I dunno if it's come across in the writing, but I've been imagining Adam has having a mild Arabic sort of accent. Also @LordOfTheNight how are you doing my man?
Bazmund
Member
Not a Doctor
STATUS: Back at the guild after a long absence. Much changed since I was gone? 7 yrs ago
- Last Seen: 1 yr ago
- Joined: 8 yrs ago
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- Bazmund 8 yrs ago
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Back at the guild after a long absence. Much changed since I was gone?
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Bio
Medical student living in Scotland, a lover of beer and steak mostly - but also writing, and politics. Because why not make myself even more divisive.
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S a n d o
E v e n i n g
E v e n i n g
There was a clink and a clank as Adam hefted his pack onto his back and took the first step out the door. The air of the street was cool, but not chill, and the business of the day - be it work or be it play - had begun to subside at long last. He took a deep breath in, letting the shade of the city wash over him like a new tide, letting it settle on his mind like the welcome dew of the desert morning.
Adam turned around with a grin as he began to walk down the street, waving up to Amara on her balcony. She was waving back with one of those smiles that leaves a mark on you, and as he turned away for the last time that day to make his way towards the stables his grin broadened, and his step quickened.
He lived a charmed life, and he knew it. To be able to walk so freely and go where he pleased, to work the work he worked, to know the beauty of so many places and to wake up every day looking forward to whatever came - it was a blessing.
Adam gave the local baker a friendly wave as the young man was closing up shop for the evening - in the morning, he sold bread and pastry, in the evenings he sold tea and cakes. He’d inherited the business from his mother when she had decided to retire, and Adam was on good terms with them both - meaning when he was in town, he got the freshest loaves, straight from the oven. The baker waved back, and tossed him roll from the cart he was wheeling back inside.
“Well, thank you!”
“They just get thrown out otherwise, Adam!”
He gave the other man a grin as he bit into it and kept on his way. He had a good feeling that the guild would have found more work by now, and there was only one place that could mean he needed to be.
It took a while, but Adam made his way up to the stables, and was pleased to see some of the other runners already there. As he approached, he gave them a big grin, dusting his hands of the crumbs of the roll he’d finished on his way in.
“Hello, my friends. We have work to do, hm?”
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@Yankee Yeah, it's probably that. He's been helping out his FaeBae in return for lodging, but she probably only has one bed so hey, if he's gotta earn his keep he'll damn well earn it.
Immediate Edit: Just remembered I mentioned she has a spare room. Oh well. He might not use it every time he stays over.
Immediate Edit: Just remembered I mentioned she has a spare room. Oh well. He might not use it every time he stays over.
I'm here, too. Just sorta chilling for the moment, I'm imagining that Adam will sort of turn up at a convenient and poignant but unobtrusive and uninvasive moment. Just need things to move forward a *little* more while I figure out how he's been living for the past couple weeks without any money since I forgot to give him any.
Siobhan
"You've known it was coming? That's... pretty unique. From what I've heard, people usually just wake up knowing rather than know in advance."
Ana turned the wheel and the car responded. It was a smooth ride, with a nicely tuned petrol engine under the hood, and good suspension. It didn't seem to fit her, like it was out of keeping with the rest of her person.
As it made its way down the road she'd turned onto, the noise of the night made a crescendo - there was no doubt about it, you were getting closer to a center in the web of violence spreading across the city.
"Me? I'm fine. As fine as reasonable people should be, when they work for a shadowy underground group of smugglers and criminals with a humanitarian streak, against one of the most advanced, omnipresent, oppressive surveillance states in human history." She replied almost-sharply.
There was a pause.
Ana sighed.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be be so hard. I haven't been doing this for very long, it is my first time doing this part of the job, and I know what lengths the EMDA will go to if they find us. How can you not be scared?"
Matthew
"Good. I'd heard about your record - not seen it - and I was hoping you were gonna be in a state to make good on it if we had to. Nice to meet you too, kid." Mira gave him a smirk that looked almost like a grimace in the darkness of the cab, as she checked the rear view mirror and frowned.
Getting out of the city was going to take a little while, but not so long that it would be a big trek - though for Matthew they were hardly going fast.
"Luck," she chuffed when he said it, "is not something I've had good experiences with."
After another couple of minutes she checked the mirror again, and frowned harder.
"That's not good." She remarked grimly, looking back at the eerie darkness.
"We were meant to have a follower by now."
Matthew
"Great. Wasn't checking ID kid, get in the car." She pulled open the driver door and started getting into the vehicle. "We don't have long, these jobs are always tight. We're already a couple minutes behind schedule, and I don't like that at all."
The more Matt heard her speak, the more apparent her accent is - though it's still hardly clear. It was Latina, that's for sure, but Matthew doesn't know nearly enough to hazard a guess at anything more specific than 'she probably speaks Spanish'.
As he got into the car, she finished tying her hair back and tweaked key in the ignition. The engine practically groaned in protest as it nevertheless came to life and the car began to move.
"Name's Mira." She said matter of factly, looking over her shoulder to reverse the car out of the alley. "I hear you're quite the wheelman. Might be that you end up having to take the wheel if we get followed. Think you can handle that?"
The car broke from the cover of the alley and into the dark embrace of the night, lit sporadically by fires and blue lights, most of which were easy enough to avoid - at least for the time being.
One step closer to safety, one step further from the life Matthew'd had.
Siobhan
Wordlessly, Ana starts the engine on the car, and the pair of you peel out into the streets. Flight and fleeing are not unfamiliar sensations for Siobhan - albeit, they are usually done under different circumstances - but Ana seems nervous, tense even. Her knuckles are almost white around the steering wheel, she changes gear too sharply, and her breathing is a little fast. She might be new to this.
In a way, you are too. Just not like her.
The streetlights were cut on the 2nd of January, as per EMDA protocols, in order to limit unofficial activity on the streets. The police still have floodlights on their cars of course, so the night isn't entirely black - and there is always the Moon - but what is more worrying is that the EMDA haven't had to use torches at all, and they've remained completely unimpeded. It makes them difficult to see coming, and harder to fight once they're here.
After about fifteen minutes of very cautious driving, Ana finally speaks.
"Are you doing ok?" She sounds genuinely concerned, "I know I wouldn't be. You've got some steel in you if you're not panicking."
January 3rd, 2020
3:12AM
Siobhan
The walk is brief, and cold, and dark. The wind is not gentle to you, plucking at your hair and your coat and your skin, as soft a breeze as it might have seemed to anyone else. You cross two alleys in your journey, you jump as there is the staccato rap of gunfire from the building you've just left, you-
There. In the alley you've just turned into.
A car with the brake lights on, a figure leaning up against the rear passenger door, their face lit by a cigarette.
She has an elegant stature and features - when they're shown by the glow of inhalation, at least - and she turns to look at you as you enter the alley.
"Siobhan?" The woman has an accent. Polish. Faint but extant, like a pretty well naturalised 0th generation immigrant. You'd recognise it anywhere.
She stands from the lean, turning to face you completely. The woman is dressed inconspicuously, in black skinny jeans and a dark green hoodie, but there's a certain air to her that is... well, not quite magnetic. She has presence, gravitas, and grace - but not to the point where you think she has power. Not to the point where you think she could use it.
At least not to speak.
It takes a moment for it to click, but it does eventually. She holds herself like a dancer - specifically, like a ballerina. Which might make sense, given her background. She looks like she's in her mid 30s, but could be older and aging well - or younger and not - pretty easily.
"My name is Ana. It's time to go."
Brooks and Abi
The car drive is slow and uncomfortable, and you are forced more than once to take incredibly inconvenient detours to avoid the periodic roadblocks set up by your pursuers - or at least, by their law enforcement lackeys, the state police. Brooks gets texts every now and again to report on police checkpoints before the car comes into view of those barricades, from his at-least-for-now partner, a young man from Texas called Billy Ray. Billy is keeping watch on your immediate destination, with a rifle; it's a mostly abandoned shack out in the desert, with a significantly less abandoned basement-garage. It was how you got out here, and it is how you'll get back.
You're not sure how Billy knows about the roadblocks. He's not a mage, at least as far as you know - though that doesn't mean he's not in contact with one.
Most likely he's getting reports from local cell members, but that wouldn't necessarily explain how he knew where you were each time either - and you’ve been keeping an eye out for drones or anything of that sort.
In spite of everything in your favour - your secrecy, your headstart on the FOE, your mysterious eye-in-the-sky - the tension in the car never fully disappears. Billy sends you another text.
“aw shit. Cops. how far off are u.”
But things are worse for Abigail.
In the endless sands and shifting dusts of the realms of sleep, lost in the liquid clouds of fatigue and exhaustion, sinking into the floor of your somnolence… you begin to dream. For a moment, you find yourself looking up a short flight of stairs at a ramshackle door, formed of broad planks and slats, outlined by a near-blinding light. The steps up to it are steep and muddy, covered in this thin grey slurry that looks maybe half an inch deep, and there’s an almost sour smell in the air. You look down and find that the mud is everywhere, not limited only to the steps out of this-
Out of this basement.
You don’t know how you know it’s a basement.
You don’t know how you know where you are, but you know you’re not where you were.
Angeline
Your trek is an ambling one, never sure which turn to take or which route is best - though you’re smart enough to stay away from the main roads. You also don’t know what precisely you’re looking for, though you figure that whoever sent the text will make themselves known when it suits them.
You’re turning into a new alleyway when you’re confronted with something you’ve never seen before.
A body. Two cops stand over it, one of them prodding the unfortunate young man’s leg with her foot as something dark pools around him.
“Whaddya think?” Her partner, a big man with a paunch and a sparse beard, muses.
“I think we got lucky, bud.” The other woman is short, but stocky, with blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail. They’re both wearing local police uniforms and ballistic vests - but they’re not the FOE.
“I’ll say. Hey, d’ya - wait.” He stops, his hand reaching instinctively for his pistol. “You there! Come out into the light, hands up!” The pair of them turn to face Angeline with their guns drawn.
This is where you thought you were going to meet your mysterious saviour. This is where they said they’d be.
Is that them, dead on the ground? Are you joining them?
Zephyr
As you head out of your building, you can hear police cars pull up in front of it. It would seem that you got out in the nick of time - something that may not surprise you.
What might surprise you a bit more is the immediate sounds of screaming and gunfire from inside the lobby of your apartment block. You give it a glance backwards, and you see cops in riot gear by the dozen advancing on the front of the house - until there is another shout, and their ranks are awash with bright white flames. The front four or five are caught in the blast, their gear and their skin catching alight like petroleum as they wail and stumble backwards away from the heat.
One of them does not, charging forwards instead, unaffected by the fire.
Your blood runs cold.
That was an agent of the CA3 - the Canadian Agency for Arcane Affairs, Canada’s answer to the American FOE. There is another brief round of gunfire, the sound of breaking glass, and then the complete stop of the stream of fire.
Good thing you didn’t go out the front.
You will hear your name called before you see the caller.
“Yo! Zephyr! Big man! Over here!”
It’s a skinny teenage looking guy, in ripped jeans and a leather jacket, with a disappointingly dull coloured mohawk. Behind him, there’s a sweaty looking overweight asian man in an ill fitting business suit, who seems alarmed by the kid’s sudden shouting.
“Come on man, let’s get the fuck outta here! You get in the front, Sam’ll drive until we’re outta city!” The punk gestures to a slick looking black mercedes, before practically leaping into the back seat.
Behind you, you hear someone shout;
“I saw someone go down the alley!”
Matthew
With the electrical cable for your alarm clock trailing idly behind you through the dirt of the city alleyways, half-illuminated by the light from the nearby streets, you make your way towards what you’d approximate as the rendezvous point. You have trouble remembering the last time you felt snow on your skin, but it’s not an unfamiliar sensation as it starts to fall.
Your breath fogs up the air before you, snowflakes begin to settle on the ground as the snow gets heavier and thicker and muffles more of the world around you. Sometimes it would be easy to suppose that you’ve moved from one world over to the next, when you turn corners and find the floor covered in soft white where it wasn’t but a moment ago.
The start of the riots in the city seems so distant through the snow.
You know that, for all you don’t remember, you will remember this; you will remember it perfectly.
The next corner you turn, you see a young woman with dark, curled hair, a frown on her face, and a big fuck off puffy jacket on. She’s still shivering, so it’s clearly not helping. The woman is standing idly around an incredibly dilapidated brownish sedan, which doesn’t look like it would survive you driving it for very long, but looks like it could still build speed for a little while if it needed to.
She turns to look at you as you enter the alley, and you notice that she’s open carrying a boxy, plastic looking pistol, the kind that cops are usually issued.
“You Matthew? Matthew Mearls?”
Hey everyone! The IC is LIVE! Check the Oth post for our start.
@Parzivol I hope we can actually change him, because my boi Adam is one of the most optimistic, loving people you can meet - but even he would have to struggle to find any compassion for Sir Matthews as-is, and that's not how you want your doctor and surgeon to feel.
@Parzivol Yeah, I didn't wanna use the word but your boy there is basically a nazi. How on earth do the Sunrunners' guild tolerate him?
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