Encounterlogs
Fayads Odd Encounter Sr Korina 240828
On an ordinary night at the Great News Community Center, Fayad, a wizard entrenched in the esoteric dealings of a dragon cult, is approached by a fellow cultist bearing a crucial task. He is handed a note instructing him to either persuade or coerce Julie Menendez—previously known as Sarah Porter and a former cult member—into returning to the fold or face elimination. This mission stems from Julie's failure to deliver on a promise to the cult's Firestarter, leading to her near death and subsequent disappearance after altering her appearance through magic. Deciding he has no choice, Fayad sets out to fulfill this dark errand, leaving behind the bustling activity of the community center and the pleas of a homeless woman wishing to access the chapel for a hint of spiritual solace.
Upon reaching Julie's residence, located in a grim part of Boston, Fayad employs magic to ensure the ensuing confrontation remains undetected. After a tense entry through an unlocked window, he confronts a terrified Julie, demanding the return of a stolen item—a gold figurine—integral to the cult. Julie, petrified and desperate, confesses to having sold the item to survive and agrees to lead Fayad to the pawn shop where she sold the figurine. Despite it being after hours, Fayad, undeterred by potential legal ramifications or the moral quandary of his actions, breaks into the shop and retrieves the item with brute force. He leaves Julie with a harrowing warning about her fortune in having him as her adversary rather than a more ruthless agent of the Dragon, ensuring her silence and compliance. The encounter concludes with Fayad returning home, mission accomplished but with the weight of his choices heavy on his conscience.
(Fayad's odd encounter(SRKorina):SRKorina)
[Sat Aug 17 2024]
In the busy foyer of Great News Community Center
The community center's foyer has a gritty, lived-in feel. Harried volunteers weave through a mix of individuals, some bearing the weight of hard-lived stories on their way to addiction counseling. The aroma from the soup kitchen mingles with a sense of desperation and hope, while a small chapel to the north offers a quiet corner of solace, its doors open to all. Nearby, the religious bookstore stands as a beacon of faith amidst the tangible air of struggle.
Mounted prominently on the wall opposite the entrance is a large cross, along with a slogan: Jesus didn't just give good news, he gave GREAT NEWS!
Aside from it, on the wall next to the entrance to the chapel, a large painting of Saint George engaged in a heavenly battle with a ferocious, massive red dragon dominates the wall, a poignant symbol of the ever-present battle against addiction.
Signs give directions to parts of the community center:
(North) Chapel
(East) Soup Kitchen & Multi-Purpose Room
(South) Bookstore & Gifts
It is night, about 75F(23C) degrees, There is a waxing gibbous moon.
(Your target and their allies have been tasked with convincing a retired and burnt out faction member to come back to the fight.
)
It's one at night, and the Great News Community Center is as busy as ever bringing Great News to people and doing their usual Good Deeds without any tax evasion and/or fraudulent activity going on whatsoever - just your usual feel-good bustling evening. The air is thick with the smell of soap, sweat, and simmering desperation, the aroma of whatever soup is leftover this time of the night wafting over from the kitchen.
Where Fayad stands in the foyer going about his usual activities, he's approached by a figure - tall, light-haired, and light-eyed, the exact opposite of himself in appearance.
"Hey," the man says, his deep voice cutting through the ambience while he rustles about in his pockets a little bit right after the greeting. "Message for you, from Boston." When he moves to hand over the note that's retrieved, he's got a red scale bracelet around his arm; a fellow dragon cultist, from out of Haven since he's nobody familiar.
Fayad blinks quietly up at the man, and then his brows furrow. He nods and reaches out to take the note and put it behind the front desk so that he can open it when no one's paying close attention to him. "Thanks," he tells the messenger, nodding to him. Waiting for a moment, whether the man leaves or stays - he might want a reply, after all - he unfurls it furtively and takes a look.
The man leaves with a nod, which may or may not be a good thing in case Fayad has any further questions once he's read the note. He didn't even ask for the name, so he's going to be pretty fucked if it turns out there's been a detail or two left out.
Thankfully, there isn't. This is pretty thorough, as far as one page of content goes.
"Julie Menendez," the note reads out above the picture of a woman - nondescript, brown-haired, brown-eyed, slightly tanned, there's absolutely nothing to make her stand out in a crowd. She may well be invisible when not directly stared at. "Previous name Sarah Porter," This one might ring a bell to Fayad, if he keeps track of the Dragon's followers outside Haven at all. "Boston resident."
The rest of the note might take some thorough reading, but he's got time, surely: "One of the first Boston cult members. Promised something to the Firestarter that she was unable to follow through with, and he cleansed her with his flames." Read as 'he burnt her to a crisp because he was mad'. "After a few months in the hospital, she changed her identity and healed her burns with fleshforming to start a new life, but she left a paper trail and some investigation revealed her new identity easily. She still has something of import to the Dragon, and the Firestarter wants you to convince her to return, or to finish the job if she doesn't agree." Why he wants Fayad to do it instead of someone who lives closer and/or knows her better is a mystery, but hey, he's free to ask the next time he's possessed by the Eidolon.
There's an address at the bottom, about a thirty minute drive away, easily reached by inputting it into his GPS and going where the road leads him, should Fayad choose to take on the job. Does he really have a choice, though?
Fayad does not, in fact, have a choice. He crumples up the note, places it into his pocket, and starts up the van outside after making sure the chapel was locked. Can't have the public witnessing all the weird shit that goes on in there, after all. The man frowns to himself. That's possible? Just...morph yourself so badly that it even alters your mystical signature? Well, isn't that what fleshforming does?, he thinks to himself, as he proceeds down the highway. Makes it so you don't even register as human if you really fuck yourself up. But just to, like ,another human? Would the spell still work? Food for thought. It's not like Fayad has anyone he can ask about this kind of thing, since most of the societies and hoity-toity types in Haven all hate him.
A decrepit-looking homeless woman tells him she wants the chapel to be open so she can feel Jesus' embrace, when Fayad's heading out, but she might have said it in a low enough voice that he can convincingly pretend he didn't hear her. That, or maybe he just really didn't hear her, who knows?
The highway is quiet; there's a few trucks on the road carrying supplies, a couple odd cars passing by, but nobody gives his van a second glance - and really, why would they? There's nothing suspicious happening here, just a good old wholesome trip.
The house the address leads him to is in what Fayad can immediately recognize as the 'bad part of town' - the streets are entirely quiet this hour of the night, ominously so, and his van feels too-noisy as it chugs its way along to get to the house he's been directed towards. Julie lives with two other roommates, the note had said, where it gave him the address. But they work nights and she's got a room to herself. He's going to have a few hours to carry out his mission until the roommates come home.
Fayad can try knocking now that he's here, or... she /does/ live on the ground floor. Maybe he can peek through the windows, if he wants to chance looking like a pervert.
Fayad is pleased enough. A few hours is more than enough time for a Wizard to do Wizard Shit. In the back of his van, he lowers the seats and draws a ritual circle, focusing on the house before him. Isolating. Silent. Safe? No, that third one isn't going to be in the cards tonight. After creating some new char marks on the leather of his middlingly expensive van, he's performed a ritual to make sure whatever happens here tonight can't leave the house. With that security blanket in place, he feels safe enough to walk up to the front door and rap at it if there's any noise from the house itself, such as a television being on. If not, he's going to look through the windows, make sure all of them are locked, that sort of thing, to try to find an easier entrance.
When casting rituals, it's always important to remember to be unsafe, insane, and non-consensual, and Fayad is ticking all the boxes perfectly. The ritual goes off without a hitch, a bubble of silence settling around the building from where nary a bird's cheeping nor a squirrel's squeaking dares to escape out into the night.
There's the faint noise of the television playing in the background, something that reminds him of children's cartoons, but Fayad's tapping on the door goes entirely ignored. Unless it's loud enough, it's very doubtful it's going to wake anyone in there. To the side of the door is a window looking right into the living room; the curtains are drawn, but there's /just/ a sliver of space between them to see a section of the couch, and someone sleeping on it in there with the TV playing. There's a glimpse of brown hair, just like he'd seen in the picture, and the slow and steady rise-and-fall rhythm of a deep sleep.
Fayad checks to see if any of the windows, maybe the front door itself, are unlocked. Don't want to bother doing anything DRASTIC when he could just walk in. Or climb in.
Or, he could knock and have a /nice conversation/ like a regular person! Or ring the doorbell, maybe. But no, that is not to be the fate of Julie Menendez this nice night, it would seem. The front door is not unlocked, but a bit of rattling of windows would reveal one of the living room windows to be slightly ajar, and able to be climbed in easily for someone who's two inches above five feet. For Fayad, it might take a bit of effort.
(He gets in.)
Fayad grunts a little bit and then closes the window behind him. He's making an effort to be SPOOKY, after all. This is supposed to distress and unnerve the target. Like they can't ever be safe even in their own home. Which, right now, is true! He moves to a seat near the sleeping woman and then, crossing his arms - his big gold clanky gauntlet on display - nudges her with his shoed foot, trying to wake her up. In fact, he even adds his voice. "Wake up, Porter," he asks.
Immediately after Fayad's stepped foot into the house, he's greeted by an endless black void staring right into his soul-- oh. That's a cat, fluffy and black, who lets out a single, plaintive "meow" that sounds kinda like "why the fuck are you in my spot" if the cat could speak, and then it jumps right up on the windowsill where Fayad had climbed in from, looking doubly disappointed when it finds the window closed, no air flowing in through the previously-cracked window. There's still no fucks regarding whatever is happening in the rest of the house though.
There's Tom & Jerry playing on the TV, and Tom's currently getting chased around by Spike the bulldog while he chases Jerry around. Typical things. Porter-now-Menendez is passed right out, snoring softly beneath the ceiling fan, and but the unfamiliar voice has her jerking awake in no time at all. "Whu- huh- who?" she asks, immediately moving to a seated position. Her eyes catch on Fayad's gauntlet immediately, with the way it's on display, and she goes all quiet in the span of 0.5 seconds, looking absolutely terrified. Poor girl.
Fayad is quiet. Truly he is at one with Leaving the Cat the Fuck Alone, and so it will leave him, also, the fuck alone. "You have something of ours. You agreed to help. You're better now. What's stopping you from helping?", he quietly inquires, the menace of his claw tips clicking against his other forearm at odds with his calm demeanor.
The cat does, indeed, leave him the fuck alone. It just sits at the window, looking out into the night like a Victorian war widow waiting for her husband to return home, and occasionally grooms itself clean, ears pricking frequently when the sounds of conversation drift to its ears.
The same level of chill cannot be said to be possessed by Sarah-now-Julia; her face has gone an impressively pale hue, and she shakes her head quickly at Fayad, her hands trembling. "I- I- I didn't- it was-" her voice is quiet, so, so quiet, and it trembles as well, as though she's on the verge of breaking into tears immediately. "It was a mistake- I almost /died/, I'm sorry, I won't- I won't tell anyone anything!" She's hyperventilating, and she moves over to the far end of the couch, tensing up like she's planning on making a run for it. How fast can Fayad run anyway, with those short legs? Surely she's got this.
Informing the woman quietly of her present issue, Fayad elaborates on how fucked she is. "If you get up, you're not safe anymore," he tells her. "If you get up, this house is probably burning down, with you in it. If you sit still, we get to continue talking," he delivers, as an ultimatum. "So take a few moments and get your breathing under control,", he permits. He uncrosses his arm, and in the palm of his gauntlet he conjures flame, dancing above the metal and causing it to give off a nice, pleasant hue. If only everything about flame was so pleasant.
Well, if that isn't enough to make her freak the fuck right out. The woman flinches at the very sight of the fire that's conjured upon Fayad's palm; the rest of the words may or may not even register to her. She's utterly and entirely frozen, her skin prickling with sweat and her limbs trembling with fear. "N-no," comes the whisper, though whether that's at Fayad or at whatever terror-filled flashbacks she's currently undoubtedly seeing is up for debate. She stays, though any attempts to breathe right don't quite work while he's brandishing fire around like a weapon. She keeps her eyes fixed on it.
Fayad curls up his hand around it, snuffing it out as he leans back and steeples his hands. Gosh, is this what a Villain feels like? It's pretty much the first time he's ever been in control of a situation for the past two months. "Why do you get to just leave?", comes the soft, envious question. "There's no way I'd get to do that. Life never ends up the way we want," he mutters, waiting for her to either make a break for it or calm down.
She relaxes - just a smidge, the teeniest, tiniest bit of relaxation - when Fayad extinguishes the fire, more of her breathing coming under control now, even if she's covered in a whole layer of sweat and her hands still tremble. The woman brings her knees up to her chest and curls her arms around them, hugging herself tightly while she watches Fayad, still absolutely terrified of what he may or may not do. "You-... you can leave too," she says in a quiet voice, as though she's entirely unsure whether she's going to make things better or worse with that, "There's always a way out."
Fayad shakes his head. "Death's the only way out. For me or for Gonthorian. Either he wins and is out of our hair, or he dies and we try not to burn with him. Which makes you a coward," he points out. "Or just not very good at it. I'm told you have something of ours. Something that you can give back. What is it?", he inquires.
Perhaps if he'd caught her less scared, she may not have agreed so easily, but as it is, poor Sarah-Julia is more concerned about her house - and herself - not burning down. "It... I don't have it anymore..." she whispers. "I- I can tell you where it is! If... you promise you will leave me alone. And... not burn anything..." She's not too much of a negotiator; that's all she's got for Fayad.
Fayad's eyes narrow. "Tell me. You're not in a position to extract promises. The last promise I made got me locked into all of this shit. Talk," he demands. "You don't really have a choice, you know?"
Oh, and there she goes, shrinking back again, shoulders hunching up defensively. "I'm sorry," comes the squeak immediately, and she takes a couple of deep, deep breaths before starting to speak, "It- it was a small figurine. Made of gold or something. I- I stole it and sold it, I needed the money for the procedure, I didn't have any other way- I'll find it again, I promise! I'll- I'll pay you back." There's big, big brown eyes staring pleadingly at Fayad now from the furthest corner of the couch.
Fayad takes a deep breath and uses his non-claw hand to cradle his forehead. "You stole from a dragon's hoard to afford magic plastic surgery. Listen to me say that out loud and consider how you thought you'd get away with this," he asks of her.
The answer is by disappearing into oblivion and hoping she'd be able to lay low and never be found again, obviously. The woman doesn't say that out loud, instead simply letting out a little whimper and hiding her face behind her knees. "... please don't hurt me," she whispers out her last means of defense: attempting to look and sound pathetic enough that Fayad simply leaves her alone.
Fayad says "Where did you sell the figurine?"
"I-I-It was in the pawn shop on Commonwealth Ave," she whispers in answer, the pleading look at Fayad not letting up in the least. Her eyes are so wide and pitiful it may as well be that one scene from Puss in Boots. You know the one.
Fayad leans forward a little bit. "Alright. We're going to drive down there and see if it's still there. If it is, I'll take it and leave and you're never going to hear from me again. And if it isn't, you have to come back and work off the debt. Isn't that reasonable?", he informs the woman.
Sarah-Julia agrees so easily she might have been fleshformed into a bobblehead for a few seconds with all her fierce nodding. "Yes!" she says qucikly, though she doesn't dare to climb out of her seat until Fayad stops looming so threateningly over her, and they head out to the van soon enough. Whatever keeps her from being burnt alive for the second time in her poor life.
The pawn shop is only a fifteen minute drive away at most, and it's closed this late at night, of course. A peek through the windows - or through the nightmare - might reveal that the statue /is/ there, if Fayad searches thoroughly enough. It'd be hard to miss, considering the gold-ness and the dragon-ness of it, though it's priced at about three thousand dollars that the woman definitely doesn't have, and Fayad probably also doesn't have.
Whatever happens next is up to the Scion: a heist might be pulled off with a hitch, though it might also go horribly terribly wrong if there's cameras and/or alarms in the place. He could always buy it, of course, or he can simply take the girl into servitude until she saves up enough cash for it.
Fayad does not give a single fuck about a random pawn shop in Boston. If he doesn't see anything visibly supernatural guarding the place, he simply uses his big ass gauntlet to literally cut a hole in the glass, reach through, and take it. "Count yourself lucky they sent me and not literally anyone else, for the rest of your entire life," he tells the cowardly woman, before getting in his van and driving back home.
Upon reaching Julie's residence, located in a grim part of Boston, Fayad employs magic to ensure the ensuing confrontation remains undetected. After a tense entry through an unlocked window, he confronts a terrified Julie, demanding the return of a stolen item—a gold figurine—integral to the cult. Julie, petrified and desperate, confesses to having sold the item to survive and agrees to lead Fayad to the pawn shop where she sold the figurine. Despite it being after hours, Fayad, undeterred by potential legal ramifications or the moral quandary of his actions, breaks into the shop and retrieves the item with brute force. He leaves Julie with a harrowing warning about her fortune in having him as her adversary rather than a more ruthless agent of the Dragon, ensuring her silence and compliance. The encounter concludes with Fayad returning home, mission accomplished but with the weight of his choices heavy on his conscience.
(Fayad's odd encounter(SRKorina):SRKorina)
[Sat Aug 17 2024]
In the busy foyer of Great News Community Center
The community center's foyer has a gritty, lived-in feel. Harried volunteers weave through a mix of individuals, some bearing the weight of hard-lived stories on their way to addiction counseling. The aroma from the soup kitchen mingles with a sense of desperation and hope, while a small chapel to the north offers a quiet corner of solace, its doors open to all. Nearby, the religious bookstore stands as a beacon of faith amidst the tangible air of struggle.
Mounted prominently on the wall opposite the entrance is a large cross, along with a slogan: Jesus didn't just give good news, he gave GREAT NEWS!
Aside from it, on the wall next to the entrance to the chapel, a large painting of Saint George engaged in a heavenly battle with a ferocious, massive red dragon dominates the wall, a poignant symbol of the ever-present battle against addiction.
Signs give directions to parts of the community center:
(North) Chapel
(East) Soup Kitchen & Multi-Purpose Room
(South) Bookstore & Gifts
It is night, about 75F(23C) degrees, There is a waxing gibbous moon.
(Your target and their allies have been tasked with convincing a retired and burnt out faction member to come back to the fight.
)
It's one at night, and the Great News Community Center is as busy as ever bringing Great News to people and doing their usual Good Deeds without any tax evasion and/or fraudulent activity going on whatsoever - just your usual feel-good bustling evening. The air is thick with the smell of soap, sweat, and simmering desperation, the aroma of whatever soup is leftover this time of the night wafting over from the kitchen.
Where Fayad stands in the foyer going about his usual activities, he's approached by a figure - tall, light-haired, and light-eyed, the exact opposite of himself in appearance.
"Hey," the man says, his deep voice cutting through the ambience while he rustles about in his pockets a little bit right after the greeting. "Message for you, from Boston." When he moves to hand over the note that's retrieved, he's got a red scale bracelet around his arm; a fellow dragon cultist, from out of Haven since he's nobody familiar.
Fayad blinks quietly up at the man, and then his brows furrow. He nods and reaches out to take the note and put it behind the front desk so that he can open it when no one's paying close attention to him. "Thanks," he tells the messenger, nodding to him. Waiting for a moment, whether the man leaves or stays - he might want a reply, after all - he unfurls it furtively and takes a look.
The man leaves with a nod, which may or may not be a good thing in case Fayad has any further questions once he's read the note. He didn't even ask for the name, so he's going to be pretty fucked if it turns out there's been a detail or two left out.
Thankfully, there isn't. This is pretty thorough, as far as one page of content goes.
"Julie Menendez," the note reads out above the picture of a woman - nondescript, brown-haired, brown-eyed, slightly tanned, there's absolutely nothing to make her stand out in a crowd. She may well be invisible when not directly stared at. "Previous name Sarah Porter," This one might ring a bell to Fayad, if he keeps track of the Dragon's followers outside Haven at all. "Boston resident."
The rest of the note might take some thorough reading, but he's got time, surely: "One of the first Boston cult members. Promised something to the Firestarter that she was unable to follow through with, and he cleansed her with his flames." Read as 'he burnt her to a crisp because he was mad'. "After a few months in the hospital, she changed her identity and healed her burns with fleshforming to start a new life, but she left a paper trail and some investigation revealed her new identity easily. She still has something of import to the Dragon, and the Firestarter wants you to convince her to return, or to finish the job if she doesn't agree." Why he wants Fayad to do it instead of someone who lives closer and/or knows her better is a mystery, but hey, he's free to ask the next time he's possessed by the Eidolon.
There's an address at the bottom, about a thirty minute drive away, easily reached by inputting it into his GPS and going where the road leads him, should Fayad choose to take on the job. Does he really have a choice, though?
Fayad does not, in fact, have a choice. He crumples up the note, places it into his pocket, and starts up the van outside after making sure the chapel was locked. Can't have the public witnessing all the weird shit that goes on in there, after all. The man frowns to himself. That's possible? Just...morph yourself so badly that it even alters your mystical signature? Well, isn't that what fleshforming does?, he thinks to himself, as he proceeds down the highway. Makes it so you don't even register as human if you really fuck yourself up. But just to, like ,another human? Would the spell still work? Food for thought. It's not like Fayad has anyone he can ask about this kind of thing, since most of the societies and hoity-toity types in Haven all hate him.
A decrepit-looking homeless woman tells him she wants the chapel to be open so she can feel Jesus' embrace, when Fayad's heading out, but she might have said it in a low enough voice that he can convincingly pretend he didn't hear her. That, or maybe he just really didn't hear her, who knows?
The highway is quiet; there's a few trucks on the road carrying supplies, a couple odd cars passing by, but nobody gives his van a second glance - and really, why would they? There's nothing suspicious happening here, just a good old wholesome trip.
The house the address leads him to is in what Fayad can immediately recognize as the 'bad part of town' - the streets are entirely quiet this hour of the night, ominously so, and his van feels too-noisy as it chugs its way along to get to the house he's been directed towards. Julie lives with two other roommates, the note had said, where it gave him the address. But they work nights and she's got a room to herself. He's going to have a few hours to carry out his mission until the roommates come home.
Fayad can try knocking now that he's here, or... she /does/ live on the ground floor. Maybe he can peek through the windows, if he wants to chance looking like a pervert.
Fayad is pleased enough. A few hours is more than enough time for a Wizard to do Wizard Shit. In the back of his van, he lowers the seats and draws a ritual circle, focusing on the house before him. Isolating. Silent. Safe? No, that third one isn't going to be in the cards tonight. After creating some new char marks on the leather of his middlingly expensive van, he's performed a ritual to make sure whatever happens here tonight can't leave the house. With that security blanket in place, he feels safe enough to walk up to the front door and rap at it if there's any noise from the house itself, such as a television being on. If not, he's going to look through the windows, make sure all of them are locked, that sort of thing, to try to find an easier entrance.
When casting rituals, it's always important to remember to be unsafe, insane, and non-consensual, and Fayad is ticking all the boxes perfectly. The ritual goes off without a hitch, a bubble of silence settling around the building from where nary a bird's cheeping nor a squirrel's squeaking dares to escape out into the night.
There's the faint noise of the television playing in the background, something that reminds him of children's cartoons, but Fayad's tapping on the door goes entirely ignored. Unless it's loud enough, it's very doubtful it's going to wake anyone in there. To the side of the door is a window looking right into the living room; the curtains are drawn, but there's /just/ a sliver of space between them to see a section of the couch, and someone sleeping on it in there with the TV playing. There's a glimpse of brown hair, just like he'd seen in the picture, and the slow and steady rise-and-fall rhythm of a deep sleep.
Fayad checks to see if any of the windows, maybe the front door itself, are unlocked. Don't want to bother doing anything DRASTIC when he could just walk in. Or climb in.
Or, he could knock and have a /nice conversation/ like a regular person! Or ring the doorbell, maybe. But no, that is not to be the fate of Julie Menendez this nice night, it would seem. The front door is not unlocked, but a bit of rattling of windows would reveal one of the living room windows to be slightly ajar, and able to be climbed in easily for someone who's two inches above five feet. For Fayad, it might take a bit of effort.
(He gets in.)
Fayad grunts a little bit and then closes the window behind him. He's making an effort to be SPOOKY, after all. This is supposed to distress and unnerve the target. Like they can't ever be safe even in their own home. Which, right now, is true! He moves to a seat near the sleeping woman and then, crossing his arms - his big gold clanky gauntlet on display - nudges her with his shoed foot, trying to wake her up. In fact, he even adds his voice. "Wake up, Porter," he asks.
Immediately after Fayad's stepped foot into the house, he's greeted by an endless black void staring right into his soul-- oh. That's a cat, fluffy and black, who lets out a single, plaintive "meow" that sounds kinda like "why the fuck are you in my spot" if the cat could speak, and then it jumps right up on the windowsill where Fayad had climbed in from, looking doubly disappointed when it finds the window closed, no air flowing in through the previously-cracked window. There's still no fucks regarding whatever is happening in the rest of the house though.
There's Tom & Jerry playing on the TV, and Tom's currently getting chased around by Spike the bulldog while he chases Jerry around. Typical things. Porter-now-Menendez is passed right out, snoring softly beneath the ceiling fan, and but the unfamiliar voice has her jerking awake in no time at all. "Whu- huh- who?" she asks, immediately moving to a seated position. Her eyes catch on Fayad's gauntlet immediately, with the way it's on display, and she goes all quiet in the span of 0.5 seconds, looking absolutely terrified. Poor girl.
Fayad is quiet. Truly he is at one with Leaving the Cat the Fuck Alone, and so it will leave him, also, the fuck alone. "You have something of ours. You agreed to help. You're better now. What's stopping you from helping?", he quietly inquires, the menace of his claw tips clicking against his other forearm at odds with his calm demeanor.
The cat does, indeed, leave him the fuck alone. It just sits at the window, looking out into the night like a Victorian war widow waiting for her husband to return home, and occasionally grooms itself clean, ears pricking frequently when the sounds of conversation drift to its ears.
The same level of chill cannot be said to be possessed by Sarah-now-Julia; her face has gone an impressively pale hue, and she shakes her head quickly at Fayad, her hands trembling. "I- I- I didn't- it was-" her voice is quiet, so, so quiet, and it trembles as well, as though she's on the verge of breaking into tears immediately. "It was a mistake- I almost /died/, I'm sorry, I won't- I won't tell anyone anything!" She's hyperventilating, and she moves over to the far end of the couch, tensing up like she's planning on making a run for it. How fast can Fayad run anyway, with those short legs? Surely she's got this.
Informing the woman quietly of her present issue, Fayad elaborates on how fucked she is. "If you get up, you're not safe anymore," he tells her. "If you get up, this house is probably burning down, with you in it. If you sit still, we get to continue talking," he delivers, as an ultimatum. "So take a few moments and get your breathing under control,", he permits. He uncrosses his arm, and in the palm of his gauntlet he conjures flame, dancing above the metal and causing it to give off a nice, pleasant hue. If only everything about flame was so pleasant.
Well, if that isn't enough to make her freak the fuck right out. The woman flinches at the very sight of the fire that's conjured upon Fayad's palm; the rest of the words may or may not even register to her. She's utterly and entirely frozen, her skin prickling with sweat and her limbs trembling with fear. "N-no," comes the whisper, though whether that's at Fayad or at whatever terror-filled flashbacks she's currently undoubtedly seeing is up for debate. She stays, though any attempts to breathe right don't quite work while he's brandishing fire around like a weapon. She keeps her eyes fixed on it.
Fayad curls up his hand around it, snuffing it out as he leans back and steeples his hands. Gosh, is this what a Villain feels like? It's pretty much the first time he's ever been in control of a situation for the past two months. "Why do you get to just leave?", comes the soft, envious question. "There's no way I'd get to do that. Life never ends up the way we want," he mutters, waiting for her to either make a break for it or calm down.
She relaxes - just a smidge, the teeniest, tiniest bit of relaxation - when Fayad extinguishes the fire, more of her breathing coming under control now, even if she's covered in a whole layer of sweat and her hands still tremble. The woman brings her knees up to her chest and curls her arms around them, hugging herself tightly while she watches Fayad, still absolutely terrified of what he may or may not do. "You-... you can leave too," she says in a quiet voice, as though she's entirely unsure whether she's going to make things better or worse with that, "There's always a way out."
Fayad shakes his head. "Death's the only way out. For me or for Gonthorian. Either he wins and is out of our hair, or he dies and we try not to burn with him. Which makes you a coward," he points out. "Or just not very good at it. I'm told you have something of ours. Something that you can give back. What is it?", he inquires.
Perhaps if he'd caught her less scared, she may not have agreed so easily, but as it is, poor Sarah-Julia is more concerned about her house - and herself - not burning down. "It... I don't have it anymore..." she whispers. "I- I can tell you where it is! If... you promise you will leave me alone. And... not burn anything..." She's not too much of a negotiator; that's all she's got for Fayad.
Fayad's eyes narrow. "Tell me. You're not in a position to extract promises. The last promise I made got me locked into all of this shit. Talk," he demands. "You don't really have a choice, you know?"
Oh, and there she goes, shrinking back again, shoulders hunching up defensively. "I'm sorry," comes the squeak immediately, and she takes a couple of deep, deep breaths before starting to speak, "It- it was a small figurine. Made of gold or something. I- I stole it and sold it, I needed the money for the procedure, I didn't have any other way- I'll find it again, I promise! I'll- I'll pay you back." There's big, big brown eyes staring pleadingly at Fayad now from the furthest corner of the couch.
Fayad takes a deep breath and uses his non-claw hand to cradle his forehead. "You stole from a dragon's hoard to afford magic plastic surgery. Listen to me say that out loud and consider how you thought you'd get away with this," he asks of her.
The answer is by disappearing into oblivion and hoping she'd be able to lay low and never be found again, obviously. The woman doesn't say that out loud, instead simply letting out a little whimper and hiding her face behind her knees. "... please don't hurt me," she whispers out her last means of defense: attempting to look and sound pathetic enough that Fayad simply leaves her alone.
Fayad says "Where did you sell the figurine?"
"I-I-It was in the pawn shop on Commonwealth Ave," she whispers in answer, the pleading look at Fayad not letting up in the least. Her eyes are so wide and pitiful it may as well be that one scene from Puss in Boots. You know the one.
Fayad leans forward a little bit. "Alright. We're going to drive down there and see if it's still there. If it is, I'll take it and leave and you're never going to hear from me again. And if it isn't, you have to come back and work off the debt. Isn't that reasonable?", he informs the woman.
Sarah-Julia agrees so easily she might have been fleshformed into a bobblehead for a few seconds with all her fierce nodding. "Yes!" she says qucikly, though she doesn't dare to climb out of her seat until Fayad stops looming so threateningly over her, and they head out to the van soon enough. Whatever keeps her from being burnt alive for the second time in her poor life.
The pawn shop is only a fifteen minute drive away at most, and it's closed this late at night, of course. A peek through the windows - or through the nightmare - might reveal that the statue /is/ there, if Fayad searches thoroughly enough. It'd be hard to miss, considering the gold-ness and the dragon-ness of it, though it's priced at about three thousand dollars that the woman definitely doesn't have, and Fayad probably also doesn't have.
Whatever happens next is up to the Scion: a heist might be pulled off with a hitch, though it might also go horribly terribly wrong if there's cameras and/or alarms in the place. He could always buy it, of course, or he can simply take the girl into servitude until she saves up enough cash for it.
Fayad does not give a single fuck about a random pawn shop in Boston. If he doesn't see anything visibly supernatural guarding the place, he simply uses his big ass gauntlet to literally cut a hole in the glass, reach through, and take it. "Count yourself lucky they sent me and not literally anyone else, for the rest of your entire life," he tells the cowardly woman, before getting in his van and driving back home.