[Kingdom of Dreams] Rulez!
1. 15 minute post cap! Try to keep it so you dont keep others waiting for too long!
2. IF it goes to combat (Not sure it will!) then 3 minute declare, and roll when I tell you to roll!
3. I will start a temp AIM chatroom to answer any OOC questions and give OOC updates!
4. Have fun, hope you don't die!
5. I will start the scene off...so give me a little longer than 15 minutes for the first post.
6. Don't forget yer transcripts!
OOC Done.
[Kingdom of Dreams] Its been months. It has been quiet. Well, as quiet as Chicago could be with the events that seemed to swell and fade away like El Nino. Small events that certain members of the Chicago Dead Mage Society were touched...Ashley had seen into the mind of a woman pushed to desperation and rage at what the world had done to her. Riley had managed to save their asses that night by calling the cops.
Morgan...Morgan had seen a kid try to kill himself with tragic results and had gained a head compartment buddy. But that had been spring. Like a spring hare, the coat had been shed...things had given way to summer. It was time for fun, it was time to relax. Nothing else had come along...it was as if the events of the spring madness had given way to summer calmness.
The weather had felt muggy that morning. The scent of rain...but it was the heat. It was hotter than usual at first that morning...like the crazy summer heat flashes in NY or the long, unending humid days in the South. The sort of heat that could make someone go nuts. It had faded...eventually giving way to the coming rain that was looming and threatening to pour down that afternoon.
Thunder briefly rolled...and something more dangerous than lightning loomed in the air...the university itself was quiet as the summer college students were relaxing. Doing what most did on a Sunday......chill the fuck out. But there was something about today that made three individuals in its proximity....restless....something stirred and they could feel it...in unique ways...
[Ashley McGowen] In the library, there's a Hermetic: small in stature, dressed in a pair of dark pants and a white buttondown shirt, the sleeves rolled up around her elbows, and after that the magi of Chicago might have a little trouble recognizing her at first. She looks healthy. Bright, no longer hollow and half-starved, blue eyes quick with vitality and lacking that uncomfortable, bitter edge she's held since the start of this year.
Ashley likes Sundays at the library; they're quiet, they aren't full of undergrad students who hang in clusters and giggle and point at old ads in the library's media section. All told, she probably could have just chosen to work at home, but she felt like getting out of her apartment, and while coming here to shred away at her thesis isn't much of a break, it's something. Once in a while her gaze slides longingly toward the window, the sunlight filtering in through it, and then her head bows back over the dusty book she's trying to bend her concentration toward.
Somehow Durkheim manages to be drier than old texts written on the founders of the Hermetic houses. Her hair has gotten longer, for despite the rise in temperature she hasn't quite bothered to cut it yet, and it's starting to wave at the edges, curl a bit around her ears. It's hard to see her face through it at the moment because she's starting to droop.
After dozing for a second, she starts back to consciousness, decides that maybe a few hours out would be a better idea after all, and starts to gather up her books. That's when her hand happens along the one she didn't put in the pile.
Ashley lifts it, studies it for a few seconds. Brings it a little unnecessarily close to her face, and then looks up and around the library.
[Riley Poole] Summer calmness. Not for one Miss Riley Poole. It's been a crazy week, what with the demon imps and the charred body and the massive damage done to her arm and its quick and complete healing. And all along there's been the weirdness with Emily, which only seems to abate when they're together. Apart, Riley never hears from her friend. Then there was that moment today at work, the message written on the wall of the women's restroom. She's immediately called Chuck and Emily, only to get their voicemails. Clearly rattled, she still had to finish her shift.
Now, she's on her way home from her final job of the day. Taking roads a little too fast, turning corner a little too sharply, in a hurry when her phone chimes. When she opens the text while stopped at a stoplight, she just stares at it. The light changes, someone honks at her, and she doesn't even have the presence of mind right now to get angry. She just says aloud and to no one but herself and her phone, "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me."
Normally, she'd toss her phone aside and continue on her way home. She'd get there and she'd grab a beer and hide out in her room until she finally heard from her friends. Or she'd head over to Chuck's place. She wouldn't think about the white rabbit flashing on the screen of her phone left in her car.
Today, though. Today of all days after this week of all weeks, Riley decides, you know what? Fuck it. Let's see what happens this time. Because what the hell else could happen to her this week? The person behind her honks a second time. Vaguely, Riley thinks she hears shouting. Rather than shouting back, she just sets her phone up on her dashboard where she can see it, and she follows that white rabbit.
Because seriously, what the hell?
[Nico Brady] It's called "the walk of shame."
In the course of this social phenomenon, a person has to somehow get him- or herself from wherever it is they spent the previous evening to a location of relative privacy while walking past strangers and cohorts, often with passersby being abundantly aware of the fact that the individual in question is on his or her way home from a night of drinking, drugs, or casual sex. There are telltale signs that an individual was engaging in deviant behavior, typically missing articles of clothing, dishevelment, or reeking of alcohol.
When Nico emerges from the house near the University of Chicago campus, it's well into the afternoon, and he looks like Hell. His curly, dirty blond hair looks as though someone used it to divine the future; his dress shirt is untucked and the buttons haven't been completely done up, the sleeves are shucked up around his elbows, and his tie is pushed into his pocket. Somewhere in the course of the evening he'd either lost or destroyed the jeans he'd had on, and he's wearing a pair of pilfered black basketball shorts instead.
They really go with his striped dress shirt and his brown loafers.
He's trying to get from the house to his Audi as fast as is humanly possible, but something's distracting him. It's music, and a beating behind his breastbone.
He shakes his head and keeps walking.
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...they all hear it eventually.
For McGowen, it is downright...spooky. As she stared at the book, recognizing it....she could hear the bass of a stereo system as someone was beginning anew another party. Nevermind that it was a Sunday, that it wasn't even near time for the evening..or that tomorrow was a work day for some. A loud sound system begins to blare the guitar rifts...a song more older than Ace of Base's Cruel Summer. It was the anthem of any high school or college kid who had ever heard the song...
...Riley can feel the bass through her car as she came into the campus lot. She could even make out a makeshift stage where a DJ was starting things up just a little bit away from the campus in a small parklike field on its borders. She could hear Alice Cooper's voice wail through her windshield...meanwhile the White Rabbit icon still flashing in the direction of the stage. She would have to foot the rest of the way as campus security likely would not be pleased with her attempting four wheel drive on the greenery.
...Nico hears it throbbing in his head. It is loud enough to make the temples throb...oh no...wait, that's from the alcohol. A song older than anyone there, the lyrics begin and then he can hear a bunch of students yelling in excitement as it seemed another party was starting...and though he tries to ignore it...the song in his heart...the song in his head gets louder...as if something to do with the music from the soon-starting party.
~School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces!!~
[Ashley McGowen] For Ashley, it begins as a low, unpleasant hum, the sort of sound one might hear from a damaged subwoofer, something that she feels deep in her bones. Something that reverberates, thrums through her like an electronic butcher's knife, like it might cause her flesh to slough away from the bone. It increases, becomes a cacophony of noise strung together, something her brain doesn't organize into anything remotely coherent.
It's not spooky. It's not even irritating. If it were quieter, if the sound system weren't pumped up so loud, it might be the latter. At the volume it's at, it's merely agonizing.
The Looking Glass falls from her hands and flutters open on the floor. The Hermetic tries to stem the noise, leaves the books behind with her hands jamming over her ears, pressing the folds of cartiledge together in the hope that she can shut some of it out, and then she makes with all haste toward the library's exit. Ashley hits the bar across the door with the force of someone trying to break the door down, bursts through and outside.
She keeps going until it quiets to a tolerable level, until merely standing there doesn't put her at risk for an epic migraine.
[Riley Poole] A summer campus concert? Riley circles the closest parking lot, searching for a place to park, the icon on her phone shifting every time she makes the same right turn as if to say, "No that way. No that way. Right. No that way." When she finally finds one, and she kills the engine, she looks around. And she looks at her phone, brow quirked. Really? Maybe it's just her Avatar, communicating to her that she needs to get out and stop being so down. It doesn't feel like that, though. When her Avatar talks to her, it uses a different font than 16-bit white rabbit.
She sits in her car for a few more minutes, firing up the old inner debate again. This has bad news written all over it. But, every time she's tried to get away from danger, it's drawn her back. Still, she's the only one who would know she went back on that 'fuck it' earlier.
She turns her phone off and tosses it into the passenger seat. If someone calls and gets her voicemail, hopefully they'll leave a message she can return. In the meantime, she doesn't want that pixelated rabbit staring at her anymore, not when she fires the car back up again, and backs out of the parking spot.
And she goes home. Because she doesn't need more bad things to happen this week, really.
[Riley Poole] [and Riley's out! sorry I coudln't stick around, guys, but thanks anyway!]
[Nico Brady] Nico has absolutely no interest in continuing the party that had only ended a few hours ago, for him. He can remember watching the goddamn sun come up while a couple of economics students did lines off of a Call of Duty box and the two female public health graduates who had been dancing by themselves all night finally decided they were going to take their box of Franzia and each other into one of the closed doors within the house's labyrinthine interior. At some point his soccer player had collected him from the backyard and they'd retired into his bedroom, but that was not long enough ago for him to have gotten any semblance of rest.
Adrenaline is coursing through his heart, which is beating way too fast, and as he stumbles off the curb and across the street towards the parking lot where he'd left his car, he's starting to wonder if he's dehydrated, if he shouldn't have had that last shot of Cuervo, if Billy had worn his silly ass out. He's not dizzy, not yet, not while he's trying to figure out if he's actually hearing that loud music or if he's imagining it, if it's in his head or if it's coming from somewhere nearby.
The back door of the library bursts open, and a frazzled-looking Hermetic Disciple comes barreling out. The Orphan lifts a hand to his head, squinting through the wan sunlight as he attempts to a) make out the details of her face through the haze of his hangover and b) decide whether he wants to embarrass himself by making himself known.
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...the music's intensity seems to die down slightly, as if adjusting volume levels after the initial blast. It doesn't stop Alice Cooper's voice from shrilling here and there. Yet, Ashley can feel it...the familiar apprehension she had gotten the evening of the Queen of the Spade. It was back....whatever was going on here today....that thing was back. In the distance, she could see the mini-concert...and strangely, a decently sized crowd....she could even make out a few staff from the school that were gathering there....even a professor she knew abhorred music due to a philistine streak that ran deeply in him.
...the music pounded in Nico's heart...before it fades. His head eases a little as the volume goes down. The prospect of a party seems nigh on suicide...and his body felt like shit. But the adrenaline was making him a combination of nigh sick and yet also clearing his head...his temples throbbed but it was no longer the urge to suddenly hurl or feel like his skull would explode. Adrenalin had that nifty little aspect of clearing the system as it flushed chemicals in your brainstem to keep you alert...awake...active...even if you wanted to just curl up and die.
[Ashley McGowen] It's not that Ashley hates music. Quite the contrary; she used to love it, and she confers a certain appreciation upon people who enjoy it, who take joy in it (though Alice Cooper, could she still hear it, likely would not be her cup of tea.) The Hermetic arrives out front, where it's quieter, where she can't hear it being pumped through a building.
It's still like listening to a knife being scraped across sheet metal with a backdrop of someone beating on a skillet, albeit from a distance. She doesn't want to be here. She doesn't want to get any closer to the sound.
If it weren't for the fact that she can feel something tingling at the back of her mind, that gut feeling she's learned to understand and obey, she'd just leave. Walk off campus, go home to blissful silence. It would be that easy.
Her eyes, swimming a little with distraction, catch Nico's, and at first the man is so disheveled that she doesn't recognize him as Nico. His presence, however, confirms whatever doubts she might have had about something going on here. Ashley takes her hands away from her ears to beckon him over, sits down on a bench nearby and does her best to shut it out while she Works. Her fingers find the links around her throat: from there, it's a matter of cobbling together something new but serviceable.
[Forces 2 to create a sound barrier, Mind 3 to hear thoughts/read body language and figure out what's being said. Diff 6, +1 for poor concentration, -1 for focus, spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 7, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]
[Nico Brady] [Awareness+Perception: For Shits And Giggles.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Nico Brady] Mutual recognition strikes the two of them, despite the distance and the fact that one of them looks as though he's had to claw his way out of the trunk of someone's stolen car, and Ashley beckons the younger man over. His squint dissipates, and he removes his hand from his brow, and with a quick check to make sure that his tie hasn't uncoiled itself from the depths of the stolen basketball shorts, deviates his course.
His steps take him across the lawn of the library, and even the sound of the grass scraping across the rubber soles of his loafers are like needles against his flesh. It isn't audible over the pounding of the music, the wailing of the singer, but by god he can almost swear he can feel it. He hadn't thought he was hungover, but that's something he's noticed about hangovers now that he's gotten somewhat older versus the hangovers he used to get in college: they're insidious. They're sneaky. They lull him into a false sense of security, allowing him to wake up in the morning believing that he is going to do all sorts of things, that he's going to go to the gym and to the grocery store and to the gas station and then as soon as he makes it the thirty feet from his bedroom to his kitchen, bam!
Maybe that's what's going on now. Maybe he's just hungover.
As he approaches the Hermetic, he can feel the tug of Ashley's Will as it exerts itself. It's a difficult resonance to weather after only having felt it once before: her Will is strong, and her capabilities far beyond what he himself is capable of. There is a cacophony of different styles of magic, and though he does not actually waver as he walks, it's clear that he's feeling the aftershocks as he comes to stand with her on the grass.
"I swear when I was in school we listened to better music if we were going to be blaring it on a Sunday morning," he says, wincing somewhat as he looks around.
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...there was a party going on on campus it would seem. No one had mentioned it...put up anything about it..but it was there. She could hear it even from the basement...as if the bass rumbled through the ground.
...more, she could feel something off. It was like a scratch at the back of her neck...and almost like she could hear something...
...curiouser...and curiouser....
...a hushed voice says...before its gone...and that unsettling sensation that seemed to thrum in time with the bass.
to Emily Littleton
[Emily Littleton] Being a student and a member of a research lab on campus, it almost seems reasonable that the Orphan apprentice would spend her Sunday in the lab, tinkering with something. Oh, if they only knew! The components and boards of a particularly possessed PC lay strewn across her worktable, none of them having anything inherently amiss, nothing that she could find, nothing that would cause the terrifying little hoax or warning from the night before. Emily was certain of it, crystal clear, that there was no underlying hardware cause for the scrolling messages -- which only made it worse.
And some asshat in the department was blaring music loud enough that it resonated through the concrete above her and down into the basement labs. She yawned, cracking her ears against the cacaphony. Reached up to brush away another creepy feeling at the back of her neck.
Curiouser and curiouser, someone whispered, or her subconscious filled in the Alice quote out of annoyance. That was that. The girl grabbed her cardkey on its lanyard, muttered something particularly uncharitable under her breath in Chinese, and slammed the lab door behind her as she headed for the stair case.
She'd had too little sleep over too many days to deal with this fuckery. It was a Sunday, for Chrissakes, and they could keep it down. This stairwell opened straight out onto the quad between the engineering building at the library stacks. Maybe from there she could place the sound, and target her particularly hostile intentions (what? I mean polite requests to keep it the fuck down).
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...the noise for Ashley becomes a nice, quiet muffle now as the sound gets cut off. Thank god the Hermetic could harness to create a universal mute button. It made things more tolerable now. Alice Cooper died away. Emily would come out to find...that it wasn't simply some asshat with a subwoofer blaring in the parking lot. She can hear the music coming from one of the fields near Northwest for the students to hang out...the Commons, so to speak. A makeshift stage was setup...a DJ and speakers galore that had either been rented or taken from whatever fixture they could find.
A sizeable crowd was there...she could hear screams and yells of excitement, laughter, and then the overly poppy sounding music of Panic! at the Disco playing.
But still the sensation had not abated...though it seemed like a good time, a summer festival...nothing felt right. It should be raining by now...the clouds looked like rain...but nothing was falling yet. There shouldn't be something going on a day before the week started....or a concert / party in the afternoon. It wasn't even the 4th of July! And yet, people were there...music was going...
...that summer restlessness.
[Emily Littleton] ((Perception + Awareness : WTF, yo?))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] The sound mutes. Everything goes mercifully silent, and for a few fractions of a second the Hermetic's eyelids flutter closed. The thoughts, emotions filtering in are just as chaotic, but fortunately, nowhere nearly as unpleasant, and she can work through them, pass through them without it causing pain.
Nico's there. Ashley doesn't hear his words but she picks up on: disdain for the type of music playing, for the singer. Ashley doesn't know anything about the quality of the music, the lyrics, what it would sound like or whether it was terrible, but it's a measure of disdain she remembers from back in the day, from back when she could still discern music she liked from music she didn't, so the Orphan gets a smirk as her hand drops away from the chain around her throat.
"I think there's a problem," she tells Nico, before she catches a familiar Will, before she "hears" Emily's irritation, and her head swivels toward the girl. "Spirits or something? I don't know, but there was a kind of...similar presence in a park a couple of months ago when there was some trouble."
That's when Ashley stands up. Whether she would like to be here just now or not, there are mages converging, and that in and of itself has her steeling herself. Raising an arm, she waves Emily over.
[Emily Littleton] I chimed in with a Haven't You People Ever Heard of...
Emily could think of a few lyrically appropriate things to finish that statement off with. Thankfully the volume drops to a tenable level, leaving the girl to just rub at the place behind her jaw where a little pressure helped to relieve earaches. It was the same place that got sore when she clenched her jaw for too long.
Now that the festivities were within reasonable boundaries, she had no real reason to complain. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she looked around the quad for anyone else who'd been displaced from their hidey-holes or study cubbies. And there? Oh, that's Ashley waving her over.
This is either good, or very bad. Emily didn't really see much middle ground when the Hermetic Disciple was involved. The girl waved back, and then started making her way across the quad. She slipped the lanyard around her neck as she went.
When she pulled up even with the group, the girl rubbed at her arms. A cluster of goosebumps stood there, as if she'd caught a chill (in all this heat?) or walked over her own grave. It'd been one of those Springs; it was starting into one of those Summers.
"Hey, Ashley," she says, her voice a little threadbare, less mellifluous than usual. She looked like hell, or more correctly like she'd been through hell and only had a few hours of sleep to right herself before heading right back out into the fray. "Nico." They're afforded a small, tired smile each.
[Nico Brady] Nico had gotten very good at lying when he was in high school. He had to: living in White Bread, South Dakota and being the star player of the varsity football team hadn't left him much room to fuck up in the eyes of his fellow students and the parents who supported them. They were hardly living in the Stone Age, but rural America in 2004 had made very little progress from rural American in 1954, as far as acceptance of homosexuals goes.
That's neither here nor there. He's not in high school anymore, and as he's learned to become more open and communicative with his clients, so has he lost some of his ability to outright lie. Like right now: he looks like someone who is in the process of stumbling home from a one night stand or a wild-ass party, and he's making no attempt to conceal that fact. What he is managing to conceal is the fact that he feels like shit, that he's catching seriously creepy vibes from the music that's playing, that he can't decide whether he should go investigate or whether he should get the hell out of here just as quickly as is humanly possible.
Ashley says that she thinks there's a problem, and the young counselor frowns, listening without reacting beyond that furrow of his brows. That's when Emily joins them, greeting the older, higher-ranked Hermetic before her fellow Orphan. He gives her a quick, tired smile when he sees her. If she had been expecting some sort of weirdness or adversity in the wake of what she'd told him earlier in the week as they stood on the corner in the drizzling rain, she'll be hard-pressed to find it now.
"Emily," he greets her. He pushes the sleeves of his dress shirt, which smells of pungent smoke and booze-sweat, higher up on his elbows, then sniffs and looks towards the concert. "Should we go check it out?"
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...Emily felt it first....then Ashley...then Nico. The feeling...was changing. That unsettling feeling was taking on a tone...that spoke decadence...perversity...wet sticky debauchery. Whether it was the song that only Nico and Emily could hear that was setting the pace, or the crowd that Ashley could sense like hearing music from another room...they could all feel it now...
..whatever was happening...was taking place now.
[Ashley McGowen] It's only now that Ashley is beginning to absorb the details of Nico's appearance and what they mean: that he'd looked disheveled and less neat than on prior occasions, she'd noted. Now she's beginning to see the basketball shorts over his loafers, the tie trailing out of the back of his pocket, smell the unpleasant staleness of hangover and...unshowered post-coital guy.
Her mind is well-attuned to the environment around her, to the thoughts and feelings filtering in, and what's going on over near the concert-goers does not escape her. That smug air about the Hermetic doesn't clear, isn't blown away by the mellow breeze of early summer.
"Rough night?" she asks Nico. Emily, who greets them, gets a nod, even as her gaze directs itself down toward the concert. While she might have been comfortable teasing the initiate, the thought of going into such an environment definitely fills Ashley with a little trepidation: the years most people normally spend at college definitely weren't full of drunkenness, drugs, and debauchery for her.
Ashley sighs, reaches both hands up and runs them through her hair, pushing it back out of her face. "...Can't tell if that's a problem or just one of ours getting kind of overzealous," she says to the other two, assuming they've picked up on that shift.
[Emily Littleton] Emily's usually better at keeping things beneath her skin, but it's been a long week. A long damned week. And it's harder to keep from telegraphing exactly how uncomfortable this roiling, seething feeling makes her when they're all clustered like this, when Ashley's awareness brushes up against the edge of her unspoken thoughts.
She recognizes it, this debauchery and perversity. Not in this setting or context, no, but she's lived something that rides right up against it, and the memories were far more lucid than she might want them to be. (As lucid as any memories of that summer might ever be...)
"Oh.... that can't be good," she says, once her mind has closed around the sea-change and found some way to identify it, to reference it even loosely against the song lyrics. She is certain that the others have felt it, and are coming to similar conclusions. She's just daft enough today to let her tongue wag freely.
Ashley says it might just be one of their own getting a little overzealous, and that raises the girl's eyebrow. She's shoving her hands into the front pockets of her jeans, peering in the direction of the party with a skeptical expression. Her shirt, white collegiate lettering on black cotton, reads: 1337. It'd be very easy to mistake the Orphan for a Vdept, or to assume by her resonance that she was a member of the Chorus. Emily looks from Nico to Ashley and then back out toward the concert.
"I'm already up and out of my lab. Can't hurt to take a look around, can it?" she asks, as if every fibre of her being isn't worried about what stumbling into a place like this after a week like hers might mean for her. As if it isn't a bit like a homecoming (unwelcome), and doesn't reek of Bad Ideas (tm).
[Nico Brady] Rough night, Ashley asks, and the Orphan snorts, reaching up to push hair back off of his forehead.
"You could say that."
They bandy about ideas of investigating, with Ashley suggesting that it might be one of their own and Emily asking if it can't hurt to look around, and Nico looks towards the concert again, pushing his hands into the pockets of someone else's shorts. After the week they've all had, the answer to that question could very well be: Sure, it can.
That's not what he says, though. What he says is at odds with what he might be thinking about the situation, about that slithering resonance he's picking up from some unseen source.
"Let's go," is what he does say.
[Ashley McGowen] Let's go, says Nico, and Ashley doesn't need any further encouragement. After the week she's had she shouldn't be hunting for trouble. She should just sigh and walk away and leave it for someone else to deal with, because God, it should be someone else, and somehow she's always in the right place at the right time - depending on whose perspective you take.
The Hermetic soldiers on, tucks her hands into the pockets of her pants and starts toward the concert. She doesn't look like she belongs at one: she looks like she belongs in an office, at the moment. Chances are she might get a look or two.
Her mind is open right now, and so it's not without a certain wariness that she approaches the scene. It takes a strong separation, a strong Will, to be able to discern between herself and others right now, an ability to build up a wall between You and Me. Fortunately, Ashley has just such a Will.
She doesn't run, but she is brisk, after she's sure that the two younger magi are following behind her.
[Emily Littleton] Emily looks precisely like she belongs here. She's a co-ed, a student herself, and she reaches up to tug free the thin band tying back her dark curls as they head toward the concert. There's a shift in the way she carries herself, too. It's subtle, but the two magi with her are perceptive enough to notice: Emily mirrors back whatever she reads off the people around her. It makes it easier to blend in, to make friends, to disappear into a crowd without standing out immediately as Other. It might help her discern what's going on; it might help her get lost in it, too.
It starts long before they reach the margin of the gathering, and it separates her from the two of them by demeanor alone. She's the younger sister, friend, friend's sister, something, tagging along with them to check out the commotion -- the one who wants in on the action, despite whatever warnings the other magi have offered her. Her resonance is the lightest of the three; all these subtle things cast her as separate, even though they arrive together.
It's exacerbated by the week they've all had, the things she's remembering, the weariness she wears. These second-nature skills surface more blatantly than they have before with Ashley, with Nico. As they reach the periphery, her hands come out of her pockets. Her fingers stretch, splay slightly, as if she's trying to feel the bass line beat between them.
She's seeking for the nexus of this oddity, for the point of origin and anything that might explain it. Soon, she might reach out with the pattern spheres she's learned, but for now it's just noticing what she notices.
[Nico Brady] If he were wearing to completeness either of the discordant outfit pieces that he has on, Nico would look as though he belongs on this campus: either the business casual attire that makes up his shirt and shoes, or the athletic attire that is covering his thighs, would allow him to effortlessly blend in with the crowd that has gathered today. With the stubble on his jaws and the floppiness of his hair, the earnestness of his facial features, the youthfulness of his overall appearance, he looks every bit his age.
Yet given the fact that he's wearing whatever he had managed to throw on before he sneaked out of an undergraduate soccer player's bedroom, he just looks like a deviant, like he wants nothing more than to crawl into his car and drive his hungover ass back to his apartment and get back in bed, maybe stopping to brush his teeth and take a shower. That is not in the cards for him tonight. There is something Weird going on, and for as little as it might concern him, there is a sense of duty tugging him onward. He's well aware of the bystander phenomenon, of the fact that the more people there are present the less likely any one individual is to do anything about it.
As aware of this phenomenon as he is, he can't just bring himself to leave the two females to contend with whatever is going on on their own. Call it chivalry, call it foolishness, call it whatever, but he decides to stay with them. So when Ashley starts to quickly stride towards the concert, he does not simply lag behind her but keeps pace with her, as much as each step sends reverberations of last night crashing through his skull.
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...it was a concert. Most would expect the crowd surging and waving their arms. People would throw up the horns or try to emulate hand signs if it was rap. Mosh pits weren't unusual or the occasional figure trying to emulate rave dancing even if they were not in the club. That should have been what was going on right now...but somehow the three found themselves stepping into something akin to someone putting Coca-Cola instead of milk into their frosted flakes and added a bit of honey to sweeten the pot.
It was...like a free loving hippie's fantasy...as if suddenly the Northwest grounds had gone back to the Summer of Love and no one knew it. But whereas the hippies might have thought of a utopia...this was depravity. It wasn't noticeable from a distance...mostly due to the voyeurs just standing back and watching like a barrier from prying eyes. As they stepped in though, they were soon greeted to the flashes of flesh...images of depravity...
...people were out of their gawdam mind.
It was subtle at first...college students making out...that wasn't unusual. The weirdness came with the further they got in...clothing being lost...adventuring hands...all the while the music plays....the DJ seeming unphased or just not noticing. Even adults, people who worked on campus were involved in....less than savory enjoyments of the body with others...
...it begged the question....what the fuck had they just walked into?
[Ashley McGowen] [Perc + Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Perception + Awareness))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Nico Brady] [Awareness+Perception!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Ashley McGowen] It's quite a sight. Actually, Ashley has never seen anything like this. The majority of her sexual history has come from a Hermetic she was with for six years; she has not partaken of the drug that's produced the cloying smoke hanging in the air, or the one that's dilated the eyes of many of the participants here.
She's never felt anything like it either, and between her Avatar's urging and her openness to the minds of the others around her, between the young women and men to either side, it's hard not to get waved away. Were she not resisting on principle, just because she suspects there's something dangerous here and because she'd only want such participation on -her- terms, she might have been.
The flush that comes to Ashley's face is a rather dark red. She shoves her hands in her pockets, uncomfortable both with her reaction and with what's going on, and the shy, bookish Hermetic directs her eyes about the crowd. At this point, she has no idea what they're looking for.
[Emily Littleton] It was okay, at first. Coeds kissing, they do that. The feeling of an amped up, oversexed high. That was almost welcome, sliding over her skin like something other than abject evil. It wasn't possession, or demons; no one had died here. It's a break from the morbidity, the constant worry, the weight of it all. It was almost okay, until they stepped past the margin of nearly acceptable acts and into more overt displays. The saunter in her step slows, steadies. It's not fun any more, not just harmless if over-zealous summertime good times.
It wasn't death and dismemberment, but this was precisely the sort of situation where people could be, often were, horribly wronged. This? This was like Mallorca, but all wrong. Not that Mallorca had been all that right to begin with.
Her body language shifts from something easy going to something noticeably unhappy. Emily averts her eyes from any particular pairing (God willing, she would not recognize any of the faces contorted in ecstasy [agony] as classmates, TAs, professors, coworkers), or grouping, and casts about for a point source.
She keeps coming up empty. The Orphan girl reaches up to rub at the back of her neck, continues to pick her way through the tangles of bodies and depravity. She's careful not to let them touch her, now, as if she might get snared and dragged down into whatever they were experiencing and not be able to get back out of it. As if she knew by experience that you could drown in moments like these.
[Nico Brady] His second mentor was a Cultist.
This is the sort of shit that he was exposed to as an undergraduate, as a recently-Awakened Apprentice without overly solid footing in the field of magic. He was swept into a strange world before he had even turned twenty-one, was introduced to a world of drag queens and drug addicts and disease-bearers, of people who weren't bad but who didn't conform to society's lofty standards, people who could be described as shipwrecks on a sea that had been set aflame. He learned how to take lines, how to hold smoke, how to drink without getting drunk, and he learned that his boundaries were his alone, that he was the only one who could decide what sort of sexual activity was considered wrong.
Walking into this sea of depravity, Nico looks strangely unmoved. Perhaps it's the protective barrier of his hangover that is keeping him from wanting to grab the nearest 40 and make out with the nearest half-naked stranger, but though he pulls his hands out of his pockets and nearly loses his tie in the walk through the crowds, he does not seem as though he's in any real danger of giving into the hum and vibe of the crowd and throwing himself headlong into the Experience.
He'd left the fucking Experience behind when Patrick look off for the relative safety of Minnesota, leaving him to go to Chicago on his own.
A glance over at the two women he's walking with reveals a flush on one of their cheeks and an aversion of the others' gaze. He walks between the two of them, not to protect himself but to make sure that he can communicate with both of them without having to yell, wholly unaware of the fact that Ashley could likely hear him even if he were on the other side of the quad.
"You feel that?" he asks, jerking his head towards the stage. "It's coming from the front."
[Kingdom of Dreams] The music itself was seeming to suffer a warble...for a moment a hot sleazy song shifting tracks into a blast from the past as the lead singer of Jefferson Airship warbled...
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the ca-
Like a record scratching, a brief split second of a pop before it skipped over to Adam Lambert's For Your Entertainment, a fresh wave of energy surging through the crowd...like a body of flesh writhing and moving to the beat...the music seems to fixate in them and the activities become more...intense..if it wasn't already enough.
The music thrums....the crowd moves...and the energy pulses and sweeps through the area. Nico could feel it...feel how it tried to pull at those there...Ashley could feel it...Emily could even feel the sensation...the impulse..the urge...the temptation....
...Nico could discern it was straight from the front...right near the makeshift stage. Ashley could discern it as well..or she could have if she wasn't distracted with the thoughts and emotions of others...the resonating urges and wants...primal instincts that even whispered of base wants...base needs...calling to the primordial side of her avatar...
...Emily could see the enjoyment on their faces...but...this was too far...this wasn't getting lost. This was catching a boat ride to get lost and then jumping off the boat into the Bermuda Triangle....there were no concerns in their eyes or faces...just lips opening into paused moans and gasps...if the lips could even make a sound.
For Nico...this was...base...even could be considered depraved. But he had seen it before. Maybe not to to this level but there was only so many swinging johns and bouncing betties before you got slightly immune to such acts. Granted, this was something you'd expect in a club...not out....here. Even still, the answer lay at the front...the answer to what was causing this...
[Kingdom of Dreams] Resonating Impulses (Dice Pool is 6)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Nico Brady] [WP: YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((WP: Don't do anything stupid.))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Emily Littleton] ((WP: NO! I said DON'T do anything stupid, self. [spending WP to re-roll, +1 diff]))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Amending: Dif 7, not 6. Last roll = 1 suxx))
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley just emerged from a Jhor episode. It's enough to elate her, to remind her that there is a living world and that she's part of it, that she's part of what's going on to her left and right. In that light it hardly strikes her as depraved. It strikes her as not-death-taint. It's alive, it's vibrant, it's everything she -hasn't- been living in for the past several months. Her pulse is pounding in her good ear; she can hear it even through the shield she's put up, eliminating sound to the outside.
At this point she can barely focus. A young woman bumps into her here, her hand brushes against someone, she shoves them into her pockets and tries to bull on ahead through the crowd. She can focus on the stage, knows that that's where she needs to go in order to figure out what's going on here, but it's only with one last burst forward that she stays headed in that direction. A burst forward and a look to the two younger mages with her: her pride is enough.
Ashley reaches up to the necklace at her throat, to the iron link there, and begins to forge a barrier. She knows she's going to be cutting herself off to all communication. At this point it's that or lose herself to this.
[Mind 3, ward, extending to Nico and Emily. +1 for diff to concentration, -1 for focus, 5 successes needed total for targets and to extend to end of scene. Extending to next round.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] Nico's voice sounded so far away and unphased, like it was filtering through the haze around them and touching her from some saner, distant place. She's not even sure what he's saying, except that it was likely level-headed and rational. She isn't level headed and rational; Emily has left that control and that collectedness somewhere else.
Ashley presses on and Emily falls behind. She begins to drag her feet, to succumb to the siren call of letting it all go. Letting all of this fucking weight go. She hasn't been able to lose herself in anything since Jarod left town, and ironically this is exactly the sort of losing herself that she's been craving over the past several weeks.
This moment of hesitation is all it takes for someone's half-clad body to slide in between Emily and the others, to separate her from them. It takes an act of sheer will for her to mumble an excuse me, or some polite-sounding collection of words, to try and step around the interloper and catch up with Ashley and Nico.
[Nico Brady] This is the sort of scene one might expect to stumble onto or through when heading into the basement of a S&M club in San Francisco, or an after-hours orgy in Queens: people in varying stages of undress and disregard for public decency, bending each other over and kneeling in worship before each other, passing around joints and pipes, taking shots off of each others' bared bodies, from places where most normal people wouldn't ever dream of putting their unprotected mouths. Clothes are strewn or hanging off of people's forms, hair and sweat is flying everywhere, and the worst part isn't that they are detached observers.
It's that they want, so desperately, to join in.
He'd thought that he'd left behind this scene when he got out of Minneapolis. He'd thought the last time he stepped out of that club in the warehouse district that that would be the last time he watched a grown man try to fit his head between the legs of a woman half his size, that that would be the last time he watched a woman piercing another person's nose with an ice cube and a sewing needle. Worse shit than that is going on around them, but campus security either hasn't been called or couldn't care less, and what makes Nico want to leave more than anything is else is the fact that he doesn't want to leave.
Before he can call upon his own magical training in a bid to protect himself, the Disciple begins doing that herself, casting out a net that will keep these intrusive thoughts, this impulsive resonance, from staining their ability to reason, to function. Nico breathes something of a sigh of relief when he feels it, as much as he would be more relieved to rip his shirt from his torso and throw himself at that athletic young blond who keeps trying to bump into him as he moves.
As Ashley Works to keep them safe, Nico casts his gaze towards the stage. He meets the eyes of the singer, and as he forges a connection between them, the rest of the world can feel him as he does so. The signature of his Work practically screams: look at me.
[Mind 1: Read Surface Thoughts. Target: Mr. Singer Man.
Coincidental. Base Diff: 4, -1 (spec. focus: eye contact).]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 6 (Success x 2 at target 3) [WP]
[Nico Brady] [Awareness+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...the crowd writhes, only the sounds of grunts and groans, mewls and moans, mixed like a bass line beneath the music. The singer or rather the DJ does indeed look at Nico..his eyes suddenly not focused on the records or the laptop he had loaded up to do the song cycling. There was no band out here as this was Northwest and the summer...it was not a hot ticket.
The music continues to play, merely not having the premix setup as it would normally do. The crowd continues to writhe...to move...to thrust and ride. Fingers drag and rake against skin...now and then attempting to touch the magi's arms or sides as they moved...seemingly unaffected.
They get closer to the front...closer to the stage as its hard to move around the orgy of meat and muscle. Nico, leading the charge can see something...a figure..but with people in the way...its hard to get a view...
...meanwhile, the pulsing yearnings continue to try and drag them under...to pull at them.
[Kingdom of Dreams] Resonating Impulses (6) - Second Round
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 9)
[Emily Littleton] ((WP: Focus, Little, you can do this.))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Nico Brady] [WP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] ((Forces 1 + Life 1: Scan, apprentice, scan. Base dif 4 +1 extra sphere + 1 distracted -1 practiced. Dif 5. [WP]))
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]
[Ashley McGowen] This time she manages to keep walking forward, with a bit more purpose now. She doesn't know exactly where the problem is coming from: unlike Nico, she can't pick up on whether it's the DJ, whether it's one of the musicians. She's trying to focus on the magic she's channeling her Will into.
She nearly stumbles over a horizontal pair on her left - she can't see half the crowd, after all - and mumbles something that might be a sorry. The burst of irritation at the result is enough to jar her back to the present.
Her shirt feels uncomfortably warm, between the heat of packed bodies and the fact that it's summer. Ashley rolls a shoulder, grips the iron link even tighter and presses onward.
[Same shit as before.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] What had been one interceding body became a thicket of limbs fairly quickly, became something she didn't want any part of just as quickly. The Orphan struggled past the tangle of people, brusquely brushing off an unwanted hand, twisting to put her hip just out of reach of another. There's disgust and alarm on her features as she hurries to make up lost ground, to catch up with Nico and Ashley.
There's also the building sense of Reverence about her, out of place as it is with their immediate surroundings. Her Will breaks free, pushes outward, Unrelenting as it washes over the people closest to her. It's enough to help clear a path, this righteousness in the middle of debauchery, this dischordant note in the surrounding sound. She's grateful for it, in the moment.
What she does see hastens her footsteps all the more. It would be easier, had she not learned this particular sphere from a Verbena; had not learned it by internalizing what it was she saw and felt around her to some extent. It's embarrassingly potent, the lust and arousal that she feels echoed in her own awareness; it's enough to bring a flush to her lips and a softness to her eyes. The center of it, the two patterns intertwined most closely with what is going on around them, lies ahead. Where Nico is heading.
[Nico Brady] Other than Nico telling them that the source of the disturbance is located at the front of the conglomeration of fornicating, animalistic bodies, there has been little to no communication between the three of them. Nico is steering them towards The Front, having eliminated the DJ as the source of the problem, and that doesn't let up even after they fight off another wave of desire to throw themselves into the action, even as they draw closer to the front of the stage, having to fight off all manner of activities that they seesaw between wanting to join and wanting to ignore.
[Kingdom of Dreams] Cults have leaders. Every movement, every revolution has a figurehead that stands at the front and brings others into it. Sometimes its a co-op. But there is always a figure on the throne. In this case, it was quite literal. Nico saw them first. They were right in front of the stage...seated like a king and queen.
Except their seats were of flesh..of skin..of backs. The woman was seated squarely on the back of muscular jock, as if it was a perfectly legitimate seat. Truth be told, that wouldn't be so impressive...but its a small pillar of flesh...a dais of at least eight different people....now and then the seat jostles...not because of strain but more to do with what the bottom tier of people were....um....doing. For a moment it was almost enough to make a head turn and try to figure out the dynamics and if that was even...sexually possible....
...the other throne holds the equivalent of 'A BRONZE GOD' or at least that's what the young man sitting there seemed to see himself as...his skin oiled and tanned to the golden crisp tinge. It didn't help that he had females lathering him with oil as well, not because he truly needed it but as if the couldn't help themselves from touching his flesh...as if they relished it...he did not opt to take throne so to speak but instead sat against the stage in a chair likely stolen from a department head given its decor....a makeshift throne but it worked.
Looking at them both though...they were just watching...just grinning. The girl flexed her riding crop...her outfit merely a sexy bit of lingerie akin to a dominatrix...a pair of glasses over her eyes with thick plastic frames. The boy...only wore gym trunks that left little to the imagination...but the disturbing part was that they looked...very much alike. Fraternal twins.
The girl and man smiled from their throne...the girl striking the butt of someone below her....at that...another wave of the impulse came...flexing out over the crowd...the mages could feel it impact them...like a wave of energy.
[Kingdom of Dreams] Resonating Impulses (Dice Pool 6) Third Round
[Kingdom of Dreams] Resonating Impulses (Dice Pool 6) Third Round (It would help if I put die in the dice roller)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Perc + Alertness, +2 from one ear, one eye]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Nico Brady] [WP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Emily Littleton] ((WP))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[Kingdom of Dreams] Perception 2 + Alertness 2 - See Nico and Ashley
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 3, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] She recognizes that girl, the one who is on top of the...flesh statue. Thing. Ashley's memory is quite good: nigh on photographic, in fact. She remembers that those twins were nothing like...whatever they are seeming to be now.
Ashley wends her way through the tangled bodies, trying to reach the stage. She's going through sheer stubbornness now, sheer singleminded purpose and Will, even if she wonders just what the harm would be in...
Well. Her hand is still on the iron link, and it's here that she attempts to screen the other two, to figure out whether there's some sort of an effect she can unweave and release them from.
[Mind 1, scanning! +1 diff, -1 for focus.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 4)
[Emily Littleton] It's a struggle again. After a moment of lucidity, of clarity and purpose, Emily is struggling with the urges washing over her, with how explicit and immediate the imagery is. She's also repulsed by the realization that there are people within this hedonistic tapestry, trapped in bodies that may be acting outside of their true will.
Ashley and Nico are not that far ahead, she tells herself. She's focused on the smaller Hermetic, on the oddly dressed Orphan, as if these two are her anchors in the moment. They are, after all, the only safe place to let her gaze settle. Everywhere else is flesh, flesh and disjointed intimacy, intimacy without emotion or understanding.
One foot in front of the other, Little. She's just got to catch up with them without falling further behind. Without recognizing a face in the crowd. Then they could figure out how to make all of this stop.
[Nico Brady] Nico is pretty caught up in himself at the moment: he's caught up in the tantalization of the imagery around him, in the horror of the realization of what the brother and sister are doing, in the drumming, base need to join in the revelry in the crowd. He's caught up, but he's not suspended, he's not trapped. He's still aware of what the two women next to him are doing, and he's aware of the fact that one of the women who was next to him suddenly isn't anymore.
When Emily drops behind, he looks around, fearful that she's been swept up in the depravity of the scene unfolding on the lawn where students sunbathe and read on warm days, where they have snowball fights and drag sleds when there are inches of powder on the ground. He finds her, and she isn't casting aside the shackles of her clothing or prostrating herself before one of the many muscular if mindless men around her. Still, she's gotten herself pretty far behind the two of them, and Nico stops walking, even reverses his steps, to catch up to her.
"Take my hand," he says, reaching out to her without grabbing hold.
[Kingdom of Dreams] The girl stares at the two before she stands up, her heels digging into flesh as she stepped down gracefully...as if akin to using limbs and torso as stepping stones. She watches them....eyes almost blazing green like a four leaf clover in tinge. Her tongue licks around her lips sensually as she taps the crop against her hand...before she cocked her hips...curiosity. She stares and then strikes down on the ground once more....watching to see their reactions...but more experimenting...they were resisting...had resisted. They had gotten all the way here and none of them had succumb to her will....and she wanted to know why. So she hit the ground...channeling her power once more...trying to subvert them...
[Kingdom of Dreams] Resonating Impulses (Dice Pool 6) - Fourth Round
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 9)
[Emily Littleton] ((WP))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] ((Perception + Alertness: Breaking stuff, is possible?))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] "They're insane," Ashley tells Nico, almost yelling - sure that he can't hear her over the music, over the fact that they're this close. Her muscles are screaming with tension, pupils dilated with lust, but she's managing. She's a mage, after all: Hermetic of House Tytalus.
"Not under impulses from the Ars Mentis. I can't help them." There's a certain anger to the Hermetic's voice: Ashley is, in many cases, comfortable with people forcing their Will upon others. After all, if a person can't resist, they're subject to whatever is coming to them; this is the way things work. It's brutal, but it's simply a fact of life, a fact of how Wills function in groups and clash against each other. Some people fall to the bottom.
This is different, and the efforts to subvert her own Will - and the fact that it's coming so close to success - has her nearly in a rage. She doesn't have Emily's information. She tries to stop the twins directly instead. Fight fire with fire, after all.
[Mind 3, command. +1 to diff, -1 for focus, -1 for practiced rote. Spending WP. Targeting both twins, will extend if necessary.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 5 (Success x 2 at target 5) [WP]
[Nico Brady] [Alertness+Perception]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Nico Brady] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] Nico extends his hand to her; he does not grab her. It makes all the difference in the world to Emily in that moment. Her fingers close around his, hold tightly. As if she's afraid he'll let her go, lose her to this madness around them. It telegraphs all too clearly how upset she is, how uncomfortable she is, and how far this game has pushed her away from arousal and temptation and toward fear.
She tugs on Nico's hand, pulls him closer to him for a moment. There has to be anxiety for him, that's she's succumbed to this, that she's lost herself. But when she brings her mouth close enough to his ear to speak to him, it's not to seduce or cajole.
"It's the crop!" She says, clearly so he might hear her over the bump and sway, the cries, the cacaphony. The girl is pointing at the female twin, now, who holds the riding crop in her hands. Emily doesn't look to her with any sense of desire, but rather with a focused disdain and anger.
[Kingdom of Dreams] ...Nico and Emily are there...Ashley is there...trying to subvert them. The girl isn't focused on Ashley though...she's focused on Nico. Amanda after all didn't swing that way. She was looking at the guy standing...the guy not bending to her will...not doing what she wanted. She got right in front of him...noticing how he gazed at things but wasn't tempted....as she stood before him and then she pointed her riding crop at him.
"Join the celebration of flesh, slave! You belong to me just like they all do...and you will partake...you will serve me...do what I want...what I bid...."
Ashley could feel that she was gaining control of the brother...but the girl...the girl was a tough cookie. Meanwhile, she pointed the crop and then jabbed it into his chest....for a moment...Emily could feel the energy...feel it collaesce around them both....it makes her knees shake...shiver...she knew if it that energy was focused on her.....there would be no helpng her...she would be lost. But...its all on Nico...it rolls out, rolling over him...trying to tempt him into desire...to submit...to worship her...to be her's....only to fall off him like water off a duck...
...but she doesn't know this, her crop in easy grab now...waiting for him to kneel with a smug grin on her face.
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley doesn't know that the whip is the problem; she can't hear Emily. All she knows is that the two twins have lost their minds, and after what she's been through, after what she's worked her way out of, she can't bring herself to kill them. Oh, she could, if she had to.
But after those other failures, the Hermetic has seized onto the hope that maybe there's another way, maybe there's something she can do to push those people into fighting for themselves. It hasn't been a fast transition; it's crept up on her.
She attempts to command the girl as well. Amanda - she knows her name, remembers her in fact. They've talked. She's trying to press herself upon Nico, who seems as though he could not be less interested. Lucky for him.
[Mind 3, same as before.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 5, 6 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]
[Emily Littleton] ((Dex + Ath: Give me that damned thing, hussy! [WP]))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]
[Emily Littleton] Oh no. No, no. Hell, no, even. Emily has not been tormented by a possessed computer, wrested from her inspection of said traitorous technology, dragged across campus and constantly assaulted by a will that sought to subject her own to let this -- she finds herself at a loss for a properly derisive word -- person attempt to bend or break Nico in any way.
She cares very little for the woman wielding the crop; Emily's not even overtly concerned for the person within that body, whoever she may be. What she does want is to end this, so she can go back to her hidey hole and continue pretending the bulk of May and all of early June did not happen.
She snatches the crop away. Bends it viciously until it snaps. Emily is angrier than she's been in a long, long time, and some of that anger is not of here or now. Nico might know that, but it's doubtful he'd care overmuch about it just now.
There's a sickening crack, and Emily hopes she was right about the source of all this drama. Else... she's about to get her ass kicked by a girl dressed like that. And that would be an embarrassing thing for her father to find on facebook.
[Kingdom of Dreams] The girl doesn't even shriek...eyes wide...but she can't move...she can only stand...no sit there...as Emily breaks it in half. The sensation isn't gone away...but the impulses are fading...already a few in the crowd are starting to get 'wtf am I doing' expressions across their features, some stopping...others a bit..still too into it. The other Orphan stares...sees that things are coming to a halt and does what he's been wanting to do since getting out of that dorm room....go the fuck home...
...meanwhile...the twins can only sit there quietly...Ashley can feel the girl...the girl trying to regain control but what power she had is gone. Looking into her eyes, she can see a green clover symbol in her pupils...like contacts...but they are starting to fade...for a moment they resemble a club from a playing card...before they're altogether gone. Son of a bitch...it was the same exact shit as the park.
[Ashley McGowen] The Euthanatos would call it the Good Death, plugging these two and leaving them on the stage. They'd consider it mercy, killing two young twenty-somethings who have been driven out of their minds by some spirit. Ashley doesn't believe in that: she's had numerous discussions with Ashton about that very thing.
Even if she did, the Hermetic has no weapons save magic, and rending people apart with magic is what caused the Jhor episode in the first place. Maybe it would be right to do. Maybe it would be more compassionate. She can't do it. It's a selfish decision, ultimately, the one that she makes.
Ashley's hands flex and unflex as Emily breaks the crop, and then...they're standing up on stage in front of the whole crowd, coming back to themselves.
"We need to go," she tells Emily and Nico. She doesn't wipe the minds of the collective: maybe they'll think things got away from them, but that isn't her responsibility to fix. She's concerned with the three of them not getting tracked down. So the last thing she does before they flee the stage is Will their features to blur, Will them out of memory.
[Mind 2, extending to Emily and Nico. Effectively giving all three Arcane. -1 for focus. Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 7, 7 (Success x 4 at target 4) [WP]
[Emily Littleton] The energy washing over them doesn't break immediately. It doesn't abate, rush out and away from the crowd like a receding tide. No, it fades slowly. It diffuses. Emily's left, holding the pieces of the riding crop in her hands, staring somewhat numbly at the now-familiar fraternal twins.
It takes her a moment to realize that they are standing at the focal point of all of this; that the crowd, when it rouses itself from its libido-fueled excesses, will look directly to them for answers, for explanations. Possibly even in anger.
Ashley says they need to go, and Emily's quick to follow. Steeped as they are in their resonances, they would need to take advantage of the slow return to sensibility of those around them. She nods to the Disciple, swallows down a dry lump in her throat, and tries not to think of the press of humanity around them -- people who were more than just animalistic husks finding themselves at the too-vivid end of a really bad dream.
They'll be considerably far from the gathering before she remembers she's got the whip, and nudges Ashley to offer it over for inspection. Maybe they'll ditch it in a rubbish bin, or maybe the Hermetic wants to salt and burn it first. The Orphan doesn't know.
[Kingdom of Dreams] The two get away easily...
::...end Clover scene::
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