You can come with me.

[K. R. Jakes] An interlude -

12:39.

"Hey. Where are you these days?"
"Did you feel anything strange?"
"Okay, listen. Yesterday, the -- there was fog; like, like, breath condensing on the surface of a mirror, but on the otherside. And activity, stepping up; I don't know: like bugs before rain I guess. How they sing so loud."
"...."
"...."
"Yeah. Sorry. I'm still here. Then it went all red light district."
"No, not - like. The color of screaming, that red."
"Yes. That red. Exactly. Drew watchers. Ugly things. Didn't interact. That was just the appetizer, right?"
"Do you know what it is?"
"Okay, main course. Ready? A couple hours ago. They went wrong. Not just nails against chalkboard wrong. That'd be natural, right? But wrong the way using a fork to perform open heart surgery'd be wrong, wrong like - just wrong. And the -- the paper between; like. I felt it shake: just as if it was drumskin and somebody's wacked it hard. But inside the drum, screaming, wailing, rending, and nothingness too, behind it, and -- something hungry, eating. I can't blame them for screaming."
"But at the same time: pow. I - it was in my head too. Shock. Scared. Like a babel. After the tower, that kind've babel. Emotions, but scared that was what it was like, and then? Nothing, just nothing. Like Nothing took over."
"Do you know what it is?"
"Okay."
"You didn't feel anything?"
"No. Don't come here."
"They can handle it."
"As well as anyone. I just - "
"..."
"..."
"Thank you. Take care, okay?"
"Ha. You know me. Always do."

And click.

And curtain rise -
on Ashley's place.

At almost 2. So it took a little longer than Kage expected: but there she is, or at least, there is a knock on Ashley's door, and it's probably Kage.

[Ashley] There are no interludes, for Ashley. Bran does not call her (protective, hostile, beseeching) Justine does not call her (you-before-me, we'll-figure-it-out) her father does not call. Confined to Chicago: that's how she knows. Solomon calls. Solomon wants a meeting.

Ashley doesn't want a meeting, but she agrees to one. She leaves phone messages, she texts. So those two hours don't seem very long at all.

Somebody knocks on her door, and the Hermetic cracks it open, peers out without removing the chain before she sees the redhead standing outside. Then her hand comes up, loosens it, lets it rattle away against the door and she beckons Kage inside. Zane's tail thumps against the hardwood floor but he doesn't rise; they've disturbed his sleep.

Ashley's in a T-shirt and a pair of blue pajama pants. Didn't bother to change. "Hey," she says. "Tea?"

[Kage] There are a number of apartments: all of them occupied; almost all of them occupied. The occupants aren't all sleeping: this isn't that kind of culture. The occupants are on their phones, on their televisions, watching a movie on their computer, chatting with people on their computer, working on a paper, the last paper, they're kissing each other, they're arguing, they're making plans, they're playing WoW, they're on the verge of an epic win, they're on the verge of something. They know they should sleep soon but they just can't. Because they're wired. Because they're talking about the bridge collapsing. Because they're talking about it all.

Then there is Ashley, who has been making phonecalls. Ashley, who felt the mental punch; who has made tea. And Kage, stepping across the threshold, taking the sort've deepbreath that moves one's shoulders, but doesn't make a sound. Her gaze finds Zane, unmoving; then she slips her hands into the pockets of her pants. They're jeans. Her shirt is a tank, dark-blue, midnight-blue. She says, "Yes, please."

By now, Ashley knows how Kage takes it. The Orphan has her bag with her, and she drops it on the floor, off to the side, slipping out of her shoes. Sneakers, good for running. She'll probably follow Ashley toward what passes for a kitchen, lean her shoulder against the wall.

[Ashley] Her hair is still a bit damp from showering, and falls into her eyes more than usual at the moment. She reaches up and brushes it away toward an ear (the left, she covers the scars that way) as she goes to put another kettle on. She drained the first one a little while ago - it did take Kage a bit of time to get here, after all. The pajamas have a way of making her look smaller, younger. Show the sharp edges of her hips and shoulderblades.

For a few minutes, the only sound is water slowly coming to a boil. The clock mounted on the far wall. Zane, whose paws twitch in his sleep, sending his claws scrabbling along the wood floor. Ashley watches the kettle for a little while, blank. Then she goes to take down two mugs and add what Kage likes to one, what she likes to the other.

Once the cups have been arranged, "I don't know exactly what's going on. Solomon thinks we're dealing with a demon. Not sure if it's one of the Paradise Lost or cthuloid variations." Not all High Umbrood are the same, after all; even if Ashley isn't sure what she thinks of angels and demons, she knows how ideas style themselves. "The angel I told you about ran into me and some others at the chantry a couple weeks ago, chasing a demon we helped kill, and it said there'd be more coming.

"The other day," she continues, picking up the kettle just before it can begin to squeal, "I was coming out of the library and this guy came up behind me and spun me around. Kissed me and dropped a note down my shirt," and she pulls the folded slip of paper out of the pocket of her pajama pants to hand to Kage, so that the Orphan can get a clearer idea of what she means. When Kage reads it, it's obvious why she didn't bring it up earlier, didn't offer a story of what happened until it became pertinent:

We aren't so different, you and I. The Hunger. The Power. You're on the wrong side, sweetheart. They'll drag you down speaking of morality and kindness. Human things. We are Gods. The script is fluid. Precise.

[Kage] Kage is not one of those people who needs to break a silence just because it's there. While Ashley gazes like a blank page at the kettle, Kage's gaze is dragged toward a window, or maybe toward a wall, maybe eastwards, westwards, whateverwards the bridge is in pieces, and cars are being dredged out of the water, bone by bone, piece by piece, pensive, thoughtless, thoughtful.

When Ashley adds honey to Kage's tea, Kage comes over and dabs a finger in it. She'd said she'd slashed herself, and she was fine with a band-aid: well, Ashley can see it took a couple more bandaids than one, and it was across her palm, across the Mount of Venus (to be precise), along the joint, curvature like a star that fell. Accidents happen. "Solomon," she says, reading the note. "The Hermetic kid?"

And then, the note read, her mouth curves. What she thinks of the note is as clear as thins ever are with Kage, who is an expressive creature, eloquent even if not always decipherable. "Jesus. Did he rip this off of some children's cartoon show? Misunderstood Villains 101?" She looks up at Ashley after that, offering the note back. "Then what: He ran off?"

A beat, and, "I called someone before I came here. Out of town. Nothing happening, it seems, but uh. He said it sounded a lot like the Week of Nightmares. Like what happened before the shadowside -- sorry, the Umbra -- became a fucking mess." There's no bite in fucking mess. If anything, the words shade pale, go toward not-quite-hollow: Kage wasn't lying when she said the sound of those spirits/souls [lamps (lanterns), fireflies] wailing will be added to her store of nightmare sounds.

She isn't haunted, though. She's thinking. About what to do.

How to fix it.

[Ashley] Kage makes fun of the note, and it seems to reassure the diminutive Hermetic. Her mouth quirks as she takes the note back, stows it away again in her pocket. Says that she might have thought much the same thing if she hadn't been so unsettled by the experience. "Solomon, Israel's cabal mate Solomon. He's a Chorister," she clarifies, as she reaches for Kage's mug, splaying her fingers over the top and around the rim so Kage can take it from her by the handle.

She raises her eyebrows, like she's curious about who Kage called, as she reaches for her own mug, breathing in the steam. She leans a hip back against the counter.

"The Avatar Storm?" she asks. "That's...interesting. And it worries me." Her brows furrow together as she raises the mug to sip from it, then thinks better of it; still much too hot. "I don't actually know what -caused- the Avatar Storm. Don't know enough about the Umbra. Maybe someone else does."

[Kage] "I've heard stories," she says, all as deliberate as a wishing penny, tossed into a still well (cobweb-choked, clogged-silk). "Most of them probably not worth repeating. But I don't know much about the 'Avatar Storm,' period. Masters disappearing. Otherworlds, cut-off. Cold War stalemate for your people and that other group of people. That much more difficult to walk the spirit-roads or the ghost-map."

Here, she shrugs; it's a careless, casual thing, and Kage wraps her fingers around the mug, wincing briefly at the heat, but not withdrawing, letting it spread, soak into her skin until it's almost unbearable, until it hums in her like the A above middle C, and then she sets the mug down again, running her fingers through her hair, keeping them in her hair. Her hair is messy, mussed, hopelessly.

"Sounds like Solomon can talk the talk, anyway. I sure can't think of anyone in Chicago who's been around long enough to remember. Ashley raises her eyebrows, as though she's curious; usually, this is a signal -- subtle -- which Kage would miss. Deliberately, maybe; offhandedly, certainly. Tonight, just after two-am, she just says, "Virtue. He knows a lot about -- well, this is up his alley." Maybe the tea is cool enough to sip now? Kage breathes on it: gently, gentled. Frost'll come, and winter.

Then: "Tch. Unsettled is no excuse not to scoff at bad campaign slogans, 'ley. Did he just run off? I mean," a beat, and: a nod, toward the pocket which holds the note. "Have you tried to use that yet?"

[Kage] ooc: Er. Put a " after "long enough to remember." Thank you!

[Ashley] Ashley, too, has heard stories. Her mentor told her quite a few: she Woke not long after it happened. She remembers being at home, remembers how her father would wander through the house late at night for a week, how deeply unsettled he looked. At the time she hardly thought about it; it only made sense to her after the fact.

She breathes against the surface of the tea, tests the side of the mug with the backs of her knuckles. When it doesn't scald, doesn't make flesh want to bubble and blister if she leaves it there too long, she raises the mug to her lips and takes a sip from it. Virtue's name makes her raise an eyebrow, pause with it still positioned there. "Did he have any advice?" she asks.

Then, of the demon, she follows Kage's glance down to her pocket. "He just disappeared," she says. "I haven't tried to contact him. I don't want to. Scared the shit out of me, honestly, bad campaign slogans or not."

[Kage] "No. Just - 'Take care.'" Brief pause. "But if the questions get more specific and there are no answers to be found in Chicago, I might call back. At least ask to borrow a book or three." Simon: a last resort sort've phonecall. She doesn't tell Ashley that he offered to come to the city. She doesn't tell Ashley that she told him she thought the Awakened Community could handle whatever it was. She wasn't lying when she said that, either.

He just disappeared, Ashleys ays, and Kage takes a deep breath. Doesn't argue. Doesn't say whether she'd do any different. Just takes that deep breath, and nods, after the slow, slow exhale. "Hunh." That's what she says. See? And then: "Hey, do you want to come with me down to the firing range? I think I'm going to go Wednesday, maybe."

[Ashley] Ashley frowns, at this, understands perhaps that Simon was a last-resort call. She remembers Hannibal's words about the matter, that they weren't really on speaking terms and those terms didn't do so well if tested. "Yeah. I...well, Solomon, Chorister-Solomon, seems to know a lot about this kind of thing, at least. He'll be helpful, even if Gregor isn't around anymore."

Gregor was her means to understanding the Gauntlet, Dreamspeaker or not; she trusted him to handle these things. And while she doesn't exactly not trust Solomon, he isn't her cabal mate.

Kage asks if she'd like to go to the shooting range, and Ashley gives her a sidelong look, as though to gauge whether she's serious. Then she lets out a laugh, not one of the light, musical ones but something sharper, almost a bark. "I'd shoot my other eye out. Or just...well..." A moment's thought. "I guess I could figure out ways to compensate. For my eye. I've just never used a weapon before."

[Kage] "Here's a first lesson, then," Kage says, with a brief, half-radiant smile - "The gun? You point it away from your face. Cuts back on nasty 'I shot my eye out' accidents." The radiance diminishes, fades, disappears, dissolves until it might never have been there at all. "Seriously, though, it'll probably be more difficult, but," a shrug. "Firing range is a controlled environment."

A brief pause. Not so brief. Kage takes a sip of the tea. Kage also carries the mug to -- not the couch, precisely, but the living room -- a place to sit. Not a chair, just the ground. Near some books. Sits, cross-legged, Indian-style, like a kindergartener on the hardwood floor. "Do you think Gregor's okay?"

[Ashley] The grin is returned, followed up by a few notes of hushed laughter, lacking those bitter tones it had a moment ago. "Okay, then." It's good for her to do difficult things: Ashley rarely undertakes anything easy. It isn't worth her time.

She follows Kage as the other woman walks out into the living room, as she seats herself near some books. Ashley folds her legs under her, drops to the ground next to the slumbering dog. Her fingers travel over his skull, over his soft ears, the touch light enough to keep from waking him. "...I don't know," she says, with a solemn look toward Kage. "I hope so. Gregor's been through a lot. I think he has the Will to handle himself."

[Kage] Her response is a sound. Not quite mellow, not quite melancholy; not quite an affirmation, not quite a denial. Just a sound: I've listened; I hear. Whether or not Kage thinks that Gregor, dragged into the umbra by a crow, could withstand whatever madness, whatever mayhem, happened on the otherside is doubful. Didn't the Avatar Storm cut people's Avatars from them: like peeling the spine out've a fish, splayed open on a wooden block? Then, then, then: that hunger was specific; the bridge fell. Those people: they died. Or they're gone. Or they didn't die. There might be survivors. Too early to know, too early to tell, and Gregor wasn't involved [off on a vision-quest].

Then: "Do you know any self-defense that isn't," a cant of her head, a lock of red-hair dislodges from behind her ear, falls across her cheek: disentangles, separates, catches on her mouth. She brushes it away, taps the side of her temple: " - sheer will?"

Isn't the sort of thing that's any good at all against spirits. Isn't really connected to what happened tonight, the demon who thinks Ashley'd be good on his/its/their side, the angels, anything. Maybe that's the point.

[Ashley] The silence on Ashley's end is a little pained. She's decided that Gregor will be all right: she's decided this because she can't do anything about the fact that he's gone, doesn't know how to go after him. It fades as she pushes it from her mind: it's a waiting game.

"I don't," she says. "They can't possess me, at least. They tried." Ashley's Will is strong enough to shrug them off like water, like the drizzle that clings to her in spring.

[Kage] Kage glances at Ashley; it's a brief glance, and dark. "I wonder what it is they want. Essentially. Bottom line. Why Chicago."

[Ashley] "I don't know," Ashley says, frowning as she curls a leg underneath her and lifts her mug to her mouth. Takes a long sip, and then sets it aside on the floor - on the edge of the carpet that covers the area between the couches and chairs. "I don't really even know why they're here or what's going on at all. Maybe it's Catherine. It's a really rare node we have."

[Kage] "There is a timeline of events," Kage murmurs, quietly: "I can't wrap my head around it. When do you think you came to their attention, 'ley?"

[Ashley] "I don't know," Ashley says, and the question makes her bite the inside of her cheek before she replies. Kage makes it sound personal (like, when did -you- come to their attention) and up until now she hadn't thought of it that way.

"Maybe they've approached other people. I haven't really talked to anyone else about it." Her hand wanders over Zane's shoulders for a few seconds before her eyes dart up, up and over to meet Kage's. "You know I wouldn't actually consider it."

[Kage] Maybe they've approached other people, Ashley says, and: You know I wouldn't actually consider it. And something there, the juxtaposition of those two phrases, the way Ashley looks at her, holds her own cup, the expression in her eyes; all of it causes Kage to look at Ashley, to consider her, and her expression is touched (fey [no]) with something perplexed, something working at a revelation. What she says is this:

"I'm not -- " pause. " -- asking you those questions because I think you're necessarily unique, 'ley," pause, "or because I'm worried you're going to repy favorably to a bad line shoved down your shirt by some sloppy kisser outside a library." Her mouth quirks; still, she is serious, grave, direct: "Just because you had those experiences; I haven't. You've walked there: you've been walked beside; you've had a shadow. Where a shadow falls, there's something felling it - you know? Some clue, some hint: the seed of reason."

[Ashley] "All right," Ashley says, and that's all, for a few moments. The tea is drained, the empty cup with less than a mouthful and some dregs at the bottom set on the rug, swirled with crimson and smoke.

"There'll be things we can do to figure out what's going on. Israel and Solomon both know a lot about this kind of thing. I think Wharil probably would too, in his way."

[Kage] "Maybe," she says, neutral, noncommittal. Kage turns the mug around in her hands once, twice, thrice: three is a good number, witching hour, lots've things come from the number three, spring from it, lots've things are made stronger. The tricycle is superior to the bicycle for stability. Kage draws her knees up, rests the mug next to her hip, curve of, her chin on her knees, wraps one arm around them. Her left hand braces her, flat on the hardwood.

[Ashley] Her cup is empty, and she's easing to her back on the floor, pillowing the back of her head on the dog's ribs, listening to the steady rise and fall just behind her ears. Folding an arm across her stomach. All Kage says is maybe, and Ashley gives her a sidelong look for a few moments, unsure of what she thinks about all this. Whether she's doubtful.

"Do you want to help?"

[Kage] Kage gives Ashley another look; something perplexed, uncomprehending: "If I can, I will."

[Ashley] "Okay," she says. "Solomon wants to get people together for a meeting. You can come with me." There's another glance toward Kage, and...what might be a hint of a smirk. She hates meetings; she imagines Kage isn't terribly fond of them either, particularly not with a lot of Traditionalists. Kage hasn't really left herself any escape.

"Mostly to compare notes, I think. I'm just glad I'm not leading the fucking thing this time."

[Kage] [! wp-not-to-look-all-ack-hey-i-didn't-mean-]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kage] "Aw, shucks," Kage says, corner of her mouth curving; there's something of deviltry, there, even if it is just a shadow: something smooth, something cool. "You'd be my meeting-date? That warms the cockles of my heart." Then: her eyebrows draw together, and her gaze is distant, a little unfocused, follow it with: "When?"

[Ashley] "I'm honored that you'd accept," Ashley says, a corner of her mouth quirking as she looks up and over at Kage again. "And soon, I think. Probably tomorrow morning or the day after."

[Kage] "Excellent. If it's before the firing range, I imagine my aim will be dead on." Beat. Then: "Before I go, want to play chess or scrabble?"

[Ashley] Kage offers to play chess, and Ashley is wearing the sort of expression that she might be wearing if Kage had just offered her a large sack of money. Or, in Ashley's case, a first edition copy of Crime and Punishment in Russian or the like. "Yeah," she says, brightly, "let me get my chessboard."

She raises herself to her feet and disappears down the hall, turns into her bedroom, and a moment later returns with a board and some carved stone pieces, which she sets on the floor between them when she returns.

[Ashley] [So competitive!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Kage] [Doo-de-doo.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)