Ian

[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Ian

[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

Washington Park was full of visitors today - the lush, green landscape dotted with joggers and frisbee players, college kids playing basketball, boisterous children playing hide and seek in the trees and elderly couples walking hand in hand by the lake. The weather was lovely, a welcome change of pace from the cold snap that had hit earlier in the week. The evening sun was a warm golden glow shining through the trees. Ian and Jae-shin were sparring in the grass near one of the flower gardens. Maybe it was the weather (that infectious thrill of spring,) but today the practice had an air of playfulness about it. Ian grinned as they danced around each other, breathing hard. His pulse beat out a rough rhythm in his ears and sweat shone on his exposed skin. He had on a pair of tapered silver athletic pants, but was otherwise shirtless and barefoot. His toes dug into the soft earth before he lifted off in a tight, predatory spring.

The attack was swift and elegant, but Jae-shin was just fast enough to block it. After a series of swift blows, Jae-shin finally managed to land a hard kick to Ian's side. Ian exhaled roughly at the impact only to dance away, shaking his head with a laugh.

"Careful, I might start fighting for real."

Jae-shin's expression was quietly challenging.

Serafíne

Awareness.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2

Serafíne

Among the visitors: someone, you know?  Who knows, who has some hint of, every strange tracery of magick in the air tonight.  Who is: enthralled by it and entombed by it and entangled by it.  Follows that thread from god knows how far away to the place where it makes a new, strange knot.

Ian and his partner have an audience.  Probably they are too intent on each other to take note of anything more than the impression of blond hair left loose, streaming into a wild tangled mass when the wind kicks up.  The sensation of her resonance: gut-wrenching, enthralling, threshold-hovering right there.  Right there.  Right there.

Sera is wearing something close to preppy drag: a highwaisted skirt, pleated and short, with silver buttons precise at the waist.  A longsleeved, rather high-necked little jacket, also black, with more silver buttons in marching military-themed rows, the cut of which would be conservation were it not, you know, so very short: the undercurve of her breasts, the spare cut of her torso.  The dark scrawl of her tattoos against golden skin.  Someone's been worshipping the sun: somewhere.  Somehow.

Grace

"So, yeah. The park!" Grace says, sniffing in the warm air and tree smell. "Places like this are good for distraction-free thinking-time. And you need that."

She walked down a park path with Jo, all decked out in a bright blue shirt with a massive comma on it. Just below the comma, in small text is "or 1=1 --". If we're going to teach, do it right, right? Be the exploit.

"So, first off -- you say you want to learn about electricity and stuff like that? First, I want to know -- what do you think of the physical things? The elements, atoms, that kind of thing? Because it's all related. Well, okay, it is all all related, but forces and matter more so than most."

Lavinia

[Per+aware, oooh?]

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

Jo Hamilton

[Do I sense decepticons?! per+aware]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Jo Hamilton

She needs distraction free thinking.

This is what Grace says to Jo, who has her cellphone out in her hand and is plugging away at something. Because Jo... Jo doesn't know the meaning of 'distraction-free' unless what Grace really means is boredom. Jo moves too much to ever be distraction free; always thinking, always searching.

The day has been warm, though the temperature has dropped dramatically from her time on campus, and she's dressed accordingly. Her black tank is lit up with yellow letters spelling out 'IN TRAINING TO BE BATMAN' with the bat symbol displayed at the top. And capri light pants (do men call their long shorts capris or shorts?). Of course, her wrists are touched with all manner of things to decorate them (probably gutted someone's computer somewhere, hopefully they don't know about it).

"Huh? Oh right yeah like.. Ok well I mean like, it's just coding right? Like a background program.. like ya know.. like your desktop wallpaper. Or maybe it's like, like an if-then statement. Like if THIS coding happens, do this! Ya know like.. dude how did the Matrix explain it? Where's trinity when you need her?"  Jo hummed. She hummed like the powerlines. Always moving, but never radically. Predictable. Necessary. Pulling humanity along, whether it liked it or not.

Lavinia

It's actually a beautiful day. More than a beautiful day, it's fan-fucking-tastic. She had been spending time with friends, some people she had concluded were decent company, regardless of whether or not they had a roof over their head. There but before the grace of God go she, and all that jazz. She remembers being out here, she remembers being hot and being cold, she remmebers thinking that she had better be brilliant or better be talented because otherwise she wouldn't be able to put a roof over her head.

Anyway, it wasn't important. She'd eaten part of a bucket of chicken with the guys, bid them adios and headed on to enjoy the rest of the park. It was a beautiful place, full of frisbee and basketball and trees and- oooh, were those people sparring?

Something felt interesting, and her dark eyes lit up like torches (like she ever had to really wonder about that) and a grin blossomed across her face. THe blonde, with her golden halo of hair and rather remarkable height and capris (nope, those were regular pants, they were just capris because Lavinia Cervantes was over six feet tall) She followed sensation, marched forward in combat boots and a cut up tee shirt (something to hide naturally occuring holes from God-knew-what)

And she headed forward, looking from the men sparring to a blonde sitting and watching and instead her attention went there. Had no qualms with plopping down next to her. Left ear to the lady's side.

"They just start?"

Ian

[Life 3, Better Body diff 6]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian

[+1 Dex for 24 hours, woot]

Ian

[Ian's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )

Ian

[Jae-shin's Dex+Brawl]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

"Fuck if I know," the lovely creature shrugs and the movement threatens to upend whatever modesty the cut of the jacket affords her.  She is wearing sunglasses.  Yesterday they were framed with skulls.  Today, they are black, cat-eyed, the frames studded with silver nailheads.  Match to the leather wrapped-round her throat.

This sideglance then, her eyes hidden behind the glasses so large they dominate her angular features, without occluding them.  "I just started watching them."

The sun slides across the reflective surface of the dark glass.  Moving, luminous.

Grace

"Well, yes. Except that there is no real if-then. If you look deep enough into the code, you might say forces are a type of matter, or matter is a type of force. They are composite objects made of the same general parts. Like, take electrons. Electrons are what carry electricity, which is a force, but they're also the things that help make up atoms. They're the same type of object, just with slightly different variables. So if you already have some theory of matter, it's relatively easy to translate that into a theory of forces."

Stroll, stroll, stroll. Lecture, lecture, lecture.

Ian and Jae-shin.

Cloud.

Wait, what?

"Oh hey! They're doing a thing!"

She turns on a heel and heads over. So, now -- a bright-eyed embodiment of shifting, winged focus starts beelining for the assembly, pseudo-apprentice in tow.

Ian

It was the first time any of the people in the park (apart from Ian's current sparring partner) had seen him since he'd gone Seeking up that mountain peak. The first time Sera would notice the addition of a deeper, more primordial note within his resonance. The primal energy of it coiled fittingly with the rest of his feline characteristics. And as Ian moved, the press of his Will blossomed out, his working evident to anyone paying particular attention. He focused with his pulse, his movement, dancing across the grass with an effortless grace that hinted at his ballet training. And then suddenly he lunged, ducking beneath Jae-shin's arms to knock him in the back of his knee. Ian followed it up with a sweeping kick that took the Akashic's feet out from under him.

Then he pounced, pinning Jae-shin to the grass with a sharp, triumphant grin.

Jae-shin looked up at him quietly, catching his breath. After a moment, he laughed - pleased and surprised. "You cheated."

"You're just mad I finally pinned you." Ian reluctantly released his prize, getting to his feet as he cast a glance toward Sera and Lavinia. When he focused on the latter, there was a light tilt of his head. "Hey."

Jo Hamilton

"Buuuuuuuuuuut matter is just code. So like if it's jsut matter and stuff, then it's just code. Cause like, how could it like be anything else? So is it like a program running? Or like.. it has like a schedule? But like if it's not an if-then, then like why is the weather and stuff all chaotic? Like for realsies?"

Now Jo HAD sensed a new individual, she has just been engaged in her phone and Grace, but now was being aimed in their direction. "A thing!" Jo exclaimed, as if this said everything. "We must like see this thing! Because things, things are cool. Not like those thingie-ma-jigs.."

Jo is right on her heels, shoving her phone in her back pocket.

Lavinia

"Good enough for me," she replied with a shrug. She wasn't wearing a skirt today, like Lavinia ever really paid attention to what she was doing in a skirt, dared egg someone closer to getting an eye full of whatever she was wearing underneath, but we digress. It wasn't important what she wasn't wearing right now. "I'm Lavinia."

Sera got another glance, having the worst time not looking and being taken in by the fact that Sera was striking. Maybe she had painting or chalk drawings on her mind after her last escapade with the awakened populace of Denver. She opened her mouth, but then noticed people approaching and turned her attentions again.

When Ian spoke she nonchelantly watches his lips, not longing but decyphering. Then, her eyes went to his face. "Hey, you two are great," she replied.

That was the voice of a herald. Something that spoke with confidence, that bid fear not, something that brought tidings of joy or the message of something wrathful beyond measure. She is a messenger, or at least that's what her voice seems intent on conveying about her.

Ian

[I suppose we should do this awareness thing]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Then it's over.  Ian - cheating - has pinned his partner and Sera, who seems to be both watchful and somehow removed or contained or maybe merely high, notices.  Her sharp little chin rises in a way that makes the sun's reflection glint off the nailheads in her sunglasses: or maybe just the darkdark glass.

And she: claps.

You know: for the show.

Around the paper cup, fingers finding her palm.  Mouth crawling, curved at one corner that is essentially inhabited.

"Serafíne.  You can call me Sera."

This to Lavinia.  Nothing to Ian except the fixed attention of her hidden eyes on him, as he rises: from the hold, from the ground.  Glances up at Sera, Lavinia, greets the latter.  Something arrested in that awareness.  She knows everything: feels everything.  Every piece of it, which threatens to peel her apart even as she is cinching herself back together.

Grace

"The weather and stuff is all chaotic because it isn't an if-then. There are very few things in this universe that are a true either-or. Mostly, we exist in the grayish in-betweens. If things were deterministic, like an if-then, we would be able to predict the chaos precisely. But as it's all built on probabilities, even so far as the electrons and protons? The world isn't a firmly defined thing. At all. Which is nice, because hey -- that would be way boring."

That spiel having been said, Grace golf-claps to Ian, and plops down next to Lavinia. "I'm Grace. Hi."

Jo Hamilton

"Well yeah but you're like totally simplifying it. Like, it's an if-then statement but it's not like, if Jo sneezes, Butterflies are born. It's like.. like If this person does this, under this, when this, but only while, then this happens, which does this, but only this while this, and so on and so on. Like it's a lot more complicated and stuff. You can totes predict stuff, if you got the code. Like if I knew the whole code, I could totally tell you when stuff is gunna happen. I mean it's be like super easy. But like we're missing the pieces and stuff so it only seems chaotic.

Jo..gives Ian a thumbs up. That is her congrats to..whatever that was. Because Jo isn't into the physical exercises, save one..or two.

"Yo Sera!" Jo gives her a wave and then finally..oh FINALLY focuses on the new one. She twitches her nose, lifts her brows and seems to look as if someone gave her to the key to the gaming store. Grace sits next to lavinia, who is sitting next to Sera. This... no.. this can't be.

So Jo, sits in Grace's lap and leans in towards Lavinia. "So, will you marry me?"

Lavinia

[You're on my deaf side, did I actually catch any of this?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia

"Sera," she repeats, grins a little at Serafíne,  lights up for a second because there is something vaguely hopeful for the woman at her side. She wasn't entirely human, this one. On first glance, certainly, but there's far too much energy there. More than a mortal body can handle (she's fragile, though she doesn't let on. She's stronger than she looks, but she's not as strong as she thinks) "Glad to meet you."

This is Grace. And there she is, surrounded by strangers who feel like- well, now, this one is certainly different, but happens to have the misfortune of being on Lavinia's right side instead of her left. She scoots back enough so that she can kind of see Grace's face. A little. Just enough so that she doesn't have to turn her head to see the woman next to her. Her brows furrow for a second, like she was thinking, like she was straining.

But, once she puts two and two together, the woman laughs, something that is intent and warm and that stuck to the senses. She wasn't terribly loud, but she certainly cut through the ambient sound.

"Lavinia," she offered to the pile of GraJoCe. "Are you tryin' to make an honest woman outta me." Brow quirked, grin widened, "or are you proposing to Sera? I haven't been married in a little while, so I feel the need to clarify."

Ian

Lavinia said they were great. Grace and Sera clapped, as though Ian and Jae-shin had been nominated the evening's designated entertainment. Jae-shin responded to the approval with a hesitant smile, perhaps unsure if he ought to be encouraging the notion that combat was a spectator sport (or perhaps he was just shy.) He got to his feet with a smooth motion, dusting dirt and grass from his legs. Unlike Ian, he had on a tank top, but was otherwise similarly outfitted in athletic clothes. They'd obviously come here with the express purpose of doing what they'd just been engaged in.

Ian, of course, took the applause in stride. The side of his mouth quirked lightly, and he bent down into a loose, graceful bow. Slightly theatrical.

"You guys are welcome to join us, if you like."

The challenge hung in the air, dry and coyly tempting, though Ian did not expect that any of those seated nearby were likely to take him up on it.

Serafíne

Yo Sera! shouts Jo and our Sera tips her coffee mug in the creature's direction.  Her head turns; their collective reflection crawls across the gleaming surface of her glasses.  Does not comment on if-thens and why-wheres and data because that all sounds like bullshit to her.

Except of course you can predict stuff.  She's a seer.  The future and the past crack themselves open between her teeth.

They speak different languages, though.  On every level.

She is looking at them though: her golden head turned, her chin low over her narrow shoulder, the dark cut of that little black jacket clearly tailored for her: from the width to the length to the glove-like fit of the arms.  Custom-made.

Somehow the lift and curve of that cup is both greeting and farewell.  It's clear - body language, the way she holds herself - that this is only a temporary waystation.

"I don't believe in fucking monogamy," this to Lavinia, a sideline, a sidelong.  "So marriage is pretty much off the table.  I think she was proposing to you, though."

Then she's moving, turns around on her heel because she never sat down, just paused in her passage.  Glance back at Ian over a dark shoulder.  "Ask me when I'm sober.  Watch me say yes."

--

That's really all the farewell they get.  She's on her way down the path, into the shadows.  Sunglasses still covering her eyes.

Grace

It seems that Jo and Grace have already joined Ian and Jae-shin in the physical contact and pinning department, which -- let's be honest here, Grace was not really expecting at this juncture.

Like, how can Jo say that the universal code is a firmly definite thing when she herself is so unpredictable?

She's got a young woman sitting in her lap. This is not a thing that has occurred before, and she blinks. Her eyebrows move a little closer together, and her eyes seek a way out.

"Oh. Huh."

And, she stands up, dumping Jo to the ground.

"Oh, it is chaotic. Just, there are ways of quantifying chaos and analyzing its probabilities. Like, if you know a word starts with 'a', it's probably 'and' or 'at' and not 'aardvark'. But sometimes, it turns out to be 'aardvark', so you cannot completely discount anything. Like people just sitting in your lap, for instance."

Yup. Like that.

"Hi, Lavinia! I haven't seen you around..."

Jo Hamilton

"Tcht. Dude the only wrestlin I' do isn't like, something you'd do in like the park." But she turns her attention right back to Lavinia and Sera, one of whom is on her way out soon enough. "Dude. Nah. Sera totes would reject me. She's like a free woman or something. All rockin it and stuff. See my awesomeness? Just hold her down really." Her lips curl into a slow grin.

"But like for realsies? Yup. Toes asked you. But I mean if you're not cool bein the chick, I'll totally be your waifu. Just don't like, ask me to like cook you anything. Only skills I got be like, mac and cheese or stovetop. True facts. " Jo is in the midst of talking when she goes forward and is dumped, rolling on her back  and sitting up on her arms to look at them. "Dude you took my spot. What'd you expect? See you'd know that if you were like in the know of the if-thens of like my software."

Lavinia

She looks at Grace and Jo in the pile together, she furrows her brows and cocks her head to the side. She doesn't quite seem to put two and two together, confusion on her face born from the fact that she can't quite figure out if she actually heard the word aardvark or not.

Just like Grace said, if a word starts with an a it is probably not aardvark but sometimes it actually is aardvark.

There were words, though. A lot of words. A lot of words that Jo said and, even if Lavinia was watching her mouth (and she was) they didn't quite register. The look of query on her face almost made one wonder if she actually spoke English as a first language. (She did, but there were things that she completely mised. Like whatever the hell a way-foo was.)

"Uh..." yep, that is confusion on her face, "I think our love could survive a diet of mac and cheese and stovetop."

She looks back at Ian, contemplates for all of a second before she straightens up just a little. He doesn't expect that someone will take him up on this. She does light up, though, her expression is laced with being delight- ah, the look says, a challenge. That was what she misse about Oliver. She missed sparring with him. She missed having someone to exert herself with, and not in the typical sense that one thinks a lovely young female creature exerts herself.

Oliver wouldn't have done it, anyway. She wasn't his type, for one, and for two she was holy.

Whatever the case, there was a little bit of relief that someone had said something she actually understood most of it.

"Need me to take off my boots? Combat boots are a bitch, but I don't mind. It's up to you."

Ian

"I'll hold you to that," Ian offered in the wake of Sera's departure, though the odds of running into a sober version of Sera seemed small at best. He watched her go, attention momentarily riveted to the flow of her legs and the sun striking off her hair. Then Jo said something about becoming Lavinia's waifu and Ian and Jae-shin both looked at her, then at each other, before refocusing on the conversation at large.

As it happened, Lavinia took him up on his offer. When she did, Jae-shin smiled and stepped aside, ceding the ring to Ian. He seemed content for the moment to stand as an observer with the others. Ian, meanwhile, raised his eyes to meet Lavinia's gaze. She had a couple of inches of height on him, and a reservoir of resonance that seemed to sing with angelic grace. These facts alone made her a natural focal point.

"Whatever you're comfortable with." He took a few steps back from the group, leaving a buffer so that no one would get hurt. Then he held himself - still and poised - as he waited for Lavinia to give him some indication that she was ready.

Grace

"If it were a list of if-thens, that would be the most horrible pile of spaghetti mess I've ever seen, Jo. Do you see it like that? I'm so so sorry if that's what you have to parse."

Grace just shakes her head, like she can't begin to understand Jo's way of unfolding the universe. That's just... massively inefficient.

She also completely ignores the whole relationship talk. That's in Here Be Dragons territory as far as Grace is concerned.

"But, I think someday you will find the chaos. Existence cannot happen without it. Creation and destruction and stasis form the first abstraction. From there, all other things split off. They work together to create and do."

And she sits again, next to Jo (not on top of her). Then, she watches just in case she has to stand up again. Probabilities, right?

Jo Hamilton

Jo drops back down again, back flat on the ground. "Man now I gotta get rings and all that. " She was having a good time of it, tilting her head to look at Ian and Lav as they get prepared for sparring. But Grace, Grace and she are still discussing the universe and computers or..where did this start again? Oh. Forces.

"Totes would.But like the software kinda is like a mess. Cause like it's always trying to improve right? So it's never like perfect and stuff. Always all these kinks and stuff you gotta like work out. Bugs right? Bugs and stuff.So like why does the universe need chaos? Like why does it have to be like, chaotic and all that to even exist? What is it like, about chaos that is so like needed for the universal code? Why can't it like... just be envisioned and all that. Like.. well.. like planned is what I mean."

Lavinia

"I'll hold off, they're kind of a pain to get re-laced," she told Ian. Conversational, but no matter how she tried to be casual the sense of otherness always crept in. Unexpected. Unintentional. But other, like a stranger in a strange land, no mater how many lifetimes she's spent here.

She takes a second to walk to the circle. Calm and confident and inspiring.. She has a presence that draws attention, that keeps attention. With resonant voice and a being that radiates a boundless, every reaching, burning ember of forever. "And you don't need rings," she calls back, "jump the broom- be united for a year and a day then reup the next year."

Reup, like it was military service.

She straightened up at that point, taking a stance that was at once comfortable but born out of practicality. Someone who learned to defend herself in a bar and polished up later with actual training. "I'm out of practice," she tells him. Says it with sincerity, too. Deception wasn't in her framework.

She nods, and was most assuredly ready at that point.

Ian

Jo and Grace were embroiled in a conversation about code and chaos and the laws of reality, and meanwhile there was Ian and Lavinia, squaring off for physical combat. They really were a diverse group.

Lavinia said she was out of practice, to which Ian canted his head and asked, "want me to go easy?" It seemed a genuine offer, though something in his eyes glimmered darkly (tempting, challenging.) They had different combat styles. Different ways of moving. Perhaps the element of surprise would do both of their training some good.

[I'll roll init now. +8]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia

"Nah, what would I learn if you went easy on me?"

(5+1d10)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia

Let it be said that her former companions were the ones who did most of the tactical things. They were the ones who thought things through. She wasn't impulsive so much as she was hindered. A few too many blows to the head, maybe the lack of hearing on one side, something made the reasoning part of her instincts slower. Made up for it in what was plugged into muscle memory.

She moved in, threw an elbow to the ribs. She does fight like she's had to deal with people. Something that spoke of learning rules and etiquette later. Let it be said, though, Lavinia acts and she commits

{action! Elbow to the ribs]

Ian

[Split action, 1a: Evade, 1b: strike to the kidney. First split Dex 5 + Athletics 4 (evasion specialty) -2]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Grace

"So it's evolving, right? The code itself mutating into new forms. You know how life evolves, right? Tiny errors in the DNA code occur when they get transcribed wrong and get passed down. Some of them are terrible, and some of them are beneficial, and the beneficial ones live on. The code of life doesn't think, oh, if I need to avoid light then I evolve an eye, so I'm going to develop an eye blueprint. It just randomly, chaotically, bubbles up.

"Sometimes an error in transcription isn't a bug. Sometimes, it becomes a feature. And thus, matter and forces and life and everything come into being, like an eye evolving on a worm. If there weren't errors, there would be no improvement either. There would just be a single, perfect zero. Nothing. The universe continually moves toward the one by cracking that zero apart, introducing errors which add stuff and do things that become its features. We use chaos to drive that movement toward something."

Ian and Lavinia spar, and Grace is more than content to watch and talk endlessly about chaos, because it's how she does. She's also thoroughly distracted.

Ian asks if Lavinia wants him to go easy on her, and she responds with violence. Grace laughs. "Noooope, she doesn't!"

Lavinia

[aaaand try and land something, dex3+brawl3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Ian

[er, pretend I re-rolled those 10's]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Ian

[Dex 5 + Brawl 3 -3, +1 diff for called shot]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Jo Hamilton

"Man that ain't no fun. Then you miss all the happy-couple cosplay. Like for reals. That's really why people like get hitched. Cause you know, you don't need to like get married to get laid."

"Thing is, we don't know if like the universe doesn't think. I mean look at us right? We're just like low-end software. Stupid little things. And we're just like self aware enough that we like get it. And we try to mess with it. And since we're just like software, what is thought really? Like is thought what we think it is? Maybe it's just complex code itself that's like thought based. I mean like sure, rocks and stuff can't think, probably, but like...they're simplistic. What if like the more complex the code, the more thought it has? Then that like means like the universe is a thinker, and a better one at that. It's got small thinkers running around doing things so...ya know, collective thought Grace. "

"Course the problem is to think that logic is based on thought. But like, it's really just breaking down biases to like understand how things work. So like..I mean simplistic way.. I see like a cat, and it's white. So then I say, if it's a cat, it's white. Well...that's illogical because in the universe, there are coded many cats that are like many different colors. So it's not that our thought is logic, or like we're trying to like impose order, but that we're trying to understand the order and then like put that into the collective network to create a better program."

"I mean like I see what you're sayin tho, about errors and all that. I just don't know that like, it's chaos necessarily. I mean what if there is like an acceptable level of errors, and like nothing goes wrong beyond that. But that level is just like, there to like help move things forward? But I mean let's say that like sure, ok, chaos and all.. probabilities. You can still predict what's like gunna happen down to a tight likelihood. Like... when I play chess right? There's like certain things that beginners like to always do wrong. Swear it. Like always. I just know it's gunna happen. I mean sure you leave like wiggle room to like fix in case they don't, but nah.."

Jo squints a little as she turns her head to look at the two of them. "See... this is why I don't do that stuff. I mean.. it's voluntary pain. " She thrust her hand in the air though. "Get 'em! " Urging the blonde on.

Ian

Lavinia was fast. Ian only just barely managed to evade the blow, his spine curving back at a sharp angle before he spun on his axis and came around behind Lavinia, using her height to his advantage. She'd feel a sharp tap right over her left kidney where his fist made contact - a blow that could have been painful if he'd put any real force into it.

And then he was darting away, smooth and and agile (even by his standards.) When he met Lavinia's eyes again, he smiled subtly (pleased and impressed.)

Lavinia

That would have been bad. Oh, it would have been something that took the breath out of her, and she knows that. When she locks eyes with Ian she is alight, more the stars than the space between them. There wasn't any real force behind the blow, which speaks to his restraint. One, she thinks. One-zero.

He's grace in motion. He's fast. And she is delighted. Her lips upturned ever so slightly, restrained because she's in the zone. This is training.

And damned if she didn't love training.

Lavinia

[action! sweep the leg!]

Ian

[And again with the split action. 1a: evade, 1b: kick. Rolling to evade, -2]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Ian

[hahahahahaha]

Lavinia

[Dex3+brawl3, diff 7}

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace

"It is chaos because otherwise we could not go anywhere with it. And it is ordered, because without order the chaos would fling us into nothing again. And it grows in the interplay between those two. It is possible for the universe to have many aspects. Like I said, there are very few parts of the universe that are an actual either-or.

"And, I've always felt that the universe thinks precisely because we are not separate from it. You are talking about how I see the thing, like a mind-fractal. Like, individual minds are fractal-shaped, but then beyond the individual is another level of the fractal -- the universal mind."

She leans back on the grass, content to watch the two at their voluntary pain. But see? The universe puts itself through voluntary pain as a way of improvement. Why not us?

Ian

Sometimes, the word really was aardvark. And sometimes cats didn't land on their feet.

Lavinia swept out her leg, mimicking the same tactic that Ian had used to defeat Jae-shin moments earlier. It was a tactic that often failed to be effective when turned on Ian (as Jae-shin could personally attest to,) but this time... it worked. Ian made to jump out of the path of Lavinia's combat boot, but he was too slow, and his balance tipped when she swept his feet out from under him.

He hit the ground hard on his side with a muffled thump and a tight exhale as the breath rushed out of his lungs. And for a second, he just lay there, as though he couldn't quite fathom how he'd managed to end up in the grass. In the distance, leaning against a tree, Jae-shin laughed.

Ian was going to have a bruise on his hip later.

He sat up, wiping some of the grass from his arm, and managed not to look too ungraceful as he got to his feet. When he glanced at Jae-shin, he raised his hand and flipped the other man off in a relaxed gesture. Lavinia, though, got a low chuckle. "I think that probably counts for two."

Jo Hamilton

"But why? I mean that's not really like, a reason. That's just like.. what people say when they don't have an answer but like they want someone to stop asking questions. Dude, it's not really a why, so much as a 'because.' If chaos is like necessary, then there has to be like a logical reason for it. Like why would it be like needed for progress? That sorta thing."

She curled her arms back, hand sunder her head as she watched the sparring. "I guess that's like a way to look at it. Guess I don't see it as fractal, but could totally work. Course not like I'd know how to like envision it other than like..binary or something. "

And then Ian drops. Jo would not consider herself a sports person, unless one counts MMOs and other online games as sports. But when Ian drops, she sits up and gives a "Yeah!" As if her team had just won a touchdown. "Man shouldn't we be like..making bets or something?"

Lavinia

She took a step back so Ian could get up. DIdn't get on top of him, didn't gloat, she just looked ready. That moment when adrenaline tries to push her senses. Her attention swung between Ian and Jae-shin, "you two are definitely friends."

A little admiring, that. Casual, but the barest bit of something else. It was a lonely road to walk, and she'd bid farewell to one of her longest standing companions, lost the other. Cooped up in a motel room waiting to find something to throw her full attention at. This was a welcome distraction, a welcome run of practice.

"Okay, so one-two? That one was more oh god, work than anything. You're pretty damn agile."

Kiara

"I'd go for the leggy blonde, myself. She's got attitude." That, from a voice drifting over near a tree close to Jo and Grace. There's a body leaning easily against it; knee high boots crossed neatly at the ankle; arms over her chest and this wild sort of tangle of dark hair set against dark red lips and a set of eyes harboring no lack of amusement for the scene in front of her.

Kiara Woolfe, if you please.

She hasn't just appeared, not without that tingling at the edges of awareness but it's been subtle tonight.

An idle passing of ways; the brunette's attire suggesting she was on her way from somewhere - or to somewhere else; somewhere requiring heels and a long skirt; a top with splashes of vibrant; glittering color and a short, fitted jacket that hugged in at her waist. A belt sat low on her hips and she seemed; with a brief cant of her head toward Grace; the dip of her mouth as she let her attention wander back to the sparring pair in the distance; quite content to remain a casual spectator.

Ian

And then there was Kiara, who Ian hadn't seen in... too long, really. And she'd just witnessed him getting knocked on his ass by a statuesque blond in combat boots. When he felt her presence, his eyes found her at the treeline and fixed there. Lavinia might wonder at the delay, but his focus was back a moment later, and this time when he looked at his opponent, there was a coil of predatory intent in the way his muscles tensed.

"So are you."

Grace

Ian hits the ground, and Grace's eyes widen like woah.

"Because, chaos is the most efficient method you can use to break a thing out of its limitations.  Efficiency. In code, in run-time, in processor cycles. If you want a good simulation, you set up some data, and you set up some simple-as-can-be rules that data has to follow, and then you randomize the fuck out of that. You don't engineer every little thing, because -- yeah, you could do it, but it'd take so much effort. You take it down to its most basic form, and let it evolve into what you need.

"Ian fell, and he'll learn a thing from that, and hopefully not do... whatever next time. Improving. He could have started out perfect, but what if perfection isn't perfect? What if the writer of this universe felt that nematodes were perfection, and created them perfectly, and allowed them to change, but never outside of 'nematode' because... how? Without chaotic fracturing, how would you accomplish that? It'd have to be recoded entirely from the ground up, if you wanted to make something new. It's all about efficiency."

Grace leans back so that her head goes backwards, to eye Kiara. "I'd go for Ian." Even though he just hit pavement. Somebody has to root for the 'underdog' right?

Lavinia

[Declare!: Splitting-

1a: punch to the wherever-the-hell-I-can-hit

1b: dodge the fuck out of whatever is coming]

Ian

[1a: kick, 1b: evade, rolling to kick -2]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Lavinia

[Shit! evade! -3, because split. Dex3+Athletics 3-3=3]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Lavinia

(and one more, because it goes first)

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Ian

[and the kick lands on Lavinia's side]

Jo Hamilton

"I know right? " Jo slipped her hand through her pockets, trying to locate something, given hat money wasn't exactly something she had a lot of. "Ha!" She sad as she pulled some piece of something out. "Taffy! I bet a... green apple taffy that she'll kick his butt like woah." Jo even waved it in the air, displaying her prize.

"Is it the most efficient? I mean like, what are we basing it on? See if the universe is built of a code we haven't like, figured out, and like don't know, stuff we're only getting snippets of, then it like, might be possible that the way we see data work here isn't like exactly the same higher up, or like..maybe we're misinterpreting it."

"Dude.. everyone knows mantis shrimp are perfection. I mean for reals. I bet those little guys are really the coders in disguise or something. Managerial programs hiding out like 'yah, we're just gunna be here in the ocean, like all awesome and stuff.'"

"I just figure, I don't know. I mean that's like the crux of it right? Completely got no clue. II'm still like, figuring out the first  code I ever ran across. So I figure there's somethin I ain't seeing."

Lavinia

[Attack! second split. Dex3+brawl3-3=3]

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

Ian

[Dex+Ath -3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Ian

[And they're tied again!]

Lavinia

She doesn't hold back, save for when she doesn't intend to hurt someone. She is invested, her movement is sound, confident after having actually landed a hit against her opponent, only to divide her attentions.

She'd said it before- Ian was agile. Ian knew what he was doing, had command over his body and she came close, so very close to evading that well-placed kick to the side but it made contact anyway. Close only counts with horse shoes and hand grenades, they say. Close to dodging doesn't mean actually dodging. She powered through the movement, tried to land her punch only to find it falling short.

The young woman pulled back at that point. Not ready to give up, but still beaming, still burning bright- a captivating representation of eternity wrapped in a finite form.

"I gotta figure out how you spread your energy so well. I'm usually one and done, this is a stretch," she compliments. Looks to the trees, back to where she had been, takes in the sights because the sounds fail her.

"Want to keep going?"

Kiara

He feels different to her, Ian. It's there in the way their eyes meet - the way her expression shifts just so - the edge of her smile; the glint of her eyes in the distance and then she's dipping her chin; directing that smile down toward Grace when she's reclining back to meet Kiara's quip with the notion she plans to support Ian.

The underdog.

The Verbena doesn't laugh at that; but she does let her teeth flash. "He does have stamina on his side." Does flick her eyes over the dark haired female beside her as she chatters about data and coding and the universe and - mantis shrimp. Doesn't shift her weight from her vantage point but rather lets her eyes comb the area.

It's not without some suggestion of vigilance; not without the subtle precision of a predator aware of the potential for conflict; for ambush while exposed.

Ian

They were two-for-two now, with Lavinia's impressive sweep countered by Ian's quick evasions and precise strikes. He'd trained in both kick-boxing and kung fu, and the latter showed in the way he moved, particularly in the fluid way he avoided Lavinia's attacks. That kind of training didn't necessarily make him a better fighter, though. The style itself mattered less than the wits and skill of the person using it.

Did he want to keep going?

"I think they're placing bets over there. Let's go one more. We should give them a winner."

Grace

"We should be mantis shrimp. Who doesn't want to see in over twenty colors and create cavitation bubbles that collapse at several thousand Kelvin with their pistol-arms, right? Bad. Ass."

"I don't know if it's the most efficient. And that's the beautiful part of it. There's more left to find out. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're wrong. Actually, we both are. Almost certainly."

"Whatcha looking for, Kiara?"

Lavinia

She gives him a thumbs up, taking the second to recenter and regain her breath. And with that, she was ready again.

[And an elbow to wherever is available, she ain't picky]

Ian

[1a: sweep, 1b: tackle, rolling for the sweep Dex+Brawl -2, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Jo Hamilton

"Totes. Mantis shrimp all the way."

Jo waves her taffy in the air again. "I got green apple riding on you. Like the best flavor ever. " She sat up to look towards the sparring two,  then Kiara. "You know like, you can totally come sit and all. I mean I don't bite... well.not like...unless you want me to." She wiggled her eyebrows at her. "But for reals."

Lavinia

[Ack! Stay up! Dex3+athletics3=6, diff8]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[rolling WP to revert to a defensive action since she didn't go down]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[And Dex+Ath to evade, -3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Lavinia

[Dex3+brawl3=6, diff 6]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ian

[and they tied again, lol, dammit]

Kiara

[It's Kiara, she's throwing everything off with her witchy voodoo, tbh.]

Ian

[Between her and Lavinia, there is too much hotness. Ian is clearly distracted.]

Lavinia

[Hot people sparring breaks the universe. True story]

 (declare: knee to the somewhere that is legal and respectable to do in an actual fight and not a bar fight)

Kiara

[+1 diff, Kiara Factor.]

Ian

[1a: kick, 1b: punch, 1c: punch, rolling to kick Dex+Brawl -3]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lavinia

[Land this! Dex+brawl, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ian

[punch 1 -4]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Ian

[punch 2 -5]

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

Kiara

What's she looking for.

It's been an overcast day but not overly breezy; barely enough to shake the leaves as it passes through the park. Still - it skims over the brunette's form; the briefest gust; stirs the hair that's fallen over her face; ruffles the collar of her jacket. Kiara's focus remains drawn into the distance; a line marring her otherwise smooth brow; drawing her eyebrows together.

Grace's query seems to cut through whatever it is that's distracting her and her eyes swing back; slip between her and Jo. Her mouth reshapes itself into a supple expression of mirth; the faintest trace of flirtation sliding into it like a promise and a dare when Jo says she doesn't bite. "Oh, I always want people to."

She straightens a little and moves around her tree to lean her spine against it; the edges of her jacket falling open; the heavy collection of necklaces jangling together as she does. "Nothing, in particular. I guess it's just - " This, to Grace, with another brief look over; away.

"Habit."

Ian

[Final score: Lavinia 4, Ian 6]

Ian

If it'd been a real fight, things might have gone differently. Maybe that strike to the kidney that Ian had done at the beginning of the round would have ultimately won him the edge he needed to take Lavinia out. Maybe, after knocking Ian onto the ground, Lavinia would have had just enough time to dive in for a killing blow. Real fights were much more brutal, and much less predictable, than sparring matches.

But they weren't really fighting, and it showed in the way that Ian grinned, panting softly as the setting sun lit a warm glow on his tanned skin. In those last few moments, he'd abandoned his efforts to evade Lavinia's blows in favor of an all-out flurry of attacks, striking out with a swift kick that was followed by two strikes from his fists - one to her side and one to her jaw. The final blow was barely a graze, tapping her in the chin as he reeled in his momentum.

She'd landed a solid knee to his rib-cage. If this had been a real fight, it would have broken bone.

"We should do this again some time. Lavinia?" She'd given her name earlier, but not to him.

Grace

"Mmm. I understand," says Grace, and she remembers a time of furtive looks and predator lookouts. It happens. Their lives are not easy ones, but whose are?

"I believe you owe me a green apple taffy?" Grace says, swiveling a look at Jo.

Lavinia

She had no idea what was coming. Expecting one blow, preparing for one, knowing that she could land another, keep them tied, but she wasn't expecting for Ian's sharp mind and sharper reflexes to beat her out in the end. There was one hit, a solid hit, one that was landed in purpose to the gut but she left herself open. Couldn't possibly divide her attention so evenly as Ian could.

His first blow lands easily, she expected one but not the second. Not the third. The final blow was a literal tap on the chin, something she didn't shy away from but did make her exhale sharply, close her eyes for just a second.

There was a certain degree of brutality that came in real fights. There was something she had originally grown accustomed to, that her original knowledge had come from desperation- like being a cornered animal. Growing into something more sophisticated, more practiced, more poised because someone taught her what to do instead of letting panic take hold. She knew this wasn't real, knew it was training and seemed to delight in the fact. Revel in the moment that she'd missed this.

They should do this again. The world came back from pinpoint focus, from the moments where she was paying attention to what was directly in front of her. "Yeah," a confirmation of her name. "Yeah," she repeated, catching her breath and beaming- all radiance, this one, "I'd like that. Do you have a phone number or something?"

A second.

"Or a name?"

Jo Hamilton

Jo grinned. She pulled back her lips to show her white teeth in the widest grin she could  manage. "Ha!" She pronounced at Kiara. "Well you know, if you like waltz over here, I'll totally take a few nips. Course you'll have to share with her." She gestured her thumb at Lavinia, finally looking back at the two of them as they sparred.

"Ah man." Jo let out a huff and held the taffy over to Grace. "Next time champ! Next time!"

Grace

[I think I'm just going to have Grace pass out on the grass, because I need to pass out XD]

Ian

He didn't have his phone on him, so he jogged over to the trees where Jae-shin stood, bending down to pull his cell out of the athletic bag that rested near the Akashic's feet. As he did so, Jae-shin murmured something quietly in Korean, and Ian glanced up. He didn't respond, but the two of them exchanged looks that held traces of teasing fondness. Lavinia hadn't been wrong on that count - the two were clearly friends (as much as Ian was ever really friends with anyone.)

When Ian returned, he held out his phone. "Ian." And when she handed him hers, he added his name and phone number to her contacts. There was a lingering sense of until next time about the way he handed it back.

When they were done, he jogged lightly across the grass to where Kiara stood. The sun was going down on the horizon and splashes of sunset hues shone through the leaves above her head. Ian glanced up once, quietly thoughtful, as he took in the underside of the canopy: the light, the colors, the pattern of branches. The leaves whispered against each other in the breeze.

He was sweating. He wasn't wearing a shirt (or shoes,) but this was hardly an unusual sight (hardly something she hadn't seen before.) When he met her eyes, he smiled.

He felt different. More like himself, in a way.

"Hi." He let the soft weight of that greeting linger a moment. "I have to get going, but... we should catch up soon."

Kiara

There is laughter at that; a slide of the brunette's dark eyes over Jo's face. The way her chin lifts just a touch. The idle motion of her fingers where they're sliding over the rough surface of the tree behind her. It all speaks to something but there's that sense she has no deeper intent (at present) to pursue it. That the seductive coil of her form where it stands (as if Kiara really were ready to pounce in some manner for the right development) and the lingering consideration of her stares are but a passing moment.

A little focus from a creature who feels as if she's peeling back your skin for the sole purpose of laying a hand to the most vital part of you and jolting you back to life. It's hard not to watch Kiara and wonder if she doesn't take satisfaction in it - unsettling others.

Pushing at the confines of comfort without ever quite overstepping beyond the limit of no return. "Buy me a drink, first." Jo's response as Kiara shifts her weight; smiling in the near-stranger's direction as Ian and Lavinia approach; Ian jogs toward her and the Verbena's focus shifts to him; her smile shifts a little; opens up; there's an awareness to it; a familiarity for the other.

"Hi, yourself."

Also an intimacy in the way she touches his body with her eyes; those long lashes dipping to cover the dark irises. She pushes off her tree; smells like the sunshine and spring and some vague; undefined thing. Something sweet; something potent. "Me too."

Get going; her arm brushes his bare skin as she passes close on her way to; one imagines; to just that. Beltane eve; the pagan must have engagements; celebrations to mark the abundance of the earth. "Call me, I have a feeling I've missed some developments."

Lavinia

She types quickly enough, like a person who clearly wasn't some erudite creature. Typed evenly and rhythmically- Lavinia Cervantes, and a phone number from Texas. Dallas/Fort Worth area. She handed it back with a little wave of her fingers, checked the phone to see what name he put himself under, and committed it to memory. (Along with noting where the area code came from. This isn't her first rodeo, to quote the song I've been everywhere, man.)

Her attention swung again, over to look at Kiara and something... clicks.

"Wolf," she said, then shook her head, "I mean Woolfe... right?"

Dawning recognition, though she met her in colder seasons. More Yule than Beltane, but Beltane was coming. Lingered at the back of her mind, she'd never been the solitary sort but it looked like it was ritual for one this year. No need to mope about it.

Jo Hamilton

She flops back with a bit of a groan. "Man chicks are so needy." She looks towards Grace for a moment, noting the now napping woman. "Right well..." She gave her a small nudge, and when she didn't move, she shrugged and embraced the concept of napping on the grass.

Kiara

The cant of her head is rather wolfish in response. A slow blink and then that subtle; suggestive smile. The red lips parting to reveal sharp white teeth. Wolf, without question. "Right. Kiara." A beat; Lavinia needs little to pull focus to her; her presence is enough.

The brunette's eyes stay on her face for a beat; her body half twisted in a prior inclination.

"Nice moves out there. Not everyone can keep up with him." Ian, referenced with this slight little look.

Ian

In that fraction of a moment when Kiara's hand made contact with his skin, the rest of the world went still. Then Jo said something, and Ian glanced toward her, noting for the first time that Grace had fallen asleep in the grass.

"I will."

For what it was worth, he sounded sincere. But Jae-shin was waiting for him a few trees down, and the evening was fast encroaching into night. So he nodded a goodbye to Lavinia and loped off quietly into the grass.

Lavinia

There's something in the way she positions herself. A little far back, enough that she positions herself a little to the left, keeps people on her literal good side, but clear enough that she doesn't turn away from them. She's aware, aware that she doesn't have the luxury of not keeping her back to some exit. Not if she didn't want to hear half of her conversations at least.

So there she is, with those dark eyes like the space between the stars, that light up like lightning does. Something like torches, with a voice that cuts clear and says fear not without having to say a word. She drew attention to herself, obvious without ever having to lift a finger. Her eyes stay with Kiara's, a smile grazes her features.

Ian gets a bit of a wave- more a raise of the hand than anything- and she continues onward, "he's something else. Felt great to actually be doing something instead of waiting for something to happen, you know?"

Hunger

For some, the day started early. Sera and Ian and Jae-shin met up with Alex and Elijah at the chantry. Maybe the apprentices showed up later, as the sun was starting to sink low in the sky and that sense of liminal electricity hung foreboding in the air. Or maybe they came by earlier to help where they could. To talk. To figure out some semblance of a plan. The other three worked their rituals as the hours passed. Sera was able to provide an advantage in the form of time - speeding up each of them incrementally until the world around them seemed to pass more slowly. Ian quietly took Elijah and Sera aside in order to better shield them from physical threats. The other mages prepared how they could.

And Lucy? What of the Dreamspeaker? She wasn't there with the rest at the Chantry. Instead she left early for the woods around the house. She packed her tools and she found a place to work, and then she called out to the spirits of the dead; of those who'd been murdered by the woman they meant to confront. Souls trapped in the memory of what was done to them.

Now was the time. If they were ever to gain some semblance of justice. Of closure. They must take it for themselves. And so she focused on the threads of fate and prophecy and justice, and she called out. Perhaps she danced, or sang, or prayed. Whatever her methods, she called, and her voice echoed across the landscape of the penumbra. It was an exhausting ritual, and perhaps she feared that it might prove fruitless. She could not compel the spirits to come. All she could do was hope that the message found its way where it needed to go.

And then, finally, they were there. Not just one, but two, three, five... eight. All eight. Jeremy she recognized. The others were less known, but they bore the faces of those who'd gone missing over the summer. And then, one by one, they pushed their way through the gauntlet and materialized on the other side. Their forms were weak and noncorporeal, but they were there. And they were ready to fight.

Back at the Chantry, the others left in their cars and drove quietly to their destination. Ian drove with Jae-shin, while Sera took her van, leaving Dan to wait in the driver's seat. Perhaps Alex and Elijah traveled together, or perhaps they went with Sera or Jae-shin. Either way, they all got there. The vehicles were parked a safe ways down the road. Close enough that they could run to them if need be, but far enough that they'd be out of sight. When the group finally arrived at the property, they'd find a large red house in the middle of a wide grassy field, bordered by pine forest and protected by a tall, wrought iron fence. Ian and Jae-shin scaled the fence, helping Sera over the top, and if the others needed it they'd offer a hand down to help them too.

On the outside, the place looked deceptively calm, with no signs of violence or destruction or any kind of recent activity. Once past the fence, however... it was another story. Something felt different. Like they'd just passed through some kind of barrier. And looking at the house would reveal... an entirely different picture from the one they'd viewed from the road.

Chunks of grass were torn up in the yard. Dark patches marked the spots where the grass had been burnt to ash, while others looked more like stains (like blood.) It was difficult to tell exact details in the dark. Sections of the house were charred. Even at a distance the smell of burnt wood was noticeable.

Serafíne

They meet at the chantry.  One by one maybe, or a few by a few and Sera is one of the first ones there.  There's an old white conversion van in the driveway with Colorado plates that sometimes ferries band equipment and sometimes ferries fugitive mages and the mages who come for this, well.  They find Sera curled up on a chaise bathing in the steam billowing from the hot springs.

She hasn't eaten today.  That sort of deprivation has found its way into her ritual.  It seems important to her, to be hungry, to feel that hunger if she intends to soften, dampen, diffuse, or even - or perhaps especially - satiate that hungry.  She hasn't eaten today and she's on something.  Not pot and not alcohol today - both would dull her senses, her reaction times far too much - but sometime early on, after she has woven her mind shield - she drops acid.

Not quite half-a-hit, but enough that she can start, you know, hearing the spaces between seconds, unhinging this minute from the next, cracking moments open between her teeth like walnuts, gathering that power to her chest, rubbing the seconds open until they start to bleed.  Some stranger might think about quantum mechanics or some other delicious paradox of agreed reality, but her experience and impression of time has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific theory and her ritual, her practice is just as idiosyncratic.   Instinctive, never structured, and when she has gathered enough power to herself, wrapped it around the stem of her spine, she calls them close, one by one, and kisses them to bestow the effect.  On the forehead, on the eyelids, on the mouth, her eyes devouringly dark, her thumbs tender on their temples.

--

Dan goes with them.  Sera won't let him come (and honestly, he doesn't want to let her go either but he knows that he would be vulnerable to everything in there.  Better out here where he can do - what?  what precisely?)  to the house but he's there - you know?  Getaway driver.  The license plate of the van deliberately shrouded or perhaps even stolen in preparation for just this moment.

--

Sera's mind is swimming and her head is pounding but at least the bleeding has stopped.  That's something, right?  She is wearing well-worn jeans and her hiking boots and an old bar t-shirt beneath a black hoodie that she has zipped the fuck up and she doesn't have a sword strapped to her back.

Maybe she should have a sword strapped to her back.

She knows how to use them.

Not like this, not against people.  At least: not against people who aren't completely shrouded in protective gear, with the expectation that the blade will slice through flesh-and-bone and make someone bleed.

So she doesn't have a sword strapped to her back but she does have a knife strapped to her thigh and she even has a nine millimeter in a goddamned shoulder holster or some ridiculous, absurd thing and she knows how to use that too.  Against paper targets and beer cans and watermelons.

And, sometimes, Nephandi.

And she's hurting, but Ian climbs the fence and then Jae-Shin and then Sera starts up after them.  She's not strong but she is rather slight and she is fucking athletic - she has to be to wear those heels all that time - so the one makes up for the other, right?

Right.

Sera hits the ground the first time because her arms are made of jello and the world is spinning beneath her and she's kind of hallucinating - just around the edges of her vision - in a way that opens up the secret world and must be closing everything else off because there is a beat or two or three where she doesn't seem to have acclimated to the change, without to within.

Behind the active vision, though, - well - when it finally becomes clear to hear how badly damaged the place is, Sera curses, quietly, beneath her breath.  And she is more than a bit breathless right now, the wind taken out of her once more by touching down on this side of the thigh fence.

Elijah

Elijah was not an athletic creature. He knew this, wasn't embarrassed about this, the fact that his physical activities tended to lend themselves to more carnal ends was not exactly helping him at that juncture, save to have the occasional thought stay present and consistent in his mind. THere were things to do. There were things to do  and people to see and something that they needed to stop.

He should have told Kalen what he was doing. He should have told Kalen a lot of things, but telling Kalen his thought process wasn't exactly high on his To Do list. Elijah took in the general feel of the place, a little cold now that he wasn't shoved up against someone who was a little slice of magical winter. He was too busy thinking of things he wanted to tell Jenn, things he'd wished he'd told her. He could see all sorts of things, except for what was in front of him. Funny how that works.

"Jesus," he muttered, looking at the house. He took a second to look at the people he was with, "so... what are we doing? Are we having, like, a metaphysical intervention? Do we read letters about why cannibalism is bad?"

Oh yeah, he wasn't nervous at all.

Alexander

Alexander had been early to the Chantry, but had been pretty quiet the whole time he’d been there.  He knew what was coming, to some degree what they were expecting to happen.  Maybe the plan itself needed to be firmed up, but in the end it all came down to one thing:  The pack and their leader needed to be stopped.  And that’s why he was here.  Because of that sense of duty that had put him in the line of fire before and, all going well, would do again.  There’s not much to be said.

He spends his time doing what he can to help the others before preparing his gear. The body armour is checked.  The pistol taken apart, stripped, cleaned and reassembled.  They’re all familiar motions – he keeps his gear well maintained – so perhaps it’s more out of something to occupy his hands and his mind until they were ready to go.  He rides with Sera and Dan, leaving the blue bike tucked away in the Chantry’s garage.

They arrive at the house and Alexander offers to boost up anyone who might need a hand before climbing up and over the fence himself.  Best hope they don’t need to get away in a hurry, right?  Elijah asks what they’re going to do.  Makes a joke about dropping off pamphlets.  Tries to hide his nerves.

“We do what needs to be done.”  The tone is almost normal, but there are tells in his body language for those who know him.  He’s nervous too.  But he’s had more practice in similar, if more mundane, situations, so is better at hiding it.  He unholsters his Glock, checks the clip and the round in the chamber – one of the clips that Kalen had worked his particular brand of magic on earlier - then clicks off the safety.

The others are watching the house, so he looks around where they’re not watching.  They don't know how many people are inside, and it's best their little group  doesn't get snuck up on.

Lucy

What of Lucy the Dreamspeaker?  Her day started earlier, with a soak in the impossible heat of the Node's hot spring to replenish what she could of her strength, her power.  One of these days she'll have to ask around if there isn't some other place, some other Node where she can pray to her divine Avatar for strength, some place that doesn't make her feel like she's melting from the inside out.  For today, though, Lucy did what needed to be done, dressed, gathered her things, and began her journey on foot to the cloaked area from her visions.  It was no easy thing.  She carried her large-ish yet plain mirror she used to draw out Sally Starling, and her lantern, and her bag full of other things over her shoulder.

The ritual was long, and arduous, and tasking.  Lucy prayed to the dusk handmaiden, the being to whom she is merely a conduit, an oracle, a device.  She readied herself and she prepared herself.  She lit her lamp and lowered the Gauntlet through her mirror that her voice would carry more easily.  The air around her grew gelid, frosted, too cold for such a pleasant autumn day.  And in the end all she can do is hope that her voice is heard.  Lucy's duty is to guide the dead, not to command.  She eases their passage to the other side, doesn't compel them.  She wonders if these are things she should do, feels her cheek burn where Dusk touched her so many years ago.  Knows there is more to be done, but later.  Later.

It seems an eternity before they arrive.  While she waits, she lights her incense and bolsters her mind against intrusion.  Lucy doesn't recognize most of them, but she knows them.  Brian and Melissa and Kevin.  Nathan, Denise.  Kate and Sean.  Jeremy.

She greets them as one would expect the guardian of the dead to greet them.  Tired, weary, but straight and strong, chin lifted.

"I promised you justice," she says, then turns away to look over the land.  The house is not easily in view, but she knows that it's there.  Lifting a long and graceful and too-pale arm she points.  "It's there."  Looking at the gathered dead, she asks, "Will you take it with your own hands?  Will you find your peace?  Come."  She takes a step back.  "I'll help you all that I can."

And she, their Speaker, guides, and she leads, leaving behind the larger mirror.  She won't be needing it for what needs to be done next.

As she nears she feels others.  Most she doesn't recognize, but two are very familiar.  One is cold, frozen, almost like her but not quite.  The other is the tumult.  The others...strangers, but those two are enough.  Lucy's chin lifts, and she picks up speed, until she is running long-limbed and long-gaited to the house.

Hunger

Lucy led her charge to the house, and when she arrived at the edges of the property and sensed the presence of the other mages, she began to run. The ghosts followed, their forms shifting and fluid as smoke. As they moved through the trees, they disappeared and reappeared, blending with the shadows. And then, when they arrived at the fence, they stopped. Ian and Jae-shin looked back at them, and the expression on Ian's face snapped with surprise. The Akashic nodded to the spirits, and to Lucy, as though he understood already what it was they'd come there to do. Jae-shin offered a hand to help Lucy over the fence, should she need it.

Behind him, Sera gave a quiet curse when she saw the state of the property. It was obvious that something had gone down there recently. But what? And who was left standing at the end?

Alexander wasn't able to sense any immediate spiritual activity nearby. At least, not in the yard or the house up ahead. Sera had previously mentioned that the building was Awakened, but now? There was nothing. It felt cold and dormant to his senses. Jae-shin confirmed it.

"I don't sense any spiritual residue in the house."

Serafíne

She glances at Jae-shin as he informs them that the house was not Awakened, or perhaps was no longer Awakened, and seams her mouth, and nods.  Thoughtful.

Then:  "There are two people inside.  Both are injured, and tired.  One's still strong though - it must be her?  I cannot sense her mind.  The other, though.  A young man.  He's scared to death, exhausted, and in pain."

  Then she glances around the yard.   Which she is seeing-not-seeing for the first time, and which she also remembers from Zoe's vision.  "The worshipers attacked Zoe's coven out here.  Maybe they didn't survive the attack.

"There were three cars, do you see them?  Maybe the survivors are looking for another victim. For her rites.  I think I can find them both inside."

Hunger

No cars were visible in the driveway. Either they were gone, or they'd been parked in the garage. Ian shook his head when Sera mentioned them. "I don't see any. I can sense the two in the house, too." He glanced at Jae-shin. "Can you tell if there are any corpses nearby?"

Jae-shin closed his eyes and breathed in a couple of deep, measured breaths. Meditating quietly. Whatever he found, it made his expression darken. He looked at Ian. There was a beat of ominous silence.

"There are many. In the basement of the house. Some of them are in pieces."

"How many?"

"Eleven. Twelve."

"...Fuck." Ian's curse was low and whispered.

"There are cars in the garage," Jae-shin answered for Sera.

Ian looked as though he was about to say something, but then he went suddenly still, poised and alert like an animal, his eyes fixed forward on the trees behind the house.

"Something's out there."

When it appeared, it happened very suddenly. People always talk about how bears can move more quickly than you'd think, but when you're actually confronted with it, it's all the more terrifying. The creature (it was a grizzly - and a big one) broke through the trees at a galloping run, making a beeline straight for their group. As it approached, it opened its mouth and roared.

It was not a normal bear. Normal bears did not have spikes of sharp bone sticking out from their hide. They did not have skin sagging from their face like a corpse. And when they roared, their jaws did not unhinge like a snake to reveal a second set of teeth. But all of these things happened. All of these things were there.

"It's possessed!" Jae-shin uttered a quick warning as he drew his sword. "Corrupted."

Wrong. Ravenous and hungry.

Ian pulled his sword. Ahead of them in the house, someone began to scream. The sound was muted and distant, but barely audible. That boy... something was happening to him.

Serafíne

"Fuck."

Eloquent creature, Sera.  She curses, not quite beneath her breath, flinches when she senses what is happening to the young man, and she does not have time to imagine him trapped in a room full of corpses but she's just on the verge of hallucinating right now and in pain and she cannot help but feel that there are terrible animate things just at the edge of her consciousness.

(There are terrible animate things at the edges of her consciousness.)

She turns, glances over her shoulder at Elijah and Alexander. "She's coming down the steps and there's a boy in the basement who is in danger.  If you can get around the bear, then you need to go.  Bullets will hurt her Alexander.  She's not immune."

[Prime 2:  attack on the bear.  Vulgar without witnesses.  Difficulty: 6 +1 (so many effects)  -1 (focus) -1 (resonance - visceral.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Serafíne

(Going for 6+ successes before she lets the effect go.  Spending a quint.)

Elijah

Under the sight of a normal grizzly bear, Elijah would have tried to play dead and hope that everything he saw on TV worked.

this, however, was not a normal bear. This was not a creature that wasn't really real anymore. This wasn't like anything he had ever seen. Eyes widened, stomach turned and he took his time to hold the handgun and familiarize himself with the fact that he was going to go in and do something that he'd only done in a friend's back yard (keep your hand steady, keep your eyes focused. Breathe and be ready for recoil. Don't look away.) And there comes a moment when people can be afraid, when fear can paralyze you and make you think that it's all over.

But action was better than nothing. He cocked his head towards the house and made his way to the door.

"C'mon, let's go," he wasn't fearless by any means. He was fool hearty, yes, but at that moment his heart was pounding and his breathing was steady and Elijah was very, very aware of how fallible his body was. About how he had to act, and act quickly. Bears and nerves be damned, they had to move.

Alexander

Two people inside – one of them hurt, scared.  Most likely another victim, although the pack hadn’t shown any hesitation on turning on one of their own before.  Either way, they need help.

Alexander turns to Ian, then to where Ian is looking, when he says Something’s out there.  He sees the bear and get’s a feeling of something riding it when Jae-shin gives his warning.  He turns and starts to bring his gun up, taking aim at the creature – whatever it had been twisted and turned into – and...

Fuck.  He holds the shot, looking to Sera when she curses but still holding the pistol in position.  “Ah, fuck!”.  He decides.  Sera seems to be happy to handle the bear and is outright telling him to go.  So the gun comes down and he runs, dashing off at the same time as Elijah.  And hoping like hell that the others staying to take care of the bear are a good enough distraction for them to be able to get past.

Lucy

On the outside of the fence Lucy stops because she has to stop.  She does not have the ability to slide through solid objects like some Marvel heroine.  But she stops up short when she sees the people with Elijah and Alexander.  One is unknown, one vaguely familiar, but the third...

Lucy, eyes wide, opens her mouth and immediately snaps it shut.  There is no time to ask Ian?  No time to wonder at him being here, at him having that otherworldy resonance.  She climbs nimbly over the fence, drops lightly on the other side, and trots to catch up.

"Hey," she says, perhaps slowly to their senses as she claps her hand on Elijah's shoulder.  She gives it a gentle if not reassuring squeeze before letting go, and she does not interrupt.

There are bodies.  Lucy looks to the spirits gathered with her, gauging emotions, reactions.  Is it one or more of them?  It doesn't matter.  If the previous owners of those bones still lurked nearby they would need to wait until later.  Lucy is weary, does not presently make a very good vessel for her Avatar's strength, does not have time to try to draw them over to aid in taking their own justice.

And then there is that bear.  Lucy, with only a simple boxcutter (and her antique silver scissors, but those she will not use for violence) somewhere inside her bag, is no good against bears.  Unless one counts potential toothaches from trying to eat nearly-frozen flesh, of course.

And anyway, their target, the target of the ghosts with her, is within.  And there is Elijah, making for the door, and Alexander.  Lucy spares only a glance for Ian, a glance that holds the barest hint of wonder, the slightest curve at the corner of her wide mouth.  Then she's shaking her head and running after the others.

"She's inside," she says for her charges.  "She's near.  Almost, you're almost there."

Hunger

It was a split-second decision. That was all the time they really had to make it. Ian and Jae-shin and Sera were at the front. Two of them had drawn swords. One of them was a Disciple. And Ian knew that some of their group were not equipped to deal with something like this. That if that bear got its jaws around Elijah or Lucy they would likely not survive.

Victoria had to know that they were there. She'd probably known all along.

"Come on!" Ian roared, running both toward the bear and away from the group. Meaning to intercept it. To grab its focus. Jae-shin moved with him as though they'd been fighting together for years. Completely in sync. Sera kept further back, preparing an effect to take down the creature from a distance. And while this went on, the others took their chance.

Elijah and Alexander ran for the front door, with Lucy just behind. She was guiding the spirits that had come with them. Leading them on to... what? Hopefully some kind of justice for the horrors that were wrought upon them.

When the mages reached the door, the found it locked. It would, of course, have been too easy if it hadn't. But the spirits? Physical barriers meant little to them, and one by one they passed through the walls into the house, leaving the living beings behind.

 Elijah

[please don't miss the door. Dex+firearms? Called shot +2?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (4, 5, 7) ( fail )

Alexander

[Bigger bang.  Dex+Firearm. +2 diff]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

He really isn't a martial creature.

He really, really isn't a martial creature. And call it nerves or call it whatever, but one should probably call it what it was and there was a nice bullet sized notch in the door, but nothing else. He winced.

Alexander

Elijah’s shot goes astray, leaving a hole in the body of the door.  Alexander takes aim and tries, shredding the lock and opening the way forward.  He steps forward, gun raised and watchful for threats.  There’s no question now that the woman behind all of this knows that they’re there.  So he does what he can to protect the other two.

Lucy

Elijah pulls out a gun and Lucy quickly steps back, clapping her hands over her ears.  She's about to lower them when she sees - ah, no, the door only has a fresh notch in it.  Alexander takes aim and Lucy watches, brow furrowed.  His gun looks like it'll be louder than the other, maybe.  The ghosts have left, have gone in to find the one who orchestrated their deaths, there isn't much that she can do on her own.  But she isn't about to stay outside with the terrifying bears.  Perhaps she can provide moral support?

She waits for the other two to go through first, then makes her way after, pausing just inside the door to step to the side and look around.  The woman outside said "she" was coming downstairs.  And that there was someone with her, someone wounded and scared.  If nothing else, maybe Lucy could get the one hurt out of harm's way.

 Hunger

[Ian Init +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (5) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Jae-shin +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( fail )

Serafíne

Normally +6 is she just +5?

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Fomori-bear +4]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (8) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Order:

Sera: 14

Ian: 12 (+7)

Bear: 12 (+4)

Jae-shin: 7

Declare time, wee!]

Hunger

[Jae-shin:

1: Dodge whatever the fuck this bear is about to do

2: Hit the bear with the sword]

Hunger

[Bear: Claw Jae-shin]

Hunger

[Ian:

1: Katana the bear

2: Katana the bear]

Serafíne

Sera:  [Extending effect.]

Serafíne

Extending Prime 2, effect - difficulty +1 (now six).

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

Hunger

[And boom. The bear is dead. Sera is a badass]

Hunger

The creature was a terrifying thing to behold, and bore down on the mages with wide open jaws and long, mangled fangs. Ian and Jae-shin were able to distract its focus while Sera finished working her effect, and then...

Sera unleashed a bolt of pure, blinding quintessence, and the effect ripped through the beast's pattern, splaying it wide open and searing its flesh. It gave one last, sickening gurgle, shuddered, and fell to the ground dead.

But of course, if Ian, Sera and Jae-shin thought that was the last of Victoria's defenses, they would be disappointed. And sure enough, even as Sera's attack found its mark, a second bear charged in from the trees to the West.

---------------------

When Alex opened the door, the mages found themselves looking into a dark foyer. All of the lights in the house were off, and no one was there to greet them when they entered. If Victoria was there, she was keeping quiet. Her resonance lingered though. That sense of devouring hunger. It was so very, very strong.

Outside, there were sounds of combat. Of a roaring, huffing beast. And then a sudden surge of crackling, visceral energy followed by a bright flash.

Another scream issued from somewhere on the floor below. It was louder now, easier to distinguish. Up ahead, at the end of the hallway, there were stairs leading both up and down.

Elijah

there was a feeling of devouring hunger. A feeling that couldn't quite be sated that gnawed on his consciousness and he was running on autopilot. IT wasn't a thought of heroism, but rather, a memory of what he was supposed to be doing. A thought that he knew he was here for a purpose and he had to move and time was not on his side, so naturally, what Elijah did was steel himself and haul ass down to where the sound of the screaming panic terror pain fuck that sound. He followed down the stairs.

He could make smart decisions later. He needed to make quick decisions now.

Alexander

That feeling, so very strong but all around them.  All around, so useless for trying to narrow down where Victoria might be.  There’s a fleeting thought that it would be something good to know, but he’s focused.  Concentrated.  He stalks down the hallway swiftly but warily, gun outstretched.  He reaches the stairs, sweeping the pistol up and then down, ready to fire.

This was always as close as he’d gotten to meditation before Kalen had spent time with him, that clearing of the mind from conscious thought.  Instinct steps in.  And Alexander steps down, towards the screaming.

Lucy

Lucy feels that ravenous, gnawing hunger trying to worm its way into the pit of her stomach.  It makes her shiver in a way that cold never will again.  There is a thought, a single pondering moment where she wonders where to start looking.  She should bear witness to what she's brought with her, after all.  She should stand guard, cold and quiet sentinel of the dead.

But a scream from below tears its way through her, raking fingernails down her spine and causing her heart to jump.  Then she is jumping, dashing forward, hot (hah) on Elijah's heels.  If she can help she must.  If it is not someone's time to die then she must do what she can to ensure they aren't taken too soon.

Like Elijah, there is no thought, only action.  Only a need to get. to. them.

[let's go percept+alert, though]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Sera is in pain.  Her head is throbbing and her muscles are shaky and she feels as if the world has perhaps started spinning the wrong-way-round but fuck that's what helps her.  That's what she digs in to to slice open the effect she is tearing out of the very goddamned sinews of her body and flinging it out of herself.  She makes this noise when she does so.  She doesn't know what it sounds like - how ragged and intense and ecstatic that cri-de-coeur is and she hardly has time to take in the staggering mess that is the ruined, once-living thing when -

"Shit."

- another comes rumbling out of the woods.  Her hands are fists now and she's pressing them to her forehead, reaching again for that-which-is-inside her.

[Prime 2: Difficulty: 6 + 1 (effects)  -1 focus,  -1 resonance appropriate.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

(Once again: charging with quint, holding off the effect for more successes. Target is 5+.)

Hunger

[Ian and Jae-shin use their action to close distance to the bear. It is init time once more!]

Hunger

[Ian +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (2) ( fail )

Hunger

[Jae-shin +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (5) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

+5 init!

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Fomori-bear +4]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (2) ( fail )

Hunger

Order:

Sera: 13

Jae-shin: 11

Ian: 9

Bear: 6

Hunger

[Bear Bites Jae-shin]

Hunger

[Ian

1: Katana the bear

2: Katana the bear]

Hunger

[Jae-shin

1: Dodge!

2: Katana the bear]

Hunger

[it's like deja vu]

Serafíne

Sera: extending!  Difficulty +1

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

Hunger

[The bear is dead]

Hunger

And just like before.

It was almost like a dance. Like it had been choreographed. The bear charged. Ian and Jae-shin moved to intercept.

And Sera? Fucking tore it apart. Not with a blade. Not with a gun, but with her own will, and her own essence. The others were hopefully inside the house by now, and for a half-second the two men looked around as though they expected another of those terrible beasts to come charging out of the woods. But none did.

Sera was hurt, and the weight of paradox hung over her head like a blade waiting to drop.

But she was okay, for the moment. They all were.

There was still an Adept in the house. And now? Oh, they had her attention. Sera could feel the threads of that devouring will working its way toward her.

[Victoria is going to remote-cast rip the man-body. She's targeting all three of them, and will need 5 successes minimum]

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 3 )

--------------------

The house was dark, but some ambient moonlight shone in through the windows. Enough that the mages could see where they were going - at least, until they began to descend the staircase. The steps were made from hardwood, and they creaked slightly beneath Elijah's weight. He was joined by Lucy and Alexander, the latter with his gun drawn and held at the ready.

As the three of them walked down those steps, the light around them grew darker. Until the door ahead of them was only a faint outline in the blackness. This door was heavier even than the first: a solid metal panel with a sturdy deadbolt. The front door had been locked. Would this one be as well?

Whoever chose to open the door, they would find it unlocked. Maybe that was a stroke of luck. Maybe it wasn't.

The first thing that hit them was the smell. Blood. The air in the basement was thick with it. Like they were walking into a slaughterhouse. But the room ahead was pitch black, and the young man? He'd stopped screaming. Now there was only this stark, ominous silence. And that resonance, growing ever stronger. She was here. Victoria. The Devourer. Jormungandr.

Waiting. For them? Likely.

Elijah

There was a smell.

His avatar wasn't screaming at him, he didn't hear dozens of voices telling him what to do. He didn't have anything except silence and a clear head. He reached for his back pocket, taking out his cell phone with the cracked screen and fiddling with it for a moment to get it to the flashlight function. He didn't want to see what was down there. He didn't want to know, but he had to know. he couldn't experience just the good, he needed to see the worst in humanity. She was here, the devourer. The serpent which devoured the world. Elijah inhaled slowly, remembering that calming breath.

"Victoria?" he asks, and his voice is a forced calm, "this is... why? Why all of this."

It just came out. He didn't mean to ask, but he had to ask.

"This isn't okay."

Like anyone would listen to reason.

Alexander

Certain things come with time.  Experience is one of them.  The experience of blood.  Fresh, dried, pooled, splattered.  The iron-tinged smell of it as you wash it away.  The experience isn’t an unfamiliar one, although perhaps its intensity is more than Alexander had been exposed to before.  Perhaps it was a blessing that, for the moment, they weren’t able to see anything.  The smell was a warning of what was to come.

Alexander’s mind still flows clear, quiet.  Focussed.  Some of the Mages had found out what happens when they sneak up on him.  This?  This is why.

Elijah slows up, the sound of something being slipped out of a pocket.  Alexander moves away.  The gun stays raised, his back brushing the wall – its presence reassuring that nothing could come at him from behind.  He listens, trying to place the other occupants of the room.  The man had stopped screaming, but why?  Because he couldn’t scream anymore?  Alexander stays quiet, all the better to stay unnoticed.

[Sneaksneaksneak - dex/sealth]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lucy

The stairway gets darker and darker, and Lucy pauses, presses against the side of the passage to allow Alexander to pass.  They have guns and, she assumes, a decided lack of night vision.  She lets them get ahead of her and it's only after she's assumped a place at the rear that she recalls her lantern, hastily stashed into her bag before she climbed the fence.  She retrieves it now, which is easy.  Finding her lighter takes more time.  She's well behind the other two, is just putting her fingers around the cold metal case when the smell hits her.  It turns her stomach.  Lucy is no stranger to the smell of death.  The chill of the grave has seeped through her skin to the marrow of her bones, and she does not always locate the departed without discovering their remains.

But this.  This is just so wrong.

By the time Lucy's found her lighter, Elijah's already calling out, the light from his cell phone shining out.  Lucy's light is no longer needed, but perhaps she can use it for a different purpose.  She opens the door of her lantern, flicks her lighter to life and touches the flame to the wick.  Soon enough, light and shadow are dancing on the walls around her and flickering over Alexander's back.  As she drops the lighter back into her bag, she thinks it might be best not to go in empty handed.  She finds the cold lump of her box cutter - it's too dark to see but it's white with a swan carved and stained black in the handle - shifts it to the pocket of her pants.

She does not follow the others the rest of the way down the stairs.  Instead she prays, and she begs a boon of the dusk handmaiden.

Dusk handmaiden, I beg you to lend my voice strength...

[Hey yo ghosts, what you want is down here: Call Spirit, Spirit 2, diff 5-1 (specialty focus) -1 (natural channel), extending once and praying that's enough!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 7) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

There's no time to understand what happens.  Sera is breathing so very hard, half-sobbing, because this sort of casting just tears something out of her and her senses are blown wide, wide open and she can feel that absolute devouring hunger from inside -

"She's coming down," Sera pants out to Ian and Jae-shinn, her voice raw, cracking.  "She's casting - she's targeting all of us with life magicks.  I'm gonna to try to unravel it but - "

you guys better move fast is the goddamned subtext.

[Countermagick!  Difficulty 8.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (2, 6, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Hunger

Sera told them to move, and that? Is exactly what Ian and Jae-shin did. They'd already sensed what was about to happen, and with a quick look back at Sera, they ran to the front door of the house.

[Victoria extends her effect.]

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

Serafíne

Countermagick!

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (1, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Hunger

[One more time!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 2 )

Hunger

[Aaand the effect fizzles]

Serafíne

'Dox.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Soak!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Sera takes 1B, is now at 3B]

Hunger

Elijah flicked on the flashlight app in his phone, pointing it forward into the room. The cool beam of white light cast an eerie glow in the room, contrasted against stark shadows and pools of murky, indistinct darkness. Jae-shin had said that there were corpses down here, but if so, only one was actually visible. That one was the body of a woman in her thirties, stretched out naked across a long metal table in the center of the room. Her chest split open, with only a gaping hole where the heart should have been. It looked as though some kind of marks had been painted on her body. Elijah and Alexander might recognize them as Enochian sigils, if Kalen had ever shown them such things.

Elijah wanted to know why. It was likely that whatever answer Victoria gave him would do nothing to make the scene before them more palatable.

The rest of the room was currently empty, apart from a set of strong metal cages that lay against the far wall, a collection of edged weapons hanging on a rack to the left, and a heavy door leading off to the right. The floor was dark and slick, polished concrete with grates installed for drainage. There were splattered red stains on the floor and on the walls.

And standing behind that table with the dead woman were two people who were very much alive. One: a young man with medium-dark skin and a soft, faintly beating note of Radiant resonance, barely noticeable amid the thick fog of Victoria's devouring hunger. He was sitting on his knees with his hands behind his back, stock-still with the blade of a small axe pressed against his throat. When Elijah's light came on, he let out a couple of quick, rough, panicked breaths, but did not attempt to speak or scream.

And the person holding that weapon? If any of those present had seen the photo that Kalen had passed along, they'd recognize Victoria's face. She looked different here. Her hair was longer, and hung loose and messy around her face. Her skin looked pallid, with dark shadows beneath her eyes. But that same piercing, hungry look was still there in her eyes. In another reality, if they'd met her under different circumstances, she would have seemed beautiful. And she was beautiful. But in a sharp, cold, brutal fashion. Beautiful the way that a monster could be beautiful.

Her lips were red. There was blood on them.

Above them on the stairs, Lucy lit her lantern, and a warmer, softer glow joined that of Elijah's cell phone. She prayed, calling the spirits back to her, and gradually they appeared at the top of the stairs, but there they hesitated. As though afraid. As though trapped in memory. This time they did not cry out though. This time they did not fall to pieces. Jeremy was stronger here than he had been in the park. Stronger, perhaps, for the presence of the others. But he was still afraid.

Elijah wanted to know why.

"Because I can," Victoria said. "Because I want to."

Alexander stepped around the beam of Elijah's light, moving quietly into the room, but Victoria's eyes tracked to him almost immediately.

"Come any closer, and I'll kill him."

Elijah

[Awarepathy?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Hunger

[Victoria's Manip+Subterfuge]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Elijah

"This is destroying you," he tells her, insists and pleads as though he knows this. As though his understanding what this did to her soul would somehow make things different. he didn't understand. he didn't understand how intoxicatng power was. he didn't understand what it felt like to become powerful. To be stronger, faster. To have a never ending hunger ripping at his insides.

"If you don't stop now, there might not be any coming back from it. Right now, it... things are bad, but you can turn back from this. You can walk away, too."

he couldn't see anything, could read anything, perhaps because of her solid poker face or perhaps... perhaps.

"What do I need to do to make sure everyone walks out of this place alive?"

Alexander

Victoria speaks and Alexander swings around, bringing the pistol to bear on the woman.  He heeds her warning, though, and stops moving across the room.

There might have been thoughts.  Thoughts of the people – the known people – who had gone missing since June.  Brian.  Kate.  Jeremy. Melissa.  Kevin.  Nathan.  Denise.  Sean.  He knew their names.  He knew what  had happened to them now.  Them, and the others who hadn’t been reported missing.  The others who might never be found.  Dead, alone, forgotten.

Thoughts of what had been done to them.  Dragged here alive, hurting, in fear for their lives.  Tied to that table while Victoria painted them and prepared them and...  ripped their hearts out while they were still alive?  Would she have had enough humanity left to kill them first?

Thoughts of what Victoria could go on to do.  Starting a new pack.  Killing more people.  Getting stronger and stronger until... She had already fed – the blood on her lips.

Others had seen him unsure and questioning, struggling to deal with what he is and what he should be.  Delilah had asked before whether his resonance was anything to do with his personality.  He’d said no but, at that time, he hadn’t been floating on instinct.  All those thoughts put to one side, his core cold.  Frozen.  They knew what she was and what she had done.

The frozen heart of the comet is in his voice when he replies.  “Ok.”  He pulls the trigger.

Lucy

"Here," says Lucy, drawing the spirits of the dead to her like moths to, well to a flame.  "She's here."

And then they are here, too.  Jeremy and the others.  Lucy turns to look up at them, chin lifted, green eyes colorless in the semi-darkness.  She holds her lantern aloft, and holds out her hand to them, beckoning.

"Come," she says, voice gentle.  She could lie if she wanted to take such a route to compel them.  But Lucy is an honest girl, for all that she could lie.  She doesn't tell them that Victoria can't hurt them now, that the worst is over.  What she says, voice kept low just for them, is,

"It's up to you now.  My friends are downstairs, and they can try to hurt her, and maybe they will hurt her.  But the debt will still be there.  If she has any people left they can and will look for them, and the cycle of violence will just keep going.

"But you can end it.  I've found your justice, and it's there," she says, raising her lantern to shine down the stairs.  "You can repay her for everything she's taken from you.  Your dog," she says, looking to Jeremy.  "Your lives.  Your futures.

"You just have to go down those stairs.  Do in death what you couldn't in life.  Set yourselves free."

[manip (persuasive?)+leadership]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lucy

[awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Alexander

[Awareness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

[Per+awareness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2

Lucy

[+7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Hunger

[Victoria Init +9]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Alexander

+6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Hunger

[Paul Init +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Hunger

[The Ghosts are all going to get the same init - they move as ONE +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Hunger

[Ian Init +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )

Hunger

[Jae-shin +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Mystery +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Elijah's Init is, uh, I think +5?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

And the Order is!

Elijah - 14

Mystery NPC - 13

Jae-shin - 12

Alexander - 11

Victoria - 10

Ian - 10

Ghosts - 9

Lucy - 8

Paul - 7

Hunger

[Paul is going to sit there and try not to get his throat slit. Will default to evasion if an opportunity occurs]

Lucy

[countering victoria's Time effect, hoping for the best!]

Hunger

[Ghosts will close distance to Victoria this turn]

Hunger

[Ian:

1: Close distance to top of stairs

2: Close remaining distance to Victoria]

Hunger

[Victoria:

1: Dodge!

2: Disarm Alexander with throwing axe]

Alexander

[1: Shoot Victoria

2. Dodge Victoria]

Hunger

[Jae-shin does the same thing Ian does]

Hunger

[Mystery NPC breaks in through a window]

Elijah

(try countermagic for time?)

Elijah

[Countermagic?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN8 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Hunger

[Victoria's Dodge: Dex 5 + Ath 3]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

[Bang!  Dex+Firearms]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Hunger

[Alex shoots! And the bullet sloooows and hits the floor in front of Victoria]

Alexander

[Dodge?  Dex/Ath]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Hunger

[Victoria throws her axe with intent to disarm. Dex+Ath +1 diff]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Hunger

[aaand she misses]

Hunger

[(it's ok, she has another one)]

Lucy

[counter-Time!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (10, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Hunger

[Victoria's Time effect fizzles!]

Hunger

[Paul jumps up and starts to run away from Victoria. His hands are still bound behind his back.]

Hunger

[Damage Tally:

Everyone: Full Health!

Order in case anyone needs a reminder:

Elijah - 14

Mystery NPC - 13

Jae-shin - 12

Alexander - 11

Victoria - 10

Ian - 10

Ghosts - 9

Lucy - 8

Paul - 7

Hunger

[Paul is going to try to cut the zip-tie off his hands with one of those weapons on rack by the wall]

Lucy

[Let the fighters do the fighting.  Lucy gets her box cutter and stands guard on the stairs. (splitting if necessary)]


Hunger

[Ghosts attack Victoria]

Hunger

[Ian:

1: Katana Victoria

2: Ditto]

Hunger

[Victoria: Rip the Man-Body on Alexander]

Alexander

[1. Shoot Victoria.

2. Shoot Victoria]

Hunger

[Jae-shin: Counter that Forces Shield]

Hunger

[Mystery NPC turns out to be a young Awakened woman of Korean descent. She does NOT have that Ravenous resonance, but instead feels Spectral and Swift. She is going to close distance to the stairs and hope that Lucy lets her past.]

Elijah

[Let's try counter magic for that Rip the Man Body Effect]

Elijah

[arete?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN8 (7) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Hunger

Zoe (to Lucy): "I'm here to help. Please."

Hunger

[Jae-shin's countermagic]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (4, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Hunger

[Victoria's shield is now at level 1]

Alexander

[Bang?  Dex/Firearms]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander

[Damage +1

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Hunger

[Victoria takes 4A]

Alexander

[Bang the second]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

[Damage the second]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Hunger

[Victoria is at 6A]

Hunger

[Victoria casts her effect. Life 3, vulgar, diff 7 -1 (focus/blood) -1 (practiced) -1 (resonance)]

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

Hunger

[That is 4 -1 (from Elijah) so Alex takes 4L damage]

Hunger

[Ian Dex+Melee]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Hunger

[Damage 5+2]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Lucy

[awarepathy: I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU IS]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Hunger

[Zoe is so completely 1000% genuine. Like whoa.]

Lucy

Lucy gives a small nod and stands aside before sliding down the wall to sit on the stairs, too mentally exhausted for words.

Hunger

Would things have been different if they'd come earlier? If they'd been the ones to attack first instead of the Hermetics? All those remnants of violence outside... and Jae-shin had said that there were bodies in the basement (probably behind that door.) What exactly had happened here the night before?

Whatever the events, Victoria had survived, but even an Adept could be vulnerable when fighting alone against a large group. And she was tired. Tired and weakened from her efforts the night before. Alexander chose to call her bluff. It was a risk. Miss, and Victoria might very well kill her hostage. And he did not miss, but the bullet somehow refused to reach its target, its forward momentum slowed by a kinetic barrier. Instead of cutting the boy's throat, she chose to think pragmatically and hurled her throwing axe across the room. It was a good throw, and likely would have disarmed Alexander if he hadn't moved, but Alexander's instincts were wired tight. He dodged swiftly out of the way, and the weapon lodged itself in the wall behind him.

Meanwhile, Lucy and Elijah did what they could to tear down the Adept's defenses, and Victoria's hyper-swift movement slowed to a more normal speed. Upstairs, they were re-joined by Ian and Jae-shin, with Sera limping after them. The two men ran through the house and sped past Lucy down the stairs just as the sound of a breaking window announced the presence of an as-yet unknown party.

And what of those spirits? The ghosts of Victoria's victims. They looked down at the room where each of them had been sacrificed. This was the place, Lucy had said. This was the time for them to gain justice. And so? They vanished. But only for a moment. When they reappeared, they surrounded Victoria, watching her with cold, spectral, accusing eyes. Victoria looked at them and snarled a curse in some ancient tongue. Venomous and threatening. But they weren't the most immediate threat, so she focused her Will on Alexander, whose gun contained bullets that might easily rip her pattern to shreds.

She chanted something under her breath - a litany of archaic, powerful words. And she licked the blood on her lips. Then Alexander fired. Once. Twice. And his bullets shattered bones and muscle and sent her blood spraying onto the walls.

But he didn't kill her. Not quite. And when she released her effect, it tore into his pattern and flayed open a couple of searing wounds in his back and chest.

There was an opportunity, and Ian took it. His katana swung in a high, brutal arc and separated Victoria's head from her body. The sound it made when it hit the floor was wet and heavy and hard. Her lifeless body followed a moment after, seeping blood in a thick pool around Ian's feet. He was breathing hard. His face and his sword were dripping with Victoria's blood.

She was dead.

But no. Not gone. Where her body fell, another spirit began to rise up, hissing and clawing her way back to the mortal realm as though she could hold herself there by force. That was when the ghosts did what they'd come there to do. Acting as one, they flew forward and attacked, tearing into her Will and her spirit one piece at a time. She fought back hard, and once or twice one of the ghosts flickered as though it might break apart, but somehow their spirits held on to reality. And gradually, Victoria's presence got weaker and weaker. Until finally Jeremy reached his hand into her chest and crushed her heart. And her light... went out.

"Paul?"

That was the girl on the stairs. She moved past Lucy, giving her a nod of thanks, and descended into the basement. When she saw Victoria's body lying on the floor, she gave a hiccuping little gasp, but her attention shifted almost immediately to the young man in the corner, who'd just finished freeing himself from his ties. They looked at each other with shock and relief, and the girl gave a sudden, hysterical sob. Then they rushed to throw their arms around each other.

"I thought you were dead," the girl whispered over and over. "I thought you were dead..."

Elijah

[Stamina: don't puke]

Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (6, 8) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

He's never seen someone die before.

He's never seen someone die, never seen someone decapitated never felt blood everywhere or been so close that he felt like he could taste it and there were ghosts and there was that feeling in the air and oh god oh god oh god this isn't happening. His knees felt like they were going to give out and his stomach turned and Elijah was certain that he was going to revisit his lunch only to be made aware that he hasn't eaten today. Didn't want to eat today, wasn't going to want anything after this.

"We need to bury people," it's all he can think. All that comes to mind, all he can get out. He sounds exhausted and wired.

"We need to bury people and give them their last rites and.. and... yeah..."

He breathed. Breathed deep and tried to keep his head together but he couldn't stop looking at her body and how it didn't have a head and there wasn't a fucking head. And how he wasn't sure if she was going to laeve a wraith or if she was going to move on and he needed to know, he needed to know what was going to happen and he needed to know if her soul was clean and he didn't know and he didn't know if things would be okay-

But things weren't okay yet.

Serafíne
 
(Sera will drop her active effects so as not to incur casting penalties.  Life 3: Healing Alexander.  Difficulty: 7.  -1 (taking time).  )

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

Serafíne

Extending.  Difficulty: 6 + 1 (extending).  -1 (her last quint).

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne
 
For Paul the NPC

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

[WP, because we are so holding our shit together?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne
 
And Extending for Paul, dif 7.

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Serafíne
 
Paradox.

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

Soak.

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Lucy

There is commotion downstairs.  Every shot fired, every grunt, every scrape of a sole on the concrete floor sets Lucy's pulse jumping.  It kills her that she can't join her friends, but it's better that she remain where she is.  She is a guardian, a sentinel.  She is the watcher on the wall (the handmaiden who guards the gateway into the Underworld).  She is not a fighter, but perhaps in the small space of the stairway she can at least keep anyone else from going down to join the fray.  She would give her life protecting the others that way.

Ian and the others come first, then while she desperately calls upon the power of her Avatar to tear down Victoria's magic.  Then the stranger.  She says she's there to help and Lucy believes her, stands aside and lets her go and turns her face upward until-

silence falls not long after.  Closing her eyes she presses her back to the wall and slides to sit on one of the steps.

She should go, she knows that she should go.  She should bear witness to what she's brought to this place, to the justice she led the dead to.  She should check on her friends, see who might be injured, see who might need a hug-

Her eyes snap open then.  Despite the dull throb of an exhausted headache, Lucy pushes herself up the wall and fairly tumbles down the stairs.  In the doorway she pauses, sees the blood, the bodies.  Her lips part but no sound comes out.  Then she looks at Elijah and her feet are shuffling forward before her gait steadies.  One of her hands wraps around his.  The other comes to rest against the side of his neck, thumb pressed against the bone of his jaw, her touch cold, her skin leeching the warmth from his.  Still, she pulls, tugging him closer, close enough to put an arm around his shoulders and hold him tight.

"I'm here," she whispers.  "I'm here."

Alexander

It all starts so quickly.  Victoria is threatening them, threatening the man with an axe to his throat.  Don’t come close, she says, or he dies.  Wasn’t he dead anyway if they didn’t do anything?  Dead, with Victoria gaining who knows what from his death.  It was a gamble, taking the shot.  It was a gamble that it would surprise her before she could do anything to harm the guy.  A gamble that she would go down before any of them got hurt.  A gamble that almost paid off.

If he was asked to describe the details of the fight later, he’d be pressed to remember.  He remembers shooting, three time was it?  And he remembers the pain – oh, hell, the pain! – when Victoria tried to tear him apart.  And that final moment when Ian ended it, once again, by decapitating her.

That ice that formed around his core, which made him so certain that what he was doing was the right thing to do, start to fade away again.  Doubts start to creep through the cracks, but he pulls that shield closer, tighter, for a little while longer.  Long enough to see the spirits of the victims tear what remained of Victoria apart.  Long enough to see Zoe and Paul reunited.  Long enough.  Just a little while longer.

He nods when Elijah says people need to be buried.  They do need an ending, the living as well as the dead.  He’d offer more, but there’s not much left to offer right now.  He carefully, deliberately, puts the safety back on his pistol and holsters the weapon.

Serafíne
 
Seraf ne is at the top of the stairs and she can taste the magic in the air, feel it harsh in the back of her throat, feel the way the world wants to snap back against the effect that Victoria works to blast Alexander, feel the strange and strangely glorious mingling of resonance in desperate countermagick to the Adept's effects.  She does not rush into the fray, the way Ian and Jae-Shin do.  There's very little will left in her body and she already sports the beginnings of a mild concussion, the raccoon eyes, the stiff neck.

When it is over - and it is over with surprising quickness - she does shuffle down the stairs, a careful hand on the bannister, searching out Alexander, whose wounds she can see, and Paul, whose injuries she felt from afar.  She reaches first for Alexander, both arms opening as she wants to pull him close and she's smiling at him and there is a sheen to her eyes and her pupils are too-large, even in the darkened basement and she is trying to urge him to calm, to call to his spirit and his body to heal and heal itself, to transcend his skin and transmute his injuries and remind his body of what it means to be whole -

but he stiffens and she reads that resistance, the need to brace himself and there's a moment between where she is already working through her focus and finding her skin electric with and by and for magic, except, except, except, an abrupt cessation, a change that feels strictured and artificial and she's exhausted but she pulls herself back into her body and leaves it by other means.  This takes longer.  She wants to tell him to be still but the world is absolutely changed around her and she has given herself over to this instense hallucination wear she sews all the wounds in his body closed with this thread of living sinew she pulls from herself: mind and will and body.

No one else sees anything, really.  They just feel her magic in the air, and see her, perhaps, moving her hands, reacting to things that no one else can see.

--

The same thing happens with Paul, though perhaps she does not even try to touch him.  She could taste his fear and his pain and his exhaustion.  So.

--

Afterwards, Sera climbs a few steps and sinks down to wait while they work out what must be done.  She cannot really keep her eyes open and kinda dozes and cannot walk fast right now but is perfectly compliant, minutes or hours later, when someone thinks to reach for her elbow and help her up and tell her it is time to go.

Hunger

It was a horrible skill to have: the ability to decapitate someone. If someone had asked Ian as a child if he'd thought it was something he'd need to learn, he'd probably have been horrified by the question. And up until the other night he hadn't been involved in any of this. He hadn't seen or spoken with the ghosts of the departed. He hadn't run into anyone whose resonance itched with ravenous hunger. He'd heard the messages on Ginger, so it hadn't exactly been a surprise when Elijah had called to ask for help. And for whatever it was worth, he understood the threat enough to know that this wasn't the kind of thing one said no to. Not when he was capable of helping.

It shouldn't have been him, though. Shouldn't have been him that killed her. But he was there, and she was standing front of him, and even with two bullets in her she could have killed any one them. She did try to kill Alexander, and given another few seconds she very might have succeeded.

He should have let Alexander shoot her again. Later, he will think about this. Later he will think about the fact that he didn't hesitate to murder someone - not a monster, not a walking corpse, not a body infested with a corrupted spirit. An actual fucking human being. He will think about it, and he will wish he'd let the cop finish her off. But right then? All he could do was stare at the body on the floor and the blood dripping off of his sword, reliving the images of those ghosts ripping her soul apart. There was a slight tremor in his hand. Jae-shin noticed, and the Akashic put his hand on the blunt side of Ian's weapon and pushed it gently down. As though to remind him that the fight was over. Ian glanced at him and wiped some of the blood from his face.

"We should check that room."

Jae-shin nodded, and the two walked over to check the door that led into the other part of the basement.

And what of those ghosts? Did they disappear once they'd exacted their revenge?

Not exactly. But they didn't stay in the basement. Instead they turned and looked at Lucy, and each of them gave her a slow nod before flickering out of sight. They stayed close though.

Sera worked her healing will on Alex and Paul, and gradually their wounds mended. She paid a price for her sacrifice, as was often the case with healers, but given time, she too would heal. They had all survived the encounter. That alone was something to be thankful for. Zoe looked at Sera with a grateful expression and thanked her again for everything she'd done. Zoe, who was supposed to have been in San Diego, but who had turned around and flown back only a few days later. Because she couldn't let it go. She couldn't walk away without seeing what happened. Even if it killed her.

And now she was reunited with her friend. Her brother. Her cabal-mate. Someone she'd thought long gone. The two of them held each other while Sera healed his wounds, silent and so very grateful to be together.

The others comforted each other the best they could. But when Zoe and Paul saw the bodies in the meat locker (saw the frozen faces of their brothers and sisters) their grief and their tears returned. There were other bodies there as well. The woman on the table in the other room. And more... likely the Hermetics who'd attacked the day before. Some of them were cut into pieces. Some of the pieces were missing.

Ian and Jae-shin helped with whatever clean up needed to be done. Locating Alexander's bullets. Making sure that none of them left behind any remnants of their presence there. It took a long time to clean up Victoria's body and wash the blood down the drains. Someone would have to dispose of her corpse, and Jae-shin, who drove a flatbed truck and had likely burned more than a few bodies in his life, volunteered to take her with him.

By the time they left the house, the sun was rising. And the ghosts of Jeremy Tran and the other victims were standing in the grass, watching the light grow steadily brighter on the horizon. As the sun came up, their bodies seemed to glow, and Jeremy hummed something soft and quiet. The same song he'd been humming to himself on the night when Lucy and Elijah had met him. Then, as the sun rose higher, they vanished.

It felt like an ending. Or a new beginning.