Encounterlogs
Autumns Odd Encounter Sr Jessica 240117
Autumn finds herself in the bedroom of the lighthouse she tends to, engrossed in a quiet morning. Her peace is shattered by a sudden and violent clap of thunder, accompanied by a lightning strike that impacts the lighthouse and a subsequent strike that damages a tree and electrifies the atmosphere. She arms herself with a khopesh and sets out to find the source of this unnatural storm. Upon ascending to the top of the lighthouse, she discovers a wild-eyed, elderly sorcerer gleefully orchestrating the chaos. Intent on stopping his reign of terror, Autumn confronts the man, sparking his defiance as he continues to bombard the town with lightning.
The sorcerer, overcome with his delusions of power, brushes off Autumn's warnings and narrowly escapes death when she heats his cloak with magic, forcing him to discard it. In his distracted state, he nearly falls from the lighthouse but is saved by Autumn, who chooses non-lethal intervention. Despite her anger, she grasps the man and rescues him from the fall. As the cloud dissipates with the sorcerer's incapacitation, he babbles about being possessed. Autumn calls for backup to take the sorcerer into custody, maintaining her duty to protect without resorting to killing. With the sorcerer detained and the day saved, Autumn returns to the solitude of her room, reflecting on the never-ending surprises of her role.
(Autumn's odd encounter(SRJessica):SRJessica)
[Tue Jan 16 2024]
In the lighthouse bedroom
This small room is sparse and serves as living quarters for the
lighthouse keeper. Rough stone walls form an insulated barrier from the sea
and begin to curve toward the entrance of the stairwell. A bed rests in the
corner of the room beside a porthole-style window while bookshelves line the
wall with numerous old volumes of marine history.
It is morning, about 18F(-7C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky.
(A local sorcerer or witch has been corrupted by their power and is causing harm to the community, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Your target and their allies must find a way to stop them without causing further harm.)
Autumn is sitting on the bed, looking down at her phone as she ponders. Until she pauses and looks around the room, lowering her device before she looks back down at the screen.
Autumn relaxes in the bedroom of the lighthouse on this chilly winter day. It's not even noon yet and there is nothing really going on in town for the most part.
That's not going to continue being the case when a loud *Crack* then *BOOM* echos through the structure of the lighthouse accompanied by a flash of light. Though there is no storm right now, it seems like the structure has been hit by a bolt of lightening all of a sudden.
Freezing at the sudden boom, Autumn stops what she's doing and hops off the bed to her feet. "The hell?" She mutters, putting her phone away and looking out her window. "What's going on?"
In the resulting silence after the loud boom that struck the lighthouse a distance cackling can be heard from above, somewhere on top of the lighthouse someone laughs manically and utters some words that are too hard to make out from here.
A few moments later another crack/boom echos but this one is further from the lighthouse, somewhere within town but it's still loud and even the floor Autumn stands on vibrates.
While Autumn is looking out the window she can see a smoldering tree that has been split in half by a lightening strike. Further observation shows that the entire sky is practically cloudless except for a relatively small cloud statically remaining above the lighthouse location.
"What the..." Upon seeing the tree and then up towards the cloud, Autumn walks towards her bed and crouches down to grab her sheathed steel khopesh from under her bed. "How dare they disturb my home," she mutters, turning to make her way out of the lighthouse. "They will pay."
Cackling persist in the periods of silence, another flash, crack then BOOM follows before Autumn's eyes this time, a bolt hits a street lamp causing the bulb to explode. This time its clear as day, the cloud that hovers above the lighthouse is practically performing an air-raid over the town.
No rain falls, its very atypical weather and the air feels like its highly charged causing Autumn's hair to want to stand on end.
The cackling most definitely seems to be coming from the top of the lighthouse so presumably that is where Autumn intends to investigate.
Flinching at the lightning strike before her, Autumn hears the cackling very well and turns to head back inside. She runs towards the spiral stairwell and proceeds to head up the stairs to the beacon point of the lighthouse. Once she arrives on top, she becomes careful as she steps forward.
Standing precariously on the edge of the lighthouse is an Einstein looking old man with his arms outstretched wide and its quickly obvious hes the cackler. "Yes Yes! I'm so powerful!" he says, sounding a bit insane. He moves his arms like a conductor in an orchestra and a bolt of lighting quickly zips from the cloud down the ground to delete a mailbox on a distant street.
Rather than seem bothered by the low stakes of the damage, the man seems to find it empowering and amusing he is delivering low level vandalism, of course, maybe he could strike a person and call real harm. He does not seem to notice Autumn approach up the stairs behind him.
With a shake of her head, Autumn raises her left hand and mutters something under her breath, causing her jewel-embed bracelet's runes to glow red-orange. Pointing her hand at the old man, she flicks her fingers and the glow pulses with magic as his clothes begin to smoulder. "You think you are powerful by causing trouble in this town?" she speaks with narrow eyes.
Channeling his inner Darth Sidious the man shouts, "Unlimited power!" and the air charges up again as if he's about to strike yet again with his control over this lightening. Still he doesn't notice Autumn while he's in his own world and he is on the edge of the balcony. All it would take is a little light murder to at least put an end to this crazy sorcerer. But maybe he can be negotiated down and no one has to die today. What sort of person is Autumn
It seems Autumn finds a middle ground by lighting his heavy cloak on fire, "Huh what? Fire!" he squeals and he rips off his cloak and begins to stomp on it to put out the flames. He turns on Autumn then and says, "You can not stop me!" then he points his finger at Autumn, the air charges and Autumn could feel all her hair stand up, likely moments from getting blasted herself.
"You will make enemies if you keep this up," Autumn tells the man as she steps aside. "You will be killed by those you cause harm and your soul will be sent to darkest pits of Hell." She keeps her khopesh sheathed as she crosses her arms. "That is, if you would stop terrorizing town and not cause harm. And I am sure I will call for backup to detain you should you dare to strike at me."
When Autumn signals she's not being aggressive the eccentric man turns back towards the town and directs the bolt that he was about to blast Autumn with to a shed behind the church in the graveyard. Setting it on fire with a crack BOOM.
Cackling returns and he tells Autumn, "Witness! I have nothing to fear from you." he taunts, showing how little he fears Autumn by turning his back on her.
Autumn scowls when the man turns her back on her, and unsheathing her blade, she points her blade at him. "You don't really know who you are dealing with," she sneers while she stands. "If you keep doing this, you will be devoured by your own magic and your soul will be sent to Hell for eternity. Your greed for magic will tear you apart into many pieces until you cease to exist in this world."
Ignoring Autumn the man laughs like a maniac, he still doesn't even bother looking at her anymore, deciding that she is nothing but words. He raises his hands over his head to reach a climax of his lightening orchestra, the cloud seems to seeth with energy and if a moment passes, multiple bolts strike randomly around the southern part of town, Boom BOOM BOOM, a rapid fire of lightening strikes begin to blast down and may continue to do so unless Autumn intervenes.
Having been ignored, Autumn seethes and grips her weapon while her hand bracelet glows again. "Then how about sample then?" she seethes before she channels her anger. She then readies her khopesh, the blade glowing red hot as she aims and attempts a stab on one of the man's arms.
There is a choked little squeal from the man as he's stabbed in the arm by the red hot blade. He gasp, clutches his arm and then stumbles...away from Autumn on his way off the edge of the lighthouse, if not caught he's going to plummet to certain doom. In the split second its hard to notice that the lightening has abruptly stopped while the man is distracted by falling.
Autumn then reaches out to grab the man, using what strength she has and her weapon as support. "I am not gonna let you fall and die," she yells at the man with narrow eyes as she tries to pull him away from the balcony. "Not on my watch!"
Grabbed by Autumn the man is yanked back onto the balcony, gasping and clutching his arm, but mostly he just appears so greatful to not be dead that he wraps his arms around Autumn's leg and says, "Thank you THANK you THANk you! You saved me." as he's doing this the cloud overhead is already fading away, "I don't know what came over me! It's like I wasn't even myself? I was possessed I tell you!" he says enthusiastically, "I can barely cast a spark on a normal day. Someone was working through me. Believe me."
"Okay, first you ignored me and now you're thanking me?" Autumn raises a brow down at the man while she sheathes her weapon. "You are welcome. But I'm still going to have you detained for reckless magic in town. You could have gotten someone killed!" She then taps her earpiece with one hand and calls on her Order comms to get the man.
"Ok..Ok." says the man on his knees, he clutches his stabbed arm to stem the bleeding and seems content to stay there, relieved to be alive and when the order comes to take him away he goes away without a fuss, he even tells one of the agents his tale of how he might have been possessed and they should do something about that. Still Autumn managed to do the orderite thing and not kill, which certainly would've been easy to do. Now she can go back to her lighthouse bedroom, content she was a good orderite today.
"Never a quiet day, I guess," Autumn says before she turns to head back to the stairs and walk down. Once she reaches the bedroom, she stashes her blade away and falls back on the bed.
Marcus walks coolly into the law office, pausing to look around. During that pause, he holds the well-polished glass door open for Rachel to enter along with him. He politely makes sure to wipe his feet on the mat, knocking some frost and dirt particles free.
AFK 5 minutes for food as the two of you set up what's going on.
Rachel makes it through the door, but with far less grace than Marcus. She comes in a few steps too far before realizing, upon hearing Marcus's shuffling feet, that she, too, should have removed the mud caked to her boots. She does so afterward. Too little, too late.
Oh, well. Despite the cursory mat-dance he performed, Marcus doesn't seem to mind any mess Rachel may or may not be making of the clean floors. He doesn't step far enough in to likely draw the attention of any receptionists, instead planting himself by the door to murmur to rachel. "Wow. We don't have places like this back home," he informs her, aside. "Place like this, you feel like someone's going to come out from that door with a tri-cornered hat on." With a nod to the south, he tips his invisible Yankee Doodle macaroni hat. He keeps the banter light.
This time, Rachel takes Marcus's cue in time. He's quiet, she's quiet. "Wouldn't expect anything more from 'mayo-is-spicy'-land," Rachel jabs. "Kinda reminds me of this one house on the outskirts of Haven, actually..." She shudders, like she's a cartoon cat, with the shivers going up her spine. "Ugh. No, I prefer the modern aesthetic, honestly. Not about all this old-school New England..." However it should be described. She fills in the missing words with a vague wave. "I feel like it's not normally a tri-cornered hat that comes out of nowhere, in places like these. It's, y'know, ghosts and stuff."
There is a secretary, but she is, perhaps luckily, upstairs: Marcus and Rachel can hear her working to set the conference up there. There's a bathroom door to the east, an office door to the south, and then just the noise of the secretary talking to a speakerphone about how people are coming soon. There's no door to the upstairs conference room, so there is some danger, there.
"Ghosts with tri-cornered hats," Marcus murmurs thoughtfully, but his attention is already on the southern door, the one leading into the office. With no real plan, at least not one that he's shared with Rachel, he starts tentatively towards that side of this room. Is it a glass door, perhaps, or will he have to open it to take a peek and see if there's anyone inside? Either way, he takes a meandering path as if he isn't really sure where he's going, and is just looking for someone to assist him.
"Marcus," Rachel mouths, with barely any sound produced. He's already off. Rachel absolutely considers a path apart from his, and of course, it's to the room upstairs, where danger is greatest. She looks. She pauses. Ultimately, she chooses, today, to favor logic. She's meant to stick by Marcus, and stick by him she will. Great care is taken to be quiet.
No glass door in the office, but it is unlocked. When Marcus opens it, inside is a grand room: a desk, framed by windows, a conference table, a bookshelf. It is Solomon's office, clearly, and it is unlocked, with a heavy door that should conceal the pair if they slip inside. Rachel, hanging back, can hear the secretary moving around. Is she coming down the stairs?
Rachel makes a split-second choice. Of course she does. She can only be relied on to follow the plan for, what, a few minutes at a time? On hearing the secretary, she splinters off from Marcus, so that she's backpedaled all the way to the center of the lobby. Just a lost soul, or a new client, or something entirely innocent - she's here to distract, so Marcus can get what they need, and both can get out.
Marcus doesn't make a big fuss over being incognito or sneaky. He just opens the door and walks in like he works here, even though a prestigious law office would probably not have someone dressed as casually as Marcus on their team. He holds the door open for just a moment in case Rachel wants to come in after him, glancing over his shoulder, but when she makes her choice he doesn't mince words or waste time. He shuts the door, hopefully in time.
As the door shuts, the secretary descends. "Oh!" she tells Rachel. "How can I help you?" She doesn't notice the door: it's funny, how Marcus and Rachel always seem to get lucky. "Welcome to Inigo & Wilson," she tells Rachel as she takes a seat behind the desk. "I'm sorry, I was upstairs preparing the conference room." It's a bright, pretty smile: the girl was clearly chosen for her looks, and she knows it, perfectly coiffed.
Inside the office, Marcus is alone. The curtains are drawn, and there is a writing pad on the desk. It does not seem like the owner of the office is in Montreal: it seems as if he just stepped out. Over by the bookshelf, a dark-spined book is open on a coffee table, with a glass of wine next to it and some kind of small figurine set next to both book and wine.
"Hi!" Rachel doesn't quite aim for vapid, but she plasters a cheerful, got-no-worries look on her face. She seems, well, like the college student that she is. A little lost, a little too peppy, given the trials and tribulations the world has to offer. "That's okay. I was just looking around. I *love* the way you all have furnished the place." Liar. She'd just said that she hates it.
"I was looking for Solomon Inigo? I had a career consulting appointment."
Marcus takes steps as quietly as he can manage, so as not to alert the secretary or anyone else elsewhere in the building. Who knows how sensitive anyone's hearing is, anymore? His very own causes him to perceive his quiet footfalls as heavy, clumsy thuds, each one accompanied by a faint wince. Still, those steps carry him to the table, where he steals a peek at the open book, trying to speed-read what he can. The wine is ignored, while the figurine is given a careful once-over but not touched.
The figurine is a king: it looks like a chess-piece king, but it is way too large, perhaps nine inches tall, and if one were to look at it closely the black wood it is carved of seems to carved into tiny tentacles in the shape of a chessboard king. It matches the book: the book is not a law book, at least not any unnatural law, and it contains a picture of the chess piece in it, along with a long invocation in Latin. When Marcus gets close, the feelings he has been having the last few days -- the desire to snipe and belittle -- go suddenly stronger, and it as if he hears them in some whispered repetition of the words in the book. The connection, even for someone with little occult skill, is obvious.
Outside, the secretary talks to Rachel. "Oh!" she says. "Mr. Inigo had to step away for a moment," she explains. "He had to go to City Hall, but he should be back any minute. He does have this conference, though," she says. "Let me get his appointment book..." She smooths down a tight skirt as she settles behind the computer, opening it. "What's your availability?"
Rachel throws a little vocal fry and up-talk into the mix. She ends with the sort of accent that usually leads to stereotyping - little problematic, maybe, that she's leaning in in this way, but hey, at least she's having fun. "Uhmm..." Rachel makes a show of pretending like that's a hard question. Her calendar's so, so full after all. She has to pull up her phone to check reaaaaaaal slowly. "Let's see..." Rachel taps her chin. "Hm, hm, hm."
Any day now.
"...Weeell. Probably not today. Maaaaaaaybe tomorrow at 1 or 2? Or Thursday?"
"I think we can make 1 work tomorrow," the secretary says. She adjusts her blouse, which has a button or two undone; she should be more self-conscious, perhaps, but some things people get used to -- or mind controlled into. Either way! She looks up at Rachel with a pretty smile. "He'd mentioned you to me," she shares. "He always makes sure to make time for mentorship. I think it's really great, don't you?" she says, bubbily.
It's pride -- arrogance, overwhelming, radiating from the King. It is the certainty that Marcus is right and the world wrong.
There's a suspended moment of indecision, a moment when his fingers curl and Marcus gnaws his lower lip. His eyes flit from the figure to the page and back. Eventually, he reaches out to try and swipe the book and the figurine at once. He gives no mind to any wards that may or may not be there. He knows nothing of such things. He just tries to tuck the former under his arm and stuff the latter in his pocket, assuming nothing happens to him in the process. Where he will go with these effects...that's another story.
"Maybe 1:30," Rachel amends after consideration. Anyway, quibbling over time aside, Rachel has questions! And comments. She could talk for *hours*. First: "Did he? He really seems like a nice guy. He was telling me that there's a requirement for lawyers here to do a little community work, but it's never enforced - but he does it anyway! World could really use more people like that." Rachel tosses her hair - it's not even long enough for tossing, really. "Do you think I need to bring anything, to prepare? What does everyone else do?"
"1:30?" the secretary say. "Yeah, we can do that," she says. "He has a 2:30, but that should be plenty of time," she says. "And it might be movable to 3:00." She looks up. "What's your name again? What should I put it in as?" she asks Rachel.
In the room, Marcus gets the book and the chesspiece, and as he seizes the chess-piece his heart fills with Pride: Pride, with a capital P. The book seems to instructions on how to create this artifact, this prized thing Marcus now holds in his hand.
Marcus shoves his hand clutching the 'chess piece' into his jacket pocket, but...doesn't let go of it, even inside the pocket. For a moment, the man stands there, right where he shouldn't be. He's stock still as some feeling or another washes over him. He smacks his lips, this time not with anxiety as he has so many times before, but with...anticipation, and greed. A smile finds its way to settle upon his mouth, his eyes alight with a newly kindled fire.
"Ra-chel," Rachel says, pronouncing each syllable distinctly. It's not like the secretary could possibly misspell a name that simple, but she's laying it on thick. "Cai. C-a-i." Hopefully, if the woman's been hired for her looks, her perception's none too keen. Rachel happens to look aside to the southern door, for only a second. And then she's entirely refocused, again, on the conversation at hand. "Thanks for setting this up."
Around Marcus, there are not good exits: the door back out, where he can hear Rachel talking to the secretary, or perhaps a window? They don't seem to open, though, so that would be breaking things.
"Totally!" the secretary tells Rachel. "Oh, Rachel is such a pretty name. And Cai?" she asks. "I don't want to be impolite," she says, which is always what people do when they are impolite. "But where is your name from?" She means where is Rachel from, of course: she's not quite the New England floorroom model.
After a moment's thought, Marcus haphazardly tosses the book back onto the table, not seeming to care where it falls, as long as it doesn't knock over that glass of wine. He at least throws it far enough away from that. The book is too conspicuous, even for what he's about to do. And what is he about to do?
He just walks right out. Strolls out of the room like he was supposed to be there, door swinging in his wake. He looks very much like he belongs here, or at least like he thinks he does. (He still isn't dressed for it.)
He tries to get his words in before anyone else can. "There you are. I was looking for a receptionist. Did I walk right past you or were you somewhere else?"
"China," she says. "My biological family's mostly from Shanghai, I *think*. And if you like that, you might li--" Thank God Marcus does speak up fast, just then, because Rachel's been known to jump the gun - and with utter, unpredictable volatility. She hangs back and lets the receptionist respond to him; there's no sign provided that she and Marcus are acquainted. In fact: "Sorry, that's my fault - I was being distracting. Please, if you have an appointment..." She gestures. Talk away!
The blonde secretary looks up, and there's a narrowing of her eyes. She may be pretty, but she also works for an ageless, immortal sorcerer. "Excuse me," she says. "You're not supposed to be in there. That's Mr. Inigo's office." There's a look, back and forth between Marcus and Rachel now, but then it's back to Marcus. "I've been here for a lot longer than it takes to recognize that you're not supposed to be in there."
"That's funny," Marcus says, with dark amusement. Normally he might seem sheepish in such a situation, being confronted like this. Rachel certainly knows him as no great fan of confrontation, and always quick to apologize. This time, contrition isn't on the menu. "Because I...wasn't supposed to be in -there-..." Marcus gestures behind himself, "while -you-..." -- He gestures to the secretary with his hand that isn't warming himself in his jacket -- "...were supposed to be in -here.-" He smiles thinly, his eyes blank.
"But you weren't, were you? I had to go looking for you. So whose fault is it that no one was here to tell me where to go...and where not to go?" His tone is downright patronizing.
The secretary rises, crossing to the door to knock briefly before she opens the office door, looking inside. She's not the fastest, in skyscraper heels and a pencil skirt that comes close to being hobble-tight, but she looks around with more than a little suspicion. Nothing seems out of place from a distance, though, as she looks back at Marcus. "How cam I help you?" she asks him, bluntly.
There's a smile shot to Rachel, but the secretary now seems to have her hands full with this interloper.
"It's not her fault," Rachel mumbles, but doesn't press, given that they're moving on. "She was setting an appointment up for me." She must still be play-acting, given that she, too, rarely takes this route - generally, her alliance is with Marcus.
Marcus steps confidently aside from the door as the secretary gives the room the once-over. His eyebrows rise in an are-you-done sort of way, watching the woman. "I have a meeting with Mr. Inigo that he said was supposed to happen once he's back from Montreal." His head cants to the side. His voice is sharp, not at all characteristic of him. Something Rachel has never heard. Is he this good of an actor? "I wanted you to pencil me in, but I couldn't find you. And now I'm starting to think he might already be back from Montreal." He steps further out of the way, indicating nonverbally that he has no further interest in delving further into the office or anywhere else forbidden. "To be honest, I don't know Mr. Inigo very well, but I hear he's a man of the community, so I know he won't judge me for wandering into his office by mistake."
"Just like he won't judge you for slacking off and leaving the room unattended without locking the door. So...I'm not worried about it."
"I'll tell him you called," the secretary says. She walks back to her computer on those heels. "What was your name?" she asks. A glance at Rachel, like a knowing apology, and then she looks back at Marcus. "I can tell him you came by," she promises, opening up his calendar.
'I'm so sorry," Rachel mouths at the secretary. Whatever she makes of Marcus's behaviour, she's simply allowing it to slide, presumably so they can get the hell out of dodge. It might be weird that she's staying here, given her business is all done, but the way she lingers, all awkward, could charitably be interpreted as a desire to make sure the secretary comes out in one piece."
Marcus confidently gives his name, like a boss, or maybe like an idiot. Time will tell which. "Marcus Quayle," he drops without hesitation. "I'll be going home now," he announces for no obvious reason -- at least not one obvious to the secretary. "I look forward to hearing from him." And he just strolls out, not waiting for Rachel or even acknowledging that he knows her.
The sorcerer, overcome with his delusions of power, brushes off Autumn's warnings and narrowly escapes death when she heats his cloak with magic, forcing him to discard it. In his distracted state, he nearly falls from the lighthouse but is saved by Autumn, who chooses non-lethal intervention. Despite her anger, she grasps the man and rescues him from the fall. As the cloud dissipates with the sorcerer's incapacitation, he babbles about being possessed. Autumn calls for backup to take the sorcerer into custody, maintaining her duty to protect without resorting to killing. With the sorcerer detained and the day saved, Autumn returns to the solitude of her room, reflecting on the never-ending surprises of her role.
(Autumn's odd encounter(SRJessica):SRJessica)
[Tue Jan 16 2024]
In the lighthouse bedroom
This small room is sparse and serves as living quarters for the
lighthouse keeper. Rough stone walls form an insulated barrier from the sea
and begin to curve toward the entrance of the stairwell. A bed rests in the
corner of the room beside a porthole-style window while bookshelves line the
wall with numerous old volumes of marine history.
It is morning, about 18F(-7C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky.
(A local sorcerer or witch has been corrupted by their power and is causing harm to the community, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Your target and their allies must find a way to stop them without causing further harm.)
Autumn is sitting on the bed, looking down at her phone as she ponders. Until she pauses and looks around the room, lowering her device before she looks back down at the screen.
Autumn relaxes in the bedroom of the lighthouse on this chilly winter day. It's not even noon yet and there is nothing really going on in town for the most part.
That's not going to continue being the case when a loud *Crack* then *BOOM* echos through the structure of the lighthouse accompanied by a flash of light. Though there is no storm right now, it seems like the structure has been hit by a bolt of lightening all of a sudden.
Freezing at the sudden boom, Autumn stops what she's doing and hops off the bed to her feet. "The hell?" She mutters, putting her phone away and looking out her window. "What's going on?"
In the resulting silence after the loud boom that struck the lighthouse a distance cackling can be heard from above, somewhere on top of the lighthouse someone laughs manically and utters some words that are too hard to make out from here.
A few moments later another crack/boom echos but this one is further from the lighthouse, somewhere within town but it's still loud and even the floor Autumn stands on vibrates.
While Autumn is looking out the window she can see a smoldering tree that has been split in half by a lightening strike. Further observation shows that the entire sky is practically cloudless except for a relatively small cloud statically remaining above the lighthouse location.
"What the..." Upon seeing the tree and then up towards the cloud, Autumn walks towards her bed and crouches down to grab her sheathed steel khopesh from under her bed. "How dare they disturb my home," she mutters, turning to make her way out of the lighthouse. "They will pay."
Cackling persist in the periods of silence, another flash, crack then BOOM follows before Autumn's eyes this time, a bolt hits a street lamp causing the bulb to explode. This time its clear as day, the cloud that hovers above the lighthouse is practically performing an air-raid over the town.
No rain falls, its very atypical weather and the air feels like its highly charged causing Autumn's hair to want to stand on end.
The cackling most definitely seems to be coming from the top of the lighthouse so presumably that is where Autumn intends to investigate.
Flinching at the lightning strike before her, Autumn hears the cackling very well and turns to head back inside. She runs towards the spiral stairwell and proceeds to head up the stairs to the beacon point of the lighthouse. Once she arrives on top, she becomes careful as she steps forward.
Standing precariously on the edge of the lighthouse is an Einstein looking old man with his arms outstretched wide and its quickly obvious hes the cackler. "Yes Yes! I'm so powerful!" he says, sounding a bit insane. He moves his arms like a conductor in an orchestra and a bolt of lighting quickly zips from the cloud down the ground to delete a mailbox on a distant street.
Rather than seem bothered by the low stakes of the damage, the man seems to find it empowering and amusing he is delivering low level vandalism, of course, maybe he could strike a person and call real harm. He does not seem to notice Autumn approach up the stairs behind him.
With a shake of her head, Autumn raises her left hand and mutters something under her breath, causing her jewel-embed bracelet's runes to glow red-orange. Pointing her hand at the old man, she flicks her fingers and the glow pulses with magic as his clothes begin to smoulder. "You think you are powerful by causing trouble in this town?" she speaks with narrow eyes.
Channeling his inner Darth Sidious the man shouts, "Unlimited power!" and the air charges up again as if he's about to strike yet again with his control over this lightening. Still he doesn't notice Autumn while he's in his own world and he is on the edge of the balcony. All it would take is a little light murder to at least put an end to this crazy sorcerer. But maybe he can be negotiated down and no one has to die today. What sort of person is Autumn
It seems Autumn finds a middle ground by lighting his heavy cloak on fire, "Huh what? Fire!" he squeals and he rips off his cloak and begins to stomp on it to put out the flames. He turns on Autumn then and says, "You can not stop me!" then he points his finger at Autumn, the air charges and Autumn could feel all her hair stand up, likely moments from getting blasted herself.
"You will make enemies if you keep this up," Autumn tells the man as she steps aside. "You will be killed by those you cause harm and your soul will be sent to darkest pits of Hell." She keeps her khopesh sheathed as she crosses her arms. "That is, if you would stop terrorizing town and not cause harm. And I am sure I will call for backup to detain you should you dare to strike at me."
When Autumn signals she's not being aggressive the eccentric man turns back towards the town and directs the bolt that he was about to blast Autumn with to a shed behind the church in the graveyard. Setting it on fire with a crack BOOM.
Cackling returns and he tells Autumn, "Witness! I have nothing to fear from you." he taunts, showing how little he fears Autumn by turning his back on her.
Autumn scowls when the man turns her back on her, and unsheathing her blade, she points her blade at him. "You don't really know who you are dealing with," she sneers while she stands. "If you keep doing this, you will be devoured by your own magic and your soul will be sent to Hell for eternity. Your greed for magic will tear you apart into many pieces until you cease to exist in this world."
Ignoring Autumn the man laughs like a maniac, he still doesn't even bother looking at her anymore, deciding that she is nothing but words. He raises his hands over his head to reach a climax of his lightening orchestra, the cloud seems to seeth with energy and if a moment passes, multiple bolts strike randomly around the southern part of town, Boom BOOM BOOM, a rapid fire of lightening strikes begin to blast down and may continue to do so unless Autumn intervenes.
Having been ignored, Autumn seethes and grips her weapon while her hand bracelet glows again. "Then how about sample then?" she seethes before she channels her anger. She then readies her khopesh, the blade glowing red hot as she aims and attempts a stab on one of the man's arms.
There is a choked little squeal from the man as he's stabbed in the arm by the red hot blade. He gasp, clutches his arm and then stumbles...away from Autumn on his way off the edge of the lighthouse, if not caught he's going to plummet to certain doom. In the split second its hard to notice that the lightening has abruptly stopped while the man is distracted by falling.
Autumn then reaches out to grab the man, using what strength she has and her weapon as support. "I am not gonna let you fall and die," she yells at the man with narrow eyes as she tries to pull him away from the balcony. "Not on my watch!"
Grabbed by Autumn the man is yanked back onto the balcony, gasping and clutching his arm, but mostly he just appears so greatful to not be dead that he wraps his arms around Autumn's leg and says, "Thank you THANK you THANk you! You saved me." as he's doing this the cloud overhead is already fading away, "I don't know what came over me! It's like I wasn't even myself? I was possessed I tell you!" he says enthusiastically, "I can barely cast a spark on a normal day. Someone was working through me. Believe me."
"Okay, first you ignored me and now you're thanking me?" Autumn raises a brow down at the man while she sheathes her weapon. "You are welcome. But I'm still going to have you detained for reckless magic in town. You could have gotten someone killed!" She then taps her earpiece with one hand and calls on her Order comms to get the man.
"Ok..Ok." says the man on his knees, he clutches his stabbed arm to stem the bleeding and seems content to stay there, relieved to be alive and when the order comes to take him away he goes away without a fuss, he even tells one of the agents his tale of how he might have been possessed and they should do something about that. Still Autumn managed to do the orderite thing and not kill, which certainly would've been easy to do. Now she can go back to her lighthouse bedroom, content she was a good orderite today.
"Never a quiet day, I guess," Autumn says before she turns to head back to the stairs and walk down. Once she reaches the bedroom, she stashes her blade away and falls back on the bed.
Marcus walks coolly into the law office, pausing to look around. During that pause, he holds the well-polished glass door open for Rachel to enter along with him. He politely makes sure to wipe his feet on the mat, knocking some frost and dirt particles free.
AFK 5 minutes for food as the two of you set up what's going on.
Rachel makes it through the door, but with far less grace than Marcus. She comes in a few steps too far before realizing, upon hearing Marcus's shuffling feet, that she, too, should have removed the mud caked to her boots. She does so afterward. Too little, too late.
Oh, well. Despite the cursory mat-dance he performed, Marcus doesn't seem to mind any mess Rachel may or may not be making of the clean floors. He doesn't step far enough in to likely draw the attention of any receptionists, instead planting himself by the door to murmur to rachel. "Wow. We don't have places like this back home," he informs her, aside. "Place like this, you feel like someone's going to come out from that door with a tri-cornered hat on." With a nod to the south, he tips his invisible Yankee Doodle macaroni hat. He keeps the banter light.
This time, Rachel takes Marcus's cue in time. He's quiet, she's quiet. "Wouldn't expect anything more from 'mayo-is-spicy'-land," Rachel jabs. "Kinda reminds me of this one house on the outskirts of Haven, actually..." She shudders, like she's a cartoon cat, with the shivers going up her spine. "Ugh. No, I prefer the modern aesthetic, honestly. Not about all this old-school New England..." However it should be described. She fills in the missing words with a vague wave. "I feel like it's not normally a tri-cornered hat that comes out of nowhere, in places like these. It's, y'know, ghosts and stuff."
There is a secretary, but she is, perhaps luckily, upstairs: Marcus and Rachel can hear her working to set the conference up there. There's a bathroom door to the east, an office door to the south, and then just the noise of the secretary talking to a speakerphone about how people are coming soon. There's no door to the upstairs conference room, so there is some danger, there.
"Ghosts with tri-cornered hats," Marcus murmurs thoughtfully, but his attention is already on the southern door, the one leading into the office. With no real plan, at least not one that he's shared with Rachel, he starts tentatively towards that side of this room. Is it a glass door, perhaps, or will he have to open it to take a peek and see if there's anyone inside? Either way, he takes a meandering path as if he isn't really sure where he's going, and is just looking for someone to assist him.
"Marcus," Rachel mouths, with barely any sound produced. He's already off. Rachel absolutely considers a path apart from his, and of course, it's to the room upstairs, where danger is greatest. She looks. She pauses. Ultimately, she chooses, today, to favor logic. She's meant to stick by Marcus, and stick by him she will. Great care is taken to be quiet.
No glass door in the office, but it is unlocked. When Marcus opens it, inside is a grand room: a desk, framed by windows, a conference table, a bookshelf. It is Solomon's office, clearly, and it is unlocked, with a heavy door that should conceal the pair if they slip inside. Rachel, hanging back, can hear the secretary moving around. Is she coming down the stairs?
Rachel makes a split-second choice. Of course she does. She can only be relied on to follow the plan for, what, a few minutes at a time? On hearing the secretary, she splinters off from Marcus, so that she's backpedaled all the way to the center of the lobby. Just a lost soul, or a new client, or something entirely innocent - she's here to distract, so Marcus can get what they need, and both can get out.
Marcus doesn't make a big fuss over being incognito or sneaky. He just opens the door and walks in like he works here, even though a prestigious law office would probably not have someone dressed as casually as Marcus on their team. He holds the door open for just a moment in case Rachel wants to come in after him, glancing over his shoulder, but when she makes her choice he doesn't mince words or waste time. He shuts the door, hopefully in time.
As the door shuts, the secretary descends. "Oh!" she tells Rachel. "How can I help you?" She doesn't notice the door: it's funny, how Marcus and Rachel always seem to get lucky. "Welcome to Inigo & Wilson," she tells Rachel as she takes a seat behind the desk. "I'm sorry, I was upstairs preparing the conference room." It's a bright, pretty smile: the girl was clearly chosen for her looks, and she knows it, perfectly coiffed.
Inside the office, Marcus is alone. The curtains are drawn, and there is a writing pad on the desk. It does not seem like the owner of the office is in Montreal: it seems as if he just stepped out. Over by the bookshelf, a dark-spined book is open on a coffee table, with a glass of wine next to it and some kind of small figurine set next to both book and wine.
"Hi!" Rachel doesn't quite aim for vapid, but she plasters a cheerful, got-no-worries look on her face. She seems, well, like the college student that she is. A little lost, a little too peppy, given the trials and tribulations the world has to offer. "That's okay. I was just looking around. I *love* the way you all have furnished the place." Liar. She'd just said that she hates it.
"I was looking for Solomon Inigo? I had a career consulting appointment."
Marcus takes steps as quietly as he can manage, so as not to alert the secretary or anyone else elsewhere in the building. Who knows how sensitive anyone's hearing is, anymore? His very own causes him to perceive his quiet footfalls as heavy, clumsy thuds, each one accompanied by a faint wince. Still, those steps carry him to the table, where he steals a peek at the open book, trying to speed-read what he can. The wine is ignored, while the figurine is given a careful once-over but not touched.
The figurine is a king: it looks like a chess-piece king, but it is way too large, perhaps nine inches tall, and if one were to look at it closely the black wood it is carved of seems to carved into tiny tentacles in the shape of a chessboard king. It matches the book: the book is not a law book, at least not any unnatural law, and it contains a picture of the chess piece in it, along with a long invocation in Latin. When Marcus gets close, the feelings he has been having the last few days -- the desire to snipe and belittle -- go suddenly stronger, and it as if he hears them in some whispered repetition of the words in the book. The connection, even for someone with little occult skill, is obvious.
Outside, the secretary talks to Rachel. "Oh!" she says. "Mr. Inigo had to step away for a moment," she explains. "He had to go to City Hall, but he should be back any minute. He does have this conference, though," she says. "Let me get his appointment book..." She smooths down a tight skirt as she settles behind the computer, opening it. "What's your availability?"
Rachel throws a little vocal fry and up-talk into the mix. She ends with the sort of accent that usually leads to stereotyping - little problematic, maybe, that she's leaning in in this way, but hey, at least she's having fun. "Uhmm..." Rachel makes a show of pretending like that's a hard question. Her calendar's so, so full after all. She has to pull up her phone to check reaaaaaaal slowly. "Let's see..." Rachel taps her chin. "Hm, hm, hm."
Any day now.
"...Weeell. Probably not today. Maaaaaaaybe tomorrow at 1 or 2? Or Thursday?"
"I think we can make 1 work tomorrow," the secretary says. She adjusts her blouse, which has a button or two undone; she should be more self-conscious, perhaps, but some things people get used to -- or mind controlled into. Either way! She looks up at Rachel with a pretty smile. "He'd mentioned you to me," she shares. "He always makes sure to make time for mentorship. I think it's really great, don't you?" she says, bubbily.
It's pride -- arrogance, overwhelming, radiating from the King. It is the certainty that Marcus is right and the world wrong.
There's a suspended moment of indecision, a moment when his fingers curl and Marcus gnaws his lower lip. His eyes flit from the figure to the page and back. Eventually, he reaches out to try and swipe the book and the figurine at once. He gives no mind to any wards that may or may not be there. He knows nothing of such things. He just tries to tuck the former under his arm and stuff the latter in his pocket, assuming nothing happens to him in the process. Where he will go with these effects...that's another story.
"Maybe 1:30," Rachel amends after consideration. Anyway, quibbling over time aside, Rachel has questions! And comments. She could talk for *hours*. First: "Did he? He really seems like a nice guy. He was telling me that there's a requirement for lawyers here to do a little community work, but it's never enforced - but he does it anyway! World could really use more people like that." Rachel tosses her hair - it's not even long enough for tossing, really. "Do you think I need to bring anything, to prepare? What does everyone else do?"
"1:30?" the secretary say. "Yeah, we can do that," she says. "He has a 2:30, but that should be plenty of time," she says. "And it might be movable to 3:00." She looks up. "What's your name again? What should I put it in as?" she asks Rachel.
In the room, Marcus gets the book and the chesspiece, and as he seizes the chess-piece his heart fills with Pride: Pride, with a capital P. The book seems to instructions on how to create this artifact, this prized thing Marcus now holds in his hand.
Marcus shoves his hand clutching the 'chess piece' into his jacket pocket, but...doesn't let go of it, even inside the pocket. For a moment, the man stands there, right where he shouldn't be. He's stock still as some feeling or another washes over him. He smacks his lips, this time not with anxiety as he has so many times before, but with...anticipation, and greed. A smile finds its way to settle upon his mouth, his eyes alight with a newly kindled fire.
"Ra-chel," Rachel says, pronouncing each syllable distinctly. It's not like the secretary could possibly misspell a name that simple, but she's laying it on thick. "Cai. C-a-i." Hopefully, if the woman's been hired for her looks, her perception's none too keen. Rachel happens to look aside to the southern door, for only a second. And then she's entirely refocused, again, on the conversation at hand. "Thanks for setting this up."
Around Marcus, there are not good exits: the door back out, where he can hear Rachel talking to the secretary, or perhaps a window? They don't seem to open, though, so that would be breaking things.
"Totally!" the secretary tells Rachel. "Oh, Rachel is such a pretty name. And Cai?" she asks. "I don't want to be impolite," she says, which is always what people do when they are impolite. "But where is your name from?" She means where is Rachel from, of course: she's not quite the New England floorroom model.
After a moment's thought, Marcus haphazardly tosses the book back onto the table, not seeming to care where it falls, as long as it doesn't knock over that glass of wine. He at least throws it far enough away from that. The book is too conspicuous, even for what he's about to do. And what is he about to do?
He just walks right out. Strolls out of the room like he was supposed to be there, door swinging in his wake. He looks very much like he belongs here, or at least like he thinks he does. (He still isn't dressed for it.)
He tries to get his words in before anyone else can. "There you are. I was looking for a receptionist. Did I walk right past you or were you somewhere else?"
"China," she says. "My biological family's mostly from Shanghai, I *think*. And if you like that, you might li--" Thank God Marcus does speak up fast, just then, because Rachel's been known to jump the gun - and with utter, unpredictable volatility. She hangs back and lets the receptionist respond to him; there's no sign provided that she and Marcus are acquainted. In fact: "Sorry, that's my fault - I was being distracting. Please, if you have an appointment..." She gestures. Talk away!
The blonde secretary looks up, and there's a narrowing of her eyes. She may be pretty, but she also works for an ageless, immortal sorcerer. "Excuse me," she says. "You're not supposed to be in there. That's Mr. Inigo's office." There's a look, back and forth between Marcus and Rachel now, but then it's back to Marcus. "I've been here for a lot longer than it takes to recognize that you're not supposed to be in there."
"That's funny," Marcus says, with dark amusement. Normally he might seem sheepish in such a situation, being confronted like this. Rachel certainly knows him as no great fan of confrontation, and always quick to apologize. This time, contrition isn't on the menu. "Because I...wasn't supposed to be in -there-..." Marcus gestures behind himself, "while -you-..." -- He gestures to the secretary with his hand that isn't warming himself in his jacket -- "...were supposed to be in -here.-" He smiles thinly, his eyes blank.
"But you weren't, were you? I had to go looking for you. So whose fault is it that no one was here to tell me where to go...and where not to go?" His tone is downright patronizing.
The secretary rises, crossing to the door to knock briefly before she opens the office door, looking inside. She's not the fastest, in skyscraper heels and a pencil skirt that comes close to being hobble-tight, but she looks around with more than a little suspicion. Nothing seems out of place from a distance, though, as she looks back at Marcus. "How cam I help you?" she asks him, bluntly.
There's a smile shot to Rachel, but the secretary now seems to have her hands full with this interloper.
"It's not her fault," Rachel mumbles, but doesn't press, given that they're moving on. "She was setting an appointment up for me." She must still be play-acting, given that she, too, rarely takes this route - generally, her alliance is with Marcus.
Marcus steps confidently aside from the door as the secretary gives the room the once-over. His eyebrows rise in an are-you-done sort of way, watching the woman. "I have a meeting with Mr. Inigo that he said was supposed to happen once he's back from Montreal." His head cants to the side. His voice is sharp, not at all characteristic of him. Something Rachel has never heard. Is he this good of an actor? "I wanted you to pencil me in, but I couldn't find you. And now I'm starting to think he might already be back from Montreal." He steps further out of the way, indicating nonverbally that he has no further interest in delving further into the office or anywhere else forbidden. "To be honest, I don't know Mr. Inigo very well, but I hear he's a man of the community, so I know he won't judge me for wandering into his office by mistake."
"Just like he won't judge you for slacking off and leaving the room unattended without locking the door. So...I'm not worried about it."
"I'll tell him you called," the secretary says. She walks back to her computer on those heels. "What was your name?" she asks. A glance at Rachel, like a knowing apology, and then she looks back at Marcus. "I can tell him you came by," she promises, opening up his calendar.
'I'm so sorry," Rachel mouths at the secretary. Whatever she makes of Marcus's behaviour, she's simply allowing it to slide, presumably so they can get the hell out of dodge. It might be weird that she's staying here, given her business is all done, but the way she lingers, all awkward, could charitably be interpreted as a desire to make sure the secretary comes out in one piece."
Marcus confidently gives his name, like a boss, or maybe like an idiot. Time will tell which. "Marcus Quayle," he drops without hesitation. "I'll be going home now," he announces for no obvious reason -- at least not one obvious to the secretary. "I look forward to hearing from him." And he just strolls out, not waiting for Rachel or even acknowledging that he knows her.