Logs:Lost and Found Part 4

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Cast
Setting

Firebird Sanctum & Simone's Home

Log

Cue the montage scene.

Picture if you will the camera closing in on Vasha's face as his big bushy Slavic eyebrows scrunch together as his eyes narrow. And he's off! Down the hall to his weapon closet where he punches in the security code, provides a thumb print, then the retinal scan. When the doors pop open, he swings them wide and steps in to consider his load out. He taps a finger at his chin, as his hands snatch this weapon and that, shove magazines into musette bags, straps ballistic armor across his chest, shoulders an AK-47, grabs his sniper rifle case, and then considers his row of sunglasses and ushankas. He selects the city camo ushanka for maximum punchline, then steps out of the closet as the doors hiss shut behind him, bristling with weapons and loaded for war.

"Am ready to go have nice polite conversation."

There's a sharp intake of breath. "... Simone, please listen to me very carefully. I need you to go inside, please. Right now." Simone, knowing her sister as she does, knows the way that Fox's voice gets very quiet and very very calm when she's Super Serious. "Please send your address to me now. I need to come over with some friends. Please don't ask me too many questions right now, but I think that the reasons why I didn't contact you for so many years have found you, probably through me."

"I know it seems probably very weird in context of this conversation, but please just trust me. I want you to be safe."

And across the cellular networks that Fox has tied her brain into runs a series of texts: 911 Alert Alert!! Please come to the living room RIGHT NOW if you are at the penthouse. If you are not but can be available, please respond with location immediately. Someone is threatening my sister.

Of course, people frequently put their phones on airplane mode when they want privacy, so they may not get the message if their players are OOCly unavailable.

Given that she's on the phone, all she can do is give Vasha the most adoring look ever to exist and silently blow him a kiss. That's her Heart.

Simone reacts to what Fox says in a relatively simple manner. Another ping on the phone and the adress happens, the sounds of footsteps in the snow, the patio door opening, foot stomping on the floor, likely to shake off snow. A soft gasp "The fuck was that noise? Sound like a cartoon laugh."

"I sent you my address, be careful?"

Vasha is loaded for war and comes back in just in time to hear Simone talk about a cartoon laugh.

"Fly us down to the Bentley. I will drive. We have to go now." Apparently Vasha isn't about to wait any more. He's going. So much so that he's walking towards (one of the) balconies, likely with the intention of just jumping right off and figuring the survival part on the way down if Fox doesn't turn him into a bird or a flying squirrel or the like. Fate magic will solve that particular problem once he hits terminal velocity. Probably. He tightens the strap to his automatic rifle, checks the stays on his various pistols, and then hugs the sniper rifle case to his chest before clipping it to his tactical vest. He then steps up onto the railing. Once he's in position and certain his gear will remain in place-- stay right there, mister hand grenade --he incognitos himself from all but Fox with one of his attainments, and leaps off the railing as though it were the back of a jump plane. Arms and legs splayed to keep him balanced in the air and keep his air speed manageable.

"Just go inside and lock the doors, please." Not that she thinks that whatever it is doesn't have ways to pass through doors, but at least it'll make Simone feel safe. "We'll be there as fast as we can. You can text me while I'm in transit."

"I love you, baby girl." Childhood gestures of affection osmose their way through her stress and worry. And then she sees Vasha jump off the railing, mutters what's probably a curse in Ukranian, and adds, "I gotta go. Sooner left, sooner arrived." She hangs up the phone, checks the text message, then stuffs it in her pocket and runs after Vasha, muttering curses under her breath in three languages as her fingers start to work Life mudras. "I love you, but sometimes, I do wonder why," she sighs to the empty living room, then dives over the balcony edge. Vasha will, in short order, find his mass shrinking, his weapons melding into him and forming strange patterns as his legs become talons and his arms slip outward into the broad wingspan of a Great Horned Owl. The powerful wings of this large, majestic bird will allow them to descend in a very controlled fashion.

The force spell that bring the sounds out to the whole rooms register a click of the phone without much of an acknowledgement since the hurry seems to be growing clear in some way.

With the given address, a normal car ride would take in the vicinity of 15 minutes, accounting for distance, red lights and other drivers. With all of the obstacle removed, it would be probably be much faster than that.

Vasha is, fortunately, no stranger to living life as other forms. You can't live around Fox for as long as he has and not dabble, after all. So after a momentary bit of awkwardness, he gets his wings sorted out and continues his plunging dive down to the car park, supenating his course, and pulling up hard at the second story to essentially dive bomb right into the parking garage. With his head start, he handily beats Fox to the car, and alights on the driver's side canopy, waiting for her to arrive and let the spell go so they can be off. While sitting there like a giant weird looking big eyed mouth pooper, his nimbus briefly flares as he prepares to make his Bentley do things no Bentley should be asked to do with a cold engine.

Fox swoops soundlessly into the garage with the gentle grace of someone who has spent so long being an owl that this is normal and in fact almost native to her, if not perfectly so, like someone who's spent a decade or more speaking a second language. Almost perfect, but not quite.

She releases the spell as she swoops over to the Bentley, landing her feet rather neatly on the floor. This may in fact make Vasha end up sitting on his car with a bunch of guns. lol. Her fingers already begin working mudras reflexively, splashing Matter magic all the fuck over the place but especially on the car.

The spells function as intended, enhancing car, driving skills and their form shifting, even if temporarily. The roads are open before them now, empty of moving car, for the moment.

Vasha was prepared for that. He reforms in a crouch on the hood of his car and slides off of it without much ado. He doesn't bother to disencumber himself of his gear, he just gets right into the car and fires up that sweet sweet engine. Once Fox is inside the car with the door closed, he backs out rapidly, shifts back into first, and goes roaring out of the garage timed to just miss the raising of the exit fence. He fishtails out onto the street and rips rubber for their destination. He seems quite outwardly calm for a man about to be going 140mph in downtown Philadelphia, a notoriously pedestrian filled and traffic clogged city. But he seems to be weaving in and out of the various emerging hazards as though he knew they were coming before they ever appeared, while keeping his engine hugging the red line.

As Vasha begin the drive toward their destination, it goes smoothly, without a problem, no cars get in their way or anything.

As Vasha's scowl remains fixed on the blur of pavement and road scenery passing them by at an uncanny rate of speed, there's a momentary expression of distraction on his face. It's brief, and it passes by quickly, but it was most assuredly present. "Something is prodding my spells. Or me. I can't tell. Keep your periphery open. Counter what you can." Vasha tears a hard left onto Oogontz, heading north out of the city as he dodges around a SEPTA bus and a semi truck in the process. This is the straight leg where he can drop her into fifth, bury the pedal, and give his mechanic something to complain about at the next visit. "Do you have a weapon?"

Fox relaxes into the seat like it's nothing at all for her to be in a car going 140mph in a city where people routinely just walk the fuck out into the street in the middle of a block at midnight. :thisisfine:

Except it really is fine, because Vasha Is Good At Fate. She cues in to that momentary expression of distraction, and is about to enquire when Vasha explains. Her head tips forward for a moment and her jaw sets. A sort of look comes over her face that a lot of people wouldn't recognize, but Vasha surely does.

So many people think of Fox as a gentle, friendly floof -- and she so often is -- that they often forget that foxes are bloody-muzzled fucking predators. Sometimes scavengers, but they absolutely will kill your fucking cat and eat your chickens. Their jaw tightens, their green-gold eyes catch the passing headlights and eye-shine like a canid's, and his lips peel back from her teeth. This is Fox, who will kill the goddamned stoat in your yard and leave his innards spread across your grass.

"Mmmhm," she agrees to the first statement, her fingers curling up into readiness to perfom a Counterspell mudra. Not necessary for attainments, but she'll fucking try. "I need to learn more Things." Her words are a low growl -- quite literally, ending in a very canid snarl. "No. I will rip them apart. But if you would like to give me a weapon and the skill to use it, I can fuse it into myself so I cannot be disarmed without being dis-armed." Well okay then, Fox.

Vasha removes one hand from the wheel just long enough to free a .44 and a pair of magazines from his person. The holster is passed over with the weapon contained in it, in case she'd rather just clip it to herself. The magazines are just dropped into her lap, because he's fucking driving at 140mph up 309 north. Then he rests a hand briefly on her leg, and it's like he fills her mind with his rather encyclopedic knowledge on the topic of firearms. She might not be up to his standards, but it will get the job done to put it mildly. Once that's all seen to, his focus is back on the road and intent on reaching their destination. "It's possible we're running into their efforts to stay hidden and stymie intervention. But either way, we've got active magic involved. So don't be stingy with the ammo, and fire to kill if you're firing. Double tap. Make sure they're down." This isn't her usual method of combat, after all. "If they can think, they can kill you."

They make their way into the city and swiftly enough the Bentley passes a person in fluffy winter clothing, walking a big fluffy dog toward a nearby park, they don't particularly draw their attention, even as fast as the car go.

The address is in sight very soon after that. A small home, with a hedge around the backyard, a car in the gravel driveway, the correct number on the door, their peripheral sight pick up something present there.

A few windows are open slightly, just from a cursory glance to the building. Nothing immediately untoward seems to be happening, but with magic afoot? A lot is possible.

On the way to her sister's house, Fox's fingers fly through a fixed set of gestures. Vasha feels -- suddenly -- more hearty. Tougher. Like he could walk out into a Siberian winter without a hat on, perhaps. And his muscles and joints respond with an inhuman liquidity, like a circus contortionist on steroids. It's fucking cool as shit.

"I will be patient with my spells and not fuse it into myself." She's already carrying three, after all, with the text message channel open. She sends another text to the cadre group: 911, entering situation with active magic at [address]. If approaching, text first so we know it's you. "Maybe we mind-talk," she growls low in her throat. "So we don't give away."

A second text flies to her sister. Tell me something only you would know, so I know it is you, and you are okay. "I do not like the windows open. There is Fate and Time active here. I do not like this. I am going to kill them many shots." Her grammar degrades slightly as The Fox comes to the forefront, red in tooth and claw, if only metaphorically speaking for now. She clips the belt around herself like a sash, the gun resting on her hip for easy grasping. "Or rip out throats with my teeth." She pauses and sighs. "We will have to explain things, I am afraid, when this is over."

Vasha rapidly slows the vehicle down as they near the destination, trying not to leave smoke and tire rubber on the street in the process. Once it's stopped, he kills the engine, grabs the keys, and stuffs them into a vest pocket near his right breast. Then he's flicking off the safety on his rifle and rolling out of the driver's side of the vehicle, advancing in a rifleman's crouch to the edge of the hedge. He drops most of his attainments, save for the one pumping Fox's firearms skills and the one keeping them both beneath the notice of the majority of people in the world. Incognito Presence is the shizz.

Once he's started a stack at the front entry to the property, he ducks his head around the corner to check for targets or potential observers or ambush positions. He only sticks his head out long enough to get a good look of the yard and the front of the house, and then puts his back to the bushes again to begin sifting through what he'd just seen in that peculiar noggin of his. A few moments later, after another brief flare of nimbus, the world around them seems to get sluggish and dull. As though it were all happening in quarter time. Because it is, sort of. Then she'll feel the tingle of his mind linking with her own. And then comes his answer, "On my signal, we go for the front door. If it won't open, I'm breaking in. I'll pay for the damages."

There are no replies to the text, not that fast anyway, the front yard is very small, full of snow and contains very few things of note. A wooden fence separate the front yard from the backyard on both side of the house. Only the right side fence has a door to the backyward, it seems locked and chained.

Little Fox's sharp sense picks up the distant ping of, presumably, her sister's phone receiving a text message. The tearing of a sheet of paper and the scratching noise of a hurried pen on paper.

Because their minds are linked, the first thing is that Vasha can hear that sound too, and as that sound passes from her ears to his mind, the Acanthus can feel the snarl curling up furiously from Fox's throat before he hears it. "I think whoever this is has got my fucking sister," she thinks, and there's so much white-hot fury and the inhuman desire that feels like a desire to rip someone's fucking throat out with her teeth and spit the fucking blood on their corpse.

Let's be gender-inclusive with our feelings, even when we are so angry we cannot really think. It's the Fox Way.

"Lead the way," she thinks, pulling the gun from its holster. "Someone is about to fucking die."

Vasha shakes his head once. "Someone might die. We do not know the situation in there. I know it's your sister. But there's a right way to do this, and that's how we should do it." That's the only caution Vasha offers into their mental link as his raised hand counts down its fingers from five to fist. And then he motions forward and advances in a jogging crouch for the front door. That he makes the trip across the lawn in no time flat is a benefit of his time magic, of course. And once he reaches the front door, he glances in through the side window, then takes two steps back, braces himself, and advances on the door in a rush with his foot aimed squarely at the frame near the dead bolt and knob. The frame complains loudly before the jamb breaks free and the door goes shooting off one of its hinges, and in advances Vasha with his rifle raised and at the ready. He checks the corners and doorways over the iron sight of his muzzle and begins advancing into the house, attempting to clear the rooms of the lower floor and figure out where the occupants might be.

The only thought that comes back over the mindlink is an angry, impatient growl, but it comes with acceptance. She follows after Vasha, hurrying to keep up with the slightly more dexterous, and therefore faster, Acanthus. Her pistol is pointed up into the air, because hey, trigger discipline came with that convenient Skill Download, and she scampers after him, slipping her skinnier, shorter profile behind his and kind of peeking out from his side.

First, the lobby is empty, it leads into the living room without a wall. There's sizable dog bed with dog toys. The couch has blankets and pillow, the TV is displaying Netflix, apparently someone's been watching a documentary about the 1985 bombing.

Then a small hallway, to the left is a staircase that leads upward, right next to it is an open door that has a flight of stair down, the walls have paintings, all signed by Fox's sister all of them are being redrawn before their eyes. But that's when Vasily sees the situation that's causing problems.

A woman, Simone, sits on the floor in the kitchen, pale blue PJ with bunny slippers, hair in a messy 'I was just sleeping bun' the floor around her carpeted with pieces of papers with lines of a bigger piece drawing. It's cold in here.

The patio door is opened, but that isn't the only thing that's open. In the space of the open door something is acting like a lens and through it, the backyard hedge, grass and general allures seems to be shifting between various state of the seasons.

A ripple in the air, a tall vaguely humanoid figure of about 6'0", oily and black in its entirety steps inside the house through the ripple and puts a hand on the patio door, clearly intent on closing it. There is no reaction from Simone, it's like she's not seeing the strange, sickening being right in front of her.

It seems look directly at Vasha and Fox, an oddly familiar smile appear on it, as it manifest a mouth.

Once Vasha reaches the kitchen, his rifle draws a line down on the oily figure at the patio door. Fox can feel him starting to formulate the rote Guardian declaration of authority, the usual boilerplate 'you are being detained', in essence, that comes with the routine performance of enforcing the veil within a consilium. He was going to do this by the book, and then that thing smiled at him. And that seemed to flip a switch for some reason. Because without announcing his intent, Vasha's finger moves from alongside the trigger guard to resting on Kalashnikov's vibe check button. And then the familiar chirping bark of the AK-47 sounds loud and proud, accompanied by the repetitive flash of the muzzle as he walks towards the thing while his rifle jerks in his hands.


The thing staggers, hands release the door, leaving it open. It lets out a scream of pain with the mouth it just manifested. The voice with which it screams sound wrong and the ripples in the strange lens-like phenomenon seems to mildly displease Simone, forcing her to discard a piece of paper to start that piece anew. The gun shots did not bother her.

The bullets falls down on the ground, expulsed from the gaping wounds. Another scream, a voice like that of a discarded, forgotten Lie.

Simone keeps drawing, unphased by the chaotic brouhaha that unfold right at her back. The being steps around her, keeping a wide berth, its step gracious enough to step around or between the paper laid out on the ground.

It's heading straight for Vasha, stepping right into melee with him making a wild attempt to grab the gun out of the man's hands, but fails to overcome the guardian of the veil.

Once the magazine is out, Vasha chucks the rifle at the abyssal creature, attempting to invoke its block reflex. Because it's followed by the drawing of his silver-plated pistol. His pride and joy. He seems to have absolutely no compunction about being in melee range with an abyssal entity as a gunfighter. Absolutely none. It's kind of wild, really. He seems to be in several places at once there for a moment as the blows the creature unloads on him fail to be anywhere like where he actually is. And when reality settles down at decides where he is? He's firing off a three round burst right at the creature's center mass. Just sticking right there, keeping it away from both Fox and her sister. A human wall.

BANG. BANG BANG.

Fox flexes the fingers of his left hand, curling them through the air in a mudra that Vasha probably recognizes as Life, and he can feel and see the shape of her imago, understands what she understands it to be, trying to turn this Abyssal into a tiny, insignificant thing and hopefully instakill it in conjunction with Vasha's bullets. She snarls her barely-contained fury when the spell just... fails to take effect. "Fuck shit damn goddamnit fuck that should have worked," she thinks angrily.

The Oily Man recoils from the pop-pop-popping and takes in a very pained breath it shouldn't need to take, it manifest a nose now. The magic tries to assault the physical manifestation of it and just can't quite go past its resistance. It screams at them and then it turns into a tiger-like roar, causing more ripples in the strange-lense like thing at the patio door.

The roar completely fail to take hold in the Life enhanced pattern of Master Revontulet, unfortunately, Vasha's gun and the wielder of said gun suffer as signs of artificial Weight of Years settle in.

asha seems a bit staggered by the effect that lands on him, moreso when his most prized material possession on the planet falls to pieces in his hand. He doesn't have time to deal with that at the moment, so rather than dwell on the moment, he just draws his last pistol and opens up with it as he had the first. A controlled, short burst of three rounds, kept at center mass. Nothing fancy, it seems, just a slow grinding war of attrition with blood, bullets, and as it happens? Destroyed high end custom pistols. He shifts his position slightly, attempting to encourage the creature back towards the portal and away from Simone.

The gun shots are loud, from both Vasha and Little Fox, staggering back from the hail of bullet. The oily blackness dries off and peels away from the being, revealing for the time of an eye blink, the sight of someone this timeline never saw before and will never see again and then just vanishes in a wisp of black smoke.

The sound of pen on paper is the only other noise in the home at that moment.

She snarls again, raising her pistol and pop! firing off a single round, center mass, as Vasha also hits the thing at the same time. When it evaporates, a wispy whine curls out of the back of her throat and she engages the safety on the gun before just... fucking dropping it, because she has to scramble across the room toward her sister, falling to all fours and turning on Mind Mage Sight linked with Mental Scan. "Simone? Simone? Baby Girl?" Unless prevented from doing so, her hands come up to rest on her sister's shoulders as she peers at her intently. All her viciousness simply evaporates into care that's barely restrained from hysteria.

With the creature gone, Vasha waits a few moments to make certain it is well and truly disposed of. Once he's sure, he pops out the depleted magazine and trades it for a full one, then slides the pistol back into its holster. The assault rifle he'd tossed, he likewise recovers, popping out its magazine and slapping a new one home. He retains the rifle, slips the strap back over his shoulder, and takes up position at the back door, watching that portal over the end of his rifle's muzzle. "We can't just pull her out, she doesn't live alone. Which means we need to clear the rest of the structure. If there's more, they'll know where we are now. Keep your pistol handy, I'm going to clear the second floor." Vasha glances back down at Simone and Fox, hesitates briefly, and then confirms that she's on board with this, "You need to keep your head in it, Fox. Tell me you're going to think like a survivor so I can go do what needs doing."

The Mind Sight reveals, because of it's innate ability, that the mind of Simone is currently not entirely in her body, but also partly channeling her artistic thoughts the paper she keeps drawing on, if only with a slightly more awkward pose because of Fox's . The rest of the room looks strange, clearly something is going on with the Lens-like effect at the patio door.

The drawing she has organized in front of her in variously sized piece of paper are a quick sketch of the backyard, showcasing it during winter time, like its meant to be, not like seeing through the lens seems to be, clearly tracking fox pawprints in the snow.

She has not been using the bifurcation of her mind for the extent of the combat, and Vasha can feel the way that she takes all of her Big Emotions and shunts them into one of her truly separate trains of thought. Fox calms, going from the angry, snarling, red-in-tooth-and-claw Fox or the near-hysterical Fox, to a calm and cold Fox that Vasha has seen twice, maybe three times, in all their years together.

"Start with that," she thinks at him, and gestures toward the lens effect on the door to the backyard. "It's popping up on my Mind Sight. She's not in her body fully right now. I don't know if this is a thing she can do, or if it's been done to her. I have to look more closely."

Vasha is about to argue. Because there's an order of priority to these things where he comes from. Enter, secure the location, then do all the investigatory business. She can sense-- because their minds are linked --the haughty I Was An Infantry Captain, I Fought In Cities, I Know What I'm Doing response that bubbles up, ready for delivery. But after appraising her new preternatural calm, he lets out a terse grumble and concedes the point. The rifle lowers, and he raises his mage sight instead, focusing on the lensing effect and starting to scrutinize it.

"If something comes down the stairs and shoots me in the face because I didn't clear the upstairs, you are going to be so sorry."

She crawls across the floor, picks up the gun she dropped, and then crawls back to near Simone, putting her back against the nearest wall and looking toward the stairs. With a face too calm, she sticks her tongue out at him and it looks really fucking weird.

"I have your back. Now and always."

As Vasha studies the strange lens like effect and focuses and invest time, effort into understanding the phenomenon before him. As he finally pulls away the final layer of opacity, it reveals itself as an Arcadian verge. Moreover, now, he sees something beyond the lens, the cycle of the season turns with more precision than the random flickers he saw earlier, growing more precise, following the path of a fox made out of silver.

Once glance back, one blink of an eye, Simone is comparing her drawing to the things she sees through the lens and for that little precious second, the pen in her hand turns into a thorn.

Magic occurs, one look backward, the familiar nimbus of Tanya splashes from the bathroom as the portal opens.

She holds the gun to one side, pointing it toward the floor, and turns toward Simone when she turns toward the portal. A tentative "Baby Girl?" and then there's a nimbus and her hand twitches. Thankfully, she's got Mind Sight up, so she sees that familiar nimbus and relaxes just a bit.

Mei steps through that portal alongside Tanya, then exits the bathroom and glances around to take the scene in as quickly as she can. She's moving even more than usual like she's someone who is trained to deal with incoming unexpected danger, even if she stops short of actually being in a fighting stance. "What's going on?" she asks, eyes going to Vasha, then Fox, to Simone.

A myriad of red cords erupts around the bathroom door, stretching out and fading into the distance. Tanya steps into view, holding up a small brass mirror, the red strings appearing wound around her fingers and wrist. Her eyes are wide and she lets Mei do the talking, staying concentrated on her spell.

Vasha utters a long and incredulous bit of Ukrainian once his work is done, and the fact that his rifle arm grows slack and the weapon sort of drifts towards the ground should speak volumes of just precisely how impossibly shocked he is. Finally, he manages to piece together an explanation, "It's an Arcadian Verge." And he's not leapt through it yet. "Also, there's a silver fox out there. Looks rather like you, actually. Just. You know. Argent." Vasha turns to glance down at Simone, then back out at the fox, then back down to Simone. "I could try reading her mind, see what she's up to."

With the others arriving, Vasha gestures about their surroundings vaguely. "Fox's family tried tracking her down, so we made contact with her sister, and during the conversation it became obvious something was wrong, so we sped here, fought an abyssal entity that was interacting with an Arcadian Verge right here, put it down, and now there's a silver fox in the back yard that looks like our Fox when she's being a Fox, and it's chasing the seasonal calendar around the back yard. The ground floor is secure, but I've not swept the top floor. We're not sure how long we have to secure the location, repair the door we entered through, or get Simone out of her trance before her family returns."

He then points to the pieces of shattered metal on the floor, there. The silver ones. "And he killed Lyudmila."

Simone does not seem to notice much of anything happening around her. Her gaze searching the depth of the strange rippling effect in the opened patio door, that act like a lens through which a cycle of season is seen over the backyard, hedge and such. Though Vasha specifically seem to see more of it.

The woman is in blue PJs and bunny slippers and using a pen to draw on various pieces of paper, then when she's done drawing on it, places it on the floor, trying to arrange them, which so far forms a depiction of her wintery backyard with animal tracks.

The apartment has pictures, all handrawn, hanging over the walls, though they seem to be completing themselves slowly as time goes on

"Thank you for staying on this side of it," Fox answers quietly, watching her sister. "You go clear the top floor. I'll at least scan her mind preliminarily and see if I can get into her thoughts and talk to her that way. Thank you for looking at the Lens first."

She turns her face up toward Mei and Tanya. There's an unnatural calm on her face. "Thank you for coming. Mei, can you look into what's going on with my sister, please? I can't see with Prime yet."