Dare To Dine

[Shrike]

Crane is focused and bound by duty. Soft are her words and sharp is her tone.

Shrike sits placidly, compared to the momentum and vitriol of moments before. Her eyes shine, glittering maliciously in the light as the show goes on.

A taloned hand, reaches for and upturns a coffee mug. Her second, a paper napkin.

Her minder will not kill her today. (Tomorrow, is, as always, another matter.) But not today, so as the Dragon's Eye focuses upon the Apostate, the Murder Bird takes a paper napkin wetting it upon her tongue before she take it to the leaked reminder of the Abyss' caress.

Napkin full of blood and spit is glared at. Visual daggers pierce the fibbers, then are turned toward her her companion but for a moment. Rules upon rules.

The hand with the napkin hovers above the mug, while the free talon retrieves a lighter, quickly setting a corner ablaze.

It falls into the mug. Fire flickering, burning, erasing. The small bit symbolic bonfire holds most of the Murder Bird's attention, which is caught quick abruptly as the Apostate speaks.

The fire burns, and glittering eyes zero in on Jericho.

The muscles of her face do not contort as she assimilated the words.

Then as abrupt as everything else, the Shrike shrieks with laughter.

[Campanella]

At around that time Campanella, Moros of the Mysterium, ducked out for a break. For all that morning, and perhaps the better part of a day, he had been locked in tortuous negotiations and vicious backroom politicking. The art collector known as Claus was no nearer to recovery and as the sad truth of his demise sank in, so the vultures came out for his estate. Campanella knew this. He was one of the vultures, after all. What had been a terrible duty had quickly soured into a chore and then a source of quiet infuriation.

That he had not expected the number of vultures perhaps spoke volumes of how he had come to view Sacramento as home; as his.

The diner was out of his way and sufficiently tasteless to keep away his rivals. They would never stoop to being seen in a diner. The Moros probably would have not chosen the place, either, but today was a day for breaking the mould. Especially if he wanted some peace and quiet.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, the Moros strode in and sat down. He completely missed the frisson of disturbance emanating from the place - of how, inexplicably, a number of patrons were in the process of finishing all at once at leaving. He even missed the confused and vacant state of the waitress as her Sleeper mind obfuscated what she may have seen into the folds of her subconscious. He made his order - a simple meal and coffee - and proceeded to bury himself in a financial paper.

He even missed the cue: the sudden chill down his spine and the itch across his back. Oh, don't get me wrong! An arm snaked across his back and rubbed vaguely at the itch! He simply didn't make the connection.

Not till the laughter. Abrupt laughter. At the same moment, the waitress returned and placed his meal before him. She also deliberately avoided looking at the source of the laughter.

Campanella looked up, torn from his thoughts, glared and folded his paper.

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2018-02-25 01:02:13		Campanella to cast Hard Air rote rolls 10 to Intelligence + Occult + Order Spec + Matter (10 Again)		6, 5, 7, 4, 3, 5, 6, 9, 3, 7		1 success

He remained staring as his sixth sense finally caught up with him.

[Shrike]

Sure Crane's lie wasn't the best the Guardian Han spin but to just straight up bale. What about making bice in public. Or whatever.

"What crimson glyphs?" her will had shattered upon the Abyss, there'd been no time for her to sharpen will and focus it enough to to form the haphazardly imprecise lines of her spell.

Not while the caustic caress of the Abyss demanded non-con breathplay. "I get nosebleeds all the fucking time asshat!" shouted at his retreating back.

Fingers eye her immaculate manicured talons and wonder if the blood of her phychic wounds had begin to drip while she'd been focused on adding to them.

"Is this am appropriate time to say, 'what a douchebag'?" innocently asked, and surprisingly sincere.

[Campanella]

Campanella doesn't say anything.

He can only watch, an eyebrow steadily rising as his lips curl into something of a frown. The Moros' consternation grows as the gentleman Xander Jericho leaves - his body language alone locking in a horrible certainty that something has happened. Campanella is unable to catch the man's attention.

He can only give the couple at the table a sidelong glance that transforms quickly into something much more steely. His eyeballs ached from the effort; he totally forgot the throb in his jaw from the stress.

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2018-02-27 01:34:22		Campanella to Scrutiny rolls 2 to Wits + Occult - 2 Spell Cloaked (10 Again)		5, 1		failure
2018-02-27 01:21:42		Campanella to Scrutiny rolls 2 to Wits + Occult - 2 Spell Cloaked (10 Again)		10, 5, 7		1 success
2018-02-27 01:20:36		Campanella to Scrutiny rolls 2 to Wits + Occult - 2 Spell Cloaked (10 Again)		10, 8, 1		2 successes
2018-02-27 01:18:18		Campanella to cast Supernal Vision rote rolls 6 to Wits + Occult + Order Spec + Prime - Tolerance (10 Again)		7, 2, 5, 3, 9, 3		1 success

Campy is Scrutinising the spell first: Composition, then Identification; next he is going to try and Identify Crane and Shrike . I've probably short changed myself with the rolls. For ease of reference, he will be Scrutinising Shrike first out of the two mages - I'm thinking his eye would have been drawn to the nose bleed more than the chin-jut.

They will get those Unseen Senses tingling when his rote spell is cast.

[Shrike]

Shrike blinks focused on the dinner's miraculous forth willworker. Well, third now, technically.

"I won't call whoever that is a douchebag." Shrike says placidly. "Promise." her hand raises, Scouts honor, "Unless he is one."

Talons rake upon the table. Piercing eyes flashing. Crane can tell the Murder Bird wants to press her will outward to do something but Shrike had already pressed and didn't want to know much more her wings could be clipped.

"The truth will set us free?" her eyes slip over to the Women in Black. "We might be new, but so is Jericow. Who is a fucking apostate" dumping the provided plate of creams and sugars on the table the Murder Bird presses the plate over the smouldering remains in the mug. Waiting for the plate to suffocate the fire she set before righting the plate and precisely place the cream and sugar packets on the plate. "So unless they are new also, an Apostate or a Libertine, we can fix this." a small serene smile.

[Campanella]

Campanella continued to sit and stare.

Maybe he was still pushing his Scrutiny of the glyph hovering over and around the table, and of the resonances humming from the two women within.

Maybe he was trying to assess whether the lithe woman was, in fact, one of the Mad. Or if he had finally stumbled across a Seer establishment where they went to let off steam and torment the hapless Sleepers. Because surely, they can't be Pentacle mages...

Can they?

[Campanella]

Two-to-one.

Campanella is prudent not brave. He hurriedly downs what he can of his meal, pays quickly and beats a retreat.

Probably not the best outcome but I believe it is easier to draw the scene to a close so we can get it squared away before the Sanctuary thread kicks into gear.