Nobody
[Mask-up!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
One
of the benefits of living at a higher elevation was the cooler summers
-- at least, compared to the heat wave that neighboring states have been
suffering, or lower-elevation cities within Colorado even. Molly
Toombs had taken advantage of the cool weather by dressing a tank-top
and pair of high-waisted shorts that did flattering things for her
figure with a light cardigan over top. Just to balance out the amount
of flesh bared to the world.
The skies had been cloudy, and even
after the sun had set that evening all that you could see of the moon
was a stained yellow-white-dusky glow behind the cloud cover. Molly
Toombs was having a rare night out with a couple of the orderlies she
worked with for beer and bar food.
It was about one in the morning
when she broke away from the bar, some generic place that people in her
age group liked to say was better than it actually was, and started her
walk home. The bar itself was located in a less bustling corner of
what could still technically be called 'downtown'. It was perhaps seven
blocks away from where Molly lived, and with the cooling evening air
and a pair of more comfortable low-wedges on her feet, she felt the walk
would be more refreshing than not.
It did her good to have a chance to clear her head every so often anyways.
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
[Oh. But did Char + Survival work? Summon!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nobody
[Er, and one more roll, for: did this go okay? Manip + Animal Ken]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception + Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nobody
The
sidewalk outside the generic place that people in her age group liked
to say was better than it actually was happened to be full of the usual
crowd. The usual smells were on the street in force, too. The usual
smells were -- some sort of late-night lingering shimmering greasy
coalescence of fried food and cigarette smoke and the sweet dusky smell
of pot that clots in the back of your throat. Then there was the smell
of exhaust -- the brisk smell of night-dampness, even in the thin air,
the elevated air that out-of-towners just didn't know what to do with,
which works on the rhythm of their bodies like -- well. The night is a
different world than the day. Witness.
Witness one of its jesters, squires, knights, who knows: Nobody (does).
This is near(ish) Molly's neighborhood and there is a Nosferatu at lurk. Molly felt a certainty of something strange going on (Strange [Touched])
near. Does that sense of strangeness alter the world, or merely give
her the opportunity to see beyond its curtain? No: not going on. Went
on. Happened. Happening. Molly felt that as she walked: the direction
she was going in -- wasn't it stronger, for a moment, then an
after-taste a-fading?
Perhaps she turns and goes in another direction or crosses the street. An alley.
A
rat. A fat Denver rat, scarred up, crooked, whispering out of the alley
purposefully, pouring like darkness from the side of a building toward a
parked car, from thence a dash across the street in a space between
headlights until it disappears in the shadows.
And then, what was
first an unseen presence, becomes a seen one. An alley, a rat, and now
somebody coming out've the alley fumbling in his pocket for something.
A
familiar face (a familiar Face), a pale young man as pale as anybody
can be (porcelain [marble]), with an ugly irish pug of a face.
Danny
boy in the trenchcoat of a homeless man, somebody far older than he
(then again, who's to say?), huddled against the cool nip of the night's
air.
Molly Toombs
There's a slick-sneak spasm of
something otherworldly-- something Strange and abnormal. Molly's pace
had slowed just a little, the muted thmp-thmp of shoes on
pavement finding a rhythm less frequent. She had come to know the sense
of Strange in the air, to recognize it like someone comes to recognize a
distinct smell.
Then, up ahead, a pull of that sense, slightly
stronger. It flexed like a muscle in action, relaxed when the action
was over, but left its stain of effort in the air. Molly's eyes were
sweeping the sidewalk up ahead when the on-task motion of something
scurrying across the street. Her eyes picked it out easily, recognized
the rat for precisely what it was straight away, right down to the
moisture clinging to garbage bags and alley corners still on its fur.
Eyes followed the rat without losing it once in the mix of headlights and shadows, followed until it disappeared in the shadows.
Were
pinned in place to spy a face that she'd remembered without much effort
when it emerged from that same spot, patting and fussing with a pocket
as though something may have just been tucked away. By now, Molly had
stopped walking entirely. She stood with her hands in her cardigan
pockets, openly and suspiciously watching the man, but hardly certain if
she wanted to call out to or hail him just yet.
Nobody
Danny
is a fidgeter. He doesn't stop fidgeting with his pocket even when he
looks both ways as if he were a good little boy in his good little
Sunday school classes (perhaps that is where Jack picked up this
face; what he remembers him from; a Sunday school class, a Church,
outside a Church, a young man with a shell-shocked face, although Jack's
expression is not shel-shocked so the Face is not shell-shocked)
and like all good little boys he learned his lessons ma'am yes so he is
going to look both ways before crossing even a sidewalk.
But then
there is Molly, red-haired, standing still, suspiciously watching, and
doesn't a smile spread across his ugly face like butter on bread?
Doesn't he smile at her with good natured pleasure? Don't people smile
at chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven in the same way?
Depending on how good the cookies smell.
Well. There is Molly.
Danny boy makes the decision for her: call out and engage or not, by
nodding deliberately at her, calling out, "Begorrah, but is it
my soul's dream I see before me in lily-white or, er, an angel come down
from paradise to trouble the world with a look that'd cause a nun to
hide her hands from the ruler."
She called him Limericky.
"Or maybe," with less of a performance in these words, "the Fates are just looking kindly on me. Hey."
Molly Toombs
There's
a shared set of traits between this Mask and Molly's face. The red
hair, the freckles, the clear Irish genes. Her red hair was cut in
straight bangs across the forehead, and those bangs nearly shrouded the
gingery eyebrows (betraying the truth to this hair color, more truth
than the black she'd worn for a few years earlier) when they crawled up
on her forehead in reaction to the call of greeting that Danny (oh yes,
she remembered his name) bleated out to her.
There's a pause, a
mild and moderate struggle under the surface that might have been missed
were there not that certain special Bond between Molly and the
ivory-skinned man. She had to stamp out a chuckle before it had the
opportunity to bloom its way to meet her voice.
Hands kept to
their pockets, and Molly tipped her head up and back down again in a nod
of greeting. She glanced down to where his pockets were, then quick
back up to his face again.
"What are you up to, Danny?"
Nobody
Has she come closer to him? If she has not: he
closes the distance. Not all at once: no. But rather like a sparrow,
pecking its way closer, crumb by crumb, at the outdoor seating area of a
restaurant (an unfortunate metaphor, but difficult to avoid). Don't
startle it and it'll swoop in on your table and make off with a french
fry. The point is: he closes some of the distance. But not all at once.
Not to startle her.
He's very good at being unstartling, our Jack
of Jacks, whatever Face he wears. He's very good at being coaxing, isn't
he? Even Danny, Danny who Molly must know is a vampire, Danny who Molly
must suspect could drink her dry, could want to, the way he's talked to
her: but what is he?
"Hooliganism," he answers, with an air of
the angelic. Danny who is Nobody at all who is Jack (the questant [the
searcher]), whose blood stains her veins, has tied love-knots behind her
heart and in her mind, Jack who is honest especially when he is not
himself (how to be one's self? One's self is not a thing one can be).
Soulful, sure, but also as if it's a joke the two of them are in:
"Would you believe me if I said that to you?"
Molly Toombs
"Wholeheartedly."
She curved lips painted a flattering deep pink into a smile, small but
seeming almost plump for the fact that it was condensed so. The smile
didn't warm her eyes any at all, though, for Molly was cool if
nothing more. The way her eyes were blue and cool and focused, one
could almost call her calculating were it not for the fact that the
better word for it was studious.
He'd edged his ugly Irish
pug mug nearer to her, scooting inch by inch with a look about him like
he had something up his sleeve. That wasn't what concerned her near so
much as what she was pretty sure was in his pocket, though-- Molly could
be caught eyeballing that again when he'd edged into her space.
This
one did nothing to bleed the life back into himself, she noted. Of
course she knew he was a vampire-- she was smart and experienced with
them, could put the clues together without needing to thumb him for a
pulse or count his blinks of the eye. She should edge her way back,
should look frightened and run. That's what should be expected of
mortals when they figure out what vampires are. But Jack knew better,
and therefore Danny knew better too (even if he was behaving as though
he didn't). Molly Toombs knew only to keep your front to a vampire, so
she stood her ground and did just that.
"Should I run?" She asked
this, raising her eyebrow, and the second hung for a second unclarified
as to whether she was asking if she should run from him specifically or
not. She didn't give him much time to ponder that, because she was
soon to follow up by glancing across the street to where he'd been, then
the opposite direction to the place the rat had come skittering out
from initially.
"There's been a slew of bombings and bombing attempts in this city lately. Are those your shenanigans?"
Nobody
"What
if they were?" His pale eyes are bright with inquisitiveness, like a
little mouse, like some prey-thing in the grass used to looking up at
the dark drenched night. His voice sounds bright with inquisitiveness,
too. "Would you expect me to," he mimes lobbing a grenade (he knows just
how, too [soldier boy, Danny boy]) at Molly Toombs, then puffs his
cheeks out and makes the pfoooo explosion sound.
"Should you run? I don't suppose you've read The Last Unicorn," a gentleman again. "The answer's there, but you should never run."
"Walking, though. Walking's just fine. Favor me with a walk, Miss Molly, and tell me what you really think me capable of those shenanigans."
Molly Toombs
When
asked to favor a lifeless man with a walk, you were put in a spot where
any answer you gave was a dangerous one. Decline, and they may
entrance you, take away your will, or follow you and catch you off guard
later. Accept, and you were welcoming what may come. When given a
choice between the two, Molly always went with...
"A walk." She
huffed a breath, then gestured for him to choose a direction and lead
on. "I don't suppose you'd be inclined to take 'no' for an answer
anyways."
When they were to begin walking, Molly tucked her hands
into the rear pockets of her shorts, elbows jutted out at her sides to
serve as small and subtle shields to keep him from swooping into her
flank.
"Well, if you were behind the bombings, I don't think
turning you in would accomplish much. So, frankly? I'd just do my best
not to get on your bad side."
She paused, looking ahead rather
than up and to the left where this unknown mask on a man she was tied to
walked in stride. Remembered that he had another question,
contemplated that a little, then cast a glance in his direction. "I
have no idea what you're capable of, so I leave nothing off the table."
Nobody
He
chooses the direction that will take them in the direction of her
house. If Florence were around, Florence would not be afraid of Jack.
Animals like him. He can speak their language, so they do not startle
when he passes near, in spite of the grave he carries in the dark
motionless muscle of his heart. But Florence isn't here: there was just
the rat, fleeing. And now there's just Molly, not fleeing like that
intent little rat had the guts to do.
"But weren't you doing that
already?" he says, going back to a previous point: "Doing your best not
to get on my bad side. Being a good person to know, depending on who I
am."
"What do you think I'm capable of? If you tell me, I'll tell
you something true and swear by the cross it won't come falling on your
head like so much shrapnel and plaster."
He sounds a bit pleased with the metaphor.
[Manipulation + Subterfuge. Specialty: Honeyed Words. Talk to me, Molly. This is a test.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Nobody
[5!]
Molly Toombs
[Willpower: Resist the lure, Moll! +1 Diff, Blood Bound]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Molly Toombs
They
start headed in the direction of Molly's apartment, and she chalked it
up to coincidence. She doubted this one has bothered to stalk her to
her home, figure out where she lives. She suspected, somewhere in her
skin, she would've been a lot worse for wear right now, far less
healthy, if he'd figured out where she laid her head already.
Her
mouth pressed into a line and her brow furrowed. She looked thoughtful,
perhaps like he'd caught her in some kind of a conversational trap. He
implored her to share what she knew he could do, promised that it would
bring her no harm. Something to the flavor of his voice, the sweetness
of that promise, had her believing him.
"I think you're capable
of playing Pied Piper to rats-- that one, at least." He knew the one,
no sense in playing dumb. "I think you're able to pull cloaks over the
eyes of people so they... look the other way, I suppose. Turn and walk
off at the right moment, maybe." She tucked her elbows a little nearer
to her sides and added: "You could see to it I never make it home."
Molly glanced back over to him when she added: "I really hope you don't, though."
Nobody
Danny
boy looks thoughtful. He looks more than thoughtful; he looks pensive,
perhaps downcast, in his self-containment; his not-at-all-quiet way of
clumping along. Deliberate clumping: perhaps Molly remembers how quietly
he'd ghosted up beside her at the mall; one moment not there, the next
moment: surprise.
His brow is furrowed and he seems to be mulling
something over, slowly. There's something quicker witted in his eyes,
though, which flick from slow study of the street back to Molly,
sidelong:
"Is it a game of chicken you're playing with me, then?"
"Last
time we spoke you said, we talked about, how it depends, it being
whether or not you were good to know, how talking in the rain wasn't a
good place for it, isn't that, something like that. How, how does it
depend?"
Perhaps he's afraid of her.
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Subterfuge 3: Why do you ask, what are you after?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
[No
contest. What he's trying to present himself as after and what he is
after are actually the same thing. He seems to want to know what side
she's really on; how she identifies herself; if she WILL use her
influence to come down on somebody. He doesn't seem afraid of her at
all, or even exactly cautious: more extremely curious. He wants to know
how much trouble she is.]
Molly Toombs
Having been
watching him already, Molly didn't have to swing eyes back at him when
he pried for her details-- they were already there. He would see them
sharpen, though, like he'd struck some nerve that rang harmony like a
harp right through her.
She was studying him then. Blatantly,
making no effort to hide that she was giving him the long once-over and
the heavy consideration. Perhaps even giving him the chance to make a
try at masking it, to see how good he was at that and how hard he
may even try. That she found him utterly open and readable,
intentionally so, had her scowling with a faint note of concern written
across the freckled bridge of her nose.
"Well, I guess it depends
on what you want to know. Just in general." She paused, then moved a
hand from her pocket to cover her mouth with her hand and cough a
little-- the sound was not of illness or throat tickles, but of clearing
her throat. Making a sound to fill the space, to let her think on
where to go next.
"I've learned a bit, here and there. In a
general scope. I guess it really depends on what you're after." She
paused again and raised her eyebrows at him. "I don't know what you're
fishing for here exactly, Danny-boy. I can tell you that whatever it
is, what I have to offer of it is probably dreadfully underwhelming."
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