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Jean-Louis came in early from being out, which is rare for him. Because Hans picked him up and hauled him home, mostly naked and in the tatters of one of his armored coats. Once they arrive, he hauls his precious cargo out of the trunk and carries it along into their haven and down, down, down into the recesses of their lair. He clunks the object down on the coffee table, stares at it in bemused wonder, and then toddles off to have a shower and get a change of clothes.
When he comes back, he sits down in a chair across from the contraption and just settles in to staring at it, chin on his hands. The object itself looks like something Tony Stark might make, a blue-green glowing orb held in a matrix of perfected metal itself braced into a housing case that forms much of the object's bulk. Two large handles jut out of the side, parralel to the ground. It has a green monochrome terminal display on the front and a little keypad below it for entering who knows what. It is very much an object that belongs in something, and if one has ever seen the back of a Mark II, one will know precisely what.
How he came to have it is a funny story, actually. He waits to tell it.
Hearing someone making a godawful racket, banging down giant mechanical braincases on coffee tables and all that, Annikah comes wandering out. She's wearing an oversized black t-shirt and barefoot, though whose shirt it was originally? Who knows. It's too big for any of the trio.
"The fuck is that?" she asks when she comes into the room and finds the unfamiliar object sitting there. "Did you time travel and rob Best Buy from next decade or something?"
Artje has been painting. She's not as good at it as Visigny is, but she's not bad at it, either, and she gets really into it, as proven by the fact that there are little daubs of yellow, green and blue in her hair and all over the ruined shirt of Visigny's -- too blood-stained to be worn in public anymore -- which she uses as her painting clothing. It hangs loose around her, down to her thighs, as she pads barefoot into the basement. (Such scandal, a shoeless Artje. Shocking at every moment seen. If only Vinny knew how truly unique he is to have seen her barefoot. "My loves?" and down the rest of the stairs she comes.
"I believe," Visigny begins, "that this may be a dead lover of mine. David Touati. He. Ahh." Visigny makes a little motion forward with his hand, stepping past the particulars and probably the vagaries, too. "Monte Cassino," is what he finally manages to explain around all of that entire topic. Hopefully they'll be able to piece together the missing bits.
"I was out hunting. Some ... It doesn't matter. A Mark II stopped me. Only it-- It recognized me. Not in a 'stop, citizen, you match a description' sort of way. I mean he called me Jean-Louis. It was David's voice, I heard it. He thought he was-- He thought he'd been-- He's here, I think. I think he's in here. I think he's in here somewhere and I know I am not clever enough to help him. And it's tearing me up."
Visigny shakes his hands at this contraption, so beyond him in concept nevermind function. "I don't know if he can even hear us. I don't know if he's afraid. I don't know anything except this is one of their brain modules. And it's one popped out when I asked the operator to eject." He ammends with a small stammer, "O-ordered. It. To eject. I had to, he was--"
Does Visigny cry? It's been so long. He's decided to stop talking, though. And breathing. Only so much bandwidth for affectation at the moment.
Annikah looks from Visigny to the braincase, then back and forth. "You and that?" she asks, before she makes some connections and goes, "oooh. Not. Right. That makes both more sense, and also way less. Is this part of one of those robocop things?" She pads over on her bare feet to where Visigny is sitting down and drops herself down on the seat next to him, where she puts one arm around him and leans in. "Maybe it's a trick," she says. "How likely is it that this is actually him?" She looks over at Artje for backup on that. Makes way more sense, right?
She gives Annikah a little look aside, and lets her handle the questions while Artje handles Jean-Louis himself. The little Daeva pads over, her soft feet nearly silent on the floor, and she wraps her arms around his waist, resting her head against his shoulder and placing one soft kiss against his cheek. "We do not need to be clever enough to solve every problem," Artje points out quietly. "We only need to know those clever enough to solve them." Her arms squeeze his midsection gently. "And that, I think, we can manage."
"I think we should both presume it could be a trick and that it is not," she answers Annikah.
"Why-- what possible purpose would the Philadelphia Police Department have in making me believe a man eighty years dead is trapped inside a roboticonstable!? Even allowing that they somehow could possibly know that I was in love with him! How? Why?I mean, yes. It could absolutely be a trick, but-- why?"
He slumps first against Artje, wrapping his arms about her carefully, and then he slumps towards Annikah in addition. If he's going to feel his feelings, he's going to do it pretty and sandwiched between two hot women in shirtlegs. "I have many jumbled feelings and nobody deserves to die and I'm very sad."
"I don't think they picked you to fuck with. But, I don't know. Maybe the things can read minds, and it just rummaged around for something that would hurt you," Annikah shrugs. This shit isn't really her wheelhouse, which is why she agrees with Artje. "Chances are we're going to need some help on this one, like Artje says. Unfortunately, breaking through a firewall doesn't just mean running into it so hard it falls over, I guess. Fucking bullshit, if you ask me."
"I don't know, my love, but I have found that there are many motivations I do not understand until I have torn them apart with my little fingers. I think it would be best to assume that this is real, and treat this, and him, as if he is real, but also to retain a healthy amount of skepticism." More kisses for his jawline, for his throat. She doesn't expect the idea that she might just bite him in the middle of this conversation to be a positive thing, and doesn't actually tease him with it. That's for after the immediate sadness is dealt with. "That is bullshit," she agrees, rather primly. "Who do we know who is good with computers, or... magical... things?"
"I'll take it up with management," Jean-Louis assures Annikah. "Titania reached out to say she might know someone, and it's possible we could make an introduction through her. Suffice, I have no real reason to trust her opinion on anyone, given she thinks her own behavior is appropriate most of the time. But she's also literally the only person that responded. So I was rather genuinely hoping that one or the other of you had been having a secret torrid affair with a Merlin and had just been waiting for the right time to tell me."
Visigny looks between the pair of them hopefully.
"I do agree," Annikah says to Artje. "We should act like both possibilities are true, until we know for sure that one isn't. If someone important to Jean-Louis has their mind in that thing, then it deserved to be treated respectfully. And someone deserves to answer for it," she adds.
"I might be able to do some divination on the topic," she offers. "No idea what it will tell me, but if you want me to, I will," she suggests to Visigny. "I'm afraid I'm not having any affairs."
"Who knows, maybe it's someone she found to top her, so she'll behave better now," Artje deadpans, turning her face up towards Visigny and offering him the most winning of smiles. It's funny, see, because -- never mind. "Sadly, I have been having no affairs. I could try to find a Merlin to have an affair with. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult, the rest of this city seems to be sleeping with one another to the extent that I often expect when I poke my head into the waffle place to check the bulletin board that the only reason I don't see them just shagging on the tables is because the owner is herself a wizard."
"Their politics are more tawdry than ours, their sex lives are more tawdy than ours. We've come to the wrong city, dear my bitches, for it is absolutely impossible for a man to be scandalous here. What must I do? Thank a cop?" Visigny flusters with a little shake of the head. He'll get over it.
"Something tells me very few people with that level of cosmic power are tops. It's probably exhausting bending reality to your will night after night. Might find the odd power bottom, I suppose--"
Visigny realizes he's musing on the sex lives of wizards and pinches his nose for a moment. "You see? I'm useless. Just a helpless bundle of faggotry and lace, me. Please do your divinations, darling. Don't make me go to Titania and have to say please. I've been a very good Spina and haven't murdered anyone that didn't explicitly deserve it since the second time we got back to Philadelphia." That level of qualification should make everyone outside of the room a little nervous, maybe.
Annikah leans over to kiss Visigny on the cheek. "I love your faggotry," she says. "And I also really don't want to think about wizard sex very much. They probably do weird shit like turn into balls of pure energy and merge with each other. I don't now."
She shrugs and leans back into the couch cushions. "I'll go ask the heavens what they can tell me about this situation, though. I'll be back. Nap time." And then she closes her eyes for twenty minutes or so, while her Beast takes off into the cosmos. When her eyes pop open again she says, "ah fuck. That is him in there. Fuckity fuck."
"Well, I suppose it's not that much weirder than drinking each other's blood," Artje concedes regarding turning to balls of pure energy and merging with each other. (What kind of weirdos do that? Everyone knows kinky mages turn into balls of pure spirit goo and merge with each other, amirite?) She shrugs mildly and laughs a little bit. "I think that might be one of the few things you can do that would shock people here, it's true."
While Annikah takes her nap, Artje just cuddles Visigny quietly. "I like the lace, too," she murmurs. Faggoty and lace. It's important. When she returns, though, Artje blinks. "Oh. It ... it is him." A small frown. "I wish I were smarter with computers. It is the one thing I never really mastered as a ghoul. I understood my planner, you know?"
It takes a lot for Visigny to seem small, and yet there he is. A droopy puddle of baguettes and failure. He sweeps his fingers through his bangs to perfect his pouty moue and downcast smolder. There. Now he can seem small. Which he does. Looking wonderful the whole time.
When Annikah perks back up and delivers her verdict, the baguettes themselves become stodgy and acquire a soggy bottom. He draws in a breath for the sole and solitary purpose of sighing audibly.
Then he leans forward, stares at that little dinky terminal keypad and pokes at it like a reticent chicken. "Ssss. Ssaaaa. Saaaaaaalut. Ehm. Question mark. Et. Ou. Ou est la-- ah! Send." Poke.
He bites his lip and waits.
Annikah shakes, starting at the top of her head and vibrating down to her toes, in a way that is a lot like a dog doing a full body shake down. "That is always so weird," she says. "Letting my Beast out, and then having it come back in. I truly cannot describe it."
She watches Visigny input into the brain case with the little keypad, and get no response from it. "Hm." She looks at Artje. "Yeah. I never got computers as a thing either. And I grew up in a world with them, too, so I have less excuse than either of you."
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