04:52 <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 04:52 <Crion> nor thorn nor thread of the loyalists. 04:52 <Crion> So it is that the e-mail arrives, then, in mid-afternoon from Langford's address at The Last of Summer Foundation: 04:52 <Crion> M.-- 04:52 <Crion> Sending a car. Need a briefing. Time you saw the foundation. Etc. 04:52 <Crion> Be ready in one hour, tolerance of 10min either way. Reply if delay needed. Vehicle and driver same as last time. 04:52 <Crion> --L. 04:52 <Crion> How convenient or inconvenient is this? 05:17 <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. 05:17 <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. 05:18 <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. 05:19 <banana> Melanie takes the back seat again. "Thank you" will be her first and last words if the goatman remains uninterested. 05:20 <Crion> "Baaah." It sounds like it's supposed to be a noise of disdain instead of. Well. 05:22 <Crion> He takes her a couple blocks downtown, into what pass for skyscrapers in Baltimore, and stops outside...the World Trade Center. 05:22 <Crion> Yes, Baltimore has one too. 05:22 <Crion> Much less famous. 05:22 <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 05:22 <banana> the ethics of popular consent when the population is by-and-large incorrect about important matters - oh, we're here. 05:23 <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." 05:25 <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. 05:26 <Crion> The doorman disinterestedly nods her through to reception; reception nods her through the metal detectors. Does Melanie set it off? 05:27 <banana> Sure, she's got a phone and a hand mirror in her purse. Hopefully they have a routine for passing that stuff around. 05:28 <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. 05:29 <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. 05:29 <Crion> In the elevator, she can see the building notably doesn't have a floor 13. 05:29 <banana> This feels very.. corporate. It must be Langford's side of the Court. 05:30 <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 05:30 <banana> forgotten. 05:31 <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. 05:31 <Crion> The elevator looks VERY expensive. Not at all like theirs. 05:33 <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?> 05:37 <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 05:37 <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." 05:40 <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?" 05:40 <banana> "Lossof? Loz?" 05:42 <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." 05:43 <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?" 05:44 <Crion> It's just sort of waiting there on a dolly. It's sweating like the room is much hotter than it is. 05:45 <banana> Oh- shaking hands! Fuck. She'll get to that next time. "Yes, please. I don't eat, but I drink." 05:45 <Crion> He nods. 05:45 <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 05:45 <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. 05:45 <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 05:45 <Crion> and Philadelphia, to try and...herd immunity. Sort of. 05:45 <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 05:45 <Crion> it. We want to prevent the stranger with the candy. Because these things, they only want this shit one at a time. 05:45 <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. 05:45 <Crion> "I have to solve things on this side." 05:48 <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." 05:49 <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?" 05:49 <Crion> "Yes to the first question. Unclear to the second." 05:50 <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?" 05:50 <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." 05:50 <Crion> He nods. "That is the real question. The inputs being different -- we can explain that. Not the outputs." 05:50 <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?" 05:51 <banana> "Or: do a lot of the disappearances have another cause?" 05:51 <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." 05:51 <Crion> "The pessimist's take?" 05:51 <Crion> "This city is so fucked that the Hedge hates black people too." 05:51 <banana> ..I didn't think that was optimism.. 05:52 <Crion> "Remember, the Hedge is psychoactive. It is psychoresponsive." 05:52 <Crion> "And the Baltimore Hedge has a lot of things that pretend to be cops, walking around it." 05:53 <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. 05:53 <banana> "Not good." 05:53 <Crion> He nods. "You are correct." 05:53 <Crion> "And that brings us to what I wanted to talk about." 05:53 <Crion> "Loyalists." 05:53 <banana> "Yes, okay." 05:53 <Crion> "The definition of 'not good.' Even worse than pigs." 05:53 <banana> Melanie said that before "loyalists". Loyalists are not okay. 05:54 <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." 05:55 <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'." 05:55 <Crion> He glances up. "You'd be surprised, I think, how many perfectly normal people over here are just caricatures of human beings." 05:56 <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?" 05:56 <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." 05:56 <banana> The Loyalists are one thing, but Melanie's not going to default to mistrust of other freeholders without a reason. 05:57 <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." 05:57 <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. 05:58 <Crion> He clicks a ballpoint pen and puts it to paper. "You said there were five of them." 05:58 <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?" 05:58 <Crion> "Describe them, starting with the leader, progressing to the least threatening." 06:00 <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. 06:01 <Crion> Langford pauses writing. "...Did he have an accent?" 06:03 <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." 06:03 <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?" 06:04 <Crion> He pauses writing again. "Yes. Like Mavis Beacon but with the undead, or something." 06:05 <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." 06:05 <Crion> "Mmmmm." 06:05 <banana> "Ah, the pink woman was Keyeyellelle.. the swordsman's 'name' was Cambridge Son." 06:06 <Crion> "The letters?" 06:06 <Crion> "The letters K I L L." 06:06 <banana> "Yeah presumably. They were really.. shitty. Just obviously awful on purpose." 06:06 <banana> "Except." 06:06 <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." 06:07 <Crion> "Huh." 06:07 <Crion> "Black hair? Stringy? Looked a bit like a kicked dog?" All of these scan. 06:08 <banana> "Yes.. and she was a torrent. Like me," she adds redundantly. 06:08 <Crion> He nods. "So Loser's back." 06:09 <Crion> "The leader, he sounds like the Proctor." 06:09 <Crion> "Yes, those are their names." 06:09 <banana> Melanie: "Oh! Someone said 'loser', but I didn't think it was a name." 06:09 <Crion> "I don't know the three in the middle." 06:09 <Crion> "Anything can be, especially on that side." He closes the notepad. "We know about both of those. Proctor's vile. Loser's complicated." 06:10 <Crion> "It's been awhile since he's put a new crew together." 06:11 <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." 06:11 <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?" 06:12 <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." 06:13 <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." 06:13 <Crion> "But fundamentally, he's a coward." 06:13 <banana> "Do we know what kind of leash they're on?" 06:14 <banana> "If we kill them will the masters mind?" 06:15 <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." 06:15 <banana> "Mind enough, I mean. We want them to mind. But is it a risk." 06:16 <Crion> "But: that doesn't mean there isn't a master, or that they won't." 06:16 <Crion> "Just that for the last ten years, they've been very hands-off." 06:17 <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." 06:17 <Crion> "It's been a couple years, so, in all honesty it was about time." 06:18 <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." 06:19 <Crion> Flatly: "He enjoys making people like him, but less so." 06:19 <Crion> "I want to put this on your plate. You and your motley." 06:21 <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." 06:22 <Crion> He nods. "There always is. I trust you can minimize it." 06:22 <Crion> "It is in the interest of this Freehold that there not be a fourth return of the Proctor." 06:23 <Crion> "And I trust you can minimize that, too." 06:23 <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." 06:27 <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 06:27 <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 06:27 <Crion> deeper towards Arcadia or simply thinking globally and acting locally. 06:27 <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." 06:27 <Crion> "So now it's your problem." 06:27 <Crion> "Will this, in turn, be a problem?" 06:30 <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'." 06:30 <Crion> He waves a hand. "You'll have it. Wasn't a condition of accepting this task." 06:33 <Crion> "But the Young Street isn't sending a kill team out of season to do new work." 06:33 <Crion> "And I'm not going to ask him to." 06:35 <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." 06:35 <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." 06:36 <banana> She holds out, not physically, another handshake - an offering of Glamour to the Wyrd, half-formed sealing. 06:37 <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. 06:38 <Crion> Did she ever drink any of her water? 06:38 <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. 06:39 <banana> Didn't get around to it. She's too focused on the conversation. 06:39 <Crion> Neither did Langford. 06:39 <Crion> He seems to notice this, and sort of just shake his head. 06:40 <Crion> "That's the program I have to propose. I won't take anymore of your time. Thanks for coming down." 06:41 <banana> "Is Dearest the receptionist outside?" 06:42 <Crion> "Yes. That's her name." He pauses. "Her reasons are her own." 06:42 <banana> "There's a lot of that around here!" 06:43 <Crion> Langford: "Names are powerful things. For all sorts of magic. Don't give out your own so easily." 06:44 <banana> "I understand, but 'Paperbark' isn't a very good superhero name." 06:44 <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. 06:44 <Crion> "The Young Street doesn't call himself that just because he thinks it sounds cool." 06:44 <banana> *pink 06:45 <Crion> Dearest nods professionally, and doesn't smile. List walks Melanie to the elevator. 06:45 <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." 06:45 <Crion> "But." 06:45 <Crion> "This freehold has no bunks for loyalists. And this freehold doesn't take prisoners." 06:46 <Crion> "And this freehold needs the issue of the Proctor and his pack resolved to a permanent end." 06:46 <Crion> He steps back as the doors close. "So that's your Hedge to trim." 06:47 <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. 06:47 <banana> She's keeping her name, though. Belanie left it to her. 06:48 <Crion> --Fin.