Bodies of Water

[Kage] And Nathan's phone vibrates, rings, lights up with an ID, sings some sort've canned melody. Whatever.

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan's phone does indeed vibrate in his pocket, alerting him of the call. Was it Israel perhaps? Solomon? Molly? Someone else? Luckily, he never used tone in case of an area where he needed to be quiet so no one else was alerted but him.

After a moment of digging through his pocket with his right hand, he draws it and flips it open to answer with a melodious and magnificent, "Nathan speaking, who is it?" Because yeah, he hadn't checked Caller ID.

[Kage] He was a sneakster he was. Not courteous. That wasn't a big motivator, not when it came to Nathan C. (T. H.) S(unshine)priggs. He was a sneakster, and subtle people don't have their cellphones suddenly boom into Queen's Bicycle Race or Handlebars, so it's just a vibration. And maybe it takes him a second to realize which of his aquaintances was calling him, although she sounds indubitably like herself over the phone: more-so, even; immediate, direct. " - T. H. Sunshine. Sunshine of my heart. Wind beneath a lot of wings. Eagle soaring proud. Nathan, hey. It's Kage." Juuuust in case he hadn't figured it out. "What are you doing right now?"

[Nathan Spriggs] Right now, she asks? Right now? Well, he was slowly edging away from a particular place, probably signaling to people that he was going outside for a minute or something. More than likely still very much covered in blood, and guts, and other forms of viscera. But hey, at least she couldn't see him.

"Not much, just really busy with something," murdering Nephandi and theirs? What? "Why do you ask?"

[Kage] "Because," and here, there's a slight pause. Because Kage is glancing down the hall. Because Kage is, more than likely, still at the top of the stairs of the house she (hates [mistrusts]) has explored thoroughly, but never to good effect. New name: Murder House. Because Kage is, probably, glimpsing Ashley all-the-way-over-there. Banister creaks, and she says, " - the two surviving nephandi are, uh, now just the two dead nephandi. Dead, I don't know what to do with them." There's a pause, here. Actually, it's a long pause, so Nathan has more than enough time to say something, never knowing it was just a pause at all. Ha. Phone conversations. They're tricky like that.

[Nathan Spriggs] Phone conversations. Definitely tricky. Also very useful. No eye contact. No seeing the surroundings. For example, right corner and against a wall. Two dead cops... drones, really. Very dead and hole-ridden. Not the prettiest of sights. When Kage tells him of the... situation though, he takes a moment to digest it, and process it. Finally, "Right. First off, cover them with something. Plastic sheets, multiple layers of bedsheets, you get the point. Then trash bags. I'll be there soon."

With that, he's cleaning up some of the blood on his right hand on the inside of a pocket (no one will ever know) and getting ready to change his clothes somewhere and grab a cab. It'd take him a while though so he didn't hang up yet.

[Kage] Her mouth curves. He doesn't see it: still -- Kage is expressive, and perhaps it's easier to read the touch of amusement in her voice, divorced as it is from whatever grimness, whatever rising gravity, is in her (dark [say reflective: a reflection says nothing, just shows you what you already know while telling the truth]) eyes. See. Kage doesn't actually like killing as the final solution. Kage understands the necessity, sometimes, but she's afraid it could become too easy. (You think justice has a voice? And we all have a choice?) Kage is normal. This kind of shit disturbs her. She doesn't fucking revel in it.

Of course, she's still Kage: so, cool -- composed. Careful. And she sounds a touch amused, for a second. "They're in the house. Care to define the word 'soon,' give it a Nathan Spriggs twist?"

[Nathan Spriggs] [Blood? Tomato juice! Matter 2, Life 1, coincidental; diff 5 (-2 resonance, -1 rote)]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan is (used to be) much like Kage. He's an expressive person when he wants to be, when he wants to make his point and get it across. A deeper part of him also hopes to do away with all the killing, all the death, and destruction, and misery, that they see or create on an almost weekly basis. The rest of him though? He's a realistic. Some would say a pessimist.

If you never expected success, you're less disappointed when your attempts inevitably come crashing to the ground. Not to mention he's seen things. Heard things. Things that twist his gut into a knot, things that make his mouth dry and desire a drink. Nightmares. Except they aren't. They're as real as you and me. Things in the guise of people who are just pure fuckin' corruption and evil.

So yes. Maybe killing is necessary some times. Maybe it's even something righteous. A word that used to, and still does, make him feel uncomfortable. What does he know of righteousness?

Adjusting the phone and pressing it against himself with his shoulder as his hands search for something, he says, "I know they are. Cover them up. Less leaking. Need to move 'em." Unaffected is the word, cold and calm logic. Probably been here one too many times. Besides, it's easier when you can't see it. "Soon, in a prompt manner. Speedily. Translating to 'as fast as a cab will take me'."

Then he's scurrying over to a nearby cab. His clothes' clean now, though. Relatively speaking. That blood? Oh, that's just ketchup. Get the forensics team and see. So that cuts down his travel time by a while, no need to change or clean up this mess.

He's already arriving at the house within the hour in fact. Stopping just a street down from the suburban home that doubles as the Magely Base of Secret Operations.

Not to be confused with Justice League headquarters. No justice to be found here, move along.

[Nathan Spriggs] [Bitches don't know 'bout my new Awareness DP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Kage] [Uh. Wha' bout me?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Kage] The operations aren't so secret, really. Not the way it keeps getting attacked. Nephandi. Then Hunters. Then Nephandi again. Next, it'll be Techs. Or maybe it'll be some power-hungry, un-lucky cabal of Traditionalists. This is a thing that some Mages forget: how the Traditions are often at odds; how so often political lines are drawn by Tradition, not by anything else, when it comes to city politics. That isn't the case in Chicago. Chicago's a good place to be an Orphan (no it's not) if you want to be part of the heart of the city (no, you don't: the heart of the city is being squeezed, is being wrung, by a fist).

There is no car in the driveway, and when Nathan enters the House, if heis Aware of himself and his surroundings, he can feel Ashley's resonance. And he is, in fact, very Aware. He is more Aware than he has been many times in the past. He is Aware that the Hermetic Adept used Mind. He is even Aware of what she did with it. He can taste the lingering poignance, beneath the relentless determination, the consuming Hunger. He can feel -- distant, glimmering, that same resonance, and likely Israel's resonance as well, glimgleam of hopefulness, bittersweet sorrow, salt on the tongue, but the sea's so sweet -- in the wards around the House. Because we all leave our signatures, we Mages. Even though we may want to be subtle, and secret.

He can feel Kage's resonance, too. Burning, shining, ardor -- Ardent [Stroke], and something Else, kindling, immanent -- draining away. It's fairly easy to find her. She's with the bodies. No. She's not with the bodies. She's at the top of the stairs, her knees clasped in her arms, her chin on her knees. When Nathan gets to the stairs, she already knows it's him coming through the door. She regards him without saying anything for a long, long second, and then says,

"What happened to you?" Because, sure. It's ketchup. Ketchup isn't on her brain, though.

[Nathan Spriggs] [I'm not Solomon; ??? reflex?]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] Piercing, Hungry, Ardent, and other Resonances. Many more. Like a Picasso of feelings and sensations, emotions wrung purer than words and expressions can make them. He is Aware of all of it. But there's more to it. The double edged sword of Resonance, of that flavor of purest emotions like fresh squeezed oranges is that they also go the other way.

Some times ignorance is bliss. It's no sooner that he is approaching the house, a foot crossing over the threshold of it. Into the sanctuary that just isn't safe. Pure emotion hits him. Enraptures him in a choking, gagging experience. Vomit-inducing almost, if he hadn't felt it so much before.

Magic of the dirtiest kinds. Unpure. Vile. Corrupt. A reek of malice and destruction. Of Undoing. For a moment, he's crumbling. Letting his body fall sideways against the door frame with his hand brought up to his mouth as he drowns back the acidic fluids that burn at his throat and make his eyes water. It takes a moment for him to compose himself again, to put on the poker face.

Gotta be serious. Gotta be composed. No weakness.

Down the stairway he goes, to the basement he's only been down to a few times. To the familiar place of Devotion. That sickening sensation to it. Many of them saw it as something Holy, to be defended. Even he admitted it's Nature was beyond his imagination, beautiful. But it was a different sort of gutwrenching sensation, like manipulating them to serve it. To submit and protect.

Devotion was no different than mindless, blind faith.

[Kage] There's a lot of big bad ugly in the world. There's a lot. Kage and Nathan had a conversation once on a street and if one of them had been using mind to skim the underneath-the-surface thoughts out've the people who passed them by, well. Maybe one of them would've been upset. When Nathan steps off of the front porch (so sweet, so perfect: it waits for pumpkins now, ripening toward an abundant harvest; some Martha Stewart haybales, arranged just so, and tinfoil stars, wrapped carefully around the bannisters, a scarecrow, a ghost, a black cat trapped in a silhouette, back arcing, arcing, arcing; it'll be Halloween season soon, the stores are already getting ready, and Americana is all about consumerism and apple pie and vanilla icecream--or didn't you know?), and he changes completely.

Kage has seen Nathan, wildeyed. Has heard him rave like a lunatic. Has seen him cool and mocking, mocking her. Kage has seen him weary, and affected by horror, uncertain and trying to be kind (gracious). Has seen him recite a list of atrocities. Has seen him hang out with Molly, relaxing with a Traditionmate, just before becoming unTraditioned. Kage has seen him never missing a beat when it comes to the repartee, but Kage hasn't seen Nathan so felled, so utterly struck down, by emotion.

Which is to say, when he sags against the doorframe, when he folds in on himself, her back straightens and her head lifts, alert. She measures the way he swallows, the way he covers his mouth with his fist, and she subsides. Kage is courteous. She'll pretend she never saw it at all. She'll pretend there was no weakness. There wasn't.

She doesn't follow him down stairs, into the basement. The thought of it makes her back prickle, her chest ache.

[Nathan Spriggs] Kage doesn't follow him down. It's a long trek for him from the top of the stairs to the bottom. All alone in that lonely darkness and bare lighting. Left to rot with his thoughts and myriads of emotions in this place. Even the Nephandi that once breath and lived their incomplete half-lives have soaked into this place. Reenacting again that gag reflex, that sense of right and wrong that he never knew himself to have or understand so well before.

These days have shined a light upon him. Upon his resolve to see this to an end and mete out judgment. Again, that righteous indignation. Makes him skip a beat, wonder if he's been around Solomon too long. Probably.

In any case, he's quick to get to work. There's bags there now, if Kage's followed his instructions. Helped to have an assistant. All it takes him is carefully measured strokes with the pen he's drawn from his pocket and mixed with both organic and chemically made inks. Stroke that form sigils, runes that interconnect.

Interconnectivity. Because matter could not be destroyed. It simply shifted from one state to another, from one shape and form to another. All of it connected. Millions of small reactions and changes around them in the blink of an eye, in the instant that electrical signal is sending a message to his brain through a nerve.

On and on it goes, covering the bags. Connecting something beyond the mortal eye.

Then he's closing his eyes and with a deep breath, sitting cross-legged on the basement floor and concentrating. Just focusing.

[Nathan Spriggs] [Changing the bodies into water, piece by piece (extended ritual), Matter 2/Life 1 vulgar w/ witnesses; diff 6 (-1 resonance, +1 resonance, -1 rote, -something near a node, -1 taking time); suxx needed: 5 per body so 10 total]

[Nathan Spriggs] (Edit that, they're not down at the basement... STILL! Stairs apply, near a node too)

[Nathan Spriggs] [Changing the bodies into water, piece by piece (extended ritual), Matter 2/Life 1 vulgar w/ witnesses; diff 6 (-1 resonance, +1 resonance, -1 rote, -something near a node, -1 taking time); suxx needed: 5 per body so 10 total]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 6 (Success x 1 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] [Extending, +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] Extend
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 4 (Success x 1 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] Extend
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 6 (Failure at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] Extend, +1 failure (-1 focus anyway, back to 3)
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]

[Nathan Spriggs] Fuck you Kahseeno, extend
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 8 (Success x 1 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] Extend
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 5 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] One more!
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 7 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Nathan Spriggs] ['Dox]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] [Never catch a break]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] It takes him about five hours. Five hours of pure Will and concentration. Of channeling his Self into the Weaving and the Working. Five hours that go in the blink of eye for him. There's no high ritual dance to it, no chanting, no singing, no movements or actions from him at all in fact. Just quiet. Static.

Cross-legged and eyes closed, his breathing's slowed down to a bare minimum. If Kage were to come upstairs to watch, she'd notice this. Notice how he seems more asleep than awake, more off in another place than there with her. But he isn't, close but not quite. Meditation.

No matter the external influences, the sounds, the movement, the sensations, he doesn't break away from it. Five hours planted to that one spot, with his slow breathing and closed eyes. Focused. Slowly the bags shift as time passes by, first one and then the other. Become less shaped, less rigidly assigned to a form. Then further shifting to what seems to be slowly liquid-filled, fluid. Like they contain not bodies, but some form of liquid.

First one and then the other. Until ultimately, if one were to open the bags in curiosity, there aren't bodies. No more Fallen. No more far gone hollow shells of former human beings. Just water. Pure, clean water. You could even drink it and never realize what it was. Never get a taste of it.

Then finally he stirs, awakens from his seeming slumber. Left hand pressed against the floor as he pushes with one knee and comes to his feet slowly. Stretching as he does. Before a wince, and a small shift forward as he slumps in pain slightly. If Kage is Aware tonight, if she's kept her concentration to the surroundings and Magic, she can feel it. Feel the hand of Paradox come give a caring caress to one of it's own.

[Kage] [Uh. Am I still Aware?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Kage] [In fact, how closely was I watching this? Prime Sight-close? -1 practiced of course, -1 foci etcetera.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)

[Kage] It's boring, watching somebody meditate. It's boring, because you're not out of your body, you're not in an altered state of consciousness yourself, you're not connected, you're not centered, you're just watchful, and what you're watching doesn't appear to be doing anything. Substitute reading for watching and obscure Academic treatises for somebody meditating, and it's something Kage has done before (patient [courteous]). And, as with studying, she doesn't do it for uninterrupted stretches. At some point, she thinks about food. Doesn't get any; she isn't hungry. But she thinks about it. And at some point, she uses her laptop to look up some information Ashley's asked her to find.

It's less boring, watching somebody meditate, when there's more than meditation going on. It's less boring, when your eyes are [metaphorically, because this is not seen; this is only felt; this is only Known: the white radiance of the quintessentia, running through all-things, veins of glimmer-gleam pulled into smoke and hear it hear it because it is sound, too, aching out've the bone, always sound, song, druming in the shape of sigils, drifting, weaving] that particular sort've Knowng dark, when you can see the way meditation's channeling up transformation and transforming flesh and bone into water.

It's horrifying.

He winces in pain. Kage waits a beat. Then says, "Thanks, T. H."

[Nathan Spriggs] Horrifying. As good a word as any. To him, it's that and much more. Breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. Amazing. How something so utterly different transformed, altered. How Life without the Will and that something called the Soul, the Avatar, becomes a chunk of Matter. Complex Matter, but Matter no less.

So when he's wincing from pain, and when he's recovered. When the realization of what he's done hits him. There isn't guilt. Not in a normal sense. Nor is there pride, a sense of accomplishment. Or even wonder. Again, not in a normal sense. He's too busy understand his own actions to. Not regretting them. Understanding the concept of how precious and fragile life is. One instant from living to organic matter.

So when he responds to Kage, it's with a nod first. Then a, "No problem. Anything else?" Quiet, not reserved or tense but with a measure of understanding over this delicate matter.

[Kage] " - you gonna be - " A beat. Grave-eyed girl. " - well. No problem any longer." Kage was leaning against the side of the door, and now she pushes herself away, steps back over the threshold. "Just - go buy yourself a canoli, or something."

[Nathan Spriggs] [Gonna be? Gonna be what?; Perc + Subt]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 8, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] [What the fuck!? +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] (Er, 2 suxx since diff 7)

[Kage] [? Mrrrrrr? The subt pool!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Kage] He isn't near as Aware of what Kage is thinking as he was of the magical happenings in and about the White Fence House. He only gets a hint of some unhappy observation, some sharp (and distant [not him, quite]) concern. She was probably going to say you gonna be okay or you gonna be able to stand or you gonna be happy today or you gonna be able to get all that ketchup off okay. The keyword is okay: gonna be okay?

[Nathan Spriggs] He turns slightly to her, mostly in a position to look over his shoulder to Kage. Wonderful, red-haired Kage. She had a way with words. With... doing things. Poster girl Orphan of Chicago city. Be all you can be. The few, the proud... the cynically kick-ass.

Just a shake of his head and a shadow of a smile to say 'Don't worry'. Just a hamburger disaster, yup. Lot of ketchup splattered. Not to mention bodies of water... heh.