Nobody
[Is Jack actually coming out tonight or did his ghoul look at him and go "Meow, meow." Aka, "No, dude." Manip + Perf.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Llorenc
In
the center of summer it's easy to believe time has both come to a crawl
and gone falling through the fingers like so many grains of sand. A
haze in the air at times and a snap chill like the coming of autumn at
others and nobody wants the season to end but anything that doesn't end
changes. Autumn will replace summer in a matter of weeks and in the
meantime the artists and vendors of the northern hemisphere are blocking
off side streets and setting up tents and dragging grills and kegs out
into the open.
This festival is a culmination of independent
restaurants and bars. It aims to drum up business. Live local bands
climb up onto a stage set up in a parking lot behind one of the
progressive action buildings. Grilling meat and banging drums and a
coolness in the breeze carries it all. Down the street one can scent the
lingering ghosts of roasted malt haunting the microbrewery. Beer and
wine flow and although more than a few people are inebriated they are
the happy self-contained type of inebriated that means the Denver PD
officers stood on every intersection just ignore them.
The sun
went down at 8:25 tonight. A certain breed of creature would not
normally arise so early but the nights in Denver are strange. It's after
nine o'clock now.
Verna Gardner
Verna Gardner,
respectable lab assistant turned unemployed penny-pincher walks down the
street tonight trying to appear as though she is still
respectable, thank-you-very-much. Her outfit tonight is comprised of
some black slacks and a short-sleeved pink blouse with delicate little
scalloped cutouts at the neck. Everything about her has this
fresh-pressed look, like she must have been to a job interview today (if
only). Seems that a woman like this might be at the Art Walk to browse
for something to buy, but no -- she's just here for something to do.
It's better than sitting in the library and thinking about how horrible life is.
And
the police are usually out in force at the Art Walks, so hopefully she
can avoid a certain menace to her personal safety tonight.
Here
and there her eye catches something, some painting or sculpture or craft
and she'll pause to appreciate it before moving on. Right now, she's
got her eyes on a grand painting meant to go over a couch. It's of a
Grecian seashore in spring.
Molly Toombs
When her
last date with a regular man had gone awry enough to end in gunshots and
burying little green-skinned monsters under heaps of rocks, Molly
decided that it would be best to make her next night out something that
she could rely on being relaxing. So, she'd phoned up Harald (who was
Jack, who was Nobody) and invited him out. There was another festival
happening in the Santa Fe district, with plenty of stands and tables and
kegs and booths out serving easy-to-carry foods and drinks from many of
the local restaurants.
Harald worked nights, slept days, so she
was patient and waited for him to be awake and comfortable enough to
head out. She said they ought to just meet somewhere in the area since
she didn't live close enough to warrant meeting at her apartment.
This
is how we find the two together, walking up the sidewalk after the heat
of the sun had dipped behind the mountains and the cool comfort of a
summer's night was allowed to take over instead.
Beside Harald,
Molly looked fucking awesome (sorry Jacky). She was a pretty enough
woman to begin with, but to have that thrown against the sharp contrast
that was how knobby and gangly and homely her companion was, people were
left to wonder if they were related or if he had a lot of money or if
it really was possible to just be that goddamn charming. Molly had
dressed well but comfortable, in a pair of crisp white shorts and a
loose-fitting royal blue tank-top that flowed airy and cool and scooped
fairly low on the chest. A gold necklace, earrings, and bracelet threw
an accent color into the mix, and flat brown sandals were strapped
securely in place so they wouldn't flip-flap against her feet as she
walked.
She had a plastic cup of beer from some micropub's table in her hand, and was mid-chatter with her friend as she walked along.
"...finished
reading it like three days ago. It didn't even occur to me to bring it
with, otherwise I would've just loaned it to you." She was talking
about a book that covered the significance of alternate dimensions and
realities and how they (supposedly) touched up against their own. It
was relevant subject matter for a project the pair were involved in.
Nobody
It is true. Jack is not a looker.
He
is the opposite of a looker. He is a look away from because he is
really just terribly ugly, and perhaps Molly should begin to take the
imperative in the phrase fixer-upper more seriously. He should be fixed
up. Perhaps he could be; couldn't he? Let's give him a study, shall we?
He's
a gawk. His jacket doesn't quite fit him. There's a rip in the tweed
elbow patch so it is peeling off, although the jacket is otherwise quite
respectable and professorial. He's wearing jeans. They're clean, but
they're a touch too baggy. He did not tie his shoes properly and if you
look very closely you can see that they're actually from two different
pairs. It's as if he just wasn't paying close attention. The colour he
is wearing does not flatter his pale and sallow skin. He's
pigeon-chested: deeply so. This plays a game of ruination with his
posture. His hair is dark brown-or-blonde-or-who-knows, and it is
slicked down hard across his scalp but it bobs into fair babyish curls
at the ends, which are tucked behind his ears, and it is not very
flattering. It is, in fact, the worst hair he could have. Under his
jacket he has a Doctor Who angels don't blink teeshirt.
He's got a little
bit of scruff on his chin that he should probably just give up trying
to cultivate because it's not going to work it's never going to work all
the ability to grow hair has migrated to his eyebrows, which are
extremely thick, fucking Werewolf-eyebrows, Frieda Kahlo thick, and to
round off this delightful depiction of manhood: an over-sized adam's
apple.
He's ugly. But he's rather likeable, and what he
lacks in raw presence he usually makes up for in sheer honeyed
manipulation (this is a feature of all Jacks; they insinuate; they're
clever, mmhmm). This Jack seems quite oblivious to the stares he and his
companion get, and the judgment inherent there-in.
He never seems the quickest to pick up social cues, Harald who is called Jacky from Jackpot because he's Lucky.
He
seems to think he's lucky tonight, because his glasses (he's wearing
them tonight) are practically fogging up with enthusiasm. "That's all
right," imperious. "You can bring it tomorrow night. That is, if you're
not working. Do you think an alternate reality might really be a
possible solution to the conundrum we've been faced with? How should we
define alternate realities; and are they really alternate, if, ah, in
truth, we interact with them, so, ah, wouldn't that make them simply a
different location within our reality?"
It smells like food
tonight; none if it moves Nobody who is Jack who is masquerading as
Jacky. Right up ahead is a Verna Gardner, respectable lab assistant
turned unemployed penny pincher looking desperately for something to do (not wearing blue?).
He
takes off his glasses and rubs his forehead, wearily. "It's, er, so
difficult to know what is and is not possible, is it not so?"
Verna Gardner
[Perception + Alertness = does Verna notice Molly (and Jack, but she's at least seen Molly before)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Llorenc
In
a crowd this thick a body could pass by people he's known for years and
not pick them out of it. Not so thick that one's elbows can't find room
and a scan of the four directions can't find one's spouse or child but
the word din was born for times like this.
The streets boast
buildings two stories tall sometimes three but the towering structures
of downtown and the tech center are distant and cast no shadow. Brick
goes dark without light and plenty of places have string lights outside
to draw attention to their outdoor seating. Helps folks find their
bicycle racks on nights when the street doesn't crawl like a downed
colossus.
One would have to have a sharp eye or a healthy amount
of paranoia to come out on a night like this and notice someone they
know. Sharp eye or paranoia or poor luck.
A young man who's as
tall as the average American woman is in the crowd tonight. He isn't
magnetic and nothing he does with the intent to draw the eye to him.
He's walking at the same meandering pace as a person in the supermarket
unsure of what they came in to buy now that they're here.
[perception
+ empathy: AURA PERCEPTION HOLY SHITSNACKS. he's just doing a cursory
scan to look for people with pale auras. IDK why. there aren't any
vampires here.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7) ( fail )
Llorenc
[I hate this fucking game.]
Nobody
[the glasses deflect.]
Verna Gardner
It's
been a few months since Verna last saw Molly. That was the day the
hug-assassin came by and interrupted her meal in order to be strange. By
some sheer unluck, though, Verna finds her eyes wandering the crowd to
spot the woman, and as nice as Molly appears tonight, she's still the
friend of a drunken pervert and a crazy woman. Verna's not going to say
hello. Who knows? Maybe Molly also has a penchant for hugging random
strangers? Or perhaps there's worse skeletons in that closet.
Well, with her walking around with something like that? It seems a high likelihood.
It's
just a glance she gives the two, nothing more, and then it's off to
another stall, as she merges herself back into the herd of moving
people.
Molly Toombs
Molly isn't doing a marvelous
job of paying attention to the people around her-- to try and keep
track of faces in a crowd was distracting and draining. She was plenty
occupied with the one that was bobbing about a half a foot above and to
her left anyways. He posed a question, and Molly followed the stream of
consciousness as though it was a jungle but she had her own beaten path
that she's been following for years. She knew how to navigate it well
by now.
"Well, no, I don't actually think it's a literal alternate
reality or dimension. I'm pretty sure it's a plane that exists
parallel-- in tandem with ours. That's what allows communication to be
possible between the two of them. As for actual travel, I don't know if
we're capable of that." But, she was getting ahead of herself.
Molly cleared her throat, sipped her beer, and looked back forward
instead of peering up at the ugly man with the tweed and glasses and Dr.
Who tee.
"The book isn't really spot on, necessarily. But it's
got some basic concepts and theories that are kind of on the nose. Gets
you thinking and figuring, anyways."
Up ahead Verna had spied
Molly, and after a pause decided to move on to another stall without any
kind of approach. Molly herself? She didn't recognize Verna, hadn't
interacted with her quite enough to allow that face to seep into the
cracks and crevices of her brain. Perhaps if that weren't the case
Molly may have pulled the other woman out of the crowd and forced
greeting and socialization on her.
Neither here nor there, though,
Molly wouldn't take notice. Instead, she'd slowed her stride enough to
start combing eyes over the signs on the stands that lined the road--
the smell of food had been enticing her long enough, was beginning to
call her name.
Llorenc
What she merges herself
into is the young man who is walking with a practiced if not pointed
deftness. One used to going out into the world with his senses altered.
Nothing wide about his eyes or his gaze or the way he looks out around
him now but if he were to have been looking around at everything without
reacting to it this would explain his slowness. He's taking in
everything and telling the thoughts gone through a person's brain when
their mouth is shut and their throat gone to silence is an impossible
task.
Yet he is young. Twenties maybe. Early or edging into mid.
Young people change so quickly but men occupy more nebulous space as
they grow up. He sports scruff on his jaws and cheeks though. Thick
black hair. If he's young he's not young enough that he cannot drink.
This
is relevant because Verna is about to bump right into him. She may have
already almost bumped into plenty of other people tonight but this is
as near a miss as anything else.
He does not appear out of nowhere
as Verna glances at Molly and Molly doesn't glance at all but when she
goes to join the flow of foot traffic again there he is.
Nobody
Nobody
knows all about planes that exist parallel and in tandem. He is
interacting with Molly right now from a world other than the one she is
part of; she just does not realize it because she is from that other
world, the world of Day-bright things, of un-Gloaming, the world of heat
and natural death, the kingdom of blue and gold. He used to be from
that world; he remembers it, dimly, even if the colours have become
somewhat faded, somewhat tattered, somewhat suspect. He might not really
remember what the blue of a perfect summer sky is; he might only think
he does. He might not remember what a flower looks like when it is open
and not asleep outside of sad bouquets at all night grocery stores or in
florid photography, such as the photographs at that stall there, which
do grab his eye. He's not from that world any longer.
He could
tell Molly, and perhaps he will, one night, that there are ways to
transition between the worlds (kingdoms, he calls them; empires), and
that once you have gone from one world to the other, it is rare that you
ever find your way back even though you haunt your first world, even
though you can touch it and drag things into the dark with you. He
doesn't want her to know he isn't part of her world. He's thought, for
the most part, that he can pull her in just a little: release her again,
and she'll be safe; she'll be able to finish her story, properly.
He's
beginning to reassess that. He doesn't want her to know that either.
There are a lot of things he doesn't want Molly to know, and yet: he is
surprisingly honest with her in This Face.
"I think, ah, travel
would be very difficult, and perhaps not without great cost. Does it
have any chapters on altered states of being? Ah, you know, such as in
the one reality you would be translated into gases or somesuch; it's
rather hard not to say higher states isn't it? What do you think of the
color pink?"
Molly Toombs
An intellectual thing,
Molly Toombs was more caught up in pondering the question that
Harald-that-was-Jacky (Lucky Jacky) had posed about altered states of
being. He may or may not have intended it, but she threaded the thought
back in to their topic, their project, their conundrum.
"I've
read about altered states of being, but not like that. More like
projection. Like, astral projection. What if we looked into that,
found some way to channel and project and go looking after him again? I
mean, if it turns out we can't summon him back to us...."
There
was a pause. She had been distracted by half-skimming over a big
bold-font menu of a few simple items at the front of one stand, but
Molly caught the final question tacked on at the end finally and raised
an eyebrow in questioning and confusion back up at the friend whose side
she stuck comfortably, trustingly, affectionately to.
"Pink? Well, it's not the best color for red-heads-- Ariel proved that in the late 80's. Why?"
Verna Gardner
Verna's
mind is elsewhere, and she's expecting the crowd to be moving at a
fairly even pace, like particles in a fluid made of humans. She doesn't
notice the slow one until it's too late, and a complicated dance of
startled feet ensues to try to keep a collision from happening.
"Oh! Excuse me," Verna says, and tries to laugh off the miniature faux pas with a smile. "I didn't see you."
As
Molly and 'Harold' pass by, she picks up something about astral
projection, and her eyes roll. Just as she thought. Skeletons in the
closet there. Fluffy-headed nonsense too.
Llorenc
If
she were any taller the moment would open itself up to short jokes but
they are eye-level with each other and the young man's feet are not
leaden and clumsy. Once he realizes she's there and trying to find a way
to keep moving forward without running into him he does her the favor
of moving first back and then to the side almost-dancing out of her way
and the way of the people around them. Ends up in an empty space where
foot traffic naturally diverts for the presence of a potted plant
outside a gallery doorway.
Passing pedestrians have made an
ashtray of the pot's soil. In the morning when the gallery staff arrive
they will sweep the sidewalk and pluck out the butts and do away with
the evidence but not the problem. This city is a mile in the air and
facing the last bastions of untamed wilderness mountains high in the
distance and plains in all directions and all people want to do is smoke
grass and throw their plastic cups on the ground.
Point is he's
quick on his feet once he realizes what's going on and then Verna is
trying to save face and he blinks like he's coming back into the
present. No astral projection here. Only bright lights and a hundred
conversations all at once. Clove cigarettes and hoppy beer.
He
returns her attempt at a laugh with one of his own and reaches up to
swipe his hair back from his brow raking fingers through it is how long
it is.
"S'all good," he says. Barest trace of an accent. He could
be from anywhere. He meets her gaze and surely she isn't going to stand
here and start a conversation with a stranger in the middle of a
beer-drenched festival. "I wasn't paying attention."
Nobody
Wait
what. Astral projection. He blinks and says, "Hmm. It does exist."
Certainty. "That would, ah, be a good idea in general, I think, strictly
for information gathering purposes, but ah, perhaps not for this
particular -- you don't want to follow him and get stuck."
Molly and Harald do not pass by quite yet -- or rather, they do pass, but they don't pass by,
because the ugly (hideous [why don't you at least pluck? Have you no
lady-friends? You have a lady friend right there]) gawk of a young man
is sneaking a covert glance at Verna's pink blouse. Covert, but also
absent-minded, as if he can't quite remember what they were talking
about.
"Who is Ariel? Ah, some fashion guru like, uh, Madonna? Did
she really prove it?" He puts the glasses back on, bright eyed with
curiosity. "No erm, I'm just asking because that woman there... That
color makes me think of my little sister. Do you think it has a name?"
Molly Toombs
[Do I remember that shade's name? Intelligence 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
"No,
as in Ariel from The Little Mermaid." Molly didn't quite sound
dumbfounded by his not knowing that, but she did carry a touch of tired,
a heavier dose of humor in the explanation. "Didn't you just say you
had a sister? How did you guys not grow up with Disney..."
But
look at that color of pink right there. Molly switched bright blue eyes
away from the menu that it kept floating back to (that was probably
where she was going to go, get a plate of that chicken kebab and find
somewhere to hover and lean or sit with Jacky to keep on discussing
possibilities, tactics, and risks in the hunt they were on) and cast
them toward Verna and the similarly-sized young(ish) man that she was
talking to.
She saw the shade of pink and announced: "Rose?"
Then Molly glanced up to the woman's face and squinted up the corners of
her eyes just a little. She was making the face that so many do when
trying to place recognition.
It came about eventually-- not in
great detail, but it had something to do with Nate and that Laurel
woman. Specifically, something to do with Laurel overhearing them (her)
mention vampires and come to harass for information. She remembered
that the woman had rounded on The Woman In Pink or called her out for
something. She couldn't quite remember what, though.
So she blinked, then shook her head. She recognized the woman, but didn't know her. No ground on which to approach -- Hey, you remember that woman that neither of us wanted to be around? What was that about, huh?
didn't make for the best conversation starter. So Molly instead
gestured to the food truck with a tip of the plastic rim of her beer
cup.
"Do you want anything?" This, followed by another drink.
Verna Gardner
All
colors have names. Most of them have many names, like a certain
somebody who asks the question. One could describe the color of Verna's
blouse to be petal pink or cherry blossom -- something like that.
And
no, she is not going to stand there and start up a conversation with a
stranger in the middle of beer-drenched festival, even if this
particular stranger seems nice enough (and nice enough that perhaps she
wouldn't have minded so much to have run into him).
She
just gives him a nervous little smile before heading back on her way
again, off to view something a little more modern in abstract black and
white. Curves and sharp lines on the canvas. Reminds her of particle
accelerator images, and oh but that puts a smile on her face.
Llorenc
And
he takes no offense to the nerves or the fact that she walks off again
after that but the only way she would know if he did take offense or not
would be if he called after her and the young man doesn't do that. He
rummages through his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and blinks again
and finds a lane in foot traffic into which he can step without cutting
off another person.
Nothing much to remember about him for the
future besides the fact that he's short dark and handsome. Shortness
serves as as much of a marker as does significant height. Darkness sets
him apart from tanned blond Adonises and skinny pale-skinned art geeks.
But he does not shine in a crowd. If he wants something he isn't going
to find it out here where everyone is moving.
He may have more
luck in the beer garden. Stands to reason it's in the opposite direction
from which people holding plastic cups have come. That's where he heads
now.
Jack and his anonymity strike again.
Nobody
"Girl stuff," Jack(y)
says, with a remniscent curl of his lip. The curl is a brother's
ingrained contempt for his sister's doings. An older brother's ingrained
contempt, at that, being hounded by a tiresome slip of a thing. "Who was the frilly one? Cinderella. The one who read books was okay."
Molly
gestures to a food truck and Jack shakes his head. His stomach is a
delicate beast and it doesn't always like him to eat. "Er, no thank you,
but," belated, brightening, "I'll treat you, shall I?"
This is a
big big big festival full of lots of people and lots of crowds and here
comes somebody with a dog on which there is a cat on which there is a
mouse: it's that guy.
The mouse is taxidermied. Some people get a
kick out of that. The dog and the cat seem annoyed and balky and growly
and mrowly but it is a dog with a cat and a taxidermied mouse and upon
that taxidermied mouse hat a little football hat.
The cat decides,
around the time certain short denizens of the crowd wander by, that it
has had enough: it jumps off and zips through stalls and freedom is
pretty glorious.
Its owner should have known this is how it was
always going to end. The dog looks sad and circles and presses against
somebody's leg.
Later, a ten year old boy who is out far too late will find the taxidermied mouse and show it to his sister.
Molly Toombs
The
curl of the ugly man's lip caught Molly in a chuckle, and she shook her
head at him some then cast her glance back after Verna as she stepped
away from the spot where she was standing, from the man she'd been
talking from. Wandering eyes then followed the man, approximately her
height with a good profile and longer dark hair. She peered curiously
after him for a second before Jack drew her back with a spark of
enthusiasm in his voice.
He was offering to treat her, and she answered with a smile and a 'pish-posh' motion of her hand.
"You're too good."
Because
of course he was. She'd accept the offer. From there, the evening
would continue on down a path of art and food. Jacky and Molly, a
mismatched pair, speaking with mutual sparks of excitement and on topics
that made it seem to passers-by that they may as well be using another
language entirely. They'd keep on like this for as late as either would
allow, and into the crowd once more.
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