She climbs into the car after Wharil, taking a seat in the passenger side. She pulls Dylan's dog tags out of her pocket and lets them drop in metallic coils into her lap: this link to the man, something he wore as part of his daily attire, perhaps something he regarded with a certain weight when they were first embossed and he took up his new role as a soldier, an object that was there with him through some of the most important memories of his life. The tags are part of what make Dylan who he is.
It's these that she calls upon, trying to piece all of the fragments of Dylan's being together into a whole, trying to understand his essence and the Word that frames his True Name.
[Mind 3. Taking time, using a focus, spending one Quintessence, spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]
[K. R. Jakes] Give me back my gun.
It was a mistake not to leave the apartment with Dylan when he first walked over to her, fixed his burning [brand] eyes on her and said that They were coming. They were coming right now, so they (we) had to leave. It may have been a mistake not to seek out what members of the Enlightened community she knew, was familiar with, and ask for their help right after Dylan fell asleep, did not wake up for days, in her study. It was a mistake, but she's not yet certain what she's supposed to learn from them. She's not even thinking, not really, about them. She's wondering: would it be a mistake to give him back his gun. Would it even matter. She felt what he did. He didn't need a gun, then. And that man, there was blood on his mouth.
"When you scare something, it attacks," Kage says, and it's low-voiced, smoke. "I'll give you back part of your gun, but after you leave, I'm not going to stop trying to find a way to get you out -- okay? Do you believe me?"
[Wharil Choc] [Resist Pain: Mind 1 + Life 1, Diff 6, -1 focus]
[Ashley McGowen] "I've got something," she tells Wharil, pulling her mind out of the swirling fog of Dylan's. "Just a little Enochian but it should be enough to do what we need it to do, I hope."
She pushes Dylan's dog tags back into her front pocket, watching Wharil handle the bone knife and waiting for him to finish whatever he is going to do before they go back. They're just going to have to hope that pacifying Dylan will work.
[Dylan Willis] There were plenty of things that Kage could have done differently. From the moment this man stepped out onto the path, she could have made different decisions: she could have just left him there, she could have taken him to the hospital, she could have called the police. Barring that, barring a chance to escape, she could have gone to Adam. Adam could have helped her while this strange being got his strength back, while he slept for over a week only stirring to slam down water as though he were trekking through the desert, to eat as though he were shoring himself up for a great task. She knows people. She knows Awakened people. She knows people who could have helped.
She had not called anyone. She had let him be. And then she had not heeded his demented, feverish ranting when he'd tried to warn her.
If there is anyone to blame, though, for what has happened today, for the way things have gone, for the fate that has laid itself down at their feet, it is not Kage. One could say that the blame lies with this man who the faithful at the door were calling Dylan. The United States legal system has a clause that makes nearly impossible the full punishment of those who use insanity as a defense.
Assigning blame is not nearly as important as the fact that these people now know where she lives, that these people might be back before they can get out. The man who once answered to Dylan is looking at Kage with those glassy eyes, but he is not twitching as he had been the night she found him.
(Can we really say he's been found when he's so clearly lost, still?)
When you scare something, it attacks. After he leaves, she won't stop trying to get him out. Does he believe her.
His gaze drops. He mutters to himself, holds conference with himself, his voice a low tone without a home, for nearly ten seconds before he looks back up.
"It doesn't work without the whole. I need the whole. What good is it in parts? It isn't good. It isn't... I can hold them off longer if I have the whole."
[K. R. Jakes] The redhaired woman watches (you had a name once) Dylan. His gaze drops, and she eases away from the wall which she'd pressed herself (back) against. Above her head, there is a plaque. A medieval letter illuminated, R. A beast made into the beginning of a word, a gift from someone once upon a years ago because Kage does not tell people her middlename and that R floats strangely on her business cards, on applications filled out for the state.
He mutters to himself, and she takes a deep breath. More than anything, she wants a breath of cool air. He speaks, and her eyebrows draw together, because, well, yes, that was part of the idea. She says, "The gun is in cupboard, but I don't think you should use it. Listen. You say that everything's burning. Maybe everything's burning because it's hurt? I don't know. But -- try to be still, to leave and not hurt anything. I'm going to see what I can do to help you. Go where you want," and there, when she says 'want', Kage reaches out again (as she did earlier) to touch Dylan's shoulder, his upperarm. And if he doesn't flinch, she squeezes his arm, as before: a steadying touch, she hopes; a sliver of reality. But this time she also touches his face, his jaw. Ardent. "I'll come back, if you stay."
This is bullshit, she thinks. This is all wrong, and it's bullshit. Kage didn't shut the door after Jacques, so it remained ajar, and Kage -- as long as Dylan doesn't make any sudden, violent movements -- eases (sideways, sideways) away from the mad mage and strides out the door. This is bullshit, and it's wrong.
[Wharil Choc] There was a sigh and his hands relented on the knife, no longer threatening to cut and/or heal himself. The dull ache of his magically torn organs subsides.
Ashley tells her she has something. Wharil hears, but there's no indication of it. Her enochian 'true names' would be useful to her, and by extension, to them. But right now Wharil was focused on his own world view just as his eyes were intently focused on the bone of his knife.
There was a dangerous and unstable man in an apartment upstairs. He'd been trained to handle himself in such an encounter, but this wasn't his specialty. And he was pretty sure the same went for the hermetic. Their skill set was limited, Wharil realized as he worried the bone of the blade. What they lacked they would have to make up for with luck.
[Ashley McGowen] Wharil's hands slacken on the knife, but Ashley can't see it; he's sitting to her left. She's waiting for him to verbalize his readiness, and when he doesn't, she turns to face him. He's toying with the bone blade as though he's thinking or merely nervous - not that -she- isn't, mind you - and so, assuming that he's done, she cracks open the door.
"All right, let's go back up there. I'm going to try to subdue him with the Ars Mentis. Failing that, we might have to leave again and come back, since I assume Kage will try to fight us if we try to take him down."
The words come in one quick stream with an exhale at the end. She's been trained for such situations, certainly, but hasn't been in one of them in some time. Ashley's struggles have been, by and large, metaphorical things.
She steps out of the car with a glance back at Wharil.
[Wharil Choc] [Fate's Blessing: Entropy 2, Diff 5. -1 for Focus]
[Wharil Choc] [Keep going! 3 more suxx!]
[Wharil Choc] [Hello Luck? Euthanatos calling!]
[Dylan Willis] Her hand has to be like a cool cloth to him, like a salve; though the heat in this apartment is nigh unto unbearable, though he looks flushed and feels like the brink of neurological damage, there is a sort of comfort from the touch of her palm to his arm. Muscle like rock loosens and relaxes as she squeezes the gasket of his arm, shoulders slackening without drooping and gaze softening without melting. It cements her words, gives them clarity.
His face and jaw are rough and strong beneath her palm, like the rest of him. That brief flicker of humanity from a woman who wouldn't trust him if he were the last (mad)man on Earth makes his eyes fall shut.
She'll come back, if he stays.
When he opens his eyes, when she's withdrawn her hand and crept away without giving him her back, Kage does not have to watch him make a beeline for the kitchen, to extract the gun from where it sleeps amongst the pumpkin bread and the basil and go on a trek to find the pieces that will make it whole again.
He puts his back against the wall, and he stays.
[K. R. Jakes] They are, none of them, particularly crafted for a combative situation -- unless they're combating things of the mind, thoughts, dreams. None of them, that is, except for the madman upstairs. The front door to the old apartment building opens, with oomph, and Kage appears, not dressed at all for this weather, and barefoot to boot. She casts a seeking glance around, and raises her voice (where are They, are They listening in, more Magick?) to calll: "HELLO, WE NEED TO TALK -- "
She is angry, but that isn't the dominant emotion painting a burnish on those syllables. Not at all. Her voice cuts off abruptly, and she wraps her arms around herself, because lo!
"Miss Jakes! How dare you! I was... I was going to scoop it up!" The neighbor who always lets her dog shit in that teensy yard has just come around the corner of the building, her pug-retriever-terrier-boxer monstrosity mut on a neon teal leash. The dog is just beginning to squat, and Kage looks -- what? You're still in my world? -- completely blank and unamused.
She shakes her head, and walks (strides) to the gate, opens it, to stand on the sidewalk and look around. And if she doesn't see those two men -- or one of those men -- well. Then she'll have to get Creative. Damnit.
[Wharil Choc] Another exhalation, even as his hands stir and his leg shakes. Ashley's already out of the car. Still, he doesn't speak. He simply opens the driver side door, climbs out, and slams it shut behind him. The knife is still in his hand though, even as he slides the crude but vicious looking thing back into its plain leather scabbard and slides that scabbard between his belt. A brief adjustment of his coat and it, along with the gun holstered on the other side, disappear.
"I'm ready." He finally says with the voice of a man going to his own funeral. Wharil isn't smiling. He isn't whistling. He isn't happy about anything he's about to do.
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley isn't smiling either, but that's really not so unusual. The change in the Euthanatos' usual demeanor is rather palpable. Ashley claps a hand on his shoulder as he steps around to the curb and otherwise utterly ignores it. Kage yells, but she misses it entirely.
With that, she heads up the stairs toward Kage's apartment, hand clenched around the dog tags just in case there's someone waiting for them on the stairs.
[Ashley McGowen] As they come back into view of the front of the building, Ash looks up at Kage, her expression still wary. "All right. What are we talking about?" she says, not yet going to ascend the stairs.
[Wharil Choc] There it was, on the tail of that shoulder clap from the woman who was slowly but surel becoming a trusted comrade. Well, a comrade anyway. He still smiles, genuinely and openly. And the act of doing so seems to lighten the emotional lode on his shoulders and back. A good thing, since in his case the faces he made were indeed quite likely to stick.
There's shouting, arguing, grumbling as they approach. Kage is out there. Kage is...looking for them? The man she probably only barely recognized, comes to a stop just outside the gate. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his coat, raising an eyebrow in an expression of 'You called?'
He looks nervous. Or maybe its just the cold and the open coat that has him huddling and shifting from foot to foot like that.
"Kage. You reconsidering letting us in?"
[K. R. Jakes] "What it is you're trying to accomplish right now," she says, when Ashley, who has approached the gate, the walkway to the apartment, with purpose, speaks. Her breath gusts out, and she hugs herself more tightly. The difference between a foot away from Dylan and Chicago, outside, in December is an intense one, and it shocks her body. She knows Ashley. Where does she know Ashley from? A half-a-moment, and she'll have it. Ashley, Ashley. Caspian. They're twined together in her memory, associated. Or someone who looked like Ashley, a little. Wharil. "My reason for not letting you in -- actually, you could have forced your way in the first time. My reason for asking you to please leave and leave a message is the same. I don't want anyone to get hurt here."
[Ashley McGowen] "My people aren't really going to take it too well if they find out there's some unstable Orphan running around in Chicago and I didn't do something about it," Ashley says, looking up at Kage.
"He could've killed Wharil. We just want to try to pacify him, if we can."
[Wharil Choc] "Alright." He says, bouncing slightly at the knees and nodding. "Alright, but you coulda been...I dunno. A little less sneaky about it. Sneaky makes people nervous. That Jacques guy for instance. For all we know you could have been keeping him hostage."
Could still be, for all they really knew. Wharil's eyes roam over Kage again.
"How is he? He acting funny?"
[K. R. Jakes] Some unstable Orphan. Kage didn't know that Dylan was an Orphan, just as she didn't know his name. For all Kage knew, the Technocracy would be by any moment to pick up their malfunctioning agent, and why, lookee here: a reality deviant. Dare they waste the resources to waste her? The information does not come welcome, and her eyes are expressive enough that it's obvious.
"The last thing I want is an unstable ... anything like that running around Chicago." Which is true. This is part of why Kage had brought him home; didn't just give him his gun and tell him to go to town. Because she doesn't want him to go to town: that would be dangerous, and bad. And it would not solve the problem. "But ..." Still, she looks from Ashley (Hermetic) to Wharil (Youth--Euthanatos, Enid's friend).
"Do you think you can fix him?" Wharil's questions. They aren't ignored, not at all. Indeed, there's a faint quirk to her mouth, although her eyes definitely aren't amused. "He's not good. I don't think he would have tried to hurt any of you if you hadn't tried to come into the apartment. He doesn't want you to come in. He doesn't want me to let you in. You didn't do that to him, did you?"
[Wharil Choc] "We haven't seen him for weeks. His dad's looking for him. He was worried. Said he'd just up and disappeared."
He was still bouncing. He seems to realize this and support his weight to the side, onto one leg. The other leg taps at the toes and shakes occasionally.
"So no, we didn't do this. And we won't know if we can fix him until we take a look. He won't let us take a look unless we can...pacify him."
[Ashley McGowen] A beat passes while Ashley stares up at Kage, her posture slightly more relaxed now that she has discerned that Kage doesn't mean them harm and Dylan is not lurking over her shoulder waiting to attack. As Kage suggests that he wouldn't have attacked if they hadn't tried to force their way in, Ashley frowns, trying to recall the events exactly as they transpired. Come to think of it, it did come after Jacques tried to shove past Kage into the apartment.
Ashley knows an alarming number of things about Dylan, mostly because Jacques has been using her as a shoulder and confidant every time he gets frustrated. What she knows of Dylan from that and from the few times she's met him doesn't piece together with the swirling confusion that was his Mindscape.
"He's not usually like this. No matter what, we can't leave him here. Do you think you can talk him into coming back with us?"
[K. R. Jakes] He's not usually like this, Ashley says, and Kage swallows. Because that is good news, isn't it. If he isn't usually like this, then he may be again whatever he was, and she won't have to talk to him or see him again if she doesn't want to, she'll feel no sense of duty; all will be well. The rest, though: No matter what, we can't leave him here.
"Why not? He's ...calm right now. And awake. He wasn't, for days. He was starving himself, and ..." Kage frowns, and there are lines around her mouth when she does so. "No. I really don't think that, should I go back into my apartment right now, I could convince him to walk outside and come with you. Maybe given time. Maybe. Do you two think you're really prepared to 'pacify' him? Pacify him how? I mean, didn't you feel it, when he worked his will back there? Paradox just ... He was a duck feather, and it was water. You felt it, didn't you? Do you really want to get splashed? He doesn't know what's going on."
"...Are you hurt?" she asks Wharil. Perhaps because he was bouncing, or perhaps because she remembers the sheer malice behind Dylan's attack. Either way, something draws her attention to that question, and she gives the Euthanatos a look of cool appraisal. It would be so much more badass if she wasn't shivering as she did it.
[Wharil Choc] "Are you?" comes his quick reply. "How've you been feeling lately? How long do you think you can keep this up before he drags you down with him, Kage?"
Her question is heard, and while it doesn't get addressed, it doesn't quite get ignored either. Wharil had his hands in his coat pockets up until that moment. One hand comes out, the hand without the blood on the shirt sleeve, and closes the front of his coat to hide the downward streaks of blood that have painted his shirt.
He sighs.
"Alright, lets uhm...lets see if we can't work this out. Start at the beginning. How'd he get to your place to begin with?"
[Ashley McGowen] She felt it, didn't she? Ashley frowns. She'd only assumed that Dylan had been affected by Paradox from...whatever he attempted to do to Wharil. "If it's not affecting him I'm not even sure how that's...unless he's..."
And here she trails off, and her mouth thins. Because there aren't really many things that 'unless' could be, and there is one option that everything seems to point to just now. "If he's become a Marauder I'm not sure how much help there will be for him."
Wharil begins to ask questions, though, and so Ashley goes quiet again, looking sidelong at the man and taking a step back so she can watch both him and Kage at the same time. She's listening, but it's clear that she's doing her best to put everything together, to run through their options and Hermetic law.
[K. R. Jakes] "Other than 'sorely put upon,'" Kage says, a little wryly. "I feel fine," she says, after a moment of consideration. A brief moment. "But you think it might be contagious," and this is a question that isn't a question, and Kage's voice has taken on a note that can only be described as -- musing. The possibility had occured to her, and she had meant to ask Him about it, but He had been scarce this past week. Ashley says Marauder, and Kage's eyebrows draw together. The word doesn't mean anything to her, other than what it might mean to any sleeper. "What's that?" Wharil's question isn't getting ignored, either. She flicks a look at him, a just-one-second, then-I'll-answer sort've look that happens in normal conversations all the time.
[Wharil Choc] "This isn't exactly the best setting for this conversation." Wharil says flatly, though his leg still bounces and his head turns this way and that to survey his surroundings.
[Ashley McGowen] "No, it's not," Ashley agrees, recalling the woman standing around out front and the dog that looked like it had been chasing a parked hatchback. "It means his sense of reality is warped. To a very severe extent, but if you want a real explanation it'll have to wait."
She sighs just a little as she looks at Kage. -This- is why they should all be forced into a Tradition, so they all know this shit.
The Hermetic doesn't give her frustrations voice, though, and instead gestures up toward the door to the building. "So do we get to come in and calm him down, or not?"
[K. R. Jakes] "Then let's talk, later," Kage says, to Wharil. This is the daytime, and there is sunlight trying to spill through winter's gray grip on the world. "He is calm right now, but I seriously doubt he's going to let anyone -- me included -- poke around and try to see just how fractured he really is. Wouldn't you guys like to plan your next move a little better now that you've got some information?"
[K. R. Jakes] "Hell," she says. "Come back later tonight if you want. But do it smart." Her tone of voice says: i.e., not like ten minutes ago.
[Wharil Choc] "Our next move depends on what he does next. Right now, he's unpredictable, but he's here. Now."
There was still that nervous tapping and small but frantic movement, even though his voice was flat, calm, and conspiratorially quiet.
"Do you know anything about meditation?"
[Ashley McGowen] Do it -smart,- Kage says, and Ashley's immediate response is an angry flash of the eyes. "We came looking for someone who we thought - " she begins, and then stops, sucking in a breath as Wharil begins to speak; when he says that Dylan is here right now, she just nods.
He asks about meditation and she frowns, looking up at Kage next, a bit unsure of where this is going.
[K. R. Jakes] "You found him once. Are you telling me you can't do it again?" By now, Kage is starting to be -- really, really damned cold. She should've thought her headlong plunge down the stairs and onto the street out a little further, really. She's not standing still anymore, either, because the body'll do what it wants to do: and rocking is helping, a little. Her gaze gets pulled to Ashley, to angry Ashley, of course, a Hermetic. What else. A note of wariness smokes through her expression, again, although truly, it hadn't really left. Nor had the fear. She's still afraid of the man who's up in her apartment. More so, now that he's actually Done Something, and it was Bad. "I don't know who you came looking for," she says, quietly. And by that, she means she doesn't know Dylan Willis. "All I have experience with is what you felt. And ..." Wharil gets a rather drawn out: "... yee-ees."
[Wharil Choc] "Well then let me level with you. Right now, the only person that can bring Dylan Willis out of...whatever this is, is Dylan Willis. And I'm not even saying he can reverse this. But if he can, you've got to get him to try. You've got to...convince him to look into himself somehow, and repair whatever damage has been done. He's got to deal with it himself.
And if you don't think you can or if you don't think you're willing to take that risk? Then you have to let us in."
Those were her options. It was as simple as that.
[Ashley McGowen] ((Stupid chat ghosting me out.)) [Ashley McGowen] Ashley looks over at Wharil after he suggests this, and ponders the suggestion he offers to Kage. "If he even remotely becomes a danger to anyone outside the apartment, you'll have to let us take care of it," she adds.
"How long do you think we should wait?"
[K. R. Jakes] How well she does contemplative. Even under these conditions: stressed, afraid, tense, wary, calm (at the core). However, she has already begun to doubt that she can help the nameless crow find himself again; that she can put him back together. Humpty Dumpty fell, and the rhyme never said anything about him being an egg. Does she owe it to him to try herself, all on her own, when here are these two Tradition mages, ready to try their ainsel'? Would it be better for him -- better for the city, better for everybody -- if she stepped aside? She doesn't know. She just doesn't know.
Given time, maybe. "I'll go up. Come back in half an hour. Don't scry. I don't want to just disappear, but," frowning, again, frowning and looking down at her toes, which are turning snowwhite, red. She wriggles them. "I don't know."
[Wharil Choc] "Half an hour. Any longer and we have to assume something's wrong."
And with that, the dark, jittery young man steps aside, but only to lean against the apartment gate.
"I gotta tell you, I'd really prefer to be doing this personally. I don't know if it'll help but...try telling him his dad is looking for him. His name's Michael."
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley, who was not blocking Kage's way into the apartment, nevertheless steps aside toward the gate as well. It's more of a gesture of acceptance than anything. She grimaces and flexes her fingers, also suddenly aware of the cold outside the apartment, but the woman walks all over Chicago to get anywhere - she can handle it.
"A half hour it is."
[K. R. Jakes] Wharil steps aside to lean against the gate, and Ashley does as well, in her own way. They remind her of harbingers, and also, rather distantly, of those statues from Neverending Story. They shouldn't, but there it is. "Okay," Kage says, and she musters up a smile. Tired, that, but briefly (ardent) luminous. A hint of brightness, and then: quashed. "Later!"
And she doesn't waste any time at all. The redhaired magi turns and races her cold ass back into the apartment, dancing around a loose brick which would hurt if she stepped on it, gravel flinging in her wake. She doesn't slam the door, but it thunks against the whatever that kept it open earlier, so that the magi didn't really need to be buzzed upstairs. Fort Knox, this apartment building is definitely not.
And once she's out of sight, she sags against the wall, breathing out. What the fuck are you doing, she thinks, pressing her palms harshly against her eyes. What in the holy fuck are you doing. Kage takes a minute to compose herself again, to ready herself to go from one extreme (winter) to the other (punishment: desert: flay the flesh from your bones heat).
Maybe he's left. That would be easiest, but she doesn't wish for it.
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