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<Crion> "Huh. It's a...fixer upper," Lauren Ipsum says, casting her red LED eyes around the inside of the warehouse -- the motley's new Hollow. What's she looking at, right now?
<VoxPVoxD> Lauren sees more or less what the motley (is that what they are now? this is probably going to be consecrated by oath at some point) saw when they first found it: a large and open warehouse, accessible by sewer, shafts of sunlight rendered almost solid in the dusty air. "Yeah, Maggie and Tony were talking about it earlier. I'm sort of leaving the architecture to them. I want to talk about
<VoxPVoxD> data."
<Crion> She's wearing work overalls, but that's fairly common for her whenever she's not behind her PC. "Right. So." She plops down on the 'concrete' floor of the Hollow, which mostly feels correct even if it's subtly just a bit too slimy -- your fingers don't actually come away yet, but the feeling's there when you touch it. "The weird thing about setting up a network in here is that basically all
<Crion> your priorities are backwards from the real world."
<VoxPVoxD> "How so?"
<Crion> "Like, a huuuuuge part of any IT installation is running the cables, right? Power, data, whatever. Well, here, you can just, wheew," she breathes on her finger and a dusting of orange and yellow sparkles coats them. Glamour. "Open up a seam in the wall or the floor" -- she traces that finger along the ground, unzipping the concrete into a perfectly straight berth for a CAT5 cable, then zips
<Crion> it back up -- "and close it right back up again. No pulling out walls or ceiling tiles; no power tools. I can't do it, of course; my Hedgespinning fades after an hour or whatever, because I don't live here. But any of your motley who have put a bit of themselves into the hollow can handle it."
<Crion> "Then, post-installation, the network admin experience is consumed by like, days of normal operation followed by shit going wrong for no reason. Then you fix the problem, and everything goes back to normal."
<Crion> "Not so over here. There's not going to be 'normal' over here. This is the Hedge."
<Crion> "So instead of a stable setup, which you will never get, you'll need to develop a range of tolerances. Even over wired communication."
<Crion> She lays back on the floor staring up at the ceiling. "So, you need redundancies, and protocols or switchovers to trigger them, and backups to THOSE, because of course, everything you bring in here from the outside is eventually going to be touched by the nature of the Hedge. They won't straight-up become tokens like they would if you left them outside, but they'll develop personality."
<Crion> "So you've got two options: mainly stick to physical media even though you're wired up -- ripping TV shows to thumbsticks or externals instead of streaming, for instance -- or try to fight the Hedge."
<Crion> She grins. "You know Jameson over in the Winter Court? Big guy, hurts people for King Nobody or whatever his name is this week. Anyway when he's in his Hollow, he watches Seinfeld, over and over again, in order. He finishes the show, he immediately starts it again. See, the thing is, that DVD collection has been in the Hedge so long the show actually changes now when he watches through it.
<Crion> Last time he was telling me about it, he said there was a whole new character, Jimothy. Just, now the show has Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, George, and this dude Jimothy. Sometimes he takes another character's b-plot, sometimes they're all new. Weird shit, huh?"
<VoxPVoxD> "We don't need to fight the Hedge constantly. I think we can work with local hardware for media, but connectivity is important - if people are going to live here, they're going to be able to need to check their email. So if not a stable connection at least some set of tools and procedures that will let us, you know, sucker punch the hedge."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That would freak me the fuck out."
<Crion> She shrugs. "He said it only got freaky once or twice, like the Shadow George episode and the meatship."
<Crion> Then she nods at what Stewart said. "Right, so that's where you need to figure out your tolerance for steel. Steel isn't iron, but the Hedge isn't too fond of it anyway. The way Santander explained it, it's like the Hedge doesn't quite trust that steel isn't some elaborate trick, and the minute it stops paying attention the iron used in it won't leap out and start doing mischief. More
<Crion> importantly, it's not incredibly dangerous for us to handle."
<Crion> "So if you want to set up something to reliably receive from our side of the Hedge, the apparatus should be steel. That should give you some reliability." She sits up again. "THEN comes the tricky part."
<Crion> Lauren waits expectantly to see if Stewart has figured out what the tricky part is already.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart listens to Lauren perched atop one of those big white paint buckets. Stewart doesn't know if it's full of paint or not, but it's ehavy. "The connection is the tricky part. Being in the Hedge is hard, going through the Hedge is, you know."
<Crion> The grin widens. "Correctomundo. The intuitive IT engineer way is to just open a portal, run a line into a box on the other side, leave the door open and set the rest of the network up normally. The two problems with that are, of course, first that portals don't really work that way; you can't really just 'leave the door open' permanently between our side and the Hedge. There are expensive
<Crion> and finnicky ways around that involving keys and tokens, but that brings us to point the second: leaving a door between the Hedge and the real world permanently open and unattended for any length of time is certifiably nuts."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's silent for a long moment before responding, as if she'd said something he had to work through. Finally he says, "You'd be better off with some kind of two-factor system, wouldn't you? Something that works in pulses rather than a stream - data in slower, bigger bunches, packets the size of, of thoughts, basically."
<Crion> She frowns briefly and looks at the finger she'd blown glamour onto, then shrugs.
<Crion> "Yeah, that's what we're working on. Specifically something that -- okay, so we know data doesn't NEED direct LOS or wiring to get through the Hedge. You'll find that out if you bring a phone over here for long enough and turn it into a token, because you'll start getting calls on it to disconnected lines. Real calls! From the other side."
<Crion> "It's controlling it that's the hard part."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Does it need to be controlled?"
<Crion> "You could leave it up to the Hedge when the internet will work, if at all, but nothing says it has to, or that you won't be asleep during the window, if the window comes at all."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Don't think of the Hedge as the Hedge, here. Picture a kind of, I don't know, switchboard spun into the hedge and a hobgoblin bound to it. So we'd be leaving it to the Hedge to govern itself but we'd be installing government we could negotiate with."
<Crion> Lauren thinks about it. "Could work. Really could, now that I think about it. I hate other IT people instinctively so it never occured to me, and frankly, I don't trust hobs. Not that I don't think they're competent; it's that if they're willing to make a deal with you -- no matter how they feel with you -- who else are they going to be selling, uh, network space to?"
<Crion> "Of course no method's going to be completely safe."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "How would you approach it?"
<Crion> Lauren: "Going the other way on this, I've got a theory, but I've never been able to test it. Basically, you set up two identical pass-through network servers, each pressed up against the portal you're maintaining on both sides. The only difference is that one, the server on this side is a clean box, and two, you've either tokenized it or glamour-infused it with a custom setup. The concept
<Crion> is: you put whatever you want onto the box on your side, backup the server, and wipe it. So you've got two clean boxes again, except now the clean box on your side has a backup with the data, settings, and connections you actually want."
<Crion> "Then you restore both servers from backup at the same time. Remember, the one on the Hedge side is clean. It shouldn't be restoring anything. But I've been talking to Santander about the magical concept of 'sympathy' -- you know what that is?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, yeah, I actually just looked that up. The King--" 'The King' sounds so weird, but you know what sounds weirder, is 'King Kingsley' "'--mentioned it the other night, when we got fieldtripped, so I was curious what it meant. A metaphysical connection that transcends physical distance."
<Crion> "Right, yeah. And we know that sympathetic connection exists in our own magical tradition, right? It's not FUN, but it exists -- it's actually kind of foundational. Sympathy between us and our fetches. Magical sympathy," she clarifies hastily. "And we know at least that sympathetic connection is strong enough to transcend the Hedge. Why couldn't there be others? Maybe we could create a
<Crion> sympathetic connection where when you restore from that backup here on our side -- an act of creation -- it 'creates' a cloned server here on on the other. And if the magic is strong enough, maybe the connection could go both ways; sending and receiving. You essentially have the same server on both sides of the Hedge, at the same time, communicating entirely through their sympathetic connection."
<Crion> "Now. There could be some problems with this. Mainly, like, what if the original server starts trying to kill the fetch server. That would be bad."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "And you what you mentioned earlier, with Jameson's Jimothy. The risk of straight-up Hedge data corruption."
<dammitwho> "Oooooo-hooooo Annie let me in, I will fly, I will swim," The pair of them can hear singing coming up a hallway towards them. The adjective 'merry' doesn't get used much in modern life, except in what is essentially a seasonal branding exercise, but it seems to apply here.
<Crion> She nods. "Though you're going to get that either way, sadly. Unless you're doing rigorous wipes and flattening/reinstalling every month or so. Might even be more corruption the hob way, since--??"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's smile widens; he hadn't realized he was already smiling. "Maggie! Do you need help carrying stuff in?"
<VoxPVoxD> To Lauren: "Have you met Maggie yet?"
<Crion> "...Nnope." Her mood seems to have gotten more suspicious and standoffish, sort of back to how it was when they first met.
<dammitwho> Maggie backs into the room, a walking steam furnace in the shape of a woman, molten metal or streamers of flame pouring down her head like hair - or, alternatively, an ordinary midwestern-looking woman of middle age and cheerful disposition carrying a large black plastic case, some blankets and sheets, and toiletries.
<dammitwho> "Heya Stewart! Nah, nah, I've got this sorted. Good to see you here again so soon; thought you'd run a mile."
<Crion> "Hmph."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart brushes past the judgment. "I wanted to show Lauren the place and do some thinking about the tech setup we're going to have. If people are going to live here, they're going to need some kind of internet. Have you met my friend Lauren? She's the Autumn Court's tech expert. When *I* need to learn something about computers, I ask Lauren."
<dammitwho> "Eh?" She turns to squint at the other voice. "Oh, sure, sure. Lauren Ipsum, I remember you. Well, welcome to the place, Lauren. Not much here yet." She addresses them both: "Glad you're getting that internet business going up here... I tell ya, I already couldn't do without that 'media server' you set up for me. Much obliged there, Stewart."
<Crion> Lauren's LED eyes light up a little bit unvoluntarily. "That's overstating it. We were just talking about...stuff."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart glances over when Lauren's eyes flare but doesn't comment. It reminds him a little of the change in the intruder alarm she installed. But it's Maggie he speaks to. "I'm glad it's working. Have you had a chance to try any of those games yet?"
<dammitwho> She nods. "Oh, for sure, for sure. I started with that 'Myst' one, and I like it so much that when I read they made a bunch of others like it, I thought about just running through those before starting on your Portals and Witnesses."
<Crion> "I should probably get going," Lauren mutters.
<VoxPVoxD> To Lauren: "Did you ever play Myst?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Oh."
<Crion> She blinks. "Oh. Uh. Yeah."
<Crion> "Been a long time."
<Crion> "Never liked either of those guys."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Naw, stick around! We don't have an oven up here yet, but I bet if you give me a bit I could put something together. You hungry? Of course you're hungry. Won't be a minute."
<Crion> "Uh. Okay."
<Crion> "I mean if that's what you want."
<dammitwho> This will also give her a chance to be out of the room briefly, in case Stewart and Lauren get to smooching, heh heh heh.
<VoxPVoxD> Shut UP
<Crion> I-it's not like that, BAKA
<Crion> When Maggie's out of the room: "If you've got motley stuff to do, I really can leave. I'm sure the food's...food."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Do you wanna? I can cover for you if you want to bail, but I was hoping we could hang out. I always see you online and sometimes I forget that you're not a long-distance friend, you're right here."
<Crion> "...Okay then. Cool." She pauses, looking over to where Maggie has -- she's just like, off in the corner of the warehouse 'out of earshot,' singing and glancing over at them and chuckling to herself while she works, isn't she? Ugh.
<Crion> "Soo...Spring Court?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Maggie, yeah. Maggie and Nels. Then we've got Tony, who's a Winter, and Melanie, who's a Summer."
<VoxPVoxD> "Where'd you meet Maggie?"
<Crion> She shakes her head. "The whole damn year."
<Crion> "Uhh. I think she came by the office to get a phone or something...? I wasn't lying when I said I hadn't met her. I probably didn't, like, even look up."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That makes sense. Maggie's really... I don't know the right word. Sort of broad...hearted...?"
<Crion> "She'll fit in, in Spring," Lauren says. It's not a compliment, but it's not quite an insult either.
<VoxPVoxD> "Which Court would you choose, if you weren't Autumn?"
<Crion> "Winter." Matter-of-factly, automatically. Then with more bluster: "Not because I'm, like, sad or anything. You just get left alone to do your job more."
<Crion> "Spring is so peppy, with so many parties. And Summer's just, right out."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, you're not getting ambushed with dinner much by a Winter courtier."
<Crion> She grins. "No, just ambushed AT dinner."
<VoxPVoxD> "Tony seems really chill. That's not a pun, I swear."
<VoxPVoxD> "I don't know what I'd pick. Autumn emailed me, which made me think it was like a tryout."
<Crion> Casually: "Yeah, he's already killed a guy."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "No shit?"
<Crion> "Well, I guess Spring did it."
<Crion> She glances over. "Like, the changeling Spring, not the Court."
<Crion> "She's their hitman. Hitwoman. Uh. Assassin."
<VoxPVoxD> "Wow."
<VoxPVoxD> "I guess - yeah. I guess everybody needs to be able to hide a body."
<Crion> Lauren frowns. "It's got a funny name. What is it...?"
<Crion> "Oh, right! They call her the freakin, 'Sun Banisher.' Badass."
<VoxPVoxD> "That's amazing. Is there like a list of titles or if you're enough of a badass do they give you a bespoke one?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I wonder if there are titles for doing tech support."
<Crion> She shrugs. "There could be. But if there was it'd be mine. Sorry. Seniority."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Which is so not fair, your name's already as a cool title."
<Crion> Her eyes flash again. "You're just saying that."
<dammitwho> "Huff! Alright, here we aaare~" Maggie returns with a folding table under one arm and a pot of avocado chicken salad in the other hand, ready to dish out into separate bowls. "Take all you want, there's plenty and the others aren't here anyhow!"
<Crion> Lauren takes a tentatively small portion.
<VoxPVoxD> "When I set up her local network, Maggie made these incredible biscuits."
<Crion> The other Autumn Court changeling makes a noncomittal noise.
<dammitwho> Maggie slaps the emotional teens on the back merrily.
<Crion> "oof"
<Crion> She does look a bit rosier, though, now. Lauren miiiight not have the best sleep schedule.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's reaction is much the same. Between bites: "Have you thought about how you're going to lay the place out?"
<dammitwho> "Little bit. Need to talk to the others, though. This is the whole, whatchacallit, motley's space, even if they're not here full-time."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's still so weird to me to live in the Hedge full-time."
<Crion> Lauren: "I couldn't do it. Gotta be online."
<VoxPVoxD> "Right?"
<dammitwho> She nods reluctantly. "I'll allow that if getting connected up here just doesn't make sense I'd have to think a bit harder about keeping someplace out in regular Baltimore. I sure would like not to have to pay rent, though. Good gravy, they squeeze you."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We should be able to fix something up for the internet. It'll be fiddly, though, because everything in the Hedge is fiddly."
<Crion> "You're gonna get weird and creepy e-mails the spam filter won't catch," Lauren says. "No way around that."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah if someone tells you they need more blue webpages, don't do it."
<Crion> With her mouth a little bit full: "Make sure the link you're clicking is to FACEbook, not FAEbook. Better yet, block the Facebook links too."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Oh, lord, I don't go anywhere near that crap, excuse my French. They make a lot of money, this Facebook?"
<Crion> Lauren snort-laughs.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'd say more money than God but the Catholic Church spends a *lot* of money."
<VoxPVoxD> "So Faebook has got to also be owned by Zuckerberg, right? There's no way it isn't."
<Crion> She shrugs. "I've always figured Zuck's a fetch. Or a Huntsman. Or SOMETHING."
<dammitwho> "Mmmm-hmm." She purses her lips. "It's just like the newspapers. Some rich fella buys everything up and tries to get people fighting each other. No thank you."
<Crion> "I mean, look at the guy."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "If Zuck's the fetch, you have to wonder, where's the real Mark?"
<Crion> "Making money in the Hedge helping the True Fae set up their own surveillance state, maybe."
<Crion> "Or whatever money is over here."
<Crion> "Debt."
<VoxPVoxD> The three of them eat in silence for a bit. Suddenly Stewart says, "Oh, hey, Stan Rogers."
<dammitwho> "Eh?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I saw this Contract on the wiki. It's called the Hedge-Busker's Tip. You can listen for someone's musical aura, which takes the shape of an existing real-world song."
<VoxPVoxD> "It's like a theme song that follows you around."
<VoxPVoxD> "Yours is a Stan Rogers song. I looked him up on Youtube. I don't recognize that one, though."
<dammitwho> Curiously: "How's it go?"
<Crion> Lauren narrows her eyes but says nothing.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart misses Lauren's reaction, focused on singing adequately: "People are simple, like May flowers sweet, both grown by that North County rain... the interval is clear, will it soon disappear, under the Guysborough Train?"
<dammitwho> "Huh." She clicks her tongue and looks off between the two other changelings for a little bit, focused on nothing. "Guysborough Train, huh? ...Yeah, that one makes sense."
<dammitwho> "You know what it means?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart shakes his head.
<VoxPVoxD> It occurs to him belatedly that he doesn't know if she meant, does he know what the song means or does he know what the fact that that's her song means. Luckily the answer is the same either way.
<Crion> After a minute, a bit strained: "So what did you hear when you used that contract on me. Couldn't have been anything good."
<Crion> "Or else you'd have said something."
<Crion> Abruptly she stands up. "You know what. The food was good. Thanks."
<Crion> "I can find the door."
<VoxPVoxD> Ah, fuck.
<Crion> Unless stopped, she will, indeed, see herself out.
<VoxPVoxD> "Wait." Stewart will get up and follow her if she doesn't stop.
<Crion> She will slow down, but not stop.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart will let her get a bit away from Maggie before saying, "I'm sorry, I should have said something. I tried it without thinking, and then I didn't really- I didn't know what to say. But I should have said something."
<dammitwho> She opens her mouth, but this appears to be something between her and Stewart, so she closes it again.
<Crion> She'll round on him, more...determined...? Than angry. But still angry. "Teach. Me. The contract."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks briefly stunned, but: "Sure."
<Crion> "...And Maggie, too. It's not fair if just you get to do it."
<VoxPVoxD> "It sort of, pops your eardrums a little? So swallowing or chewing gum might help..." He shows Lauren how it works.
<VoxPVoxD> To Maggie: "Do you wanna?"
<dammitwho> She hums to herself. "Much obliged, Stewart, but I think I'll pass on that one. Though I might bug you now and again and ask what you hear about this person or that."
<Crion> Lauren ignores her, then, and focuses intently on the lesson with her arms crossed.
<Crion> And as soon as she's gotten the hang of it, she narrows her eyes and does kind of a silent raspberry with her lips--
<Crion> Her eyes widen and she blinks, and her face gets a little bit softer. "That's weird." Then, hurriedly: "Not your song. Just...hearing it like that."
<Crion> "...I'm not telling you what it is. And I don't want you to tell me what mine is."
<dammitwho> "What'd you g-- awww."
<Crion> Primly, to Maggie: "Learn it yourself if you want to know."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Heh heh. That's fair."
<Crion> "...I really should actually get going, though. There's tickets piling up. Harlan got a virus on his phone again."
<dammitwho> She nods. "Sure, and you're always welcome, Lauren. Come by sometime!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's second breath after Lauren invokes the contract is bracing and cold like a lungful of Halloween night air. "Okay, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for hanging out." He'll walk her out unless she signals she'd rather he didn't.
<Crion> She seems fine with it. "Thanks again for the food," she says to Maggie. When they reach the door, she says perhaps overly-flatly, "I'll see you online later...?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...yeah, absolutely."
<Crion> "Cool. I had fun later!" The last bit kind of runs together as she steps through the portal.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "What a sweet girl. Does she like movies? You should take her to a movie."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart sighs. "Take her to a- what?"
<dammitwho> Maggie, cheerfully: "Neither of you really strike me as sports fans."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: 'Hey, I've been to multiple Orioles games!"
<VoxPVoxD> Two is multiple!
<dammitwho> "Yeah, and don't you wish you hadn't?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Baseball is so bad."
<VoxPVoxD> "All the variance is in the outcome, everyone's trying to do the same thing basically every time. It'd be like watching people play a professional Civ 2 war league where no one's to-hit chance goes higher than 35%."
<dammitwho> "Ooofah." She sits down in a creaky camp chair. "We should get some carpeting or something in here, the floor's freezing. What's this about a Civ 2?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Civilization is a series of big complicated strategy games. They take a long time to play and involve a lot of micromanagement, but whether you succeed or fail still comes down to how well you can roll dice."
<VoxPVoxD> "Some people swear by them, though."
<VoxPVoxD> "And then there's strategy games that are even drier and dustier than that."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Golly. So it's just like playing board games on the computer, there?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, exactly."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Hrrrrrm. Now, here's something maybe you can answer for me. I was looking up the history of video games and whatnot, because I figured there'd be some simpler ones I could, you know, try on as well. From what I understand the first really popular ones were that Super Mario?" She pronounces it 'mare-io'. "Is that right? Do people still play those these days?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, yeah. Super Mario Brothers, 19...8...5? I want to say? It's still really fun, and people still play it, and they've been making Mario games for 35 years now, and most of those are also really good. I can get them on a console if you want to play them on a TV, or you could emulate them on your computer."
<VoxPVoxD> "They're a lot more twitchy than Myst is, though. They care more about reflexes."
<VoxPVoxD> "They're not super hard, mostly, because each of these games is designed to be some kid's first video game, but it's a very different experience."
<dammitwho> She leans back, closes her eyes, and nods. "So what's your favorite? Not what you stream, I mean. What're the games you like the most?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That's really hard."
<VoxPVoxD> "I guess... there's this game called Deus Ex."
<dammitwho> She crosses her legs and sips a mug of ice water.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's a science fiction game about conspiracies and technology. What I love the most about it is that there's so many ways to play it. It's basically a first-person shooter, where you run around with a gun and shoot bad guys to reach things bad guys are guarding. But a lot of games just tell you where to go and sort of, measure your competence at game systems as you progress.
<VoxPVoxD> What Deus Ex does - what really good games do, I think - is it poses a question."
<VoxPVoxD> "So like, the first level of the game, the game asks you, 'How are you going to get to the top of the Statue of Liberty?' and you can take heavy weapons and try to blow your way past all the fortifications, or you try to sneak around and avoid detection. You can kill everyone you see or play a complete pacifist."
<VoxPVoxD> "And then at the end the game asks you what kind of society you want. You can join the ranks of the powerful men who control the world. You can cause a total breakdown of society and try to piece something together out of the aftermath. Or you can become something new and scary, and leave your old self behind."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks at Maggie, the furnacewoman, and is suddenly deeply uncomfortable. That's twice in a row he just- fuck! He can't keep making mistakes like that.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Hmm. Don't think I've heard of shooty games where you don't have to shoot people and still win."
<dammitwho> "I can't decide whether that's strange or not."
<VoxPVoxD> "Strange?"
<dammitwho> She notices Stewart shifting in his seat uncomfortably. "You alright, th-- oh! Oh!" She laughs merrily. "I didn't even realize. Stewart, I like to think I'm a pretty tough gal." She thumps on her chest for emphasis. "You don't have to go and worry about reminding me about all this metal and whatnot. That part's not so bad." She adds, "Not for me, anyway. It's different for everyone,
<dammitwho> I'm sure."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's just..."
<dammitwho> "Hmm?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Like yeah, you say it's fine for you, and I believe you. Then you say it's different for everyone, but that understates it so much."
<VoxPVoxD> "I just don't want to hurt people! But I can't know for sure what hurts people. It might be anything. Sometimes it might be everything."
<VoxPVoxD> "Lauren was having a perfectly nice time and then I fucked it up."
<dammitwho> Maggie, looking at her cup: "Yeah... I think I know what you mean. I don't really have an answer for you there. I guess all you can do is make sure people know you have good will for 'em, and try to make amends when things go wrong. I expect Lauren'll be back sooner than you think."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I've been really lucky, making friends in the Freehold. But all my new friends are so different from each other, and different from me. I feel like we're a motley, you know? A collection of people who could only be united by this... this thing. But Lauren's not like that, you know? Lauren's just... Lauren. Like if we hadn't all been pushed together, I think she'd be my only
<VoxPVoxD> friend."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "You think maybe she feels the same way about you? That's a pretty heavy thing to realize about someone."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't know."
<dammitwho> She shrugs a little.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...I should get home. I've got to work in a couple of hours."
<VoxPVoxD> "Thanks for the food. And for being around."
<dammitwho> She raises her mug. "Cheers."
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<Crion>
<Crion> Which nights does Stewart take off from gaming? Sorry, work.
<VoxPVoxD> Usually early-week weeknights. By default he streams every night but Tuesday, but Monday is his second-most-frequent night off.
<Crion> Well then. It was a Monday night that the motley was made, so it will be the next night, Tuesday, that the hex box chat app will light up with a message from...a new sender.
<Crion> Username: "QUOTH|THE|BITTER|WIND"
<Crion> The message is:
<Crion> <'STEWART READER,' KNOWN OTHERWISE AS 'CRITICALMASS:'>
<Crion> <YOUR ATTENDANCE IS REQUESTED AT THE LAW OFFICES OF KINGSLEY, SANTANDER & RAVENS>
<Crion> <NOW>
<Crion> <OR AS PRACTICABLE>
<Crion> <THUS ENDS THE INTERDICTUM>
<Crion> <NEVERMORE>
<VoxPVoxD> "Badass," Stewart breathes.
<Crion> Well?
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart was just googling the words from Lauren's song. Apparently "the Mountain Goats" have a shitload of albums. He can dig deeper later.
<VoxPVoxD> Inner Harbor, right? Attached parking garage?
<Crion> Indeed.
<Crion> No one seems to be sending a car this time, though.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart can drive himself.
<Crion> When he arrives at the parking garage, the shutter will be closed...and open on its own as soon as he pulls up to see if there's a buzzer. The garage itself is dark; emergency lights only at night, it seems. If that.
<VoxPVoxD> The dim, shadowy parking lot is very atmosphere. This is both a mood and goals, thinks Stewart.
<VoxPVoxD> *parking garage
<Crion> As soon as he drives in, the shutter closes behind him. Better keep the headlights on.
<VoxPVoxD> This owns!! Stewart will drive carefully, letting his eyes adjust to the comparative dark.
<Crion> The garage is completely empty. The lights are gone entirely...except a pool of yellow light from a single bulb near the elevator, hung over the doorman's chair.
<Crion> He's nowhere to be seen.
<Crion> The elevator door stands open.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart feels like someone's rolling the red carpet out for him.
<VoxPVoxD> He doesn't touch any buttons on the elevator immediately, waiting to see if it moves on its own.
<Crion> It does not...but after a moment, as if in irritation, the button for Floor 27 lights up.
<Crion> Perhaps this elevator does not suffer passengers gladly, at least not afterhours.
<Crion> After all, it should be off.
<VoxPVoxD> Somewhere between Floor 12 and Floor 14 Stewart's anticipation starts wilting into nervousness. The last time he was here it was because he'd just watched three men get shot to death.
<Crion> The elevator moves up with smooth alacrity; whether because it loves a job well done, because it's afraid of fucking up, or just because it's an impersonal machine and everything is normal -- ha ha ha -- is hard to say. The doors slide open on Floor 27. Everything is stillness and dark.
<Crion> All of Lauren's computers are off; she's home for the night, clearly. The rest of the office is the same. No noise -- except for the elevator doors closing immediately behind Stewart and the elevator descending as quickly as it possibly can.
<Crion> Wait...not no light.
<Crion> There's three thin lines of gold all the way down the hall, coming out of the double doors to Kingsley's office -- the top and bottom jambs, and where the doors separate.
<Crion> This is interesting.
<Crion> Kingsley's office doesn't have double doors.
<Crion> Well, it didn't last time, at any rate.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart approaches. He'll knock if he reaches the door before anything happens.
<Crion> As he gets within swinging distance of the doors, they explode outward as if thrown open by a great wind, and a burning golden-orange light overwhelms him. A voice beyond booms: "COME INNNNNNN, STEWART READER, KNOWN IN OTHER PARTS AS QUOTE, CRITICALMASS!"
<Crion> "ENTER MY REALM"
<VoxPVoxD> Eyes wide, Stewart fights hesitation and crosses the threshold.
<Crion> The office is...much longer.
<Crion> The floor and the ceiling and the walls are all completely clear; you appear to be floating in the sky, and why not? Why would there be buildings this tall in the Hedge? Except looming behind you there is one, a great pillar of basalt some quarter-mile away towards city hall, backlit only by a gigantic moon that takes up almost a fourth of the night sky.
<Crion> The rest of the sky is stars, more than there should be and in strange patterns that change when you're not looking; below you, you can just make out the ever-twisting, ever-twisted rows of the Hedge seething as they rearrange themselves like a nest of vipers. The ocean stretches away to the horizon vaguely in the place it should be, but it seems too far.
<Crion> All of this is less important, perhaps, than the office itself.
<Crion> A great hall of knicks and knacks: towering shelves of books; a row of six different globes, none of which appear to quite be Earth; four safes stacked two on two, and all of them chained up; the statue of a beautiful woman; the statue of Christ on the cross, but wearing a leering grin; a great mirror covered by a silk sheet, and a bolted-down wooden chair sitting in front of it; and finally,
<Crion> at the end of the room, a massive desk and the man behind it, all the light in the room behind drawn in towards him to die but his hideous eyes still gleaming in it. He appears to be fiddling with...a Game Boy Advance.
<Crion> "BAH!" He tosses it irritably into a drawer.
<Crion> Then he turns to Stewart and--smiles?
<Crion> "Thank you, Stewart Reader. Like what you hear?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart is just kind of dumbstruck. Finally he manages a "Holy shit."
<Crion> The smile widens.
<Crion> "Sit." He snaps his fingers, and the bolted down chair in front of the mirror grumbles, unbolts itself from the floor, trundles over to his desk, and sprouts cushions on its seat and backrest.
<VoxPVoxD> Despite how flatly awesome this is, the display of power and the vertigo of the magician's sanctum leave him almost scrambling for a seat.
<Crion> The chair seems to have sympathy; it adjusts to fit him precisely. Presumably this isn't the first time this entire sequence of events has happened.
<Crion> "I," says the man behind the desk, steepling his fingers, "am W. Marcus Santander."
<Crion> "I prepare your taxes, and other official documents."
<Crion> "Yet -- I do other things, besides."
<Crion> He seems older than his age, severe, and always in shadow -- even though three great lamps, two behind him and one of the desk, illuminate this section of the room. A long beard and gnarled fingers, but great, stern, accusing eyes -- and yes, that is a wizard's hat, hanging on a coat rack in the far corner.
<Crion> Santander seems both mighty and stooped, and while his very visage inspires fear, it is not without humor. Though whether that humor lands, well.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart finally manages: "How can I help?"
<Crion> Loudly and immediately: "MANY WAYS!"
<Crion> "First: Are vampires real?"
<Crion> His eyes probe Stewart's.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart shrinks a bit. "As far as I know. I saw someone explode into a cloud of bats."
<Crion> "Adequate. The correct answer is 'yes.' 'As far as I know,' to a sage of the Autumn Court, means 'yes.' SECOND! Were the bats actual bats?"
<Crion> After a brief pause: "You may speculate."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They were definitely physical, and not, like, illusions - they disturbed the air, broke a window. But they must've been part of the vampire in some sense. So they weren't actual bats, if we define 'actual bats' to mean like the kind you'd find in an attic or, or a belfry."
<Crion> Santander nods with satisfaction. "Better than adequate: correct. Third: why did the vampire wear an opera cape and a tuxedo to meet with corrupt police officers in the year 2019?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Because he wanted to give the impression that he was very old, or he's so old it didn't occur to him not to."
<VoxPVoxD> "Coming off like that is a philosophical point as much as an aesthetic one."
<Crion> Santander nods and leans forward with satisfaction. "And given the available evidence, what is it clear that vampires can do in one very important way, and cannot do in another?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Pass for human?"
<Crion> He narrows his eyes. "Almost."
<Crion> "Again."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart thinks. "Feel human?"
<Crion> "Forget about humanity, narrowly defined," Santander says. "Think in principles."
<VoxPVoxD> "Grow? No, that's too narrow again. Is it change?"
<Crion> He nods. "There it is. We, after all, pass for human, and we feel human. The fundamental difference between us and the vampires is not the fangs or the feeding or the magic or even the fact of death. We can or do have all those things. Even, in very strange hours, the death. But we are still alive, and we are still part of the world." Santander waves his hand around the Hollow. "Which is not
<Crion> the impression this 'sanctum sanctorum' gives! You see these things and you think, yes! I shall strive to steal the secrets of the gods, and become one with the outer worlds. And, in time, with the proper cunning and the proper learning, you shall."
<Crion> "But you will never be a vampire."
<Crion> "You will never be a werewolf."
<Crion> "You will never be a mage."
<Crion> "And this--" He raises a finger. "This, I posit, is a blessing unto you."
<VoxPVoxD> "Why?"
<Crion> "Because the vampire is empty, the werewolf is too full, and the mage always yearns to be something else. You have to live inside yourself, even as you explore this great new universe. And you must not view those wants -- the plain facts of life, the plain desires of your nature -- as impediments, not even to something so majestic as learning."
<Crion> He leans back in his chair. "This, of course, is why I do the taxes."
<Crion> "I find helping people enjoyable. I find cheating the government enjoyable. So I indulge these things."
<Crion> "That said, I do have a task for you."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart perks up.
<Crion> "Discover enough about vampires to --" He snaps his fingers again, and a computer monitor shoots out of his desk. Presumably he's got a hex box stuck down in there somewhere, because Stewart is shown the empty Autumn Court wiki page for Vampires (Homo Nosferatu Vampiris). "Fill this page...after scrolling once!"
<Crion> After the proclamation he looks regretfully at the monitor. "Lauren continues to tell me we need this updated, and I suppose I agree. With proper security!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks at the screen and then back at Santander. "Okay. Any suggestions where to start?"
<Crion> "I HAVE NONE!!!"
<Crion> "This is your task."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart leans back a bit, but nods.
<Crion> "However."
<Crion> "You have accepted a task of knowledge from a Lord Sage. This entitles you to reciprocation of knowledge upon completion of your task. However, I am lenient, and I am clearly testing you instead of truly asking for new knowledge! SO."
<Crion> "You may ask me any questions three. And if I do not answer, that question I return to thee."
<VoxPVoxD> Seems to be a pastime of the Autumn Court. Stewart leads with: "Who was the opera cape bat cloud vampire?"
<Crion> "The Count of St. Sebastian. Seneschal to the Court of Baltimore. ...The vampire court."
<Crion> "His title is Seneschal. The rest is, well. Names are power."
<VoxPVoxD> Question two: "What kind of work does becoming a great changeling magician entail?"
<Crion> "There is a short answer to that question, and a long answer. So: I SHALL GIVE BOTH!"
<Crion> "The short answer is that you must become intimate with foolishness, failure, and death, and not become a fool, fail, or die."
<Crion> "The long answer is that it will be a long process, with many setbacks. It will be dangerous. It will require consortation with strange oddities of the Wyrd, monstrosities of the world entirely out of your holistic conception of a unified theory of magic from dealing with the True Fae, and spending time with those from as far away as Philadelphia. Perhaps even...Pittsburgh. It will not be
<Crion> easy and at times -- most times! -- it will not be particularly fun, and it may lead you not into unpleasant truths, for the truth is never in and of itself unpleasant, but unpleasant ways of thinking. You will need support, and support is not an old tax attorney summoning you to his skylab at 8 PM on a Tuesday. You will require a robustness you do not yet have. And then, in the end, if
<Crion> you are skilled, and lucky, and availed of many smaller, more interior splendors, you will be the one with the grumpy chair. And I will have..."
<Crion> "...retired to the country."
<Crion> <@Crion> "The long answer is that it will be a long process, with many setbacks. It will be dangerous. It will require consortation with strange oddities of the Wyrd, monstrosities of the world entirely out of your holistic conception of a unified theory of magic from dealing with the True Fae, and spending time with those from as far away as Philadelphia. Perhaps even...Pittsburgh. It
<Crion> will not be
<Crion> <@Crion> easy and at times -- most times! -- it will not be particularly fun, and it may lead you not into unpleasant truths, for the truth is never in and of itself unpleasant, but unpleasant ways of thinking. You will need support, and support is not an old tax attorney summoning you to his skylab at 8 PM on a Tuesday. You will require a robustness you do not yet have. And then, in the
<Crion> end, if
<Crion> <@Crion> you are skilled, and lucky, and availed of many smaller, more interior splendors, you will be the one with the grumpy chair. And I will have..."
<Crion> <@Crion> "...retired to the country."
<Crion> Beneath Stewart, the chair grumbles, but doesn't change how comfortable it is.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart is silent for a time, thinking about this.
<VoxPVoxD> His last question is, "Knowing everything you know now, if you could choose never to have been taken, would you?"
<Crion> Santander leans back and steeples his fingers. "I find myself unqualified to answer that question now, at the end of too many things. And so the question is returned." His voice is unusually subdued.
<Crion> Then he laces his fingers together and rests them on his chest.
<VoxPVoxD> It takes Stewart a long moment to formulate the fourth question. "Why do they take us?"
<Crion> "Because they're broken."
<Crion> He pauses.
<Crion> "Do you need a longer answer?"
<Crion> "There is one. It's arguable whether it's more illuminating, or even true."
<VoxPVoxD> "I guess... what way are they broken that makes them do that?"
<Crion> He closes his eyes. "There is a place called Arcadia. Are you familiar? It is the name we give the place we go, when we are taken. A thousand shining, solipsistic duchies. Or ten thousand. Or a million. But that's not really Arcadia. They call it that, because, like the mages, they are creatures that yearn to be somewhere else. There is a true Arcadia, they say. It's a big club."
<Crion> "And the Gentry aren't in it."
<Crion> "So. How to get back to heaven? For it is their heaven. The mages have their answer, and it seems stupid and insane, so we will not bother ourselves further with it. But the Keepers -- they've thought about this."
<Crion> "They've thought about this, so much."
<Crion> "And their answer, I believe, is that they believe they are wholly incomplete. That there is something missing. Not a permanent thing -- a transitory thing. A spark. Something to ignite them and return them to the way they used to be. They yearn to reach their heaven through love or hate or music or popcorn or violence. And they need, therefore, a lover, a hater, a violinist, a movie theater
<Crion> teen, or an opponent. But always a victim."
<Crion> "Arcadia is a land of tumult and conflict. Change." He glances at Stewart and smiles. "You had to know I'd bring it back eventually. And they...don't...change."
<Crion> "And it kills them."
<Crion> "Figuratively, but also literally, because in their world figuratively is literally."
<Crion> "They take us because they're broken, and they're afraid they can never be whole again."
<Crion> He pauses. "But make the mistake of pity at your own peril."
<Crion> "That is the long answer."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods, after another pause. "Thank you."
<Crion> Eyes still closed. "You owe me a wiki."
<VoxPVoxD> "I'll get it done."
<Crion> He opens his eyes and nods. "See that you do. The chair and the elevator will see you back. Goodnight, Stewart Reader, Apprentice of the Unknown Reaches."
<Crion> The chair literally goes "hup," walks him back to the door to the Hollow and stands up to put Stewart himself in a standing position, pushing him through the portal. The door to Kingsley's office slams -- it's just the single door again. The whole floor is once more cold and dark...but then the elevator opens, warm and bright. When Stewart steps in, it plays soothing music and immediately
<Crion> ferries him back down to the garage. When the doors open on the garage it's dark, but then the fire alarm on the elevator BLORTS, and the lights snap on, and the shutter to the garage opens.
<Crion> Once Stewart has pulled out of the parking garage, the shutter closes again. Every light in the building switches off. Every machine goes silent. It's like no one had been there at all.
<Crion> --Fin.
<banana|split> running aroudn waving my hands in the air and screaming
<banana|split> (RAWHTAS)
<banana|split> oh wrong channel
<banana> https://i.imgur.com/pRFI7qg.jpg
<banana>
<banana>
<banana>
<banana> Melanie rolls up in Stewart's parking lot in a Kia a few years out of date but barely used. There are bits of leaves all over the roof surface, but the passenger seat is clean and clear.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's got the cool leather jacket Gerald gave him on. It's not really chilly but it's not-warm enough to justify looking cool. "Hey!" he says as he gets into the car. "How's it going?"
<banana> In the back she's only got a couple of bits of furniture - the things she could move herself for the first round - and a case of Spotted Cow. "Thank you again for doing this."
<banana> "Um, it's not going very fast, but I don't have very much to move. If we drop this stuff off at the sewer first then it should just be a trip or two.. I hope."
<VoxPVoxD> "Oh, yeah, no problem. Moving alone sucks." He notices the case of beer in the backseat, but doesn't acknowledge it. "Maggie has the place looking pretty good."
<banana> "It does! Last time I had.." Ehh. "I must have had help. I have no idea who it was, though."
<VoxPVoxD> "How much are you bringing over?"
<banana> Melanie: "I've got a planter, is the main thing, and two bookcases. Stuff like tables and chairs don't really matter, but putting bookcases together in the Hedge doesn't seem to be easy? They fall over."
<banana> "Oh, also my TV!"
<banana> The city traffic is a pain compared to the suburban streets Melanie originally came from. She's not sure where to park, actually; the makeshift motley's hidden manhole doesn't come with street space.
<VoxPVoxD> With Stewart's help, Melanie's able to get the car parked somewhere where the walk is only slightly awkward. Once they've got the first set carload in the Hollow, already cozy with Maggie's influence, Stewart'll turn to her and say: "Can you do me a favor real quick? Just, like, sing something. It doesn't matter what. Twinkle twinkle little star or whatever."
<banana> ? "Since nobody is listening, I can totally do that."
<banana> Melanie's face sets for a moment in concentration - little flakes of bark drift away from the seams where it meets the rest of her head. Talewright had her sing lullabies and prophecies, but she used to actually know.. ah!
<banana> "Bend me, break me, anyway you need me-" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NnAHGed2Jk] is quite loud. But what Stewart hears in his head is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MJh2jSkqqA].
<VoxPVoxD> Hey, she's actually got a nice voice. He looks vaguely impressed but then suddenly his face sets with focus.
<VoxPVoxD> "That's really pretty," he says, belatedly and inappropriately considering the song Melanie's actually singing.
<banana> "-as long as I want you, baby-" Melanie breaks off. She's leaning on one of the warehouse's temporary interior partitions, taking up most of the room between the floor and the makeshift ceiling, trying to sort of merge with the wall out of embarassment. "Thank you. I've, I've performed before, but Nels would be much better..."
<banana> She can feel the glint and glamour. He's done something, fine, but what?
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I learned this contract, see, it's called the Hedge-Busker's Tip. It turns out everyone's being has this sort of vibration that magic can pick up as a song. Like a real-world song. It's easier to use on someone who's already singing."
<banana> "That doesn't make a lot of sense. Songs are artifacts, human-made - your contract's promise has to be delivering you some sort of impression, a mapping or interpretation."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, but it's still unique to each person. Nels is singing her own song, for instance. Maggie's is by a Canadian folk singer named Stan Rogers."
<banana> Melanie's heading for the door - this is interesting, but there's a way to go and she doesn't want to have to drive fast. "What if Maggie is Canadian?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's following. "She could be, I guess. I would've guessed like... Minnesota or something. Which is America's Canada, so."
<banana> "There could be, basically, there's some sort of fat hobgoblin sitting on a trove of platinum albums and spitting out songs it thinks are appropriate in exchange for whatever price you've paid.. or is it the Wyrd? Does the Wyrd have opinions about music?"
<banana> "I would not trust its taste." This isn't a joke.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What kind of taste do you think it'd have?"
<banana> Melanie: "Rigid. We'd be assigned music that's meant to define us, to bind us into what destiny or Keepers or God think we are."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I wonder if your perspective would change if you listened to ten of the songs, or a hundred. Or maybe not. I haven't gotten the impression of songs that define people, exactly, but I've only used it a handful of times."
<banana> Melanie: "Hmm." A pause. "I don't have enough information on the contractor's motivations here.. can I ask you something instead? Do you know what your own song is?"
<banana> "Do you want to?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't know what it is. I can't seem to use it on myself and Lauren wouldn't tell me."
<VoxPVoxD> "I wouldn't mind knowing, but, she promised not to tell me and made me promise not to tell her hers so it feels like I'd be going behind her back somehow."
<VoxPVoxD> "Do you want to know yours?"
<banana> "So you would hear it in an ideal world, ok." Who's Lauren again? Better not admit not knowing. "I would be afraid of bias, self-analysis paralysis."
<banana> "No! Thank you for asking, by the way. But it sounds like.."
<banana> Melanie: "I associate the idea with, like, theme music in a film? A motif that goes with a character is designed, cinematically, to recall them - it's a memory-impression, sub-cognitive onboarding. So it's used as a way to sum up a person, a character, in a way that you don't consciously consider."
<banana> "When Darth Vader walks on screen - I don't mean this reference as a computer guy thing. I don't remember a lot of movies."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You're thinking, what if the implicit thesis of the magic is that your song forestalls growth?"
<banana> Melanie: "Yes, am I being unfair? The idea of someone giving you a pithy description and then leaving it there- what I want to say is, the musical stinger is used, textually, as a lossy descriptor. What Rawls would call a piercing combinator, but fuck Rawls."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "To me the question is, does the song change? Can the song change? Can you change the song?"
<banana> Melanie's accelerated to normal driving speeds, unconsciously matching her excited speech.
<banana> "Well, that would have implications. Someone's listening in on your.. character, your narrative role. It's either binding or surveillance."
<banana> "In alia manu, it's just a piece of music. Perhaps the people who first made the contract were just having fun with it."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Someone is. Right? Like... the great powers that might watch or interfere with us exist. We've seen them. We know their ignoring us is off the table."
<banana> Melanie: "Yeah, I guess it is all like that. You can find someone, physically determine their location by paying the appropriate price.. so the world is watching."
<banana> "I wonder is this move even worthwhile!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Is your rent already free?"
<VoxPVoxD> He says this jokingly.
<banana> "Yes. That's the problem."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart doesn't understand. "I don't understand."
<banana> Melanie turns to look at Stewart, really considering him as a guy rather than an.. interaction. Stewart's trustworthy, right? He comes off as someone who has judgement and an instinct to kindness..
<banana> "Do you ever watch WNBA?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "No."
<banana> Melanie: "Okay. There's a player on the Sky, Belanie Lucas.. she's still a rookie. Good enough to be there but not really great."
<banana> "I don't know if she renamed herself or if I, like, forgot my own name. It is possible. But it's so dumb.. Belanie.. I think it has to be intentional. And she does a lot of stuff like that."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "And you've never spoken to her?"
<banana> "I don't know if we've spoken. I get.. messages. She does things only I would understand, like she knows. And I feel things sometimes, like a William James multiverse skip. I think she gets flashes of me. Did you know I found this car where I left it, hundreds of years ago? But it was returned just before I went to pick it up."
<banana> "I should have told you. I'm really sorry. I don't know if it's dangerous."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "In your position, I'd want to move too."
<banana> "Do you think it will help? UMBC is paying for my apartment with her scholarship funds."
<banana> "..but I mean I earned the freaking scholarship. Someone I used to be, not just someone in an alternate moral universe!"
<banana> Oh hey, we're here. That was faster than going the other way.
<VoxPVoxD> "Do you think they know what they are the whole time or just if we come back?"
<banana> Melanie: "I've thought both those things. At length!"
<banana> Before buzzing them into the apartment, Melanie will knock - hopefully her roommate's out. If not.. probably fine, but she still hopes.
<VoxPVoxD> Melanie's always been more blunt about the other side than the others. Nels doesn't want to talk about it at all, and Maggie's got that gentle way about her. But Stewart feels like he has to walk through cobwebs without tearing any down. "Who are we waiting for?"
<banana> "Looks like nobody. I think her name is, um, Cass.. or Katie, something like that, she's just a maths student." Melanie bends (creaks), grabs the beers from the back seat, then unlocks the door . There's not a lot in the duo, and most of the furniture is clearly part of the apartment itself - but there's an ancient CRT television in one corner junk pile, and a much larger plasma TV balanced
<banana> precariously on a dresser.
<banana> There's a DVD player hooked up, a pile of merchandise, and yes, it's paused on a huge zoomed still of Belanie Lucas attempting a tackle. The HD is good enough to make out sweatdrops.
<banana> "Do you want one of these now, or should I put them in the fridge?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's startled out of looking around (carefully not lingering but also not actively avoiding the screen) by the offer of beer. "Uh, not right now, thanks."
<banana> "Here's the thing." Melanie's own room is locked, and it's taking her a while to find the right key. Little nimble physical actions like this.. she doesn't like them. "I think she's trying to help me."
<banana> "However! This might be insanity or simple emotional compromise. So I can't endanger you guys by believing myself."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The Autumn Court has a broadly pro-those guys policy. Like in terms of, uh, rapproachement."
<banana> Melanie: "The Summer Court... doesn't. But I don't think they care about fetches in Chicago. Though she visits. Have you read any fairy tales?"
<banana> "I totally, totally understand if not."
<banana> Melanie means that Belanie visits Baltimore, not Melanie; hopefully that was clear, because she hasn't noticed if it wasn't.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Not recently. I liked them as a kid."
<banana> Melanie: "Ok, I was looking at some and: they should be the ones we call changelings."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...do you think that happens a lot?"
<VoxPVoxD> "In the story way I mean. Snatching babies from cribs."
<banana> In Melanie's room there are, as promised, two empty bookcases; a whole bunch of cardboard boxes full of books; and a large square planter filled with loam. No bed.
<banana> "How, indeed, would we know? There's nothing to come back to, no known home.. you aren't Lost if you adapt. You might be very uncomfortable."
<banana> "Consider this: hobgoblins. I don't know where they come from - probably someone does, but I don't, which allows for imagination."
<VoxPVoxD> That thought's a little bit too much for Stewart right now. "Books are always the worst part of moving. Have you ever looked into an e-reader? I've got a Kindle that I like a lot for reading in bed."
<banana> "I've got a tablet, actually." It was in the first lot somewhere. "It's great for textbooks, but some stuff you can't easily get online. Like I mentioned William James earlier.. everyone praises him, but do they actually read him? Not enough so that he's in print."
<banana> "And yet, Rawls."
<VoxPVoxD> "What makes Rawls so bad?"
<banana> Melanie can't quite fold her arms, but she rubs them against each other glumly before gathering the werewithal to heft a box.
<banana> Melanie disses Rawls. "He's just such a liberal. The faculty love him, because of course they do- he's an american white guy from the first half of last century who wrote about fairness and neutrality. He makes all these convincing arguments that what really matters is equality of opportunity, and it's explicitly political stuff - he pushed ideas through all these students and magazines."
<banana> "You see Rawls everywhere in the Democrats' stuff and anywhere an academic is like, I disagree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Imagine if they knew some of the things real people actually say? Or fake people! Imagine the First Amendment for contracts."
<banana> "I mean, contracts capital-c. Obviously it does apply to actual mundane contracts."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "A First Amendment for Contracts is basically a Second Amendment for Contracts."
<banana> Melanie wonders: would Stewart be interested in the Cypress Society? Probably not; he's more of an interest-taker than interested per se, a sort of renaissance gamer. She thinks. But it's easier to think about people, make assumptions, than to actually get to know them.
<banana> "Haha. I wonder if the Courts ban, like, weird obscure ritual actions on neutral territory. Like maybe there's a law against turning widdershins in the presence of a king."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "'Hit the deck! He's got a metronome!'"
<banana> The planter is going to have to be dismantled and reassembled, which raises a question: what to do with the soil?
<banana> Melanie: "I know what you're thinking. Did she recite six yantras or only five?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Is there anything special about the soil?"
<banana> "No, it's pretty good but I can put together another mix given time. We can dump this stuff, I guess there's a few minerals I'll.. um."
<banana> "Please forget this now."
<VoxPVoxD> Fuck! "Oh, yeah, don't worry about it." Stewart should not have called attention to that.
<banana> Melanie stops scooping dirt into garbage bags for a moment. She's thinking.
<banana> Also, looking at Stewart in a kind of obvious 'I'm thinking about you' way.
<VoxPVoxD> "Is... is something wrong?"
<banana> "I was going to ask that, I think."
<banana> Melanie: "There's something I've been not noticing."
<VoxPVoxD> "What do you mean?"
<banana> "Just now I was embarassed by my, you know, weird bodily functions, tasty soil yum. So I was playing it off with humour, and I know I am bad at that. But I'm not that bad. It seems like you get.. really worried when you think other people are worried."
<banana> Maybe that's what empathy was like. It rings a kind of emotional bell.
<VoxPVoxD> Oh no, now he's weirding people out. "It's just hard to tell what hurts and what doesn't."
<banana> Fervently: "Yes."
<banana> Since that's sorted out, the only real question here is whether to try for one trip or two...
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks relieved. Everyone's experience is so personal and so idiosyncratic it feels-- Oh, we're moving on. "How are you finding the Summer Court so far?"
<banana> Melanie: "To tell you the truth, I haven't had enough experience to really answer that. I want to meet more court.. iers? People from the court. And to see what I can do to help, but I think Langford List is enacting some sort of.. plan."
<banana> "It involves managing who meets who when and what impressions they have of each other, in order to achieve things. I'll be taking notes."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Is that the big guy who was playing pool at the thing? With the... bat vibe?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I helped him with a network latency problem once, but it was all online."
<banana> "Yeah! He's a thinker, although obviously he can also do Summer stuff. The actual monarch of the court is Young Street, who's basically a barely caged flame. Capable, really good looking, wants what he wants on his own terms. My impression.." Melanie doesn't know enough about the politics. But she wants to learn. "I think it works because what he wants is to take any assholes that come
<banana> over the Hedge at us, or out of the mundane night, and rip their heads off. It's practical."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Sounds intense."
<banana> Melanie: "I'm looking forward to it. The world is, ehh."
<banana> "Everything moves fast. I mean, it moves at the normal speed, but that's fast now. It's easy to stand still in the currents, not easy to catch them. So: it helps to be swept along."
<banana> "Heidegger would say blind currents, the blindstromealltags of everydayness. If you can't navigate you can still participate."
<banana> Hopefully Stewart doesn't speak German, because Melanie's pronounciation is not good.
<VoxPVoxD> If he can, he gives no sign. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I've been pitching around for odd jobs for the sake of direction. I've got tech support, stuff with the Hollow, I agreed to populate a wiki..."
<banana> Melanie: "That's the same kind of thing you used to do, right?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What do you mean?"
<banana> Melanie: "Different purpose, same activities. You've maintained or resumed your skillset, right?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart hesitates for what feels like a long time. "Not exactly."
<VoxPVoxD> "Is this everything?"
<banana> "Oh, okay." Apparently there was no deeper meaning to the question.
<banana> Melanie: "It's as much as we'll fit in the car. I might have to move the TV another day..." Actually, she should turn it off. There's the remote.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Are you going to get on the Hollow media server? We'll be able to stream movies we download direct to your TV over the internal network."
<banana> Melanie: "That would be very nice. I've been watching too much Netflix - it's an easy way to not do anything while also learning.. basics. Like you know, what the everyday objects are in the world, how people deal with stereotypical situations, as long as those people are movie stars."
<banana> Turning the key in the yellow Kia's ignition: "I owe relearning to drive to The Fast and the Furious."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They've made so many of those. Last I saw there'd only been two."
<banana> "We could watch the rest some time.. I don't think I saw them when they came out. Actually, I think I thought cinema was a dead thing for weird olds"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You drive very well for someone who learned from an action movie. You're not driving backwards in the wrong lane while weaving through trucks or jumping over a rising drawbridge or anything."
<banana> Melanie: "I'm waiting for my theme music to kick in."
<banana> ... "...okay, what was it?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It was really chill in a lonesome way. Kind of... spare? I think it was called 'Slow Fall'. I'd never heard it before, and I tried Googling the lyrics a minute ago and I can't find them."
<banana> Melanie thinks about this.
<banana> I wish he hadn't t- let's not put it this way. "I wish I hadn't asked that."
<VoxPVoxD> I wish I hadn't told her. "I'm sorry."
<VoxPVoxD> "I'm 2 for 4 on upsetting people with that. I should probably stop using it."
<VoxPVoxD> "Or... telling people? But it can't be right to use it and not tell someone."
<banana> "Oh boy. You're a Kantian, Stewart."
<VoxPVoxD> "Duty! Sublime and mighty name that embraces nothing charming or insinuating but requires submission."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart blinks.
<VoxPVoxD> "I don't know where that came from."
<banana> Melanie: "Kant."
<banana> "It's the Critique of Pure Reason I think.. if that's unconscious knowledge for you, well, sorry."
<VoxPVoxD> "Yeah but how do I know that? I never-- did I?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I can't remember what classes I was taking."
<banana> "I'm with you there. Though honestly I might not have remembered them anyway, I wasn't much of a student."
<banana> "The thing is, if, um." Melanie's voice is diffident. It's much more expressive than her actual movements.
<banana> "I don't know what the motherfuckers did to you but They are, most certainly, deontological ethicists. If I were you I would try to see the merits of white lies."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You think so?"
<banana> "If you find someone's soul-song interesting or a helpful way to understand them, why not?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What if I knew a Contract to listen to someone's thoughts. Is that okay?"
<banana> "And if you don't think they'd like it, or don't want to think about what they'd think, there's no harm being done. Actually, when you invoked the Contract I think it gave me a little boost, like maybe my 'vibration' was being drawn out that way."
<banana> Melanie: "That sounds incredibly useful."
<banana> "But think about it this way."
<banana> "If you tell someone 'I'm reading your thoughts' then sure, they won't trust you."
<banana> "But it isn't actually possible to win in this situation, not while being totally honest."
<banana> "What do I think if you tell me, 'I know how to read your thoughts, but I won't do it?'"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So is it unethical to learn?"
<banana> Firmly: "Absolutely not. Knowledge is a shield and a lifeline, and how you use it is up to you. Owning a weapon doesn't make you a killer, owning an idea doesn't make you an inventor."
<banana> "The idea of duty is wrong not because orders aren't a valid idea but because they need to be checked by your own human understanding - not delegated to society. You don't owe someone information which would upset them to no end, you don't owe them obedience unless you believe in their cause." Now Melanie's driving like Paul Walker.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So you think that whatever I decide to do, I should stop asking people's permission?"
<banana> Melanie: "Why jump straight to an absolutist position?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I mean about this specifically."
<banana> "Oh, sorry."
<banana> "Yeah no, um.."
<banana> "Look, being upset by the idea of having a theme might just be me. But more generally, if you think there's some reason not to tell people it's harmless to keep it from them."
<banana> "Like.. sometimes I learn things about people by looking at them. It's not important that I go and keep them informed of what I've picked up. If you see a guy with his fly down, yes he'd probably want to know about it, but the experience of actually being told, in the situation you're in... it's hard to judge."
<VoxPVoxD> It wasn't just you. "It started out like, a party trick. I thought it was a neat idea. And kind of aesthetically pleasing, you know? That everybody has a song. Then I used it without telling someone, and she got upset. Then I used it on you while telling you, and you got upset. I just don't want to upset people."
<banana> Melanie: "Ehhh. You can't, sorry."
<banana> "I mean, you can't not upset people. It's too hard. Like.. you're good at it!"
<banana> "You're a nice and helpful guy who I bet is way less upsetting than average. But it's not possible or even desirable to get 100%."
<banana> "I'm sitting here, or mostly sitting- bending- with basically zero capability to avoid upset. Maybe I am upsetting you literally right now, I don't know. I used to know exactly when it was appropriate to tell a guy do to his fly up - when it was helpful or funny and when it was going to be an embarassment or a- a comeon. That fluent social instinct wasn't even a learned thing, I just assumed
<banana> it was obvious? That only dumb people and nerds had to, like, try."
<banana> "But now- trust me, it is not obvious, and most of us are very fragile, and you're doing fine."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "'It's not possible to get 100%' is the worst possible thing for a gamer to hear."
<banana> Melanie: "Hahahaha!"
<banana> "Do you want to talk about something else? I need to learn how this media server stuff works."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Sure. It'll be pretty simple, the TV in the common area is already hooked up."
<banana> "I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about the ethics of lies - it comes down to harm avoidance versus benefit to the- cool. Mine's a bit bigger, so we could just swap them out if there isn't room for personal areas.. but. I don't think everyone's going to move in."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, I'm going to keep my own place."
<banana> Melanie: "Okay. I think Tony said something about needing to work, too. I'm lucky there.. sort of. This thesis is starting to feel like it will take up about 24 hours a day."
<VoxPVoxD> "Maybe we can find you a Time-Turner."
<banana> "Is that a kind of hedge-token? Someone brought a clock into the warehouse, and now the big hand counts the hours while the little one points to the minutes."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's from Harry Potter. It lets you live through each day twice, basically. But something that powerful as a real token would probably have a terrible price."
<banana> Melanie: "Oh. I tried living through each day a hundred times and it was actually pretty awful."
<VoxPVoxD> Now that everything's in the Hollow: "Right. Sorry."
<banana> "You have no idea whether I'm upset now, right? Good! Keep it that way!"
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion> Stewart gets back to his apartment whenever he gets back. Parking is fine as it usually is on the lot around the side, and he's probably expecting by now to see someone from the Freehold standing more-or-less conspicuous watch over the front of the building, though the shifts have been winding down a bit since Nels hasn't been bothered at all since in the incident with the homeless guy. And
<Crion> sure enough, there's the quiet Brit with four eyes and a gun obviously in the waistband of his jeans, under his hoodie -- but this time, he's not alone.
<VoxPVoxD> Oh. Hey. Stewart's not sure if he should make... eye... contact but he does anyway by reflex.
<Crion> Canterbury is leaning against a car having an animated chat -- well, animated for him, which means he appears to be saying something once every minute or so -- with two humans. They're together, but they don't give the impression of being a couple. One's a punk-rock hillbilly looking guy with a dockworker's local jacket covered in pins; the other is an attractive, severe blonde woman in
<Crion> slacks, a blouse and vest, and a smart gray jacket.
<Crion> Neither the changeling nor the punk seem to notice Stewart, but she does immediately. Her eyes narrow slightly, and if Stewart meets her gaze she won't look away. She seems to be studying him.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart studies back.
<Crion> Without looking away, she seems to make a noise to herself, then says something to her...partner...? Without looking over, Canterbury says, "It's all good. They're friends."
<Crion> "From your time of year."
<Crion> Punk dockworker looks over and sizes up Stewart casually, then nods amiably. "Hey."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks from her to Canterbury to the dockworker. "Sup."
<Crion> "I'm Union; this is Everafter." He grins. "I take it you're used to the names by now."
<Crion> Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E81owDP4Ro We're the first ones to starve; we're the first ones to die.
<Crion> Everafter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViFRTgC2y4 We all need a deeper purpose; one that's true and bold.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's nice to meet you. I'm Stewart Reader."
<Crion> Canterbury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_BrbhRrP6g ♫♪♫
<Crion> Everafter: "So you're Santander's new prospect. Interesting." To herself, almost: "Yes, I think that'll do." Back to Stewart: "You may consider yourself on the guest list at the Belvedere. Provisionally. Requiring invitation. On business."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The hotel?"
<Crion> She chuckles; it's not immediately obvious what she finds funny. "Yes. The hotel. You will find us at the Owl Bar, when such a thing is necessary. And not before."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I appreciate that. Thank you. It was nice to meet you."
<Crion> "Indeed. Come along, Union."
<Crion> "Yeah, okay," he says, then grins and winks at Stewart. "Don't sweat the formalities, kid. Drop by some time."
<Crion> "Union!!"
<Crion> "Yeah, yeah." He turns and slaps hands with Canterbury, and Stewart can just make out him passing a baggie of something -- weed? -- to the Winter Court changeling.
<Crion> Then they're off down the street. Probably vanish as soon as they turn the corner.
<Crion> When they're gone, Canterbury shakes his head, and in his soft, posh accent: "Wizards, mate."
<VoxPVoxD> "Damn."
<Crion> "Now here's the thing." He takes out a joint and lights it up. "Union, he could have come by any time. He didn't ask when to stop in; I didn't tell."
<Crion> "But he and the lady show up two minutes before you get back."
<Crion> "And if you got stuck on a red, or stopped off at the pub, or so on -- I'd put dollars down they'd still have shown up two minutes before you got back."
<Crion> He puffs and offers Stewart a drag. "Unless you're working tonight."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart'll take the hit. "Should I be worried?"
<Crion> "Not unless 'Stewart Reader' is actually your real name. You seem like a smart lad. And even then, they're good people. Slow to trust; that they showed up here in person and let them see you seeing them is a sign of the shoulders you're standing on already."
<Crion> "All the same. Not all wizards like us. And even the ones who do, well...I saw comic once about wizards and shotguns. Last panel was: WIZARDS: NO SENSE OF RIGHT OR WRONG."
<Crion> He puffs again. "Not actually so. But too close to it."
<Crion> "And it's like that biddy said to Dorothy. There's good witches and there's bad witches, yeah?"
<VoxPVoxD> So those are the guys Santander called 'mages'. Part of Stewart wants to head down to the Belvedere right now and see what's up, but the weight of his bag binds him here. "Yeah. So those are some of the good witches/
<VoxPVoxD> ."
<Crion> "Indeed." Canterbury gestures with his joint. "Union's a very good witch."
<Crion> "Everafter's a bit of a public school princess, but she's not bad people."
<Crion> "You'll meet the others in time, I suspect. The guy who runs their...whatever they call their freehold, guy named Jesuit -- he's a trip."
<VoxPVoxD> Eyebrows up. "Jesuit?"
<VoxPVoxD> "Like the priests?"
<Crion> Canterbury nods. "The same."
<Crion> He finishes the joint. "Enough idle talk out of me, though."
<Crion> "I'll be out here if you need anything. Yell. Or run."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I appreciate that. I know Nels does too, if she hasn't said. Take it easy."
<Crion> "Mmmm."
<VoxPVoxD> When Stewart gets inside, he puts his groceries away, makes two turkey sandwiches, and then opens the bottle of vodka he bought on the way home. He spends a couple of hours poking around the public social media profiles of people who don't know him anymore before he successfully drinks himself unconscious.
<Crion> --Fin.
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion> This place is starting to look a little bit more like home. It's been a week or two at most since the newly-joined motley found the warehouse -- might need a better name for it at some point -- and turned it into somehwere safe to spend time. In fact, it's been about as long as it would take the five of you to turn the hollow into a cozy little fortress protected almost completely from the
<Crion> predations of the outside world.
<Crion> So what have you done with the place?
<banana> Set aside the weirdness of being handed a group and told to form it into a team. Learn the basics of 'hedgespinning', the art of allowing-but-guiding the incessant transformations the landscape wants to make. With fae will and a bit of elbow sap, Melanie's turned a corner of the warehouse into a pair of rooms.
<CBN> Tony is a simple man, of simple tastes. However, it's also a huge pain in the ass to carry a full recliner into the Hedge. So for the moment, he's got his little space, some secondhand carpets draped over clotheslines for walls, a beaded curtain for a door (fuck yeah), a lawn chair (moderately comfortable if you don't mind a numb ass after an hour), and a minifridge. Currently hosting enough beer for a good party for one, or one each at
<CBN> a party.
<banana> They're hers, but only semiprivate - she has no real use for locks in a place like this. The outer and larger space is a library-cum-study area, with shelves all around the sides and a couple of standing desks. One of them is mostly reserved for Melanie's chromebook (not working great in here yet) and current papers; the other has a bunch of knicknacks and personal possessions.
<banana> Beyond and within the library space is a small garden, its walls reaching up to the top of the warehouse where a skylight lets in unpredictable moods of sunlight. Little shrubs and flowers are planted around the edges of the soil-filled space, but the centre is clear dirt; the only furniture in the garden-room is a mirrored dresser. Melanie doesn't own a lot of clothes anymore, but she has
<banana> to keep them somewhere.
<trenchfoot> Nels' space is still a work in progress. There's an old record player she found at a pawn shop and some albums she picked up on the same trip, reissues of albums she knew and some pieces that look familiar if she stares at it for too long. Her furniture is just a simple cushion pressed up against a wall, and she keeps a guitar she wouldn't mind losing nearby, hoping that she's far enough away from the others to avoid bothering them, but
<trenchfoot> she hasn't really made a home here just yet, or even a place she could hide out in for too long. Would hardly do to hide from the world with nothing but a sleeping bag.
<Crion> Over the course of the week, Lauren Ipsum is in and out constantly, helping set up the cantankerous server and its Hedge-side clone, and generally making time with Stewart to the extent either of them are about.
<dammitwho> Maggie has just moved all her furniture directly into a section of the warehouse - but she's not in her room very often (and when she is the door is usually open), preferring to stick to the common areas, especially once she's managed to wangle together a stovetop/oven.
<dammitwho> Making time, eh? *eyebrow waggle*
<Crion> Ugh. Moms.
<VoxPVoxD> Come onnnn
<VoxPVoxD> Despite not moving in, Stewart is around a lot, helping set things up with Lauren, making sure all the electronics work, and of course eating Maggie's cooking.
<dammitwho> Of note is that the battered acoustic guitar Maggie got from her Spring party has been propped up with a bunch of pillows like a cat bed, with the word TOPPER written on it in elaborate black calligraphy.
<banana> The first time Melanie sees that she's going to be interested. "Do you play too, Maggie? We almost have enough people for a band."
<dammitwho> Agreeably: "Oh, sure! Though when I've got other things to hand, why, I just let Topper play himself for a bit. How about it, Topper?"
<banana> What
<dammitwho> A quick strum echoes from the guitar's strings experimentally, and then it begins playing on its own, still sitting in its little cat bed.
<dammitwho> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IkvAb6THQY
<CBN> The first time Tony saw it, he bite back hollering 'free bird' but just barely. He's been spending a fair amount of Hollow-time tidying up the main area, which always seems to go so quickly when no one else is paying attention. He even makes his bags of empties disappear!
<trenchfoot> Nels, moving some more pillows into her room, freezes for a moment before hurrying past.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart also freezes when he hears it, looking around for Nels.
<banana> Melanie: "That's cool, in the classical sense. It's good study music too."
<banana> "I should let you know, I'll be spending a lot of time just cooped up reading and typing, it's, I'm not trying to be antisocial. It's actually really nice to have people around and things going on. But I have a lot of work to do."
<Crion> The internet installation takes a couple days of work; first there's the technical stuff of getting the servers attuned, which is easy enough, especially once Lauren takes the Hedge-side server over to Santander and comes back with it in "working order." The restore goes well enough too, and the sympathy principle is sound: the server on the other side of the Hedge attunes perfectly with its
<Crion> double, and the internet comes through -- immediately firewalled, of course, and then routered -- very well, if somewhat slower than the upspeeds advertised by Verizon.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Oh, no doubt. Are there times when we should try to keep it down out here, so as not to bother you?"
<Crion> Of course, then the real problems begin. The servers begin spamming each other that night, then stop talking entirely the next day, and then begin trying to send each other malware. Lauren and Stewart have to broker something of a peace treaty, conducted entirely in hexadecimal entries into the command line.
<Crion> Eventually, however, both grumpy machines agree to get along.
<Crion> The Autumn Court would be pleased: another changeling has made peace with its fetch. Sort of.
<VoxPVoxD> Friends!
<banana> Melanie: "No, I can focus. Even if there's nothing to focus on, I can keep it up for a few months."
<banana> "Oh! But no incense please."
<trenchfoot> Nels finally pokes her head back out, looking less alarmed. "No incense from me, then." She eyes the space - someday she might want a still in here. Probably safer than her apartment for that much.
<dammitwho> A STILL YOU SAY sorry caps
<banana> Melanie wants to explain: some incense is fine! It's just the kind with pine needles or cedar twigs, any burning wood. She's.. vulnerable. But that's not something to spread around carelessly.
<banana> "If we're talking about roommate stuff, I brought a TV. Do you both want me to set it up in the common area?" She's not clear on who's moving in, only that Maggie is and Stewart isn't.
<Crion> The good news for Melanie of course is that nothing in the Hedge catches fire so easily, and even if it did, none of it is...wood, precisely.
<Crion> So as long as you don't bring it in...
<dammitwho> Mags: "Ooh, that'd be nice. We could connect it to Stewart's media server there. I'm sure there's some computer program that makes files play on the TV."
<CBN> Tony's unerring dirtbag sense picks up enough that he hollers "WE NEED A COUCH BUT PUT THE TV IN THE DEN UPSTAIRS WHERE I MARKED OUT THE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER" And then he goes back to sweeping some more in the first floor common area.
<banana> Melanie: "Yes! I was talking to him about- oh, okay."
<banana> To Tony: "How do you feel though about having the room taken over on gamedays?"
<CBN> "HEY WHATE-" He pauses and just walks over to them so he doesn't have to yell, broom in hand. "Hey whatever sure. Just nice to have a place for things and things in their place though."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Game days?"
<banana> Melanie: "Well, yeah. That's the only thing I really watch, Chicago Sky mostly or NBA in playoff season."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "What are those?"
<banana> Sadly some months over.
<CBN> "NBA's basketball and...Chicago what now?"
<banana> Melanie: "Basketball games.. um, did you have basketball?"
<banana> How old is Nels, anyway.
<banana> To Tony: "WNBA. My team. Used to be."
<banana> Technically this is a lie; it's should-have-been rather than used-to-be.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I - maybe?" It's vaguely familiar, but she never saw a game.
<CBN> "Cool beans, cool beans. And the W is...Women's...NBA?" It is very clear that this is a good-natured but entirely shooting-in-the-dark guess on the nature of sport.
<VoxPVoxD> Tony's putting out a really chill vibe, and Stewart respects that.
<banana> "Oh wow, you have to be here on Tuesday. There's a great fixture. I- I wish I could show you what it's like in a pickup game. Haha."
<trenchfoot> Nels smiles. "I'll make sure to be here."
<Crion> You don't have a cable connection...but luckily, Youtube TV exists, and you can just buy what's essentially a live sports cable package from them for $60 a month. Santander has already greenlit doing subscription costs through the law firm, because they're basically nothing and he is incredibly entertained by the servers.
<trenchfoot> Does that just get regular TV channels, or do we need to be careful what we watch in here?
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Melanie, are you gonna be using all these planters here or is it alright if I plant some valerian root and such?"
<Crion> Where the great rolling steel loading-dock door would have been in a normal warehouse, there's instead, a pair of large panel wood doors. Stepping through those takes you into a well-appointed but nondescript hallway, with a great elevator door in it. Pressing the call button on that opens the rear doors of an elevator somewhere in Baltimore -- in the real world. This door is a portal, and
<Crion> can only be opened by the application of glamour. Should there be people in the elevator when you step through -- mere mortals, of course -- all they will see is a normal-looking hallway behind you, so long as you remembered to close the wooden doors.
<Crion> The big question, then, is: which building is this elevator in?
<banana> Melanie: "Ah. Well," But: this was going to come up the first time Maggie decided to get a midnight snack or something. "May I show you something for a moment?" If Maggie's amenable, Melanie will lead her into the garden room and close the door behind them.
<dammitwho> She'll shrug and follow Melanie for whatever this is.
<banana> It's: Melanie taking off her shoes, then stepping into the middle of the garden room. She raises her arms toward the skylight and seems to sink into the earth a little, becoming thinner, feet shifting apart - the soil writhes, a little.
<dammitwho> "Oh my. Well, isn't that something." At a loss for further statements, she strokes her chin. "I suppose I'll get some separate planters then."
<Crion> It turns out it's in Lexington Market, a legitimate but disused and cranky elevator in the rear with quick access to the back of the lot, and unless some cleaning people get really suspicious and snitty -- which you should be able to defuse by just, changing your schedule for a couple days -- you should be fine. It's not like them locking up for the night is going to stop you.
<banana> "I need about this much space at night." Melanie doesn't exactly gesture, as her arms are sort of fused in place right now, but she's nods at the fairly fixed amount of room she's taking up. "Anything in the corners is fine.. herbs add interesting tones to the space."
<banana> Wow, it feels weird to be doing this with clothes on.
<Crion> Uh huh.
<dammitwho> "Alright then. I'd hate to be crowding you, is all."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart catches up with Nels. "Hey, how's studying going?"
<banana> Melanie's unstiffening, reshaping into something more human in form (if not in material). "I mean, I could totally beat any little plants that try and get in my space, but then your seeds would have gone to waste."
<Crion> Here's a curious question. How much time have you all spent out in the surrounding Hedge since settling in? Have you been scouting it? You can't learn its layout, really, but you can learn its temperament.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Huh? Oh, it's - still exhausting. I've been switching between history and trying to wrap my head around science when that gets too frustrating."
<CBN> Tony's definitely spent some time outside, staying within sight of the building the whole time though. He hates to be idle, and you can only make a mostly-empty-and-being-moved-in building so tidy at the moment.
<trenchfoot> Nels has probably done a bit of scouting, in between studying, getting everything settled, and trying to spend some time relaxing. "They figured out a lot of stuff, I guess."
<banana> The Hedge still worries Melanie conceptually; she associates it with memories of failure, and outside this safehouse it's a step closer to Arcadia. She hasn't gone out at all.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's spent as little time in the Hedge as possible. He didn't make Lauren do the server setup herself or anything, but he hasn't gone walkabout.
<VoxPVoxD> To Nels: "It was a weird century."
<trenchfoot> She sighs. "You're telling me."
<banana> At some point after that first conversation, Melanie's going to go and find Tony. She has a feeling he's actually around a lot, just.. overlooked.
<trenchfoot> Second World War. Unbelievable.
<GreatClownVoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Anything in particular giving you trouble?"
<CBN> Tony has also spent some time leaving out half-open beers, stale perfume ads, all that sort of thing, in the service of luring some of the more easily-swayed-but-also-attentive-enough-to-catch-it hobs nearby. People: Hard to make friends with. Weird demi-people that operate under inscrutable rules and arbitrary laws? Well, that's still people, but at least hobs know stuff. Sometimes.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Still in the 40s for history, but - chemistry. All of it."
<banana> What the heck is he doing? Tidying up parts of the warehouse and then setting out mess in others.. it's probably a magic thing. Saucers of milk for.. cobblers. Melanie can't remember the details. "Hello Tony. It's Melanie."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Chemistry's just a lot of memorization. Have you ever heard of Khan Academy?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "No, what is that?"
<CBN> When Melanie finds Tony, he's wandered out back of the warehouse and is currently performing something between an elaborate handshake and a basic dance with a knee-height, bipedal avian wearing a floppy hat that covers its face and rests on its beak."Oh hey Melanie!" He concludes the greeting and addresses the birdthing, thumbing towards Melanie. "No bogue, she's ace." And facing Melanie, nodding to the hob "Yeah I can't
<CBN> pronounce this lil fella's name so it's Steve now. Say hi Steve."
<banana> "Umm." Well, Melanie wouldn't want to be bogue. "Honk to you too, Steve. Tony, I'm taking some notes."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart will sit Nels down and put his laptop between them, navigating to Khan Academy. "It's on the internet, it's got free study resources and lectures for basically anything. There's a whole chemistry section here with videos."
<VoxPVoxD> "If hearing someone talking helps you learn. It does for me."
<banana> Melanie: "I mean.. I'm making a chart. It's kind of, in my thesis I'm trying to integrate some ideas from our, you know, view of the world.. I'd like to get some numbers straight. But is it okay if I ask you something."
<trenchfoot> Nels nods gratefully. "It's got to be better than just staying in my own head about all of this. I can't - keep it all straight."
<CBN> "Yeah go nuts. Steve was just about to tell me...what's up lil guy?"
<banana> Looks like he's come over all shy.
<banana> Melanie hopes the thing isn't thinking of nesting in her.
<banana> "So.. you know about NBA, but not WNBA.. that's a range, and I think you fit into a point on our, um, scale, I have a theory about it. So! You don't have to answer this, but when are you from?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, it's hard. Most people forget this stuff six months after they learned it, and they got to learn it over four years."
<CBN> "Would've been...October of '75?" And half-under-his-breath, at Steve. "Yeah man I know I know, new hat later-not-now, you know the deal."
<banana> Melanie: "Okay. I'm 2016, Stewart was around 2010, and Nels.. it's a geometric progression as long as Maggie fits. Hmm!"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Then... why learn it?"
<CBN> Tony: "Yeah that's...cool? You want that to be cool? Cool? What'll that prove if it fits, or disprove?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "There's... a lot of answers to that question. The main one is, because they say so. There's all these standards and tests you have to pass. Having a high school diploma is almost like a permission slip to be part of society."
<VoxPVoxD> "A lot of people get forced out of the system before they can get that, and then they spend the rest of their lives fucked."
<banana> Melanie: "Well... I think maybe we've been put together according to a bunch of mystical rules about complementary syncreticism? It's basically Eclectic, like more Cicero than Socrates."
<banana> "Um, the kings admitted to synergy, 'party roles'. Kind of giving the game away! So we should expect to see more stuff like this, more five-equidistant-points."
<trenchfoot> Nels thinks this over. There have been a lot fewer family stores around, but surely apprenticeships... "I guess I don't understand why this specific stuff to learn. I - wanted to catch up, but it's sort of overwhelming all at once."
<CBN> Tony: "That's...good? I'm gonna level with you, I haven't been in school in 40 years and I mostly got through that on the strength of my coach's say-so. But if you need me to do something with that information just point me at the problem?" Not dismissively, he's trying to relate to Melanie through acts of service, his sole way of engaging with people meaningfully most of the time.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The idea is to get people to learn a little bit of everything. Or try to, anyway."
<banana> Melanie grins; it's slightly manic, but the effect is tempered by how slow she's moving. "Yes, I'm thinking out loud! Sorry about that. And actually, I- know exactly what you mean."
<banana> "Like." A pause.
<CBN> Tony's listening but he's also shooing Steve away, trying not to offend the hob while also keeping the damn thing from stealing his shoe laces. Which Steve is trying to do, also.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "The English is fine, at least. And history - well, there's too much of it now, but I can handle that, too. I haven't opened the math at all, I wasn't even good at that as a kid."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The math's gotten more complicated, but they've gotten better at teaching it. And we have machines to do all our arithmetic."
<banana> "I did the same thing. I went to college on a basketball scholarship and got through about a year of it without really taking a class where you have to think. And I was totally fine with that, it's... freeing. The world needs people who do stuff."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Could you show me?"
<CBN> Tony, between quiet hisses and waves at the not-goose. "Yeah doing stuff is the best not in front of my friends Steve c'mon man I thought we were cool. Anyway how're you liking the space yet? He sighs and just un-laces his boots and hands them to Steve. "Getting your space all set up nice?"
<Crion> honk
<banana> Melanie: "I like it a lot. We have to go out into the world, but there's somewhere to retreat. When we're, you know, defeated."
<banana> "Who came up with this though."
<CBN> "Uhhh hopefully somebody who doesn't want it back, because it was a pain in the ass buffing out the dents in some of the...I know it's not actually aluminum siding, but it doesn't have to look like shit, you know?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart takes out his phone. "There's a program on every phone, for starters." He opens the Calculator app. "Do you recognize the symbols?"
<banana> Melanie: "It's probably made out of like mythic metal. Quicksilver or something."
<CBN> Tony: "At least it didn't scream when I started in on it, floors either. Which was nice."
<Crion> Steve sort of wanders around for a bit. Is Tony going to let him?
<banana> Melanie: "I mean.. who decided it was a good idea to burrow into the hedge? That you could be *safer* in a twisted realm of narrative and abandon than hanging out in the boring actual world, which has no natural defenses."
<CBN> Tony looks down at Steve. "Hey you know the rule, wipe your feet, don't steal anything. Melanie can you get the door for us? Love this lil guy but he's got sticky feathers you know what I mean, so I'm keeping my eyes on him."
<Crion> Steve tilts his head and honks twice. He promises...not to remove anything from the hollow...?
<CBN> Tony: "Don't touch anything except to walk on it, AND not remove anything from the hollow." He nods.
<banana> Melanie: "Oh, yes." She'll hold open the flyscreen door, which didn't exist yesterday, to let a goose-shaped demon into her home, where she lives in in a planter box.
<trenchfoot> She takes a look at the phone. "Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. This little thing can just do all those? And it's a phone?"
<banana> Occasionally philosophy seems inadequate. But that just means you haven't done enough thinking.
<Crion> honk honk
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's a computer. Math is the most basic thing a computer does. Every other thing you see a computer do is math." He remembers his conversation with Maggie.
<Crion> When Steve returns a few minutes later, he is rolling/walking on a beer from Tony's fridge.
<Crion> He looks at Tony with flat, questioning black eyes and a slightly tilted head.
<CBN> Tony: "Swear to---fine, great. Fine. You can have it IF you tell me something that you think I would think is interesting or new that you saw in the Hedge today, and do not say the hollow or anything in it."
<Crion> honk
<Crion> The hobgoose lifts the beer up -- ah! And here are the shoelaces. He has fashioned a sling to hold the beer in.
<banana> Melanie: "How does it even know what beer is."
<CBN> Tony gestures with a wave. "Melanie, you're smarter than I am, so I don't need to tell you this was a mistake that I'm leaning into, do I."
<CBN> Tony: "It's cheaper than a firstborn child or whatever some of the others ask for so I'm not asking questions I don't want answers to."
<banana> Melanie: "No, I get it. You've got to live your truth."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Will I have to learn how to do that computer math? Because it still looks more like magic than anything else."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Not if you don't want to."
<CBN> Tony: "Steve pace yourself you weigh less than my left leg. So what's up lil buddy?"
<banana> Melanie: "Anyway, I told you I'm not smart. I was a jock who never had even one thought apart from boys, parties and ballgames."
<CBN> Tony: "That is three entire thoughts, don't sell yourself short."
<trenchfoot> She lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Thank goodness."
<banana> Melanie: "You're right. Someone has to do it!"
<CBN> Tony: "And, I was reading that I guess football kills your brain? So if you didn't play that, you're probably smarter than me because of science now, too."
<Crion> Between leveraged sips of beer, Steve honks conversationally.
<CBN> The color goes out of Tony's face, which given that it's...dirt, and nails. Not a great look. "Uh okay, that is...that's a big 10-4 there Steve."
<banana> Melanie: "Just basketball and lacrosse. But I'm thinky because like.. a faerie turned me into a tree and I couldn't do anything else for multiple lifetimes, and I got addicted to it."
<banana> "What's he saying? Is he actually saying something?"
<Crion> Steve just merrily sips away.
<CBN> Tony: "Thinking's good, I'm glad someone is. Yeah he's saying he saw a pair of changelings running from a group of...he says 'as many as more than one hand of a person has their fingers but less than two hands of a person has their fingers' so let's say a half dozen, whatever? Other changelings."
<CBN> Tony: "But, and he insists this is good news, they'll probably die soon without help so there probably won't be anyone higher up the totem pole than folks like us, except, you know. Asshole ones."
<banana> ... "Where are they?"
<CBN> He looks around the room then back at Melanie. "Can you get everyone together while I get that part? I don't want to holler and spook the lil guy."
<Crion> honk
<CBN> To Steve: "That's great and all Steve, any idea where, anything else you want me to know? So that if I go looking for them I won't get murdered by them or the other ones, so that I can keep you in hats and beer and shoelaces, of course."
<banana> Melanie: "Yes." She can't hurry inside, so she'll call out. "Stewart! Nels! Maggie! There's an emergency."
<trenchfoot> Nels quickly hands Stewart his phone back and moves towards the common area. "What kind of emergency?" she says, as she pats herself down for her revolver. Ah, there it is.
<Crion> Steve waves a wing and honks -- and is interrupted by, in the distance, the sound of an echoing gunshot.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart follows Nels out.
<Crion> It's weird: it comes in even through the walls. It's like because you're aware of it, you can hear it now.
<banana> "Changelings under attack, maybe by other changelings. Out in the Hedge."
<CBN> Tony stands up right quick and looks around as the others assemble. "This is going to sound stupid and I'm sorry, but we should follow the gunshots, Steve says. This is Steve by the way everyone."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "....hey, Steve."
<Crion> This is what you know about geography around here: there's a trod to the east, not major, not minor, kind of odd how it moves about, but it's really you moving about -- it's in the same place. The gunshot came between you and the trod.
<Crion> To Stewart: honk
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Um. Hello, Steve. Tony, you've been exploring a bit, right? You and I take the lead?"
<Crion> To Nels: honk
<CBN> Tony: "Thanks Steve. Next time you are entitled to a beer again when you visit. But if we're heading out, I need to lock up behind us, okay?"
<Crion> honk honk
<CBN> To Nels: "Sounds like a plan."
<Crion> Steve trundles out into the Hedge, beer in sling, sipping and honking softly.
<dammitwhoa> Maggie peers around a corner, holding one of Tony's brooms. "I hear a dang goose inside?"
<CBN> To Maggie "Sort of long story, I can catch you up after we go save some lives. Grab something kill-y if you've got it though."
<VoxPVoxD> "His name is Steve."
<dammitwhoa> Maggie: "Oh no! I'm not really one for fighting, but I'll toddle along anyhow..."
<trenchfoot> Nels apologetically gestures to her revolver. "Something we might need for the future."
<banana> Melanie lags a little behind; she can trudge along at a reasonable speed, but it took a few moments to get going. Her face is set (grained?); who will these people be? Are they in time to help, if help is merited?
<CBN> Tony heads out with everyone presumably following, listening to the gunshots as he goes.
<CBN> They sort of echo off the sort-of buildings, but gunshots are, at least for the next minute or two, rare enough in the Hedge that it's not too hard to follow along. Could be easier, but what couldn't be?
<banana> Alleyways filled with organic shadow, streets empty of cars and overgrown.. the city-hedge is the worst of both worlds it lies between.
<trenchfoot> Nels is a little too focused on keeping the group together and close to Tony, and not quite focused enough on sneaking. Quick and quiet gets her halfway there.
<CBN> Tony leads the group along the trail, such as it is, with urgency but not haste, and despite the urban environments begins to blend into the background in that particularly Tony way.
<Crion> They eventually arrive at the scene: a great, burned out section of midtown real estate, almost correct but not quite, all the signs in foreign languages that don't exist, all of the doors looking painted on, and all the mailboxes -- there are too many of them -- looking like they're itching to get up and run. In this environment two changelings in their early twenty-somethings -- a fairest
<Crion> boy and a beast girl, hard to tell too much else from a distance -- are fleeing a posse of changelings who are frankly just sauntering down the street, laughing and firing rounds occasionally from their guns.
<dammitwhoa> Are any of the changelings recognizable from the local Courts?
<banana> Why are they fighting.. are there loyalists involved in this? Can there really be people like that?
<Crion> The boy keeps running to doors and banging on them, and the girl pulls him away. Of the pursuers there is an old white-bearded wizened man with a long-slide M1911 pistol he occasionally shoots off while sneer-grinning; a buff ogrish lady with a pink buzzcut, a similarly bad news grin, and a chainsaw; a tittering little reddit fuckboy with a laptop stapped to his back and a Glock in his hand;
<Crion> and this weird inbred Tory looking motherfucker -- darkling? -- with an honest to god dueling sabre. Following behind them is a cowed, shivering elemental, and she's the only one who's watching.
<Crion> They certainly look like how you'd imagine loyalists.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart is quiet as a mouse.
<Crion> "Ohhhhhhh, lad and lass. You're in trouble now," says the white-bearded man.
<trenchfoot> Are they.
<Crion> "You can't...just...go walking around some places. But keep knocking, young man, keep knocking. Shit in one hand, knock with the other."
<Crion> The woman with the pink hair revs the chainsaw.
<Crion> The kids keep scrambling down the street, but they've obviously had problems with the thorns, and are exhausted. This is the end of the chase.
<Crion> So, what's the play?
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart creeps toward a nearby alley, trying to catch the kids' eye in a way that says, This way is safe!
<CBN> Tony, quickly and quietly, swallows a penny. If any of his friends see it happen, they also see the nails jutting out from his soil-flesh grow longer, barbed, and coiling more-a-skeleton-than-exoskeleton around his frame. The most jarring part is that now he's got a face: It looks pretty close to his Mask, just cast in copper mottled with patina.
<Crion> The kids see you and after a moment's hesitation, immediately run for you. The woman with the loyalist sees you, too...and does...nothing? She even makes eye contact.
<Crion> The old man, however, rolls his eyes. "One last hunt, then. After them!"
<CBN> He circles around the side of the group, catching sight of the laptop and lining up a good line of attack on its bearer. Stewart's their wizard and he likes computers. Obviously, this is their wizard. And you always kill the wizard.
<Crion> The five of them -- the four who seem to care, and the fifth bringing up the rear -- storm forward towards the alley...
<banana> Melanie made a promise to the dying season, to protect and be protected. She made a promise to herself, to get involved. She steps totally unarmed from the other side of the street - wasn't really hidden anyway - and says, "You'd better piss off."
<trenchfoot> Nels looms from her position in the shadows. It's - not quite as hidden as she'd like, but her revolver's drawn and she's aiming...
<Crion> The weaselly hacker: "What the fuck is this?"
<Crion> The big woman with the chainsaw: "Meat." She revs.
<Crion> The old man looks a bit concerned, however...
<Crion> Not the aristocrat, though. "On your guard. Be pleased to know you die by the hand of the Cambridge Son."
<Crion> "Yeah yeah yeah," says the hacker, choosing one of the ladies at random and opening fire...on Nels.
<Crion> The bullet hits her in the chest.
<trenchfoot> Fucking rude, and this is why she wore armor-- "God - shit!"
<CBN> Tony emerges from the shadows, coming at a distracted passer already looking downfield. The refs are nowhere to be found, and Tony launches himself, all metal and dirt and fury, at the little asshole who just shot his friend. He bellows his ancestral warcry. "FUCK YOU NERD" The nerd eats turf.
<VoxPVoxD> Wow.
<Crion> The nerd's gun and laptop both go flying, and he groans and curls up into a ball.
<CBN> Tony, breathing heavily out of anger and not exertion, not yet."And STAY down. And the rest of you!"
<CBN> "Stop being assholes!"
<Crion> The old man: "Kid Kid Kid. The fuck do I take you places for, lad?"
<Crion> To the lady with the chainsaw. "K.I.L.L." -- he pronounces each letter -- "please rid us of these--"
<trenchfoot> Well, that takes care of him. So, next up we have the lady with the chainsaw, so-- Nels quickly pulls her revolver back up and shoots her through her shoulder before ducking back behind some form of cover. "That is not your name."
<Crion> "Ugh!" the woman with pink hair grunts. "Fuck!"
<Crion> "Ugh," says the old man. "Fuck."
<banana> Melanie steps... back, not forward. But roots burst from the ground, wrapping the poorly named chainsaw artist and then constricting with crushing force, the force that tears down civilisations left untended. "And I'm not meat."
<Crion> "AAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!" The woman screams and swings her chainsaw around, but it's not fast or anywhere near enough. She might get out of this with only two broken limbs, if she's lucky, but 'K.I.L.L.' is fully out of the fight.
<Crion> "That's fucking enough of this," says the old man. "Cambridge Son, get the bird. Come here, you fuck," and he grabs Kid Kid Kid by the hair and starts dragging. "Consider this a truce," he says to the lot of you, "in that you can have the kids, and maybe we won't come looking for you. You come looking for us, and maybe you don't like what you find."
<VoxPVoxD> While the battle's being won, Stewart is dumpster diving, pulling garbage bags tied with mistletoe away from the alley wall to reveal... an uncovered sewer grate and a ladder down.
<banana> Melanie: "You bastards. You get away with this once." She's stumbling over to Nels, looking for injuries.
<CBN> Tony's standing in the middle of them glaring and huffing. "And barely that."
<trenchfoot> She's bleeding a bit, and bruised badly, but it could have been much worse. "I'll be fine. Check the kids," she says.
<Crion> Cambridge Son, as he lifts K.I.L.L. and takes her off the field. "Be seeing you. Chaps."
<Crion> "Shut the fuck up," says the old man.
<dammitwhoa> It all happened so fast. Maggie couldn't even process what was going on before it was all over!
<Crion> The cowed woman rushes to help the Tory, and he looks almost disgusted at the proximity.
<Crion> Where did Stewart's ladder lead?
<VoxPVoxD> The idea is that it leads to a tunnel that will give them a straight, safe shot to the Hollow.
<banana> Melanie watches the - other - elemental. She doesn't know enough about these people, what their dynamic is, why they're hunting down other changelings for sport. But it's worth noting.
<Crion> Sounds good. If he remembers how they found the entrance to the Hollow the first time -- a sewer tunnel with five locked grates, a bank vault door, and a ladder up -- he'll find the two young changelings waiting for him at the first of those locked grates. They'll open on his -- or any of the motley's -- touch.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'm Stewart. We're taking you somewhere safe."
<Crion> The boy is incredibly beautiful, male model handsome, tall and completely fucking terrified out of his mind. He's Fairest and wearing torn, expensive clothes. The girl is also pretty in her own way but more subdued, with hints of fox ears and lupine eyes in her mien, and while the boy hyperventilates and asks Stewart, "Oh god, is it okay? Who are you?", she clams up.
<CBN> Tony lets his rage chill and ice over as his copper features chip away and flake off on the breeze, leaving the soil beneath. He lets the others do most of the talking from here, as he's watching their backs and keeping an eye on the loyalists until they're out of sight but good.
<banana> Melanie watches them leave, too. She wants to kill them. She could have kept them there, there's a contract Summer taught her... it would have been a needless risk. It might not have been the right thing to do.
<trenchfoot> Nels watches them go, hand still on her gun. That last one - the one who wasn't fighting. Something to ask about later.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "We're like you. Where did you come from?"
<banana> To Tony: "That was a nice tackle."
<Crion> The boy: "I walked out on my girlfriend. Well, not really my girlfriend. I. I don't know. I don't even know where I am--"
<Crion> The girl: "The Bleakest House."
<Crion> "I'm Gemma," she says. "I think he's Peter."
<CBN> He nods at Melanie, thinking to himself, still got it.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Knocked the hell out of him," she nods.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, that sounds right. Come on, we'll get you somewhere safe. Are you hungry?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart passes a hand over them in a vaguely healing gesture, and their spirits swell with fresh glamour. Meanwhile, as the vault unravels itself behind him, he listens...
<dammitwhoa> Maggie: "Heavens, yes. You two must be exhausted, let's get you something to eat, at least."
<banana> Melanie shakes herself - a few nuts scatter - and walks to the alley. "Maggie's a great cook, and we've got a pretty comfortable space on the edge of the city."
<Crion> Gemma: "Yeah. And tired."
<Crion> Peter: "I'm Peter."
<Crion> Gemma: "Can we trust you?"
<Crion> She doesn't sound like she's expecting an honest answer.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I hope so. We don't mean you any harm. We heard you were being chased and came to help."
<Crion> Gemma Franklin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZwypOmPKoE I wanted you to know that I put up a fight; but everything goes missing when they dim the lights.
<Crion> Peter Montgomery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pxfx1kFXIo Saw Cinderella in a party dress; but she was looking for a nightgown.
<dammitwhoa> Maggie: "If you're confused about what's going on, we can get you into the more-normal world to some people who can help explain..."
<CBN> Tony: "And you can crash with us if you need to, if you don't mind floors. And geese."
<trenchfoot> Nels takes a few more deep breaths - that's going to bruise - and she makes her way over to Stewart and the kids. "I think we're probably about done for the day here, anyway. Did anyone else get hit?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You got hit?!"
<Crion> Kid Kid Kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvJjmWTg7Qo If I could burn this town, I wouldn't hesitate to smile while you suffocate and die.
<dammitwhoa> "Goodness, Nels, it's a good thing you wore your vest."
<trenchfoot> She grimaces. "Yeah."
<banana> Melanie: "I guess we're making four different calls.. or one to Autumn."
<Crion> Gemma grimaces, Peter sort of sputters. "Fine," she says.
<Crion> "But no one touches me."
<Crion> She doesn't seem to give a shit about him.
<Crion> Which is odd, considering she saved his life twice while she didn't know you were watching.
<Crion> He, on the other hand, doesn't seem quite to know where he is, and is amenable to just being led by the hand.
<banana> You don't need to care about people to do that!
<VoxPVoxD> Once they're inside, Stewart says: "I'm going to go get help. You guys - there's a shower that way, we'll get you some food." To Maggie: "I'm gonna pick up blankets. We gonna need anything else?"
<Crion> Peter will go wherever he's led. Gemma's going to find a room with good sightlines, and sit in the corner.
<Crion> Oh hey. While Tony's walking into the Hollow, Steve will try to walk in with him. From out of nowhere. Will Tony allow this?
<CBN> Tony will. "Hey there sport! He's pretty satisfied with how this all went because of Steve. "I'll grab you a sixer. Can someone watch Steve so he doesn't steal my chair?" It's unclear whether he means 'sit in it' or 'take it away.'
<Crion> honk
<banana> Melanie's not sure what to do here. She'll write another email to Langford, quickly - not that he's answered her last one, but this is important. Then.. "Do you guys want something to read? I've got..." Biology textbooks, fairy tales and continental philosophy.
<dammitwhoa> If Steve's the one that led us to rescue these two poor babies, Steve's alright with Maggie. She'll happily feed him lil niblets while she's baking.
<VoxPVoxD> After he gets his answer, he'll pop out cityside and text Lauren while driving to the store. <the others saved a couple of kids from loyalists. they're fresh out. who can we get to pick them up>
<Crion> Steve is uninterested in stealing...a chair. Instead he nods at the sixer comment, then waddles over to the mini-fridge, opens it up, pulls out another beer, and drags it over to Gemma. She looks confused.
<Crion> He pops it open and leaves it sitting next to her.
<Crion> honk
<Crion> Then he waddles off.
<Crion> Didn't close the fridge, though.
<Crion> Hobs.
<CBN> He hollers from the other room at Melanie. "We've got old Newsweeks piled up by the stairs if they want that! Ask them if they want that!" He returns with a sixer of MGD for the hob of the hour.
<CBN> Closes the dang fridge. Gonna be reflex soon.
<Crion> Lauren: <gerald is coming by. lexington market?>
<trenchfoot> Nels retreats into her room for a moment, carefully placing her revolver down and removing the vest. Then she's back out like nothing happened.
<VoxPVoxD> <yeah. eta?>
<trenchfoot> Her shirt's rumbled, but otherwise doesn't look like she's been in combat, so there's that.
<banana> "Yes, and magazines. Um.. people who can help you will be here soon, and we could answer questions you've got. To be honest only Stewart is good at that. Answering questions."
<Crion> <5m, he's at the office and already headed for his car>
<Crion> <maybe 10 if traffic sux>
<Crion> <also: fuck>
<trenchfoot> Rumpled. Not rumbled. That's the word that refers to shirts.
<VoxPVoxD> Not gonna need blankets then. <theyre in rough shape. gemma and peter>
<CBN> Tony awkwardly mills around in the main area while the kids do whatever it is they're doing. Attempting to be helpful, he offers, "It's 2019 now I think. I hope that isn't fucked up for you."
<Crion> <kk. have someone out front to let gerald in>
<banana> "It's fucked up for everyone else... um, Donald Trump is the President."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, who wasn't even a block away yet, just turns around.
<VoxPVoxD> He'll meet Gerald outside.
<CBN> "I still don't know who that is and I'm not going to learn."
<Crion> Peter is calming down, getting less shellshocked; Gemma is sipping her beer. Both will want to hang around for the food, and when Stewart lets Gerald in, he'll graciously sit through the meal.
<banana> Melanie: "Have you seen reality TV yet? Like Survivor?"
<dammitwhoa> Maggie: "Hey now, I can answer questions! Unless it's about modern history!"
<trenchfoot> Nels just keeps quiet. If they want to know, they'll ask.
<dammitwhoa> Maggie's making burgers. Kids love burgers.
<VoxPVoxD> Once Stewart's back, he'll make conversation over dinner. "Maggie, you haven't given me your reviews yet."
<CBN> Tony's wallflowering it up with the best of them, making...whatever the hob-equivalent of small talk with Steve is.
<Crion> Gerald's very polite; he'll eat as well, while making conversation with the kids. Generally doing the same thing he did with Stewart with them, except without having to explain guns.
<Crion> Steve is indulging in his beers, and is very festive. He's not even destroying things!
<banana> Is that.. the Autumn king?? No, he's not even Lost- ahh. Melanie gets it. That's......... interesting.
<banana> She's going to retreat to her library and think about that.
<dammitwhoa> Maggie's fussing with the condiments, cheese and sliced tomatoes and such. "Hmm. Well now. I expect you already know that I liked that Myst game quite a bit. Sort of like wandering through a fantasy story, which of course they made obvious with the traveling books and whatnot." She chuckles. "Very soothing, you know? To just sit in the Channelwood Age or what have you and muse on what
<dammitwhoa> you have to solve next."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Myst is really pretty that way. Did you try Portal yet?"
<dammitwhoa> "Portal I had a bit harder time with, but I suppose that's what practice is all about, and once I got it figured out it was delightful to get a room all set up and just run through it like a machine, flying zip! zip! zip! all over the place and landing at the door."
<dammitwhoa> "That robot-" She pronounces it 'robit'. "lady was a hoot! It was almost a shame you had to beat 'er at the end."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Did you listen to the song that plays after you win?"
<dammitwhoa> "Witness... Now I'm sorry, but Witness I could take or leave. I didn't mind the puzzles, you understand, they got the noggin' a-joggin' like you'd want, but the way they were placed in the world... I dunno. It didn't seem 'real' the way Myst did. Could be I missed something there."
<dammitwhoa> Maggie: "I did! It was cute."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It sets up Portal 2, which is a longer game that's also very good."
<Crion> Eventually, dinner's done and Gerald leads the kids out. Before he goes, he tells Stewart, in private: "You did well today. Doing well's not without its own problems. These loyalists, they weren't known to us. King wants to make sure they are, now." He grins. "That's what you get for giving a fuck when it wasn't your turn to give a fuck."
<Crion> --Fin.
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion> It has been a few days since the fight. Melanie's second fight and first real one on this side of the durance, unless she's left one carefully a scuffle out of the logs. The two kids her motley rescued have been bundled off to the Freehold, which is determining how to handle them; there hasn't been much foot traffic through the Hollow or the surrounding Hedge since then. Neither hide nor hair
<Crion> nor thorn nor thread of the loyalists.
<Crion> So it is that the e-mail arrives, then, in mid-afternoon from Langford's address at The Last of Summer Foundation:
<Crion> M.--
<Crion> Sending a car. Need a briefing. Time you saw the foundation. Etc.
<Crion> Be ready in one hour, tolerance of 10min either way. Reply if delay needed. Vehicle and driver same as last time.
<Crion> --L.
<Crion> How convenient or inconvenient is this?
<banana> It's a lot more convenient than it used to be. Lexington Market is closer to the freehold institutions - this would have been a problem when Melanie was actively attending classes, but her work's mostly research for now. If she can keep her adviser satisfied.
<banana> She spends most of her day standing still, thinking or typing or - this one is new - talking. Leaving at short notice is fine, and she replies as such.
<Crion> Sounds good. The Escalade from before will be waiting outside the market 45 minutes, driven by the same performatively disinterested Beast Summer courtier who looks like a goat.
<banana> Melanie takes the back seat again. "Thank you" will be her first and last words if the goatman remains uninterested.
<Crion> "Baaah." It sounds like it's supposed to be a noise of disdain instead of. Well.
<Crion> He takes her a couple blocks downtown, into what pass for skyscrapers in Baltimore, and stops outside...the World Trade Center.
<Crion> Yes, Baltimore has one too.
<Crion> Much less famous.
<banana> That's actually kind of cute. What is Langford offering? The Summer Court is still a little.. mysterious to Melanie. She likes what she've seen but she hasn't seen much, and the way others talk about it is not.. positive. Still, it wouldn't be a surprise if almost everyone is wrong. That's one of the themes she's been reading about recently - not going to make it into her synthesis, but
<banana> the ethics of popular consent when the population is by-and-large incorrect about important matters - oh, we're here.
<Crion> "Fourrrteenth floor," he says, popping the locks on the back door for her even though they'll open from the inside either way. "Tell the doorman you're here for the Laaast of Summer Foundation."
<banana> Melanie: "Okay." She appreciates the lock thing, as unbending from a sitting position is difficult enough already. Paying no further attention to the capraffeur, the conflicted Elemental makes her way into the building, perhaps to conduct some world trade.
<Crion> The doorman disinterestedly nods her through to reception; reception nods her through the metal detectors. Does Melanie set it off?
<banana> Sure, she's got a phone and a hand mirror in her purse. Hopefully they have a routine for passing that stuff around.
<banana> To mortal or at least doorman eyes, she's wearing an unseasonal white dress with a small bag on a strap over her shoulder. No e.g. guns or knives.
<Crion> A tray, yeah. If that's all, she's waved forward and handed a visitor's badge with her first name taped on it from some kind of labelmaker. Guy who hands her back her phone says to swipe it over the pad and hit 14.
<Crion> In the elevator, she can see the building notably doesn't have a floor 13.
<banana> This feels very.. corporate. It must be Langford's side of the Court.
<banana> The pad thing is kind of weird - the instructions are clear, and it works, but how? Is this normal or some sort of token? Melanie's worried it's one of the things she's frogotten
<banana> forgotten.
<Crion> The pad's got a red light on it. If she waves the card very close to it -- doesn't even need to touch directly -- it'll turn green. The only button that lights up after that is 14.
<Crion> The elevator looks VERY expensive. Not at all like theirs.
<banana> Probably the person best placed to know if some sort of floating ID sensor is just a fact of life would be Nels, since she's not bamboozled by modern technology. Melanie will write up a text message on the ride up: <Was it normal to have a kind of key that you don't have to put in the lock?>
<Crion> When the elevator doors open, they open on a clean wide expanse of a corporate waiting room. It's empty except for the receptionist, a devastatingly beautiful Fairest in Summer who immediately zeroes in on Melanie with suspicion, and Langford List himself, examining a file folder from behind his spectacles. He closes the file and hands it to the receptionist, and pretends -- probably -- that
<Crion> he doesn't notice her glare. "Correct instincts," he tells her, then removes his glasses and folds them up as he walks forward to extend his hand. "Melanie. Welcome to the Last of Summer Foundation."
<banana> Melanie's happy to be here, and it's obvious. She wants to get involved, and the actual environment is.. calm, slow-paced. She used to hate offices, she thinks. "Hello again, Mr. List. What sort of work does the Losf do?"
<banana> "Lossof? Loz?"
<Crion> He'll retract his hand if it isn't shook. "El Oh Es. It's an abbreviation. Not an acronym. My office is this way."
<Crion> It's a very spacious office, and there's an ice cold pitcher of water -- fully half of it ice, really, but big enough for two people. "Something to drink?"
<Crion> It's just sort of waiting there on a dolly. It's sweating like the room is much hotter than it is.
<banana> Oh- shaking hands! Fuck. She'll get to that next time. "Yes, please. I don't eat, but I drink."
<Crion> He nods.
<Crion> He pours them both a water. "You look around the Freehold, you see, what. Sixty percent white faces. Maybe sixty-five. About ten percent Latino, Asian, or otherwise. Something like a quarter to thirty percent of this Freehold is black. The city of Baltimore? Sixty-two percent black. Now. You look at the disappearances. The cold cases. We're not talking dad and mom don't get along and mom
<Crion> takes the kid out to Catonsville -- which, let's be clear, lots of moms can't afford. We're looking at a substantial elevated disappearance rate among: poor black children on the one end, and poor black adults on the other.
<Crion> "You get into the higher income brackets, this levels out. Somewhat. You still have to account for shit that happens on this side of the Hedge. For white people." He pauses, but doesn't say 'no offense.' "But in the lower income group the statistics diverge markedly, and not in a way we can mundanely explain. So what Last of Summer does is outreach, along with the Spring Courts in Baltimore
<Crion> and Philadelphia, to try and...herd immunity. Sort of.
<Crion> "The Keepers, they want it easy or they want it hard. We can't do anything about the ones who want it hard: the ones going hunting for some man who came up from the streets and made something of himself and then got snatched for fun. But the ones who want it easy, we can make it hard on them. We try to keep kids together, in peer groups, in after-school programs, in group homes when they need
<Crion> it. We want to prevent the stranger with the candy. Because these things, they only want this shit one at a time.
<Crion> "Now what does that mean. Does that mean some rich kid gets snatched instead? Maybe so. Is it fair? Nothing's fair. But we pay in more than our share, and here's the thing -- fewer of us come home. What happens to those kids lost in the gap, huh? To they come out somewhere else? Do they get killed? We don't know. Autumn, they. Well. They study the issue.
<Crion> "I have to solve things on this side."
<Crion> "That's what we do here. This foundation underwrites that recreational center up on 25th that Spring runs. And they do a good job of it."
<banana> Melanie listens intently, as well as watching List talk. More than any changeling she's met, he reminds her of tutors, the faculty ones who're passionate about some philosophical position. "So as far as we know, the inequity is - the Others go after poor people? Because it's easier?"
<Crion> "Yes to the first question. Unclear to the second."
<banana> Melanie: "That doesn't make sense. Malevolence, the imputed motivation, sure, but- why would we, the people who make it back, be so different?"
<Crion> "Maybe because it's easier. Maybe because poor black pain tastes better. And we're not sure if it's race or class or both."
<Crion> He nods. "That is the real question. The inputs being different -- we can explain that. Not the outputs."
<banana> "If there are more disappearances of black kids than anything.. but the Lost who come out of the Hedge are more white than the city.. what does that mean. Stricter watches and more killings in Arcadia?"
<banana> "Or: do a lot of the disappearances have another cause?"
<Crion> Langford sighs. "The optimist's take is that there's something we're missing in our methodology. There's something to explain the elevated take rate on our side, even if it's just...human trafficking, or plain bad counting."
<Crion> "The pessimist's take?"
<Crion> "This city is so fucked that the Hedge hates black people too."
<banana> ..I didn't think that was optimism..
<Crion> "Remember, the Hedge is psychoactive. It is psychoresponsive."
<Crion> "And the Baltimore Hedge has a lot of things that pretend to be cops, walking around it."
<banana> Melanie: "Well if the supernatural boundary of dreaming realms responds to human prejudice by actually murdering more people the way prejudice would have it then that's" she's looking for an adjective.
<banana> "Not good."
<Crion> He nods. "You are correct."
<Crion> "And that brings us to what I wanted to talk about."
<Crion> "Loyalists."
<banana> "Yes, okay."
<Crion> "The definition of 'not good.' Even worse than pigs."
<banana> Melanie said that before "loyalists". Loyalists are not okay.
<Crion> Langford List pulls out his glasses again and puts them on, and then a pad of paper. "I didn't ask you to report on this fully over e-mail for a reason. You can guess why that is, I assume. Lauren Ipsum has been. Spending time. In your Hollow."
<banana> "They're an amazingly awful concept. The ones we, we met are also, in practice- just caricatures of human beings. They were a living answer to the question 'what kind of person could do this'."
<Crion> He glances up. "You'd be surprised, I think, how many perfectly normal people over here are just caricatures of human beings."
<banana> Melanie: "I haven't spoken to Lauren.. I think she's interested in Stewart. She's a computer hacker? Who might intercept emails for.. some reason?"
<Crion> Langford: "Lauren is an incredible talent and the freehold is lucky to have her. And with that said, assume she's reading all of your e-mail and handing it directly to the Autumn King."
<banana> The Loyalists are one thing, but Melanie's not going to default to mistrust of other freeholders without a reason.
<Crion> "That first sentence isn't a joke. I value her highly. But there are some things it's better to discuss before taking them to the Court of Secrets."
<banana> If nothing else.. she can't really tell who's trustworthy. Deceit escapes her as much as goodhearted gestures. And there's not nothing else.
<Crion> He clicks a ballpoint pen and puts it to paper. "You said there were five of them."
<banana> Melanie: "I won't put anything in emails that I don't want the Autumn king to see. What do you need me to tell you now?"
<Crion> "Describe them, starting with the leader, progressing to the least threatening."
<banana> "Yes, five. The only one who wasn't visibly an idiot was this shitty old man with a really old-looking gun. He gave orders, and they weren't useless - he forced the others to pull out at a moment of danger, when we couldn't.. safely.. prevent them." Melanie continues.
<Crion> Langford pauses writing. "...Did he have an accent?"
<banana> Melanie: "I.. can't tell. He spoke in a slightly archaic way, though. The next three seemed like pretty much equals.. there was this big woman with pink hair and a bloodied chainsaw. We had to tie her up quickly. A tall british-looking guy, big adams apple and kind of blue veins, had a sword. Then there was.. this is hard to describe believably."
<banana> "When I want back to college and had to learn to type quickly there was this educational game. Have you heard of it? Typing of the Dead?"
<Crion> He pauses writing again. "Yes. Like Mavis Beacon but with the undead, or something."
<banana> Melanie: "In the game the agents have keyboards on their backs, they pull them out in order to type furiously at zombies. It's great. Anyway, the fourth guy had that, a laptop on his back like he was going to, um, deck into us mid-fight. They called him Kid Kid Kid."
<Crion> "Mmmmm."
<banana> "Ah, the pink woman was Keyeyellelle.. the swordsman's 'name' was Cambridge Son."
<Crion> "The letters?"
<Crion> "The letters K I L L."
<banana> "Yeah presumably. They were really.. shitty. Just obviously awful on purpose."
<banana> "Except."
<banana> Melanie frowns. "The fifth woman did not want to be there and I think she saw us first without saying anything. She didn't fight."
<Crion> "Huh."
<Crion> "Black hair? Stringy? Looked a bit like a kicked dog?" All of these scan.
<banana> "Yes.. and she was a torrent. Like me," she adds redundantly.
<Crion> He nods. "So Loser's back."
<Crion> "The leader, he sounds like the Proctor."
<Crion> "Yes, those are their names."
<banana> Melanie: "Oh! Someone said 'loser', but I didn't think it was a name."
<Crion> "I don't know the three in the middle."
<Crion> "Anything can be, especially on that side." He closes the notepad. "We know about both of those. Proctor's vile. Loser's complicated."
<Crion> "It's been awhile since he's put a new crew together."
<Crion> Langford reaches over to his phone. "Dearest, calling the King. Tell him to put out word that the Proctor and the Pack are operating in Baltimore again." 'Dearest' isn't said like a term of endearment, but casually, like a name. After a pause: "Of course he already knows. I want him to make sure everyone else does too."
<banana> Melanie's focused now that she's not trying to remember and describe. "How do these people relate to the world? Do they live here, or there?"
<Crion> He replaces the phone. "There. They pop up on this side from time to time, just to get air and dive back again. They know Baltimore isn't friendly."
<Crion> "I'd say Proctor isn't dangerous, but he's incredibly so, especially to kids like those you ran into. His MO is collection. He recruits through promises and pain. Abuse. Or he sells you back to your keeper."
<Crion> "But fundamentally, he's a coward."
<banana> "Do we know what kind of leash they're on?"
<banana> "If we kill them will the masters mind?"
<Crion> He shakes his head. "Far as we know, it's a purely business arrangement between him and whoever his patrons are. No Keeper's ever walked in to stop us from killing his pack before. The man's just enough of a wily coward to duck out before the bill comes due for him."
<banana> "Mind enough, I mean. We want them to mind. But is it a risk."
<Crion> "But: that doesn't mean there isn't a master, or that they won't."
<Crion> "Just that for the last ten years, they've been very hands-off."
<Crion> Langford sighs. "This is the third time Proctor's resurfaced with a new crew after we killed off the old one. Loser was part of his second. Not part of his third."
<Crion> "It's been a couple years, so, in all honesty it was about time."
<banana> Melanie: "I don't understand how someone makes the leap from selfishness or tribalism to siding with alien monsters over their own fellow v- subjects. It's beyond stockholm syndrome or ideological treachery."
<Crion> Flatly: "He enjoys making people like him, but less so."
<Crion> "I want to put this on your plate. You and your motley."
<banana> "I think we can work together well enough to beat them." Melanie thinks about it for a while, holds up a flaky hand. "It'd be risky to do it without practice and preparation. There is an element of chance."
<Crion> He nods. "There always is. I trust you can minimize it."
<Crion> "It is in the interest of this Freehold that there not be a fourth return of the Proctor."
<Crion> "And I trust you can minimize that, too."
<banana> Melanie: "It would be.. helpful if you could explain why. You would trust me or us, I mean. I have ideas, plans, the others are all good at something but there's so much we don't know."
<Crion> "First, they're operating locally in your Hedge. Not 'local' as in Baltimore; 'local' as in, if I understand correctly, a hob tipped you to the chase through the neighborhood. You have local perspective. You have snitches. Fundamentally, if the loyalists are operating near your Hollow's anchor, you are not only the first in line to respond, but the first in line to get hurt. Second, they're
<Crion> operating locally in your Hedge. The Hedge is not constant; as discussed, it is psychoactive, and it likes familiar things more than unfamiliar things. That means those of us who are not local to your particular corner of the Hedge operate at a disadvantage. We don't have sightings yet from elsewhere in the Baltimore hedge of the Pack, so we have no idea if they're launching incursions from
<Crion> deeper towards Arcadia or simply thinking globally and acting locally.
<Crion> "Thirdly, they're operating locally in your Hedge. You caught the call. You gave a fuck when it wasn't your turn to give a fuck."
<Crion> "So now it's your problem."
<Crion> "Will this, in turn, be a problem?"
<banana> Melanie: "I want training, involvement. I need to meet more people from the Court and learn to work together, learn how to conduct this kind of fight and others. This isn't a.. quid pro quo, that's what Mises would say so you know it's wrong - it's the process of 'minimization'."
<Crion> He waves a hand. "You'll have it. Wasn't a condition of accepting this task."
<Crion> "But the Young Street isn't sending a kill team out of season to do new work."
<Crion> "And I'm not going to ask him to."
<banana> Melanie: "Yeah. I am a half-empty vessel, Langford, and if Summer can fill me with tasks of protection and vengeance I won't spill."
<banana> "You should be are, I think you are already aware that this motley per se won't be a.. kill team, a fighting force; if you expect me to contribute fighting spirit to it, I will."
<banana> She holds out, not physically, another handshake - an offering of Glamour to the Wyrd, half-formed sealing.
<Crion> He nods. "As I said at The Sinecure, we don't need more fighters. But we do need to know you can fight, or at least track, harry and dissuade. There's a distinction." He stands and shakes easily on the oath.
<Crion> Did she ever drink any of her water?
<banana> It's deeply weird that this conversation feels more natural than the ones about musical instruments, but it's not really upsetting. It reminds Melanie of a team hype session with the Retrievers' coach.
<banana> Didn't get around to it. She's too focused on the conversation.
<Crion> Neither did Langford.
<Crion> He seems to notice this, and sort of just shake his head.
<Crion> "That's the program I have to propose. I won't take anymore of your time. Thanks for coming down."
<banana> "Is Dearest the receptionist outside?"
<Crion> "Yes. That's her name." He pauses. "Her reasons are her own."
<banana> "There's a lot of that around here!"
<Crion> Langford: "Names are powerful things. For all sorts of magic. Don't give out your own so easily."
<banana> "I understand, but 'Paperbark' isn't a very good superhero name."
<banana> On the way out, Melanie will head for the front desk. "Hello," she says fairly firmly, but her approach gets slower and slower as she actually walks up to Dearest.
<Crion> "The Young Street doesn't call himself that just because he thinks it sounds cool."
<banana> *pink
<Crion> Dearest nods professionally, and doesn't smile. List walks Melanie to the elevator.
<Crion> As he presses the button and the door opens. "You said you don't want to be a kill team. I respect that enough to swear to not asking you to become one."
<Crion> "But."
<Crion> "This freehold has no bunks for loyalists. And this freehold doesn't take prisoners."
<Crion> "And this freehold needs the issue of the Proctor and his pack resolved to a permanent end."
<Crion> He steps back as the doors close. "So that's your Hedge to trim."
<banana> That didn't work, then. It usually doesn't. Melanie doesn't bother responding further to Langford, because he'll want to see actions.. and she wants the exact result he does.
<banana> She's keeping her name, though. Belanie left it to her.
<Crion> --Fin.
<VoxPVoxD>
<VoxPVoxD>
<VoxPVoxD>
<VoxPVoxD>
<VoxPVoxD>
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrCgjGnlQRQ Stewart's apartment is uncharacteristically loud, as his music is turned up to rise over the sound of the vacuum. There's always some chore or other that needs doing, and it's an easy way to make the world feel a little more manageable.
<trenchfoot> Nels' attentions are pulled away from her schoolwork as she listens to the music through the walls. That's not really an instrument she's heard of before, but the tune is... pleasant enough? Would be rude to interrupt in the middle of vacuuming, so she listens, and then mimics it back to pass the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b68Yz6t98 Then she just gives up and goes over to knock on Stewart's door, because how does it make
<trenchfoot> that sound?
<VoxPVoxD> It takes a few knocks to get Stewart's attention. Nels hears, in turn, the sound of the vacuum shutting off, the sound of the music shutting off, and the sound of the door unlocking. Then Stewart is there. "Oh, hey! Was I too loud?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Um, not exactly - I was just... what was that? It doesn't sound like anything I've heard before."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh! Sorry. That's called a vacuum cleaner. It's a machine we can use to get dust off of our floors and carpets."
<VoxPVoxD> "It gets kind of loud."
<trenchfoot> Nels amends: "That too, but - the music."
<VoxPVoxD> "Ohhh. That was, uh, Sonic? Sonic 2, I want to say? Chemical Zone." He realizes belatedly that they're still in the doorway and lets her in. "Are you hungry or anything? I've got cold pizza..."
<trenchfoot> She steps inside and doesn't stare, except at his computer briefly. "No, that's fine. And - I can come back later if you'd like, I'm interrupting your cleaning, but... when you have the time, could you tell me more about this 'Sonic'? They seem like quite a musician."
<VoxPVoxD> "..." Oh shit. I skipped steps again. Let's wind it back and pay attention this time. "...I'm happy to a break. But yeah, ah, 'Sonic' is not the name of the artist who made that music. Sonic is name of the - why don't we sit in the living room - the name of the game the song was composed for."
<VoxPVoxD> "The song was composed by a man whose name I don't know, for a... computer, basically."
<VoxPVoxD> "Is the instrument, I mean."
<trenchfoot> She'll take a seat wherever's convenient, as long as it has a back. "I didn't realize games had music. Or that computers could make those sounds..." Does he have his computer visible from the living room? She'll be looking in its direction, regardless.
<VoxPVoxD> "A computer that you can play like a musical instrument is called a 'synthesizer', or a 'synth'. Which, now that I say it out loud, sounds pretty cyberpunk."
<VoxPVoxD> "Let's leave 'what is cyberpunk' for another time."
<trenchfoot> Nels opens and then closes her mouth, then considers. "And do they all sound like that Chemical Zone?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, no, they sound like... like anythimg, basically."
<VoxPVoxD> "Holy shit!"
<VoxPVoxD> "You've got a hundred years of music to hear for the first time."
<VoxPVoxD> "That's really cool."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I do..." The thought suddenly seems daunting. "Where would I even start?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I'm... completely inadequate to this task. But we can start. Come in here," he says, waving her into his office.
<VoxPVoxD> "I'm... completely inadequate to this task. But we can start. Come in here," he says, waving her into his office.
<trenchfoot> She follows close behind, unsure of where this is headed. He doesn't seem to have a record player anywhere...
<VoxPVoxD> This room is set up like an ersatz recording studio, with soundproof baffling hung on the walls, large lights diffused through curtains, and windows sealed against the outside with blackout curtains. There are what might be three or four whole computers in this room, judging by the array of boxes, screens, buttons, and neatly bundled wires. There's one huge, high-backed chair in front of
<VoxPVoxD> the machines.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's bringing in another chair from the kitchen. "You take the big chair, I can mess around with stuff better from this.
<trenchfoot> She sits, looking all around at the wires and where they lead to and from. The variety of screens and things that she probably shouldn't touch would make her head spin, if she thought about it too much, but she's still going over the idea of one hundred years of music.
<VoxPVoxD> After setting up the little chair on the right side of the desk, between two keyboards, Stewart presses a series of buttons rapidly and the three large screens light up. The bottom ones show what Nels might already know to be 'websites', while the top one is a lengthy array of short lines of text that Stewart makes vanish before Nels can read any of it.
<trenchfoot> His system seems to be much faster than hers. Still, it was a cheap set and it does what it needs to.
<VoxPVoxD> "So, alright, the first thing I want to say: there is more music made every year than a single human being will ever be able to listen to. From albums, singles, soundtracks, compositions, sets, live performances, even unpublished material that sneaks out into public hands. You're going to be feeling overwhelmed, and that's fine. That's not going to go away. We all feel like that."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Ominous and sort of terrifying, but also relieving to know I'm not alone."
<VoxPVoxD> It was said Stewart's Autumn Mantle grew three sizes that day. "That's also to say that I am only going to be able to show you a tiny part of what's out there, because I only know a tiny part of what's out there. So I recommend also getting other people's perspectives, and exploring on your own."
<VoxPVoxD> He sits back. Shit... where do you even start.
<trenchfoot> She nods. Maybe she can figure out how to have that Google play music for her, when she gets back to her place...
<VoxPVoxD> "I guess the next thing I'll say is that if you just want to learn information, like you want to pinpoint a specific thing or you just want to cram for some reason, we have this thing called Wikipedia, which is basically a huge store of information people volunteer to write and edit. You go here--" typetypetype "--I'll write these out for you--" typetypetype "--and you can look at,
<VoxPVoxD> say, 1919 in music, 1920 in music, 1921 in music, and so on. Each year, with specific historical throughlines of note, specific important events and people, hit songs in different genres..."
<VoxPVoxD> "Pick a year."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Um, 1970." Fifty years. Halfway mark.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart types it in. "Boom, 1970 in music. Then we can go to biggest hit singles... here, like this is a 1970 song." Nels sees a video play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvUQcnfwUUM
<VoxPVoxD> StewarT: "...and that was 1970 hair."
<trenchfoot> She makes a face. Still... "If I couldn't see them, you could've told me this was something I just hadn't heard from when I was a kid."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "And that's just one of a million different kinds of music from then. Here's another:" 10https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cce72tWrn0E
<trenchfoot> Nels just taps her foot and starts humming along unconsciously. "Wow," when the song finishes. "And that's two popular songs from the same year? I guess radio really helped... but this is all on the internet now?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah. There's ways to buy or steal or listen to almost any song you want, any time you want, anywhere you want. Our phones play music too, you can put music on them or, or podcasts. We talked about podcasts before."
<trenchfoot> She's extremely excited to start looking this stuff up at home, if she can figure out how to find all of this. "Wait, how do you steal the music if it's available for free?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "People who let you listen to music free usually have some plan to make money off it, like they're selling ad space, or they're trying to get attention for their next album for sale, or it's a loss leader to get you to give them your private data so they can sell *that*, or something."
<VoxPVoxD> "Stealing the music gives you the song to do whatever you want with without anyone else getting any money. In theory."
<Crion> There's a knock on the door, subdued and measured.
<trenchfoot> She understood most of that. "Do the artists still-- oh!" She smooths out her skirt. "I'll just - wait here?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's head whips around like an antelope's on the savannah, but after a tense beat he says, "Oh, shit, right. Stay here a second." and goes to answer the door.
<Crion> Canterbury's standing outside, leaning against the molding, in his usual hoodie. This close you can smell him -- or more properly, his mantle. Fresh, crisp winter air, without the smokeyness of autumn in it.
<Crion> "Hey mate."
<Crion> "Shouldn't do this in the hall."
<VoxPVoxD> "Yeah, come in." After shutting the door, Stewart snaps his fingers. "Actually, do you wanna... stick around a bit? Nels is curious about something and more perspectives will help here."
<Crion> "Oh..." He thinks and shrugs. "Sure. I'm supposed to be watching you two after all. It's been long enough that anyone watching me knows what I'm doing."
<Crion> Is there a counter or table nearby in the main room?
<VoxPVoxD> Yeah, a long counter serves as the primary separation between the living room and the kitchen. There's keys, old mail, and a squat jug full of violently orange flowers. "Nels, Canterbury's here. He brought weed and he's gonna help explain music."
<Crion> He takes a bag from under his hoodie and puts it on the counter. "Forty qu--" He pauses. "Forty dollars." That looks like a lot more weed than forty dollars should buy.
<Crion> How old does Nels look, again?
<VoxPVoxD> Money changes hands and Stewart leads Canterbury into his computer room, where he'll flip a second switch under the light switch and turn on a fan in the vent over the door.
<VoxPVoxD> "Thanks again, man, this is such a load off my mind not having to find a dealer."
<trenchfoot> She looks around 20, 21. Nels makes her way out from the office and looks at the 'weed'. She uh, probably hasn't smoked before?
<Crion> Canterbury nods. His four eyes all blink at once. "Be careful on it. That's from Union. Little bit goes a long way. Calls it 'Hearts in Atlantis.'"
<Crion> To Nels, he'll nod. "Miss."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Hello, Canterbury. Thanks for looking out for us," though she's still looking at the substance.
<Crion> "Pleasure to be of service."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart shows the bag full of fat green dried plant buds. "Did you have weed in 1920? Uh, uh, cannabis, or marijuana, or, or, reefer...? Any of this ringing a bell?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Vaguely? Cannabis does, anyway. I think I knew someone who liked it, but he liked heroin better."
<Crion> Canterbury makes a noise and shakes his head.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "So I've been told," she nods to Canterbury.
<Crion> "Oh nah, miss. It was opium among my...I guess they were mates."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "This isn't anything like heroin, but it'll make your thoughts fuzzier, make music sound better. Might make you hungry. If you smoke too much you can get nervous or paranoid. Anyway, no pressure. I was trying to figure out how to approach showing Nels some of the music she hasn't heard yet."
<VoxPVoxD> He switched from speaking to Nels to speaking to Canterbury there.
<Crion> Canterbury nods. "For me -- I was taken in '37, right before the war, and came back oh. Ten years ago. For me, the thing that sort of -- made everything make sense, really, was the eighties. Eighties popular music. That's the bridge between the familiar and when instruments stop sounding like instruments any more."
<trenchfoot> Nels hmms thoughtfully. "Stewart was playing something from 'Sonic' when I knocked. I'm - curious how they changed, other than that. Seems like I could've done a lot with them."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, in the 1980s you've got, like, new wave, early hip hop, post-punk, metal, R&B... it was when synthesizers, like the one that was playing the song you heard, got popular."
<trenchfoot> She makes a note to remember those phrases for later. Maybe this will help her study, or maybe there's some kind of studying music that people have. Hmm.
<Crion> "Which isn't to say I dislike the eighties at all. The eighties had Bonnie Tyler."
<Crion> "They also had a lot of cocaine, which people want to associate with Winter but really, really isn't our bag."
<Crion> He's rolled a joint but looks to Stewart for permission before lighting up.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart waves a hand. It's all good. So here's a big list of 80s songs. Why don't we start here and see which direction we explore in. We can put our faith, for now, in the algorithm."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart waves a hand. It's all good. "So here's a big list of 80s songs. Why don't we start here and see which direction we explore in. We can put our faith, for now, in the algorithm."
<Crion> Ahhh. "Damn good stuff. Wonder how their set up is. Probably involves some wizard shit."
<VoxPVoxD> Nels sees Stewart scroll through a long list of artists and song titles next to squat rectangular images.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Oh! How about this one." She gestures to the screen showing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIOAlaACuv4
<trenchfoot> She liked fast cars. Of course, 'fast' back then is... not fast at all anymore.
<Crion> Canterbury chuckles and shakes his head.
<Crion> "My Court's kind of song."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart plays it. "Oh, I think I've heard this one before." He'll pack a bowl while it plays, and offer to Nels but not make a big deal of it.
<VoxPVoxD> When it plays out: "What do you think?
<Crion> "She's not wrong," says Canterbury, after a contemplative puff. "We all do make that decision."
<trenchfoot> She accepts the bowl, but hands it back. "You first. Show me. And -- it feels. Hmm. It reminds me of - before. But that wasn't to be talked about, and now here it is just laid out in song..."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "What's 'Hotel California'?"
<Crion> Canterbury actually smiles at that.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart demonstrate show to operate a Bic lighter and corner a bowl. He chokes when Nels asks that, but recovers to reply, hoarsely, "Let me load it up."
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqSKl7sdUa8
<VoxPVoxD> On a dark desert highway...
<VoxPVoxD> It occurs belatedly to Stewart that his father probably once also sat around getting stoned and listening to Hotel California.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Not as good as Fast Car. And - I don't care for that last verse. At all."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Hotel California is a... divisive song."
<Crion> "Doesn't help most concert versions are 12 minutes long. Some bands can pull that off. Not The bloody Eagles."
<trenchfoot> Her face lights up when she sees the sidebar. "Oh! Tony mentioned that one!" She points to Free Bird. Although - these are times on the corners... "Did they just stop making short songs after a while?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Song lengths vary based on the genre and the time period. Free Bird and Hotel California are both songs where a guy spends a lot of time goofing around on the guitar between verses."
<VoxPVoxD> "They're both from around the same time, I think."
<VoxPVoxD> "I was raised to call that kind of music 'dadrock'. Music our dads wouldn't listen to, if our dads were roughly the age implied by my current age."
<VoxPVoxD> *would listen to
<trenchfoot> She nods solemnly. "Goofing around on the guitar is a good reason to have the songs go for that long."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh oh oh!"
<VoxPVoxD> "Jimi Hendrix."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Who's that?"
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
<trenchfoot> She exhales through her nose. "He's excellent. Not sure about the lyrics really -- but his playing..."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "He didn't write the lyrics to that one, I don't think, so good news there."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Oh! Good. I'll look him up when I'm back in my apartment, then."
<trenchfoot> "...is that a cover of Crossroads?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart clicks on it. "I guess...?"
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE9HvSdcaL4
<Crion> "Hahaha."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I'm better."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Than Clapton? Easily."
<VoxPVoxD> This is another song his dad would've listened to.
<Crion> "Clapton was pretty good. But," Canterbury shrugs. "A mortal."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Then he shouldn't have tried playing my song."
<Crion> "Wrote a really sad song about his kid dying, though. Very popular in my circles."
<VoxPVoxD> "Okay, so this is all a lot of 70s-ish guitar rock. Let's see what we can find from the electronic side of the 80s..."
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcyCQLewj10
<trenchfoot> She startles at some of the beats, but this is... pleasant. "I can see what you mean about the synthesizers," she says to Canterbury. "I kind of like them, though."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart loads up the next one Nels picks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGBohd0V2Mo
<VoxPVoxD> "This one's neat because it's about technology being rendered obsolete by technology that was then rendered obsolete - they used to play music videos on TV the way they play songs on the radio. But now they're all on the internet."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I wonder if someone who was around for that time of music videos on TV feels, well. Like I do."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It was right before I was born. My parents would know."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "You pick for the next one. Um, can I try some more of that marijuana? It's - pleasant. Fuzzy."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart packs another bowl for Nels and then pokes around.
<VoxPVoxD> "I like this one." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnDwBrm_jsY
<trenchfoot> She takes a slightly larger hit than last time and begins coughing. "Okay. Oh, wow. Out of practice."
<VoxPVoxD> That's the terror of knowing what this world is about...
<trenchfoot> Nels, dumbly: "He's got great range. Um, they both do, but the one more than the other..."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Freddy Mercury."
<Crion> "R.I.P."
<VoxPVoxD> It suddenly hits Stewart that someone's going to have to explain AIDS to Nels.
<trenchfoot> There's also sort of a lot going on, and it's hard to focus on anything but the words and the voices. "That's a shame," and she means it.
<VoxPVoxD> "Canterbury, any requests?"
<Crion> "Yeah...I mentioned Bonnie Tyler. Welsh girl. But let's do something a little modern with it too." He walks over and searches for something specific. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVkc6UF1mzI
<Crion> "Now this song was written by a lad what went about calling himself 'Meat Loaf.' Jimmy Steinman."
<trenchfoot> There is even more going on here than there was last time. "He chose that name on purpose?"
<Crion> "All the weird shit with the heavy beats and the synth? That's the remake. 'Quixotic' is the DJ who did that. You take the song master -- or just high enough quality, really -- and you fuck about with it."
<Crion> Canterbury takes another hit. "Technically it was a group, but he wrote the songs and he sung them and got out on stage in the silly outfits. Wrote 'Bat Out of Hell' -- this is back when concept albums were big, so Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell (no, that's it's name, swear on the Qu-- to God) were full of these 12 minute long indulgent epics that had to be chopped
<Crion> down for the radio."
<trenchfoot> Privately, Nels thinks they should have 'fucked about with it' less. Still, the singer's good, and she's not opposed to the concept. "And people just put up with that?"
<Crion> "Not particularly. Meat Loaf had some big radio hits but his passion really was musicals -- he wrote parts of Footloose, which is where that song originally comes from. Nowadays he's just an old man that says dumb shit on television."
<Crion> Stewart's probably able to gauge this better than Nels, but while Canterbury still has his posh English accent his vocabulary has become much more Americanized. It's always 'shit' and never 'shite,' for instance.
<trenchfoot> Abruptly Nels wonders if the other Nels Foulke ever became an old woman who says dumb shit on television. She doesn't think she wants to know. "Well, there's nothing wrong with a musical. Saying dumb stuff in public is pretty bad, though."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's given to wonder. Was his Durance somehow American? Hard to say, impossibly rude to ask. Probably never know.
<Crion> Might be that, might be the time he's spent here since. Hard to say and rude to ask though, yeah, probably.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I grew up in the 1990s, and music on the radio had stuff like this:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH3jo8ThugE
<VoxPVoxD> "There was a period where they just, I don't know, raised hot teen dudes in kennels and trained them to dance and harmonize for food."
<Crion> "Suppose I'm high enough for a bit of the boy bands."
<Crion> He puffs again. "One of them fucked around and tried to go to outer space, if you can believe. Not from this group. The other one."
<trenchfoot> It takes her longer than she would like to realize he's making a joke. "It's good to know some things about music have barely changed."
<VoxPVoxD> "The 90s also had music like this:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg
<Crion> "Never could get into grudge."
<Crion> "Grunge."
<Crion> "Whatever."
<trenchfoot> Nels makes a face. "I see why they used the kennels for the handsome ones. To stop them from making this."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart snorts.
<VoxPVoxD> Then he giggles.
<Crion> "Lots of birds found Kurt here very attractive. But maybe they just loved the legend."
<VoxPVoxD> Birds?
<Crion> Well, there's a Britishism.
<VoxPVoxD> Oh, Stewart gets it.
<Crion> "Women, sorry," he says after a moment, seeming vaguely embarrassed.
<Crion> He puffs again. "I'm guessing we should let the summer lads talk about rap."
<Crion> "Or, just put on 'Hit 'Em Up and see what's what."
<Crion> He looks around the room. "That's the song that got Tupac killed."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Who? How?"
<Crion> "The godfather of West Coast rap. And, bullets."
<VoxPVoxD> Ohh shit. Stewart's glad Canterbury's got this and is able to avoid verbalizing his anxiety. "Yeah I'm way out of my depth there."
<trenchfoot> Eventually 'I don't know what that is' is going to get old. Actually, it's already starting to. "That does tend to happen."
<Crion> "Rap is intertwined heavily with Black culture in--hell, I'm not the man to explain this, but here goes. You know how white people took jazz and blues from black people? Well, they did the same thing with rock and roll, and right now they're doing the same thing with rap. Except rap...well, rap doesn't sound like anything I wager you've ever heard before." He leans forward and searches for
<Crion> 'Hit 'Em Up dirty'. "Don't repeat half the words you hear on this in polite company, especially not that big one."
<Crion> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41qC3w3UUkU
<Crion> "Three months after he put this song out, Tupac was shot dead in Las Vegas."
<Crion> He puffs again. "Or was he? That's a fun rabbit hole to go down."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "This. Okay. Some of the other songs were a lot but this is the most."
<Crion> "An entirely different artistic tradition, love. Little to no live instrumentation. You take a recorded beat on a loop and you do something halfway between spoken word poetry and singing over it. Entirely a modern form. Can't do it without at least a cassette tape deck."
<Crion> "Well. And turntables."
<Crion> "But you're not walking in with a horn section or even a guitar and drums."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks up at 'horn section' and then quietly resolves never to tell Nels about ska.
<Crion> "Since rap broke into the mainstream, it's become more and more highly produced. Interesting to note that the greater culture hasn't been able to steal it from blacks yet -- sure, it makes most of the money off of them, but you've only got a couple notable white rappers at all and none of them are an Elvis."
<Crion> He pauses, then to Stewart. "Holy shit, have you told her about Elvis Presley?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Nnno."
<Crion> Shakes his head. "Hard to understand American music without Elvis, mate."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't really know anything about Elvis besides that- well I don't want to spoil the ending for Nels."
<Crion> Canterbury leans back to the computer again. "To understand what I'm talking about, here's what we do. This is the song 'Hound Dog,' originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1953."
<Crion> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoHDrzw-RPg
<Crion> "Now, this song, it was massively successful...as a blues song. Spent something like a year charted. Big Mama Thornton's biggest hit by far."
<Crion> "Then, three years later, attractive, clean-cut young white lad Elvis Presley records...this."
<Crion> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eHJ12Vhpyc
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I hate him already."
<Crion> "This is one of the most famous songs of all time. It made Presley a permanent star. It helped launch an entire genre of music. And the main difference is...what? Slightly up tempo. Man singing. Stronger percussion throughline at the expense of the singer's emotion."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh I get it! He's like the Notch of music."
<Crion> "Elvis was a fun character. We were talking musicals earlier; Presley was drafted to go to the Vietnam War, and he actually went. It introduced him to amphetamines and the drug use that would eventually end his life. Before he left, he met a 14-year-old girl named Priscilla...Beaumont? Something like that. He was 23. Yeah. Married her after a seven year courtship, the books will tastefully
<Crion> tell you. They made a whole musical out of this, called 'Bye Bye Birdie.'"
<Crion> He leans forward and does another search. "This was the fake Elvis song they came up with for it." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP__tlb6yZU
<Crion> Canterbury seems not to hear the Notch comment, probably because he doesn't know who that is.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "And this man was - what, the history of American music makes him that important? I'm not glad I missed all of it, but I don't think I would've wanted to see that."
<Crion> "Much like Tupac, it's a big conspiracy theory that Elvis is still alive too."
<Crion> "Grimly funny, maybe, that Las Vegas, where Tupac was gunned down, is also the center of the world for Elvis impersonators."
<Crion> He glances at Nels. "That's people whose job or hobby is dressing up like Elvis and pretending to be him, no matter how little they look like him."
<Crion> "Strange years, here."
<trenchfoot> She just shakes her head.
<VoxPVoxD> "There was a movie where a whole bunch of Elvis impersonators who impersonated Elvis at different points of his life robbed a casino or something together."
<Crion> Canterbury grins. "3000 Miles to Graceland."
<Crion> "Heard that movie was shit. But what a cast."
<VoxPVoxD> "And then this is just all music for like, buying albums of or listening to people play live at shows. There's so much work going into music people hear just incidentally. Movie soundtracks, game soundtracks. People who make careers and fortunes setting music to other people's stories."
<VoxPVoxD> "These are mostly electronic or orchestral compositions. Like here's one:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3SZ5sIMY6o
<Crion> "Morricone!"
<Crion> "Hahaha, and that fucker John Williams, right on."
<VoxPVoxD> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuOArEfqGo "This is Morricone."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I like Morricone better, I think," she says absently, fiddling with her skirt. "Oh, definitely, with the guitar and - I could do some of this. Could have. Huh."
<Crion> "The big guy now is this Hans Zimmer man. He's composing everything. Some guys just get all the work."
<VoxPVoxD> "And then there's video game music, like what you heard originally. A lot of it is totally synthesized but not all of it is." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egn_VNVKzI4
<Crion> "Wasn't there that song that was just, Russian classical music that they stole for the theme to a video game?"
<Crion> "Metal something."
<Crion> "Metal Slug? Metal Solid?"
<trenchfoot> Nels hums along to the Weight of the World. Familiar, somehow. Not one of hers, but... familiar.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Metal Gear Soli, yeah."
<Crion> "Really good song too. But then, that's why you'd steal it."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Shitty thing to do. I mean - we play eachother's songs, it'd be hard not to, but you don't just... chop up someone else's work."
<trenchfoot> She yawns. "I should be getting back. Thank you for the education, and for the weed. It was... nice."
<Crion> He puffs. "Well, you do and you don't. Like I said about rap -- that's what 'sampling' is. But in rap you credit where the beat came from. This lad just passed it off as his own, so yeah. Very different."
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<Crion> A few days after the fight with the Loyalists, Stewart is on an off-day -- Tuesdays, right? -- when he gets a message on the hex box from...username "QUOTH|THE|STEWARD|KING":
<Crion> <'STEWART READER,' KNOWN OTHERWISE AS 'CRITICALMASS:'>
<Crion> <ROBERT KINGSLEY OF AUTUMN REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE AT>
<Crion> <BRUNCH>
<Crion> <ON THE MORROW>
<Crion> <MAKE YOUR REPLY>
<Crion> <THUS ENDS THE INTERDICTUM>
<Crion> <NEVERMORE>
<VoxPVoxD> These guys go hard. Stewart finds himself using his shift key and everything in his reply. <I accept the invitation. Where and when?>
<Crion> The little dot dot dots appear to indicate typing, then disappear, then reappear again. <HOW DOES STEWART READER DESIRE CHESAPEAKE DEVILED EGGS, SERVED WITH MIMOSAS>
<VoxPVoxD> Oh hell yes. <Ardently.>
<Crion> <THEN STEWART READER THE KING TOMORROW SHALL SEE, AT THE ELEVENTH MORNING HOUR, AT MISS SHIRLEY'S>
<Crion> <THUS ENDS THE INTERROGATION>
<Crion> <NEVERMORE>
<Crion> The user logs off.
<Crion> How does Stewart prepare for -- and get to -- the brunch?
<VoxPVoxD> Meeting the King for brunch at the kind of restaurant whose menu prices are all in integer form... looks like Stewart is busting out one of his two (up from one) button-down shirts. Mimosas...
<VoxPVoxD> He'll drive.
<Crion> The good news is this place is in the Inner Harbor, which means it's just a quick walk from the parking garage of the law firm.
<Crion> So hey, free parking.
<VoxPVoxD> That's always nice. He arrives at about 10:50; anxiety over lateness always has Stewart showing up to places slightly early.
<Crion> It's an, uh, downright balmy day for autumn -- early October, now. But not uncomfortable. Quite the opposite, in fact; put it at something like 71 degrees, no humidity. The Inner Harbor is what it always is. Doesn't look much like the rest of the city. Technically this place has a dress code, but, dress codes have a very specific intent in downtown Baltimore. Flumpy white teens in cargo shorts
<Crion> and skater shirts stand far less of a chance of getting kicked out than black teens in jeans and plain white tees. This is intentional.
<Crion> Sounds like Stewart is dressed well either way, though, so he'll see Kingsley waving to him from an outdoor table with a lot of empty seats around it. Gerald's sitting next to him. Both appear to be in good spirits, though Gerald is obviously working security.
<Crion> For his, ah, brother, not for the restaurant.
<Crion> There's an umbrella angled to cover them from the high late morning sun.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart smiles at them both as he sits down. Both of them? What's all this about. Is something wrong...?
<Crion> Kingsley smiles back. "This place says they don't take reservations, but, well. Every promise is flexible."
<Crion> Gerald sips his water. "Don't be an asshole, Bob."
<Crion> Kingsley: "What?"
<Crion> Gerald: "You're doing that thing where you say a thing--"
<Crion> Kingsley: "Yes."
<Crion> Gerald: "And it's got an obvious double meaning."
<Crion> "A specific point, then an ominous broader point."
<Crion> Kingsley sighs. "I suppose it does become force of habit."
<Crion> Gerald: "Right."
<Crion> Robert Kingsley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpQArtCeXTk You understand, I've got a plan for us; I bet you didn't know that I was dangerous.
<Crion> Gerald Kingsley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjTTB6yII4o This ain't no place for no hero; this ain't no place for no better man.
<Crion> Kingsley: "But the boy isn't scared of a little bit of...theatrical embellishment. Am I right, Stewart? Feel free to order off the menu. This is a business lunch. It shall be expensed."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart came here for Chesapeake deviled eggs, and by hell and all its angels he's going to have some Chesapeake deviled eggs. "Business lunch, yeah? So, what's up?"
<Crion> Kingsley orders eggs for the table, then the chicken and waffles. Gerald gets the Chesapeake chicken sandwich. A pitcher of mimosas is ordered for the table.
<Crion> Stewart is of course entitled to an entree as well, if he'd like.
<VoxPVoxD> There's no reason you can't combine two different egg+crab foods at the same meal, right? So he'll get the crab cake eggs benedict.
<Crion> Kingsley nods in approval, and the waitress takes it down. When she's gone: "This is about the loyalists."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart resists the urge to pluck at his own sleeve rather than look at the men across the table. "Alright. Are the - are Gemma and Peter okay?"
<Crion> Gerald: "To the extent that they can be, and that we trust them. Spring's handling the triage. We're looking into..."
<Crion> He pauses. "We're checking up on things."
<Crion> "Same as we did for you lot."
<Crion> "Trust, but verify."
<Crion> Kingsley nods.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart eats fitfully, not for lack of hunger or because the food is bad (it's amazing), but because he's afraid of being in a spot where he has to talk with his mouth full or where he has to chew while these two are staring at him expectantly. "Sure, yeah, that makes sense."
<Crion> Kingsley: "With your motley, the concern was that you all appeared in the same cluster. That's suspicious. These two were chased by a bunch of loyalist running dogs but not hurt until you could save them. That's a tactic that's been used to insert spies or Trojan horses before." He frowns. "One time, literally a horseman. Neither here nor there."
<Crion> He waves a fork as he spears another egg. "We don't expect to come back with concerns on them, but Santander and Ravens are handling the inquiry. And Santander's team. You'll meet them in time. What I want, here and now, are your impressions of the loyalists themselves."
<Crion> Gerald pops an egg with crab lump on it full in his mouth and chews politely while watching the street. Has Stewart filed a formal report already? He hasn't been asked to, but, perhaps he's that sort of go-getter.
<Crion> Beyond his correspondence with Lauren, of course.
<VoxPVoxD> Nothing beyond what he and Gerald talked about the day Gerald came to pick the refugees up. "Impressions?"
<Crion> Kingsley: "Impressions. It has been decided -- mainly by fate, but also, to be brutally honest, to minimize Freehold exposure in the case this is a tremendous honey pot -- that your motley will be handling the...response...to these fools. That decision was made in conference of all four seasonal monarchs, but I will be plain: I am King, and the decision redounded to me. Given both your motley's
<Crion> disposition and the beneficient outcome of your first interaction with them, I think this is well within your safe capability."
<Crion> "I mean, of course, not just 'you,'" Kingsley points both hands with palms opened upward at Stewart, "but 'you.'" He widens his arms to encompass a theoretical group.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So by 'response', you mean... what, exactly?"
<Crion> Kingsley smiles. "My question gets answered first. Impressions?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart drums his fingers on the table. Mimosas here yet?
<Crion> Oh, yes.
<Crion> Have been. Came with the eggs.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart takes a slow drink while he gathers his thoughts. God, that's good. "They're, uh... I've never really seen people like that in real life. Just... hunting people. There was an older guy, or he looked older, and he seemed to be in charge. He didn't jump in, and he gave the order to retreat."
<Crion> Kingsley nods. "That'll be Proctor. How did he strike you as a leader?"
<Crion> Gerald: "I think he already gave the answer, there."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "He didn't seem to rule by love. Tony laid this one guy out with, like, a football tackle, almost... the old guy - Proctor? - grabbed him by the hair, called him stupid. Melanie took out this big Zarya-looking lady who had a chainsaw, and then a fourth guy, kind of looked like a young Mr. Peanut, sounded like the baby from Family Guy, he said he was called 'the Cambridge Son'."
<VoxPVoxD> "Then in the back there was someone who looked like she didn't want to be there. Like she was a captive too, almost."
<VoxPVoxD> "Proctor had a pistol, like an army- like an M1911, I think? Cambridge Son had like a military dress saber. Chainsaw's name was like, Kale? Or Kayael? I don't know, it was hard to hear. The guy Tony took out, Proctor called him Kid Kid Kid. "Not like, 'Kid, kid, kid' like you're clucking your tongue but all at once like spray of bullets. Kid-kid-kid."
<Crion> Kingsley nods. "What's a Zarya?"
<Crion> Gerald looks like he's about to say something, but doesn't.
<Crion> Stewart's show, after all.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, it's a- it's a character from a game. She was big, buff, broad-shouldered, short pink hair."
<Crion> Kingsley nods. "Okay. The last one. The one in the back. She's the one I think we're concerned with. Any further thoughts on her?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "She was- I was off in an alley, trying to get the- to get Gemma and Peter to run over there. My plan was to Hidden Reality a tunnel with a straight shot to the Hollow. It was kind of a dumb plan, in retrospect, to try and be visible and hidden at the same time. But the girl in the back saw me and she didn't rat me out. I don't know if the others ever even knew I was there."
<Crion> Kingsley's eyes narrow, and he glances over at Gerald, who shrugs.
<Crion> Kingsley: "So we have...something of a--"
<Crion> Food's here!
<VoxPVoxD> Oh hell yes.
<Crion> How are the eggs?
<VoxPVoxD> Cracking the poached egg so the yolk runs with the Hollandaise all over the crab cake... fuuuuuuuuuuck.
<Crion> Once they've all eaten a little bit, and the waitress has refilled the mimosas and absconded, Kingsley: "We have something of a conflict of interest."
<Crion> "It's the position of this court that we do not take in loyalists. We do not jail loyalists, obviously. And Proctor cannot -- for the fourth time since Reagan's inauguration, apparently -- be permitted to maraud in our near Hedge."
<Crion> "However, it is also the position of this court that Loser -- that woman who didn't turn your run-in with the loyalists into a bloodbath pre-emptively -- is a valuable asset."
<Crion> "We've...run across her before. When she was a younger teenager."
<Crion> Gerald: "It was my impression she was dead."
<VoxPVoxD> "I'm sorry. An asset to..."
<Crion> Kingsley: "This freehold."
<Crion> "And this court."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "Okay."
<Crion> Gerald: "It also wasn't the intention for the maiden voyage here to be a kill list." He takes another big bite of his sandwich.
<Crion> Kingsley: "That's also true."
<Crion> The king of the Freehold of Baltimore: "Other courts will give other instructions. That's the...variable, that comes into play, with these multi-court motleys. We all knew this going in. The court will understand however you wish to take this."
<Crion> "The motley, I mean."
<Crion> "However the motley wishes to take this."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You're saying you want us to..."
<Crion> He finishes a waffle, with chicken speared on with it. "However, I want you to know what resources you have access to. As I currently run this freehold, I am in possession of the power to direct the full punishment that our laws allow against those who serve the enemy."
<Crion> "If you can find where Proctor and his pack lay their heads, I can...have it dealt with. It is, indeed, my job to have it dealt with. What I would ask in return is you conspire for Loser not to be there, for that."
<Crion> "Or," he says, "you can handle it yourselves."
<Crion> "But they cannot go home, and under no circumstances can they stay here."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's voice is very faint. "...right."
<Crion> Spearing the next bit of waffle. "It would, perhaps, feel better if we could just...throw them in a cell. Throw away the key."
<Crion> "But then, we know how that can feel."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart flexes his wrists unconsciously.
<Crion> Kingsley puts down his fork and sips his mimosa. "And that is one place we align with the Court of Summer. This freehold does not take prisoners. We will not become our keepers. Sometimes that means we cannot defer a hideous act. Sometimes that is how it has to be."
<Crion> "...Should it come to it, Gerald will run the freehold fire team. You should put together a method of contact with Lauren for passing on word."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart opens his mouth, finds no words, and takes solace in another bite of egg and another long sip of mimosa. Then he speaks. "I guess... I guess we'll need to work out our response as a group. I don't- I have no idea how the others will react to this kind of-- order."
<VoxPVoxD> "It's not secret, right? That Loser isn't... a target?"
<VoxPVoxD> "I can tell them."
<Crion> Kingsley nods. "You should be aware, however, that when I say Loser is not a target, I speak for Autumn. Not for the freehold. Other Courts have already expressed other opinions."
<Crion> He smiles faintly again. "But then, what use is being in season if you can't get your way?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...oh."
<Crion> "If you bring Loser in, you will have explicit cover and protection from the King of Baltimore."
<Crion> He sips his mimosa again. "But it's up to you to sell that. And make it happen."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'll report the will of the group. And then whether it's us or not us we'll. We'll make it happen."
<Crion> Gerald nods, this time. "And when I say that I'd appreciate not getting that call, the one to put together a team, I want you to understand that what I mean is you find some way to trick or oathbind them to changing their ways or going to California or something."
<Crion> Kingsley gives Gerald a look.
<Crion> The fetch sighs. "But I'd prefer to take that call than have you lot do it yourself."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't know what the others will think. But we'll figure it out."
<VoxPVoxD> A beat later: "So I guess this is the thing? That we were preparing for?"
<Crion> Kingsley almost cackles.
<Crion> "Ah, Stewart. Stewart, Stewart, Stewart."
<Crion> "Finish your eggs."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...why are you laughing at me?"
<Crion> Kingsley looks up from his food and for a second his eyes are dead flat, his mouth a thin line. Then he leans back and grimaces. "That's not the right question. First, I'm not laughing at you. Second, if I was, the answer would clearly be that I'm an asshole who is hiding something. Which is something that you already knew. So. The question you should ask -- and that I won't answer -- is:"
<Crion> "'What are you so afraid of?'"
<Crion> He smiles a nasty smile. "And I guarantee you this: it's not the Proctor."
<VoxPVoxD> "Oh."
<VoxPVoxD> "Well, great."
<Crion> Gerald ever-so-slightly shakes his head.
<Crion> Kingsley: "Isn't it just so."
<Crion> He takes another drink. "Well, this got more tense than I'd hoped. Less so than I'd, mmm, feared."
<Crion> "But then. This is what making partner looks like. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's ambush lunches with the boss."
<Crion> Gerald: "You wouldn't be here if we didn't have every faith in you. Which you should keep in mind, should you run into some of the other Autumn courtiers and they're unaccountably assholes to you."
<Crion> Kingsley's turn to shrug. "Some people rise to their level of competency early."
<VoxPVoxD> This isn't normal. The synchronicity, five Lost emerging at the same time, coalescing so easily. This is pregnant with significance, one they clearly don't understand themselves. Fear rises from impotence, and from fear the desperate urge for control. Violence, too, rises from fear, like smoke from a fire. He's not to blame. There's no need to take it personally. A bolt loosens, one notch
<VoxPVoxD> at a time.
<VoxPVoxD> "Are you thinking of anyone in particular when you say that?"
<Crion> Kingsley: "Oh, absolutely. But not Lauren, if that's what you're assuming."
<Crion> Gerald: "There are a number of courtiers who...don't come by the office much. You'll be introduced. When they return their e-mails and stop claiming they have the flu."
<Crion> Kingsley: "Christ, it's flu season again, isn't it."
<VoxPVoxD> "Oh, no, Lauren's always been super nice. I just, you know, I don't know everybody yet."
<Crion> Kingsley: "How to put this diplomatically. Autumn is a court of specialists, with special remits. You're one of the closest things to a generalist that we have. Which might have put an undue amount of pressure on you. But no matter how poorly you think you're doing, or how badly you think you're comporting yourself, we aggressively scouted you for very good reasons. One of which is that you'll
<Crion> ask the Autumn King why he's laughing at you at brunch, yes, but another being that you'll show up for brunch to begin with."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You must not always lead with the deviled eggs."
<Crion> "Usually we just get coffee." Gerald says, then finishes his sandwich.
<Crion> Kingsley: "Don't let it go to your head."
<Crion> Has Stewart ate and drank his fill?
<Crion> He can also ask some more questions, but, the boundaries of the answering have been fairly well laid out.
<VoxPVoxD> He hasn't drank his fill, but Stewart's what you call an anti-social drinker. "Okay. One more question. What's the, ah, clearance level here? Who's it okay to talk to this about. The others, obviously, but..." It's obvious to at least two people at the table he's asking if he can loop Lauren in.
<Crion> "Lauren and Santander are cleared, if not fully briefed on Lauren's part. Santander is going to know the goings-on whether we tell him or not -- and we do -- but our position...after some discussion..." Kingsley glances at Gerald. "...is that motley business isn't ours to divulge. So you control that particular spigot. Ravens, of course, knows everything."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Alright. Cool. Thanks."
<Crion> Kingsley raises his glass. "Keep us in the loop."
<Crion> Gerald: "And good hun--"
<Crion> "...Good luck."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart gets two bottles of champagne and a jug of Sunny D on the way home. He thinks about telling Lauren about his day. He thinks about it a lot. But between work that evening and the eternal brunch that carries him to quiet oblivion he just never finds an opening. Funny how that works out.
<Crion> --Fin.
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<Crion> It's still early October; some time has passed since your encounter in the Hedge with the Proctor and his pack. The two rescued changelings are in the care of the Spring Court at the moment -- it's seeming likely that Spring and Winter are getting new courtiers out of this moment, bringing the number of new changelings in the Freehold of Baltimore to an odd seven in the past six months. This
<Crion> is quite unusual, and there are intimations that perhaps it's straining the resources of the freehold to deal with it all at once -- at least, if the amount of complaining Banthem is doing to Kingsley upstairs at The Sidereal over the past few days is any indication.
<Crion> Of course, who knows if anyone in your motley is aware of any of that! You could have spent the intervening time bunkered down in your Hollow, or rooting around the Hedge, or gaming. Or all of the above. What have you been up to?
<banana> One thing Melanie's been up to - insofar as she's "up to" tasks involving positive action at all - is a direct followon from the rescue situation. At some point when most of the incipient team are around she's going to try and get everyone's attention: "Um, could I tell you all something? Not me exactly. I need to pass something on. If nobody's busy."
<dammitwho> Maggie is sitting in the warehouse's common area - carpet has laid down to make the bare concrete less unpleasant upon the feet, and comfortable (if old) chairs placed around the large tv connected to the media server. From it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRo7tMnM60I
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's been throwing himself into his work. He started a new Youtube series which is doing decent numbers, he's been puttering around the Hollow making sure everyone's TVs and computers are in working order, and he's been doing tech support for the freehold. For fun he digs around online for resources on vampires, using the occult lore he does know to separate the wheat from the chaff
<VoxPVoxD> in far-flung discords, unlisted wikis, and dark web redditlikes.
<dammitwho> "Hey, MELANIE! Come out here, there's a show I think you should s-- oh, there you are!"
<CBN> Tony's spent the time falling behind on his movie-watching. Most of his free time has been going towards some combination of keeping the Hollow and the immediate surroundings relatively tidy, hauling a futon into his hovel, and getting some old lawn furniture to set up a makeshift overflow-seating space for the ground floor. When pressed, he'll admit it's because he doesn't want to make anyone have to stand if they find any more
<CBN> stragglers out there, but so far it's mostly given Steve the opportunity to sit in like half a dozen different chairs.
<banana> Melanie: "What's this."
<VoxPVoxD> His only real social contact, except for when Maggie pins him down long enough to make him eat something, is with Lauren, and only because Lauren's always online. He hasn't hung out with her in person since they got the Superfetch set up. He keeps floating and discarding ideas for asking her to do stuff.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "It's a mystery program! This little bald fella solves crimes, but he uses ze psychology and ze little gray cells, I bet you'd get a kick out of it! Hold up though, what was it you wanted to pass on?"
<banana> "Oh, it's a period drama? That's an amazing hat- yes! Sorry. Okay."
<banana> The Elemental straightens, rustling gently over the 'bip' noise of a remote hitting pause. "I have information from the summer court."
<banana> Once she's presenting, Melanie's diffidence vanishes, replaced by smooth articulation. It's very much like an actor taking on a stage persona; a transformation that takes place when there's no back and forth of actual reactions to deal with or when she gets overly excited.
<CBN> Tony's also been converting a corner of the first floor into a kitchenette. So far there's enough of an oven there that he's been baking. Currently, he's cleaning a spot of dirt off of the doorhandle while he waits for tonight's experiment to finish: Chocolate chip banana bread.
<banana> "The Keeper loyalists we drove off last week are known to the freehold, in concept. Their principal is the shitty old man, who has form."
<banana> "He calls himself the Proctor, in keeping with their apparent tradition of using the dumbest possible monikers - it's a defense against hostile magic as well as resocialisation."
<banana> "Proctor has friends on the Other Side. He's repeatedly formed teams to capture, harass and convert the Lost here and in other places, perhaps other countries. They don't last, but he's a notorious coward with a habit of making it out alive."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's taking a break from hooking the fridge up. Looks like Melanie got pulled aside too.
<banana> "Consequently: K.I.L.L., Kid Kid.. Kid Kid, some number of kids, the sword guy, they're younger. Inexperienced. The woman they called 'Loser' is a different story, another repeat offender."
<banana> "Summer is, we will note, in occlusion. The modus operandi of Proctor's asshole squads is that they stick to a region, and in this case it's our region of the Hedge. We have the power and opportunity to confront them, and I'm told it's our responsibility to do so."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'm hearing the same thing from the King."
<VoxPVoxD> "Except I'm being told that we have to make sure Loser's okay."
<VoxPVoxD> "Everyone else needs to go, though."
<dammitwho> Maggie raises her eyebrows. "They're asking us to... you know, do away with them?"
<CBN> Tony hollers over from the kitchen. "Yeah but what's their fuckin'...deal?"
<banana> Melanie clasps her limbs behind her back. It doesn't really work as a rhetorical stance, since her trun- her torso is barely thicker than her arms. "We're to kill them. They've come back too many times."
<VoxPVoxD> "Not necessarily," Stewart says hastily.
<VoxPVoxD> "We can... we have the option of calling in a team."
<VoxPVoxD> "If we don't want to do it ourselves."
<banana> Melanie: "Ehh."
<banana> "I mean ultimately you're right. We'd have support if we really need it. But I think it's.. needed that we don't need it.."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I was told that if we can locate them we can just call in a... a hit squad."
<banana> To Tony: "Like Stockholm Syndrome for faeries. They're cowards and recidivists who want everyone else to suffer worse pain so they can forget theirs."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Uff. Her Gardenership's said we're to handle them in whatever way we're comfortable with, so long as they're, y'know, handled. Though we can't exactly resettle the little shits. 'scuse me."
<banana> Melanie slumps slightly. "Have we all been given slightly conflicting instructions."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Seems so. I got the impression that the decision to protect Loser was not... unanimous."
<dammitwho> She shrugs. "Maybe difference of emphasis. We all know we can't let them hurt anybody else, and s'long as that's done I can't imagine Their Nibs getting too upset about the how. Though," She adds sadly, "I don't see much way of doing it other than-- gkkkk!" She draws a finger across her throat.
<CBN> Tony shrugs. "Doesn't sound that conflicting to me, though? For what it's worth, my play is that the old guy and the real stuffy one have to go, everybody else, whatever. Not sure the chainsaw one or the ner---the Kid one---are gonna want to talk after we bury their friends though."
<dammitwho> "That little girl at the back? We should try and get her out... I mean maybe that's a trap, like a dove pretending to have a broke wing so it can trick and eat a wolf-" Possible Arcadia-based misunderstanding of how doves work here. "But if it is, it's a trap that works on us not wanting to hurt people we don't have to, so I guess we gotta run into it anyway."
<Crion> Steve's by every now and again, always when Tony's around, and occasionally amuses himself by helping or harming the clean-up effort, or sometimes both at once, but never in any catastrophic way. He won't have reported any sign of the loyalists in the near Hedge recently, but then, it's unclear the degree to which he remembers or cares to look.
<VoxPVoxD> "Kid Kid Kid shot Nels in the chest."
<banana> Melanie: "We don't have to become people who do this regularly. There was a.. promise about that."
<banana> "What do you know about Loser?" It's not a name you choose for yourself.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I know it's not her first time. I know the Autumn Court considers her an asset, or a potential asset. And I know that she had a chance to blow my cover out there and she didn't do it."
<VoxPVoxD> "I don't know why she was out there in the first place, I don't know what she's after, and I don't know why the King cares."
<CBN> Tony gestures to Stewart with an oven mitt. "Also there's shooting Nels yeah. Fuckin' A."
<banana> Melanie: "It seems okay to err on the side of care."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "No matter what we do, we have to find them. That means, probably, a lot of time in the Hedge."
<banana> "Let's practice learning this place when we have pieces of time and at least a pair of people. You're right, but none of us should be going out there alone!"
<dammitwho> She nods. "That's just good wilderness sense."
<banana> Smokeless heat shimmers around Melanie, an echo of record-breaking weather earlier in the year. The fridge Tony's wrangling shudders for a moment before gurgling back to life. "There's another reason I wouldn't want to encounter any of the loyalists alone, even if that wasn't super dangerous."
<banana> "They, um, repel me. Something about what they do, who they've chosen to be.. it's an unfair reaction. Choice might not be the right term. But I want to.. I made a promise to something about fights to the death. It feels like it's not worth living as long as monsters like Proctor go on. I know that's wrong, so."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Like a supra-ethical compulsion? A geas?"
<VoxPVoxD> That's kind of cool...
<CBN> Tony: "That sounds bad? But good to know."
<trenchfoot> Nels was studying, and practicing some of the songs she heard, and distinctly not going on adventures into the hedge (though she has been checking out the area around the Wherehouse). So when she wanders into the place from the elevator it's almost a surprise. "Um, hi? Did I miss an alarm...?"
<CBN> The timer goes off. Tony retrieves the banana bread, and sets it to cool on the range. Now the waiting game begins.
<banana> Melanie: "All I mean is, if we get the chance to really permanently end them, that's what I want to do. So if it's not the right thing to do at the time, please.. speak up. Haha."
<VoxPVoxD> Oh. She just wants to- oh.
<banana> Oh it's Nels. Rippling heat fades. Melanie subsides into embarassment and physically takes a couple of steps back.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "You're talking about the creeps? Yeah, we should get 'em."
<dammitwho> "Nels! Heya! Naw, we just got started talking about some stuff. Like, a minute ago, so you've got good timing."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So... the plan is to do it ourselves?"
<dammitwho> Maggie: "No better way."
<banana> Melanie: "If we don't do it, someone else has to."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...alright."
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Can't see that Proctor fella letting this go, and I sure wouldn't want him creeping up on my back in the Thorns."
<VoxPVoxD> "What's the actual-- we call go out together, like a, a posse?"
<dammitwho> "Figure we should at least see the lay of the land and whatnot. We shoulda done that anyway, I guess..."
<banana> Is Stewart really okay with this... "Maybe it's a long term thing. We don't have to dedicate ourselves to prowling the hedge like it's hunting season. We should explore over time and look for signs, trails."
<CBN> Tony: "Steve hasn't mentioned anything from them lately, do we have anything else to go on?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "They shot me. Fair is fair. So."
<banana> Melanie: "Steve and his horrible friends might come up with something. Until then, shall we just explore the local Hedge from time to time and, tell each other what we find?"
<trenchfoot> Also, delighted: "And how is Steve? I haven't seen him in a while."
<trenchfoot> Frowning: "Their friends are probably fine. Steve is just - incorrigible. They're a goose."
<CBN> Tony: "Oh he's been around." Tony brushes a stray feather from the common area furniture. "Probably good, hard to tell with them."
<Crion> Steve's actually been around more often the last couple days, and somewhat nicer -- perhaps suspiciously so...but he seems to want to spend more time in here with Tony than he does out there.
<trenchfoot> Good goose.
<banana> To be fair it's a lot nicer in here than out. "Do hobgoblins actually like being hobgoblins?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "They would rather be alive than not, I can tell you that."
<banana> Melanie: "Well I guess that's easier inside."
<CBN> Tony: "They like beer and messing around with our stuff, from there it's just philosophy."
<dammitwho> "That's a peculiar question. What's the alternative?"
<trenchfoot> Nels gestures to herself.
<banana> An example of a human? She does pass muster better than most of us.
<dammitwho> That was to Melanie, about whether hobgoblins like being hobgoblins.
<trenchfoot> That's true. Still valid.
<CBN> Tony swaps the side of his own head with an oven mitt. "Oh stupid, how'd I not mention this? Do any of you know what pigs are? Or not pigs, like..."He clears his throat, "Steve said, The Pigs." You can feel the emphasis caps.
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Seen a few." She doesn't elaborate, but does pat her purse to ensure the revolver is there. (It is.)
<dammitwho> She sits up. "The police are sniffin' around here? The hobgoblin police? Oh, I don't like that at all."
<CBN> Tony shrugs and touches the banana bread with a finger. Cool enough for a knife, so he starts slicing. Over his shoulder: "They didn't sound like regular or, regular for hobgoblins maybe? Police. Steve didn't elaborate and you try getting more out of that one than he wants."
<banana> Melanie: "Oh."
<dammitwho> "Gonna have to shoo them off, then."
<banana> "Mr. List told me about those guys. They're kind of created from the Jungian collective unconscious Baltimore view of cops. Like.. directly and exactly from."
<banana> "So imagine if BPD was, just as bad?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I was just told to dodge 'em and pretend they weren't there."
<banana> Melanie: "Maybe we could leave the hollow for a while and go do something in the world until they stop sniffing around."
<CBN> Tony: "No wonder Steve's been hanging out so much. Anyway, banana bread. Hands for plates kids!" Tony starts carving off slices for anyone who wants to swing by the kitchen.
<banana> Omg nevermind "..wait no I'm staying here. Yum."
<VoxPVoxD> Oh hell yes.
<trenchfoot> Augh. Augh yes. "Slice for me, please."
<CBN> Tony distributes the banana bread. It has chocolate chips all nicely melted throughout, so there's a pretty high floor for how bad it can possibly be. C+ in Home Ec, easy.
<banana> Melanie: "I never had any trouble with the cops when I moved to the city but I had a lot of teammates who did. They tell stories which are like wow, is the hate really that bad, and then you just.. see that exact stuff being real on TV and in the paper."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "They used to be even worse."
<banana> Melanie: "I think it goes back to, like, what the police are really for. Have you ever read Settlers by J Sakai?"
<CBN> Tony gives Melanie the look of you-should-know-that's-no, as he usually does when she asks questions about books.
<banana> Melanie considers the look, and the audience generally.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What's it called?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Who?"
<banana> "It's basically about the early history of America and other countries that were colonised and.. the short version is, that can lead to problems."
<CBN> "Amyagway, mgno." Tony finishes chewing and swallows the piece of banana bread he was on. "They get worse and they get better, The Pigs, I think? But right now they're especially bad, which is why Steve's been around so much, but they're never going to really go away, and I'm going to run out of flour sometime here, so we should probably go do...something?"
<banana> To Stewart: "I'll send you a PDF."
<banana> "We could go shopping.. or we could watch that show about the hatted monsieur."
<CBN> Tony puts another pan over this one to help keep it warm, and neatly sets aside the oven mitts. "Besides, I don't want Steve being scared, or eating and drinking all my stuff."
<banana> "Shopping for flour I meant."
<CBN> Tony: "So, better to go out there to get the hours in, even if we don't get too much out of it."
<CBN> He sighs a little. "Hiding from other people's problems just makes them ours."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "We get them out of the hedge."
<trenchfoot> "That's something."
<CBN> Tony: "Or at least out of our corner of it for awhile."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So like, flush out the Pigs like they're prairie dogs?"
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Aw, I don't mind. Going to work feels good, so long as it's work that you can see the use of it."
<CBN> Getting into the idea more, but more to himself than anyone else. "Hell yeah, let's go pick a fight with some cops."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "No, no. Let's go pick off some cops so's that they don't know there was a fight at all."
<CBN> Tony simmers slightly. "Yeah that's probably smarter. But let's go before I sober up too much."
<CBN> You thought Tony was baking sober? Folly.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart still faintly can't believe this is happening, but he goes along.
<trenchfoot> If he hasn't learned that all cops are bastards by now, Nels can tell stories.
<banana> Tony's nongourmet snacks are delicious. Like a sort of diner food version of desserts. Digestion's.. difficult, though, and Melanie is exhausted by this much socialisation. She likes her new friends(? does she have the right to that word) so much and wants to keep up with being normal. She kind of doesn't want to go out right now. But she never really wants to go out, and it wouldn't
<banana> be ok to give into that.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Cheer up, Mel!" She slaps Melanie on the back heartily. "We can watch Monsieur Poirot when we get back."
<banana> "Yes, okay." Melanie sways a little, though it feels about as unyielding as slapping a wall.
<CBN> Tony's thinking out loud, pacing in the kitchen, sipping from a previously hidden surprise beer. "So we need to get rid of the Loyalists, and chase off the Pigs. Or get rid of some of the Loyalists, and The Pigs are out there. Hm. Hm."
<banana> "Let's not try and find the loyalists today. The hedgepolice would, like, take their side."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "And we really just want them to go away. Like, all of them. So."
<trenchfoot> She pauses. "That is what we want, right?"
<CBN> Tony swigs. "You can't really make The Pigs go away forever, Steve was saying. It's the weather." Slug. "Not that that means we can't go punch the rain in the stupid head while we're doing other stuff."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "Does fighting them make them go away or just sniff around more?"
<trenchfoot> "That wasn't explained to me, when I learned about the pigs."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah we're not going to end up calling down the Hob National Guard, or something, are we?"
<CBN> Tony shrugs. "Not really sure, but you gotta figure it makes THOSE Pigs not able to sniff for awhile. Anyway that's just a thing Steve was explaining earlier, so things to think about. Slowly, inevitably, he is sobering up just enough to rethink the worst of this. "Besides, we've got the Loyalists to definitely take care of right now, don't we?"
<trenchfoot> Nels: "They shot me."
<trenchfoot> She nods, self-assured.
<banana> Melanie: "No, not right now! I mean that would be totally okay if we somehow accomplished it? But nobody was expecting us to immediately go and hunt them down, without planning or training or information."
<trenchfoot> She deflates. That's a good point. "...maybe we can do that later."
<CBN> Tony: "I dunno about you Melanie but when Coach C and Spring tell me to do something it's usually pretty immediate. We can be smart about it though yeah."
<CBN> Tony: "And they said, Proctor's out, bogue snob guy's out, everyone else they don't care, we can rock-paper-scissors on that if we gotta."
<trenchfoot> Suddenly: "The one who - she looked miserable. We should help."
<VoxPVoxD> "That was Loser."
<banana> 'Coach', lol. "I mean I totally agree with the goal. Get rid of Proctor and.. maybe see if Loser isn't ike the others. But maybe we could-" she makes a knob-turning motion in the air. "Start with looking for their trail. We shouldn't go out there aiming to actually find and fight them on the spot, not knowing what they're up to or whether they're in a position of power."
<banana> 'Coach', lol. "I mean I totally agree with the goal. Get rid of Proctor and.. maybe see if Loser isn't ike the others. But maybe we could-" she makes a knob-turning motion in the air. "Start with looking for their trail. We shouldn't go out there aiming to actually find and fight them on the spot, not knowing what they're up to or whether they're in a position of power."
<dammitwho> Maggie, slowly: "Hitting the loyalists immediately sounds like a good way to get a chainsaw in the snoot."
<CBN> Tony: "We should figure out how to avoid the Pigs while we're getting at the Loyalists, can we all agree on that?"
<dammitwho> "Sure."
<CBN> T: "Just to keep this a one-front war today, anyway."
<trenchfoot> Grumbling: "They shot me."
<banana> Melanie: "But we don't want them to shoot you again."
<trenchfoot> Nels: "I know! I know."
<trenchfoot> She's both younger and older than Melanie. That's weird. Best not to think about it.
<trenchfoot> It's surprisingly easy to slide into the position of a distressed person lost in the hedge and direct the pigs away from the Wherehouse. (It doesn't have an official name. She's calling it that anyway.) There's just so many of them, though - hopefully the rest have figured out how to stop the onslaught.
<CBN> Tony, meanwhile, does one of the things Tony does best: Finding stuff to follow and silently, eerily watching it as it does its business. In this case, Pigs doing Pig Business.
<banana> Melanie follows the others outside - the wrong outside, into the Hedge. She's not sure how to help; it doesn't respond well to science or to force. She tries to clear and change paths, to help the others make their way around while impeding the weird cop-imitating monsters.. physically positioning garbage bins and 'street closed' signs and so on isn't having much effect. Time to reconsider.
<trenchfoot> She's so distressed. It takes multiple pigs to comfort her, as her cohort handles the rest - they are handling them, right? Please. Please this is humiliating
<dammitwho> Well, that was a bust. Maggie has absolutely no idea what would consitute a sign of changeling habitation. "Pfoo. I don't know what I'm doing, here." She resolves to talk to Stewart as soon as he's free.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, bravely, stays inside. The wiki has plenty of relevant information, which Stewart can relay without going into the Hedge. Every part of a team matters!
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's free whenever Maggie catches him next.
<dammitwho> Maggie leans on the wall near to where Stewart is no doubt doing something incredibly important on the computer. "Stewart, I'm gonna level with you. I need your help. Well, really, I need the Autumn Court's help but that's more or less you right now."
<CBN> Tony's not known to ALL the hobs, that would be impossible. But Steve's got a loose enough beak that some of them definitely know that the dirt man is a generous baker and leaves a full sixer out round side of the wherehouse unattended for just long enough, pretty often. So when he starts asking things like 'Hey, have you seen <the descriptions of the Loyalists> around here lately, and where? I'd hate to spend all night looking for them
<CBN> and not have any time to bake or buy beer or not swing around to check and see if any of y'all haven't gotten got by shit bigger than you yet,' hobs listen.
<dammitwho> "I was out there trying to help give the Wherehouse-" Nels was right, that's a good name! "-the once over, see if I could make it harder for varmints and such to spot that we're living here, when it struck me that I didn't have the faintest idea what would count as 'signs of habitation' out here." She sighs. "I'm Spring, and I know it. A song in my heart and all that. But it would be
<dammitwho> nice to have witchy tomes and such to look at." She taps her temple. "A gal's gotta have more than old leaves in her noggin."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart tabs away from the passive-aggressive argument about trading mechanics he was reading. "Oh, sure! Of course. How can I help?"
<CBN> And that's how Tony made a giant clam with an extremely catty pink pearl with a human face, almost cry. It didn't point the way, but a flock of hiveminded, fish-like crustaceans going by Bill did. Bill said they saw the Loyalists thataway, and to please bake more apple pies soon, thank you.
<banana> Melanie's not helping, and she hates it, but she doesn't know what to do about it. She trails the pigs back and forth, managing at least to stay out of sight - easy when they aren't really looking. She'll keep the others updated on where they're going, though it isn't particularly useful to know.
<dammitwho> Maggie: "Golly, hmm. Well, to start, is there any 'A Beginner's Guide To Hiding In The Hedge' or something of that nature?"
<Crion> To be fair to Melanie, their patrol routes don't seem to be fixed or even sensible; at one point she spent an arbitrary amount of time watching a pair of pigs walk up and down the same hedgerow 'block,' knocking on obviously fake painted-on doors, shouting something incoherent but with the cadence of 'POLICE!' before moving on. But there do appear to be some places they won't patrol -- it's
<Crion> hard to tell if that's intent or just, weird randomness on the part of the Pigs. Maybe compare notes...? Assuming the Hedge doesn't shift.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Nothing in the fak..." (that's what he says, the 'fak') "Let me see who's online..."
<Crion> QUOTH is online -- Stewart knows this is the landing like, chat bot for Ravens, which then logs on with a personalized account for whoever...they?...are speaking for.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart floats a query to the bot. <Do we have a primer available on camouflaging Hollows from, say, Hobgoblin detection? Helps us and helps us look for signs of another occluded Hollow in the area.>
<Crion> QUOTH: <'STEWART READER,' KNOWN OTHERWISE AS 'CRITICALMASS:'>
<Crion> <SUCH A VOLUME IS N>
<Crion> The typing dot dot dots appear again.
<Crion> <!!!>
<Crion> <TRANSFERING>
<Crion> QUOTH|THE|BITTER|WIND has logged on.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh shit! The Lord Sage of the Unknown Reaches just logged on."
<Crion> QUOTH|THE|BITTER|WIND: <'STEWART READER,' KNOWN OTHERWISE AS 'CRITICALMASS:'>
<Crion> <Assuming direct control.>
<Crion> <AH! Stewart. Yes.>
<Crion> <You've caught me at an opportune time. Let's see here...>
<dammitwho> Maggie nods. "Now that's a good wizardly name. Solid."
<Crion> In a few moments, Santander pastes three pdf links into the chat, each of which is a scan of a monogram that Santander himself has written, discoursing on the subject of Hollows. Much of the text is irrelevant -- though very interesting -- theoretical musings on the magickal (yes, with a k) and contractual roots, so to speak, that undergird the Hollow system. But he has also provided bookmarks
<Crion> to relevant parts of the text. Most importantly, every real door or portal in the Hedge has a tell. A real manhole cover will have a hole with which to insert a prybar to remove it, rather than being solid metal, even if it does not budge. A real doorknob will turn but hold fast to its lock, rather than just be a lump of metal sticking from the wall. And so on.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "He's so cool."
<trenchfoot> She's still pressing the pigs - aren't you going to find the person who put her here? Can't you lead her out? NO she will not leave, not until justice is done -- but they're doing a better job of organizing. Fuck.
<CBN> Tony's good at finding his way through the Hedge, now he has a semi-detailed and very-current napkin map of where the Pigs patrol, and a direction to go in to find the Loyalists. So, like an idiot, he goes to do that.
<VoxPVoxD> This time Stewart's tagging along, hanging close, checking for signs and wonders, and just trying to... put good energy out there.
<Crion> There are some locations where the Pigs avoid that overlap with where the hobs said they'd seen Loser wandering. Seems like a good place to start.
<CBN> It's very good energy. Tony values the 13th man, even if it's literally just one man.
<Crion> The Pigs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4LYZC97hmM Beat all the white trash; beat whoever you see. Don't need a reason: L A P D
<Crion> (Warning: slurs)
<Crion> Stewart can't actually make out most of the lyrics, though. It's weird.
<banana> The fake cops might not actually do anything dangerous if you don't go near them, but they're so impervious to distraction. It's frustrating. Melanie tags Nels out and prepares to call upon a fae contract - *forcing* the Hedge to shape itself against them and keep them away. She rips pot plants from porches and replants them in a string across the road ahead of a cop 'car', trading promises
<banana> with her own memories of the parts of the Hedge she fell threw.
<banana> through
<banana> A hedge within the Hedge begins to grow... too slowly. Melanie retreats.
<banana> Maybe enough the damn plants will survive the thing's tyres to put up a wall next go-ground of their patrol route.
<Crion> Eventually, they find it. It looks like just about any other one of these fake, incoherent buildings on the outside, but you can see -- just barely see, if you get the good vantage point Tony took with the help of Melanie's Hedgespinning, while Nels kept the local Pigs who weren't waylaid by the new walls in the Hedge they weren't expecting distracted with her concerned-citizen act. The
<Crion> building looks normal...but there's a big old covered wagon sitting atop its roof, massive, with a great, sealed door. Should have been impossible for it to ever get up there. Would have been impossible to see just looking up from the street.
<Crion> It's Stewart and Maggie who eventually confirm this is where they need to be: each building on the block has a stoop, and each has a cage storm door and a front door with a knob beyond it. All the others are clear fakes. The storm cage doesn't budge. The knob doesn't rattle. Not so on this building. This is real.
<Crion> They've found someone's Hollow. And all signs says it's the Proctor's and his pack.
<trenchfoot> Fuck.
<Crion> ...Sirens in the distance...
<Crion> They don't sound close.
<trenchfoot> Well.
<dammitwho> Hmm.
<Crion> When you get back to your own Hollow, there are Pigs patrolling outside. They're trivial to avoid, since you know what they do and what they are.
<Crion> But they weren't here before.
<Crion> And Steve is bunkering down tonight, with a beer.
<CBN> Tony: "Hey Steve, what's up." Trying not to be as brusque as it definitely will be, after trudging all over the Hedge for the night.
<dammitwho> "Ufffff da."
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion>
<Crion> Things are still...normal...in Baltimore. For certain definitions thereof.
<Crion> Sure, there are a bunch of Pigs roaming the near Hedge, but they can't hope to get into the motley's Hollow and don't seem aware of where it really is. Tony's got a bunch of weird rude buddies/pets going in and out, ringled by the honking Steve, but that's usual. And things on the real-world side of the city are as they've always been.
<Crion> Where's Stewart on his next day off after locating the Loyalist Hollow?
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart is at his apartment, which needs to be kept clean, and where geese and cops and cackling kill-orders mostly stop at the door. He's reading on his iPad, this 'Settlers' pdf Melanie linked him. Woof. He's got an ear out for any notifiications that might come from his computer.
<Crion> What's he set the notification sound to on the hex box Autumn chat app? It can be any normal system sound...along with a bunch of onboard, seemingly-default spooky sounds besides...?
<VoxPVoxD> He's got it set up differently for different people. Santander gets the MIDI of a lightning strike. Kingsley gets an ominous wind chime, where Gerald has the same chime in a major key. Lauren's got a creepy theremin tone.
<Crion> It'll be that creepy theremin tone he hears, then, twice.
<Crion> <he>
<Crion> <y>
<Crion> Username dolor_sit_amet
<Crion> of course.
<Crion> <u up>
<Crion> <sry>
<Crion> <Are you awake.>
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart hears those weird notes and he's in the chair. He doesn't scramble, he'll insist. <yeah sorry i was reading. what's up>
<Crion> <power in my building's out. i'm on a coMPANY PHONE>
<Crion> <you wanna crash the mage bar>
<VoxPVoxD> Oh hell yes. <100%>
<Crion> <alright i'll be there in 30>
<VoxPVoxD> <sick>
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's only got 30 minutes to... the apartment's already immaculate. Sometimes being a tightly bundled ball of neuroses works in your favor.
<Crion> If he hasn't already, how long does it take Stewart to register that a girl just asked him to meet her at a bar?
<Crion> If it helps, pictures of the location indicate he's looking for jeans, decent shoes, and a gingham shirt.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's registered and dismissed that four times before he's out the door. The oscillating quantum potentiality finds Stewart at ease, meeting a friend for an exciting new venture and bewildered, overwhelmed, mired in the rules of a game no one ever fully taught him. For now, he's comfortable (as comfortable as Stewart gets without a keyboard under his hands) and, arguably, he looks
<VoxPVoxD> nice.
<Crion> Nice. Does he drive?
<VoxPVoxD> Yeah, he's gotten used to having his own car, and between Uber's pricing and the stuff Melanie keeps sending him to read it's getting harder and harder to justify booking a ride. He could always walk, but, these are his nice shoes, which he wears so infrequently that they aren't broken in yet.
<Crion> Hard to find parking up there! Hard...
<Crion> ...But not so hard tonight!
<VoxPVoxD> What luck!
<Crion> He finds a spot on the Belvedere's block, just in front of but not blocking the fire hydrant -- the curb's colored here to let him know.
<Crion> As he parks and steps out, his eye catches on a man cater-corner from where he parked, a wiry, handsome man with slicked back hair and subdued -- but still red -- suit. He winks, turns, and walks up the block.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart makes eye contact with him for just a moment before he turns away.
<Crion> The Red-Suited Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfXupu60v-Q No we can't slow down; we can't hold back; though you know we wish we could.
<VoxPVoxD> Nice. So there's a nonzero chance that was the actual Devil. Cool. Cool cool cool. Well, we're parked.
<Crion> The Belvedere Hotel has a nice, spacious walk up, a man to open the door -- he does, Stewart is precisely the sort of young man who they expect to be walking into this hotel -- and a semi-busy lobby with a...yes, there it is. A great wooden, hardcarved sign over a pair of open double-doors off to the left, before the reception desk: THE OWL BAR
<Crion> Below that: EST. 1903.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart idly wonders how much of the national register of historic buildings is infested with the supernatural. Is it all of it? It might be all of it. He also looks around. Any sign of Lauren?
<Crion> https://i.imgur.com/pbQInHT.png
<Crion> The eyes are more imposing than perhaps they should be, for symbolic owl eyes.
<Crion> How on time is he?
<Crion> Early, on-time, late...?
<Crion> Well. He's not late.
<VoxPVoxD> Since parking was a lot easier than he expected, he's about five minutes early.
<Crion> Then he's just in time to see Lauren in...a yellow sundress...having a heated conversation with a tall African-American man at the front door of the Owl Bar. He seems very long-suffering.
<VoxPVoxD> Whaaahowowowowookay. Stewart approaches the confrontation.
<Crion> Lauren: "You've seen my ID. I can drink wherever I want. This is BULLSHIT!"
<Crion> The big guy: "This is for your ow..."
<Crion> He sees Stewart. And it's clear that he sees Stewart.
<Crion> "Oh."
<Crion> "Well, if it's like that."
<Crion> Lauren: "Yes, Fireman, it IS li--"
<Crion> She stiffens and turns to follow his eyes, and by the time she faces Stewart, she's...almost smiling? No, that's still a grimace. "Hi,"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Hey. Is-- is something up?"
<Crion> "No!" she says. "No. We were just...going inside?"
<Crion> It's a very aggressive half-question.
<Crion> 'Fireman' closes his eyes. "The Owl Bar expects the best behavior from its guests." He opens them again to glare at Lauren. "Children's menu is available until 10 PM." He looks at Stewart again. Then: "Good evening, Mr. Reader. Ms. Ipsum."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Thank you so much."
<Crion> As you walk in, he'll motion to another bouncer and walk off. Seems he's not actually the usual doorman.
<Crion> Fireman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eJbxI-jZbA Don't you ever tame your demons, but always keep them on a leash.
<Crion> The hostess chipperly asks you if you want a table or the bar. Lauren's going to volunteer table almost immediately unless contradicted.
<VoxPVoxD> Table sounds good to Stewart. So does this song.
<Crion> Once the hostess has seated them -- Lauren makes sure they're as far from everyone as possible, though this place will eventually be filling up -- Lauren sips the ice water and says, "Sorry about Fireman. That's his name. He's a wizard."
<Crion> "Sometimes he's an asshole about letting us drink here."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Only sometimes?"
<Crion> It's weird...sound seems to carry less than it should in here. Hard to tell why, whether it's acoustics or something else. But there's no live music and the piano stuff being piped in from the PA is very soft. So is the argument between two soon-to-be-ex partners three tables down.
<Crion> She shrugs. "Kingsley and Santander are close with these dudes. For certain definitions of close. And it's not like we're going up to the thirteenth floor!"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "This is my first time here. How often do you come down?"
<Crion> She grins at some private joke. "I don't go anywhere often."
<Crion> "But when I go out, it's here."
<Crion> A waitress will come by with menus. Lauren orders a house pilsner. This place's specialty is high-end personal pizzas from a big brick-oven pizza they keep sort of backed up to the bar area so you can see them putting the things in and out.
<Crion> *big brick pizza oven
<Crion> One of the specialty toppings is, yes, lump crab. They let you choose whether the crab meat is cooked with the pizza, added after, or sauteed alongside.
<Crion> There's also pineapple and ham and all that nonsense.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart orders a stout for now. "This place must be special if it can get Lauren Ipsum out of her fortress time and again."
<Crion> She looks intentionally unimpressed about it. "It's got wizards."
<Crion> "I mean, they don't like. HANG AROUND down here."
<Crion> "Not all the time."
<VoxPVoxD> "But if you come here to people-watch often enough you'll catch..."
<Crion> Chipperly: "A stake, a bullet, a car, a rifle grenade--"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, I see the appeal."
<Crion> She laughs. "But seriously, this place is under their protection. It makes it a good place to talk. And yeah, they're listening, so we can't talk real secret shit, but. Well."
<Crion> "NORMAL secret shit they already know."
<Crion> "Wizards."
<Crion> "And we have agreements. Oaths."
<Crion> "Not you and me, but the people above us."
<Crion> She sips her beer again. "So basically we can treat this like The Sidereal, except we have to pay for food."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Seems fair enough. Are you hungry?"
<Crion> "Oh yes, I'll be ordering a pizza when the waitress comes back. Do you want to split nachos?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well I do now."
<Crion> She grins. When the waitress returns, it'll be a plate of nachos to split, one personal pepperoni and four cheese pizza for Lauren, and...anything for Stewart?
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart'll get a personal margherita. Between that, the stout and the nachos, he doesn't want to have to roll out of here. "So, okay, no trade secrets, obviously."
<Crion> She nods firmly. "Current events are fine, though."
<Crion> "For the most part. If you've stumbled on a way to murder every vampire, keep to yourself. Just so we can sell it back to the vampires."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Good looking out. But that's not the way the murder winds are blowing."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Good looking out. But that's not the way the murder winds are blowing."
<Crion> Lauren hides her grimace with another sip of beer.
<Crion> Nachos! That was quick.
<Crion> After a particular cheesy one: "That bad, huh?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "When I had the thing with Kingsley and Gerald, I was expecting a lot more pushback. Like, keep watch, defend your base, I expected that kind of thing. But these" his voice drops to a whisper for a moment as the nachos arrive "these out-of-towners and their combat specs are just, like *here* and everyone's totally like 'Yeah, no, it's cool, let's go square off' nevermind
<VoxPVoxD> the fact that Nels got fucking shot in the chest."
<Crion> She blinks. "Is she alright?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "She was wearing a vest. I think Maggie did something, some clause or-- she's fine. But it's insane! One of them, she's this big jacked like, Zarya with a chainsaw. And everyone's just, fine with it? I feel like I got backdoored into the Walking Dead here."
<Crion> She sighs and finishes a nacho. "I don't think everyone's fine with it. And from what I've heard about The Walking Dead, it went a lot better than that. No one died, right?"
<Crion> "So it's more like...you got backdoored into a horror movie, where everyone sucks."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Which sounds a lot more like reality."
<Crion> She sips her beer again. "Is everyone REALLY like, 'let's go square off?'"
<Crion> "Like, that's 1v1, right?"
<Crion> "Squares have the same sides all the way around."
<VoxPVoxD> Three bites of nachos and this stout and Stewart can already feel his gut sloshing around. It's so good though. "No, we're like... basically we had to find them, and we think we did, right. But Gerald gave us the option to hand off, uh, step two to another team. The Wherehouse didn't want any of that. Everyone was into us doing it ourselves."
<Crion> Lauren: "The...wait. You named it??"
<Crion> "You named you???"
<Crion> She slams the counter. "You have to lead with this stuff!!!"
<Crion> "That's so cool!!"
<Crion> "Sorry. Sorry."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks startled and delighted. "Nels came up with it. Maggie started using it. Now it's kind of stuck."
<Crion> Primly and firmly: "Names you give yourself are very important. And also impossible to use in magic. I approve."
<Crion> "Anyway. I'm jealous."
<Crion> Hastily: "Not enough to want to, like, join you."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Hey, we're only trying to catch up. There are some devastatingly good self-given names floating around."
<Crion> "But this doesn't sound like The Walking Dead at all. If uh. What I've heard about The Walking Dead is true."
<Crion> "None of those people like each other at all."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Maybe it's me that's the weird one. Like I'm not saying those guys don't deserve it, or whatever. But like... I don't know. I keep thinking about how Gerald and I, sort of, cleaned one of those up."
<Crion> Lauren's pizza is here. She devours a slice. With her mouth still slightly full: "Well, you're not going to be cleaning anything up, right?" *gulp* "And you don't have to kill them unless you have to. You can, like, put them on a hobwagon down Route 666 after making them swear not to get off until somewhere around the Ozarks and never come back. Maybe you have to hurt them, but you don't have
<Crion> to KILL them. So are you guys committed to killing them?"
<VoxPVoxD> Man that looks good. "Like, would we offer and accept other terms as long as they fucked off? I don't know. Probably. But the way Kingsley and Melanie were talking it seems like we're at least *expected* to kill them."
<Crion> She rolls her eyes. "Were you asked to kill them?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Not... directly..."
<Crion> "Then I'd have a little faith in the forbearance of the man who not only forgave his fetch, but calls him brother, when it comes to accepting creative non-violent solutions." She pushes forward the pizza dish. "Have a slice. You're staring."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart takes a slice. "You're right." He takes a bite. Chews it thoughtfully. "I just, I hear gunshots and chainsaws revving and my mind locks on to the worst case scenario and then suddenly that's the center of the universe now."
<Crion> She pauses. "I'm not saying it won't suck. You know, when you walked in the door that day at the office, I asked why they got you. With 'The Wherehouse,' I understand now. We don't actually, uh." She has another bit of pizza. "Have the same skillset."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You and me, you mean?"
<Crion> "Yeah."
<Crion> "I mean we have like."
<Crion> "70% of the same skillset."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart watches Lauren elaborate.
<Crion> "But you're able to have the problems you have with this stuff, this field stuff -- real problems!! -- without having also either ordered Kingsley to stop putting this shit on you, or stopped going outside. You're here in your nice shirt and clean jeans drinking...okay, you're drinking a stout, and who does that, but you're able to maintain, assess, and proceed. That's what Gerald calls it.
<Crion> MAPing. And you also realize how fucked up it is."
<Crion> "It's a hard balancing act, being scared in the court of fear. I know."
<Crion> She seems to realize she's been giving a speech now, and goes bright red.
<Crion> "Anyway, Kingsley's the king of the freehold. Fuck the rest of 'em. That's what I say."
<Crion> She hurriedly sips more beer.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart, of course, is rapt.
<Crion> "Have another slice!!"
<VoxPVoxD> "So you're saying, what, you're saying that it's my job to be running back and forth freaking out all the time?"
<VoxPVoxD> "That this constitutes a skillset?"
<Crion> "Stewart. You're going to be freaking out all the time no matter what." She sips her beer again. "I was putting that in the 70%."
<Crion> "And yes, caring about why you do things is a learned skill."
<Crion> "Look at those Loyalists if you disagree."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Okay, you're right. So what would you do if you were in my situation? How would you apply your skillset?"
<Crion> "I've got two answers to that," she says. "The first is what I'd love for myself to do, in an ideal world."
<Crion> "The second is what I think I'd actually do."
<Crion> "I can give you either, or both."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Both, please. I want to hear from present Lauren and all hypothetical future Laurens."
<Crion> She doesn't seem to find that funny. "So. Route 666. That's a huge trod, one of the biggest we know of. It runs vaguely from around the Interstate 70 sign outside Baltimore -- which is actually on I-695 -- to Cove Fort, Utah, where it hits I-15. Long stretch of road. You know where their Hollow is; you know how you get internet in a Hollow. That means Kid Kid Kid, unless he has access to our
<Crion> magic and a spoofed server, is using a goblin switchboard. That means you can jump his signal and send him some kind of meet request out near the Route 666 trod. These guys are go-getters, right? They're also bullies. Tailor it to that, and no matter how suspicious it is, they'll show. You neutralize them, you get the Travelling Hobs to agree to take them on board, you oathbind them never to
<Crion> see the Atlantic Ocean again. That's the ideal."
<Crion> She leans forward. "What I'd actually do is tell Loser, the chainsaw girl, and the fake brit to fuck off, and tell your Summer and your Winter Court that no one ever needs to see Kid Kid Kid or the Proctor ever again."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's stunned.
<Crion> "I wasn't around last time Proctor was through."
<Crion> "I was around for the fallout."
<VoxPVoxD> "What happened?"
<Crion> Her brow knits. "People...couldn't go on living."
<Crion> "With themselves."
<Crion> "So they didn't."
<Crion> She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "He tricked a courtier into giving two other freeholders up. The courtier thought he was helping."
<Crion> "Proctor made sure, when it was done, that he knew that he wasn't."
<VoxPVoxD> "Oh."
<Crion> Lauren takes a bite of another slice. "As for Kid Kid Kid, he's an alt-right fuck who just needs to die. Why do you think it's three Kids?"
<Crion> She pauses. "This got a lot more serious than I meant for it to get."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's fine, I'm just as- wait, how serious did you mean for it to get?"
<Crion> Lauren: "I was hoping to see if you played Destiny 2, since it's F2P and you seem like that kind of MMO pi---person, might be that kind of MMO person, and I've gotten addicted to shooting weird aliens in the head."
<Crion> "Also, I wanted pizza and my internet was out and I wanted to see you."
<Crion> "And YOU wanted to see the Owl Bar."
<Crion> "So, you know, good all around."
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That's still in my backlog. I completely missed Destiny 1, but I'm hearing that's not a problem?"
<Crion> She laughs. "Fuck no! They got free of Activision, which means all the dumb gating bullshit is done too. The new expansion is great!"
<Crion> Her phone buzzes. "Oh! Power's back."
<Crion> "You ready to head out?"
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, let's go."
<Crion> Lauren throws down the law office business card...and takes Stewart by the hand as they walk out of the bar, through the lobby, to the street outside. A car rolls up for her that Stewart will recognize -- Gerald, of course. Lauren lets go of his hand as the window rolls down, but the very slight smirk on his face shows through. "Thanks for coming out," Lauren says.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Thanks for inviting. I had a great time."
<Crion> "So did I." She takes his hand again, squeezes it, then jumps into the backseat.
<Crion> Gerald looks studiously forward. "Good evening, Mr. Reader."
<Crion> This is both a greeting and a farewell.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's just flustered enough to only manage a "Yeahthanksbye-" before the window rolls up and they're gone.
<Crion> Back to his car, then?
<VoxPVoxD> Yeah. Stewart's still flexing his hand when he goes to open the car door with the other one.
<Crion> He's got his seat belt on and is about ready to put in the key when...there's a knock on the window.
<Crion> It's a smiling African-American man, in plainclothes, and he's got a police badge
<Crion> .
<Crion> He makes the "roll it down" motion.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart lowers the window. "Is there a problem?"
<Crion> His mouth was open to say something before Stewart said something first. "No. No, player. Nothing's wrong. Sorry to bother you. Sorry to get in your way."
<Crion> "Did you know you're parked illegally?"
<Crion> Stewart is not parked illegally.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "No, I did not know that. I'm sorry."
<Crion> The man's smile widens and his stare deepens. "You're sorry."
<Crion> He straightens up, speaking to someone over on the other side of the car. "He says he's sorry."
<Crion> "Well then, we have no choice but to believe him," says the woman leaning against Stewart's passenger side door, grinning.
<VoxPVoxD> Stewart's white enough that he's only very nervous.
<Crion> "Yeah, he is sorry," the 'cop' says, then leans down. "You're Stewart. I'm Singular. Both upper and lower case. I've got a Permit -- that's my partner over there -- and you don't. You're here without authority. Do you understand how that goes for boys like you, in towns like this?"
<Crion> Singular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udmTfK6_aM8 The whole world loves it when you sing the blues; the whole world loves it when you're in the news.
<Crion> Permit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnO-MflYxCw You better run, better run -- outrun my gun.
<VoxPVoxD> Okay now he's freaking out. But his keel stays steady. Heart thudding in his chest he focuses on the music in his ears, and says clearly and slowly: "How does it go?"
<Crion> Singular cackles. "Well, young man, I'm glad you asked. It goes a little bit like--"
<Crion> The badge in Singular's hand hisses, glows, and ignites his hand and coat.
<Crion> "AHHHH!!!! AHHH!!!!!!!!"
<Crion> "FUCK!!!"
<VoxPVoxD> Holy shit. Stewart starts his car.
<Crion> In his rear view mirror, he sees Fireman walking down the street.
<Crion> And taking off his suit jacket.
<Crion> He nods to Stewart. The message is clear: drive.
<VoxPVoxD> Holy shit holy shit holy shit-- the car squeals out of there.
<Crion> The sirens won't even start for twenty minutes or so. And on the news, it'll be an engine fire.
<Crion> Weird.
<Crion> Just another day in Baltimore.
<Crion> --Fin.