ic Sunset Wheel

[Kai Wren]

Victoria’s phone was in her hand, number punched in, though she hadn’t yet dialled for the taxi that would - hopefully - take these poor souls to safety. An ambulance would draw too much attention. Her expression was still sour, her body language tense, but at least her tone was back at a normal speaking level and not the hushed, angry whisper it had been before.

“I have no intention of letting it drop.” She said, “But we are not yet ready.”

She turned towards the mouth of the alley, away from the others, and spoke calmly.

“In any conflict, the first aim must always be to remove your opponent’s ability to do you harm. We have taken the drug, and the victims. They are partially disarmed. But they still have the club. We won’t take that from them by engaging them on their terms, when we have to worry about the civilians, collateral damage, and retribution.”

She shook her head slowly, “What this specific type of magic is… I can’t say. If I had to guess, she was trying to drain time from me to supplement her own. This is a fight we need all our tools to win, we cannot continue with one arm tied behind our backs.”

[Exaccus]

"huh....i wonder if...." facsimile began as he returned to his flesh and blood form, feeling somewhat cooler in his head now "that Musician guy that the club owner pointed out to me, he told me he blacked out on stage during a performance two nights ago...I uuh...hacked the surveillance and watched what happened, it went wild when he started to play but the camera got damaged by some person throwing a chair at it before anything truly freaky happened...might have something to do with his instrument." he added thoughtfully.

 

"The devil has all the best tunes or so the saying goes." he offered "Not really knowledgeable about magic, other than it sucks getting stuck in a topsy turvy book where its the only thing that matters." he adds with a shudder.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Exaccus

[Supercape]

GM

 

"The music, what is it?" pondered Violet, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "That is interesting. And it makes sense, I suppose. Music has a beat, a rhythm, even a time signature. It is regular. At least, usually it is regular. There are aberrations", she added. 

 

"Time is of great interest to me. To us" she said, adding in Victoria as an afterthought. "Although we may not agree on everything" she added, more coldly. "In any case, whatever is going on here is an insult to time itself, it seems. I would burn the place to the ground...but I do think we must understand what is going on, and fully. There may be wisdom within the madness" she suggested. 

 

"In any case, we have saved some souls and corrected the abomination" she concluded. "But what now? Regroup and lick our wounds?"

[Kai Wren]

“Enough.”

Victoria’s voice was taking on that quiet edge again, as Violet continued to jab at her. She hadn’t fully trusted the woman when they’d first met, and her attitude was starting to move from merely ‘annoying’ to actively dangerous. She was apparently set on sharing ever more information about the Guardians of the Wheel with these outsiders, and still bore a grudge.

She turned to Facsimilie, and brought her hands together, bowing shortly to him.

“Thank you for your assistance.” She said, “Your efforts with the civilians and the gas are appreciated, and the other information you have gathered may prove valuable. I’m glad that you didn’t decide to press on immediately. That shows… improved, judgement. If you pass me your contact information, I will be in touch for the next stage.”

Then, she rounded on Violet. “We need to have words.” She said, “In private. You know where I live. Meet me there in an hour.”

[Exaccus]

"Sure thing, you got NFC enabled?" he asked as he pulled his smart phone from his pocket "this is my uuh...work phone. so hit me up any time, ill give you a buzz if i come across any of them zombies wandering around in my patrols." now fully back to professional curtsy

 

"you want me to corrupt the recordings for tonight on their surveillance systems?" he offered off handedly "might count as criminal damage or something but ive had to kick a few doors down before now so hopefully i can be forgiven for this too." as he quickly assumed his smartphone's traits and hooked himself into the surveilance system once more, giving a quick sweep of what events were happening around the club, his computerized mind able to quickly process colossal ammounts of information as it was.

 

"oh yeah, my power is i turn into stuff i touch." he explained with a smirk of pride.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"A useful talent" said Violet, frowning. "And one that I am grateful for. You certainly got rid of those fumes" she said more kindly. "I, for one, would appreciate all the help we can get". 

 

She crossed her arms and gave Victoria a look. "I think it is time we had words" she said, firmly. "Things are not always as they appear to be, and rarely as they should be" she said, dripping cryptic philosophy. "But I say we should talks as soon as possible. Time is dripping between our fingers. Who knows what else is happening at the Square Moon?" she suggested firmly. 

 

"So tell me where, and I will be there". 

[Kai Wren]

Victoria nodded her head to Facsimile, after he had passed on his contact information. “That would be useful.” She said, to the idea of corrupting the CCTV footage. She didn’t particularly care that it was, technically, a crime; compared to everything else that had gone on this afternoon, it didn’t rank very high on the list of things that would weigh on her conscience.


Victoria’s penthouse was at once obviously expensive – situated in the prestigious Downtown region, it couldn’t really be anything but – and also surprisingly spartan for such an opulent location. Whilst Victoria hasn’t denied herself anything she wanted, her tastes are rather utilitarian. Cream furnishings and bright lighting make the expansive apartment feel somehow empty, whilst a few scattered pot plants at least make a token gesture towards making the space alive.

It did not take long after the door had closed behind her ‘guest’ for the woman to make her feelings known.

“You are undisciplined. You don’t trust my judgement, to the extent that you are willing to undermine my decisions in the middle of enemy territory, and you shared far too much with the outsiders. You left clues to the Guardian’s purpose in front of civilians. And all of this because I was insistent on removing the enemy’s advantage over us before taking the fight to them. Am I being unfair in my assessment, Violet?”

[Supercape]

GM

 

Violet listened carefully, studiously, careful to think before speaking, and when she spoke it was slow and glacial. 

 

"By your standards, perhaps I was undisciplined" she said, cryptically. "But the Guardians are not always right. It is true I learned a lot from them. Perhaps I learned too much" she said, taking a step back, out of striking distance. 

 

"Why do you trust them so? Are you not suspicious of their motives? their philosophy? What inner secrets do they keep?" she asked, studying Victoria carefully for clues as to her thoughts. 

 

"They fight the Forces of chaos, this is true, but they are chaotic themselves. Rewinding time? Bending time? Is this not an affront to the nature of the universe?" she asked, more insistent now. 

[Kai Wren]

“Time is not Fate.”

Victoria had dispensed with the sunglasses and the oversized hoodie. She looks far more relaxed in her t-shirt, though her eyes are hard and unyielding.

“Time is water. Fate is the path that water takes in its journey. We stand in protection over Fate, not Time. You cannot damage time, it is unending. The paths that we take through it, though, those can be… threatened. Diverted onto the wrong course.”

She shook her head, arms folding across her chest as she stared the woman down.

“But this is not about philosophy. This is about practical matters. And you did not answer my question. Am I being unfair?”

[Supercape]

GM

 

"It is about philosophy, for me" replied Violet. She seemed to be more confident now. Her movements were fluid, and she kept her distance. 

 

She was ready to fight, if attacked. Not threatening, but making very sure that she wouldn't be taken by Victoria. 

 

"I studied under the Guardians for years. And I came to see their philosophy as wrong. The way they can rewind time. The way they use it. The wheel are corrupt" she said, determined. 

 

"I left, determined to forge my own path..." she added, pulling up her t shirt. Around her naval was a tattoo of a shattered wheel. 

 

"I am Broken Wheel. I am not a Katarnachist, not a villain. But I an an enemy of the Guardians. An exile, a pariah. A flawed student, they would say. I learned everything I could from them, and reject them as flawed, not I" she said, proudly. "I want to know what you are...."

[Exaccus]

Facsimile for his part stayed until he'd seen Jon and his charges and other victims of whatever had gone on in the square moon off and made his way back to his motor cycle, it had only been a a couple of minutes to sort out this initial encounter with whatever weird magical shenanigans had been going on and he wasn't expected home for at least a hour or two more.

 

Perfect oppertunity to do a quick sweeping patrol of the surrounding area donning his smart phone form once more he took a moment to corrupt the recording footage of the surveillance footage though scrambling its codec encoding and then set about obscuring his altered appearance under his leathers and returning to his bike

 

A leisurely ride around the block and the occasional latching his way into survielance systems not advanced enough to resist his hijacking to extend his visual range of the area and save a little time in his route with the occasional skipping of a set of lights or two by cycling them to his favor.

 

Though not callous enough to resist intervening in any crimes he might encounter he had his eye out specifically for signs of shambling zombie like critters that might've escaped the moon in the wake of the incidents chaos..

 

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

Zombies, no. 

 

Sunset, yes. 

 

And not the literal sunset, for it was night now, and sunset had been. No, it was sunset, the thin dark musician with the elegant threads that he had been talking to in the Square Moon. The trumpet player.

 

Sunset was loitering outside the Square Moon, drinking whisky from a hip flask, and sweating despite the night air. From  the security camera footage it was hard to tell whether he was anxious or angry or even sad. But perhaps he was all  three. 

 

"not again..." he mumbled, over and over again. You didn't have to be a master lip reader to spot him repeating himself over and over again. He was perhaps mumbling other things too, and on one accosaion raised his fist to the moon and appeared to be shouting out some drunken curse. 

[Exaccus]

It was a mild curiosity to see sunset raging at the moon, probably something someone more wordy could make poetic if they felt so inclined.

 

For his part facsimile felt that this was perhaps a golden opportunity to glean some information from the inscruitable man and so, risking his mother wrath for being late home he brought his bike back around towards where sunset was at that moment, intending to make good on his mothers advice and let the man ramble at him about whatever might be bothering him and maybe get a little bit more of a glimpse at the square moons hand in all that had transpired so far.

 

"Hey man, you ok?, sorry about ditching you and Jon in there, i had to make a swift exit due to some hijinks that were going on." A lie of omitted details "Bit of a passionate man, if clingy.."

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

Sunset at least recognised Fax, although he was distracted and preoccupied. 

 

"OK, yes. No. Well..." he replied, not quite sure of how to respond, or what the truth of the matter was. 

 

"I'm OK. This isn't. I dance with the devil every night, boy, but that trumpet was something wicked" he explained. "I put it away and  ran like hell the day I played it. And now, well, I just can't stop thinking of the music. I want to play it again, and hear those flutes in my head, feel that terrible horror, and laugh at it all" he added, mopping his brow. 

 

"Those cats in their, they are trying to play the same music. I don't know how I feel about that. Its complicated" he said, pacing again and wringing his hands. "I want to play it, but I know what happened when I did...and I can feel something is up in the club. Like time is slow or fast or something. Like time doesn't  really exist, or we don't understand it. Or space or anything" he said, gazing at the stars in the sky. 

 

[Exaccus]

"oh yeah man, i read about that, TImes like a perception right? feels like it drags on when we're having it rough and speeds by when things are good." he mentioned as he brought his internal camera online and began to record through his eyes, this might prove important.

"Trumpets messed time stuff up you reckon?" his memory darting back to violets mention of the timing of music "Maybe altered it to the time mark of the song or something?" weird shit happened every day in Freedom city but this was taking the cake a little bit, formulating a text inside his cellular brain to send with the attached video violets way detailing what he'd missed in flipping his camera on and sending it on his way with a thought to victoria's phone.

 

"Take me to the thing and ill deal with it for you." he offered resolutely " Us Freedonians gotta stick together you know."

 

Txt Message

Spoiler

HI Vic
Bit sooner than I Thought

Sunset's in a bit of a tizzy
Magic trumpet messed with time in club.

 

See Attached vid.

 

Give violet My regards!
Fax