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Tonight is going to be TV night for the cadre--Fox discovered Warrior while clicking around on Zoya's HBOMAX and basically ran screaming to tell Mei about it, and now it's totally A Thing--but the deal with TV night is that before TV night is going out to get food as a cadre. This is a thing that Fox instituted as a means of getting the entire cadre out into public, doing things, together. Hearthmasters do things like this. It's literally her job.
Zoya had a Thing that she had to do, though, so she's excused from this evening's outing. Fox is wearing her pea coat, her backpack, a pair of ratty sneakers, and a t-shirt. A slim bubble of Forces-generated heat surrounds her, unable to be felt unless someone's actually almost touching her. Weirdo. She offers cheerfully, "There are a bunch of new food carts at the lot near Temple, I think we can walk over there."
Untitled Goose Admin (she/her)Today at 9:31 PM
Mei is as she often is when she goes out, in black jeans and boots and leather jacket. Her sunglasses are hanging from the pocket of the jacket, since it's dark out, and she's also surrounded with a skin-tight bubble of warmth that keeps her from freezing in clothes that aren't really designed for feet of snow. "I'm always down for checking out food carts. Some of the best food, at prices even a picky PI can afford."
Oontz-Oontz heard there was going to be a Pop Culture Ingestion via Digital Media and invited himself along by beeping insistently at Vasha until he screamed fine.
So now a very annoyed Vasha-- dressed in an Eagles hoodie and a pair of slouchy jeans and work boots --is being trailed by a strung out, clearly wasted raver kid. Also in a hoodie which glows from the inside with what one hopes are flashing LEDs and the like.
"We could just make sandwiches," Vasha attempts with a tightly voiced flat affect.
"A sandwich just isn't a sandwich without the creamy zesty zip of Miracle Whip," chirps Oontz-Oontz in a ready for TV voice.
"Oh my God I hate you so much."
Leta is unusually fit for public consumption this evening. She's wearing a baggy tie dyed shirt, a pair of acid wash jeans with holes in the knees, converse high tops, and her silly little tea shades. What a gremlin.
"It's okay, Oontz Oontz. I love you enough for the both of us."
Leta tucks her thumbs into her pockets as she takes up the rear of the group.
The outside, a public outing in cold weather, the Firebirds aren't the only ones out in about, obviously, but there seem to be a few people with similar goal as them tonight. For the most part, the people don't seem to pay them any mind or don't really hinder the progress toward their goals of acquiring food. The city looks the same as usual as they walk through it:
Telephone poles and lamp post have these posters for lost pets or advertisements for very indie bands of some kind. Discarded newspaper are on the ground, fluttering about or stuck beneath some bench or another. A woman with a warm looking coat is at one of the poles, affixing one of the posters, paying no mind to passerbys
A Bunch of kids runs down the sidewalks, chasing after the fastest one, the situation seems more playful than anythinjg else, as they run past the Firebirds chaotically with the lead young man screaming "You guys are such ASSHOLES!"
The Usual ™️
The Usual indeed. Fox spins around in front of the group, and turns back to face Vasha, wiggling her fingers at him. "We could, but that's the sort of thing we do at other times. This is the night where we get out and stomp around in the snow and spend time together outside of the house and then go home and watch TV and snuggle and act like humans." Her grin is brief, and very sharp, and then she giggles aloud at the interplay between Oontz Oontz and Vasha. "If you really don't like him, I can always turn him into a teacup, My Heart," she teases, but then quiets as the group of kids runs by.
A glance up and down the street, her gaze flickering over the woman with the coat, and she stuffs her hands back into her pockets, humming under her breath. Happy to be out. With her people.
"But I am not human, I am robot," Mei says in a robot voice, before she does the robot for a few steps. "Beep boop. Check engine." She turns to say over her shoulder to Vasha, "I'm sure there's somewhere you can get a sandwich at the food cart pods, if that's really what you have your mind set on." When the group of kids comes running past she watches them go, and with two fingers gives them a sort of salute gesture.
Because Vasha is Vasha, his casual annoyance and disgruntlement just serves to mask his habitual hypervigilance. And with a photographic memory, a trained mind, and temporal recall, nothing escapes his notice that he doesn't genuinely want to. The posters, the woman posting them, the kids and their demeanors, they're all noted on at least some level of Vasha's noggin. One never knows when information will become important in the future.
"That wouldn't be very kind of us. Taking him in and forcing him to be something other than he is. Which happens to be annoying in the extreme. Not his fault American pop culture is a cess pool."
Oontz-Oontz shrugs his shoulders between Leta and Fox, indicating he can't argue with that assessment. When Mei begins doing the robot, Oontz lays down a sick beat and joins in with her. Being inhuman really helps sell he whole robot business, perhaps a little too well.
Leta offers a little snicker at Mei and Oontz, hiding her cigarette as the kids run by. She's not a great role model, but she'll definitely try.
The lanky little Mastigos joins in on the dancing. She's very bad at it, but she's having fun so don't judge her, please. "Vasha, you are such a surly fuck. American pop culture is incredible. Sure, it's like bar food, or a disgustingly greasy hamburger, but it's still incredible! We just have to trash up your pallet first."
Their goal in sight, the first half of their trip is almost over, as they approach the restaurant, but as The Usual Happens around them the vigilance and attention to their surrounding that some of them wields bring something to their attention...
Vasha is only half paying attention to Leta. Or as is far more likely, Vasha is pretending to only be half paying attention to Leta while a thought seems to occur to him. He stops short and ticks his head back, peering up the block a spell, then turns back about to peer at the woman putting up the poster nearby, his head ticking to the side just a hitch. Huh. Now he's squinting at the poster itself.
"Cyka blyat," Vasha mutters in the understatement of the decade.
"Cyka blyat?" Leta shifts her definitely-not-tobacco cigarette over to one side of her mouth. She quirks an eyebrow at Vasha, and then her eyes begin to dart about.
The scrawny Thyrsus starts laughing when Mei starts clowning and Oontz Oontz joins in. Her laughter is full-throated and brilliant, and she spins around on the balls of her feet again, delighted by the interplay between her cadremates. It's on the second turn that she actually notices -- just as Vasha curses -- the posters. And Fox turns pale and wide-eyed and then suddenly turns away from the pole, the woman, all of it, and then there's a flare of her Nimbus -- all bright green and sharp -- before Fox's presence goes decidedly Incognito.
Mei's eyes follow Vasha's gaze, because tone says a lot even when the words don't mean anything to her. At least, in cases like this. When she spots the poster she blinks a couple of times and then looks around. Where did Fox go? Who knows! She moves closer to the poster to get a better look, to see if there are any interesting details. It's not like she's any stranger to dealing with wanted posters. Often enough, she's the one putting them up. In this case, she's making note of any contact information, and then already taking out her phone to start seeing if she can find details connected to them. Who the phone number might belong to, any social media accounts associated with email addresses, and so on.
Leta crosses her arms over her chest, following Mei over to the poster. Knowing that Fox has been practicing their Mind, Leta can guess why Fox has suddenly disappeared -- especially considering how often she and Vasha do this same trick -- and thus is quick to move on to the figure this bullshit out phase of the equation.
"I am a liability, too. I will see you back home." Vasha then leaves their perceptions in much the same way that Fox did. Only he doesn't head home, he starts tailing the woman hanging up the posters. But it does get his slavic accent out of the area of the people searching for a woman last seen in Russia.
There's a little ping on the edge of Leta's consciousness, Fox's voice creeping in along her thoughts like the fox herself, the way she sneaks around underneath tables and the like. You should open a telepathy network, please. There's something ... confused and terrified on the fractal edges of her thoughts, but mostly just really fucking startled.
The woman smiles toward the remaining persons. "If you see the woman on the picture, or if you're looking for someone, get in contact, they're getting something together to help find lost people that were for a long time." She seems intent on moving to the next pole to continue with their work
Mei's fingers work on her phone, pausing only long enough for her to look up at Vasha and give him a nod. "Alright. I think I'm finding some information here. I'll text you with what I figure out." She looks back down at the device and continues her searching, then stops again to look up at the woman smiling her way. "I'll be sure to let you know if there's anything pertinent that I can share," she says. Which is true. The 'that I can share' part is important, though!
"Thank you very much, have a good day." then continues to the next pole and puts up another posters, working carefully on it.
Leta wiggles her fingers, and then poof! Everyone hears the twiggy little stoner in their mind.
My friends. Hello. This is Leta. I figured it would be easier to communicate about whatever the fuck is going on if we could all interact with one another.
Leta's inner voice is somewhat slurred. This is just what happens when your Cadremate is 11th Question.
Fox's voice in their heads is agitated, and because she doesn't have to worry now about the woman seeing her, she comes sneaking up alongside where the poster was hung up, taking a closer look at it. What the fuck. That's really the main repeated sound inside the brain of Fox.
"Huh. Strange," Mei starts saying, before she realizes that was out loud, and not in her head, so she tries again.
Huh. Strange. Thanks Leta. The number on the poster links back to Thomas Distel, a private investigator. I know him. Or at least know of him. They seem to be putting on some art project about finding long-missing people, by some artist named Simone Gratz. I'm pretty sure the person who hired Distel is Daniel Gratz, who is actually from Rodeph Sholom. Does any of that mean anything to you? Do you know who any of those people are, Fox?
That's a lot of information for her to have found in very little time, but Mei is good at what she does.
Leta sits silently awaiting Fox's response.
There's a long moment where Fox's brain just sort of rings like a bell. Bluescreens entirely, and then dissolves into static and silence. It takes a good twenty, thirty seconds before there's any kind of response from her at all. And when the response comes, it's thin and shaky. Fox's usual ebullience is entirely gone, and the thought comes through as the equivalent of a whisper:
"He's my father."
A soft snow begin falling on Philadelphia at this moment, touching on the ground and altering the lighting in the area slightly. The woman meets with a younger looking teenage boy, that was also working on setting up posters and they leave together, heading toward one of numerous vehicles parked on the side of the streets.
Mei is still poking around trying to dig up dirt on her phone, so it takes her a few moments to really recognize the silence. And then she does, and she looks up in time to catch the tail end of that heavy absence, before the whispered words come to fill the void. He's... oh shit. Maybe we should head home and order some delivery or something, instead of trying to get through sitting around at food carts in public with this hanging over us
That's probably a good idea, Fox manages after a little bit more frantic scrambling of thoughts and blue-screening. We should.
Now, normally, the rest of the cadre doesn't get to feel what it's like or hear the thoughts that race constantly through Fox's head -- but right now? They do. And they get to feel the imago that she forms, as well as knowing in the same moment that the woman up the street, the one who had been putting up posters? Her DNA matches Fox's closely. Implied siblling relationship closeness. The age of the woman rattles through Fox's head, too. The feeling of relative math. Devorah?
And that's the sound of Fox's brain starting to shut down entirely.
Mei looks around, but since Fox is Incognito, she doesn't see any of what she's looking for. She pockets her phone again and holds her hand out a little bit. Let's go she says. Want to take my hand? You can hold it as we walk back, if you need to. She doesn't start moving just yet, and the emotions that come from her across the link are all calm, reassuring. They'll figure out what's going on. They'll sort things out. Everything's going to be fine.
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