that she would have to choose her next moves carefully, lest she finds herself a victim of her own underestimation. The vampire drew a deep, inaudible breath, before casting her words.

"Is... something the matter?" Scarlet asked nonchalantly, sneaking inquisitive intentions beneath her caring words.

Arryn opened his mouth, again tempted to ask her directly about the photos, about whether she came from Aether like he did. But again, the words wouldn't come. He needed more time, he decided then. He needed time to sort everything out in his own head, to look at the problem from every angle before he took action. He didn't want to be too hasty. He had to think this through carefully before he tried to ask Scarlet any questions.

"No," he answered her finally. "Just thinking. Say, have you seen Hogan's leash? I've been looking for it everywhere and it's nowhere to be found."

Scarlet's index finger met her lips, as she visibly pondered upon Arryn's question. Her eyes stalked the living room for a brief while, before settling on her room's door.

"Oh my... I must have taken it with me by chance. Perhaps you would excuse my blunders, while I check my room?" she said, with an apologetic tone.

The girl made her way towards her personal chamber. Within a few seconds, she came back to Arryn with Hogan's leash.

"Here ya go! Apologies. My mind tends to wander off out of habit. I hope that you would forgive me for my derelictions." Scarlet apologized, accompanied by her odd choice of vocabularies, despite the girl's young visage and modern attires - it was almost as if she had been living in the past century. While the little things were not worth noting to many, Arryn's recent sights of Scarlet's room only served to further his intrigues and caution, as he to her. Unbeknownst them, the two were starting to learn about one another, albeit via discreet ways of going about it and chance of fate.

"Ah, thanks, " he said. He reached out to take it but stopped short. "Did you say you wanted to walk him again today? I don't mind doing it myself, but if you want to, you're welcome."

"Oh yes! Of course! I would very much love to accompany Hogan in your stead." Scarlet exclaimed, having been granted Arryn's words.

"Well alright then," he said with a smile. "Have fun, you two." He opened the front door in the hallway and held it open for his two roommates. His smile never faded until her back was to him, and then it abruptly melted back into a pensive frown.

This time, it was Scarlet who could feel Arryn's eyes digging into the back of her on the way down the stairs.

Written with Pilgrim59

Mentioned: koala

Arryn's Daytime Activity: Complete

 

[doneanddusted]

Mentions: Avari
With: Mqueserasera

I stand in Dublin, on that Ha’penny Bridge, posing in one of those “natural positions” for a camera, a brilliant sunset behind me. Richard, Diana, and Alexandre- “friends”, I suppose- had pulled me here, telling me I ought to enjoy my free time while I could. They didn’t know how much more time I spent drinking and gambling than actually paying attention to my studies. Somehow, we end up in an enormous library, with two whole floors of bookshelves- all of which I can’t read.

“You’ve got some nerve to bring me to a library I can’t read in,” I turn towards Diana, but she isn’t there.

Suddenly, everything melts away, and I’m surrounded by people walking to and fro. I open my mouth, but someone in the crowd is looking straight at me.

I wish I could leave this stupid place.

Summer woke up with a groggier feeling than usual. She could still feel the haunting blue eyes of the man in her dream. However, she didn’t remember the rest of it all, and made no effort in doing so. The young woman rolled off of bed. Her room- unlike the rest of the apartment- seemed to be kept in pristine condition. After some “convincing”, Summer had gotten Richard’s permission to paint the walls a pure white colour. She kept furnishing minimalistic; there was not a single “decorative” or “sentimental” thing. Summer’s closet contained the same shirts, the same pants, the same hoodies, the same sweaters, and the same trench coats.

In fact, the only thing she changed was her tie, but that was only for her personal enjoyment- and over time the different ties became just as repetitive as the identical shirts.

Summer slipped on her trench coat and stepped out of her room to see Diana, in abnormally attractive clothing. Well, Diana always wore attractive clothing. But this time she looked sublime.

“What are you doing here?” Summer asked.

“It’s my last day in London,” Diana said. “I wanted to spend it with you.”

All those stupid romance movies Summer’s friends forced on to her arose in her mind.

“Oh.”

“You probably shouldn’t wear so much,” Diana laughed. “‘Cause there’s like a heatwave goin’ on right now.”

“Oh.”

Summer retreated into her room and swapped her normal outfit for a more appropriate one. She even pulled out her shorts- which hadn’t seen the light of day in… forever.

“Okay,” Summer left the room. “What do you want to do?”
“I have a big list,” Diana pulled out her phone. “There’s ummmm- the Reader’s Retreat... that cat cafe… some markets… and I wanted to see London Bridge and London Eye-”

“Haven’t we been there plenty of times?”

“Never in the day time.”

God, Diana was extra as fuck.

“Why don’t we just go to the Reader’s Retreat first,” Summer sighed. “And then you can just pull me wherever?”

“O-Okay!” Diana shoved her phone back into her bag.

They left the apartment and stepped into the oven that was the streets of London. Summer looked over at Diana every once in a while. She wasn’t dense- she knew Diana had feelings for her. But acting completely unaware proved to be incredibly entertaining in Summer’s opinion. Admittedly, Summer totally would’ve dated Diana, but both of their situations weren’t the most optimal. Summer never did well with long-distance relationships, anyway.

After visiting the Reader’s Rest and letting Diana say goodbye to all her coworkers, the two set off for that cat cafe.

“I’m surprised you’ve never been there on your own time,” Diana said as they walked down the streets.

“Never had the time,” Summer shrugged.

“You spend too much time making food!”

“Baking is a mandatory task.”

“Really.”

“Yeup.”

They walked in silence for a while. Suddenly, Diana tugged Summer’s arm.

“There it is!” She pointed.

Summer turned to see a coffee shop, modest in size and frilly in decoration. On top of the entrance, an old but not too shabby sign said in pastel pink color “Cozy Cat’s Cave”. Of course the sign couldn’t actually say the words, but if it could, it would speak in soft whispers of an old lady with a, somewhat, youthful spirit. This was exactly the kind of store Summer imagined Diana would've liked. She let Diana pull her into the shop, where they were greeted by an old lady on her armchair by the counter, who was simultaneously brushing a haughty cat on her laps and grumbling about her employee. Inside, over a dozen tables were arranged with plenty of empty seats at the moment, the few regulars in the morning were outnumbered by the shop’s namesake creatures. Behind the counter, a small girl, couldn’t possibly older than 20, poked her head out in relief when some customers at last had come to save her from the old lady’s rant. She merrily greeted her saviors with a smile, with more genuine than her usual industrialized one. “G’morning! What can I get you?”

Immediately, Summer's mind started working on the people around her. The kid struck Summer as incredibly non-English, though perhaps she was just being racist. Next to her, Diana's voice quivered.

"Uh- er-" she stuttered. "I'd like- Uh-"

It still astounded Summer that people could get scared from nothing. Admittedly only Summer thought of it all as nothing, though nowadays she knew that often people get nervous from the idea that people were watching them, or just from being somewhere unfamiliar. How this was any cause to worry escaped Summer... It wasn't like they were actually being surveilled or something. However, she supposed she understood the desire to be wary in such situations.

"Ummmm... I- I-" Diana continued.

"Table for two," Summer finally butt in. "Are there any rules or such when it comes to the cats?"

"Are there now?" Muling a question that was somehow never brought up before, Ginny said "They are not really exhibits. They, like, just hang around here. Some are the shop owner's cats, some belong to the customers for one reason or another had left them stay here for a while or for good." In fact, the girl had never given them much intention in the first place, except when they got in the way of her works. Since Mrs Henderson enjoyed taking care of them a little too much, Ginny was never asked to take part in that hobby of hers.
"Don't feed them anything weird I guess, and you probably shouldn't bite them or hurt them in general, or Mrs Henderson will yell at you. That's about it, so...About your drinks, if you don't find it too strange, would you mind describe to me what kind of tastes you expect to get from them? Think of it as a way to better our service."

Admittedly, rather than listening to the young woman, Summer sort of watched the cats in the back. Magnificent little buggers. And incredibly easy to smush.

"I'm not expecting anything," Summer said.

She looked over at Diana.

"M-Me neither..." Diana mumbled. "But I- I do- I like tea... I guess... and- and- and black- and black coffee. I don't know what to expect..."

"All right... So one tea of whatever type and one black coffee? I assume you would like them tasting good?" Said Ginny, eyes rolling in her head. Such difficult customers, you do get them sometimes.

"Is there a menu?" Summer was already buried in a pile of cats.

Diana pulled Summer over to a nearby table and sat down.

"I'm sorry," Diana mumbled.

"It's not your fault," Summer shrugged. "Normally you find a place to sit first, though."

With the menu in her hands, Ginny quickly followed the girls to their table like an obedient cat. She handed those menus to her customers.

"This," Summer said, pointing to whatever funky drink was on the menu.

"I'll have an iced coffee," Diana added. "And a biscuit."

They turned towards each other.

"So..." Diana twiddled her fingers. "Have you seen that news conference yesterday?"

"Yes," Summer stared at a particularly fat cat in the corner.

"Kaysen must be a really good investigator."

"Yeah, apparently he's a two time worldwide chess champion or something."

"Oh."

There was a bit of silence.

Ginny returned with the drinks. The iced coffee made with what she believed the golden ratio between milk and coffee, as for the other drink, she had already forgotten the name as soon as it was placed on the table. One of the cats nearby quickly snatched a biscuit the moment the plate was put down, and promptly retreated back to its own place on a cozy armchair to enjoy the treat like it was too obvious too even explain that it was just exerting its rightful privileges on all ordered food in the premise. Likewise, Ginny butted into the conversation of her customers casually. "Investigator? Is there a big investigation going on right now or what?"

"You know the Covent Garden dealio?" Summer turned to the waitress. "The police were investigating it, but they turned it over to some Jack Kaysen guy. He released some photos of the wreckage and his own speculation about it."

She took a sip of her drink. Sugary. She looked over at Diana, who was still staring at the plate where her biscuit used to be.

"We can get some dessert somewhere else," Summer said to her friend.

"Wreckage?" Asked a puzzled Ginny. She wasn't up to date with most modern news outlets, and the cafe's regulars weren't exactly the best news sources of anything but the local pet beauty contests. Nonetheless Ginny was still a curious sort, having a big incident like that under her radar was unacceptable. "Maybe I slept through it," She explained "I'm a heavy sleeper after all, dead to the world after ten."

"Ah," Summer couldn't relate.

She finished her drink and looked over to Diana. Diana hadn't even touched hers. Summer raised an eyebrow at her friend who, upon seeing that expression, downed the entire cup.

"Well, it was really nice to be here," Summer announced. "I think your drinks are sublime, and I just adore the cats!"

She threw a wad of money down.

"The change is for you," she said. "Let's go, Diana."

Summer pulled her friend out of the cafe as quickly as possible.

"Let's never have a date or whatever at a restaurant ever again," Summer muttered into Diana's ear. "Okay?"

"I-I'm sorry," Diana said.

"Don't be."

They walked in silence for a moment.

"So, where do you want to go next?" Summer asked.

Diana immediately cheered up.

"L-Let's go to the London Bridge!" she exclaimed, before leading Summer with her to continue their little... "date".

Summer's thang complete!!!

 

[Pilgrim59]

Scarlet Sommerfeld
Arryn's Apartment / Lister Hospital
August 7th, 2018 (Morning)

Interacted: Lil' Hogan ( MagicPenguin )
Mentioned: N/A
​

The Heat (Part 2)​

The door creaked behind, as the vampire cast her squinted gaze upon the dawning horizon. With Hogan in her grasp, the faceless figure buried her troubled face beneath the shadows of her sunhat. It was one of the few moments in her life where Scarlet felt a creeping sensation of fright upon her back. Although she could not discern what Arryn was thinking, the girl caught a glimpse of his gleaming green eyes, as if he had seen something in her. Her room was far from being a prime target for a search, given his stature and demeanor. Perhaps it was what she said earlier? Or it was simply out of her paranoia? Scarlet quarantined her concerns, and expedited her given task at hand - letting Hogan relieve himself. Before long, a stinging sensation snapped her back to reality. The sun's beam briefly stroked her skin like a fiery smithing rod, poking her forward down the stairs.

"Grrr! Why did I agree to walk you, little Hogan? Of all days... it has to be today?!" Scarlet reprimanded herself, as the pup circled her leg.

"The things I do for you, lil' Hogan..." she smiled halfheartedly at Hogan, with the latter's nonchalant gaze buttering up Scarlet's affections. After all, she was a sucker for cute things.

Her eyes narrowed, and conceded with the consequences of her choice. She gave a long sigh, before leaping forward with great speed, at the behest of the energetic Hogan. The two spent some time in the park, with every second of the vampire's time being spent in the shades of the towering trees. Scarlet was glad to be given intermittent respite throughout their little walk. Little, as she deemed it, was far from short. To her, it was a death march in the sun. The only thing that kept her sane and unerring in her charge was Hogan's adorable wagging tail and his aloof persona. In Hogan, Scarlet could see the brighter things in life, where efforts are rewarded for the little things. The means of getting to one's destination are all a part of what makes one human in the end - be it morally or ethically. Scarlet would not hesitate to call the day off, and shut herself in for all eternity. But as far as the vampire could see, it was a foolish way out, and she found no cause to partake in such a decadent way. The heat, the sun's deadly gaze, and the tasks given before her, all of it were a part of a trial. Her faith was in herself and that of other's beliefs. To perfect one self via arduous restraints and efforts, or to run away? Scarlet would proudly step forward to advocate for the prior. As the sun took its break behind the rolling clouds, Scarlet made it her mission to return home, having toured the park long enough for Hogan to relieve himself.

"We'll play next time, Hogan. Today's just not the day for aunt Scarlet." Scarlet commented, petting Hogan tenderly as she took him into her arms and made a run for it across the streets.

"Bahh! Kids these days, can't even stand to be in the sun for a little bit." an elderly passerby said.

Scarlet was not quite in the mood for a verbal confrontation. If anything, she would be the one to utter his words. Even so, she chuckled a bit, conceding with the old man's remarks, as she herself has much to learn what the outside world has to offer. Despite her travels throughout the last century, the evolution of mankind and their technologies had proven her obsolete self. It was there, that a little spark of inspiration ignited within her head. Perhaps she should frequent the library for a change, in addition to filling her bookshelf with new covers. After all, what collections of books that Scarlet had accumulated over the years were left behind to facilitate her light travels. Her last visit to Inferno was a good start to catch up on many things, as well as a warm reunion with her American associate.

Before long, she found herself at home, breaking out in sweat. She tended to Hogan's food and water, before settling down for a breather. By now, the empty apartment marked the departure of her roommate, and she had little time to spare for leisure. The girl grabbed her bag, laden with her fresh uniform and hygienic auxiliaries, as she made ready to leave for work.

"I'll see you later tonight, little Hogan." Scarlet waved at the pup, before closing the door behind her.

Dousing herself with all the sunscreen that she had, the vampire took flight. She finally decided to concede with her situation, and propped open her umbrella. Like a nomad roaming the scorching desert, Scarlet had covered herself from head to toes with at least two layers of clothing, despite the hot weather. If anything she was less keen on being exposed as a vampire than minding what those on the streets had to say. She eventually arrived at work exhausted from the heat, and was met with puzzled eyes from her colleague. When asked, she simply passed it off with a nonchalant smile.

"Are you... alright, Scarlet, dear? It's literally hell outside and you're covered up like a mummy!"

"Oh it's nothing! Just feeling... under the weather a bit. That's all!"

"Well you could have called in sick. Go home and get some rest, dear. I'll get someone over to cover your shift."

Scarlet's persistent zeal and pride discerned her from such thoughts, even if she did considered it for the best.

"I'm just fine and dandy. Promise!"

"Mhm..." the lady hummed judgmentally with her brows raised, questioning Scarlet's physical integrity. "...I better not catch you unconscious in the hallway, sweetie. You know they still charge you as a staff for a checkup, right? Don't push yourself, Scar."

"Danke schon (Thank You)! Fufufu. I'll get changed." Scarlet replied, with a relieved smile.

Scarlet made her way towards the staff changing room, when she caught sight of a bleeding patient being rushed towards the Emergency Room. Given her exhausted state getting to work, the sight and aroma of blood put her in a trance. Like a smoker's first cigarette of the day, it tickled the vampire's senses, smothering her state of mind up, as everything else around her began to blur out. The sweet scent of fresh blood made her head light, as if she was flying within the confines of her own mind. To Scarlet, what she had perceived was a prime medium-rare human steak, all prepared on a tray with the staffs serving as appetizers and asparagus sides. Her hands vibrated, while she gnawed at her itching set of fangs, of which were discreetly concealed behind the curtains of her tender lips - like a set of sharp blades, ready to do the bidding of her darker yearnings.

(Go on... have a taste. No... No... Stop! Must... feast... No! ... BLOOD! STOP!!!)

The girl broke into a nearby closet and fell to her knees. The dark shrouds surrounding her irises receded, as she nibbled firmly onto her arm - drowning out the ringing voices in her head. The reptile-like slit within her eyes faded into meadows of green, as Scarlet's body vibrated nonstop for the next few minutes. She began mumbling in German, reciting some of her favorite novels, in an attempt to calm herself. The surge of dark energy within her evaporated after a while, as she gasped for air within the confines of the stuffed cell.

"... a little too close for comfort there, Scar... It's never easy, is it? What am I going to do if it gets hotter tomorrow?" Scarlet sighed, as she screened her face beneath her arms - out of shame and contempt.

[Scarlet's Day-Time Activity Completed]​

 

[MagicPenguin]

Spoiler: Dream Journal Excerpt

Two young women walk down a lonely dirt road, one dragging the other against her will. The two look nearly identical in every way--tall and willowy and beautiful with pretty faces--except for their hair, clothes and their expressions. The one in charge has silver hair, a severe expression, and wears wicked black armor darker than the blackest night; her arms are covered in tattoos of characters and images whose origins I don't know. Where this woman steps, suffering and death soon follow in her wake, but she keeps on moving as if she does not even notice the damage she caused. The woman she is dragging is dressed far more plainly, a simple skirt and blouse with long dark hair. Her expression is horrified as her twin drags her onward. She beats at the hand that holds her wrist like an iron manacle to no avail. She tries to plant her feet and dig in her heels so that she can't be moved, but her captor glides at a steady pace, uncaring of the poor girl's meager resistance.

Eventually, the road the two twins are on comes to a fork and the women stop and look down both paths, uncertain which to take. Down the right fork, I can see a path where the innocent girl dies completely and the severe woman no longer has to drag her along like dead weight. There is fire and blood and suffering beyond measure down this road, for those who cross this woman's path--be they enemy or ally-- and for the woman herself when her reckoning comes due. It ends with her slow and painful death.

Down the other fork, the innocent girl is the one who walks alone, her captor vanquished. Though she seems relieved at first, those around her suffer still, for she has not the power to save them. She is rudderless, clueless, unable to help herself in a world completely different than any she knew before. Down this path, too, is a cold and lonely demise, for she has neither the will nor the power to prevent it.

In between the two forks is a third possibility, one not marked by any beaten path, full of wild wilderness and pitfalls aplenty. Neither woman seems to notice it, focused only on the options presented to them, but down this path I see the two women walking hand in hand, not as captor and prisoner, but as sisters of a kind. They oppose each other still in some ways, but they work together even as they do. In harmonious balance, they accept one another as they are. Down this path alone can I see a happy ending for either woman, if only the two of them could see it. They remain at the split, eyes fixed on either the left or right fork, unable to see the option in between not marked by any road at all. I try to shout, to warn them that they have to step off of the road before it's too late, but they cannot hear me.

This Dream makes me feel anxious; I think a great deal rides on whichever fork the women choose, for the rest of the world as much as for they themselves.

If only they could see that third path...

Excerpt from Samantha Fletcher's Dream Journal; Age 13

Samantha Fletcher
Crowded Street -> Mall -> Deli
12:06 PM

The heat of the sun beat down on her, unrelenting, as though she were trying to walk through the middle of an active volcano and Samantha, panting and soaked in sweat though she'd only been out for all of 10 minutes, began to wonder if this adventure had really been such a good idea. She could be at home right now, relaxing in her air conditioned room, binge-watching something on Netflix or reading a book. Instead, she was risking heat stroke, trying to push her way through crowds of people packed like sardines all so she could meet Pretty Boy at his deli again. After the way he brushed her off last night, she was determined to bug him at work every chance she got until either he told her what she wanted to know so she'd leave him alone or she found another Aether person who would. Or rather, she HAD been determined. This morning. Before this heat. Now she wasn't so sure.

"So hot..." Sam muttered weakly under her breath. Her body, hunched forward slightly as though she were bearing a weight on her shoulders too heavy to carry, lolled back and forth with her dizzy swaying movements while she forced herself to keep shuffling forward. Her silver hair in its ponytail behind her brushed against her upper back as it swished side to side with the motion. Was it just her imagination, or was it getting harder to put one foot in front of the other? Her cheeks felt flush. Her purple eyes were hooded and her vision seemed blurry. She felt lightheaded and dizzy. Sam wasn't sure she could take much more of this. It was like an oven out here. Or a broiling desert. Or an oven in a broiling desert. Or...or...

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Huh?" Shaken from lamenting her misery, Sam stopped in her tracks and turned her head woodenly to her right to see who had addressed her.

"You don't look so good," said the boy her gaze fell upon. He had no viewings. He was about her age, Samantha thought, tall and skinny with neatly cut blonde hair. There was something very familiar about him, though she couldn't say what. "This heat can be dangerous if you're not careful," he continued. "Why don't you come sit inside and cool off?" He chucked his thumb over his shoulder at the entrance to a large building, the local mall. Even if Sam wanted to refuse him, she didn't really feel like she had the energy; the oppressive sun just seemed to drain it all away. She said nothing when he took her by the hand and led her inside. Distantly, Sam thought with chagrin that they probably looked more like an older brother leading her younger sister by the hand than two teenagers roughly the same age. Even overheating as she was, she had enough wherewithal to feel stung by that thought.

The cool air inside the mall was like heaven. Sam might have collapsed in relief had her mysterious companion not been holding her hand to guide her along. The boy sat her down at the food court in the mall and handed her a water bottle. "Here. Drink this. It's important to stay hydrated."

She took it gratefully and drank deep. "Thanks," she said when she finished. She looked at the boy and was again struck with the odd feeling that she knew him from somewhere, but she couldn't say where. "I appreciate your help. But, um...why?" she asked a little awkwardly.

The boy rolled his eyes. "I couldn't just leave a classmate to die of heat stroke. Don't you remember? I'm Ryan. We were in the same English class last year?" Ah. So that explained the familiarity. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised you didn't remember me. You're always off in your own little world, writing in that book or looking out the window or staring at someone out of the corner of your eye when you think they aren't paying attention."

"Oh," she said. "Um. Sorry?" Her flat, questioning tone didn't really sound sorry at all.

"No big," he said. "So what are you doing out today in this scorcher?"

"Just...running some errands," she hedged. She did appreciate his help, but she couldn't very well tell him what she was REALLY doing.

"Oh." Ryan shifted his feet a little uncertainly. A silence as oppressive as the sun outside settled between the two. Sam tried to think of something to say to him, anything to break the uncomfortable silence, but her mind was just blank. This always seemed to happen whenever she tried to talk to people.

A voice called out from across the food court. "Hey, Ryan! C'mon, man, let's go!"

Two other classmates of hers, a shorter, stockier boy with messy brown hair and a very pretty and fashionable blonde girl stood watching the two of them. The pretty blonde girl--Amanda, Samantha recalled, a popular cheerleader or something--narrowed her eyes and frowned, though from this distance Sam couldn't tell if it was at Ryan or at her.

"Oh! Hey, I gotta go. You can keep the water. I'll see you in the new school year, yeah?" He got up and began jogging away.

"Oh, um..." Sam called after him. "Yeah! S-see you then," she said, genuinely hopeful he might actually mean it.

"Bye, Sarah," he called back before walking off with his friends. The pretty girl glanced furtively in her direction, then said something to Ryan and the other guy, who both just laughed in response. Then they all walked off together.

"My name's Samantha," she muttered irritably under her breath as she watched them go. She felt angry, though Ryan getting her name wrong wasn't really why. She was more angry at herself than anything. She really did want to make friends. Why was just talking to people always so difficult? Sometimes, it seemed like every other person her age was born with a comprehensive manual about how to interact with each other and somehow her copy got lost in the mail. Looking back over the conversation she just had (if it could be called that, she thought ruefully), it seemed like she could see every stupid thing she'd said or done as plain as day in hindsight, though it did her no good now. What an idiot he must think I am, she lamented. She felt so frustrated and helpless and annoyed with herself at times like this, she just wanted to crawl into a deep hole and never come out.

She got up and stalked out of the mall. She was back out into the scorching heat, though after sitting inside a while, it didn't seem nearly as bad as before. She tried to put Ryan and her clumsy attempts to be social out of her mind. She had more important things to do anyway. Like figure out more about the Aether people and all her Dreams and viewings. She could interact well enough with Pretty Boy to grill him until he coughed up the goods, she was sure of that much, at least.

When she got to the deli and was told he'd taken the day off, she nearly cried.

Mentioned: IG42

Samantha's Daytime Activity: Complete

 

[Disco]

The Luciano Family Household​

​

Avery Luciano​

The large polished oak door before him had an impending and menacing malice oozing off of it. Avery could’ve sworn he saw some evil presence gazing him down from the door like a vicious stalker. Although that was likely his head playing games. His poor, pulsing head. Avery blinked and winced. Whatever Mark put in those cocktails… The hangover wasn’t worth the taste. The headache didn’t just have a stench of alcohol trailing it either. Avery left the damn doll in his room – all he could do was hope it wouldn’t cause a ruckus. Then there was the coffee girl…

There was just too much.

Avery finally buckled himself with a deep sigh. His hand in slow motion was it stretched toward the door handle. Avery told himself over and over to calm down. It was just his father. It was only his office. Just his father. He wishes it was that simple.

Avery walked him with calm demeanor. Even if he was hesitant on the inside, at the least he could manage to not appear afraid of the consequences. If anything, the fear that routed within Avery tied more to the future.

The world of the mafia was a strict and powerful one. There was no room for error and traitors. The hierarchy of power was to be followed. Those who broke it were as good as dead. Avery, despite his position in the mafia family, was still just another Mafioso in the ranks. He didn’t hold true power, even if he was supposed to take the reins. The men and women around Avery who made brave travels from Italy to England were in search of something powerful. A prosperous something that would lead the family to a greater structure in life. Many tenants had to be followed for this to come true. Organization, respect, understanding, compromise.

Avery had managed to break this code. While his offense wasn’t the most violent and heinous, it was still something he broke. Disrespecting Tony was against the code. No matter how much Avery hated the man, he had to follow that code. It was a cruel reality.

The young Mafioso received his verbal scolding from his father. It was quiet and calm. Not unlike Avery himself. They both knew why Avery would break out against someone like Tony. To Giovanni, his son’s motivations were clear as crystal. There was no remorse for his son despite this. He’d leave his beloved eldest with a simple warning.

“The family before yourself.”

Avery Day Action: Complete​

 

[Avari]

​

Agent Sarah Bishop and Kaysen observed the pedestrians flowing through the street. An old lady in a patterned head scarf hobbled along despite the heat, a tesco bag in each hand. A blue one-man dustcart paused outside the bar to empty a waste bin. Kaysen was on his feet immediately, getting an unobstructed view, politely but adamantly shooing the driver on, watching the street beyond. They watched a tired looking mother struggle with a squealing child on the opposite pavement. Watched a gaggle of teenagers as they idly peered into a newsagent’s window, with their backpacks slung low over their shoulders. Watched a crumpled man thread his through the thinning crowds oh his way south. Watched him shoot panicked glances left and right, watched him clasp his collar tightly to his throat in an effort to obscure his face.

Ironically, this only drew more attention to him. He was short, not over five foot two at the most. He was in a hurry, but trying not to look it. He was grey-haired and disheveled, on a mission. He was Raymond Cage.

“That’s him.” Said Kaysen. Already he was on his feet, swerving around the dustcart and maneuvered into the street some thirty meters behind the target. Sarah quickly fumbled with palmtop computer she had been writing a report on into her jacket pocket, and started after him. As she did, her sleeve caught the half-empty glass of lemonade. The glass fell, rolled across the table and promptly smashed on the pavement.

Cage heard the noise. Turned and saw her.

She flicked a look at Kaysen, cursing her own tactlessness. Cage was already looking back at Kaysen. He saw Kaysen reach into the breast pocket of his waistcoat for a weapon. A panicked look of disbelief, and Cage darted into a side street and away.

Kaysen was after him in an instant. Pedestrians scattering like startled pigeons as he burst through their midst.

​

Sarah launched herself after them, half-colliding with the woman with the pram as she did so. She ignored the woman’s impressive array of swear-words and chased down the narrow street after Kaysen. She could see his silver hair as he shimmied between a couple of shoppers. Far ahead of them, Cage was turning the next corner. As she approached it at a run, Sarah could hear angry shouts and swearing. She turned into the alleyway, and found half a dozen school kids shouting after the disappearing Kaysen. It seemed one of their mates - a freckled ginger one - had been knocked flat on his back in the pursuit.

“Watch where your fuckin’ going!” He bellowed.

Sarah quickly hopped around them, still staring down the alley as Kaysen rounded another corner. She had dropped well behind now, sixty meters at least. It was obvious she couldn’t match Kaysen’s speed. A couple of dusty construction workers laughed and joked as they began to secure a makeshift door in the chipboard wall around a building site, obviously at the end of their shift. Their hard hats were clipped to their belts and their fluorescent jackets were on their shoulders or hanging on their waists - so they were completely unprepared when Cage rammed into them like a charging bull. One caught the full brunt of impact, and practically went flying - landing on a pile of cardboard boxes a full five meters away. The younger man, had managed to avoid the worst of it, but had still taken a blow from Cage’s shoulder and had been knocked back. He was now attempting to grab Cage from behind, when Kaysen approached at full pelt and yelled at him to step aside.

Cage tore open the makeshift door, the metal rivets holding it in place flying all over the place like ping pong balls. He span around, and glared at Kaysen and seemed to convulse. From Sarah’s perspective , still halfway down the alley behind them, it looked like Cage was about to be violently sick. She heard a loud plopping sound and Cage regurgitated a green-grey glob of matter at Kaysen, who was forced to dash to the side to avoid it - colliding with the young construction worker. Cage took his chance in the confusion, and dived into the construction site.

The young worker was staring at whatever it was Cage had thrown up. It hadn’t splattered on the ground, it just lay there - pulsing and throbbing. Kaysen reached out one foot, and promptly crushed the thing into the pavement, then kicked it through the door. He was briefly prevented from following it, as the young workman - now joined by his elder colleague, grasped him by the arms. Kaysen shucked them off quickly with a swift shake of his shoulders, and said something to them with a cool smile - which made them back off.


“Excellent choice.” said Kaysen, and disappeared into the building site, still in pursuit of Cage. Sarah pounded up to the street to the door, and brandished her ID as she reached to her ear piece with her other hand.


“This is Bishop.” She gasped, completely out of breath. “We have a potential Code seven at the construction site off tileyard road. Clean-up crew requested.”

“Acknowledged. Crew on route.” A cool, calm female voice replied and Sarah nodded and switched off her earpiece. The older of the two workers was staring at her, clutching his temple which was bleeding profusely. His eyes were pale, and he seemed shaken despite his size.

“W-what’s goin on? That bloke threw up...was that Kaysen? Ain’t he police?” The door was slightly ajar, and he was about to open it for a look, but Sarah promptly pushed it shut again.

“We have this under control,” she informed them briskly. “Anyone else in the site at the moment? Anyone due to arrive for another shift?”

“We’re the last,” The younger one replied, his arm around the older one. “We were just locking up.”

“-but the floors aren’t all in yet. External sheeting don’t go that much higher either.That place is a death trap above the fifth floor without safety equipment.”

Sarah leaned back, and stared up into the late afternoon sky. The building loomed over her, a cliff of scaffolding and concrete. Far above, a dirty yellow crane poked out above the top floor. Green
fabric netting flapped in the breeze around the unfinished office block. She turned around and pointed to the yellow hard hat clipped to the older man’s waist.

“I’ll need that then.” She said. He hesitated. “Come on, we haven’t got all day.” She pulled the door open again, it was barely holding on to what remained of its hinge.

“Lock this behind me and remain here. If anyone comes with ID like mine, follow their instructions - I’ve already radio’d for back up.”

----​

Behind the barrier, it was gloomier. The summer sun failing to penetrate the dark interior. Sarah paused for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust. She casually threw the hard hat into a rusting yellow skip as she passed it. The thing Kaysen had kicked threw the door had fetched up against the side of the skip. It had unfurled now, like a snot-colored jellyfish. The thing gurgled for a moment before it went stiff, leaking a yellow bile into the dust. She could hear running on the floor above her. Shoes scrapping on concrete, she scanned the floor to see where they could have gone and stepped through a gap in the wall where emergency fire exit doors would soon be fitted and glanced up into the stairwell. Concrete stairs made a four-sided spiral up into the building. There were no rails in place, so she hugged the wall, staying as far away from the edge as possible. She made her way up flight by flight and the drop became sheerer and more disorienting. Her lungs began to burn as she reached the ninth floor. Beyond the next landing was the sound of scuffling, so she slowed her progress and peered out carefully.

The late afternoon sun fell in a brilliant shaft of light angled through the whole area. Concrete reinforcement wire poked out of blocks in the center. On a cross-beam in the center stood Kaysen. He was balanced, seemingly unconcerned with the terrifying drop below him. He had a pistol in his hand, trained on the far side of this shell of a room.

Cage had picked his own way cafefully over the precarious fretwork of girders, and now scrambled over the partly constructed exterior wall. He had to use both his hands to balance, grasping the weathered steel of the scaffolding. Sarah could see that his grey suit was stained down the front, as if he had been sick over it. He turned to face Kaysen, the race had clearly exhausted him and took deep, desperate breaths of air. He was well and truly cornered.

​

Kaysen must have been thinking the same thing.

“It’s over.” He said simply. “You have nowhere to go.”

Cage peered behind himself, out across the city. While he did this, Sarah carefully and quietly shuffled into the room. She caught the horrifically long drop down, and clutched the wall to steady herself when a momentary wave of nausea washed over her. Cage swiveled back around to consider Kaysen again, careful not to overbalance on the scaffold platform. Sarah could now see that the stain on his suit was a dark red. His neck and face didn’t seem to be marked. Maybe he had somehow scraped himself running through the building. He was breathing easier now, and was smiling broadly - but his smile wavered slightly when he saw Sarah approaching from the back of the room, but quickly refocused on Kaysen.

Kaysen had not moved from his previous position in the center. He held his pistol in a one-handed grip, unwaveringly pointed at Cage. He knew Sarah was roughly twenty meters behind him, even though she hadn’t spoken a word. He waggled the fingers of his free hand slightly, to indicate that she should stay back.

“You’ve admired the view.” Kaysen called out to him. “And you know you’re going nowhere.”


Cage cocked his head to his side, contemplating Kaysen. “That weapon is fascinating. I haven’t seen anything with that design before. Is it a prototype?”


“It’s a FN Five-Nine.” Kaysen replied calmly. “Mark VI. Fires high caliber custom made 32mm cartridges. More than enough to take even someone like you down.”


“Someone like me? How Interesting. That’s not police issue is it? Definitely not in this country. Where did you get the cartridges?”

Kaysen’s aim didn’t falter. “What matters is where you may be getting one. Step away from the edge. Carefully.”

“Oh, I think I’m safer where I am. I’ve been told all about your sponsors, Mr Detective. I’ll take my chances here thanks.”

Kaysen moved his head to one side, and Sarah could see him smiling grimly. “Very well. Perhaps we can start from the beginning then - with your connection to the deaths of sixteen vagrants. Each a few minutes walking distance from your home address, which you moved into four weeks ago; exactly the time the deaths began.”

Cage tutted. “I heard about those. Appalling really. Saw it on the news.”

“No,” Kaysen interrupted. “You didn’t see it on the news. The number of victims was never made public. We made sure of that - so you are unusually well informed.”

“I suppose I am. You can find anything out on google.”

“Their times of death match the exact times you had your lunch breaks at work, or you just left. We checked with your employer. They all match.”

Cage’s smile didn’t change. “A simple coincidence. It’s no crime to take a walk at lunchtime.”

“You were killing people, not time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“...attacking defenseless victims and splitting open their heads.”

“How terrible!”

“You have an Abnormal ability. You can feed on spinal fluid to gain immense strength and speed - God knows how you found that out - You murdered them by biting into the backs of their necks.”

Cage laughed in disbelief.

“In fact,” Kaysen persisted. “Isn’t that spinal fluid now? All over your shirt collar?”

Cage raised his hands to his face, an almost involuntary reaction. His face clouded with anger.

Kaysen smirked. “Made you look. Your first mistake was trusting the Luciano. We have been aware of their smuggling of Abnormal individuals for quite some time, but you neglected to inform them of the origin of your power. You believed they would cover up your behavior if you paid them - but their desire to survive supersedes their greed.”

The breeze through the building had began to stiffen now, despite the hot weather, though Kaysen’s stance remained rock steady. Cage took another look backwards into the street far below. Returned his gaze to Kaysen. He didn’t look angry anymore - more calm.

“I...see.”

“Your strength after feeding is immense. You are one of the few who would be capable of the destruction seen in Cove-”

“No!” Cage suddenly snapped. “That had nothing to do with me!”

“We can discuss that later.” Kaysen replied coolly. “There’s no way to escape from this. Agent Bishop is behind me. She’s already called for back-up. So even if you did get past me - which you would never manage - you would never be able to break the cordon around this building. Come away from the edge. Now.”

“Are you going to read me my rights?” Smiled Cage, regaining his cool.

“You are property of the Foundation now. You do not have any rights. You are not human. You are Abnormal. And that means we are the only ones who can help you.”

Cage laughed now. “Help me?” He repeated, before laughing again. “I know what you do to people like me. I can smell the blood on you, Mr Detective.”

Sarah thought she saw Kaysen’s arm tense up. “No more fooling around, Raymond. Come away from the edge.”

Cage murmured something to himself, studying his feet like he had never seen them before. He looked up, and grinned at Kaysen, like it was all a huge joke.

“I think I’ll take my chances.” He said cheerfully.

Cage allowed himself to fall. His feet didn’t move, his arms remained calmly by his side. He just dropped backwards, as though expecting someone to catch him.

But no one did. Raymond Cage was still smiling as he plunged backwards, head first and tumbled to his death.

---

Mentions: Disco

 

[Avari]

WEATHER: CLOUDY| UNCOMFORTABLY HUMID
UPCOMING EVENTS: N/A
NEXT FULL MOON: 28TH AUGUST

NOTABLE LOCATIONS
INFERNO: OPEN FOR MEMBERS| JAZZ NIGHT

NOTES:
NIGHTTIME ENDS 6TH FEB
koala : Elena needs to receive the summons for questioning at the Police Station Friday Morning.
The Suicide near Piccadilly is starting to break on the news.
​

 

[Avari]

Sarah Bishop pushed her way through the police cordon. Her words were "Excuse me" and "Sorry" as she moved the police constables aside, but her tone was "Get the hell out of my way". She knew that they responded to a tone of authority, and were accustomed to simply obeying orders that were spoken clearly and unambiguously. It was a technique she had seen other Foundation Agents use, but Sarah was still trying to be polite about it. Sounding more assertive meant she got things done faster, got to her destination sooner.

Not that Cage was going anywhere in a hurry. His last journey had come to an abrupt end after only a few seconds.

"Excuse me...keep those pedestrians back there, please. Remain behind the second cordon - authorized individuals only. Thank you."

The Foundation had been quicker than the police, with a small crew arriving before the Police even got wind of the incident. They had set up a guarded perimeter roughly seventy meters within the police's own, preventing even the emergency services from approaching the scene. Four intimidating looking fully armored Foundation guards were standing by, wearing their black armor and featureless masks. As Agent Bishop approached, she saw the length of a Bus that seemed to have stalled in the middle of the carriageway.

"Can this be moved?" She asked the closest one.

"NO MA'AM. YOU'LL SEE WHY." He replied, his voice mechanically treated and robotic. It served to keep them completely anonymous, though it was a tad OTT as far as Sarah was concerned. Not that she'd ever tell their commander that. Black creeped her out at the best of times, and she was always far happier when that terminator of a woman was somewhere far, far away - which right now, thankfully; she was.



She rounded the front end of the bus accompanied by the guard she had addressed. The windscreen was a crazed spider's web of splintered glass, with a smear of blood down its full height. The diesel engine was still chattering away, and the crumpled body of Raymond Cage lay sprawled under the front wheels.

"EIGHT FLOORS DOWN. HITS THE TOP OF THE BUS. SLIDES DOWN THE FRONT. BUS DOESN'T STOP IN TIME. FINISHES THE JOB."

Sarah could see a dark pool spreading beneath the bumper, like a target had Cage's head in its dead center under the front of the bus. A familiar voice poked around the side - a man with sleeked black hair and half rimmed glasses. His name was Doctor William Cohen - and frankly, Agent Bishop felt the man was a bit of a dick. He was one of the Foundation's medical staff, who was usually either scraping up bodies or cutting them open - usually both. Sometimes, if the victim was lucky - they were dead by the time he got his hands on them.

"Hurry along, Bishop." He snapped, ignoring the Foundation guard completely. "Sanders is already donning her rubber gloves. You're not going to want miss this. Speaking of-"

He rapped the front of the bus with his knuckle. "Sanders, get this bloody bus back a bit. What's that driver doing?"

A woman's head appeared through the driver's side window. One of Bishop's fellow agents - Hannah Sanders. She was a nice girl, from what Bishop had seen - but they rarely had the chance to talk.

"He's in no fit state to drive..."

"You can bloody talk, Try the reverse gear would you?" Doctor Cohen replied, annoyed. "It'll be hard performing an autopsy on a meat pancake."

There was a horrendous grind of gears, and the whole bus seemed to shudder. With a reluctant grown and a startling hiss of air brakes, the vehicle slowly moved backwards. From beneath the front of it emerged the gory mess of Raymond Cage. His limbs were twisted in impossible angles. There was so much blood that it created a reflective surface, in which Sarah could see the streetlights that had started to come on around the scene of the accident.

Doctor Cohen considered the remains with a passive expression, before beginning to snap photographs with a digital camera. Sarah had seem him at a few scenes of death by now, yet was still amazed by his complete sense of detachment to what he was doing. Sanders joined them at the body. She had given up trying to park the bus neatly, leaving it to one of the Foundation Guards who had experience operating large vehicles.

"Nasty," She said. "Did he jump or did Director Kaysen...?"

"Suicide. Kaysen cornered him. He just fell back...like he was collapsing on a bed.

"We got the right guy then. The spine one." Sanders noted, still taking pictures.

"I believe "got" is putting a rather positive spin on it." Kaysen's voice crackled into their earpieces.

Sarah had left Kaysen back on the eighth floor when she'd hurried down to see what had happened to Cage. Who knew what Kaysen had been doing up there since then - she remembered he liked to look out across the city from high vantage points when he was afforded a rare, quiet moment. He must have decided to descend in style, because he was using the builders lift down the side of the building. He decided to jump onto the top of the wooden partition and then leap the remaining ten feet to street level, agile as a cat.
"As interrogations go, I confess it was not one of my best." Kaysen concluded, giving Sarah a pat on the back as he glided past. "I'm sure we can still learn something from our friend here. Get him back to HQ and do an autopsy."

Cohen sighed. "Let's get this guy shifted. What I need is a really big spatula. I hate it when I get brain under my fingernails."

As the Doctor reached forward to begin moving the body, it suddenly shuddered and the broken, bloody approximation of a face let out a wretched, awful scream. Sanders and Sarah screamed themselves and jumped back, as Cohen practically threw himself backwards, landing with a hard thud on the pavement.

Kaysen had not jumped, and had reflexively pulled out his gun, which he now had trained on the pile of twisted, gurgling flesh.

"Oh my god," Sarah gasped. "He's still alive. How is that possible, he's practically inside out!!!"

Cohen had already recovered, and was digging through a bag of surgical tools he had brought with him to the crash site.

"Get him stabilized!" Kaysen ordered.

"He's not gonna survive..." Cohen shot back as he produced a needle filled with vicious looking green liquid.

Kaysen smirked at him as he fished out his mobile phone.

"Yes he will. I know just the girl for the job."

"Of course you do." Sarah sighed, unable to take her eyes off the writhing mess of bone and muscle that was somehow still clinging onto life.

Cohen paused before he thrust the needle into Cage's twisted body, as a sudden thought occurred to him. "Oh god, not that psycho you picked up..."

Kaysen simply smiled, as he began dialing a number.
​

 

[MagicPenguin]

Roland Fairchild
Park
6:46 PM

With a sigh, Roland let himself fall on the park bench, exhausted. It had been a long day. Between learning what he could from Jim, performing both his own and Silver's regular duties, and keeping a constant eye on the girl to make sure she did her work without trying to cheat, he had no shortage of work to do. What he said to her the first time she tried to steal the jar of chocolate must have sunk in, because there were no more serious attempts after that, just sullen stares and angry pouts. In the end, she completed all the work, though, and with relatively few mistakes to boot. It took Jim 10 minutes before he managed to pick his jaw up off the floor when he found out the plan actually, blessedly worked. Before they left, Roland was only too happy to hand over the entire jar to her. He gave her plenty of head pats and lots of praise too. Teaching her to read wasn't so different from training a hound to sit and roll over.

In addition to the chocolate, Roland also gave her a few review sheets on the letters she learned to complete for "homework," as they called it here. If she completed them to Tannur's satisfaction, he told her, her keeper would have even more sweets for her when she was done. Whether or not she did was up to Tannur, though. Roland's Silver duty was done for the day. He sighed contentedly again on his park bench, taking in the fresh summer air.

Roland felt more at peace now than he had in quite some time. The sky was a beautiful red-orange hue, getting darker by the hour as the sun sank further and further below the horizon. The oppressive heat of earlier had faded to a comfortable warmth. Roland's red locks blew in the gentle evening breeze. The chirping of the birds was replaced by the whistling of the crickets. Parents walked with smiles on their faces, accompanying their small children home after a day of fun in the sun. Couples sat together on benches of their own, holding hands, watching the sunset and enjoying the quiet evening much as he was. One father and son duo were playing catch. An old woman sat feeding the pigeons before the birds went to nest for the night.

For the first time since before Covent Garden, there was nothing pressing that Roland needed to be doing right now. He was at truce with the Shadow Queen and her forces. For tonight at least, the search for Odania would be handled by Ludwig and Quinn, so no worries about that either. He had no ancient cities to hunt, no witches to kill, no missing allies to locate. For just one night, Roland could simply sit back and relax. He'd almost forgotten what that felt like. With a smile, he dug into his backpack and pulled out his notebook and a pencil so that he could indulge his hobby. He flipped through drawings of creatures, places, and people from Aether, things he drew from memory, in addition to scenes from Earth. Roland had always been a talented artist and he carried this notebook around with him for when he had a rare free moment and inspiration struck. He started first sketching the father and son tossing a baseball back and forth. Then he went to the old woman feeding the birds. He was halfway through drawing the couple holding hands and watching the sunset together when he was suddenly interrupted.

"Yoooo, Ron, that you, man? I haven't seen you around here in forever."

"Oh, hello, " Roland responded. He didn't know his name, but the young man addressing Roland was someone he'd met during his first month on Earth. Roland had no job then. He spent much of his time exploring the city, hunting for signs of Lucrezia or her minions so he could kill them and go home. He stopped in this park sometimes in the evenings then to draw, much as he was doing now. Occasionally, people would ask for sketches of themselves as well, and some would even pay him small change for the effort. This person was one of the people who often dropped by for a drawing back then. "I've been a little busy, " he told the man. "I got a new job, y'see."

"Far out, man. Hey Sarah, " he said to the girl he was with. "This is the guy I was telling you about. His pictures are so good, he's like Michaelangelo or something. C'mon Ron, can you give my new girlfriend here a portrait?"

Roland flipped to a clean page with startling quickness and a winning smile, abandoning the half-finished couple. He might not remember this man's name, but the guy was one of the ones who paid for a drawing, he certainly remembered that much. Not everyone did. "Alright. Why don't you have a seat here next to me, miss? Smile or pose if you like, but try not to move too much. This should only take a few minutes."

When he was done, he handed the girl her picture and her smile threatened to outshine the setting sun. "Thanks, Ron. Excellent as always, my man." His gratitude was all well and good, but Roland was even happier for the five pound note the man slipped him.

"Hey, do me next!"

This from the boy who was playing catch with the father earlier. Both were now standing behind Roland's bench. They must've been watching him draw.

Roland glanced quickly at the sun, still high enough to give light. For another hour or so, anyway. "Sure, why not?"

The boy sat next to him with am an expectant grin. "Remember now, " Roland said. "No moving till I'm done. Understand?" The boy nodded vehemently and Roland set to work.

When he was done with this one, he handed it to the boy, who was thrilled. As a bonus, he gave the picture he'd drawn of him playing catch earlier to the father. "Wow. You're really good at this, buddy." Another five pounds.

Roland looked around and suddenly found a little crowd had grown around him. He wasn't too surprised. Much the same happened every time he came here and started drawing.

"Hey, how about me?" One girl called.

"No, no, do me next!" Exclaimed another.

"No, me!" This, from another young boy.

There were maybe seven or eight people gathered about now, all wanting pictures of their own.

Another look at the sun told Roland he had maybe forty minutes of good light left now. Enough time for two or three more, he figured.

"Alright, alright, " he shouted over the demands for pictures. "I'll do you next, " he said, pointing to a middle-aged woman. She seemed likeliest to tip well, he thought. She sat down beside him and he got to work. The others quieted down and formed a circle around him, all watching him work raptly and hoping he'd have enough time to do one for them as well. Roland couldn't help but smile as he worked, happy to be the center of so much attention, and not, as might have been the case on Aether, from people who wanted to capture, kill, or just suck up to Prince Roland of Alcamoth or the Hero of Light.

No, for tonight, people just wanted a picture from regular old Ron.

Mentioned: WillfulWren Avari IG42

Roland's Night Activity Complete

 

[Shotgunpenguin]

Juniper Arc
Apollo's Courier Service/Park/Streets of London/Juniper's apartment

Juniper let out a relieved sigh as she leaned back in her chair, the cold air from the ceiling was a godsend from the pressing heat outside. After her final delivery, and a small detour, the refuge of the store had never felt better. She had already clocked out for the day and was simply taking some time to cool off before she had to head to the store. She would need to procure more bandages for her bathroom, as well as as some food for Lisa and something called a litter box. Her attempt to sneak the kitten in last night were less than successful. Fortunately for her it was her neighbors daughter, Felicia, that caught her and she was rather infatuated with the little cat. Her silence was bought with the promise of being able to play with the kitten when she was home, and to look after it while she wasn't.

"Hey, Juniper" Lucas called out, walking up to her with a large grin on his face. "Are you clocked out already?"

Juniper nodded her head at his question, then raised her eyebrows "What's up Lucas?"

The older man laughed and rubbed the back of his head "Well as it turns out, we've had a really good month last month. So with some of the extra money that was lying around, I've decided to treat everyone to a few drinks next week. It's this great little pub a couple miles away. Be great if you could join us."

A pub? Juniper though for a moment before the prospect of free drinks won her over. "Sure, that would be great."

"Great, we're all going to meet up over here before we head over. If you need a ride I could give you a lift." He reached out and patted her shoulder "I'll see you then."

She couldn't help but smile as he walked away. It had been a long time since she had the opportunity to drink with others. The thought briefly made her sad, remembering her soldiers that she had left behind in Aether, but she quickly pushed it away as she got up. The sun had started to fall, and she still had to get to the store before they closed.

Juniper shifted the plastic bag further up her arm as she walked alongside her bike. It was starting to get dark out, the bright bulbs of the lamps above her had switched on and were casting a dim shadow as she walked. She could still not believe that these humans had managed to store light and were able to use it in such numbers without magic. She had tried to learn more about how they accomplished such a feat, however that had caused more questions to spring forth. She could hardly understand this 'electricity' as it was, let alone what an 'electrical grid' or a 'circuit' was.

Her walk back to her apartment from the store took her down a route she had not taken before. She would have walked back the way she came, but after questioning the girl at the counter she had said that this way would get her home quicker. She observed her surroundings as she passed them, her eyes settling on what appeared to be a small crowd surrounding a man as he studied the woman in front of him. Juniper paused for a moment, before shrugging and making her way over to the group, stopping to make sure no cars were hurtling down the road. After her lie to Lucas she had looked up what a car crash looked like, to see exactly why it was considered so bad.

Juniper was no stranger to carnage, but the images she had looked at would forever be imprinted in her memory. "How could one even survive such a thing..." Her thoughts trailed off as she got closer to the group. The man was some sort of artist judging from the picture of the woman he had drew. Moving around the crowd she couldn't help but stare at his face as she recognized him. The prince of Light himself, the enemy of Lucrezia and all of her comrades, and the man who she partially blamed for the death of her queen. She waited until the woman thanked him, slipping him a note before she spoke up. "My my, I never pegged you for an artist, Prince." She pushed herself to the front of the crowd, much to the displeasure of those around her.

The Hero of Light looked up from the slip of paper he'd received from the woman to stare at Juniper blankly. There was no apparent recognition in his eyes. "Prince? No, my name is Ron. I'm afraid you must have me confused with someone else, miss." He slipped the paper into his pocket and looked past Juniper to the crowd she'd shouldered through. "I'd say we have enough light for one more. Who wants to be the last?" A jumble of noise went up from the small gathering, everyone clamoring to get his attention.

Tch, so he was going to ignore her? "I would like my portrait drawn then. I assume this shall be enough?" She asked, fishing the 10 pound note out of her back pocket and holding it out to Roland.

He stared at her again for a moment, saying nothing. His eyes went hungrily back and forth from her face to the ten pound note in her hand and he licked his lips. The clamoring behind her got a little louder. "Alright, then. If you insist." He slipped the money into the same pocket he had the note. Then he flipped to a clean page in his sketch book. "Have a seat, then." A huge set of disappointed "Awwws" went up behind her and much of the crowd started to disperse on learning that he wouldn't be drawing anything for them today.

Juniper couldn't help but grin as the crowd dispersed from around them. She leaned her bike against the end of the bench and took a seat as he requested,setting her bag down by her side. "Alright prince, you can drop the act now. Or do you prefer 'Ron' now over Roland?"

The man's eyes were focused on his notebook with only occasional glances at Juniper as he worked. His hand moved carefully but quickly. "Ron or Roland," he whispered over the scratch-scratch-scratching of his pencil on paper. "But not 'Prince' or 'Hero' where others can hear. I expect that kind of carelessness from Silver, not you."

A scowl briefly formed on her face, before it was replaced with a neutral expression "You don't know a thing about me." She kept her voice low, before asking "You've been in contact with Silver?

"Unfortunately," he replied wryly.

"I can understand, Back on Aether she wasn't the most.." She trailed off, attempting to find the right word before sighing "She's a fine comrade, but she has all of the brains of a pile of rocks. Trying to get her to do anything that she wasn't expressly commanded to do was more painful than scraping off you're own skin."

Roland merely grunted. "Her brains aren't the problem. She's got plenty of those, if only Lucrezia taught her how to use them. Instead, the madwoman chose to treat her as a weapon to be used and disposed of later with little regard for the girl's prospects past that point."

"Watch you're tongue, Roland!" Juniper felt her legs clench as they prepare to stand, but forced herself to relax them.

Roland kept right on drawing as if he didn't notice her sudden agitation. The crowd from earlier was nearly all gone, giving them plenty of opportunity to speak freely in low whispers. "Ah, but you would know all about being used by Lucrezia, wouldn't you? I know more of you than you think. She made certain sure that everyone, be they aligned with Shadow or Light, knew there was a human high in her ranks, hoping to entice more humans to defect and submit. A clever little public relations gambit on her part. Unfortunately for you, Staxos was pretty good at public relations himself. I doubt there's anywhere in the realm of light you could wander where you wouldn't be convicted of treason and summarily hung for being an apostate and a traitor, made a harsh example of to deter anyone from following your example. You're a reviled, homeless stranger in the lands of your birth, forbidden ever to walk there freely again as long as you live, even if you ever do make it back to Aether. That's what Lucrezia's machinations did for you, Juniper."

Juniper felt the rage bubble up in her throat as she wished for nothing more than to leap over and beat the princes face until it resembled jam. She gritted her teeth and dug her nails into her palms so hard a small drip of blood broke through. "Do you think that these words would shake me? Before, I was only a brigand living towards a shallow existence of razing villages and stealing what I could. Already I would be hung for my crimes, yet your esteemed church seemed to look the other way when they needed soldiers. But now, now I have a goal. I have someone that I could fight for, something worth giving my life for in order to see it succeed. You can speak ill of me all you wish, but before you seek to slander my queen let us not forget that it was you're church that sought you're death. Or are their crimes instantly forgiven?"

Roland stopped sketching briefly and looked at his drawing. He must've made a mistake, because his mouth momentarily twisted in distaste. He began vigorously erasing the perceived imperfection before he went right back to sketching, his eyes set in deep concentration. Eventually, he finally answered her.

"You're not wrong," he admitted. "But the Church hasn't got anything to do with you and Lucrezia. So, where was I? Ah, yes. Shunned by the realm of Light." The man's tone was remarkably light despite the gravity of what he was saying. "Well, I can't imagine you're very well liked among the Shadowspawn that inhabit her lands any more than you are by the humans, elves, and dwarves who believe you betrayed them. That witch's scheming turned you into a pariah, a hated outsider no matter where you choose to live. On top of that she treats you, like Silver, as a weapon with little value beyond how many of her enemies you can kill before you finally break. As I'm sure you know better than anyone, one doesn't mourn when her spear breaks in the heat of battle, Juniper, especially not her. She simply throws the old one away and grabs another." He shook his head sadly. "I cannot fathom why you would choose to follow her so fervently after all she's done."

With a sigh, he put his pencil down and tore out the page he'd been working on. He handed it to Juniper. It was a drawing of her, though not in her earth form. Instead, it was a full body sketch of her standing tall with spear in hand, red hair blowing in an unseen wind, face a picture of ferocity and pride. It was her as she had been on the day of the attack on Blackrock, before she jumped into the portal.

"Hey, bud, I think you messed up this time," said someone who came and looked over her shoulder to see the finished product. "That's not her."

"Oh?" Roland asked him blandly. "I suppose I just let my imagination get the better of me this time." The man scratched his head in confusion and walked off shaking his head.

Juniper took the paper, narrowing her eyes as the man remarked that it did not look like her. Looking at it, she couldn't help but feel a tinge of sadness as she looked at it. The woman in the picture seemed confident, but she knew that she was scared. Scared for herself, for the troops that she would be leaving behind, and scared of the unknown that she would be thrust into.

"Lucrezia has done more for me than the church ever would." She growled through clenched teeth. Standing up, she grabbed the bag at the base of the chair and one of the handlebars on her bike. She shot a glare at the crown prince and began to walk away, but paused and looked back at the prince "Look after Silver. If I find out that you've done anything to her.."

Roland didn't respond. He only watched her walk off. He didn't look mad at her, or offended by her words, or even worried about her threat. No, the only thing she could see dwelling behind those green eyes was, infuriatingly, pity.

Juniper's anger hadn't lowered since her interaction with the crown prince. The sun had completely disappeared, replaced with the dim glow of the moon and the brightness of the street lamps. She was gripping the handlebars of her bike so hard that her knuckles turned white, her teeth grinding against each other as she paused at a crosswalk. Letting out a scream, she kicked the metal pole with the sole of her shoe in an attempt to burn off some of her anger. A couple who were passing by looked at her strangely, but the glare that she shot them had them turn away and hurry past her.

"Damn prince." She continued her walk home in angry silence, those who passed her gave a wide birth. As she was passing by an alley she heard the sounds of a struggle. "Probably just another damn cat." She shook her head, continuing her path until she heard a mans voice cry out. Okay, so maybe not a cat. Turning around, she leaned her bike against the building and, dropped her bag and ran down the alley. The sight she came upon was a youngish looking man in a blue jacket being threatened by a man wearing a knife. The knife wielding man had his hood up, preventing her from getting a good look at his face.

Acting quickly, Juniper turned and lowered her shoulder as she charged at the assailants side. He turned towards the new arrival, but couldn't do anything as she crashed into his side , the two of them sprawling to the ground. To his credit, the man kept a firm grip on his knife as he swung it wildly from the ground, but she was already up and out of his range. Instincts kicking in, she looked around for anything that could be used as a weapon, only to curse as the man rose to his feet.

His eyes roamed over her, and then to the man he was threatening. For a moment it looked like he was about to flee, but instead he charged at her slashing wildly as he approached. Juniper waited for him to get closer, dodging back as he sought to slash her throat open. The man lunged forward and thrusted his knife towards her stomach, but she turned her body to the side and grabbed his wrist with her left hand. She pulled her right arm back before sending her elbow into his nose with a sickening crunch. He cursed and brought his other hand up to his nose, only for Juniper to twist her body and pull his caught arm backwards over her shoulder. Her free hand joined her other one around his wrist, and with a yell she raised and brought the arm back over her shoulder.

The knife cluttered to the ground with a yell as searing pain raced up the mans arm. Wrenching it again, Juniper tucked her hips and flipped the man over her back onto the ground. The air was driven out of his lungs as he hit the ground, but Juniper knew that he was still dangerous. Pivoting on the spot, she brought her leg back and punted the side of his skull. His eyes shut as his head rolled to the side, unconscious but still breathing. Juniper took a deep breath as she rested her hands on her knees. The young teen who was bring threatened seemed shocked, before recovering and looking between the two of them. "Holy shit, thank you! You just saved my life!"

Juniper held out a finger towards him, cutting him off as she took another breath. "I wouldn't have needed to save you if you had just defended yourself." She glared at the teen before continuing "Does no one here carry a weapon?"

The teen was taken aback by her sudden question "What? Listen, things here are messed up. We can't carry anything to defend ourselves, else we get stopped by the police for carrying a weapon." The teen glared down at the unconscious man before kicking his body "But these fucks can stab someone and the police wouldn't even arrest em. They'd probably arrest the guy who got stabbed for fighting back."

Her eyes widened in shock and the teen noticed "I'm assuming you're not from around here? No idea why you'd want to come to this shithole, everything is going to hell and the bloody police aren't doing shit about it."

"What do you mean," she approached the teen and looked him straight in the eyes "Why don't the police do anything?" Juniper's expression could only be described as a mix between shock and rage as the teen explained the state of their police. It was sickening to hear the stories that the teen told her, she couldn't even bring herself to imagine if these people were in charge of her protection.

As she returned to her bike a new rage burned inside of her, one even greater than the one before. She rushed back to her apartment, slamming the door open as she entered and slamming it closed behind her. The loud bang caused Lisa to jump and let out a mewl as she retreated to behind her chair. Throwing her bag on the floor she stomped her way over to her bed and sat down. She was to angry for sleep, so instead she settled for burning a hole in the floor for the rest of the night.

Written with: MagicPenguin
Mentioned: Avari , WillfulWren
Juniper's Night Activity: Complete

 

[koala]

Elena "Rose" Benoit
Location: Home
Interactions: MagicPenguin

There wasn't much to be done or sad over the last day or so besides work, eat, and get with Arryn whenever necessary. Their performance was coming up and the two had finally decided on a song. It was different from the usual tunes Elena sang or played, but it had a whimsical, fantasy vibe that she figured Arryn might appreciate. She was sure he'd feel uncomfortable on stage regardless, but a melody like that of Aether may or may not soothe him even if just a little bit.

Elena clocked out like usual and took the same path home. She entered the bus, let a few stops go by, and then walked the remaining 15 minutes under the darkening sky. Although she'd taken the same route for years, something was especially eerie that night and she couldn't put it into words. All she could say was that it gave her a dreadful feeling--one she did not appreciate whatsoever.

Finally home, the blonde woman checked the mailbox that sat delicately near her door. She saw a rather familiar official-looking envelope poking out of it and her chest tightened. Reaching for it, she felt something lodge in her throat as she quickly tore it open to read.

"Dear Miss Elena Benoit," she read, pushing her front door open and stepping inside. "We request your presence at Camden Station regarding the Covent Garden incident on Friday, July 11 at 9:00 AM. If conflict arises, please contact us at this number so your appointment can be rescheduled."

Oh god, Elena thought as she quickly got out her phone. "Oh, god. Arryn." The woman said when her friend picked up her call. "They know. I've been summoned again so that means they know, right?"

 

[MagicPenguin]

Spoiler: Dream Journal Excerpt

A creature of twisted shadows stalks through the night. It takes the form of a man, but on its face is a malicious, gruesome smile full of long, sharp, hungry teeth, one that could only belong to a monster. Gluttonous, it takes and takes and takes from the innocent who cannot stop it, never satisfied no matter how much it consumes. Its victims cry, and it gorges on their pain and their fear and their tears. Its mad cackling echoes throughout a city drowning in despair and corruption and weakness.

The monster finds another lost, helpless soul, a frightened young man, and its twisted grin widens. It prepares to feast once more. It takes one menacing step toward him where he cowers in an empty, abandoned alleyway. With a roar, it lunges, sure of its success, only to stop just before its greedy claws can rend his flesh. Its roar turns to a cry. Its grin becomes a grimace of pain. A bloody spearhead emerges from its breast. The creature of hunger and rage and shadows melts away to nothing. Holding the spear is a hooded figure, a woman whose strength is her pride and whose pride is her strength.

"For the Queen," she declares with passion. The young man she saved rejoices, and the hooded woman feels satisfied, for her strength has been proven and justice has been done. Before she can relax, however, two more shadows appear behind her, these more fearsome than the first. Full of the same hunger and fear that drove their fallen kin, they lunge at the woman, at the lost soul she saved, at the very concepts of truth and goodness and justice themselves. The very foundations of the city in which they all stand are rocked and battered beneath their assault.

With a snarl, the spear holder dispatches them as easily as the first. Two quick and vengeful thrusts. "For the Queen!" She shouts as the first melts. "For the Queen!" she shouts again as the second does the same. The melted shadows split and multiply, and where there were two vanquished foes now stand four new beasts. The woman kills these in the name of her queen and the four become eight.

"For the Queen! For the Queen! For the Queen! For the Queen!"

Again and again she stabs and the shadows melt one after another. The city she fights to protect rejoices her efforts even as it denounces them at the same time. No matter how many she kills, how tired she becomes, how many stab wounds and bullet holes she collects, still she keeps on fighting for her queen and justice and strength and herself. She stabs with her spear until her arm threatens to fall off. But this brave woman's strength will not carry her forever, no matter how great it is.

For no matter how many monsters she destroys, she is only one person, and she stands alone in a city of shadows that never sleep.

Excerpt from Samantha Fletcher's Dream Journal; Age 12

Samantha Fletcher
Library -> Crowded Street
6:59 PM

After she struck out on harassing Pretty Boy at the deli, Sam had no desire to trudge through the heat all the way back home. Instead, she decided to head to the library and wait it out so she could walk back when the sun was setting and she wasn't at risk of melting. Besides, after the press conference the night before, there was something she wanted to look into anyway, and the library was as good a place as any to do it. She found herself a computer and started digging to see what she could find out about this Jack Kaysen guy.

Ever since she saw the man on TV, Sam had had a foreboding feeling lurking in the pit of her stomach. She didn't know why. Something about him tickled her memory, as if she should know him from somewhere, but she was sure she'd never seen him before in her life. He was an investigator, and he claimed he was going to find the culprits behind Covent Garden; if anything, that should make her feel happy, right? After all, whoever blew up the place must be criminals, so Kaysen was doing the right thing, wasn't he? But if all that was true, why couldn't she shake the feeling that he was extremely dangerous? Why was it that every time she thought of him, she felt as though something horrible was going to happen? The feeling wasn't a prophecy of the future as a result of her power; her viewings didn't work that way. No, this was just Sam's gut. She just wished she knew exactly what her bloody gut was trying to tell her. Also, it was very strange, but for some reason, looking at the man, she couldn't help but think of a fox, of all things. He didn't look anything like a fox. Why was it so easy for her to think of him as one?

Nothing she could dig up on the internet pointed to anything nefarious. In fact, the man was apparently a model citizen in more ways than one. A scholar, a chess champion, a valedictorian of multiple prestigious universities, a renowned detective known for solving cases that had eluded authorities for sometimes decades; the list was endless. He was a paragon of virtue.

But Foxface was dangerous. Very dangerous. She knew he was. If only she could see how. With a sigh, she gave up on the computer and headed to her usual isolated hiding spot on the fifth floor. She sat in a cubby in a corner and pulled out her Dream journal. Now that she thought about it, the last time she came here after seeing Dragon-Man, hadn't she been looking at a Dream involving a silver fox? Silver, like the color of Kaysen's hair. Curiously, she flipped back to that very same Dream:

...I prick my finger on one of the flower's thorns and begin to bleed. I cry out and suck on the wounded finger. My father hears my cry and now he is behind me with a determined looking silver fox at his side....He points and the determined silver fox at his side pounces into the garden and rips all of my special flowers out of the ground with a vicious growl. I cry and cry and try to save them, but they are all already torn to pieces, dug up and worn to shreds by the fox's tenacity...

This was one from a long time ago, when she was only six. That wasn't too long after she started keeping a Dream journal. This Dream was actually one of the very first. She might not have remembered she ever had it if it wasn't recorded here.

The last time Sam was here, she'd been trying to figure out what it meant. Could the reason she felt a sense of familiarity looking at Kaysen be that she had Dreamed of him before in the form of this silver fox? It would also explain why she felt he was so dangerous; when this Dream came to pass, it would be a tragedy on a scale she could hardly contemplate, though she didn't know exactly what or why.

What about the flowers? She still didn't know what they were:

...Some of the flowers are average and typical, but some of them are special flowers: some of the special ones are from another country and struggle to survive in this foreign environment while others are hybrids between the foreign flowers and the regular ones....

In the Dream, the only thing she knew about them was that they were from a foreign place, trying to survive in a strange new garden. A foreign place. Like Aether? Could the flowers represent the Aether people that had been cropping up one after another the last two days?

It was just a hypothesis, but if you assumed that Kaysen was the fox and the flowers were the Aether people, the Dream seemed to be foretelling that Inspector Kaysen would eventually hunt them down and tear them to shreds. And that this would somehow lead to a horrible tragedy. Notably, on this reading, the Dream did not seem to be saying the tragedy would happen if Inspector Kaysen found the Aether people, but rather that the tragedy would happen when he did. That sent a shiver up Sam's spine.

It wasn't a perfect interpretation. There was a lot she still didn't know about this Dream: why was she there, and why her Papa? What did that represent? If the flowers were Aether people, what about the hybrids? Who were they supposed to represent? Why would catching the Aether people lead to a horrible tragedy? Because they were actually innocent like Pretty Boy said? That was tragic, but it seemed small potatoes compared to the tragedy she felt would actually occur when this Dream came to pass. So what could the tragedy actually be?

Sam wondered if there were any other Dreams that featured a silver fox. Sometimes, she found that happened: recurring themes that seemed to pop up in these foretellings over the years. She spent hours perusing every Dream she'd ever recorded for mentions of a silver fox. One day, she thought to herself with irritation, she was going to put these things into a word document so she could just hit control F at times like this.

In any event, her efforts were rewarded. There were several mentions of a Silver Fox. One was about a game of tug of war over a pit of spikes. The silver fox came at the end, sniffing around to see what had happened after everyone left. Another was about a silver fox climbing a tree to grab an acorn that fell off a branch before he could reach it. And the last was a silver fox surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves.

Interestingly, regarding the first Dream about the pit of spikes, there was also a man with the head of a dragon present. Dragon-Man. And, if she recalled correctly, one of the many, many viewings she'd seen for him two days ago was a silver fox sniffing about his red hair.

The Kaysen-hunting-Aether-people interpretation was looking likelier and likelier the more she dug. And that scared Samantha more than just about anything ever had.

She had to tell Pretty Boy, she decided. He had to know about this. The future couldn't be changed, she'd once thought. Not under any circumstances. Except that she'd seen it done first hand, by the Dragon-Man. She hoped that hadn't just been a fluke. If any Dream about the future ever needed changing, it was this one about the silver fox in the garden. She had to figure out how to do it.

Samantha had to stop Foxface.

She looked out a window and saw the sun was setting. The heat had probably relented a little bit. She could walk home without overheating now. She packed up her things and headed out into the street, leaving the library behind her. Despite the later hour, the London streets were still as packed as they ever were, but Samantha hardly noticed. She let herself be pushed along with the flow of the river of people, her mind a million miles away the entire time. She couldn't stop going over in her head everything she'd found about Foxface and the Aether people and what was going to happen if she couldn't figure out how to stop it. She remained lost in her own little world, her thoughts chasing themselves around in futile circles, until she was roughly knocked out of it and right down onto her backside.

"Ow," she cried out. She looked up to see who'd knocked into her and when she did, she let out a surprised gasp. He was a tall, broad shouldered man, well-dressed if somewhat ruffled looking. Though he'd bumped Samantha so hard, he seemed poised to keep on walking as if he hadn't even noticed she had gotten underfoot. None of that was the reason for the small silver-haired teenager's surprised reaction, though. No, that was because of the viewings this particular man carried with him.

There were seven of them, which was surprising enough on its own. Usually people had one or two, unless they were from Aether. Then they had dozens, if not hundreds, always shifting and changing right before her eyes. Was this man from Aether too? It wasn't as many viewings as she'd come to expect from one of those, but it was still way more than any normal person would have. Thoughts about the number of images quickly eluded her though when she registered what the images this man had actually were. They were some of the most gruesome she'd seen for any person in all her life, and she had seen some gruesome ones before. She was no stranger to viewings about a dark future. Still, this guy's were something else entirely.

Above his head was an image of a dismembered arm, though still moving, as though trying to crawl along by itself; another was of what appeared to be an infant with half its head missing, the left side of its face crushed into a goopy, brainy puddle of porrige with bits of undeveloped skull dotted throughout the mix for flavor. Its one remaining eye was open, staring lifelessly in Sam's direction so that it seemed to be looking straight at her. She suppressed the sudden urge to retch and looked at the next. The third viewing was a female hand with a wide hole in the palm, its fingers bent at odd, horrendously painful looking angles, its fingernails torn off and bleeding profusely. The fourth was the man himself, holding a big hammer; he was using it to hit something in a large brown bag over and over again with a look of deep concentration etched on his face. Whatever was in the bag didn't move, but she couldn't help but note that it was roughly person-sized, kind of like a body bag you might see on police TV shows. The fifth was an image of the man standing in the middle of a rainstorm under an umbrella wearing a heavy coat. His eyes were cold and he had a stony, inexpressive look on his face, as if he were standing in the middle of a normal downpour. He did not appear at all affected by the fact that the rain coming down in buckets all around him was actually colored bright red.

The last two images were, blessedly, no where near as abhorrent as the previous five. A little eerie, maybe, but compared to the rest...tolerable, to say the least. The sixth was a mysterious looking black ring covered in strange writing. It had a blood-red gem set into it. It seemed to exude a very malevolent aura, enough to make her shudder, though it was almost a relief to look at it compared to the others. The last viewing was just a manhole cover, open slightly so she could see into its shadowed depths. Bright red eyes seemed to peek at her from the darkness of the sewer beneath the manhole. Aside from being out of place among all the others that were so positively grisly, this one was also notable because the manhole cover was one Samantha knew the location of. She'd passed it by as she was leaving the library. It was cordoned off by some workers doing some sort of maintenence, as she recalled, but it was open when she saw it in real life, just as it was in the viewing she saw here.

"Hey, get up, kid, you're blocking the way," called an angry voice. A man hastily stepped over her prone body, nearly stepping on her torso. That jarred Samantha out of her study of the man who'd knocked her down. She hurriedly returned to her feet, cheeks red with embarrassment, before she returned her eyes to the one with the viewings. The man had his back to her and was walking away now. She stood for a moment, arguing with herself. She didn't really want anything to do with a man with viewings like those. There was nothing in his future but trouble. But...on the other hand, a person with as many as six viewings wasn't normal. He didn't have as many as Dragon-Man or Delivery Girl or Pretty Boy, but he might be from Aether anyway, for all she knew. She hadn't been able to get any information about the place out of Pretty Boy, but if this guy was from Aether as well, this could be her chance. She couldn't just let him walk away, could she?

Curiosity and need warred with fear and caution in her until she took both her hands and slapped them to either side of her face to psych herself up. How was she supposed to stop Foxface's tragedy if she couldn't do something as simple as talk to one man in the street? With a look of stubborn determination, she started walking up to him and called out to the big guy's retreating backside.

"Hey! Hey wait! I need to talk to you!"

Sebastian paused in his stride and turned around. His mind had been elsewhere and it was only mild curiosity that caused him to investigate who was calling out like that. He wasn't even aware the person being called out was him until he laid eyes on a child. Flushed in the face but urgency laced in her expression. If the kid was lost, why had she chosen him to seek for help? Well regardless, he was the one she ran to.

"What's going on, kid? Lost?"

When he turned to look at her, Samantha flinched and considered turning around again. His eyes were flecks of ice in a face of stone. A stone-cold killer, she thought apprehensively. She'd never seen someone who looked so scary without even trying; he certainly looked like someone who would have the kinds of viewings he did. She shored up her courage again and spoke, unwilling to back down.

"No. You knocked me down. That hurt." She crossed her arms with a pout and waited for an apology.

"Oh. Sorry. My mind was somewhere else. Was that all?"

"Are you from Aether?" she asked, suddenly changing topics.

His expression quickly changed from indifferent curiosity to harsh suspicion. The girl took an unconscious step back. Aether... he had heard the name before. Nothing concrete but it was definitely not something a normal person should know. Particularly not a little girl like this one.

The fact that she asked the question so matter-of-factly was reason enough for caution.

So, Seb decided to talk to this individual as a full grown adult as opposed to a small child because for all he knew, she was. It wouldn't be the first time.

His eyes glanced around with practiced precision to all the spots people could be listening from or following before returning to the small girl.

"That's not a question you should be asking in public like this. "

"So you are?" she persisted, perhaps unwisely.

With that, Sebastian's suspicions died as soon as they rose. This was just a girl who was in over head and knew too much for her own good.

Christ almighty, why was he getting all the crazies since coming to London.

His expression softened and he let a sigh loose before responding, "Not here." He looked around again but less intensely this time. "Somewhere more private. You never know who is listening and trust me kid. You don't want people to know you know things."

Somewhere private? Like, with no witnesses? The image of him beating a brown body bag with a heavy hammer floated past his eyebrows. No, she didn't think she wanted to go anywhere private with this man. Her momentary courage fled her. She wanted to know more about Aether and she was curious about why he had only seven viewings where other Aether people had dozens...but she wasn't quite that curious. She'd just go bother Pretty Boy again tomorrow.

"Um. Hey, you know," she said hastily, "there's a bunch of workers doing maintenance about two blocks that way," she said pointing in the direction of the library from which she'd come. "They have this manhole all cordoned off and...well, I think there's something interesting over there. Especially for you. You should go see what they're doing, okay?"

There was no real reason to tell him to go to the manhole. He had a viewing over his head of it, so he would go there, whether she said anything or not. That's how her visions worked. She just wanted an excuse to quickly change the subject again before he dragged her off into an alley and did unspeakable things to her.

His eyebrow rose with Interest and he looked In the direction she pointed in. He wasn't looking for any blue-collar workers in particular but she seemed rather serious about it. "Is there something specific that I will find interesting over there?"

Maybe the girl was like him? A "different" kind of person. Like he was.

"Probably!" she said enthusiastically. "Only one way to find out. You better head over there. Right away! I'll leave you to it. Bye!" She turned to walk away before he could say anything else. She tried not to look like she was in a rush to get away from him, but she wanted to go before he could shove her in a big brown bag. Or put a hole in her hand and bend all her fingers at painful angles.

"Kid!" He called out. He gave her shoulder a light tap before she got out of reach. "Here, take this." The same card he gave Scarlet or any other abnormals he came into contact with.

"What's this?" she asked, looking at the card curiously.

"Business card. My personal number is there."

"Business card? What do you do?"

Seb was silent for several breaths before responding, "A lot. More than most."

He pointed at the card again, "I'm giving it to you for a reason, kid. If you're dumb enough to go around asking strangers questions that could very possibly get you killed. That number could very well be your lifeline."

She felt a stab of outrage. If I'm dumb enough to...? First he bowls her over without even noticing and now he was insulting her? Who did this jerk think he was? She really wanted to give him a piece of her mind. She planted her fists on her hips and opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of him and his stupid card. The image of him standing in a rainstorm of blood floated leisurely through the space between them.

"Oh...thanks, I guess," was all she said, meek as milkwater. "I'll hold onto it." It couldn't hurt, right? It was only reasonable. Samantha could be reasonable.

The old abnormal ran a hand through hair with a long sigh again, "It looks like your digging kid. But the hole your digging is incredibly dangerous. More than you realize. Trust me, I've been digging for a very long time. You don't get out with clean hands."

She cocked her head quizzically at him. He was starting to sound like Papa. She knew he was right, that she shouldn't take dangerous risks, but...how was she supposed to save the Aether people from Foxface if she didn't take any risks at all? She had to figure out how to change the future.

He turned in the direction the girl had pointed earlier, "Manhole right? I'll look around. Just.... dont go asking questions like that out of the blue. Alright? Test the waters first."

"Christ, why are children..." he muttered under his breath before starting off in the direction she gave him. "Stay safe kid. Please." He called back as he disappeared into the crowd.

"I'm not a child!" she shouted at his retreating back.

She looked down at the card he gave her again. "Sebastian Williams." Was he from Aether or not? He certainly seemed to know something about it, at least. She'd have to ask Pretty Boy tomorrow, she decided. He'd know this man if he was from Aether. She turned and started to walk home, head spinning with everything that had happened that day. Between Foxface, Sebastian, learning more about Aether, and trying to stop him from getting beaten up, she had quite a lot to talk to that stubborn idiot about the next time she saw him.

Written with @shadowz1995

Mentioned: Avari IG42 Shotgunpenguin

Samantha's night activity complete.

 

[MagicPenguin]

Arryn Blacksmith
Home
9:21 PM

Arryn had been thinking about Scarlet all day, going through all the possible explanations, trying to figure out how to explain the pictures in her room, her aversion to sunlight, and her reluctance to enter the apartment until he gave her permission. As he saw it, there were only a handful of possibilities:

The first was that she was an elf or a dwarf in disguise. Both had incredibly long lifespans; it wasn't crazy to think they might not appear to age even after a century. But that didn't explain her aversion to sunlight. Besides, racial qualities disappeared once you exited the portal to Earth from Aether. Marcus and Silver were no longer shifters, after all, just a regular human like him. Daniel hadn't remained a werewolf either; a night with him tied up naked in the park and a stay at the police station for indecent exposure had confirmed that well enough for both him and Ana. Even Lucrezia had lost her elf qualities when he saw her in Covent Garden.

The next possibility was that she was a vampire. It would explain everything very neatly if true: vampires didn't age, hated sunlight, and were forced to ask permission before entering a private residence for some reason. It seemed the likeliest solution at first glance. But after a little thought, Arryn had ruled this out fairly early on. Vampires on Aether could not be exposed to sunlight of any kind, at all, period. They died on contact. Scarlet was averse to it, but clearly she could tolerate it, because she went to work during the day and made no secret of the fact she could go outside when she wanted to walk Hogan or tend the apartment's garden. Beyond that, a vampire was incapable of hiding his or her fangs. Checking for fangs was the only way to tell a vampire apart from any other normal human in a crowd. Arryn didn't need a close examination to tell that Scarlet's teeth were normal, though. No fangs on her. So, not a vampire.

The third possibility was a human who'd concocted or bought a life-extending potion of some sort. Particularly rich, powerful, and influential figures on Aether often had access to such things. Such potions sometimes had unexpected side-effects too, such as, perhaps, sensitivity to sunlight. Her asking to enter might just be a personal quirk of hers unrelated to anything, one he put too much weight on because of what he knew of vampires.

The fourth possibility was that she was a mage dabbling in some very powerful and dark magic. The kind of forbidden stuff that someone like Lucrezia might peddle in. And if Lucrezia could still use her magic on Earth--which he knew she could from what Roland told him of Covent Garden, at least in small bursts--then someone else with similar magical power likely could as well. An ancient dark druid, perhaps, or another Aurelia that had somehow survived the fall of Odania. Could she be an ally of the Shadow Queen's? A hidden dagger in the dark sent to spy on or perhaps assassinate Arryn if he became inconvenient? Or maybe they intended to use him as leverage against Roland somehow? That Scarlet was actually an enemy with hostile intentions was the possibility that scared Arryn the most, in truth.

None of these explanations fit perfectly, but one thing he knew for sure: whatever the explanation, Scarlet's oddities couldn't be explained without magic or racial traits or vampirism, or some other type of method that was not supposed to exist on Earth. So, if she could not have achieved her agelessness on Earth, that logically left only one possibility. She HAD to be from Aether. No matter how he turned the problem over in his head, that was the conclusion he always came back to given the information that he had. One way or another, Scarlet had to be from Aether like he was.

The blacksmith took a brief break from thinking about Scarlet when he got a panicked phone call from Elena about the summons she'd received on Friday. "Don't worry, Rose," he tried to reassure her. "Everything will be alright. You're not connected to anything that happened. No matter what happens, I won't let anything bad happen to you." He went over to her place soon afterward for their rehearsal that night. They did get some practicing done on the song Rose had chosen for them--a song about flying to the moon, of all things! He still couldn't believe such a thing was possible!--but they also spent a lot of time going over what Rose was supposed to remember from the night at Covent Garden and what she was not. In the end, he told her he would go with her that day for moral support. He couldn't let anything happen to her no matter what, especially not for having gotten caught up with him and the Aetherians. He didn't think he could take it if something did.

When Arryn got home from his rehearsal with Rose, he found Scarlet already home herself and his mind went right back to how to figure out who or what she really was. As she had on Sunday, he found her cooking up a storm, humming to herself and gliding so fluidly from one corner of the kitchen to the other she might have been a belle dancing on a ballroom floor. It smelled wonderful and his stomach rumbled at the various aromas wafting throughout the apartment, but he couldn't let himself be distracted from what he knew he had to do. He had plenty of time to think about the problem now and was sure she must be Aetherian, but the only way to know for sure was to ask his roommate directly. He took a deep breath. It was now or never.

"Scarlet," he began firmly, "you and I need to have a talk."

The girl turned around from the counter, donning a curious look upon her visage. She sold her audience with an innocent damsel look, something she excelled at over the course of time. Despite this, Scarlet's firm grip upon her kitchen knife was more than enough to keep Arryn at bay. His straight forward approach put her on guard, disregarding the fact of his recent ventures into her room. Tension mounts, as the German lady broke the brief pause in between their little visual standoff. Scarlet cast aside her kitchen utensils and slid the white rag across the kitchen aisle - a physical act of casting her thoughts aside.

"Hmm? What do you mean by that, Arryn? Is something... the matter?" Scarlet asked, as she locked both her hands within the confines of her white apron.

Light, where to start? With a sigh, Arryn took a seat at the kitchen table. He took his hammer out of his belt loop and leaned it up against the wall beside him. He didn't intend for this to turn into a fight, but it didn't hurt to be cautious given some of his darker suspicions about druids or vampires or Aurelia sent to spy on or kill him. The heavy sledgehammer would be well in reach in case things got...hairy.

"First," he began, "I have to apologize to you, Scarlet. I was looking for Hogan's leash this morning and one thing led to another and...well...I went into your room." Arryn's cheeks reddened a little at the admission and his eyes fell guiltily to the floor. "Hogan found the photo album under your bed. I shouldn't have looked, I know that, and I'm sorry, but I saw the pictures inside of it." He looked Scarlet right in the eyes and added, meaningfully, "I saw the years they were supposedly taken."

Scarlet's eyes widened, bewildered by both Arryn's transgression upon her room and that of his forthcoming rectitude. Perhaps it was time for her to come clean while the moment presents itself. But the vampire's inherent pride and innate hubris have prevented her from showing remorse. She tilted her head a little, with a troubled look, before raising her brows.

"So you did? What do you think? I do resemble my great grandmother, don't I?" Scarlet claimed casually, followed by a light chuckle.

An expert in masquerading one's personality, the kindred was no stranger to lies and deceits. While she has yet to relinquish her stand with her poor excuses, Scarlet knew Arryn would press on with those determined looks in his eyes.

As she expected, Arryn wasn't buying it. "You have pictures from 1917 to the present and the person in those photos is identical in every one. A family resemblance like that is remarkable. It couldn't just be your great grandmother. Your mother and your grandmother and your great grandmother and you all look exactly the same? That sounds like a bloody miracle to me. Almost too good to be true, in fact."

"What do you think, Arryn?" she said indifferently, almost confident in her stance, despite Arryn's pressing words.

Arryn folded his hands on the table. Enough innuendos. He was tired of beating around the bush. "I'm just going to ask you right out, Scarlet. Did you come from Aether?"

"Eighter? What is that? What are you talking about, Arryn? I'm quite... confused." Scarlet replied, donning an earnest face of confusion. For one of the few moments in the vampire's life that was full of secrecies and discretions, she was being honest this time around.

"I don't see how else those pictures make any sense. It has to be magic or a youth potion, or...something else that doesn't exist on Earth. I know about Aether, Scarlet. I won't tell anyone. You don't have to hide from me. So, I ask again, are you from Aether?"

Scarlet's eyes lowered beneath her bangs. Her cheeks bloomed, as if she was about to burst out emotionally. Yet her brimming green eyes contradicted with her delicate demeanor. It was futile to continue playing the wickedly innocent role, she thought. Her cold eyes met Arryn's, as she cast aside her apron.

"It seems there is little to gain by shying from your inquisitions. You are answering your own question, Arryn. A good secret is one that is buried with the dead..." Scarlet chuckled a bit, retaining a calm visage that made her seemed like a completely different person.

"...I already gave you my answer. I know nothing of this Aether that you are speaking of. Tread carefully, Herr Bennett."

Arryn scratched his chin. "Alright," he said calmly. "How do you explain the pictures, then, if you're not Aetherian?"

"Perhaps our werewolf friend can shed some light on the subject? Speaking of which, where are they? Arryn? Don't bother denying it, I can smell one out from miles away..."

Arryn's eyes narrowed. She smelled him? "Who are you, Scarlet?"

"Your roommate."

"And what else? An elf? A dwarf? A mage? An alchemist?"

He leaned forward in his chair, peered directly into her eyes.

"A vampire?"

"N-None of your concerns, Mister Bennett." she scowled.

"I disagree. If I'm living with a dark druid who might suck out my soul or a vampire who might try to eat me in my sleep, that concerns me very much."

"At the rate you're pressing this matter... you would do well to be keep your secrets... in the dark void of an unknown tomb." Scarlet practically growled, as she launched herself towards Arryn.

"Bloody hell!" he cursed, bursting from his chair so quickly it fell over backwards behind him. The kitchen table overturned as she plowed past it. He reached for his hammer and raised it to defend himself. That had escalated very quickly, he thought distantly; if he hadn't been ready for the remote possibility that something like this might happen, she would've had him by the neck before he even knew what was happening.

Red surges of dark energies surrounded Scarlet, as she let her hands forth, in an attempt to grab Arryn's neck. Her green eyes were all but a dark void of eternal darkness with an amber slit that parted her irises. The probing and penetrating in those eyes were gone. Now, Arryn could see in them nothing but a deep, dark hunger.

Before she could sate it, the long wooden handle of his sledgehammer was pressed up against her torso. Arryn held it at both ends, his right hand just below the hammer's head and his left at the end of the handle. He used it as a barrier between himself and his attacker, preventing her from getting any closer to him than she was and her hands from getting anywhere vital. He gave her a light shove with it--which, from him, was like a full bodied push from any other man--moving her body away from his, then shuffled backward into the living room so he had more room to dodge and maneuver. He managed to make it inside, but in the blink of an eye, she was on top of him again, flinging her clawed hands in crushing blows aimed at his throat, his chest, his face...anywhere she could land a fatal hit. Blood and bloody ashes, she was really trying to kill him! He was only just able to block her blows with the hammer still in his hands. They rained down on him almost faster than he could percieve with his naked eye. And Light, but this woman was strong! His arms remained firm, but he could feel his very bones vibrating under the impact of her repeated attacks. A normal hammer's handle might have snapped in half before hits that powerful, but Mah'alleinir held firm even in its weakened state. All he could do at the moment was to back away slowly and continue to block and dodge her furious flurry of lightning fast strikes. Even that wasn't enough to keep him entirely safe: at one point, her sharp nail grazed his cheek, and a bleeding cut emerged. At another, she landed a kick in his side and it felt as though he'd been hit with a wrecking ball. Miraculously, he still managed to stay on his feet after that one.

A few colorful sparks emitted in between the two, as the vampire's crimson waltz of red and black pressing Arryn slowly towards the corner of the living room. By now, what was once her hands were now a pair of sharp talons, keen on the blacksmith's demise. Despite her ferocious lunges and slashes, Scarlet found Arryn to be a formidable man. Given the knowledge of his mysterious background from Aether, she veered herself as swiftly as she could, with every strikes correlating with her next set of movement. From one corner of the room to the other, the furnitures that adorned the elongated cell were all turned fro and forth within her path.

Scarlet was relentless. His side ached more with each passing second. He wondered if that kick had broken anything. If Arryn had not regained his strength after Covent Garden, she would have overpowered him easily and killed him in less than a second. But he had regained his strength. And this was not the first time he had ever fought Shadowspawn, which her claws and eyes revealed her to be, if not exactly what variety. Arryn gritted his teeth and rage filled him. He was the cornered animal right now, but he was a wolf, not a scared rabbit, and he was about to show Scarlet what happened when you tried to back an angry wolf into a corner.

He waited for his opportunity, content to back off and block her blindingly fast strikes for a time until she showed an opening. He was careful not to let her push him into any walls or corners, retreating cautiously in a circle and dodging the various pieces of overturned furniture while she tired herself out trying in vain to hit him anywhere fatal. When she finally faltered a step and her blows slowed just a hair, he wasted no time: with his left hand, he smashed the back end of his hammer's handle into her face, hard, with a little less than half his full strength. A sickening crack resounded throughout the room and she was forced backwards, jaw dislocated, nose and mouth bleeding, dazed from the power of the blow and the suddenness of the counter-strike. He pulled his hammer back and wound up for a full strength sideswipe aimed right at her head while she was still reeling. Whatever kind of creature she was, she couldn't survive if her head was ground into pulp.

Scarlet felt the blunt end of Arryn's hammer ringing within and throughout her head. But there was little time to rest, as Scarlet turned her head slightly, and extended her leg towards the ground. Urging her abdomen forward, the kindred spun a bit, almost as if she was twisting her own body to turn away before the powerful blow could find its target. Before long, Arryn's resolute smite found its way into the wall behind her, merely missing her by a few inches. The big wall between the kitchen and the living room cracked into three large pieces and came tumbling down in a cloud of drywall and debris. While she was able to dodge his powerful blow, the vampire had dislocated her ankle in that hasty maneuver to get out of the way. Tremors followed, as the smothering clouds gradually unveiled the two figures eyeing each other, drawing heavy breaths of respite.

Arryn didn't wait; she was down on the ground and he had no desire to give her any time to regain the initiative. He moved to press his attack, winding up for another powerful blow. The head. He had to get her head. He brought the hammer high over his own head and, with a roar, brought it down with all his strength to bring an end to the cursed Shadowspawn that had tried to kill him.

Woof!

The hammer stopped inches from Hogan's little body, the pup now planting himself firmly between Scarlet's head and Arryn's intended blow. The bloody traitor was lucky Arryn had been able to stop the heavy weapon's momentum in time to avoid turning him into paste right along with Scarlet. He cocked his head at Arryn and his tongue lolled lazily out of his mouth, unfazed by the hammer. It looked like the mangy mutt was actually laughing at him!

"Ho-Hogan..." Scarlet exhaled, as the crimson surges of dark energies that blanketed the woman quickly dissipated.

Tears flowed from her eyes, as the tendrils of darkness quickly escaped her eyes, like a sunny pair of green meadows emerging from the longest night. The vampire was filled with remorse and guilt. Just like with her past, she had let her darker yearnings grasped the better of her. Her trembling hands caught Hogan in between her bloodied bosoms, as she ran her fingers in between his golden fur.

Breathing heavily, full of adrenaline, Arryn took a step back, studying Scarlet's prone form on the ground before him. She was crying now, but he didn't trust her for a second.

"What are you playing at? Think I won't end you if you shed a few tears, Shadowspawn?"

"Quite the opposite, I'd say. Sometimes, the very thing that I tried to escape from was the right answer all along. Who am I kidding... I can't become human again, even if I wanted to... Do what you must, Arryn." Scarlet said, with a gloomy tone, as she curtained her eyes to the void of darkness.

Arryn remained tense, ready for anything. "I'll have the truth now. What are you? How did you get here from Aether?"

"Blutsauger (Bloodsucker)... Vampires... Kindreds... we all come by many names. But... be as it is, I am telling you the truth, Arryn. This... Aether that you speak of... this is the first that I've heard... from you." she said, with a peculiar look upon Arryn's question.

"A vampire..." he muttered, shaking his head. He dropped his hammer and sat down on the floor, catching his breath. "But not from Aether. I don't understand this at all."

"Are you familiar with... Count Dracula? And other works of fictions?"

"I've heard the name. I thought that was just a story."

"Even in fantasies, there are some truths..."

Arryn suppressed a dark chuckle at the irony of her telling him that.

"I just happened to be at the wrong place, and at the wrong time... a century ago..." Scarlet sighed, as she passed Hogan over to Arryn.

"I see," he said. He placed the pup on the floor and let him sniff about as he pleased. A few pieces of the puzzle he'd been trying to solve slid into place. Not from Aether herself, but perhaps turned by a vampire who had been. Some sort of Earth-grown half breed? Was such a thing even possible? It might explain why she had no fangs and why she could tolerate sunlight, both things that threw him off of the vampire hypothesis early on. Earth apparently was not as magic-free as they had all first supposed.

"I'm sorry," he said. "When I walked in the door, I didn't intend for..." he gestured to the collapsed wall, the destroyed furniture, and the general chaos strewn all throughout their apartment. "...all this. I wish you had just told me you were a vampire from the start."

"... A girl's gotta have her secrets... Although I, too, should apologize for my... behaviors... I do get a bit jumpy when someone addressed my past. Say... " Scarlet replied apologetically, with a brief pause in between to catch her shallow breath, before continuing.

"... You seem pretty ... composed... despite me being a vampire. Doesn't that ... you know... scare you in the slightest?"

Arryn just snorted. "Nah. Why should it? You're not my first vampire. Besides, my last roommate was a werewolf and one of my best friends is a shapeshifter. You seem a good person, as far as I can tell. As long as you don't try to eat me or turn me, I have nothing against vampires." Of course, that didn't mean he wouldn't be on guard going forward. She had just tried to kill him, after all.

"Eh... W-Well... You're not even my type to take a bite on a-anyways!..." Scarlet face turned red, neverminding the blood that painted half of her face.

"... Well, as long as you don't mind living with a vampire-in-rehab, I couldn't ask for more. After all, someone's gotta help ya fix that wall..." Scarlet smiled slightly, comforted by Arryn's nonchalant attitude with her origins. Taking in Arryn's acknowledgement of supernatural beings and their existence, the vampire felt no need to make an enemy out of Arryn. After all, she almost died from their recent 'heated debate'.

"Yes...the wall..." He looked at Scarlet, her nose still bleeding, her ankle swollen. He felt the pain still reverberating throughout his side where she'd landed a kick. "We should take care of these injuries, first of all. And then..." He looked around again at all the destruction the pair had caused and let out a mournful sigh. "The landlord is not going to be happy about this," he said with dread.

Hogan barked happily, licking first Scarlet's hand and then Arryn's.

Written with Pilgrim59

Interacting: koala

Mentioned: Avari WillfulWren

Arryn's Night Activity Complete