Autolycus taps Cut on the arm and nods away from the group. "Let's not crowd them." No need to make it harder for the ladies to do their thing.
Plus he wasn't exactly sure if Nous wasn't going to whip a gun out and silence their witness right there in front of God and everybody else. You'd have to be an idiot if you wanted to be anywhere near that.
Perception failure
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Betty Crocker was the best thing the girl could come up with? Was she even old enough to know who Betty Crocker was?
The worst part? That wasn't exactly the first time she'd been called that, either. Kids had to get more creative. Seriously. She offered a little shrug to Cut before starting to head back towards the car. Let Nous do her Q&A with little gangsta kid, her gaze settled briefly on Cut before she tilted her head at him in a rather 'are you coming?' sort of way. She wasn't about to openly discuss precisely what had gone on in there, and really she could only handle about two sentences of ghettoisms in a day.
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He nodded to Nous and Lycus, excusing himself.
"You know, for what it's worth? Totally a Veronica and not a Betty."
Honestly? He'd been laughing at the kid. Prime example of why he wasn't having kids. Kids. These. Days. Nobody ever mentioned having to deal with kids when he signed up. Kids were why he stopped doing birthday party magic shows. Because kids.
He put his Serious Face on.
"What's the good news?"
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"I'm more of a Veronica than a Betty?" Mandy looked to Cut with an amused look. "How well do you know Archie comics, hm?" she inquired as she unlocked the car and slipped into it, gesturing that he should join her. A little more private for this conversation... that would be useful. "Because you do know that Veronica was the intended bride for Archie, and that only after an overwhelming backlash from the community did they end up adding the Betty storyline..."
She let that topic drop after a moment, her expression becoming serious as well. "Never leave me alone in a room with that dickwad, or I make no promises what I'll do to him," she warned Cut, frowning deeply. "Between him deciding that the best way to create a distraction was for me to kiss him," her expression told of precisely how impressed she was with that, "and then his hissyfit when they asked for names..." Mandy shook her head, looking irritable.
"That wasn't the time or place to make that freak out happen. Worse, whatever it was he did that hauled up miss interference. They were so goddamn close to giving me exactly the information I needed before that happened..." She was livid. It didn't really take knowing her to realize that she was livid. She was somewhat ranting, but... at least she was ranting to someone she could trust. And to be fair, she wasn't ranting at him, either. For whatever reason, she seemed distinctly not angry with him.
"Long and short is this. You were right, there was at least one - possibly two - police officers involved. Man with a shotgun in the closet, the woman with mace and a pistol. I don't blame them for being on edge, given that they had a small child in the apartment as well. Both Leah and David seemed to have seen what had happened, neither seem particularly keen on discussing it much further. The two were fairly perceptive, as one would expect from trained police officers, so I settled with telling them the 'truth' of a sort.
"First off, I suggested this was quite possibly a science project gone awry. They reacted reasonably well to title-dropping Iron Man, so hopefully they'll bite on that front. Once they determined they needed names... well, I had a spell up to mask my appearance, so if I'd shown ID it wouldn't have mattered. Shielded myself from all three in the room. Apparently that was offensive to mister thief, so he threw a fit.
"Fuckin'... ugh. Anyway, we were about to settle down and have a more calm talk, because clearly a police officer would want a man who killed someone off the streets, even if it was an accident..." Her fingers moved to her temples, before she finally shook her head.
"... Realistically, what came of that situation? Pretty much nothing but my determining that Autolycus is a dipshit, but that there were, in fact, two witnesses there. Adults who have no particular desire to talk about this situation." Icy blue eyes turnd on Cut for a moment, "And Nous' lack of patience nearly got me shot, on top of that, which I don't particularly appreciate, either.
"My base concern, after all of this, is locating that person. To her credit, Nous made a statement that... while not entirely correct, prompted this realization: There's nothing saying that any of those who saw what happened were Sleepwalkers or newly Awakened. If the spell that was cast was done with enough motivation on the caster's part, it could very well have flared a type of nimbus that is visible to all. A halo... this person's actions could have been taken out of some belief of Justice, or could indicate that this person sees themselves as godlike and that the action was taken out of Pride.
"Nous seems set on shutting the Sleepers up - which is fine and dandy, but I'm not particularly concerned about a young child telling stories. They do that. It's sort of a thing. What I am concerned about is whether this person is still running loose, why they did what they did, and how best to prevent that from happening again."
Mandy sighed a bit as she leaned back in her seat. "I hate working in teams. Just in case you missed that memo. Thank you for not being an idiot in this particular instance."
Oh. So when he says 'let's not crowd them', Guardians take that as 'I'll stay here while you go off without me'.
Great. Autolycus was rapidly deciding that the Guardians here were full of shit.
Fate worked in interesting ways. Calls through the Supernal to Lady Luck had been made - yet while their initial object had not been something that could be immediately done, She always listened in her own way.
Autolycus noticed through the glass door that Penderson and Barton were coming downstairs. Nobody was carrying any shotguns. They were both armed, sure - police officers usually were. The pretty blonde cop's pistol was on her uniform belt. Barton's wasn't plain to see. They were looking at him and heading toward the door.
Maybe it was Nous's call to Fate. Perhaps it was Ozymandias's Eternity Now having tripping the hell out of them. The pair looked kind of confused and were looking at him, but they weren't carrying themselves in a threatening way at all.
Opportunity knocked. All three of their witnesses were together.
The remainder may roll Wits+Composure+1 to see 'em coming out.
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He raised an eyebrow. He knew about as much about Archie as he did about eighteenth century poetry. He knew Veronica was the brunette and had some vague notion she was a bit more daring and opinionated than Betty. What gave him that notion? No idea. He could totally be wrong. But, seriously? Did Mandy know something about everything? Handy. Mandy.
A nod, and he slid into the car, flashing an apologetic look at Lycus. Hated ditching, but something told him that Zoey and Lycus needed some space. And not the magic kind.
His face did the kaleidoscope thing, rotating through surprise, confusion, amusement, and seriousness. Then backwards, then forwards. Well. Sure beats watching roofers, yo. A few nods were sprinkled in as he digested the information, and he ended on a slightly sympathetic, slightly quizzical expression. It had all been... oddly... tinged with a degree of vulnerability. Which was either a mis-read, or this whole team thing had really worn her down. His hand made an odd scissor motion, laying one finger over the other, and then a silent snap. If a card had been in his hand, it would have flipped over and behind a second card; without them, it just looked strange.
Skip the joke about Lycus should have tried that in a park.
Honestly? Things had gone sideways. But it was like riffing cards from one hand to the other, or juggling. Drop something? Don't stop. Keep the others moving, and pick up the stray later. Or strays. Plenty of time to hash out things afterward.
"No bigs. Thanks for, uh, catching me up. Wow. Okay. Hmmmm. Look? I get what your saying about our main perp? But the splash here is the witnesses making A Thing about it. So. I'm not saying the perp isn't A Thing, but I think, ummm, we finish this. We're here. We've got the targets lined up. Let's wrap this up, then see what's what? I'm thinking, focus on one thing at at time, and not get all, you know, scattered. But whatevs. I'm with you, whatever you want to do, but I think we ought to knock this out while it's right in front of us. Just close the pitch you started."
He paused, and looked over at her, leaning back.
"Or. You know, if you're over it? And need some alone-time-Mandy-time, you can, uh, start on the perp and I'll finish up here. With them. Your call."
Turned as he was, slightly toward Mandy, he didn't notice anything else.
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She tried to tell herself she was fine with it, before rubbing at her temples a little more as she gestured to bring his attention outside. "The police, apparently, have decided to also grace us with their presence. For the time being, I'm going to sit here and observe. I don't think I have the patience with which to deal with Auto talking anymore, so... If you need me just... wave me over or something," she sighed. Yeah. She definitely needed a couple minutes on the cool-down train. Hell. Maybe she was somehow fucking this up?
... whatever. Let them figure it out on the own. "But sure thing. Shut this thing down first and foremost. I'm counting on you to mesh better with those two than I ever could." Because Cut was sort of mallable like that, it seemed.
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She waits for Shaniqua to come back with Tommy. The kid is already going to be scared enough she can be patient enough for him to get outside. And lets face it, compared to the rest of them, she was probably the friendliest looking. Kids in this neighborhood didn't act like kids anyway, so she's not as bad with 'kids' as she thought. Or maybe she is and she just can't tell. Either way she's had more luck with those under the age of 18 today than the ones over so she trusts her instincts and waits for him to come over with Shaniqua. He's not four or she would have knelt down to his height, but still she makes sure to keep an open and friendly stance, her arms relaxed by her side and a smile on her face amidst all those curls.
"Hi. My name is Elle. You a friend of Shaniqua's?"
Sometimes asking the obvious question was the best route. Of course he was. Ice breakers are more than just boats in the North Sea.
"I'm looking for a guy who shoots lightning like Iron Man. Shaniqua tells me you might know the guy?"
She turns and makes eyes at Star in the car1. Hopefully he doesn't just think she wants him to take her clothes off and gets that she wants him to look at the kid. As she turns around to keep her smile going at the kid, she notices2 a pair of people coming out of the building. It's too bad she has no idea what the couple upstairs looks like or she might recognize them as the ones she needs to get to shut their blabbering mouths.
*
And here comes Mandy's fanclub, looking how he felt only a little bit ago. Course they were looking at him, which he felt was grossly unfair to Mandy's desire to be in charge of everything. It only takes a moment to pick up a couple pebbles from the ground, the first one falls short but it's a good enough throw that he can adjust the second so it bounces off the hood of the car Mandy and Cut were in.
Come dazzle your adoring public once again, witch.
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(TKTM) Some Things Don't Belong Online
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