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]