Meridith’s Saturday night odd encounter(Meridith)
Date: 2025-08-30 22:06
(Meridith’s Saturday night odd encounter(Meridith):Meridith)
[Sat Aug 30 2025]
In Homey Cabin
A small homey cabin. It’s got a bed in the corner, a small couch, a television on the wall, a cozy kitchen area and a small attached bathroom with shower.
It is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At High and Lynch/span>/spanMeridith tilts her head gently. “I’ll explain.” She offers to the three. “The mastermind of this plot is Tautha. The Fae God who killed me.” She scoffs and rolls her shoulders. “He was ejected from the City when Hester turned herself in to feed his appetite for a star.” She growls low. “He took her to film a disaster movie, turning her into some grotesque plague carrying monster.”
“Only,” she grows more contemptful. “She is not done starring. They want to use her, here in Haven, to film the rest of the movie.”
“And that’s not the worst part. Malin, and others, intend to play along. He called them up. He intends to have them help finish his movie. To some final ridiculous musical number…” She clenches a fist and releases it. “Haven is a stage. Fatecrafted nightmare. And…I’m so sick of being some doll in this dollhouse for them to do as they please.”
Meridith holds up four fingers. “One, we cure the disease. Two, we banish the connection between Tautha and Hester. Three, we disrupt the movie.” She shakes her head. “I refuse to give this bastard what he wants. He has a crew here in Haven. Figments. But there has to be a physical component, trailers were released…if we can track down some tangible member of the crew…” She huffs. “Thoughts?”
Lillian nods along with Meridith. She looks angry when reminded this god killed the other woman, and just generally agreeable to the idea of being sick of being a doll. Then as Meridith goes over the plan, she looks a little more doubtful. “Okay, yes, I agree with the plan… but how are we executing that. You think the crewmembers will know how to cure the disease?”
“No,” Meridith explains. “I think that if we destroy his connection to this world, his influence over Hester will fade. I think this disease…I think if the source of its power is cut, it will fade quickly.” She gestures. “Same as if the movie was complete. He’d never care about curing it, but, if he’s done with here, he’ll stop feeding it…”
Amber slinks silently into the building after Meridith, tensing at the sound of distant howling on the horizon. “Okay,” she frowns, “That all tracks from when we encountered him the first time. Throwing Fabled at him didn’t work the first time, I guess, so no reason to think it works this time.” She shifts her weight, “But, uh. We got fucked last time. I’m sure you remember. So I have concerns.” She shifts her weight, “Maybe could try an exorcism. He works by possession, we think.”
“We’d have to track down Hester, and expose ourself to the disease too…and that’s exactly the kind of confrontation he has! It’s an improv script but he has all these little outcomes written down!” Meridith grumbles. “So, we go off script, hit in a way he doesn’t expect. Ruin the story in some way…” She mumbles, then pushes forward towards the door. “There’s footage of Hester spreading the illness, it’s gonna wind up as roll in the film. If we can track where the footage is being sent, we could intercept and shut it down.”
“Okay. So what do you think his connection to the world is?” Lillian asks, looking between the two as they discuss. “It may not be something we can physically cut off from the world. It could be, like– I mean, it could just be Hester, yeah? And then Amber’s exorcism idea is still necessary. Unless I’m misunderstanding something.
“No! It’s Tautha, it’s his interest. It’s the fun of this game!” Meridith explains. “He needs to be satisfied…but I refuse to let him resolve this with satisfaction, so we spoil the game, spoil his connection, not through Hester, but whatever crew he has here. We can’t get Hester right now, and they’ll be going through with the plan tomorrow, we don’t have time to fuck around.”
“Tautha cannot emerge into Haven willy nilly. He’s already spent himself even pulling Hester out. So, whatever power he has here is tenuous.” Meridith offers, hopefully.
“If he’s actually Fae, I-…” Amber trails off after listening to the other two, running a hand through her hair, “I mean. There’s classic wordplay? If the scene just needs to be made, doesn’t have to be good, we could make a shitty AI video or something. Letter of the law’s filled but he doesn’t get what he wants. No power to keep pushing after it’s done. But true supers are fucking terrifying and I don’t want to be dead. So do we think that’s worth a try?”
“So kill the crew? Ruin the set? Destroy the editing equipment?” Lillian goes quiet when Amber speaks, then grins. “If I was a fae god trying to film a perfect movie, I’d be fucking pissed if my footage was replaced with AI garbage. That’s not a bad idea.”
“I don’t think it’s a deal…” Meridith shakes his head. “It isn’t some contract she has to fulfill. He wants the ending he wants. What I want is to find where his contacts are in Haven and deal with them. But…yeah I like that. Okay! I refuse to sing or dance, but if you can make some AI slop…we can wipe the footage recorded, upload this…god that’d be a perfect stupid middle finger!”
Meridith grins. “So, make some garbage footage, and then track them down. Then, meet up, infiltrate, disrupt, and bing bang boom, enjoy your ai slop you shitty wannabe director!”
Amber gives a thumbs-up to the pair, “Okay. Cool. You want me to head back home and work on that? And then you two find the crew and stuff?”
“Finding the contacts is easier said than done though, right? How are we going to go about doing that?” Lillian asks.
Meridith nods to Amber. “Yes, get started, we’ll meet up when we’re all done.” Meridith turns to Lillian. “She has a crew following her, we can try to scour the city, put out feelers, contacts, their scent might be unusual, we can check scene of their crime…”
Amber gives a lazy salute, slipping back out the building to get to work.
Meridith heads out with Lillian, through Lillian’s contacts, she manages to get some intel on where their query has been, from there, it is Meridith’s nose that helps them track it down.
Once Meridith is tracking, Lillian’s job goes from tracking to keeping Meridith out of trouble.
Lillian finds herself feeling a little off. It’s a raspy throat. It’s been a lot of running around surely it’s….nothing.
“I think I’m going to need to catch myself, Meridith,” Lillian says as she stops and puts her hand against a building for support. She starts to hack up a lung.
Amber does good work. Or… ‘good work’. What’s the outcome of successfully making slop? Well, it’s effective at what they desire, hopefully frustrating the one they are working against. But, then, with such an Alien mind who knows what he thinks of…this? Well. They all manages to get back together. Lillian looks off, and Meridith is concerned. “The best thing we can do is end this, Lil.” She gives a sympathetic work to Amber. “We tracked them down, a loft apartment. I say we just go in loud and quick but, I am open to other approaches…”
Lillian frowns and plops down on a step. “I’m not entirely sure I can go in loud right now…” She coughs some more.
Amber rejoins the group, looking concerned at the state of the two. She’s gripping a thumb drive in her left hand. “What did you say they were? Figments? Like, we looking at squishy mortals or actual danger?”
Meridith shakes her head. “I’m not sure there’ll be much resistance at all, but it’s hard to say for sure. This is more of a ‘deadly god Fae is mad at us or finds us amusing’ kind of danger than ‘scores of deadly men with guns.'” Meridith poses. “Lil, come on, no slowing down for this okay?” She tugs at Lillian’s arm. “But if we can sneak into the room somehow. Find which ones got all the equipment set up, that might be better?”
Meridith points up at the roof. “We can get up there pretty easy and then break into the room, or slip in. But…we’d need to know where exactly, or we’re just going through the front door with extra steps.”
Lillian groooooaaaaans, which leads into another coughing fit, but she’s pulled along easily enough. “I like sneaking in better if we can find out where we need to sneak in.”
“I’m sneaky if you two are too sick to do scouting,” Amber suggests quietly, frowning uncomfortably, “But if I get made you better bust a door down.”
“I’m still feeling fine for now. But, that words. We can wait on the roof. You take the sneaky approach?” Meridith offers and moves to haul Lillian off. To the stairs of course. The elevator won’t go to the roof!
Amber finds a very young looking PA staring at her as she finds her way up to the loft. “Excuse me…I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.” He’s guarding the door and folds his arms looking pretty unimpressed. He goes to speak into a radio. The elevator closes behind her, leaving her, momentarily trapped.
“No, I am. I’m the tech here to make sure the equipment’s working,” Amber answers quick on her feet, “See? Badge.” She holds up empty fingers. Not to fool him, but to draw his gaze, “Oops. Must have left it at home. But you need to 60take me to the equipment.”
Amber recovers with grace from her being caught flat-footed. The clever corpse leans in with quick thinking and the young man blinks. “Oh…you’re our new tech hire, right…weirdest production I’ve ever worked on…” He completely sinks into her control, and even does the work of letting Amber inside. She can tell immediately where the rest of the tech is, not on the main loft area, the master bedroom off to the other side of the floor. Around her is the look of a loft converted into a make shift movie studio. Likely the trailer was made here. There’s plenty of opportunities to disrupt the production, loud and quiet sabotage. As well as making their footage all they can rely on. Surely they could recover, but if Tautha’s influence is too far stretched…the whole thing might just dissolve.
Meridith/b>/spanLillian is still doing a hell of a lot of coughing, but she’s probably fine.
Amber slinks in, giving the man a casual nod when they part ways. Act like you belong is what they say, and she tries. On her phone, she doodles out a map of the layout before texting it to the other two, checking around for a place to help let them in. Or to just wait in case they bust through the ceiling or something.
Given Amber’s smooth entry, she has the run of the main floor. Plenty they could sabotage here, but a closed door still remains, the heart of the operation. She could get the others here no problem, there are some others milling about, or she could direct them to infiltrate the room.
The two pronged approach seems to be working. Could Amber does some creative sabotage while they handled the rest? Or…is what awaits them behind that door worth doing together, even if it means having to lose their cover?
Amber draws a red arrow on the map to the spooky door, alongside a question mark. She sends that as a follow-up as she slinks on over towards that door next. She fidgets with the drive she brought, peeking for places to upload it instead of going loud.
Lillian quietly looks at her phone for a moment before glancing back up at Meridith. “Does that mean we should go there? Where the arrow is pointing?”
The master bedroom door draws eyes, but Amber can make a quiet approach. Meridith texts back. “We’ll get in position…” She peers at Lillian and nods, moving to the otherside, peering down. She nods. “We jump over the side, and break in through the glass,” she offers, very sanely.
Lillian is wearing the appropriate boots for such a maneuver, even if her health isn’t quite window-breaking health. “That’s going to make it hard to keep quiet,” she points out.
Meridith shakes her head. “I never said I was quiet.”
Amber finds the door locked.
Lillian huffs. “Okay. Fine. I thought our plan was to be quiet, but… okay. I’ll do my best.”
“Only to the point it was useful, we’re gonna sabotage all this stuff.” Meridith declares with a growl, and a little cough.
Amber considers the door a few moments. Then she reaches deep into her hoodie pocket as she tries to wander her way to a place more out of the majority of sightlines. Time for a distraction. She drips some blood on it, then sets the POSSESSED TOY to run through the building as a distraction, texting ‘go’
“I warned you!” Lillian says with exasperation when Meridith coughs.
Amber breaks in alone, as the duo is delayed in their approach by the strange illness that takes them both.
Inside the room, Amber finds a long finger hunched next to a computer, monitor on the side, visible to her reads [The help she expects does not arrive, succumbing to the illness on the rooftop.] She looks exasperated, annoyed. “These endless rewrites, is this really an ending you think is suitable? And then three almost entirely unrelated people swoop in and put an end to it, Hester never interacts with them and the trio already lined up, just end up doing nothing, really?” She looks like she’s at the end of the rope. “You just upload some whack footage and break our shit?”
A lone figure, even
Amber eyes the window, seemingly having expected some backup at this point. She glances behind her as she makes sure her magic demon doll is still doing work. Then back to the figure, “Well, if it ends that way, you don’t have to put up with his bullshit anymore. Or do you have an idea for something better?”
Lillian texts Amber some encouragement and a heart emoji in lieu of being useful.
“I’m just the script supervisor!” She exclaims. She rolls back and shakes her head. “It isn’t my job to worry about continuity and pacing. I just report the issues. It’s the higher ups who deal with the actual issues with the script.”
She does keep typing. Describing the scene, describing the plagued individuals, on the roof, and elsewhere suffering. The script has some self-aware irritation with this meta-commentary. “But god I hope they cut this part out. I really should get a different name for my credits on this one. Starting to look like a real Hell House III situation…” She wrinkles her nose. “Listen, you do what you have to. The folks out there aren’t really here to fight, we’re just looking to get our foot in the door. New Haven’s proving to be the next LaLaLand if you get me.”
“Alright, well. You know when they fuck up a movie so they can claim the insurance or whatever once they decide it can’t be saved?” Amber pulls out the USB stick and sets it onto the desk. There’s a glance to the window, then to the woman, “60Do that.” She leans back, giving a shrug, “Better for your career than making this guy happy would be.”
The woman stares at Amber a moment, and raises a brow as she types away. She fetches the USB and blinks. There’s no fussing or conflict with the order at all. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” she muses. She does the work for her. The footages is uploaded, backups are wiped. The equipment is disabled. The ability for this studio to further produce such a film are blunted severely. On the monitor, the script reads ….and then Amber’s delirious flu possessed allies barge in through the front door with violent intent. A loud crash sounds. “Better go take care of that…” She offers Amber.
From there, it’s easy enough to make an exit. The media sites run a story on the upcoming film and its controversial use of AI, blunting the growing popularity and trigger multiple complex and totally reasonable discussions online. While the originator of this plot is still out there, and who knows what can save the poor victim if anything, the effect of the plagues spread dies off with the spreading word.
/b>