Aim. Point. Click.

[Red Right Hand] Minutes. That's all it took to end a life, and turn another one around. That voice, those eyes, that face, they'll never look at Ashley again. Never talk to her. All that's left is purpose, and hollowness. With her drive to see this to an end, to protect the city as Daiyu would have and revenge her death, Ashley dives into their minds.

If she were in a better state, she might've hesitated at what she's about to do. Already an idea of what to expect. But she isn't. Their mind, their Wills, everything that makes these men who they are is... as twisted and hollow as their Resonance and their actions.

If there was ever any doubt of a Barabbi's willingness to corruption and the End, there's not any more. Not for these men. But it isn't an enjoyment, so much as a pure and wholehearted faith. Belief in what they're doing, the Masters they serve.

The kind of blind faith that would make even the most religious person cringe if they knew half of what Ashley knew of their beliefs and what they serve.

[Ashley McGowen] If she were in a better state, she would indeed have hesitated. Ashley doesn't like death; she doesn't like to touch it, she doesn't like to be immersed in it, and there is still the lingering memory of (bodies under knives viscera red heat God the heat guilt) Hell. She would still have done it, because they need things from these men and whatever she can dredge up might keep other people she cares about (other people who are hers) safe, and because she refuses to be cowed.

That's just the kind of person Ashley is.

She is indeed disgusted when she gets a sense of their faith. Not faithful either, Ashley, not even to good causes, good ideals: she believes in herself, she believes in her Will, and she believes in doing the things that she Will. She believes in the process of becoming a god. Her devotion is an impulsive thing, extended more to ideas or, on rare occasions, to people. Like the woman dead the next door over.

It doesn't stop her. After that connection is established and after she's had time to accustom herself to it, steel herself against it, she begins the process of pulling layers apart. Of digging. But she does it carefully.

These are the kinds of men who truck with things that would make everything that's gentle in her, even everything that's strong and vital and thriving, heave and tear away. They're also the kind of men who might layer their minds with memories intended to do just that. So she winds around and it's more like a slow cutting than a devouring, but it's taken in all the same.

[Red Right Hand] They don't carry traps as one would expect. Not conscious ones. They don't need to. One by one she flashes through the memories. The instants, they're enough. Earsplitting shrieks of pure terror and pain that make even the bravest of people hesitate. Glimpses of faces, understanding what's going to happen to them, and the fear in their eyes. Pleading. Begging. And much more.

But there are also other things. Faces. Names. Tainted and wretched Resonances. Places. Someone who appears frequently, the memories of who he is faded and jagged, destroyed in subtle ways. Enough so that even they probably don't realize this.

Dark corridors. Creeping sensations of filth and taint to them, of the deepest and darkest abysses imaginable to the mind. They twist and turn, and the memories of them are so real. So vivid for her that if Ashley focuses on it, she can feel how they distort, that sense of space that's constantly shifting and changing. Becoming obfuscating even though they look so... simple. Like an office building's dark basement.

[Ashley McGowen] There's a lot of blurring here, faded edges, presences and places burned away. They don't realize the damage that's been done, but Ashley does, and Ashley can repair it. She can put it back together so that it makes sense, so that it's useful.

Those little glimpses, they make something in her twitch in revulsion. She has to withdraw a little, on occasion, to steady herself. To try to think of other things. Then she goes back.

Those other memories: she has the sense that some of them are feigned, planted, and it's hard to know what's real and what isn't. Whoever did this was very skilled, and whoever did it has been practiced at doing this for far longer than Ashley has. It's going to be long, slow work.

But she still tries to start the process of repairing, of piecing together, of sorting out the illusion from what's real. It's like a puzzle, in its way.

Ashley likes puzzles.

[Ashley McGowen] [Mind 4, diff 7. +1 for it being her first time doing this, -1 for focus, -1 for applicable resonance Static: Determined.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5) [WP]

[Red Right Hand] Inside their mind, she slowly Wills the pieces apart and together again. Undoing and reforming, trying to repair a measure of the subtle damage to these minds. It's a long and arduous Working, the kind that tests her patience and at times feels like it might be impossible to accomplish.

But the subtlety to it is it's weakness. She can piece it together, like a very complex puzzle. Or a diverse painting. No one bit is complete or clear. No one memory is enough. But by shifting each one, combining them, repairing them... She paints an outline of sort.

Not enough to repair the damage completely, it's too much. But it gives her hints and ideas. Paints a picture of who they seek.

The most recent, in that same dark basement with the shifting corridors and that sense that makes one ill at ease, a jagged and blurred man stands. But there's a voice to it now, not indistinct like it'd been before or hard to grasp. Simply raspy. Old.

Like a man in his late 60s or early 70s. But there's a sense of authority to it, a depth that carries with it power and confidence. Commanding and charismatic. The kind of person who can carry a crowd, even at whatever advanced age he is. Someone who can sweet talk the Devil himself. She can hear him order the assault on a very specific and familiar address that took place not long ago.

Their response a simple: "Yes, Mr. Esc--" But then it cuts out and blurs again, like the name's hard to understand. It carries enough sense that they, not realizing what'd been done, remembered the order and the occasion. But just couldn't place the person well if they tried.

What's more, there's details to the basement that weren't clear before. The magic that seeps through every corner and obfuscates traps in certain places. Defenses. Wards. Bans. Things to prevent intruders. Shapes that seem to move in the shadows.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is unable to find a specific place for the basement. But Israel told them about the office basement, that place, and she's able to piece that together. What she does find are wards, the types of wards that are laid down. The Ars Conjunctionis, all of those, preventing scrying and people stepping inside.

Ashley doesn't know whether it's useful. She doesn't know how beneficial it will be to know the face of the enemy.

While she doubts they know anything of his other plans, she tries to pry that forward too, tries to see whether or not there might be anything else that could protect the others better than any ward.

[Red Right Hand] Deeper into their minds, there's more horror to find as much as useful information. It's a closer look at his other plans, the things he'd had them do, other reasons the Charity existed. There's an eight year old girl there, mind destroyed beyond hope. Used as a tool for murdering unsuspecting criminals and drug dealers, to allow them to edge into their territory slowly.

Or maybe just lure police into places. She's not the only one, Ashley finds memories of other very similar cases. How they'd managed to get all those policemen in their pockets. Many were drones, others though... they weren't, they were simply corrupt bastards.

That's all though. These guys were low-rankers. Lowest echelons of the tree. They don't know what the plans for the city were. Simply following orders in fear and awe of the greater man, and a sense of duty to their Masters.

[Ashley McGowen] Minds destroyed beyond hope. There are Sleepers enslaved, Sleepers who are little more than animated shells. Sleepers who will need to be killed along with the others. Ashley stores all of this away, plans to go out and find them after Mr. Esc is dealt with, as he will have to be.

Unfortunately they are low rankers. There is very little to be found here that will help Solomon or Israel.

She regrets that. She regrets this having really, at the end, been for nothing. They protected the chantry and they kept Catherine from corruption, but there is no new light to shed. Daiyu is dead, and she was killed by a pair of guys that, in the long run, really didn't mean that much to anyone.

Ashley makes sure that they're bound, that their instruments are taken away from them. That they have little ability to Work here. That their mouths are taped shut.

Then she wakes them up.

[Red Right Hand] It isn't an instant thing for them, waking up after the sort of sleep they were in for so long. The signals that run through their nerves with the slightest twitch and send enormous amounts of pain through them like waves due to injury don't help either.

One of them is nervous, shivering and in pain. Maybe it's just shock. Maybe it's actual fear for once of what awaits him. Because he knows. Even if it's not Ashley he might fear, but what she stands for. It's a failure to their Masters no less.

The other though, he quietly rests his head on the cold floor and tries not to move due to his injuries. Other than that though, he's calm. Amused even with a look up the corner of his eyes to Ashley and how she seems now, a small twist of his mouth in the shadow of a grin there.

[Ashley McGowen] One of them is nervous, shivering, and the other manages to smile up at her. Manages to mock her: maybe he sees the bloodshot eyes, the grief that's mapped its way across her rounded features. Maybe he sees that she didn't really sleep much last night, and what sleep she did get was between crying spells.

Ashley stands in front of them, and she doesn't start on them yet. She looks between them and she says, "Afternoon, gentlemen. Ashley McGowen, Order of Hermes bani Tytalus. Those were my wards you broke down."

She'd intended to be cool and calm and detached, in talking to them. She'd intended to intimidate. Right now, she's managing a little, but there's something that's seething and boiling inside her the moment she looks into their faces. There's a temper on the verge of flaring, rage on the verge of working its way out of her throat.

[Red Right Hand] The nervous one, he just looks up at her. The fear that's running through his mind reflected in his eyes as his body continues in involuntary shivers and spasms of pain and fear. Some men were just the weak links by nature, even walking the Caul didn't fix that.

He isn't interested in Ashley at the moment, wary of the threat and what would happen but that was precisely why his eyes were like a cornered mouse. They shifted around the room for a sign of the numbers or way to escape.

The other one was still calm. For a moment, yes he'd frowned and given Ashley's words the proper consideration and understanding she expected, and for a split second maybe even the fear. But then just a small attempt at a shrug in indifference. It ended, however, with his eyes slamming shut as he grit his teeth from the pain of his wounds.

[Ashley McGowen] It's the calm one that draws her ire. It isn't precisely that she wants him to be shivering in fear like the other one: it's that she's so angry that the indifference is like a challenge to her right now. It makes her want to tear it apart, tear him apart until he can't put up that front anymore.

He winces from the pain of his wounds, and Ashley kicks him in the chest. Once, then again. Then before she knows what she's doing she's grabbing his shirt and hauling him up to hit him: in the face, in the neck, in the ear, in the collarbone, it doesn't matter. They're just fueled by instinct, those strikes, and they continue because she's too blind to do anything else.

Her fists are small, and she doesn't really know how to do damage with just her fists (with anything). He won't feel most of the blows beyond a sting.

It doesn't change the fact that there's a Hermetic, jaw clenched, who finally releases him and then lets him fall back to the floor, breathing hard, pupils flared with fury. There's one last kick.

Then she says, "I want you both to understand what you took from me."

There's another flare of hunger when she reaches up to her collar. There's a pair of jaws closing around their minds, closing, not crushing. Not yet.

[Mind 3, telepathy. -1 for focus, -1 for practiced rote, -1 for applicable resonance Entropic: Hungry.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3 (Success x 2 at target 3) [WP]

[Red Right Hand] [Ack... that -hurts-; WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 (Botch x 1 at target 8)

[Ashley McGowen] [Extending.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4 (Failure at target 4)

[Ashley McGowen] [Ugh.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 7, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 4)

[Red Right Hand] She's kicking him in the chest and it hurts him. Hurts him bad. Ashley is a small woman, and not all that physically fit, but when it's someone this wounded feels it like someone much stronger was punching him. As she drags him up, he's having a coughing fit from the hits and his eyes are shut tight as the pain courses through him.

But he's weak after all this. His focus is all going into maintaining that smug attitude of superiority. So when she's punching him at last, and he's crumpling to the floor... Well, he's gasping for breath, and at last there's a measure of fear there. The pain's so much and in his eyes she can see it. A barely successful gasp of air in exchange for that scream that's stuck in his throat.

It makes him give up and simply let gravity take hold, body stopping it's movement as he just rests against the hard, cold floor and lets the connection she's thrown up be made.

[K. Jakes] Kage is in the hall. Kage is, in fact, smoking a cigarette, with her back against the door, listening. Kage wanted to be around -- more or (preferably) less -- just in case something happened. Because Kage is not a trustful person. Because it sounded like a bad idea: the vengeance-Hungry Adept, diminutive, small-bodied, alone in the chantry with a couple of contained Nephandi who'd broken through the wards if the House before, even if she has recently been talking to that Flambeau asshole. That's where Kage is, when Ashley says I want you both to understand what you took from me. Her cigarette's almost gone. She wants another one.

[Ashley McGowen] Neither of them fight.

Here is what she'll show them:

A collection of memories, a handful. Except those memories aren't just Ashley's memories, here to visit them, here for them to look through and watch as detached viewers. They become Ashley, and very soon, Ashley becomes them, and these are their memories, these things happened to them. These emotions are theirs, they've been planted, they've been hammered into place by a stronger Will.

And she'll show them a woman who they admire, a soldier who hasn't let all the soldiering get to her but has lost so many things. She'll show them someone who is brave and honest, who told them the truth when the truth was hard to tell, who didn't flinch from their anger. She'll show them someone who was calm and centered but had a strength of spirit and a passion at the core that a life of war didn't drive out of her.

She'll show them someone they understand without speaking, someone who just acts, the way they just act: someone that balances them, like fire and water, dominance and surrender (but not to each other.) A woman who jumps in a fountain late at night when they were there feeling alone, who invites them in and they splash and kiss in the water and lay down in the grass shrouded by shadow. A woman who they spend afternoons with sitting in the grass, reading poetry. Who dances, whose movements are so graceful they are almost inhuman (more than human.) Who, after their mother died, just laid with them quietly and let them talk about growing up.

That's what they experience. Here's what they feel, respect and admiration and shyness, will-she-or-won't-she, does she feel this way, and they feel like they're falling in love, and they wonder at all the things that might be ahead. There's a lot of things they want.

Here's what else.

They see a shotgun rip her open. They see the heat sucked from her body, and they feel her fingers touch their cheek after she falls. They see cleaning her body, washing the blood away. They feel like they're being torn apart, like, for a little while, everything that's good has flown from the world. It will be okay again, but it isn't now. They know all of those things that they want and aren't going to have, aren't going to see again.

It doesn't matter if those are things they would feel normally or not. It doesn't matter if they're detached, black hearted bastards. They feel all of it.

It hurts.

[Ashley McGowen] [Implanting those emotions because you are both soulless fucks. Diff 7, -1 for focus, -1 for applicable resonance Static: Relentless.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 5) [WP]

[Ashley McGowen] [Extending.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] [Extending]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Red Right Hand] [...Am I a smug soulless bastard...?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 9 (Failure at target 10)

[Red Right Hand] Emotions. Human emotions, here to come knock on their door. Things they'd cast away long ago, forgotten about. Probably for the best. Not everyone was a willing convert to the cause, some of them had regrets and remorse. Even after their Avatars became twisted monstrosities, there was an emptiness there that they wanted to fill but couldn't.

The shivering and frightened man was one of those people. It'd been so long ago, that he'd been a hopeful kid trying to accomplish something. Before he got conned into the Caul, before he did things he couldn't take back. So giving himself to the cause filled that gap.

Salvation was a lie. Might as well even the score. If nothing existed, then maybe that meant he could escape the torment. Or maybe when the Lords that dwell in the Abysses would fill it with something else. Anything better than uncertainty.

But now again, human emotions come to visit him. Things lost so long ago, and they feel so warm and so kind, so familiar. They rip and tear him apart. Love, happiness, loss, these are beautiful things and things he'd lost so long ago. Things never to be gotten back. For a moment, even the weather and tainted monster of a man can feel a strange warm sensation down his cheek as a single tear manages to make it's way out of the tear duct and fall to the floor under him.

Then he's curled into a ball and accepting his fate. Accepting death. Salvation in death. His soul was twisted and beyond saving. But maybe the next life wouldn't quite be him. Maybe by not understanding human emotions from a start, he could escape the torturous sense of loss over it all.

But the other man, the smug man who's writhing in pain still. He's less understanding, less human in his lack of humanity. The memories, the loss, the destruction of it, it brings a tinkle of blood down from his mouth from the worsened wounds and a slight twitch but that's all. Too pained to mock her, or say something, some response. But he's satisfied.

A twisted victory in their loss. It might not be today, might not be tomorrow... But maybe, they'd sown seeds of dissent in the group. A gap in her heart that wouldn't close and might even bring her to their arms some day. Even the chance of it was enough to satisfy him.

[K. Jakes] No more cigarette. Kage looks at the butt, then ashes it out on the wall. Then, absent contrition, wipes at the stain with her palm, shifting her weight from one hip to the next. Then she nudges the door open, to take a look at how Ashley is progressing. It's been quiet. It's been too quiet. She isn't standing up, and she isn't going into the room yet. She's actually trying to be very quiet, just in case Ashley is still in the middle of some delicate Hermetic (ha, ha, oxymoron) ritual.

[Ashley McGowen] One of them cries. One of them is happy, in a way, to have experienced those things that she showed him. For a second or two, there's a part of Ashley that is happy to have given it to him, even as something else in her twists in revulsion, in disgust for all that he is. For his weakness, for needing to hide behind some master, for allowing subjugation to some stronger Will.

The other one, well. His satisfaction gets returning defiance, determination: no. This is not bad enough to make her them. He gets a look, too, there from her physical form, there in the place that their Minds warp and weft.

Ashley has a knife, and now is when she pulls it out. Long, heavy blade; it's a ritual knife, and it's sharp. She drops to a knee next to one of the Nephandi, the one that's stayed calm. And she looks into his face, slaps a hand against his cheek: a pat, but a hard one, one that makes him look at her.

And she'd intended to tell them that she was going to cut their hearts out, let them know what was going to happen. She'd intended to smile and say that it was poetic justice, explain to them that she just isn't very good with a knife.

If she were to do it, it would take a long, long time. Because she really is shit with a knife, and there's bone to cut through, flesh and veins in the way.

But in the end, imagining this kind of murder and doing it - they're two completely different things. Killing during battle is different, when the blood is hot and there's an immediate threat. Torturing two men there on the floor? Well, that's something else.

If the truth has to be said she's angry with herself for not being able to do this. She regards it as a failing, when she positions the knife above the man's chest, lets the tip dig in, lets it press through to the bone and can't drive it through because there's his face and it's still a human face even if he is a Nephandus. She should be able to do anything.

Except that she doesn't want to, and she doesn't Will it. So she looks toward the door, and at first her voice is very quiet, and she has to raise it after she speaks once. Then again. "Kage. Kage? I need your gun."

[Red Right Hand] [I'm about to die either way, mock her?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 9, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Red Right Hand] She kneels in front of him, and by instinct he tries to move back. But the pain's too much and his body's too tired. Instead, after he's recovered from the attempt to recoil. With a difficult breath, he's laughing. A pained and faint laughter. Like a mock. His eyes on the knife, as though egging her on and telling her to do it. Daring her to do it.

The other, he doesn't react short of an involuntary shudder at the prospect of a gun. But deep down, he's probably glad. He hadn't seen the knife, but the imagination did wander.

[K. Jakes] Ashley has a long, heavy blade; a knife used for ritual Work. Ashley has that knife, pointtip downward, over one of the Nephandi's hearts, pressing into his chest. Kage sees this, and she -- quietly, still; quiet -- stands up. If Ashley'd kept pressing it in, if Ashley'd delivered the words she had planned, if any of that had happened, Kage would have said something.

So when Ashley looks toward the door, Kage is watching her, pensive, observant, dark-eyed and inscrutable, all smoke. And when Ashley asks for Kage's gun (Dylan's gun, actually [inherited]), Kage doesn't need to go down to the truck to hand it to Ashley. She has it at her side, just in case.

"Need me to show you how to use it?" she says.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley has never used a gun. Both of her old cabalmates knew how: Justine was very good with them. Was an excellent shot, knew how to use pistols, knew how to use rifles, could use a shotgun (god, a shotgun.) So she knows there's more to using one than pointing and pulling the trigger. There are levers and hammers and things that need to be pulled.

She doesn't know much more than that.

There's also this: Ashley has only taken a life once, and it was also outside this house. It was back in January with magic, unwove the man, devoured the life out of him. She's never pointed a gun at a man's head and murdered him there on the floor.

But she does want to do this, even though everything in her rebels. Even though her gut recoils. Her mouth is dry, but she tells Kage, "Yes," and holds out a hand for the weapon from where she kneels on the ground. The knife she lifts away from the man's chest and sheathes.

[Red Right Hand] The fact that he's ignored doesn't seem to stop the man, doesn't bring a halt to the pained laughter. Instead, he's attempting to force himself to slide forward and grab Ashley by the left ankle. Not in a grip to drop her or hurt her, but rather to get her attention.

"C-C-Can' ev'n see i-i-it th-thru' p-p-properly?" He says, in between pained gasps and attempts to laugh at her that make his rib cage feel like he's being kicked over and over again with a steel toe boot and his heart is being crushed by someone's iron grip.

[K. Jakes] Yes, Ashley says, and holds her hand out for the gun. Kage doesn't give it to her yet; perhaps because the smug Nephandi -- the one who isn't cowering, who's too-far lost, who's been too-emptied, scooped-out, Hollowed, maybe he was born that way, maybe inhumanity's just the way his heart beats -- has reached a hand out to try and laugh at the Hermetic and hold her still.

Kage walks across the room, and she says, "Okay. Watch closely." She says that to Ashley, and she crouches down, holds the gun out for Ashley to see. And she also does this: she looks at the defiant one, consideringly, then says - soft - "And hey, kid. Kid." Doesn't matter how old he is, really. "Listen to this lesson, okay? I'd like it if you were a better person in your next life. I'm going to hope. I'm really sorry that you're the way you are. And I'm really sorry that your last words are cliched B-movie villain bullshit." And she shoots him in the leg. "And I'm really sorry this is the last room you're going to see. It's disappointing."

And she hands Ashley the gun, after showing her how to check the chamber, and says: "That's how. Just hold it really close, okay?"

[Ashley McGowen] He grabs Ashley's ankle, and what he says makes the Hermetic's mouth thin, makes her eyes flare, brings forth that boiling fury she'd walked into the room with. That had caused her to kick him, punch him, beat him until he's broken and bloody. She did it even though there's a wound in her side, persistent and painful; she ignored it.

She almost does reach for the knife. But Kage, she mocks him, because Kage mocks, Kage is sardonic, and then she shoots him in the kneecap. The sound is like thunder.

Ashley's ears are ringing, and her eyes are wide with shock at how loud that noise was inside this room, how it reverberated off the walls, how it made her guts jump and jumble together. Kage holds it out to her and shows her how to check the chamber.

Ashley takes the weapon, she checks it. She does what Kage showed her to do. And she presses the gun against his forehead. It takes her longer than one would think to pull the trigger, because he's staring up at her. That blast is loud, too.

The one that's shaking. She puts her hand on his shoulder, closes her fingers over him, the kind of thing you do to comfort someone or offer solidarity, before she puts the gun to his head. He dies just the same.

[Red Right Hand] The loud explosion in the room makes the curled up one jump. What follows makes him look at last, because at last the smug one is screaming. Howling in pain as his kneecap is blasted through by a bullet and bits of flesh and muscle are sprayed on the floor below it. His lungs burn from the howl but he doesn't care. It hurts too much.

For once, tears slid down his eyes. Not tears of remorse, not tears of some revelation, not the kind Ashley might have wanted with her implanted memory. But tears of pain, the kind that her current state probably craved. They continue to streak down his cheeks up until the last moment, when his eyes meet hers and he just looks at her. Ensuring that the memory and the emotions and what comes next are all burnt into her memory forever as the bullet makes a hole through his skull and more viscera is splattered on the floor as he keels over to the side with lifeless blank eyes and twitching muscles.

The second, the fearful one doesn't look at her though. He closes his eyes, and for a moment, just for a beat, he stops shaking when she puts her hand on his shoulder. The instant that is shortly followed up by the thundering sound of a gunshot once more and as he too paints the room with his blood, leaving a permanent mark on it even after it's gone and been cleaned. These kinds of things don't just go away overnight, they might forget but this room never will.

[Ashley McGowen] He stares up at her when she pulls the trigger, and Ashley's blue eyes meet and hold his. She doesn't want to kill anyone, but it isn't because she's afraid to do it. She doesn't flinch.

When the third shot fades away her good ear is ringing, and the gun is hot in her hand. Ashley looks down at it, looks at her finger curled against the guard, against the trigger, and then she hands it butt first back to Kage. She stays there kneeling next to one of them, next to the one who, for a little while, remembered what it was to be human.

She isn't looking at the Orphan: she's blinking away tears. They aren't all because of Daiyu. Just most of them.

[K. Jakes] Dead people stink. They lose control over their bowels. They become something other than just fear sweat and viscera. Nobody'd washed the two nephandi, while they lay on the floor, in the middle of a scrawled chalk, burning, shining, unrelenting, reverence, all around. There's absofuckinglutely nothing cool about dead people. There's nothing to be afraid of, either. They're just eidolons: wax.

Kage accepts the gun, puts on the safety. Kage isn't crouching any longer; Kage is standing, and looking down at the two once-men; looking down at the back of Ashley's head. She says

" - you know," a beat, "this gun was Dylan's. The nameless crow's. He gave it to me when I asked him to. Because I didn't want him shooting someone who didn't deserve to be shot." A beat. And then - " - it's fitting, though. Here. For what it's worth. It's good that they died, and it could have been worse."

Poetic justice. Or something, right? Kage runs her fingers through her hair, and keeps them buried in it. Her hair is as red as newspilled blood -- really, it is. See?

[Ashley McGowen] It's good that they died, Kage says, and Ashley nods. Mute, at first, just a bobbing of her head, which is bowed, shaggy dark hair falling over her ears and obscuring her face. Not blood, like Kage: just shadow, like the sleek dark pelt of some beast, thick and short.

Dead people stink, and Ashley doesn't like those smells, doesn't like the scent of blood and viscera, doesn't like them even more than most people don't like them. They make her eyes flare a little, they remind her of that one time, that one time she tries very hard not to think about. Post traumatic stress disorder: it lasts for a long time. Sometimes it lasts forever.

When she looks up at Kage there's still something fluid, there about her eyes, but it's held back, stoppered away. She says, "I showed them my memories of her. And how I felt about it. And one of them," a glance toward the one who'd been trembling, "he remembered."

For a moment, she'd even wondered: possible, is it possible, could she maybe. Can it be done, can a soul untwist. That question is there in her face. Kage knows, and Kage can read it, because Kage knows Ashley, and Kage and Ashley were equally stricken by the Marauder's death.

[K. Jakes] Kage thinks of spinning thistle and Kage thinks of spinning flax. Kage thinks of spinning things gathered in graveyards, and Kage thinks of them shining. Kage thinks of the way the one had screamed, and maybe he hadn't been human any longer, maybe he hadn't been a good person, maybe he'd been an agent of Desolation, a Desolate creature, but he'd sounded just like anyone else who was hurt. There is a question in Ashley's eyes; a question of twist, and untwisting; a question of re-Naming, and Kage responds to it by looking from Ashley to the two dead men. Maybe they'd had names she'd found when she searched them. Maybe not.

She says, bone-hard, yielding-silver - soft-thing - "That's good, too. That's better revenge. That's making something bright again, you know?" But there's the question, and Kage knows it's there. She glances back at Ashley, and says - " - We should hit the books and start making up ways to unmaze fuckers like this. If it's even possible."

Wistful. Of course it's possible. Everything is. Undoing the Avatar Storm is possible.

Sometimes it's just hard.

A beat. "I'm going to call Ashes or T. H. to handle the bodies."

[Ashley McGowen] The muscles in Ashley's throat are still frozen up, clenched, hard to breathe through. They do this: it's the first sign to her that she's about to lose it, that something is coming up on her that she'll have a hard time suppressing. But she does. Somehow. Even though that closing makes her want to panic.

She walks out of the room, away from the bodies, because she doesn't want to be around them right now. Because she's happy in a way, about the revenge, but she doesn't want to be present where a killing was done.

She says to Kage, "It's fucking stupid, that some weak kid can make a dumbass mistake and have his soul black forever. There's a way." Because there always is. It's her agreement with Kage, it's her saying: I'll help you, we'll work on this together, it means something to both of us.

After a second or two she clears her throat, banishes some of that tight feeling. "Thanks for coming here with me."

[K. Jakes] Kage is good at naming things.

Kage is good at naming things so the names stick. Kage is considering renaming the White Fence House, renaming it something like the Abbattoir. This isn't a conscious thing. Kage just names things, and then they're named. Ashley walks out of the room, and Kage bites her lower lip, once alone, and looks at the toes of her shoes. They're sneakers, thin little keds, spring-time things. They're borrowed. They're her younger sisters. They're almost slippers, Chinese seamstress, red-strand, red-ribbon. Kage turns, follows Ashley out -- after a last glance at the dead --

Then she says, "Did you find anything out?"

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley stops when they're out in the hall, because there is that door again, and beyond that door is Daiyu. No: beyond that door is Daiyu's body. She stops in front of it and she looks at it a moment, thinks about going in because a part of her wants to look, a part of her wants to see her face as much as possible, imprint it forever. Map its contours and the little things, what her fingernails look like, her scars and where they are and the way they felt under her fingertips.

She doesn't go in, ultimately. Her eyes well up again but those don't fall either; she just turns away and puts her hands in her pockets and starts back down the hall. Because Kage has a question.

"Some," she says, "but I don't think it's going to be useful. Just a face, and half a Name, and the location of the basement Israel's already been to. Shit they did with the charity. They took away the mind of an eight year old girl and used her as a lure. But nothing that can help us."

It would have been some validation, something, if she'd been able to discover anything. Ashley is disappointed, bitterly so, and it's there in her voice. "It's just...it's so pointless."

[K. Jakes] Kage's eyebrows draw together, and she -- is pale, let's face it; very pale -- frowns. Lines around her mouth. The same ones that show when she smiles. "You're wrong," she says. "It's never pointless."

[Ashley McGowen] "They were a couple of fucking Initiates, and she lived through a war," Ashley says, rough, raw, with a look over her shoulder at Kage. "And we don't have anything to show for it. There's going to be more and they're going to keep fucking coming. Where's the point in that? How is it worth it?"

That's the problem with the kind of resolve Ashley has. She wants to fight, and she fights just to fight, and she fights because she can't do anything other than fight. And she will continue, because she doesn't know another way. It doesn't mean it means something to her.

Not right now.

After a few seconds she lifts her hand and scrubs it across her eyes. "I'm sorry," she says. "I should go home."

[K. Jakes] How is it worth it? That's the question that makes it difficult to frame a reply, to find the proper symmetry. "There are two dead -- three dead? Four? Five? I don't know how many, down by the well -- but there are Nephandi who won't be twisting anything else into their shadow, now. Because of this. And if being untwisted, if being -- it means something. It's never pointless to live, and it's never pointless to die. It -- "

Kage feels deeply, and she stops. "They were people once," Kage says, quiet and low, "And then they were monsters, and now they're not. And that isn't pointless." A beat. "But you should go home. And play with Zane. I'll ... start looking into that stuff you asked me about and call you later."

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley feels deeply, too. It feels like some monster is trying to chew its way out of her guts, it feels like there are shrills of pain through her muscles that could bend her backwards, double her over. It's moved over into being physical. She's not going to play with Zane when she goes home. She'll make the attempt. But she won't.

"I know," she says, quietly. "I just...wish I could go and fall asleep for a couple of months, or something." There's a sigh, then, and she rolls her head, pops her neck. She doesn't say anymore, because there's grieving and then there's pathetic, and she refuses to be one of those. They're close enough as it is.

"Thanks, Kage," she says again, because she knows the Orphan is going to be the one who calls Ashton about the bodies. Ashley, she just has wards to put back up before she goes, and tomorrow she'll go tell a man that his best friend since childhood is dead, and their hearts will break in silence.

[K. Jakes] --

And when Ashley is gone, there will be two phone calls. The first will be to Ashes, and she won't answer. The second will be to T.H. And it'll go ring, ring, ring.

[Ashley McGowen] [depressing credits]

Henri Bean, Maintenance Girl

[Henri Bean] *Incessant buzzing. She could have called of course. But why call when one is in the neighborhood, and can instead lean on the bell in an attempt to recreate the drum beat from My Sharona. Half singed, the frizz topped teenager bounces from foot to foot impatiently outside Kage's complex, skin prickling from the cool night breeze. A man in a sleek sports car rolls by, one hand on the steeringwheel, the other greedily shoving a BigMac into his dribbling maw with little concern to a college student trying to cross the street. The blare of a horn adds to the city's noise as the vehicle and the co-ed play chicken down the street.*

[K. R. Jakes] [I'm aware, you're aware, we're all aware?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[K. R. Jakes] The gate is fastened (the hold is barred) and there is no chink in the apartment building's defenses today (no neighbor, unsuspicious of visitors). Henri buzzes, and buzzes, and buzzes, and it's entirely possible that Kage isn't home; her black truck of monstrous proportions, in which Henri has found herself on various unpleasant occasions, is nowhere to be seen. Then again, it isn't like the complex has a parking lot out front. Just the green scrub of an almost-yard, just the little wind-y path up to the stoop, the hold-the-door-open-for-the-world brick has been thrown as far from the front door as possible, and the building's old intercom system adds a whine to Henri's isistent button pushing.

Upstairs, Kage tries to use the intercom to tell whoever it is to calm down, hold on; it doesn't work. The super should get on that; the super won't, Kage knows from long experience. Finally, Kage drags herself out of her couch, shoves her feet into her cartoon dragon slippers, and walks down the stairs. And it's Henri. She knows, when she opens the front door, framed by the dark stairwell up. Knows that it's a Henri who doesn't feel like a Nephandi, which is a plus. Kage's expression is a touch guarded; her eyes tarnished up with wariness, but also - a gleam. She's pleased to see the diminutive Ether Queen. She's ready to be pleased, anyway. She's also ready to be told Henri's robot army won't stop stealing panties from Trannies and would Kage please come and help.

"Hey," she says. "C'mon in and up."

[Henri Bean] *No. It was no nephandi belting out eighties hair rock on Kage's intercom. Henri's owlish face lighting with a gleeful shine as the weary orphan emerges from her house. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, the scorched scientist crows.*

Criminey! Your tella-bloke machine don't work or summin? Been out here freezin my she-pebbles straight north!

*Kiwi speak, and plenty of it, as Henri clatter clanks past Kage into the apartment with all the thoughtless entitlement of someone who lived there. As she struts in like a bantan rooster, her smell fills the enclosed space. Grape soda, metal, and the overpowering odor of acrid smoke and burnt hair. Electric blue eyes blink from under a wild halo of black frizz, taking in Kage with a tilt of her head.*

Was you sleepin mate? Didn't mean to wake a sheila up....

[K. R. Jakes] Kage regards the wild mechanical frizz of Henri's hair as Henri struts in. As they go up, up the stairs, into the apartment Henri knows well enough, with its shining new kitchen counter, almost obscenely new compared to the rest of the dilapidated (aging [gracefully? heh?]) place. Some part of her knows what her own older sister'd say, or try to do, and she is irritated at herself for thinking in terms of conditioner. It makes her run her fingers through her own hair, red red red and messy.

"What's a tella-bloke machine? Why would I want a machine to tell a bloke anything?" Kage asks, of Henri. And then, with the ghost of a smile -- something pale, and diminishing: "I wasn't asleep. It's been a long weekend. Want something to eat?" A pause, and Kage -- who has circled into the kitchen -- rests her palms against the counter, leaning forward. Her eyebrows lift, and she says, "What are you working on these days, Miss Henri Bean Ether Queen? Catch a woman up. Tell me the story of your life, as will not be splashed in Gentleman Inventors Quarterly, huh?"

It doesn't seem as if robots stealing panties is the problem. Still. Kage wants to be sure.

[Henri Bean] Oh, your intercom thing mate? Should be able to just buzz a bozy up rather'n have to hustle down on your own two. Sort of defeats the purpose of having one....

*Curiousity running rampant, the slender teenager peers about the complex in greater detail. Her mind on security these days, as she worked on the lafette's own defenses. She makes a ruckus heading up the stairs and into Kage's apartment, all clattering and clanking and clonking of heavy boots. Made for stealth she was not, the Ether queen. A bright manic smile as Kage addresses her as such. Henri hops up on the counter beside the orphan, belatedly removing a gadget from under her bony ass with a hiss of pain.*

Fuck a Duck. Ow.

Anyway, betcha there's plenty of blokes what you'd like to tell a thing to. You'n Gregor'd make a hansum pair, whenever he gets back from his vacation. All worryin like you do.

*As to the story of her life, it seems for once the Bean's response is a shy kinda bob of her shoulders. *

[K. R. Jakes] Kage is cool, casual, a creature of composure; of understated elegance and reserve. Kage is poised. Kage is also, today, bone-tired, heart-weary, and she has burned whatever willfulness she generally has low. Which is to say, her half-rueful half-amused smirk changes to a widening of the eyes, and then an utterly gorgeous, utterly luminous grin, shocked laughter cupped in her gaze, brimming over. "I'll tell the super. He isn't usually very quick when it comes to doing his job," and this, deadpan: "Unless it's the part of his job that involves collecting bills, or writing them." The grin just begins to fade, when - " - His vacation? What vacation?" Henri sort've bobs her shoulders, shy, and Kage pushes away from the counter, opens her refrigerator, and pulls out some left-over eclairs or cookies or baked somethings or other, something sweet.

[Henri Bean] Vacation mate. Tahiti. Came to me in a dream all trickys like. You know how them dreamspeakers are. Speakin' in dreams.

*A wide grin as she hops back down from the counter with a clank, and moseys over towards where the intercom is, arbitrarily getting out a screwdriver and beginning to remove the faded faceplate. A glance over her shoulder as Kage rummages in the fridge.*

Got anything chocolate? I'm gonzo for chocolate. Ain't had a nibble since yesterday on account of bein' busy.

*She doesn't mention that she was busy ...running from the police... after lighting up the waterfront with an overlarge arsenal of homemade fireworks*

[K. R. Jakes] Kage doesn't notice Henri, idling toward the intercom plate, Henri with a screwdriver that should strike more fear in the heart's of badguys than Doctor Who's (and Kage isn't a bad guy, but she is justly cautious of Gentlemen Inventors, even when they're ladies - especially when they're ladies - like Henri). She might have something to say when she does notice.

As it is, "Busy with what?" There may be things left unmentioned. Kage usually asks about them. It's almost as if she had a sixth sense -- and maybe she did. Awakened people: you never know. "I've got chocolate mousse cake. Half-eaten, but it's still chocolate. Chocolate tea, too. Tiger's eye: it's creme brulee and chocolate." Kage likes tea. Henri knows this, by now. Kage's voice is a shade distant, because she's thinking over, wincing over, Henri's insistence that Gregor is in Tahiti. Kage knows Gregor was still alive a month ago, on a visionquest; that he didn't want help. That's a little like being on a vacation.

A beat. And - "Hey, did you know it was Israel's birthday on Friday?"

[Henri Bean] Oh you know... with things....

*Things having absolutely nothing to do with why she was at Kage's right now, rather than on the good ship Lafette. Where Atlas no doubt was waiting. To beat her. Or at least give her a long boooooring lecture on discretion and how the Lafette doesn't need protection against rockets Which was madness in Henri's opinion, as you never knew when someone was going to hit you with a rocket until they up and hit you with a rocket, and then where were you? Rocketted. Thats where.

A screw squeaks, threads stripped already. It'd need a new one before she was through, one of her hands fumbling about in a pocket and coming up with wire strippers and a chunk of tinfoil. Tinfoil was an etherites second hand man. Her 1st hand man being ducttape. A tongue protrudes as Henri squints at the intercom intently.*

Friday? Mousse sounds brilliant mate. I'm get her a pressie then. Maybe make her sumphin nice. OH! Think she's got a thing she'd like turned to gold or some'in like?

[K. R. Jakes] "Robot things? Things that explode? Or self-replicate? Or de-construct base matter and re-construct it in another shape? Laser things? Boy things? Girl things?"

A beat. The mousse cake is put on the counter that divides the kitchen from the dining room and the living room, in all its medieval/modern glory, and Kage sets a couple of forks on the counter next to it. She doesn't mean to get any plates. And, of course, now she sees that Henri's messing with the intercom.

Says, "The Friday which just passed. I don't know if she'd like anything that's gold; she couldn't see it, although I suppose it might feel nice." A beat. "I know she liked the roller derby."


[Henri] Ummmmm... a little from column A.. a little from Column B.... And bollox to boy/girl things. Bloody trouble they are. Boys I mean.

An you should of been at that Derby mate. Was brilliant mate. Gave you a dingle but you weren''t round!

*Muffled, a pair of pliers in her mouth, both greasy grimey hands digging around in Kage's intercom, as electricity bzzzts and tinfoil sparks. Working live, it would appear. The Bean was Fearless. Or so one might beleive if they hadn't had to haul her crying self out of their cupboards. Henri gets a tiny jolt and hisses, dragging the goggles gregor had gotten her down over wide eyes before looking to the weary redhead with a "I didn't just get shocked" smile.*

How you been Sheila? What you been doin?

[K. R. Jakes] "I would have liked to see it," Kage says, with a faint (moon's shadow, smoke) smirk. Kage would've liked to see Israel busting out the moves. Kage would've been a little more hesitant about getting herself pushed into the madness. She doesn't know much about roller derbies, but they sound violent. "Maybe next time." And, apparently, she also likes to tempt fate. Henri says boys are bloody trouble, and Kage can't argue with that. Not with Him, hovering around, the things He says. He's not a man, but -

Kage doesn't really see Henri's 'I didn't just get shocked' smile. Kage is leaning her elbows against the counter, again. Distant, and tired, and drooping. She doesn't even seem to have noticed the suspicious - and dangerous sounding - electricity, the sparking; these wires are old. Bad things could happen. The building is flammable: this is Chicago, city of city-fires.

There is something about Henri that people see, and worry about. Henri acts like a child in so many respects. Kage doesn't try to baby her. Kage doesn't think she should be stopped from 'dangerous' experimentation on a Technocratic ball of goop, per se. Kage has principles, and Henri thinks. Kage hopes Henri thinks, believes it. Which is to say, Kage doesn't wave a hand and say Oh, nothing, nothing. Kage answers with this, grave-eyed: "I've been spending time at the White Fence House. It went and got itself attacked by a circle of Nephandi. And someone I knew died. There were bodies to deal with."

Here, half-wry - an attempt at humor (attempt, because her heart isn't really into it) - "You don't have a robot that could help with that, do you?"

[Henri] *Electric blue eyes blink behind her goggles as her frazzled, complicated little brain shifts gears from "red wire has rust, have to strip to wick. Nanobots could be utilised for upkeep?" to "Droopin Kage? Dead buddies? Ohnos!" Another snap of electricity as Henri quickly does a patch job on the wiring of the intercom, and slaps the faceplate on with a single screw. Clatter clanking approach abrupt and tenative at the same time. She should do something. What would gregor do? ...somehow sighing in worry didn;t seem appropriate. But - AH! There's the solution. One hand hauls up her pants to an acceptable level on scrawny hips, while the other scratches the back of her head. Stalling for time.*

I think that fucking house is bad mojo mate. I'd steer clear. Sorry. Bout your friend n' all.

* And I hope its no one I know. Selfish little thoughts make her wince as she pushes up her goggles, then abruptly flings her arms around Kage in a bruising, bony hug. Burying her head in the woman's shoulder. Her voice muffled as she crows with sad authority.*

Robots don't give hugs for shit.

[K. R. Jakes] The Orphan flinches. Not because Kages are shy, shying creatures, half-mythic, who inhabit twilit worlds at the edge of noise and away from crowds, where Touch is an alien idea, and Hugs are strange things spoken of in legends. But because Henri's hug was a bruising sort of bony hug, and Kage is already very bruised. There are ugly, ugly purple and black (plums, squooshed) marks all over her back, in the shape of a lock, ornate, Victorian, thank you very much Paradox, you paranoid fuck. The Orphan flinches, and her eyes get a little shiny, and her breath leaves her with an oof, and then she hugs Henri back. Gingerly. The slender -- and small; not too tall at all -- red-haired woman touches Henri's hair, and swallows. Then she says: " - you could just be saying that so I don't think you're a robot. But how do I know, really?"

[Henri] Aw, you don't really think I'm a robot.... *Its said as though Kage had just declared the owlish girl Pretty (which she was not). Or Brilliant. (which she was.) Smoke. Kage can no doubt nearly taste it. Its like the damn etherite rolled around in a burning building for awhile until she was good and saturated. And knowing Henri Bean, she may well have for god knows what reason. Henri gives a big sigh, unabashed as she squishes the bruised orphan in a good bear hug. It seemed once she'd committed to a thing, she was in it for bust. Dylan's friend, maurader or not. Goopy's keeper, even if it was "evil". There was something to be said for the silly kid's staying power. Henri sighs again and rocks from foot to foot, awkwardly. Her pants sloooowly making a break for the ground.*

[K. R. Jakes] "Your construction is very cunning, if you are a robot," Kage replies, not precisely saying yes, not precisely saying no. Kage is really good at answers like that. If Henri doesn't release her, she -- gently, but firmly, gravely-- detaches herself from the frizzy-haired Etherite anyway, and says, "C'mon. Help me polish off this cake. And tell me what it's like, living on the Lafette."

[Henri] [and fade to cake eating and lafette jabbering and henri fixing the intercom. And promising to come back soon to make it EVEN BETTAR]

[K. R. Jakes] [dundunDUNNN.]

Cleaning the Dead

[Kage Jakes] Eventually,

there is a bedroom upstairs where they've set Li Daiyu's body. There's a lot of discomfort associated with what's left behind, after someone's gone: Passage (mystery). It shows, in the way people refer to the body, as if it has become uncomfortable, an alien word on a swollen tongue: the body, Li Daiyu, Li Daiyu's body, the dead person, it, she, what to call it?

Kage is done with what is actuall in her power to do. She has gone down to the Node, down to the Well-room, with Emily. She has given direction, and she has thoroughly -- very thoroughly -- looked over those who're dead and those who're unconscious, gathering information, holding it in her mind, waiting, there, to be put together into a picture that'll

well. Doesn't know what it'll do.

And it's when all of that's done that Kage goes upstairs, to a bedroom, where they've let Li Daiyu's body, and Daiyu's cabalmate is holding (her [what was once]), and has been for some time. If the door is shut, Kage knocks on it before she enters. If the door isn't, she knocks on the doorframe.

Says " - Ashley."

And we'll go from there.

[Ashley] Eventually,

there is a knock on the doorframe. James shut the door when he left Ashley alone in the bedroom and told her to take whatever time she needed. That they would handle everything. It took a weight off her shoulders: it was like someone had extended permission for her to grieve.

Li Daiyu is a mess. A shotgun blast nearly killed her when the battle started, and her front is blood, her chest is shredded to pieces. Her clothing is in tatters.

Ashley is not much better. Blood vessels on her hands are broken where the skin isn't torn, and the flesh of her knuckles is turning an ugly color: not quite the purple of a deep bruise, not quite the red of blood. A stain radiates out from her side where there is still a hole in her shirt, where there's a bullet. The curtain is closed, and the room is dark except for what manages to filter through.

Ashley has her head in the crook of Daiyu's shoulder, an arm thrown over the ruin in front of the Akashic. And that's how Kage is going to find her, cuddling a dead body like the act could bring breath back into it. Like it were an instrument, and she were a master, and this were the Ars Vitae, the Ars Spirituum.

She's not a master, and that's not what this is. When Kage enters her head turns a little, but doesn't lift. "Hi."

[Kage Jakes] Kage stops just inside the threshold. Because this is Kage, and Kage is a creature of poise, she manages not to look too dismayed; Ashley is likely too shellshocked, too injured, to read the pause as dismay. In the dim curtain-kept dusk of the bedroom, things are a soft bone-yellow: a chest of drawers, the bed's footboard; Ashley's cheek, Kage's white (although thoroughly besmirched, now) shirt.

Daiyu is ruined. Daiyu is dark and visceral mess, and her expression isn't a rictus of horror, is serene, because Daiyu was an Akashic Brotherhood, because Daiyu had last words, because Daiyu died well. Except: it doesn't look very well; it looks horrifying. Kage wasn't there, so she didn't see how the wound itself didn't stop Daiyu, how the Akashic Brother continued to be a thing of lethal elegance, how it so worried the two Nephandi who've been separated from the executed policemen, who're still alive (for now, alive), that they sucked the heat out've the air around her, froze her.

Kage takes stock. Her eyelashes flicker, but it's fine: she's cool, and levelheaded, and unlike the stereotype of redheads, Kage does not have a temper that flares out, is not (obviously) passionate. She runs her fingers through her hair, walks across the floor, finally, and sits on the bed next to Ashley. Scooches her over, closer to Daiyu's body, if necessary. Sits near the Hermetic's knees, and she's looking at Ashley's side, not at Ashley. Kage has never, ever been any good when it comes to medicine, to medical problems, to -- she's just never been good at it. She's never managed to learn how to touch Life, or even how to See it, although she's wanted to fora long time. She used to think that it was Him, keeping it from her out of spite, as a carrot to dangle, whenever she didn't do what He wanted. She doesn't think that anymore, precisely.

But she's still not good with it. She can't look at someone and know what's wrong. She can't even look at someone and know what's wrong in a mundane sense. But - " - were you shot?" A beat. And, separate from the inquiry into Ashley's physical well-being -- or not: "How bad?"

[Ashley] Ashley has spent most of the past two hours, since she knelt next to Daiyu and heard the last words, in tears. She stopped a little when she was outside on the lawn because she'd temporarily emptied herself, screaming at the node inside, crying in front of the well. Because she had to, in order to do what Work she could and make the house slide from the eyes of passersby.

It's obvious. Amid the gore there's a wet patch against Daiyu's shirt. Ashley's voice is thick, her eyes and nose are swollen. Her breathing is unsteady, though that might just be a result of the wound.

When Kage looks at it, it doesn't look like the bullet grazed Ashley, skimmed off a bit of flesh in passing. She's wearing her orange and blue striped shirt - it's one of her favorites, recognizable even amid all the blood - and there's a hole, and through that hole Kage can see the place where the Hermetic's flesh parted. Where the bit of metal burrowed inside, and she can't see where the bullet is now.

"Yes," Ashley says, and there's a sniff, a gasp of air like she's some beached leviathan, like she's trying to control her breathing again. Then, "It hurts." That's not a whimper. It's almost dismissive. The wound, it's the least of Ashley's worries right now.

[Kage Jakes] And then, an awkward moment. Awkward isn't just the purview of people with crushes, of people who don't know how to walk as if they're comfortable with who they are, people who choose words that aren't quite suitable for the occasion. Awkward isn't just the purview of the loveable nerd, or the hopelessly unrequited. Awkward is here, too. Because there's a moment where nothing fits, and Kage feels like she should say a thing, but doesn't know what to say, doesn't know quite how she should push, doesn't know if she should even hug Ashley if there's a bullet lodged between her ribs. What if she hugged her, and somehow pushed the bullet through her lungs, and then Ashley died just because she was hugged, and then Kage was just there, sitting on a bloody bed next to a dead Akashic and a dead Hermetic, some guy's brains on her teeshirt, and it would be her fault, and a horrible, pointless way for Ashley to go, and, and, and.

No. That won't happen. Probably won't. Kage says: "Does it hurt too much for a hug? Because I'd like one." A short beat. And then, "And we should clean Daiyu up."

[Ashley] Other than Daiyu, this is the person she is closest to in the city. Closer to than her remaining cabalmate, closer to than her apprentice, than any of the Traditionalists she knows in the city. Kage is one of the two people in the city who actually know what the person lying dead next to them meant to her, how much, what they were to each other. Kage is, right now, the only person she would allow to stay here.

And Kage is the only person she would push herself up off the bed for, lean over for, allow to hug her, right now. It's probably a mark of just how upset Ashley is that she clings. Even after her mother died, her grief was mostly private. She didn't cry in front of anyone, didn't press her face against someone else's shoulder and have to blink back, feel her throat grow tight.

But that's what she's doing right now.

Kage says they should clean Daiyu up. Ashley just nods, wordlessly.

[Kage Jakes] This is the thing about those who have Awakened.

They are still human.

They have the opportunity to lose that humanity in ways regular Joes and plain Janes can dream about, but rarely attain. They're not like other creatures who exist in the margins of the world (now [abiding]). Essentially: they are human beings, and they're easily cut, and they're easily wounded, and they're ruled by their hearts (their heads [their wants and desires]). When Ashley sits up, Kage watches her as closely as she can, and she doesn't bother trying to be subtle about the way she is studying the Hermetic, she doesn't bother dwelling in that place of opacity, of smoke, of inscrutability which is Home. She watches her closely, in case anything obvious falls out. No, Ashley is not the unfortunate guy in the Operation game, and it's not likely that she can be lifted up and shaken, so the pieces'll fall out, but still: Kage watches, closely. Just in case.

Then she hugs Ashley, very carefully. Ashley's reaction eases some of the tension in Kage's shoulders (although she winces, as a shrill of pain aches through her muscles, an alarum, remember what you've done, what the world'll do to you) because she knows how to deal with a crying girl. She's a sister. She's been a sister for most of her life. Some of the gingerness fades, once it becomes obvious that nothing's going to fall out of Ashley, and she strokes the shorter woman's hair, and looks at Daiyu while Ashley cries and (ow) clings.

"Okay." A beat. And, quiet enough to go unheard, really - "I'm sorry, 'ley." Kage starts to withdraw, because there are things to do. But it's a gentle sort've withdraw.

[Ashley] Even right now there's a part of her, in the back of her mind, that is whispering for her to pull herself together. That's the Tytalan part of her, the part of her that Victoria Kurtz had a hand in pushing, in digging in and drawing out, pulling it forth and then stretching it and covering her so that it existed impossibly on her outside. It's not the part of her that says things will be okay someday because Ashley doesn't have an inner voice that tells her those things. It says: get up, you have shit to do, get up, have some dignity.

So when she lets Kage withdraw and lifts her arm to wipe her face, tries again to exert control - this time successfully - it isn't because she thinks things are going to be okay, someday. She doesn't. Ashley has absolutely no faith in the idea that things will be anything other than the sky is falling, better deal with it, maybe there'll be some satisfaction at the end, maybe there'll be another obstacle surmounted, conquered, dominated, and maybe you'll just lose another thing you didn't think you could bear to lose.

Handing life those kinds of ultimatums is a bad thing, she's found.

She finds her voice, and she stays sitting up there next to the body, and she says, "Bring some water. And she has some spare clothes at my apartment, or her keys are with the motorcycle."

[Kage Jakes] Bad things happen. That's all Kage had been able to say, after Dylan had died. And Ashley hadn't wanted to accept that. Ashley'd been stung, into wanting more. Bad things happen; it's something Kage believes (faithful [reverent]), because she has observed that it is True. Good things happen, too. This is something Kage believes, just as ardently. Has to believe. Wants to believe, and so it is. She isn't thinking about the good things right now. There's too much viscera.

But Kage understands how Ashley thinks. Kage has understood how Ashley thinks for a long time; before she ever started thinking of the diminutive Tytalan as a friend (in fact, she'd never thought she'd think of the Tytalan as a friend [and that was why]). She gets that Ashley isn't okay, isn't resolving herself against some spark of hope or anything like that. She knows that Ashley's driven to move forward, because of her Will, because of the urge to be indominitable, because there's just one challenge after another. She gets it.

Gets that it doesn't make for a happy life.

Gets that, too.

"Come to a bathroom," she says, and reaches out - once - before she stands, to brush Ashley's bangs out've her face. It's not a slow, tender gesture; it's just careful. "Wash your face, if you think moving won't make your side worse." Kage glances down at her knees, at her shoes, and then presses her fists into the bed and stands up. "I can grab stuff from your apartment." Pause. "Will you stay over at my place tonight?"

[Ashley] "Okay." Ashley is happy that Kage asked her this, and it shows on her face. She doesn't want to be alone. That's another mark of how upset she is, how raw, how little Will she has left at the moment.

Come to a bathroom, says Kage, and the Hermetic eases herself off of the bed. It's more difficult than it sounds: she has to push up with her hands, and her hands are brutalized, tender, badly bruised. The knuckles look like shreds of meat where she struck them, repeatedly, against the stone of the well. Against the vessel for the node, the consciousness, she swore she'd protect.

She still wants to protect Catherine, because Ashley swore a vow, and there's this, this thing about Ashley that a lot of people miss: she's honorable. She keeps her promises, she'd rather give up her ability to Work for a little while than break a promise. There's also that "...I wish I could convince myself that the node is worth this." That whatever is good, that the people of the city, that guarding her territory, that it's worth this. Lost innocence, a walk through Hell, a dead mother, a dead lover. It's a lot of blood to shed.

She walks toward the bathroom and she doesn't have to search around up and down the hall for it. Ashley knows the house quite well.

When she reaches the bathroom, she reaches out and turns the knob on the sink, and the first thing she does is start to try to wipe blood from her face. She doesn't look into the mirror. She already knows how she looks: like a shell of a human being, like some ghost risen off a battlefield and given flesh, like one of the thousands of faces she saw twisting beneath knives in Dylan's red halls.

[Kage Jakes] The Orphan (initiate [once]) isn't known for her devotion to the Node. In fact, there are very few who know that she, briefly, for a handful of days, spent a lot of time in the library, in and out of every room of this house, looking for secrets; finding them, too. The Orphan has only stood beside the Node twice, now. Three times, if she includes Ashley's memory: that buoyant, soaring sense of well-being; Music, and Love. Kage's skepticism when it comes to the Node borders on irrational (rational [my doubts]). Kage folds her arms over her chest, and says, "Beauty's worth something when it's Truth."

That's how Ashley'll leave Kage, standing, arms folded, in the room where Daiyu is dead. Once Ashley is gone, Kage opens the curtains a little, allows sunlight back into the room, and looks at the yard from this vantage point, if the yard is visible from this vantage point. If not, she cranes to see, opens the window a crack, to let air come in and see what's going on. Summer-air, fresh and sweet and clear, and she takes a deep lungful of that.

She might say something to the body, privately. If she weren't so drained, she might try to look across, into the otherside, there's so much blood it should be simple, it should almost be automatic, easy to fall that way, but she doesn't expect there's much to see.

There are people Kage wants right now. People Kage wants to curl up beside. And it's not going to happen. It's okay: she's not really just a freelance research specialist or investigator or whatever it is she has on the new business cards. She's a Disciple without a Tradition, and she's difficult to frighten. She's fine.

She presses her fingertips into her temples, trying to figure where cloths to wipe the blood from Daiyu might be, where a basin big enough, where the fresh sheets, where. And she goes to get those things, bring them back into the room, leaving the window open ajar. Some of these things are in the bathroom, and maybe Ashley'll still be there, when Kage gets to that part.

[Ashley] The world makes ghosts of us. When they were still relatively new to each other, Daiyu put a hand on Ashley's arm after Ashley said that Edom killed her mother, and those were her words. They've never struck Ashley truer than right now, watching water cloudy with red (some hers, a lot Daiyu's) swirl down the drain.

A lot of the blood has dried, and it takes her a while to scrub it away. Some of it flakes, flutters onto the countertop, smears once it gets wet, flakes onto the floor. A lot of it has matted her hair, so after a moment's hesitance she warms the water, tests it against her palm and then sticks her head under the faucet.

There are people who can detach themselves, whose emotions run cold sometimes and who can just stop feeling for a little while, when things are too much to bear. Ashley isn't one of those people. She's always hungry, and like Kage she's passionate (and it's outward, maybe she should have been the redhead), and she feels. Things haven't dulled. She's just trying not to think about them long enough to keep those tears at bay again.

She looks down at her shirt, one of her favorites, and pokes a finger through the hole, because now it's just a rag and so is the orange undershirt.

When Kage comes into the bathroom, Ashley's hair is wet, hanging back in her eyes, and her face is red both from the heat of the water and from being scrubbed, and from tears. But it's clean. It's Ashley, not some picture snapped at a refugee camp or out of a war zone. She says, "I want to help you."

[Kage Jakes] "I said we... should clean," Kage says, an echo of Kage from just a few minutes ago. Which is to say, I figured you would. She kneels, in order to open the cabinet with -- towels, whether cloth or paper, and she says: "Do you know who we should contact? Does she have family, who'll want to see her buried? A mentor, who'll want to perform certain rites? I don't know anything about the traditions of the Akashic Brotherhood."

"I don't know really know what's right here."

And while she's down, kneeling on the ground, she subtly (not really [no]) eyes Ashley's side, trying to gauge whether she's still bleeding. Ashley bleeding out because someone with the ability to do some quick medical work didn't get here in time and Kage didn't insist on dragging her to the ER is also a horrible, and stupid, way for Ashley to go.

[Kage Jakes] [ooc: there should be an ellipses between know and really know! pretend it's there.]

[Ashley] "Her family is back in China," she says, "in Kunming. No mentor." Most of Daiyu's old cabal mates, the ones back in China, any mentor she had: they're all dead. Daiyu lost them in the Ascension War. That much, Ashley knows, even if she never tried to ask about the War at length. She sensed how painful it was, the way Daiyu sensed how painful the topic of music was for Ashley.

"She was brought up Buddhist and held to a lot of the philosophies, but she didn't really Believe," Ashley says. "So...someone who can do Buddhist last rites, all the same. I don't know her family, though, or anyone who would. My father could probably at least help with the rites or tell us what to do."

Kage is eying Ashley's side, and the blood seems to have slowed to a trickle. Still wet, the wound, but it's no longer a steady flow. What is worrisome: it's low, a gut wound, and the likelihood of it having plowed through an organ or two is high. Kage is eying Ashley's side, and after a moment Ashley notices. "Emily called Ashton," she says. "I can't go to a hospital. I have some...some really strange medical records. I try not to risk it."

[Kage Jakes] [Hmm. Wits + Streetwise to remember a shady emergency room where they won't ask no questions about a bullet wound as long as cash is involved?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Ashley] There's another pause before she says, "Hu Jinhai. I didn't get a chance to meet him, but he's a really old friend of hers, he works at the...at the White Lotus Studio, so I can..." And she trails off, swallows hard. Doesn't want to think about going back to the studio, but what has to be done has to be done.

[Kage Jakes] That word (haunts [a chord]). Again. Belief. Kage doesn't know much about the Akashic Brotherhood at all, but she does know Daiyu didn't identify herself as particularly traditionbound. Not in the stuffy, stagnant way of so many old Tradtions. She said she did things a little differently. Kage considers this, and then thinks about Sam, who she'd meant to put in touch with Daiyu, and she doesn't realize that she's sighing.

"If Ashes doesn't show soon, there's a place I can take you for a bullet wound. Money'd be a help, though. They've got good tacos." A beat. "Is there gauze, or something? Just - put pressure on the wound, so your cup doesn't runneth over. Gauze, a -- big bandaid, or something." Kage is laden-down with stuff, now, and she steps backwards, bumping her shoulder against the side of the door. Wince.

She seems to be waiting for Ashley to leave the bathroom first. "I know where the White Lotus Studio is," she says. And then, "And arranging Buddhist rites should be fairly simple. There's a pretty large community down in Chinatown."

[Ashley] Daiyu wasn't particularly traditionbound: it was one of the things that attracted Daiyu and Ashley to each other. They were primal souls from cerebral Traditions, knew their philosophies, knew their beliefs (which complemented, weren't the same but complemented) but knew the rest, too. They knew without having to speak. But Ashley knows that she would still want Hermetic tradition to be observed when she dies, so she can only assume the same of the Akashic.

"I'll talk to Hu Jinhai and find out where her family is, and see if he knows where she'd have wanted to go back to, in China," Ashley says. "It's...I should do this, for her." Even though Kage knows where the studio is.

She finds gauze in one of the drawers. Finds medical tape, too. She has things similarly laid out in her bathroom at home (remembers helping Daiyu with a wound after they came out of the Umbra) and presses the gauze there, tight, tapes it. Keeps a hand pressed to the wound, and walks out of the bathroom ahead of Kage.

[Kage Jakes] It's, Ashley says, and ineloquence grabs her throat; she changes her sentence. I should do this, a beat, for her, and Kage half-smiles. Not a real smile, really: the ghost of a smile, the shadow cast by a fall of moonlight; it's weary, and there are lines around her mouth when she smiles, and these lines're sketched out now. Her eyes are black, and she says, "Yes, but I can give you a ride."

Kage thinks it's too soon. It has to be too soon. Too soon to ask Ashley to talk about Daiyu. Kage knows that there are stages of grief, and Kage knows that there's the possibility of stagnation; Kage knows death, for all she'd like not to sometimes, and she knows life in the aftermath of it. But it's just happened. She says, as they walk down the hall, back to the room: "I locked -- warded? -- the two black-hearted fell-down fuckers in. Em helped. And uh, I couldn't get the house. The shine wasn't cooperating."

"'ley -- what happened? You don't have to tell me while we're tending Daiyu's body, but I want to know."

[Ashley] I can give you a ride, says Kage, and those words are simple. The offer is simple. Ashley's throat still tightens with emotion, all of a sudden. Carefully, because Kage is carrying things and Ashley doesn't want her to drop them, and carefully, because Ashley has a bullet lodged in her ribs, she hugs Kage, and it's brief but it's tight, her head presses against the small of the Orphan's back for a few seconds. "Kage? I don't want anything to happen to you, either," she says.

They aren't demonstrative people, either of them, and chances are she won't say anything like it again. She releases Kage and walks back into the bedroom, prepares herself to see Daiyu there again, blinks hard once and stops there in front of the bed. When Kage says that she warded the Nephandi, she nods. "I'll talk to them." It's the first hint of temper she's shown.

It vanishes, because Kage says she wants to know what happened, and Ashley says, "I'll tell you, but...not right now." Right now, it would make her relive it, right now it is all too new. Kage is right.

[Kage Jakes] [>.>]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Kage Jakes] [
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Kage Jakes] Ashley presses her head against Kage's back, between her shoulderblades. Kage has long-since gathered her hair back into a loose pony-tail, something she can still comb her fingers through, something that mostly stays out of her eyes, out of her face, something that can be undone and ungathered if she needs to, and it kinks up where Ashley's forehead presses, split-ends sparking. Kage pauses, when Ashley hugs her tightly.

Ashley doesn't see Kage's expression. Doesn't see how Kage's dark, dark eyes go liquid and luminous, far, far too expressive, far, far too big for her face. Ashley doesn't see the corners of her mouth tighten, or how her lips part after, the quick-cut glance to the side, and doesn't get much hint, either, because Kage controls herself. Blinks, and hugs the towels closely to her chest [like a teddy bear, or a stuffed mouse, or...]. Smirks, but it's the ghost of a ghost -- the Echo of an echo. Swallows, says - " - I'm not going anywhere with a lot of anything right now."

A beat. And: "I'm glad you're alive, 'ley."

And Ashley releases Kage, and that's good. Kage resettles the towels, paper and un-, and follows Ashley into the room. There's more light, now; it cuts away the gloom, at least the aura of it. Kage dumps the things she brought into a chair, and then she starts by taking off the shoes. To not right now, Kage only nods. She might have insisted, if she hadn't spoken to Molly earlier today; if she didn't know some of what was going on, and only then because she thinks Ashley can take it. Then again, she might not have.

Kage knows all about when not to say a thing, and how useful that is. Helpful, too.

She's a sister. She cares about people.

[Ashley] Ashley doesn't see how that liquid pools in Kage's eyes, there at the corners, there at the rims, but doesn't spill. She doesn't see how Kage's lips part as though she has to catch her breath. She doesn't see any of that, and to Ashley, it doesn't matter. It's not people that matter to Ashley, it's persons, and when a person matters it's heedless and headlong: she doesn't give a thought to whether it's returned. She doesn't worry about what the other person feels, or what she is to them. It's just there, and it burns, and it's relentless, her affection. It doesn't let go easily.

Kage has towels in arm, and Ashley reaches up and takes one of them. While Kage goes to fill the basin she places a hand against the side of Daiyu's face, begins wiping it clean with the towel: cradling her head as though the body were living. It's not purposeful, that tenderness. Just instinctive. Most of Ashley's good qualities are.

[Kage Jakes] [...faaaaade.]

Clean Up Crew

[Dancing Dragon] Any Vajrapani knows this - there is always death, waiting. It isn't a distant fear, but an ever-present reality. Li Daiyu had seen nearly every one of her friends and loved-ones fall in battle. One of them she had killed herself (and she had never forgiven herself for that.) Because of this, every day was a blessing. Every moment of peace treasured. And when the end of this life inevitably came for her, she was not surprised. And she was not afraid.

The shotgun blast had nearly killed her in an instant. It left a great gaping hole in her chest, and blood dripped and pooled, splattering those near her as she fought. And fight she did - despite her injuries. She never lost focus, and never hesitated. (She never had. She never would.) That the rest of her companions would live was all that she ever asked for.

But there was only so much harm that one body could withstand, and eventually, an effect cast from one of the nephandi robbed her of the last bit of strength she had remaining. No longer a blur of movement, she suddenly stopped... and fell. Cold. The world was distant. Blood seeped from her chest. Her eyes fluttered. The world was black. A breath - ragged.

And then, Ashley. She couldn't see her, but she could feel. And she reached up and touched the Adept's cheek, very softly. "I'm sorry," she whispered. And then, even more quietly... "Ni you wo de xin. I will remember you, always."

And then the last breath disappeared from her lungs, and her hand fell.

But it was not the end. Only another beginning.

[Ashley McGowen] They just had lunch together, and they were supposed to go and look at the library. Ashley'd thought about telling her about Catherine, suggesting that she go down to speak with the node. That's the way this afternoon was supposed to go.

She has an answer that she wants to give, but there isn't time. Daiyu's hand falls. Ashley bows her head.

She doesn't collapse in sobs there on the ground. She doesn't fall over the body. She doesn't walk off and sit on the curb and stare emptily at the sky. Maybe she wants to do all of those things.

Ashley is an Adept of the Order of Hermes, and conflict hones a Will to perfection. She stands up. And, clear-eyed (for now) she steps around the body and walks up to the doors of the chantry. She swore she'd protect the node.

[Emily Littleton] There are moments that Emily will replay, over and over again, for a lifetime. Moments like this. Moments like the flicker of balefire as it closed on her skin. Moments like the scream of a boy child who was pressed beneath the heavy body of his assailant (his mother). These are the things that shape and press and force her Awakened life into the role she will play, later, when she is done being just an understudy on this stage.

This is the first Traditionalist she has seen fall in battle. For a moment, Emily doesn't believe she's gone. She waits for Daiyu to pick herself back up, put her insides back together like Ashton did. Gasp for air once more after the slip-slide of honey smooths over her lips. But there is no flicker-rebirth of life, and there is no charm to save her, and there is nothing the Apprentice can do. Nothing but lower the (useless) firearm she carries to her side -- still ready (ever ready) -- and approach with wariness and respect.

She glances to Alex as she moves, but keeps her attention on Ashley. If she were smarter about all of this, perhaps Emily would think to watch the door. Or look down the street for another van, another wave to the assault. Just now she is numb, and the numbness stills her tongue and deadens her thoughts. It is stock-silent in her head, behind the thin thrum of tightly-controlled panic, and the slackness in Daiyu's frame and features is at once horrifying and abstractly fascinating.

Ashley steps toward the Chantry, but Emily stays with Daiyu. She will not leave her alone; and she will not load this body into someone's jeep like a thing. Like a vessel broken and profane once more.

She looks to see if Alex is following the Dean in.

[Alexander Turnquist] The gun in Alex's hand doesn't go limp, it doesn't fall weakly to the ground in shock. His strength and focus doesn't abandon him with the fall of Daiyu, or Li as she allowed him to call her. He's quick to reload, flicking shells out onto the ground from his revolver and sliding new ones in. He'll worry about collecting them up afterwards. He keeps the gun trained on the head of the nearest Nephandus while he makes his way closer to Daiyu and Ashley.

He steps over the writing and bloodied forms of cops, strewn around like play things. Finally he's there, just in time to watch the life go out of the Akashic. They had their differences the two of them, but it is perhaps he who understands most here. He doesn't weep for her, the wheel has turned as it does for everyone, this life was no more important than any life before it and the multitude of lives that will come after it.

Alex waits a moment with Daiyu when Ashley steps away. He looks down upon her lifeless corpse. Perhaps they would have argued about him calling her this, perhaps she would have disagreed that they are brothers in philosophy and religion. But their beliefs entwine so much and when it comes to this, when it comes to death. They are one and the same. He says as much to her, though he knows she is gone already.

"Go with peace Chela" And he follows after Emily and Ashley.

[Red Right Hand] The house is quiet as Ashley steps inside. It's dark and empty. The lights aren't on, and besides herself, there is no one present inside it. Not, at least, on the ground floor. It gives that strange sense of a normal home. Just a lifeless home in the suburbs. The kind of thing that makes you double-guess and wonder what are you really protecting, especially on a day like this when the risks become ever so clear.

But at the same time, she feels it. That energy, the vibrant sensation. Devotion. The kind of sensation that strikes true in dark days like this. It doesn't feel dim, doesn't feel weak, doesn't feel tainted. In fact, the very opposite. It's stronger than most of them have probably ever felt it. It soaks through the house today as though a sign of something.

If and when she slowly ventures down to the Node, the sensation becomes almost overpowering. The aftertaste and Resonance of Quintessence mark everything in the surrounding. As though extreme amounts had been unleashed. And the Nephandi lay, not victories and not in the process of a ritual. But dead. Barely recognizable human corpses, ashes almost.

Almost unrecognizable, and covered again in that sensation of Devotion. As though they'd been lashed out at, blasted with the pure Essence of it. Catherine had stood her ground.

[Ashley McGowen] It's clean inside. Pure. Safe.

Her wards are shattered, and they managed to invade the inside: she's able to see this, sense it, without needing to look. But Catherine herself stood her ground inside, and the interior, the stone well, remains sanctified. It fills her with that sense of devotion she extended toward it months ago, suspended in the water, hearing music for the first time in ten years. With something akin to what she'd wanted to extend to the woman lying in a pool of her own blood outside.

There's nothing more holy than sacrifice. This is something her Avatar knows, and it's something Ashley has been forced to learn. It doesn't make for an easy life, or an easy Enlightenment.

Ashley takes stock of the interior, of the basement. And then she finally just can't stand up anymore, and she kneels inside at the base of the well, presses her forehead against the stone.

That's when the tears come.

[Emily Littleton] There are things to be done. Emily knows this. She knows this, as she stands on the front lawn of the Chantry house, holding a borrowed firearm in broad daylight, staring down at the broken body of another Traditionalist. It takes minutes after Ashley and Alex enter the house for her to start moving again. To reach up and scrub one hand over her features, glance this way and that way down the street, and numbly pull her phone out of her pocket.

The first call goes to Kage.

The phone rings, but Emily doesn't pay enough attention to it to keep track of how many times, or for how long. When Kage picks up, assuming Kage picks up, the Apprentice's voice is rough and barely accented at all. It's all pulled back, worn and unsteady.

"I need help at the house, Kage. It happened again, and Daiyu died. Ashley's here, and Alex, but it's just the three of us."

[Alexander Turnquist] He follows into the chantry after Ashley, his gun held ready in both hands. He scans each corner, clearing each room before moving on. It's not until he gets to the basement that he pauses. He doesn't have access to the chantry, not like other members. But there is nothing stopping him, he knows this. Its all been torn down, still he hesitates. But the crying reaches his ears and he pushes himself forward.

When he comes across Ashley and the charred nephandi, he holsters his weapon and moves across the room towards her. This place.. This place is strange.. he has not been somewhere like this before. He coughs once, its incredibly awkward. To see the dean crying like this.

"Dea-- Ashley.." And he lowers himself to place a hand against her shoulder. "Ashley, the men outside.. some are still alive." He lets that sink in for a moment before he adds more suggestively. "Answers Ashley. Answers that will let us keep the balance." -- a nice way of saying get revenge. A euthie way.

[Emily Littleton] Kage asks very good questions, and they help ground the young apprentice back to the reality around her. (What about the neighbors?)

"Ah, right. They're going to be a bit of a problem, probably," she says, scanning the cadre of dead or otherwise incapacitated forms on the front lawn. Noting the CPD badges. Checking that van for anything resembling SWAT markings just now. All the little details that had gone unnoticed in the melee.

"There's... um... people?" Yes, they're still people. "On the lawn." Dead people. "It's... Kage, it's not good. I can't move them on my own. It's not like last time. There's not a lot of people here. Ashley and Alex went in, and they didn't come back out, but there've been no more gun shots or anything. I think it's ... quieting."

Very helpful. Emily chewed on her lower lip and forcibly pushed down the panic of not knowing what to do, and not having anyone like Ashton here just now to cleave to.

"What can I do while I wait? Who should I call?"

In the meantime she moves between bodies, trying to take away whatever police markings or badges might draw even more undue attention from neighbors or passers by. Not that it would matter, with six bodies on the lawn -- that's a spectacle in and of itself.

[Ashley McGowen] Alex finds his way down the stairs. Ashley doesn't notice him. He isn't supposed to be here in front of the node. Ashley doesn't notice that either.

He touches her shoulder, and he speaks, and the Hermetic's breath catches. Clogs, and she lifts her shoulder to wipe her face, trying to even out those intakes of air, to stop gasping like some beached leviathan, turning to a raisin in the sun. Her chest aches.

Alex extends revenge the Euthanatos way, but Ashley isn't done. Her jaw clenches, and she presses her head against the stone. "Fuck them," she says. Her jaw tightens further, if it were possible, molars grinding, and one small fist balls up and flies into the edge of the well. Once, and then again.

"FUCK YOU!" It's hard to know who that roar is directed at, at first. "So much for this...this fucking city. FUCK YOU." Each word is punctuated by another strike against the well. A flurry, until she's exhausted, until she's emptied, until her knuckles are shredded and bloody.

It takes a while.

And then she's exhausted, and still gasping, and her hand hurts, and she's conscious of that bullet that found its way through her shield, the one that's still buried in the flesh of her side.

She thrusts a hand up toward Alex. "Help me up."

[Alexander Turnquist] He doesn't stop her beating herself up, its not his place. He just watches helplessly as she smashes her hands to bloody pulps against stone. She screams out and at first he thinks she is saying it to him. Telling him to get lost, to fuck off. But its not him she speaks to, he's not entirely sure what she yells at but its not him.

When she asks for help, its offered without hesitation. His hand reaching down and gripping tightly on hers, he pulls her to her feet easily.

"How bad is it?" He asks, eyes looking towards the bloody wound at her side. He doesn't ask if it hurts or if she feels ok. Just will it hinder her from doing what she has to do.

[Ashley McGowen] Alex doesn't know the node is conscious. Not yet. Perhaps one day, after he's found his way into the cabal, he'll learn. He might even be able to speak to it himself.

He tugs Ashley to her feet and she can't help the gasp of pain that accompanies. She's a stoic woman, but that's generally when it comes to emotional hardship, not physical injuries. Right now, she's small and bloody and her body is a mess, throbbing, asking for sleep.

"Not that bad," she says to Alex. Then she walks up the stairs and back outside.

The bright afternoon is a shock to her eyes, swollen as they already are and used to the darkness inside the basement. She ducks her head away from it, at first. And then she sees Daiyu, still lying there on the lawn, and tears flood her eyes again. She wipes them away.

A glance tells her Emily is making calls. Emily's capable. Emily's Emily, and she's never been more grateful for the apprentice than she is at this moment. She walks as quickly as she can past the body of the Akashic so that she can Work on the policemen, dig through their minds and see whether she can repair them, whether they've been so thoroughly soaked in taint that there's nothing that can be done. And in the end, she finds that there isn't. So she looks up at Alex. "There's nothing of them left," she tells him.

The Nephandi, well. They're going to stay good and unconscious, until she has herself together enough to interrogate them. She will be interrogating them.

Once it's taken care of, Ashley sinks to the ground on the grass next to Daiyu and covers her face with a hand. Hopefully Emily's called some help.

[Emily Littleton] While Kage drives, drives like the wind, drives like madness, driven mad -- Haste, she makes it -- Emily works her way down the very short list of people who she should call. There's a Singer, who thinks he might want to Mentor her. She thumbs a few buttons on her phone, sends him a note. Blessedly there's no need to call him, to let that shaken and worried voice escape her lungs once more. The phone is talented. It can do this while she listens to Kage. Message, connect -- the phone is more talented than Emily.

It's just a message, and then she's stepping inside the house to dump the badges on the floor beside the door. To find a linen closet where she might find a sheet, or blanket, or bath-towel to lay over Daiyu. The rest can hang; sod them.

Later, though, she'll remember that they were people, too. And extend some respect. Not just now.

Now she is what Kage told her to be. Martha Fucking Stewart. And nothing is wrong.

[Subterfuge: I am Martha Fucking Stewart and Nothing Is Amiss here, +1 for dead bodies on the lawn and it not yet being halloween]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Ashley McGowen] [Oh, yeah. I should probably Mind people away. Mind 2, -1 for focus, -1 for practiced rote, +1 for, uh, really bad shit just happened.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 4) [WP]

[Kage Jakes] Kage wasn't joking.

It takes her less than five minutes. And when she drives around the corner, in her monstrous, larger-than-thou black pick-up, the rubber doesn't burn (burning, burning [Paris is burning, and so is Troy]), and the brakes do not squeal. This is because she's tapped into the road, the ebb and flow of its fortune -- because she is, howsoever briefly, pretty much a god of her machine. The truck stops short, but: doesn't make a single sound in protest. Well, hardly.

If there's a car, any car, any strange car Kage doesn't know, near the House -- well, she parks just behind that. And then the 5"3 Disciple is opening the driver's door, and jumping out onto the sidewalk. Her knees absorb the force. She looks as if she's just come from a very, very casual lunch out. She's wearing a blouse, scoop-necked, and jeans.

"Hey," she calls, and then says: "I've got some equipment in the back." First: Kage takes stock. Of where everybody is. Where everybody is lying. Who everybody is. Then -- well: we'll see, what then.

[Alexander Turnquist] Alex follows Ashley back outside, wordlessly. He doesn't even speak when she tells him there's nothing left of the cops. He knows what she asks, he nods his head and pulls out his gun. It's a bit large for this, some of them still squirm on the ground and its not exactly something he enjoys doing. But their minds are gone, they are just husks, they have long since died. It's like killing a zombie.

He cocks back the magnum, shoots once, twice, three times. It makes an awful mess, but you have to be sure. What's left of their heads leaks goo and brain matter onto the grass.

He holsters the gun and looks up just in time to see Kage saying Hello.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley isn't really conscious of the passage of time. She hears the gunshots as Alex finishes the shells off. Even now there's some part of her, deep inside, that clenches in revulsion. She doesn't want to bring death to anything.

Yet this entire lawn is steeped in it. She was able to focus long enough, just a little longer, to mask the place in time for help.

After that, there's just nothing. She curls and buries her head in her arms and tries not to imagine what's beneath the sheet. Kage's appearance barely even registers, let alone gets a hello.

[James Blake] He'd been planning on walking from his place to the Chantry. It's close enough. But then a red haired woman in a pickup truck found him. So he hitches a ride. It's rather convenient. They don't talk on the way. Kage drives like a maniac and James checks his gun. When they get there death is on the lawn. The Chorister sees Alex after he sees the bodies. He pauses at the edge of the property...then starts across the lawn. His eyes are drawn to the one body with a sheet over it. He recognises the body underneath...but he doesn't linger on it. This isn't the time to let himself feel anything.

The deaf man puts his hand on the Euthanatos' shoulder to get his attention. "You hur'? Wha' the fu' happen'?"

[Emily Littleton] Kage arrives in her beast of a truck, steps out with her rowan hair and this is not how they are meant to meet. Not here, steeped in blood-death, in mind-death, in malady. There is no path through the thorns here that kisses another, and no gently blown leaf litter (just life litter) to obscure the well worn paths. It is chaos, and terrible at that. There are places in the lawn where the ground has soaked up the blood, swallowed it up, pulled it down -- like the grounds are just as Hungry as the Hermetic (a terrifying thought, at best)

Ashley sits with Daiyu; Alex wraps up loose ends of the tapestry and Emily still clutches her phone in one hand like a talisman. As if to say see here, I called them, I called them and it is enough, I called them and they came so, so it will all be better now. But there is no better, and there is no smile. She watches Kage take stock of the situation, watches James approach Alex. Then Emily exhales, and heads for the other Orphan.

"Hey."

And then moves on to help with the the equipment in the truck, shoving her phone in her pocket as she goes.

[Kage Jakes] Kage and Alex haven't yet had the pleasure. They haven't even been at the same Meeting, and so from there to have a common jumping-off point: you. You're the one who says this. You. You're the one who watches, just so. The red-haired woman has to take a brief, steadying breath when Alexander Turnquist, Euthanatos, puts a bullet in a head (onetwothree[fourfive pigeons] justlikethat). And then another.

And then another. James walks across the grass. Kage doesn't, quite yet. Doesn't walk over to Ashley and give her a hug, or make any friendly gesture like that. "Are the other two dead?" She is asking Emily, and she is asking Alex. The equipment she was talking about: well, it's a pick-up truck. She has a lot of shopping bags. A lot, a lot, a lot of shopping bags (she was shopping, just before she got the call). And she has a camera, and she has a tarp. The tarp she uses to cover the bed of the pick-up when it rains.

Kage pulls out that tarp, billows of it, and says: "All right. Put this down on the living room floor. That's where we'll drag 'em. Ask James, and - Alex, was it?" This is for Emily, because she's not lifting her voice so that it carries. Kage, she goes off to investigate the van, and barring an act of Doom, she disappears inside.

[Kage Jakes] [And, uh. Just to cover all bases. Bad guy car. I am an investigate-y master, right? So if there's annnnnything to find, I'm totally gonna find it, right? Intel + Invest. +WP. Because, uhm. Dead bodies. And investigate-y masters don't leave behind signs of their presence!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
to†Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] [I have witnessed the badassery of your investigation skills, oh masterful one. Alas, I know nothing of the bad guy car of doom. Ask your friendly, medicated ST.]
to†Kage Jakes

[Alexander Turnquist] Alex holsters the weapon and turns to meet James before his hand touches against his shoulder. He smiles. It's good to see the Chorister, though what he's doing here is any ones guess.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." He waves a hand at the concern, casting it aside. "Fallen attacked the Chantry, we sorted them though. We lost one in the fight however.. Daiyu.. Did you know her?" His eyes narrow with his own concern now as he watches the Singers face. He hates being the bearer of bad news.

When Kage wanders up and he gives her a nod, he's never seen her before. His eyes rake her body, not in a sexual way, just getting a good picture of her to store in his memory.

"Hey, I'm Alex. The other two.. they're the Fallen. They've hopefully got a few things still rattling around in their heads so Ashley will want to get in there I'm sure. The others... well... just empty shells."

He pauses and he adds. "Theres three more in the basement, burnt totally fried. Not sure by what, ask Ashley."

But the woman is all action, bustling about with tarpaulins and god knows what else. She's like a character straight out of...-- "Yo Bones." He calls out to her and gives his shoulders a little shrug. "Whats all this for?"

[Emily Littleton] This is a perfunctory thing. A working thing. No time for how do you do and why it's nice to see you, no, Kage has a tarp and she's telling Emily it goes in the living room. Are the other two dead?

"No. I don't think so." A wary glance cast that way. They aren't dead, but they also aren't moving. Emily takes the tarp and follows Kage with her eyes only when the Disciple goes to investigate the van. Then she makes her way over to James and Alex, positions herself so they both can see her, holds up the tarp. Looks to the bodies.

Then heads inside the Chantry.

If they don't follow her, then the Apprentice will start shoving furniture out of the way on her own to make room for the tarp. For the bodies. God above how she hated this house and all of its dead bodies. She can't look at Ashley, just now, on her way to the porch. Or Daiyu. Emily keeps her focus whittled down so tightly that she doesn't notice if either man follows her in until their footsteps fall on the hardwood floors.

[James Blake] He doesn't bother trying to act like this doesn't bother him. Alex says they lost Daiyu. James already suspected as much. But that doesn't make it easier to read on his friend's lips. He gives an unhappy smile and drops his eyes for a second. This isn't hitting him nearly as hard as it hit Ashley. Still. He looks back up and says, "Yeah." And then he takes a breath. Stands up straight. If he had a rifle he would shoulder it.

Emily comes out. Holds up the tarp. OK he signs. And then he looks over at Ashley. When he speaks this time his voice cracks. It's only mid afternoon. But he'd spent all morning talking. "I go in in a minu'. Wai' for me...I hel' you."

He and Ashley aren't exactly friends. They've spoken twice...maybe 3 times if you count the first encounter with the Weathermen. But only really spoken twice. Her apprentice is his friend. He asked for her advice on his would-be apprentice. So...they're not close. But he walks up to her anyway. Rests his hand on her shoulder for a few seconds. If she jerks away he takes a hint. But he doesn't speak either way. And after a few seconds he steps back and walks toward the house to help Emily.

[eileen] A few blocks from here there is a huge brick house. Two stories plus a basement and an attic. It was abandoned ages ago. Used to be a funeral home. The sign outside has been peeling. It isn't too far from this house, this white-picket-fenced house. But it has the sort of character one might find inspiring. Stories about it abound. It always seems windy. The backyard garden is overgrown, and its flowers and trees seem to blossom and grow well past when others die come autumn and winter. There's a plum tree in the middle. There's a little playhouse in the back that someone built by hand. Less well-known: an enormous spiral carved into the wood floor of the attic.

Not that Eileen had the guts to go inside. She's no (sub)urban explorer. She did creep through the gate to take photographs of the wild garden, the roses, the white stones nestled into the weeds at the base of the various trees. It isn't that the house is haunted by anything but rumors, but people tend to leave it alone in a way the suburbs don't usually tolerate. Fucking funeral home.

Her camera is in a camera bag over her shoulder. It's warm enough that she's just in knee-length denim shorts that hug her leg, the ends folded up and ironed neatly to lie flat. Low-top camel-colored Cons. A green t-shirt. Her hair is up in a ponytail, hanging thick and chocolate-caramel down her back. Her footsteps fall slap-tidy on the pavement as she walks right past the white picket fence

and the bodies

and the magi

singing to herself, since there's nobody around, and singing rather badly: "-- special boots that beat the path to my house and it's careful, and it's careful when I'm therrre..."

[Ashley McGowen] Things are going on around her, people are walking around with tarps, taking the dead officers, Kage is here, James is here. Things are getting taken care of.

Distantly, Ashley is angry at herself for not being able to help with the cleanup, because it's something she should be able to do right now. It's important. People have doubtlessly heard the gunshots, and while the illusion she put up is going to fool Sleepers, it wouldn't fool Technocrats. It wouldn't fool anyone who investigated too much, poked too far past that barrier.

But she can't. Not in the face of all the other emotions that are swirling in her stomach and the thoughts that keep going through her mind. She isn't empty, yet, shock hasn't settled in. Maybe it won't. Maybe she won't go blissfully numb.

She'd like to say her goodbyes to the body, but this place is too public, and she isn't quite uninhibited enough. It will have to wait until Daiyu's taken elsewhere: she will be, for the last rites.

Eileen wanders by. Ashley doesn't see it. James rests his hand on her shoulder and she doesn't jerk away. She doesn't really respond, either.

[Emily Littleton] James will find her inside the house. Where their footprints from coming and going are now brown-red traces on the wood floors. Emily remembers when these floors were carpeted. She remembers when that carpeting was drenched and painted with gore. Standing just here, in the dead of winter, with the smell of death surrounding her.

That's probably why her hands shake, somewhat as she pushes the coffee table to one side. Moves everything up against the wall with focus and direction. There's a cluttered pile of police badges and IDs beside the doorway. She'd taken them off the fallen men sometime between calling Kage and the big black truck's arrival. Alex's other gun is there, too. Emily had not continued carrying it around, for better or worse.

Her hands are already stained, smeared in places and clean in others. Her hair is trapped in a spiral at the nape of her neck that threatens to yield, to unwind itself. Her resonance is up, and though the Correspondence rote has faded, he can still taste the Unrelenting Reverence around her. It's a lower note, there, under the cupperic tinge of all this blood.

James walks in, and she looks up. Pauses in whatever she's doing. There's the tarp, folded and violently blue in the middle of the entryway. Her eyes find his, for a moment. They're empty. She's alert, and she's looking over at him, but there's no push, no challenge, no mirth or lightness. There's a numbness (I've done this before) and a worry (It will never get easy), and then the Apprentice goes back to work.

Wordlessly.

[Kage Jakes] Kage isn't so caught up in what she's doing that she doesn't reply to Alexander when he replies to her. This is an organic process, the 'clean-up'; this is an organic process, what occurs to one to do when one is Kage Jakes and one is called into the wake left behind by bloody deeds at the White Fence House. There's room for conversation -- or, at least, room for information. Yo, Bones, he says, and Kage, who is rather solemn-eyed just now, grim-gazed, crooks her mouth. The ghost've a smile. "Alex," she says, accepting the nickname, and not choosing to replace it with her actual name yet (maybe she is a little distracted [she hates blood and murder]). "If you could start getting 'em inside, that would be useful." And he wants to know what it's all for: "Don't want to get blood on the carpet. When we bring her in, we won't be putting them in the same room." She raises her eyebrows, to see if he has any questions.

And then Eileen, she's singing badly as she wanders by. Kage winces. Not because of the tune, no. But because there's anybody out at all. And if Alex doesn't have any questions, she's inside the van, all vanished. Probably. Checking things out -- it takes time.

[ =) Percept + Awareness. You aren't a scary Nephandi, are you, hipster-girl?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kage Jakes] ooc: the 'bring her in' - meh, there should be emphasis, to make it clear she means Daiyu. (grin) I'm tired, yo.
to†Alexander Turnquist

[eileen] If Eileen were using magic at the moment it would slam in Kage's senses like a load of metaphors. She's not. Kage lucks out, as a few others here today have not in the past. But there's something about her, and it isn't inside-out, corrupt, dark, goo where there should be no goo. It's noisy and bright and chaotic, like getting dropped headfirst into an upside-down Wonderland-themed nightclub or something.

Her soul is right-side out. That much Kage can tell easily enough. Her soul is brighter than your average bear's. That, Kage can tell, too.
to†Kage Jakes

[Alexander Turnquist] "Getting em inside right.. right.. Different rooms.." He frowns, thinks on it a moment and then realisation dawns. "Oooh. I get you. Right, as you say Bones." And he turns on his heel, but that's when he notices. Short, curly brown hair. Quirky little grin. Oh how strange it is to see that in the midst of all this hell. She's singing even, its bizarre. He stops and looks around him, as if checking to see if anyone else has noticed this. Then he calls out.

"Eileen." a pause. "Eileen, what are you doing?" And he actually steps towards the girl in case she doesn't stop on her current trajectory.

"It's dangerous out, you can't be walking around like this around here. You better stay with me. James and Emily are inside, do you know Emily?" He's talking rather fast and there's a bit of blood spattered onto his cheek and chin that he is thankfully unaware of.

[eileen] [*waves wand, makes that 'miss cotton, miss cotton, what are you doing'*]

[eileen] [*also helps nomey look at the DP/gallery at eileen's 'short' hair*]

[Alexander Turnquist] [*flaps hands at kai and waves some scissors* ILL MAKE IT HAPPEN]

[eileen] One minute she's walking along, minding her own business, and the next thing she knows someone is calling her name. Someone with blood on his face. Eileen doesn't stop walking right away. First her head turns and her singing trails off as she looks over to see who is calling out her last name, since he just doesn't have anything else to call her by.

Her eyes widen at the sight of his face. She doesn't look anywhere but at Alex just yet. "I'm... walking to the bus stop," she says. There's a pause. "You have, um... cranberry sauce. On your cheek."

She brushes her hand at her own face, mirroring where it is on his.

[Alexander Turnquist] His eyes narrow, she's talking nonsense. Cranberry sauce? What is she on about-- His eyes go wide and his face goes pale. He has blood on his face doesn't he. Probably brain juice or something equally horrible. His hand scratches at the spot indicated by miss cotton, his fingernails come away dark red from the dried substance. He sighs.

"Yeah you don't want to do that... do you even know what's been going on here?" He turns and looks at the bodies all laying in the grass outside the chantry. He needs to tend to those.

"Look, have you ever seen a dead person before Cotton?"

[Emily Littleton] When James doesn't answer, when he isn't looking her way or lingering long enough to notice the apprentice, and no one seems ready to start the lumbering work of moving bodies into the house, Emily finds her way to the kitchen. She drags the footprint-steps further in. Makes more of a mess to clean later. She washes her hands and put the kettle on.

It takes time. Time while Alex is talking to Eileen, and James is doing whatever it is that he does, and Kage is investigating the hell out of the Nephandi Van. Emily waits there, in the kitchen, like this was a normal afternoon Chantry visit. She's making tea. Not because any one will drink it, and not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's something small.

Something human.

When she comes out of the Chantry again, and she is still vaguely channeling that Nothing's Amiss Here vibe, she heads not towards the bodies littering the yard but toward the one (only) draped and hidden from view. Toward the Dean, who is also the Hermetic, who is also a friend.

Emily pulls up a patch of grass beside Ashley. She hands the tea to the other woman, without putting words into the mess. If nothing else, the faint scent of jasmine will help cover the stomach-turning scents. It will give her something to hold. Or to throw. Or to even drink.

If Ashley doesn't take it, Emily sets the mug on the ground between them. And she waits on James or Alex to help her move people. She can't move them alone.

[eileen] It will be awhile before she decides she wants to look somewhere other than a face she's met. Once. A face she knows hides an Awakened brain-soul-construct-person-self. A face she guessed right about, because someone was helpful enough to confirm that he is, in fact, a wheel turner. She is determined that it's cranberry sauce. She will stay determined that it's cranberry sauce until the last possible second.

"I don't want to catch my bus?" she says, a little confused. "But I do, it's --"

have you ever

never have i ever not seen a dead body

She stops, and her eyebrows tug together. "Yes," she says, and leaves it there. She doesn't ask why.

[Ashley McGowen] Emily sits down in the grass next to her, and there is no response from the Hermetic. Ashley isn't even crying anymore: just verging on catatonic. The others are moving the body inside, and Daiyu is going to be moved into a separate room.

It's likely that she'll spend the night here. It's likely that she'll spend it next to the body. Morbid, perhaps, but people have their own ways of grieving, and Ashley isn't particularly interested in what other people would think of it. Or what other people would think of her relationship with Daiyu, or what they think of her sitting here while there is work to be done. She just doesn't care.

Emily, though, isn't here to do more than simply offer her a cup of tea. Something to hold and something to warm her hands and give her some small bit of comfort. Just that: the gesture a friend does for another friend.

Except, unfortunately, of all the teas Emily could have chosen she chose jasmine tea.

Ashley takes the cup and the moment the scent hits her, her hand trembles, and most of the hot liquid spills over her lap. She doesn't yell at the apprentice: she can't have known. But the cup is hastily dumped out and set aside and Ashley covers her hands with her eyes again and goes silent.

[Ashley McGowen] [...er. She covers her eyes with her hand.]

[Alexander Turnquist] He ignores the statement about her bus, cotton ramblings. Though the clever confusion of it isn't lost on the Euthanatos. She answers the important question and she doesn't wander off into potential danger. That's the main thing, mission accomplished Alex.

"James is inside, he'd want to see you. You should head on in."

And then he turns on his heel and steps towards the bodies. He takes off his leather jacket, his holster with his huge magnum in it seems suddenly all the more real once it is revealed. One holster at his chest still remains empty, he'll need to get that weapon back of Emily. The straps are undone and the weapon comes down to be piled with the leather jacket followed by his t-shirt. This is going to be messy.

He picks up his bundle of belongings and places them closer to the chantry entrance before heading back and rather unceremoniously hoisting one of the dead cops up onto his shoulder. He carries the corpse like a sack of potatoes inside, blood oozing from the wounds of the man. Alex grimaces but says nothing and deposits the dead body on the tarpaulin before heading back for another.

[Emily Littleton] This... this is not good. Ashley dumps the tea all over her lap. Then she dumps the remaining tea on the ground. Emily can't quite fathom why, isn't going to ask, probably doesn't want to know, but now there's another puddle on the lawn. And an upturned mug. And an Adept, with her head in her hands. The Singer to be wilts a little more, rounds her shoulders and purses her lips. She picks up the mug.

Emily wraps her fingers around the still warm stoneware. She smooths her thumbs over the curl of the handle. She exhales, quietly and with a bone-deep weariness, as she pushes herself back up to standing.

It would have been better if Ashley had yelled. It is eerie to see the Tytalan beyond fighting, mournful and weathered. In the middle of a broad-daylight afternoon. In the middle of such a mess. It bothers her, enough to set her moving again.

Back into the house, back into the kitchen, the cup goes back into the sink. She washes her hands again. It doesn't matter, they won't stay clean. Not today. Not until all of this is done. And then Emily will head back out, and hopefully she will not have to tell the menfolk, in actual words what she needs them to help with.

Doing? That's one thing. It's managable. Naming what it is they have to do? Completely another. Utterly beyond her.

[Kage Jakes] [All right. Just ... a btw, WP! You can do it! -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to†Ashley McGowen, Emily Littleton

[Kage Jakes] When the red-haired Disparate (shard [Awake]) is done with (in)the van, she leaves it. There is Ashley, in the same place, her hands over her eyes, a cup -- overturned, bright -- in the grass. There are the two unconscious fallen-down Fallen Down in the grass, and the two -- three? -- policemen whose minds were gone long before Alex executed 'em. And there's a girl who doesn't feel tainted, gooey, full of gross (but they're good at Masking [that's what the Cultist said, just half an hour ago: maybe a little more]), but instead feels like a character from a Francesca Lia Block novel.

And Alex is talking to her about dead bodies, has she ever seen them, and then Alex is hauling one of the cops -- just in time to escape a disbelieving look, throwing him over his shoulder, and walking into the house. There's gunk. From a head-wound. Especially one so fresh. And that's horrifying, really. Horror, as per usual. Kage actually hates the White Fence House sometimes. If by sometimes, we mean a lot of the times. Whatever's inside, Catherine, devotion, shining well-deep of star-spangled Beauty, well -- fine. Whatever. Worth it?

Emily comes out again, and Kage says, "Help me with this one." It's not that she's ignoring Eileen; she isn't. Miss Cotton. She certainly isn't. She's just not inviting her in, and she isn't telling her to run, either -- undecided, or perhaps just overloaded. Then she takes a deep, deep breath, and [closes her eyes, tightly] crouches down to hook one of the dead cops's under the armpits and haul up with all her strength. Hopefully, Emily will get the legs, and they'll carry him inside, and Kage will not throw-up, and she will not think very much about what it feels like, the body in her arms, the man who was empty before he died, what he might've done, what he did.

[Alexander Turnquist] He spots Emily on her way back outside and he's about to say something when Kage spots her first, they offer to bring in one of the bodies. They don't look very happy about it, at least kage doesn't.

"Why don't you two collect the shells, we need to get them. 3 from Emily's .45, 9 from my 44, 2 from a shotgun and 3 from another .45." He pauses, the information stored in his brain during combat is something he hasn't really thought about before, its deeply engraved within his subconscious. It's a reflex, he just does it.

Without another word he picks up the cop that Kage is attempting to haul and again slings him over his shoulder. How disgusting. Brains fall out all over the grass as he walks away with it.

[Ashley McGowen] People are carrying bodies in, and after a while, it occurs to Ashley that other things have all been done, she should help at least with Daiyu, and it will let her get off the lawn that much faster.

It will let her get inside where it's quiet and it's dark and where nobody is going to bother her, where she won't smell the lingering traces of jasmine. Where she can say her goodbyes privately.

So, after a moment, she pushes herself to her feet. Her breath hitches again as she's suddenly reminded that there's a bullet still lodged in her side, and she probably needs to see a doctor. She isn't going to see a doctor. She's going to throw down painkillers and hope it dulls it a little. She may call Ashton. But she isn't going to the doctor.

She makes sure the sheet is secure, and then she hooks her arms underneath the dead Akashic's and begins to pull her into the house. She can't lift her, but Daiyu isn't heavy, and Ashley is certainly able to drag her in without stopping, even wounded as she is.

[eileen] "Insi--"

It's the beginning of a question that doesn't ever gain full voice. Alex is turning on his heel and walking away, which takes away that nice point of cranberry-sauce-flecked focus. There he is, letting the whole world see his gun because the whole world is currently oblivious to his gun. And there's dead bodies, in various states of yecch. Alex is dragging and carrying them to a tarp.

Emily is over by Ashley and Ashley's...

The pain from her is almost palpable. It's in the air as much as her resonance. Eileen is still on the sane side of the fence, looking into the lawn. Her lips are parted and her eyes aren't blinking and Emily's inside the house and there's a redhead and Emily's outside the house and Eileen's staring at what she didn't see before.

She swallows, closing her mouth, puts her hand on the gate, and walks in. Her camera stays in its bag and her bag stays over her shoulder. Her eyes are on Ashley for a little longer, though Ashley doesn't know it, and rather than going to the woman she promised not to touch anymore, she starts to edge away. But not to the house. And not towards the bodies. Not... well. She sort of sways, not sure which direction to go until Alex speaks up.

"I can do that," she says, perhaps not loud enough. Then again, louder: "I can do that."

Ashley gets up to carry the only body with a covering. Eileen turns her eyes away from the sight of it, from the taste and aura of Ashley's sorrow. She starts searching for shells in the grass.

[James Blake] It's hard to work and converse at the same time. Not for hearing people. But when your voice is in your hands and your ears are in your eyes...it does make things hard. James isn't one to dwell on it. It's not like he knows what it's like to hear and then suddenly not. This is just how it is. And sometimes things don't go as smoothly as they would if he were hearing. But it's okay. He manages.

Emily slips out of the house while he's arranging furniture...putting down tarps so that when they drag the bodies in there won't be as large a mess. When he finishes he goes into the kitchen to wash his hands. And then he realises he doesn't know where his would-be apprentice went. "Emily?" he calls. Only it doesn't quite sound like that. And no one hears him. He wipes his hands off on his jeans - no time to look for a hand towel - and goes back out onto the porch. In time to see Ashley drop a cup of tea on her lap. He stands there for a few seconds. And then he notices Miss Cotton.

The Chorister jumps off the porch instead of taking the steps. Walks across the lawn to where Alex and Eileen are. He gives Eileen a smile. But it's just a stand-in for a wave. This isn't a social function. Alex picks up a dead cop without any need for assistance. James isn't quite so strong. He's tall but he's built for moving fast...not for lifting heavy things. Or dead bodies. Ashley starts to drag Daiyu's body inside. The Chorister winces. Hurries over to her. "Le' me hel'," he says, and picks up the tiny Vajrapani's legs.

[Emily Littleton] Emily was about to take up the feet of the cop, to ferry him haltingly with Kage toward the blue tarp where he might await his final resting place, when Alex interceded. It was better, this way. The last time there had bits of bodies, lax and slippery, foul smelling and crimson. Those bits went into Ashton's jeep. There'd been more of them then, more to bear the burden, more to share in the slave-trade that was ferrying the dead across the frozen yard.

Emily had kicked the snow over bloody places. It had been colder then.

It's easy to get the two times mixed up in her brain. Alex takes the body off of Kage's hands, gives them a task, and Eileen steps in to fill it. She isn't sure what to do, so Emily, too, stoops to wrap her slick hands under the arms of another fallen body. She tugs as she stands up.

It doesn't move.

She tugs again.

Something blurbles unappealingly, and something oozes. The apprentice lets go, turns a pale shade of green, and takes a step backwards.

[Kage Jakes] [All right. We're doing a pre-emptive strength roll, to see how horrid this is going to be.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 4 (Failure at target 6) [WP]

[Kage Jakes] [Nope, again!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7) [WP]

[Ashley McGowen] Let me help, says James, and then he picks up Daiyu's legs.

Ashley looks up at him, and the blue of her eyes is stark right now because they're so glossy, because the whites have reddened. They're utterly vibrant, in their grief.

She adjusts her arms beneath Daiyu's, firms her grasp a bit so that she can be more easily lifted and carried inside rather than dragged. It doesn't need to be said that she appreciates it, that she feels this is more respectful.

"Thank you," she says quietly. And with James, she moves backwards up the stairs and carries the body inside so that it can be set in one of the bedrooms. She can't think of where else to put it: the chantry is not a funeral home, though it might as well be by now. She sets Daiyu down on the bed, still with the sheet.

And just looks down at the shape beneath the shroud for a few seconds before asking, "Can you leave me alone for a while?"

[Kage Jakes] Kage is glad to let Alex take the dead cop. Kage is also glad to move on to one of the Nephandi that Daiyu'd been beside. And Ashley. They're going up, and into the house now -- they've disappeared. Eileen, wide-eyed, is combing through the grass; Emily looks as if she's going to be sick. "Leave off, Em," Kage says, gentle - "Help, uhm. Miss Cotton, huh?"

And she utterly fails, at first, to move the dead weight of the fallen man; almost strains something, almost pulls something out of something it shouldn't be pulled out've -- but she tries again, and hauls nephandi one into the house. Hauls him further, not into the room with the tarp. Into another room, a room that can be warded [by Ashley, or herself; she'll do it if she has to], so that if he comes back to wakefulness, he won't be getting out.

They're all on it now: the Mages. Soon enough, the bodies are all inside. There's still remnants of gore in the grass. Gore makes the grass grow green and bright at the White Fence House, so that's good.

[James Blake] He takes Ashley's lead when they carry Daiyu inside. This is better than dragging her. It's just a shell...but it's a shell that belonged to someone they both respected. Someone who deserves better than to be hauled around like nothing. So they carry her. And James doesn't try to put her on a tarp or on the floor. They go all the way to the bedroom. He takes a few steps back. Watching Ashley the entire time. He can't see if she speaks. Her grief is like thunder. He can't hear it or see it. But he can feel it. He doesn't touch her again.

"Ta' your ti'," he says. As quiet as he can since he can't hear himself. "We han'le everythi'." And then he steps out of the room...and shuts the door behind him.

[Ashley McGowen] James tells her to take her time, reassures her that they can handle everything, and the Initiate doesn't know just how much that lifts off her shoulders. Or maybe he does, and maybe that's precisely why he said it. And then he closes the door, and the room is dark except for white light filters through the curtain.

Ashley stands for a few seconds in that beam of light, glances toward the window. She doesn't open it.

All she does is walk over to the bed and drop, adjusts so that she isn't lying on the wound. It's still bleeding, beginning to throb now that the adrenaline has fully died away. She removes the sheet and curls up against the body, which will be cleaned later. But not right now.

And she's going to remain there for a long time.

[Emily Littleton] Emily doesn't know Miss Cotton, but she does know Eileen. Eileen has impressive bottle-cap skills. Eileen knows Colin (who is also Henry), and she knows James. This is good, because Emily is not in the right mindset to look after someone new to the cursed and often bloody ways of the White Picket Fence House. Surely, as an Emissary, she should be worrying about things like whether Eileen has clearance.

When the Dean is mourning a cabalmate (friend), in an upstairs room, fresh after a Nephandic attack, points of order seem... inconsequential. So she offers Eileen a small, thin-lipped smile. It isn't warm, because warm was incongruous with where they were and what they were doing. She joins the young woman in combing through the grass for casings, like they were on on some macabre Easter Egg hunt (though Emily very much doubted anyone would rise from the dead in three days).

It was not Good Friday.

When their paths crossed, she offered a quiet "Thanks for your help." It's the first she's said in awhile. It sounds a little rough, as if her speech were unpracticed just now.

[Alexander Turnquist] After the last cop is thrown inside in the living room, Alex moves to the kitchen and opens the fridge. He procures himself a couple of bottles of beer and heads back outside, sitting down on the porch. He lets out a long sigh. He looks horrific, dead cop blood splattered on his bare torso from the carrying. He cracks open the bottle and downs about half of it in the first swig. Mother of christ and its only the afternoon.

He watches the ladies searching for shells, though he's not really paying much attention. His eyes are glazed over. He's had enough, he just wants to go home have a shower and give Riley a hug.

[eileen] She's hardly the smallest person here, might not even be the youngest, but Eileen makes herself seem quite little indeed as she hunts and gathers shells. She counts them. She was paying enough attention to what Alex said that she knows to count. When she gets so many gathered that she can't carry more, she goes and dumps a double handful on the tarp. Goes back to find more. They're mostly in the same general area.

Her head comes up the one time Kage says her name, the way people look up when they hear their name. She doesn't add in her first name. Not right now. She just does what she can to help, like there's nothing strange at all like finding a bunch of magi with dead people and firearms shells to deal with.

Have you ever seen a dead body before?

She has to ask Alex once how many, which caliber. As if she can tell them apart. Maybe it's just nine of one, four of the other or something. Eventually it's done and her hands smell and they're shaking but she's keeping very quiet, which isn't usual for those who have spent more than a few minutes around her. Or even just a few minutes. She counts the shells once she and Emily are done. Not even a thin smile. Just... maintaining.

Her chest moves under her shirt when she breathes. Emily speaks, and her eyes snap to the other woman's, because that keeps her from looking at anything else. "Oh." Beat. "Yeah. You're welcome. So you're... uh." She lifts a hand, wiggling it in the air. Whatever that means.

[James Blake] There's blood on his hands. He looks at them as he walks down the stairs. It's as Emily noted...there's no way to get them clean and keep them there in this house. He plods downstairs, and stops at the bottom to see where everyone is. How many bodies are inside. He can't hear sirens. Can't hear voices. So he seeks out the others. And he does what he can to get the rest of the bodies inside. Afterward he comes out onto the porch. Pulls out his cigarettes. Sits down next to Alex. He doesn't speak. There's no point. He just offers the Euthanatos a cigarette.

[Alexander Turnquist] Alex looks at the smoke, strangely he takes it. What the fuck, its been a long day. He puts it in his mouth and hands over one of the beers to the Chorister and waits for a light.

[Emily Littleton] It's done. Eileen is looking up at her as if her eyes were the one stable point in all this mess, and Emily is trying, for the other girl's sake, to be stable. To be a thing to hold on to. It's not really in her, just now, but she understands. She remembers what it was like to have someone turn her bodily away from all of this, because she couldn't turn her eyes away on her own.

"Yeah," Emily says. She's {finger waggles}, whatever that means. "I'm going to go wash up," she says. But she doesn't look away from Eileen's eyes just yet. "Coming?"

She'll lead her straight through the house to the kitchen, which is spared (usually) from the chaos of whatever besieges the house. Today it is clean, aside from bloody footsteps, and there's a broad sink to wash their hands in. There's tea on the counter, a little over-steeped but sweet-green smelling. It's a counter point. Someplace a bit safer for the other mage to be. Emily washes up. She dries her hands on a towel. She watches Eileen (if she's come into the house), and waits.

If she's alone, then the Singer-to-be will join James and Alex on the porch. If not, she'll let Eileen lead.

[eileen] Inside the house is where they took the small body covered by the blanket. Inside the house is where Ashley hasn't come out of. Ashley whose mourning is like a migraine, pressing against her skull, or maybe that's the Adept's magic, or maybe it's just a migraine.

She looks at Emily because it means not looking at the brains. It means not looking at the blood and it means not looking at whatever bits of body are left on the lawn. It was the way she looked at Alex earlier, because it was something to focus on. Not quite meditative. Far from panicked. She's unsettled, and she's... most obviously... avoidant.

Which is why she looks at the door into the house, and she shakes her head. "I'm good," she says quietly, and though she walks up to the porch. She sits between James and Alex, whether that means sitting on the ground or cramped onto a bench or in a separate chair, and then she opens her camera bag.

To take out a little plastic film canister.

And to open said film canister, remove some papers and a little baggie of green stuff, and start rolling.