|
On a street that is like all the other streets, in a house that is very like all the other houses, live(d?) people that were very much like all the other people. The mail came and the packages went. The people came to mow the lawn and trim the hedges. Once a week, the sprinklers turned on. At night, the lights turned on. In the winter, there are winter lights. In the summer, there is a flag out front of the door.
A car or two in the drive way. Sometimes the garage door would be open. And people would go in and out of it. There would be a cooler, and people would get things from it. The radio would play, and maybe it would be a game. Or maybe it would be AM 1500.
If you pan out, like some fractal image, the planned unit development would iterate outwards from one perfect McMansion to a larger, McMansion somehow formed of all the rest. The outer suburbs are recursive. They copy each other. And it's here, in the middle of everything and therefore in the middle of nowhere, that they plopped down their little flag on the map.
While all the churchgoers are at mid-day services or after service lunch, and all the gays are at brunch, that's when Quincunx drives a range rover into the driveway, full of the gang that Jeremiah had managed to scare up.
On the sidewalk out front, a white lady walks her labradoodle past the sanctum, none the wiser.
"Well," says the old man in his feathery voice, "This is what they reported as their sanctum. So I suppose we start here."
Kay is dressed in a black pantsuit, a pair of shades, hair slicked back into a ponytail. Death armor is summoned, weaving into her pattern, just in case things go southward. The magic woven around them is shielded, for the most part and with one glance toward the building, they attempt to assess structural integrity. "I suppose it would be over-cautious to ask someone to blanket dispel everything from this place." spoken in a surprising low, almost barytone voice. Which, honestly seems to surprise even Kay.
Fox is curled up in the back seat, wearing a hoodie pulled up and shadowing her face. The hoodie is a nondescript greenisholiveishbrown, her jeans are a nondescript color, but she is still barefoot. Fox spins her ring around her finger, rubbing the pad of her thumb against the smooth perfected iron. "I mean, we could, but then we wouldn't be able to really assess anything except through postcognition, so that's probably ... " She pauses. "Pavlichenko would probably advise against it." WWVD? is not always the best question, especially if vodka and cranberries are involved, but sometimes, like with Time, it is a good question.
Jeremiah was dressed equally darkly, the black jeans and t-shirt calling up an air of the unseen stagehand, known to be present but meant to be invisible to those beyond the stage, with a grey hoodie to round out the ensemble. He nodded in agreement with Spider's comment, looking over the house. "Everybody ready?"
Quincunx unbuckles his seatbelt and hops out as gingerly as his old bones allow for. He fetches a yard sign from the back of the range rover, plops an AMWAY EXPO sign down to ensure nobody comes to ask why so many people are poking around the home, and seems to honestly believe this is all that will be necessary to dissuade the neighbors. (Likely, there's more to it than that. But he's confident that is covered, in any case.)
"Don't worry about local police, media, or the neighbors. I have you all covered on that front. Worry about wards and evidence. Traps, and so on." He fetches his cane from the range rover last, and begins picking his way up the brick walkway towards the front door. "If you like, I can wait out here and chat away any bystanders. Or I can help you all inside. Though I am afraid I can't do both."
Mei has made herself pretty non-descript for this outing too, with jeans and a dark grey hoodie, and a pair of boots. "I can temporarily dispel the magic," she says as they're starting to unbuckle and climb out. "That way it doesn't alert anyone who is maintaining the spells, and if we want to look at the spells themselves later, I can just let go of my own Dispel and let the effects return for our perusal." She smiles at Quincunx. "Do you think bystanders are going to be a concern? I find that unless you're doing anything that looks suspicious, most people are woefully oblivious."
"I'm good with not dispelling for the moment, if it would hinder our investigation. Let me give a look to the building itself, just in case." Kay says approaching just for a moment, turning on her Sights and attainment upon it. "Just checking for basic building alterations." and in fact, just trying to assess durability or anything strange regarding the materials and build of the house.
Fox slinks out of the car. There's really no other way to describe the way that she moves. There's a little grunt toward Quincunx, more thoughtful than disrespectful, though who knows with Fox and Pentacle officials, as she slinks toward the house, hands in pockets. She pauses on the front walk and stares at the doors, each in turn, and then the windows, too, as if they might reveal the secrets of the universe.
"We can't know for certain how friendly they were with their neighbors," Quinn observes to Mei. "It's not so much the passersby that concern me, but the chance they took in the cat for the old lady across the street when she travels. That sort of thing." He doesn't object to the magic being muted for the time being, inclining his head in approval when Mei suggests it. For now, he waits to have something to weigh in on in an official capacity.
The structure of the house is improved, consistent with Matter magic being applied to exisiting build out. You guys could probably hold off a platoon of modern infantry from the house with little difficulty, and it wouldn't take too much damage. Which suggests it probaby was designed to at least APPEAR like an actual sanctum to trained eyes.
Mei, you've been around the Tree enough to recognize the early sign of naturally perfecting materials, which suggests there may well be a verge nearby.
Jeremiah moved to exit the vehicle with the others, keeping an easy pace to add to the 'nothing to see here' field that already surrounded the gathered Awakened. "Having eyes outside just in case may not be a bad idea."
"Yeah there's something in there making the material slowly perfect over time." Kay mumbles. "Probably a verge or a special domain or some kind of other object or function." Kay looks about, pointing out some of the stuff they noticed quietly. "I'm getting this weird feeling, do we have any sort of key to get in? I doubt they left one under the welcome mat."
Mei crouches down to get a better look at the door hardware as they approach it, then glances around them and stands back up. "I keep seeing small signs that some of these metals are starting to perfect on their own, which suggests there may be a verge nearby." She shifts her vision over to Prime sight and starts looking for any signs of magic, although she'd be surprised if there were any on the outside of a sanctum for the Guardians. But you never know.
There is, printed under the front door matt, the word 'Seriously?' is black box lettering, however. No keys to be found.
(And no signs of magic.)
Another grunt from Fox, and she slinks up next to Mei, sniffing at the door like a dog taking the scent from an outstretched hand. It's kind of weird to watch a human being do that, though these people in particular are probably used to that from Fox. "This is some high-level electronic bullshit. Security theater, anyway, for the most part. The mundane stuff is probably connected to some sort of company, just for the looks of it. And to use humans as Paradox bombs on intruders, heh. Probably magical cameras in addition to the ones I can actually see." There's something grudgingly impressed in her voice, sort of the verbal equivalent of the 'I Guess' comic panel. "Dunno if whatever sort of remote viewing system they have actually runs through machinery, though." One hand scratches at her cheek absently with grubby-nailed fingers. "And the doors are warded all to fuck." Sniff sniff sniff. "Gardener's work. Messy-ass nimbus. Space, Time. Little Forces, Time, some Fate." A beat, and she huffs.
"I'm gonna talk to the lock. Once the door is open, I won't have long to get to wherever the security panel is and disarm it. I can do it, just -- let me."
"Alright, do you need us to suppress anything, or get ready for countering?" Kay asks, taking the shades off of her face and hooking the branch of it in the pocket of their blazer. They gaze around, getting ready just in case.
"...you sure? We have over 160,000 consumer grade products avail-- okay. Have a nice day." Quinncunx is worth his weight in gold over by that yard sign with his cane. Someone coming up the block just switched sides of the street and is taking a right instead of heading this way.
He looks back up the yard and gives everyone a thumbs up. For he? Is helping.
(The yard is BIG. Don't worry about being overheard all that much.)
Mei hooks her thumbs on the pockets of her jeans and tells Fox, "I can just tell the sensors that the doors are still closed the whole time, if you'd like. That way we don't have to worry about the alarm at all. Or we can disable it when we find the panel." She glances back at the door again. "I can also just shut the wards down, still. Selectively, rather than turning off everything."
"I think both is a good idea, just in case there are redundancies."
"I think probably dampening the wards is a good idea, and then we can disarm things from the inside," Fox answers. "I can ask the lock to open up for us. I'm trying to avoid directly using effects on things if we don't need to, just because... " A vague gesture with one hand. "We're not leaving connections but anytime I can avoid leaving fingerprints on things, it makes Vasha happy."
"Jay, could you do the temp dispel thing?" Kay asks, turning to their cadremate. "Or do you feel better if someone else does it?"
"I can, although I'm not as high on the totem pole for Prime as I could be." He glanced between the others gathered. "Anyone better than Disciple on that front?" (edited)
There's a brief, subtle motion with Fox's left hand, and the stellar iron on her ring finger gleams before she tucks her hand back into her pocket, standing in front of the lock like she's waiting to be let inside. "Wakey wakey," the Spirit Master murmurs, gold eyes glittering.
"I can help you if you feel you need a bit of help." Kay reaches out to Jay, lending their support as a potential yantra.
It might be the spirit of the lock, or it might just be a spirit of locks. But either way, when Fox goes looking, there's a small little goblin-like creature visible atop the lock, swinging a little foot off the edge. It seems happy up here on the door. Because the ground? The ground is roiling with motes feasting on one another. Like the floor of a bat cave. The little spirit is minding its own business for certain.
"Hey buddy," Fox offers, which -- probably -- is a little offputting for such a little spirit. Fox is effectively a Rank 4 Spirit, after all. It's a little like if you were just sitting at your desk minding your own business and the VP of Operations, who is also an angel, appeared next to you. "Would be pretty fucking keen of you to open up the lock for me." Her gaze flicks down to the ground where the motes feast, and she glances back up to the little gremlin.
As Mei circles back around the house, completing her circuit, she pulls her hands up from where her thumbs are still casually hooked on the corners of her jeans pockets, moves her fingers through a quick series of Rote mudras, and reaches out with a bit of Supernal energy. It makes a featherlight tap against the edge of one of the wards, and like someone poking a Prince Rupert's Drop in the right place, all of the magic collapses into nothing. "Wards are down," she says casually as she rejoins the group. "I didn't touch anything else, so there's still some Time effect in the basement, but both the inner and outer wards will be gone for a while."
"Well, that's gone." Kay blinks at the sudden lack of spells where there were just a moment. then gives a look toward the lock itself, who's getting a talking to apparently. "Yeah, you do what Fox tell you." hands on hips pose. "Any idea on what the time effect could be? The verge?"
There's a rather loud clap of sound when the wards drop. Apparently the air pressure differed between the wards? Definitely not something anyone would have naturally thought to check for. Quinn is already holding a phone up to his ear and waving his hand in the air, to indicate you all should continue. Apparently it doesn't even rise to something he feels the need to caution you all about.
"Nicely done." Jeremiah nodded to Mei as she returned, blinking at the unexpected sound from the wards. Sparing Quinn a brief glance he nodded to his fellow Ladder before returning his attention back to the door and the magi speaking with it's lock.
The little spirit doesn't need to be told twice. He mutters the entire time, but he swings down off the edge of the lock and climbs into the keyhole. His grumbling echoes the entire time as tumblers whirr and catches click and at last the magnets click and the bolts drop and lift or pull as appropriate and the door swings open on an expertly balanced Swiss manufactured hinge that you won't find in an Anderson built home. Only with us here at Tollbrothers.
The interior beckons like a PTA meeting.
"Thank you," Fox purrs gently, a little sweet after her sharp-toothed smile and that glance down at those motes who look awfully hungry, and she pats the lock, humming to herself happily; the humming briefly bubbles over into absent-minded song under her breath. "Everyone's got someplace they wanna be let in," and the sleeve of her oversized hoodie slides over her hand as she rests her hand on the doorhandle and opens it. No need to be leaving trace biomatter behind, after all.
The biomatter stuff has also been handled through one of Kay's magical spells. "Oh don't worry about finger prints or skin flakes, one of the tricks I put up is keeping this clean. Still, doesn't hurt to be careful. Never know if they thought about this too. Walsingham is a Moros after all." Kay says, pulling on her bracer a little tighter around her wrist as she enters, surveying the things she can see from the entry way.
With the wards down, the Stygian resonance pouring out of this place is particularly potent. Anyone with eyes to see it can see it clear enough. If the verge isn't Stygian in nature, it would be a miracle.
Jeremiah smirked a touch at Fox's lyric of choice, quietly humming the next bit of the song as he moved to follow her in. He too kept his eyes peeled as they entered the house proper, looking for anything unusual...or perhaps too normal, all things considered.
"Oh this is going to be fun." Kay maintains her Active Sight of Matter and Death, hoping to notice specific phenomenons regarding it, studying the surrounding for hints.
"Definitely not my specialty, that," Mei says with a glance over at Kay, and then a smile. "Fortunately, we come in a variety of specialties, don't we? So many things to learn, and only so many hours in the day." She shrugs and waits for the door to open, and for whatever problem they didn't anticipate to come leaping out at them, because it always seems like there's something.
Fox slinks forward, tipping her head to wink sidelong at Jeremiah, and then sniffs the air. "Oh, hmm," she offers. "That's one of the two things I really suck at." She pauses in the ridiculous fucking foyer and -- her Exorcist's Eye still active -- blinks twice, bringing up her Matter Sight and Prime Sight, still humming the chorus of Skeleton Key.
"Hmm, I might be able to learn something about it... and I was just looking for a proper verge for something fun too. Someone I need to talk to on the other end of this." As Kay speaks, looking about
The house is lit. Inviting and warm. It smells of lilac and baked bread and rotting human flesh somewhere under it all. The pictures in the foyer suggest that Gardener was married to Cypher and Man was their child? But Man is a full grown adult, of course. Right? All the objects d'art on the shelves, all the pictures in the frames, all the baseball gloves next to trophies, they suggest a middle class idyllic life. Beer and hot dogs and soft ball and ignoring the missing stairs in our communities. You know. Suburbia. Cloying, perfect, oily suburbia.
It's an open concept layout. The parlor is just off the entry way, the family room beyond that with a dining room and kitchen around and to the left towards the back of the house. The central pillar of the structure, with its stone chimney and steel reinforcement, that's where the secondary wards protected. And that's the part of the house with no obvious means of entry from this floor.
Stairs lead to the basement. A basement from a movie featuring Bruce Campbell to look at it. And they lead to the second floor. The upstairs. Bedrooms. More little lies in cozy lying frames.
(The stygian resonance is pouring up from below, btw.)
"Getting major flashbacks to the last time I visited my parents." Jeremiah made a face as he took in the too-tasteful decor, shaking his head as he looked around. "Want to start from the top and head down or vice versa?"
"Yeah give me a moment to make sure what the energies are like, just in case it's zombie land down there." Kay puts back her shades. "Vibe check time."
It's like watching energy seep out of the basement and reach towards your ankles. Like the basement knows you're there, and it's waiting for you.
It almost makes the upstairs seem not preternaturally offputting. Almost.
"Yeah it's murder-like down there, I don't think there's zombies, but like, I feel there might not be pretty imagery either." She looks about "Also, did someone say earlier there was time stuff in here? Did we take care of that?"
With everyone now inside, Quinncunx Omnia retreats from his forward observation post on the corner of the driveway to a less conspicuous place for an old man with a cane; the chair on the front porch. He removes his floppy old man hat, rests it over the .44 he places in his lap, and adjusts the strap on his trifocals.
"Wish a fucker would," he mutters to no one.
"I can't say that I like the feel of this place," Mei comments as she wanders in and looks around, keeping her eyes open for any spells she might have missed before. Or anything that tells her anything about the Major Arcana in general, since that's her other specialty. Sometimes she makes Sherlock Holmes look like an oblivious bumbler, and in a moment she's taking in all the tiny details.
"No, it sucks, it feels like murder," agrees Fox, slowly wandering the house. She shudders at the faux-perfection of the Things on the Walls and the Pictures and the everything. This is not, after all, too different from the Perfect Life that she left to go work in Russia, from the family she failed to make contact with again for so long. "Time to find the clickable objects," she mutters to herself.
"I'll check on the death twilight front... just in case there's ghosts around." Kay just waves their fingers and trace some minor, rapid symbol around their eyes, then flex their fingers like new gloves just materialized. "Or ghost objects, do you think there could be goetia or spirit guardian too?"
"I can see goetia and spirits, and no, I don't see anything," Fox answers rather absently as she wanders the first floor, looking at statues and pictures and shelves, glancing at rugs and perfectly-placed accessories. Another shudder runs up her spine, and she makes a face. Gross. "No clickable objects yet."
Mei does a brief round of the place, touching nothing, and then returns to where she was. "I know how we open the hidden sanctum," she says. "It's going to take three of us at once, I think they designed it that way so that nobody could force one of them to do it." She starts pointing. "One of us will cover the eyes of that statue, one the ears of that one, and one the mouth of that one."
"Coming up clean mentally as well, so no surprises in the walls or anything." Jeremiah added, heading towards the ear-covering statue to do his part for the unlocking sequence.
"Oh nice." Kay moves to stand near one of the statues. "there might be ghosts down there, but we couldn't sense them from outside the verge, or anything, for that matter..." she looks vaguely toward Fox. "What's your cursor like? A fox paw or a firebird shape?"
With all the appointed statues covered in the appointed ways within the appointed span of time, there is another loud clack and clatter. Like a running out of chain, or a spinning of counterweights. Possibly both. After only a few short seconds, the great fire place that heats the living room swings open revealing the lab Vasily would have had if Zoya had let him. It even has chrome and mirrored walls so it looks bigger on the inside than it actually is--
No wait, that's a Sanctum.
And it is bigger on the inside. The Guardains were holding out on y'all. Tsk.
Who will be the bravest to step inside the Sanctum first? It is Fox. Fox is the bravest. Or at least that's what she's telling herself, even while she's slinking into the Sanctum as a fox will. "It's a fox paw, it changes into a firebird when there's a clickable and I mouseover," she deadpans back at Kay. Her eyes narrow as she scans, scans, scans.
"Been meaning to do this for our place..." Jeremiah added with a small smirk as he went in after Fox, eyeing the spatial set-up in particular for any sorts of keys or triggers that might get them punted off into an oubliette or the like just in case.
"Oh that would be cool. I have similar ideas too, but with my own shroomy twist." Kay grins at the replies they get from both Jay and Fox. "Alright then, let's see...." Kay does get ready for counter spells she needs to throw around however, given that her sight is active still. "Are there things protecting the sanctum"?
Mei spots no lurking dangers. Probably, they would have imagined that anyone getting this far would have already defeated them. They'd be dead or disabled, so what's another potentia drain going to achieve? No, this sanctum is just functional. There's an obvious weapons locker. There's a chemistry lab. A computer lab. There's a manufactury, where it appears they've been recently manufacturing firearms and bullets, and there's a maker space that wants for nothing save square footage. It's all packed in and efficient across three floors of a warehouse space. That feels like it must be underground somewhere. But it's clear that the sanctum isn't wherever the house is, and that the verge is not where the sanctum is. Even though it was within its wards. Which means that there has to be another security measure in the basement, similar to the one with the heads up here, controlling access to a similar chamber below where the verge is.
"That's pretty unusual for a Guardian sanctum," Mei comments when she peers in, and the place is bigger on the inside. She follows Fox in, though. She continues to avoid touching anything as she begins searching the room, trying to put any pieces together that she comes across, but until then, just putting all the information in her head for later use.
Kay wanders the sanctum trying once more to figure out the physical make of the place, durability of the materials and general value of it. See if it's altered in obvious ways. Also using her sights and general perception to maybe help Mei in her investigation
In silence, Fox walks the entirety of the sanctum. There's something kind of icky about being in someone else's Sanctum without permission, even if you have a Very Good Reason: it's like rifling through someone's underpants drawer or sizing up their dildo collection (pun intended). There's something so terribly intimate about it. So, at least for right now, she looks with her eyes, not her hands, just like her mother taught her when she was little.
It all looks quite consistent with what's been going on in the city lately. Mobilizing for war? There's signs of weapons being made. No doubt the maker space would have research into Mark on it, and the chemistry lab a tincture from the Tree. It looks like the sanctum of people trying to help out locally. Or, if you want to get very paranoid, the sanctum of people trying to look like they're helping out locally.
"Wall crawling!" Kay starts wall crawling, to approach the stone too, but after Fox, studying and watching for potential spells to potentially counter, just in case it triggers something there.
Without saying anything out loud, Fox just suddenly turns and walks up the wall as if she's in some Doctor Strange fight or something. Her hands stay in her pockets, and she treats the wall like the floor. Once she gets up to the ceiling, she points at a dark stone imbedded in the ceiling. "Look what I found," she announces, her voice quiet. "I'm not taking it down yet." The implication in the words is I'm not taking it down until we have a Reason to.
"Is it even theirs?" asks Diamond.
Jeremiah blinked as Fox pulled her best Peter Parker impression before grinning, a quiet "that is wicked..." slipping out before he got a look at what she was pointing towards. "Well then..."
"Well," Fox answers, "I can try to match the nimbus. I'm not sure I've seen all of theirs, but... you know." A vague shrug, there. "I'm gonna go ask HeavyGlasses McPentacle about the legal repercussions of taking this down. Y'all can come up the wall like this, I put that on all of you if someone wants to squint at it. Just don't like take it out until I get back." And she walks back down the wall.
"No problem! I'll just be looking at it like it's some museum artwork and I don't want to get kicked out." Kay looks down. "Come on up, it's pretty fun to stick to walls."
Fox briefly forgets why she came out onto the front porch until Quinn lets her into his concealment. It happens about the same moment when she becomes aware of what it is. He doesn't apologize for being careful, he simply looks up to her with his patient face. His eyes look enormous in those lenses.
He's not a don't speak unless spoken to sort. He's quite happy to let her start the speaking. Which is an admirable quality with a tactical nuke for a voice.
"I'd personally rather not muck with someone's soulstone," Mei says, as she continues investigating the area. She leaves others to decide, for the time being, how they want to handle that situation.
Oh, the temptation to join Kay on the wall by the soul stone was rather strong indeed, but for the moment Jeremiah joined Mei in continuing to search through the Sanctum proper. They were here for evidence of malfeasance, after all, and business before pleasure.
Yeah, that doesn't even bother her. Vasha does that shit all the time. "We found a soulstone." Sometimes Fox just rambles around until she gets to her point, adding in six facts you didn't know about pigeons along the way, but today she refrains from being the Orphans of Proteus version of BuzzFeed. "They're inside trying to figure out whose it is. Right now I don't see any particular reason to take it down, but... what are the legal considerations surrounding its potential removal?" She rolls her shoulders inside that worn-out hoodie.
When Jeremiah goes through the makerspace he spots some very official looking IDs. Federal Rangers, as it happens, and the passes are stamped for access to Centralia. And the mine fire there. There's papers and documents and work orders all put together to substantiate that sort of business, creating a back story for why they're even out there to begin with.
Similarly, Mei finds the ammo and after a bit of examination discerns it's mostly incendiary. Every fourth round is FMJ. So fire, fire, fire, slug, fire, fire, fire slug. A great way to tear apart a Beshilu nest, but a really lousy way to engage Seers of the Throne.
This is all consistent with either a genuine attempt to address a problem from a year ago, or an anachronistic attempt to appear like they're genuinely trying to be helpful. Either way, they're not glowing. The soul stone is. At least to Fox.
"I am here to ensure that there are no legal ramifications to our efforts here," Quincunx answers Fox quietly, his voice measured and whisper light. Carefully, almost artfully absent of emotional tenor. Perhaps he's trying to keep his words from swaying her off down some unspoken whim of his.
"You all contacted me because you had reached the very end of what you believed your Lex Magica stated was possible. Everything that we do now, Little Fox, is precedent. This question you are asking is precedent. This answer, precedent. Whatever it is your friends now do inside, out from under my squinting eyes, that too is precedent. So at this point I must simply trust in the character of that young man in there. As I am trusting your presence here, based on his word alone." His head ticks just a touch to the side.
"So just make sure that whatever you do, Little Fox, is something you would want done to you if you were in their position. The why of what you are doing with that soulstone is as important now-- perhaps moreso --than the what you intend to do to it. So. For posterity. For the sake of precedent. State for the record, Little Fox, why it is you wish to remove it."
His impassive face breaks into a very slight smile. An extended hand when one has no hand to extend because they're holding a gun and hiding it with a hat.
The nice thing, sometimes, about being someone who is terrible at hiding her feelings is being someone who doesn't care to do so, really. It saves so much energy, nine times out of ten. Fox's face journey as Quincunx answers her is, if not profound, at least very obvious. She's thinking. And at one point that includes thinking about whether everyone present is someone she'd use the word 'friend' about: the expression resolves into a tiny white femme's version of Obamanotbad.gif.
"I don't know that I do," Fox answers mildly. "I wouldn't want to do so unless I had, in a non-exhaustive example list," the former Mystagogue continues, "evidence that it was stolen or that the soulstone was directly enabling Seer actions." She scratches her cheek, that absent little gesture of hers which, to the careful observer, might look a little like the gesture one would use to pet the face of a cat. Or a fox. "Which I guess is answer enough. I'm not leaving a demesne here if the balance of evidence indicates that would help the people who keep trying to kill us."
Jeremiah mulled as he went through the makerspace, the pieces laid out before him painting an odd picture. He glanced towards Mei, an eyebrow arched. "Is it just me, or does it seem like this either hasn't been touched since the Centralia thing or they left this all out to make themselves look good?"
Spidercrawling Up the Wall still, Kay curiously studies the soulstone with keen eye and focus. "Oh, I know these soulmarks on the stone, this is..." and Kay takes a break there, narrowing her eye and expressing a quiet, fuming anger for a brief moment as they grit their teeth. "A problem. The owner of the soul stone is part of the Tears of the Martyr's Tree..."
A relatively nondescript hatchback arrives, pulling up to park on the side of the street and a casually dressed Alexis hops out, retrieving a backpack and a small gym bag. She is draped with the gentle web of a spell to brush away sleeping eyes that does not extend to the Awakened, and is humming along to some OST that isn't immediately recognizable. She wanders down the street to the house, glancing at the sign in the yard and chuckling before addressing the two outside, "I apologize for being somewhat late, I needed to retrieve some equipment." A head tilt asks if their conversation is any of her business or if she should just scoot on inside.
"No, I agree," Mei answers Jeremiah. "I'm actually curious if we can find clear signs that anyone was here more recently, and that this place hasn't just been sitting idle since them. There's some nagging part of my mind that wonders if the people we've thought were the Major Arcana cadre weren't, in fact, and that they got replaced around the time all the Centralia business went down." She gives Alexis a smile when she arrives and shrugs her shoulders. "No harm done. Glad you're here now."
"Then let us keep up the search of the sanctum, continue to gather evidence, and make a more informed decision as to what to do to the Soul Stone before we leave. In general, if your intention is to uncover more evidence in order to ascertain the innocence or guilt of the individuals to whom this sanctum belongs? I will be in favor of it. Especially if it is minimally invasive. Scrutiny, and the like. Keep in mind we tried everything to reach them before now. This is a wellness check as much as it is a criminal investigation."
"Jeremiah is inside herding the cats, I imagine he will be thrilled to see both you and your equipment." He then puts a touch of verve into the speaking of the words, "They have a whole secret lab down there for you to poke at." Alexis may be conscious of finding that notion incredibly appealing more than she might otherwise. That voice doesn't really have an off switch, sadly.
Fox grunts once, scratching her cheek again. Perhaps it is a self-soothing gesture as much as a time-filling one. That would certainly fit her general ... Fox-ness. "Right. That's what I needed to know." Her gaze flicks off across the lawn toward Alexis and she tips her chin up. "Hey, kid." It's not unfriendly, it's just the greeting of a preoccupied person. "Right." And without another word, she tips her head indicatively while glancing at Alexis and heads back in to the makerspace. Her keen ears pick up the tail end of the conversation, and she scampers up the wall to join Kay near the soulstone. "Wait, what."
Another deep breath. "It's got the markings of the Tears of the Martyr's tree on it. I peeked at it a few times before settling into making my own... this has implications." Kay's fist are clenching and unclenching rapidly.
Alexis sets down the gym bag, which thumps with the sound of tools settling, and glances around, "That is an interesting theory, and actually may be easier to prove than disprove, unfortunately. Depends on how much they scrubbed the place and what tools and skills they used to do so. So let's get collecting." Her backpack gets slid off and zipped open, revealing the guts of a forensics kit that probably wasn't stolen out of a detectives' car trunk. Probably. "That soul stone is probably going to be telling. And if it ISN'T their fault shit went crazy, it can always be returned assuming it is actually theirs, whereas if things are out of wack then its safer with the Consilium than here." Neoprene gloves go on and she sets about collecting bits of stuff here and there, looking in corners where dust may have settled and light doesn't reach while working to bring the workings of her own legacy to bear.
"Have to wonder..." Jeremiah replied to Mei, giving Alexis a quick salute as she joined the group. "Do we know if any of the cadre members were part of that legacy themselves, or are we thinking this may have been 'on loan', as it were?"
"Before I start staring at this myself, anything else you've already figured out?" Fox asks Kay. Her attention turns to Alexis, then, and she replies, "I don't know if you heard everything that Quincunx said, but we're outside the boundaries of precedent. I'd like to have something more than 'well we thought it would be safer with us for Reasons' before we disrupt a demesne and remove a soul stone. That's not a precedent that I want set."
Once inside the home and through the secret door in the fireplace, one enters the warehouse size inner sanctum and laboratory of what was presumed to be the Major Arcana. This laboratory is clearly underground, and clearly not in the same location as the house from which it is entered. The suction and air currents are precisely what you'd want to have in a lab where chemicals and such are being mixed. But it does mean there's no dust present to go off of. The only things she finds that provides any potential dating criteria whatsoever is a very, very few dead insects. They must have entered through the portal with those who come and go from this place.
Once she's got them all gathered in hand, it's not hard to recognize them all as spring and early summer bugs to a one. And so fragile and old as to not be recent. Consistent with the Centralia event dating.
"I admit that I am very personally biased with this and that my own personal shortcomings might be huh..." A pause and several blinks as they speak with Little Fox, greeting Alexis from the ceiling with a wave. "Involved in there, but I think the Children of the Tree should get the soul stone until we know how the legacy got obtained and use the favors of the stone, if necessary, to secure it. This soulstone is from a highly powerful Moros, just only slightly less powerful than me." (edited)
Sometimes it is best for a Magister to be present. There's a tingle of magic from above as he puts a shroud over the whole of the property and begins picking his own way through the home and down into the sanctum, one caned step at a time. It is probably no coincidence at all that he arrives in time for the debate about what is to be done with the soul stone.
He doesn't say anything. He just clears his papery voice softly and removes his soda bottle thick eye glasses to begin wiping them off on the end of his silk tie. He was kind enough to keep his glasses off for everyone's expressions to adjust to him suddenly appearing. When he puts them back on, his smile is neutral-pleasant and serene.
Everyone was saying?
"Cipher was recognized as a Master of Death by the Consilium." Alexis notes, "And said recognition does not always expose one's full skill-set. Hell, I think mine is officially out of date at the moment. Unless these bugs have been altered, they seem to be consistent with this space having gone unused since the time of the Centralia event. Which does not fill me with hope. One does not carve off a chunk of their soul to make a Demense and then NOT use that Demense. Its fundamentally incompatible with the mindset necessary to perform the act in the first place."
"Especially not when one is a Guardian of the Veil," All Fives agrees with a nod of his bespectacled head.
Jeremiah glanced towards Quinn as he arrived downstairs, giving him a respectful nod before looking back to Alexis. "Agreed. So if they got subbed out right around that point, finding proof of that will be important. Moreso if we can find out where they went."
"I wonder if any of the neighbors have seen them recently," Mei muses aloud. "Finding out the answer to that kind of question is a big part of my day job, but it might be better not to go asking the neighbors questions until we're done here, since it's only going to get them to pay attention."
"That's presuming that this isn't a stolen Soul Stone, which is exactly what we're attempting to figure out." Fox's voice goes tight; she's crouched on the wall, her hair falling sideways off of her head, hands tightening on her knees, speaking tensely through her teeth. "It is possible that the person who made this Soul Stone ... hijacked the Legacy, learned it out of turn, stole it, whatever. It could be Cypher's. It could also not be. That's... that's my whole point, and Diamond's, and given that this Legacy only belongs to one person that I, a Talekeeper of the Children of the Tree, can recall ever having it, this whole thing is excessively ... suspicious. But. As I said. There needs to be sufficient evidence for me, personally, to want to set a precedent about when it's okay for people to enter someone's Sanctum and take down their Soul Stone and disrupt their Demesne. So I would put before the group that it's probably a really good idea that we just leave this right where the fuck it is and look for evidence of malfeasance. If we find it, and not just our suspicions, I will take the stone out myself and let Weaver and the Lictor decide between the two of them who should hold custody of it for the time being."
"Yeah, I'll go with what Fox says." Kay exhales slightly, trying obviously to calm themselves down a little bit from the emotional state this particular event brought up. They spidercrawl down the wall and goes to give Alexis a proper hug of greeting. "By the way, wall crawling is fun."
"That's very kind of you," the Lictor in question remarks with dry amusement. He seems remarkably nonplussed about all of this, but then again this is the sort of thing he does as a day job. This. Over and over again. "Do you want to experience the rush of amusement that comes from getting a lictor to call a Councilor?" He's put his pistol away, having traded it for his old Blackberry. "I'll do it. Just ask. It's a rare treat, and I highly suggest you enjoy it while you have the chance."
"Well, since nobody else has been here for months, as far as we can tell, it seems pretty reasonable to leave it here for a while longer," Mei responds to Fox. "I'm with you in that I'd rather not wander off with someone else's soulstone, whatever our motivations might be, because there's a chance that we're wrong about what's going on and I want no part of even accidentally stealing something like that."
"Agreed. Better to leave this as-is for the moment and look for more information on what happened to them that left this place abandoned for as long as it has been."
"If that is the case, would it be appropriate for us to put up an alarm spell at least, in the case of someone else coming here? Once we finish investigating, of course." Alexis starts looking for signs of what this space was used for specifically when it was in use, and possibly where they aquired their materials from.
"It was my intention to replace the wards here with wards of my own once we leave. Safeguard the place no less well than its previous owners had, and with the benefit of my Emeritus rights overlording the place, woe betide the one that trespasses, et cetera, et cetera. Care will be taken in the future no less well than it has been up to this point," Quinn assures quietly.
They had been crafting incendiary rounds to fight the Beshilu, creating counter toxins to help fight exposure to Beshiu infection in humans, making fake IDs to get access to Centralia, etc. (See prior scene log above.) The materials, many of them, appear to have been acquired through governmental channels, legally. In that they are properly labeled and such. Anything that can be acquired bulk was acquired from the local home depot or similar big box. All of the technical equipment is akin to the chemicals and controlled substances. It looks like it was carried out of a government lab and left here, new out of the box. So whoever got it here was well connected. (Or knew how to become well connected on a whim.)
"I think maybe we focus on things right here before calling a councilor, I fear this would cause an overwhelming amount of amusement and I couldn't keep up." Kay says to the intention of Quinn. "Unless somethings suggest their life might be in danger or ours.." a look around.
"With the information I have it seems like the most likely scenarios are that they defected for some reason, in which case their lives are probably not in immediate danger, or they got replaced, in which case I would imagine they're probably dead already," Mei says with a wince. "But since we're not sure which answer might be right, currently, I'd rather err on the side of caution, since they might be alive, and also not actually Seer agents."
"I mean, isn't Walsingham the one who tipped us off in the first place? Might not be terrible for the Lictor to ask him some questions. He might, you know. Wanna help." A beat. "Or he might be dead, who knows." Fox hangs out with Vasha too much, maybe: the Ukranian's sense of humor certainly lends its weight to her Jewish wryness. After saying that, she grunts again, scratches her cheek. She doesn't come down from the wall for a minute; instead, she seems to sort of zone out momentarily. Everyone who has their Mage Sight up gets to see, when Fox's little fingers flex and curl through yantras, the explosion of green and petrichor which surrounds her. It's not a very strong working, so no one feels the Tilt's effects; they just see the Primal Wild briefly punching its way into reality through Fox's work. Her gaze goes distant, and she steps down from the wall, singing under her breath a little as her bare feet pap pap pap across the makerspace floor, hands back in her pockets. when my time comes around, she half-sings under her breath, lay me gently in the cold dark earth.
"He was, yeah." Jeremiah nodded to Fox, watching the Thyrsus as she did her, well, magic. "May be worth getting a hold of him to give him an update..."
Somewhere, Vasily is very proud of Fox and doesn't quite know why. Utilizing the man's own methods, Fox backs her way into some awareness. She goes looking for evidence of seer complicity and comes up short. Completely dry, in point of fact. You can't prove a negative, but there doesn't appear to be anything to find here fitting that criteria, either. Nor any inclination to seek for some other thread elsewhere. No urge to call for a pizza that will introduce a quirk of fate when the delivery guy turns out to be a Seer Proximus. Nothing. It's like looking to Fate and having Fate tap its foot and point at its watch impatiently.
"Alright! Then I guess we can all be overwhelmed with the joy of calling a councilor." Kay chuckle slightly and shrugs, moving around the lab to see if there's anything she can make sense out of from the gathered clues, even through the lenses of their Mage Sight
"I'm not an expert in spirits, but would it be possible that its something other than those two options, especially given that evidence points towards their last activities being involved with spirits of corruption? Like, could there have been something involved other than the Beshilu that got to them because they were looking at the obvious and active threat?" Alexis tilts her head, "Not everything that benefits Seer operations is the direct action of their hands. Not that paranoia isn't well founded there, either."
Don't worry, Vasha. Fox will tell you all about it later and demand praise, smooches, and delicious pelmeni. He taught her well. She walks slowly in circles around the floor, humming to herself, sometimes singing the words. Her footsteps are uneven, odd meter, hands patting at her thighs in 3/4 time. a boy with a coin he found in the weeds with bullets and pages of trade magazines, she absently sings, humming and singing, while everyone else talks and theorizes. She's kind of tuned out from that conversation for the moment. Humming and wandering. a girl with a bird she found in the snow sneaks out as actual words as she turns her face up, wandering without paying attention to where she puts her feet. A person could walk off a cliff that way.
She goes so far as to wander up to the ceiling again, as if trying to prompt herself, and stops next to the soul stone. Fox balances on one foot, dark hair pluming down toward the floor, and props her left foot on her right knee, hands folding behind her back. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but the threads of Fate leading me to 'evidence of members of the Major Arcana collaborating with the Seers' just... don't exist. It's not... really possible to make all of those threads disappear with regards to this particular spell. It just... doesn't exist. There's not a there there."
"You would prefer I call Walsingham, rather than Baldur? I can call both. I can even conference them both in and pretend I don't know how it works and yell 'can you hear me' over their first attempts at saying hello." Quinn's continued attempts to keep matters semi-light may not be appreciated, but it seems to be how he navigates the world. Mastigos can be a prickly bunch.
When Fox explains matters, his bushy white eyebrows lift in surprise. "Oh, the villain does a turn. It's never the Butler, is it. Not really." Quinn is now looking about the room in his own right, continuing to be both eccentric and old if nothing else.
Mei cracks a smile at Quinn's joke, so there seems to be some appreciation at least. "Well, there's still something down in the basement that's making use of some kind of Time effect, which we haven't investigated at all. It might be worth checking that out before we start making phone calls? For all we know, we might find the Major Arcana in stasis or something. And there's the Verge."
Jeremiah smirked alongside Mei at Quinn's attempt at humor, looking about the room anew. "Downstairs sounds like a plan."
"Yeah I agree but, just a second, I think Fox and I can do something with the little dead fellows over there." Kay approaches it and look up. to Little Fox on the ceiling
What Would Vasha Do is sort of the watchword of this for Fox, it would seem. She unfolds from where she'd been casually hanging upside down with her hands folded behind her back and her foot on her knee, reaches up, touches her fingertips to the ceiling, then dangles from her fingertips before dropping down to the floor.
It is a beautiful thing, if one appreciates the aesthetics of Awakened magic, to see two Children of the Tree cast in concert. Fox's Yantra blends with Diamond's in a way that's hard to explain or describe within the bounds of spoken human language. It feels like doors opening and closing, like the pressure of the air itself changing. Master Revontulet's left hand curls through the air, leaving behind it a lunargent trail ever-so-briefly like she's sketching the Northern Lights across her personal sky. The work takes about half a minute -- hardly an extensive ritual casting -- as she folds time around herself and Kay together, bringing them to what's important to see with regards to their current task.
Some things come with the teaching, and the 'heads up display' of the Red Guards is one of them. That mental construct that helps Vasily to process a fire hose of magical information into visual heat maps, targeting indicators, graphical readouts, and the like-- all neatly arranged in the subconscious where it can even operate in a split mind, if one is so inclined, for full tactical awareness even while doing Sudoku.
Live an examined life with a heads up display is all I'm saying.
And once it's dialed in, the past temporal diagetic overlay appears ghosted in the heads up display's visual overlay. She can still see the present, and she can also see the past, but the two are blurred and intermingled and concentration is required to focus on any one or the other. But that's normal. That can be managed.
The mayfly was dead, in the first place. That's where the timewalk begins. The final leg twitch. She watches the life leave the clue that broke the case, because Fate knows she'd want to witness it. Someone needed to know.
Several days earlier, nothing happened. A mayfly was flying about, tossed on the passing air of someone who was never there just a moment ago. Buzz goes the mayfly. Buzz.
Some time before nothing at all happened, Gardener was in the lab with Cypher. She's draped against his side as he's peering into a microscope. He's trying to pretend he's working, but eventually she winds up in his lap and then Gardener made sure that nobody was able to see the nothing that they got up to in the lab shortly after that. Nothing happened then, too. Naked nothing, probably.
Before that, a Man was down there printing out documents. A man became a Federal Park Ranger. He sat at that table there and put his hands flat on the table and went to that place she's seen Vasha go before. And then a Man was SheilaThomas, Park Service, and not a man at all.
(More.)
A similar accounting is given for every fact that can be found in the room. Gardener and Cypher developing the anti-toxins, working on the ammunition together. All the things that are here, in situ, can be accounted for in the time walk. Nothing appears to have been taken. Nothing appears to have been moved. It was, in point of fact, materially redacted such that the state it was in prior to everything simply ceasing to be recorded on the temporal record is the state it was in immediately following that absence from the temporal record.
And that absence from the temporal record goes on for twelve days.
And downstairs, three time spells and a Stygian verge await. Fun.
Fox has no particular qualms or fuss about nakedness or sexuality; it's just another squelchy and often fun thing humans get up to in their time on this likely-cosmically-insignificant little ball of rock, liquid and gas. Still, it's a private thing to most people, who don't just like walk around their sanctums with their tits out all the time like that's meaningless because to Fox it is, so there's a puff of laughter. She doesn't convey that information to the general public, though, because if they'd wanted people to know, they would have made it clear, and it is not -- currently -- germane to the investigation.
"So... " A pause. "We have A Man becoming Sheila Thomas, a Park Ranger, and some research being done in here before the Beshilu expedition. The creation of toxins. And then... twelve days, just... gone. Scrubbed. Very thoroughly." She sighs. "Very, very thoroughly, by someone who doesn't even think bugs are alive." Respecting the privacy of someone you don't respect at all now is a difficult thing, sometimes. But Fox has her own code of ethics.
"I think we've gotten everything we can here for the moment. The basement awaits."
"Twelve days," Mei says, expression getting thoughtful. "Do you have any way of telling which twelve?"
"Alright, ready for the basement. Let's see how creepy a Stygian verge can be." Kay puts their sunglasses back on. "Just in case I need to take them off for a pun later."
The basement is designed with the careful artifice of the Guardians of the Veil to appear precisely as mundanely suburban family as the upstairs was. Camping equipment tucked away, and assortment of sports apparel for things A Boy tried and failed out of. A few hand tools from a man that fancies himself more of a handyman than he actually is. It's perfect.
With Alexis and Mei's perceptions altered, they see through the key pattern down here, similar to the one that existed upstairs. Only down here it's three separate pieces of media containing Walsingham. A DVD of Elizabeth, a copy of Her Majesty's Spymaster, and a copy of Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. A Man is a Weeaboo. Once all three are located and interacted with, the locks hiss and the central brick stack against which the heater and water softener and so on are located dislodges and swings open, just as the fireplace did above.
Only it opens on a yawning blackness with a creeping purple aura. The verge.
Behind this wall, on the floor, the three time spells are located. Conspicuously human sized and placed prominently on some very clear floor.
|