eldest

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Nothing.

Two hours of nothing.

She has facts. Individual bits of fact. Money movements. People being seen together at fundraisers and at lunch. Changes in behavior, somebody getting fired for something that'd normally move them to desk duty alone.

But there's no throughline. Something's going on but without knowing that already, it'd only look like so much noise. Even knowing that, none of this connects to tell her anything greater. Only that the police are throwing their weight around. Which she already knew.

"Fuck."

She's gripping her nose to stop a stress headache and glaring hatefully at the corkboard, which has refused to have more than one or two connections between bits of paper. She needs more leads. She needs somebody who can crunch financial data. She needs Alan Insert-Last-Name-Here to have a full wikipedia entry with an Controversies section. She needs a cigarette.

Instead, she waves at the spread, irate, and moves a few deliberate feet away from the board. "Okay, we've got everything out here, I'm not seeing anything, you're not seeing anything, this calls for either fresh eyes or new information. But for right now, we're-"

Someone is trying to get into Elodie’s apartment. They’re alone, unkempt hair and three day stubble leaking around the crevices of the dark sunglasses, three-ply mask and hoodie pulled tight. They’re knocking? They’re not.

Elodie frowns down at the screen. "Hate being proven right." She sends a still photo of the guy to her own phone, and then starts packing away the unused files.

"So. Best start heading back then. He'll have done whatever damage he wants by the time we're there."

*

"Oh, there's no question that humans need art," said Brown. "An entire sector of the economy is devoted to it. The impact of Pink's work can be quantitatively measured in the relative property values in sectors she devoted personal attention to. I've tried providing her with the stats and measures before, and it makes her happy in the short term, but it always fades away sooner or later."

They're continuing this on the train. She's gone back in her wheelchair but is notably less tense: being able to get up and move if needed does wonders for anxiety. "Okay, so she's seen the statistics, but has she seen anybody actually react to it? In person?" She pauses, then pulls out her phone.

Persephone: hey pink?
Persephone: sorry for snapping at you, i... really, really hate when i'm stuck in the wheelchair
Persephone: would you mind showing me a few things around the station you designed in a few days?
Persephone: when shit's a little calmer
Persephone: maybe ask if any of the others want to go along as well

That should be something nice to look forward to. Nice trip with a friend. Not at all a date.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Elodie freezes, file open and page half turned, gears turning as she converts the station's section numbers to geography and landmarks. "You made Rainbow Road? No. She made Rainbow Road?" She closes the file, puts it back on the desk. "We. Humans thought that was a coincidence. Random natural beauty in something artificial. There's at least one church that wants to declare it a no-shit miracle. And she made that?"

She takes a minute to think, still aside from a few tentacles idly solving a rubics cube, then scrambling it and resolving it. Mindless physical therapy, all you need to know is the pattern. Don't even need to look at it at a certain point.

"So if she's the art and creative expression, why does she think that she's unneeded at her best state? Humans need art." She points to a few blocks of soft wood, a whittled steamer-ship sitting on top of them. "All of us do. I can't speak for you if you need it, but the fact that she's there, and has been there since the start, at least implies you or those who made you thought it was important."

And then there's a thoughtful quiet for quite some time.

*

The files themselves are meticulously, if oddly, organized. Each box is a story, written or in the process. Names and places get highlighted. Where something comes up in another box or file, the location is marked on a sticky note. Not bad for a system whose first requirement was "all on paper, no electronics".

She is trusting you with this, Heca. By definition anything you look at enters digital storage. But you, like her, would claw out somebody's eyes before they hook you up to a network. So she feels safe with this.

The process itself is simple. Write up a list of names, places, and concepts we're looking for. Open a box. Go through it to see if anything matches. They're all labelled by titles, picked for memorability more than taste.

Two hours later, they've got nothing.

That'd be a 6 and a 7 on +Clever, so that's a no on clues.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

You see Piripiri become a different person, twice.

The first thing is simple: Uusha walks in. Piripiri goes quiet and focuses on her, finishing the burn she was tending and then folding her arms into her sleeves in front of her. She's not being amused at witches immediately focusing on the new magical lore in front of her anymore. She's just waiting.

There's no change in attitude when Uusha declares Giriel her proxy, but it still feels different to you, most likely, because all of that deference shifts to her when Uusha walks away. It's a little unorthodox but they're allies, maybe? This isn't the sort of thing you'd do otherwise, to anybody out of House. Maybe they're closer than she thought. She moves to stand two paces behind Giriel and one to the left, out of the way but able to help if needed.

Then the second shift. Giriel starts to talk, explaining her plan in halting detail, apologetic. Confusing, until the command. And Piripiri goes blank. Stony. You still have her attention but none of it is kind, now. Only her eyes betray her, thorny green fury. How dare you? To somebody who can't defend themselves?

She almost doesn't care that it's her, specifically. Maybe she'd be even more furious if it wasn't.

And there's one slow breath and even that fades. You're looking at the picture of calm detachment as she look down at the offered knife, then looks back up to meet your eyes. "It would be dishonorable for me to hold that." She states, and holds out her hand, palm up, for the knife's point.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"OH&S rules are written in blood," recited Brown.
"OH&S rules are written in blood," repeated Black. There was a chantlike quality to how they said that, and hearing a fully assembled November say that must be quite the thing.

They follow you inside, but they've both got their fucking geiger counters out every step of the way.

She's got her own counter out, and just on the inside of the door there's a little airlock of sorts, a double-lock to keep any free-floating material that somehow happened from getting out. Also on the wall is a detailed breakdown, in both formal OH&S paperwork and annotated shorthand, of what was in the clinic and what was done to clear the hazards. Another sensor shows air quality inside. Elodie carefully, slowly, gets up out of the wheelchair, swaying far more than normal, and sticks a tentacle holding her counter past the sealing into the clinic proper.

No clicks.

She nods, satisfied, and goes inside. It's rather plain, inside. Everything's been cleared, there's a desk with a chair, a few shelves with boxes of files. There's a cot in another corner, a hotplate, bottles of water, and ramen on a folding card table. A den, a hole to lay low in for a few days, or more with some planning, even if it'd be unpleasant. But most importantly for the moment, a place where she can store all those things from her apartment she was keep to not have the cops take a look at.

One last thing is of note. One door is plastered with radioactive warning labels, sealed thoroughly with layers of airtight foam and radiation baffles. Again, there are the two (paper!) notices prominent on the door, detailing the contents and containment procedures, and a contact number to a burner phone of hers, in case something goes horribly wrong.

OH&S rules are written in blood. She knows this too.

"So. Tell me if this is none of my business, but the whole. Turn to ash thing. Pink doesn't do well with fucking up, does she?" She's setting papers on the desk to sort through as she speaks.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She knows exactly how she's supposed to act here. Coy. Like having somebody confess, albeit muffled and distorted by layers of cloth, that they've been so enticed by you and what you offer that they'll turn on their side, on everything they believe, if only for a moment of your approval.

That's how you break in a prisoner, Ven. Which makes it all the more awkward that Piripiri doesn't want to do that to Naji. So instead she gets an approving smile and a calming hand on her back as she goes to cut the- whoops, no knife. Right.

So set aside the disdain for Ven (and really where did that come from?), take care of the poor snake-demon-lady that she's managed to entangle quite thoroughly, and do your best to not be malicious. She's honorbound to not be a good spy or even a spy at all right now, so she can be a good person instead. "Naji, right? Good girl. Come along, we're going to find someplace less dangerous." And with that, she works one of the ropes the demon had been suspended by free enough to work as a lead, and goes to find someplace less active.

*

Piripiri ducks into the hollow the witches and Azazuka have taken shelter in, still wearing hell's regalia from the Laema. She leads one of the Laema's daughters on a rope lead, who stares at her with naked adoration, gagged and bound. In short, it looks like she went native.

Then she grins on seeing Giriel and Azazuka. "Oh, good, you two got clear. This is Naji, she's... following me. Naji, Azazuka and Giriel and... I don't think I know your name?" She lies effortlessly. Of course she's gotten reports on Peregrine. But that's not exactly the sort of thing you want to say on first meeting somebody. She steps around and starts to work on checking over Azazuka's burns. She doesn't have her medicines with her (and this is the last time she's ever walking around a festival on anything less than fully ladden pouches), but she can at least make sure they're clean.

"So, you're a witch. You're probably also one because you're, y'know, here." She jabs a finger at the two Generals fighting. "The fuck?"

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

There is a very brief second when Pink grabs onto Elodie's shirt as she sits in her wheelchair where her face goes blank and her hands twitch. And then it passes and she's got a very cranky expression on her face as she puts her hands, slowly, deliberately, in her lap. She takes a deep breath, and says, picking each word with care, "Please let go of me."

Once Pink does, she starts rolling the chair down the street, towards the train station. "I met Skels through another inmate that got released about 2 months before I did. I'll be recommending him to the next guy to get released, which is in 3 months. To get to know him, all you have to do is go to a horrifying prison for years and years, get let out, and have quasi-legal prosthetics that need expensive and frequent maintenance. Or I don't know, you could ask him on a date. You seemed interested in that, and I think he accepted your apology."

They're at the station. It's a very short walk from Skels'. She suspects that's intentional, and has no idea where he gets the money for the prime real estate. She's not sure she wants to know. She rolls up the ramp and settles in back to a wall, facing the station map across the station, before looking at Pink. "Listen." Finger one. "Don't ever touch me without asking when I'm in a wheelchair." Finger two. "Don't ever touch the chair without asking." Finger three, and gritted teeth. "Assume that I'm scared out of my mind when I'm stuck in this, not able to walk, with twice my remaining body weight bolted onto me as misfiring prosthetics. Cool? Cool."

And she settles back in to watch the station as they wait for their train.

*

Persephone: I'll need a place, yes. I'm pretty sure my issue will be more finding someplace that doesn't care about the convict bit.
Persephone: Or the police continuing to fuck with me.

*

One more stop in Ares before the apartment and figuring out just how to get inside past the hordes, a few quarters spinward. Moving from the Enlightment band to the Classical, do a few simple anti-tail tricks to ditch any easy followers, and end up in front of a clinic, Geiger's Counter. It's been closed for years, based on the grime, and is plastered with yellow and black stickers screaming the danger from radiation hazards.

"They didn't store their chemotherapy equipment properly. The owner was more invested in making the clinic, uh, cute." She gives a dismissive gesture towards the clinic to show what she thinks of that, as she wheels her way down a side alley ignoring the stickers. "Containment broke, the building itself was built to code for storage of radioactive material so it's not hitting the rest of the neighborhood so it was decided that it would be cheaper to just abandon it." She's reached a back door, behind a rusting hulk that used to be a dumpster, and takes a key out from her bag, unlocking it. "Took about three weeks to clean up, including the new radiation baffles in the walls. Cowards."

And with that she rolls into her safehouse.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Elodie grits her teeth and winces as the dire dremel pokes away. It doesn't hurt but that's not to say she can't feel it happening. "Does it have any sort of listing? The black site. Usually those go down as like corporate security, maybe in this case an armory or anti-riot storehouse." She'd never liked Disney. All cameras, cheerful brightness and sculpted experiences. "Or something innocent."

The burr gets eliminated, the sensation mercifully ceases. And then she sees an email pop up on her phone. "Those FUCKERS. I'm losing my apartment because they're caving to the police. Got four months to find something else."

She types, deletes, and tries again, biting at her lip.

Persephone: So it's not an immediate concern but the cops leaned heavy on my apartment building and they caved. I've got 4 months to find someplace else.
Persephone: Any leads would be handy. I've got some time before dealing with it at leatyjn3
Persephone: Another fucking burr. Of course. Least*

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

…you could easily hide that you collaborated with a demon to escape, you know. If you dropped her and let the Wrack-waste swallow her. There will be awkward questions from everyone: the witch, Uusha, Azazuka. And you don’t even know her name.

There is no arrangement of the fates, no weaving they could make, to make that a choice that Piripiri of House Seumul would make.

She's got nothing to work with. Her umbrella is wielded by her captor handily, standing tall upon the broken side of a ship, holding back the tide of wrack-dolls from the sea of Hell. Her knives were tossed aside in the forest among a scaled-swarm, to save Han from the whispering snake. She cannot fight, she stretched honorable surrender to the breaking point even grabbing her umbrella.

But sometimes that's not what's needed. Sometimes you catch somebody unwanted as they fall. You wipe away any drool from their gag, you smooth back their hair and pet their head softly. And you hold them close as they shiver and make muffled whimpering noises. "It's okay." You say. "I'm here. It will all be okay."

A retroactive rolling of entice nets a 12. Gain a string on the demon maid, and she picks one.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Elodie 404s for a moment, sputtering. "But. Wait. No, no, you're both adults, you can do whatever you want in your free time, just wait to flirt with my technician till after he works me over." There's a moment before what she said sinks in. "I mean till he fixes my..." she stops again, frowns, tries again. "Till after he works out the kinks in- Fuck it. Anything I say will be dirty. Skels, bone me up and get your digits inside me cuz you know it feels good."

Sorry Pink. She's had a day and it's not noon yet.

*

Elodie lies topless on a padded table, glaring and jabbing at her phone, earbuds blocking out the music. An array of LED lights shine down on her back, carefully arranged so that no shadows cover anything important, and illuminating a tattooed star map, constellations names spelled out lovingly in delicate cursive. The bottom corner features a date and time in the same hand. Framing the map: "may the stars shine upon the end of your road". A clever puzzle to work backwards to figure out where in the world, a treasure map where the X is implied.

The effect is ruined by the scar tissue around her spinal implant cutting the map neatly in half, which Fucking_Skelator is currently prodding at each and every joint, crevice, and corner of, checking for corrosion. Her tentacles were similarly disabled and opened up, the connections between the prosthetics and the dock and hardport grafts that attached them to her being the next thing to be checked.

She hates this, she hates being helpless, she hates that her technician understands this. She hates not having a choice to not trust anybody. She needs a distraction.

"Hey Skels. Heard anything fun about police fuckups or coverups recently?"

She doesn't have to raise her voice above the trumpet that had inexplicably joined the speed metal. She didn't know how, but he could always hear her.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Elodie places a kiss on the forehead of her very, very sleepy (at the moment) daughter, nods a goodbye to Matilda, and goes inside to get to work. The kettle's whistling when she gets back in, and shortly she's got a chipped mug of steaming joe in tentacle as she sits at her desk, getting ready for the day.

First: messages. She's got them auto-sorting into one of a number of baskets, based on subject, and she cares about two of them right now. Elodie taps one that should be empty and has a good thirty-seven DING thirty-eight messages. Her PassTheHat account. Usually pretty steady but very slow, a lot of recurring drip payments. Seems her usual mix of anarchists and activists donating liked her being headliner news. She'd be more mad about it if she didn't immediately tally up the bills she could pay now; as it is, she sets that aside for a quieter day to work through.

She leans back in her chair, sipping coffee, and opens up the other important one, the work chat. She scans through and it's... yeah it's about what you expect.

Persephone: in no particular order
Persephone: @ProvocativelyFickle i'm alive, unbeaten, and not arrested. doing fantastic.
Persephone: @JuntaSThompson if you have any way to track police attention, now's the time. i want to know where they're acting squeaky clean around to find out where to dig
Persephone: @all in case the above doesn't make it obvious i'm not dropping this. i already got burned and i refuse to let this fuck up my life with nothing to show for it. that being said... i'm also low on leads. i've got one name and police behavior to go off. so i'll be in my hole digging.
Persephone: and @NumbToNothing *sprays with water* no shit-talking your own work

The time is now 7:00, and November has showed up. Black and Brown find coverage. Pink... talks.

"... and then Black brought up this would be an execellent use of her motorcycle that she's been after, and Red was on board. And White tried to shoot it down immediately because of the budget and the fact that it'd only carry one of us. Black and Red fired back that it was about the look, which, I mean, it does look like fun? You'd have to find a good long straight stretch of road to get up to speed though. Also Blue worked out that we could probably get four of us on the motorcycle with a side car but then Red made "thhhhbbbtttt" noises at her for ruining the look. What are you doing?"

Elodie lifts another cushion of her couch and checks under it. The time is now 7:37. There are baked goods in her kitchen. "The police are going to be searching here today. I want them to not find anything interesting." Picking up a sheet of notes from under the couch, she waves it in the air at the kitchenette area before adding it to the folder. "This is interesting." She's been sweeping the area for notes: after years of prison and warden access to everything electronic, it's a hard-worn habit to write anything worth hiding down instead of typing. Satisfied that she got all the notes, she shuts the folder and tosses it in her bag, where it goes on top of Sasha's forgotten hoodie, a small box of tools, and a slightly larger box of legal things that she still didn't want the police poking around in. "I need to get my tentacles recalibrated today, since I can afford it now, did you want to come with for that?"

To Headpattr, right now all that's happened is Elodie had hired Heca. The station government had a large subsidy in place for disabled people using Headpattr, as an alternative to actually providing the social services themselves. Elodie, as a lady with no legs, was disabled, though getting that status had driven more than one administrator to tears as they figured exactly how to classify her: last she'd checked she legally wore light industrial equipment as mobility aids.

The next text, "Th4837!95", arrives. The time is now 7:42 and the first reporters are showing up and double-checking their phone's navigation. A few of the brighter ones are asking neighbors for the same thing. Carnegie District had sprouted eyes. She doesn't do anything as crass as peek out the windows: that'd tell the reporters (the smart ones, at least) something. The point was doing exactly not that. So out comes the wheelchair with a glare and a sigh. Dip into the bedroom, grab a scarf and non-prescription glasses. Text Brown and Black to send headshots of the reporters. Sit in the wheelchair and wrap a blanket tight around the tentacles, all curling in on themselves, and the improvised disguise is done. Now all that's left is gritted teeth as Elodie sits and is pushed about by Pink.

The reporter hurrying out of the way of the poor lady in the wheelchair coming the side door, eyes still focused on the building to make sure Elodie doesn't slip out the side, is at least a reasonable consolation prize.

*

The time is now 10:07. Elodie and Pink pass into an unlabelled storefront with a few stools, a dusty countertop, and a closed door that doesn't do much to quiet the speed metal pounding from the back. It takes all of a minute for a four-armed android with a elegantly engraved skull for a face to barge out from the back, roaring a greeting. "PERSEPHONE! AND YOU! I DON'T KNOW YOU!"

Skels is an experience the first time.