As the days passed, the Moscow winter grew angrier. Snow frequently pounded the streets. Wind whipped Dane's coat from his legs, and his walks around the city's many parks became less frequent. The shops of the Enlightenment district became a haven, especially the one beneath Aria's home. Every day which passed when he did not see her curled a little more tightness around his heart, until it hurt his chest to draw another breath. When came the day when he nearly beat his driver to death with one of the golf clubs right in the middle of the Ritz's gift shop, he knew the time had come to set his mind to other tasks else he was likely to snap on the next person he saw.

Izmailovsky Market was a bone yard of abandoned stocks, hollow niches, and empty paths of late, but then came a milder Saturday and weeks of absent tourists flooded the quaint little aisles. The Market wound its way like a parasite through the guts of an old russian fortress. The center of which was identified by the traditional russian architecture of wooden, painted onion-domes. One half of the interior grounds was devoted to the stalls for locals to hawk every single kind of thing imaginable. The other half was filled with playthings. Children flocked to this park-like atmosphere where they crawled, scrambled, climbed, and ran through the various pieces of equipment. It was here where Dane claimed a spot on an empty bench and nibbled away at a warm tart purchased at one of the food stands from the market. The scene reminded him of the morning he sat in the shade of London's Tower Bridge, but here were no nannies wheeling wee ones along the Thames. Here, the children were scrawnier, the women older and uglier. There was not a sophisticate in sight. Sleek coats were absent, only to be replaced with bulbous, puffy apples with legs. No woolen caps were slanted across a lovely brow. Here, scarves were tied around wrinkled faces. A homeless man urinated on the trunk of a tree in the distance. The place was revolting. The best thing about the place was the tart, and even that tasted like stale pastry microwaved too hot.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief - there were no napkins in a place like this - and dumped the trash of his treat on the ground. One of the children, a boy of about nine years, jumped from the high arc of a swing carved from the shape of a laughably giant chicken. He landed nimbly on his feet and came running to Dane. If the boy had a parent watching him, they were oblivious to the sudden change of trajectory.

Dane carefully folded the handkerchief to a tight square and tucked back in his coat. The boy planted himself in front of him, blocking the view.

Dane leaned to one side, "I say, lad, you're blocking the view."


The boy snagged the bit of discarded styrofoam and paper from the ground and shook it beneath Dane's nose. "You littered. You're not suppose to litter. Don't you know that? Or are you as stupid as the way you talk?"


Dane was rather taken aback. He glanced between the so-called litter and the way the child's face was all squished up. The boy wore one of those hats with the flaps down his ears. The way his mittens were folded back to expose his fingertips made for a perfect line to aim for with an ax. His nails were dirty.

Dane leaned forward, a grin split his lips into a wide smile that creased his eyes. "Where can I get a hat like that?"
His own had been lost in the graveyard the night he met Aria, and his ears were cold.

The boy rolled his eyes upward like he could see the hat in question. He shrugged and pointed across the way toward the maze of stalls. "They sell them in the Market."


Dane took to his feet. "Do you think you could show me?"
He took the trash from the lad, who again looked surprised. "You're right. I should not litter. Littering is bad."
Nothing happened yet, and he was already feeling better. This was going to be a fantastic day after all.

"I guess I can, but I have to be right back or mom will be mad."


Dane nodded. "Fair enough. We don't want mom to be mad."


And together the two strolled toward one of the many tunnels digging its way through Izmailovsky Market. On the bench where he had been sitting was a card wedged between the slats. It was hand-painted with a tiny Mockingbird.
Edited by Dane Gregory, Feb 28 2014, 07:32 AM.

The familiar ding sounded an open line from the cockpit. Nikolai didn't break focus from the screen to answer it, "Yes?
"

The pilot's calm voice responded. "We are thirty minutes from touchdown, Ascendancy. I expect a smooth ride the rest of the way."


"Thank-you Colonel,"
always formal, Nikolai closed the line as he glanced at the window far to one side. He'd glanced frequently over the past few hours, until the fall of night finally eased his anxiety. The far-distant land below was dark and empty of light as the seas. More than preferring to fly at night, he felt cloaked in the evening. More in control. Although the notion was likely childish, even if most children feared the night.

He returned his attention to the screen. His speechwriter had sent the final version of the address he would give first thing in the morning before the talks. That meant several rounds of read-throughs, and paused only to add his own notation.

Deep in thought, this time a knock broke his concentration, and his brow furrowed with brief worry. He turned in his seat just as the door opened to admit the EoA Chief of Staff. The man had served his position for too many years to know the Ascendancy did not like to be disturbed when he was practicing speeches except for the most unusual of circumstances.

A grim frown creased his eyes with anticipation. "What is it, Viktor?"


"News from Mecca, Ascendancy."
He placed a transfer device onto a reader pad embedded in Nikolai's desk. A live feed from an Al-Jazeera news agency was suddenly overlaid on a fresh screen. "A Special Forces team has attacked Al-Hasan during prayer and in open view of the public. Initial reports say dozens are dead, and hundreds are injured. The mosque where he was located was nearly burnt to the ground. We don't know whether or not Al-Hasan yet lives."


Cold blue eyes drank in the sights panned by the camera while Viktor explained. "Who were they?"


Viktor cleared his throat. Nikolai rose to his feet.

"That's the problem, Ascendancy. We don't know. Our information says the team wore Custody uniforms. Vegas to be exact."


Nik blinked as though he didn't hear it right. Viktor wasn't sure which was the worse news: the impersonation of a Vega team or that he couldn't confirm the impostors' true identities.

"Conference room. Now."
His order cut sharp and cold. The speech was abandoned as Nikolai strolled from the room. Words of unity were worthless to him now.

A pair of land warriors sat a top the table staring back at Katya. She hadn't told Aria yet that she'd gotten past the first layer of security. It was a typical government encryption that she'd already had the access to, such was her job after all. This particular pair while one of the newer models was still sporing something older. But that wasn't the interesting part. The goo\ggles held another security layer that Katya tracked to the Baccarrat Mansion. Its base signal when turned on always went back there. It wasn't even clever about it's execution, it was simple to follow. Clearly their IT guys needed a bit of an education in modern security.

But the Baccarrat Mansion was just that a house full of men and women and glass as it was their foundation. No reason for hitting their servers, at all. So why had this woman given her a pair of goggles that linked to a rather benign building? That was what Katya wanted to find out. There had to be some record somewhere of what that building.

There were many places to go and many places she could easily just walk into to see permits and such, but where was the fun in that. Katya sat down at her computer and cracked her knuckles above the laptop screen before getting down to work. A good place to go would be the permit office.

Not overly complicated to get into. A little bit of typing and few opened backdoors later Katya was scrolling through a long list of permits for the Enlightened District. They all had indicators as to public and private. On the GUI side of their program Katya knew that those marked private would not be accessible easy, she filtered through those. If the Baccarat Mansion was hiding something, she'd find it in one of those files. She hoped.

It didn't take long for Katya to realize that someone had just opened a few of the same files she was looking at. They held the tale-tell signs of opening through a back door administrator. Curiouser and curiouser.

Important subject at hand. Anyone game for a thread? Jaxen or Dane. I promise to be nice. *grin

Damien Oakland

D.O.B: 20th October 2015, Augusta, Maine, USA.

Location and Occupation: San Quentin State Prison, California, USA. Inmate on Death Row

Appearance: 6'2 with a medium muscular build. Long dark brown hair with dark facial hair framing a youthful face weathered and hardened.

Psychological Profile: Egotistical, dominating and ambitious are the three words that come to mind when people describe Damien. He has always burned with a desire to make something of himself which has not dampened by his time in prison. Damien is a man of principle and philosophy. Of HIS principle and HIS philosophy and he accepts nothing that strays from his belief.

Abilities: Channeler.

Biography:

Damien was born in small the northern state of Maine, USA into a close-knit family. At the age of 2, his parents were forced out of work by the turbulence of the times and would have languished in poverty. However, his father received a lucrative business opportunity from a friend in the Custody.

As a result, Damien spent the greater part of his life in comfort and peace on a private estate of modest means outside of London. Owing to his ambition which bloomed at an early age coupled with an unrelenting confidence, Damien attracted the notice of many of the prominent citizens of the Custody, but found himself at the same time shunned by the upper echelons because of his modest wealth and obscure heritage.

Damien finished his secondary education and spent two years at Oxford studying Political Science before tragedy struck his family back in Maine where his grandfather was murdered leaving his grandmother heavily in debt and unable to pay for treatment for Behçet's disease which rendered her incapacitated.

Damien and his parents rushed back to Maine just before his twentieth birthday, unable to both support his education and his grandmother. It was not without trepidation that Damien left Oxford, but found that he was unable to support himself.

Back in the USA, he took various menial jobs to support his family. His determination (and no doubt other reasons) attracted the eyes of the daughter of a Senator, Elissa Davis.

At 23 Damien was struck by an inexplicable sickness which no doctor could determine the cause. Frequent fevers and sudden euphoric fits of near insanity came to a head on the fourteenth of Feburary 2038. He planned a surprise Valentine for his girlfriend and awaited her return from work.

As she returned, unsuspecting, Damien was struck with a violent fit of euphoria which increased his daring nature to dangerous levels. Instead of the surprise of chocolate and flowers, he proposed to Elissa. Her father objected and an argument began between the two men, when Damien was filled with indignant rage.

Damien has no firm memory of what exactly happened, but both Elissa and her father were immolated and the house destroyed. Although the evidence was circumstantial and his rage-induced state not warranting first degree murder, the man's status as a Senator coupled with a string of suspected bribes Damien was sentenced to death at the age 23.

He was transferred to the maximum security prison of San Quentin where the long and arduous process of appeals began. Thoroughly disillusioned, Damien grew disgusted at the corruption and brutality that he witnessed.

His spirit was never dampened by impending death. He continued to study, taking an interest in Justice and Philosophy and quickly became notorious amongst his fellow inmates as a dangerous and implacable adversary.

For the past 7 years Damien has nurtured his new-found gift and shaped it to his will with an impressive determination, however, his ambitious nature grows impatient and burns for freedom.

The only things chasing Jaxen the last couple of months were women dying to rip his clothes off. Some were actually a little too rough, a harsh judgement coming from Jaxen, but who could blame them? In that regard, they were kind of monstrous, but so far, no cannibals, no dungeons, and nobody with snake tattoos on their wrist. Although. That one Asian girl with the lizard thing on her back what was her name? - eh, who cared, Jaxen couldn't pronounce it anyway - she'd made him do a double take before taking her home. She was into some weird shit. Nobody would call Jax a goody two-shoes, but he had a particular disinterest in being tied down these days.

Oriena's warning about snaky hunters lurking in the shadows finally dulled to a back of the brain kind of memory. In short order, Jax's lifestyle returned in fits and starts. A quiet night out in low key bars - which explained quality finds like Lizard Lady - stretched into underground clubs which expanded into red carpet strolls and headliner parties.

He did hit a plateau with practicing this new skill he'd discovered. Tony was right, no more sickness. But the work was dangerous. After shocking himself to near blindness one night on his own, he decided to give Tony another call. He might have tracked down Jon, at least to brag about the night after they parted ways, and maybe buy the guy a beer for good wing-man work. But the guy was busy or out of the country or something. And Jaxen found Moscow suiting him quite nicely these days.

Mecca wasn't exactly a beautiful city, all things considered. There was a certain humor in bulldozing priceless historical sites in order to build five star hotels and McDonalds, he supposed, but it didn't quite qualify as art. Nicholas walked the streets of Mecca barefoot in the two white cloths of the ihram, the traditional clothing of the Hajj. He felt ridiculous, but he figured it was a small price to pay.

Nicholas wasn't sure what suicidal impulse had brought him down to the city's streets. Boredom, most likely. For weeks he'd been cooped up in a hotel room in Moscow, only to be paraded about in front of Brandon's cameras. He looked more like Brandon's bitch than anything, regardless of what scathing articles and live feeds he put out. Was it really any wonder that he was driven to drink?

He frowned. Sobriety.
Now that was interesting. His head rung like a tamborine and his hands shook like he was some kind of addict, but he felt no cravings for liquor. He had something much, much better after all. The first time he'd tried to channel the power sober, it was like being a rodeo cowboy. Even if it was all in his head, he'd felt the absolute certainty that one wrong move would mean the death of himself and those around him. It wasn't like in the movies with some cool hand-wavey things and magic words. You had to grab it and take control, a single slip of the mind more dangerous than tossing bullets in a fire. Not to be melodramatic or anything.

He paused in his walk, taking the chance to drink in that sense of invincibility. Clearing his mind was so much harder without anything to dull it. What took less than ten seconds felt like minutes, as he tossed every emotion and stray thought into a little box. Then he stomped on it for a little while until the magic happened. All at once his senses amplified. He felt every stitch of the white robes, he could smell camel shit three roads away, see the hairline cracks in the foundations of the house he was standing next to... and hear the shouting of ten or twenty pissed off Arabs. If there was one thing in common drinking had in common in magic, it was that it made you feel goddamn invincible. Nicholas decided to see what was going on.

A couple blocks away and he had his answer. A woman stood surrounded by a group of angry men. Her blonde hair was blowing in the wind, and by her clothes he judged her western. A black bullet proof vest with the word "PRESS" standing out in bone white made it obvious what she was. An idiot. She should have at least put on a headscarf with things as they were. Nearby, the guy who was presumably her camera man was taking a vicious beating. It didn't look like things were going to end well for either one, if the stories that had been pouring out of the city since dawn were any indication. The group had decidedly too much rope with them.

Now, how to fix things without getting himself lynched or exposed. "Nicholas Trano: Evil Hell Demon from Hell" wasn't exactly the article he wanted his more conservative constituents reading. Then he remembered: the Legion Premiere's CEO had taken up residence in the same hotel. He was a bit of a dipshit from what Nicholas had seen, but mercenaries were mercenaries. It wasn't like he expected the guy to do an actual mission. He just didn't want to see the woman murdered, and he wasn't confident enough in his abilities to try to save her unless absolutely necessary.

So he made a call.

Hopefully they could send help. CDPS was already dealing with riots in half a dozen places around the city, and he doubted they'd be here any time soon.



Edited by Nick Trano, Feb 16 2014, 10:52 PM.

Morning Mass, led by the venerable Pope Patricius I in Domus Sanctae Marthae.

"A return is needed, to ourselves. We need to embark on an internal pilgrimage, to that often far-off place within ourselves, that place of reflection and meditation we refer to as the conscience, where we may weigh and measure and take stock, as the year ends. This is the specific action of reasoning creatures, of human beings who must choose between good and evil, or between lesser evil and greater good."

Armande tuned him out.

Overhead, a white ceiling yawned, and aided the design of a lofty space, but it was all an illusion. The room was grand, but not large. Marble stretched from Armande's chair in the back to the altar in the front. White also, it shone like the heavens with rivers of gold. The same gold as what streaked the Papal vestament adorned by the Holy Father.

Ordained clergy filled the rows separating Armande's place in the back to where the Holy Father delivered his speech. IF the Holy Father had noticed Armande's presence, he continued with the remainder of his homily and did not acknowledge him.

He looked well, but despite words to the contrary, there was a tension to his eyes that spoke of unease with the world. For this, Armande admired his counterpart. Pope Patricius I, and his predecessors though Armande could not ascribe to their countenance personally, doggedly clung to the Faith in everlasting redemption, even to the dismissal of all earthly ills. The Vicar of Christ was dealt the burden of guiding the souls of man to spiritual peace; but the Regus was their worldly champion. He would forge a legacy for humanity that would guide their children to their rightful place; that is, toward freedom.

The Eucharist prayer had begun. The offeratories were made, and Armande stood with those around him. A series of prayers followed. The epiclesis called upon the Holy Spirit to imbue the bread and cup with the body and blood of Christ. The words of Jesus at the Last Supper were recounted, followed by a narrative of his death and resurrection.

Armande fell through the motions with crisp replies of the tongue and devout movement of the hands, but his soul was empty of faith. As the Holy Father ignored the flesh, so also did the Regus ignore the spirit. They were two halves of the same whole, a balance of body and spirit, distinct but connected at the same time. Where one office ended, the other began. Just as the white robes of the papal capes, the mozzetta, reflected the stretch toward heavenly futures, the long, black cassock of the Regus' robes reflected the death of what has already been: a cataclysmic past that must be amended if mankind is to be saved.

By all outward appearances, he was as penitent and pilgrim as any other participant, but he was the first to depart at the end of mass, hands tucked behind his back, and luminous eyes burning with the significance over this reunion with his counterpart. His attendance meant one disturbing thing. That the end was come unless the warriors of the Atharim stood to stop it.

Patricus I saw him then, without mistake, and the heavy burdens both men carried crashed about their senses. They would meet in private.

[[Continued from Blind Eye]]

She’d lied about the cab. Crisp autumn wind bit her skin the moment she stepped out onto the pavement, like the tips of a thousand knives. Looking out at the skyline this morning, she’d lamented the sunrise, like every bloody streak of it was her own blood draining out into the horizon. From the ashes of yesterday’s masochistic anger bloomed today’s guilt; not an emotion she dealt particularly well with, so she was almost glad for the sharp torment of weather urging her thoughts to focus on the physical. Not that it stopped her bracing with folded arms against the wind, sleek coils of dark hair rippling about her shoulders. She was the only moron out here without a coat.

The nearest metro station was her destination. No cash on her, of course, but a life lived on the streets had taught her everything she needed about getting what she wanted. It was warmer on the train, and mostly empty; she was not sure of the time, but she’d probably just missed the squall of rush-hour traffic. This hour belonged to the old, the jobless, and those burdened with motherhood – though this close to Moscow’s elitist centre, there was little sign of the usual hopelessness. The wail of a baby further down the carriage, the listless shuffling of the elderly too afraid of death and solitude to stay at home; these were the markers that graduated her journey home. When a guy staggered in and passed out on a seat opposite, suffused in the metallic stink of stale booze, she knew she was almost there.

Home was on the outskirts of Zamoskovreche, a residential area not quite suburbia but at least grasping at the prospect. The realtor had suggested it a potential investment, and Oriena had agreed. She’d bought it for her mother originally, but the woman had dug in her heels against leaving her own apartment. If Ori didn’t understand her need to stay in the heart of Moscow’s poorest streets, she didn’t argue either. So, despite potential, the house remained a shell. A place of practicality rather than comfort. No photos hung on the walls, and there was little in the way of decoration to distinguish a touch of personality. She had money now, but little incentive to spend it on things she deemed immaterial.

Echo slunk around her feet the moment she passed the threshold, and she picked him up without pausing to think about it. He rumbled a pleasant purr, nudging his face into her neck, trying to coerce the devotion that was his due. Little fucker was always insanely pleased to see her, which she secretly found rather gratifying. She’d never had pets as a kid – you just didn’t keep pets where she’d grown up – and this one had chosen her rather than the other way around. He stuck around whether she paid him attention or not, whether she fed him or not, until he’d chinked a little crack of fondness in her apathy. She knew she’d finally caved when she gave him a name.

After a little fuss, she plonked him down on the sofa. She was hungry, but too agitated to eat. A shower, another shower, a glass of water to battle the faint headache. Trying hard not to think. Yesterday, avoidance had burned aggressively in her chest, indignant and furious. The guilt had gnawed even then, if only a little, a nuisance diluting the force of her hatred. But it had been easy to ignore. Easy to drown under strong liquor, and then Jaxen had made forgetting even easier. But though she might brood protectively around her stubborn pride, her spine would not curl to the indignity of actually hiding. She tied her hair in a knot, changed into running clothes. Stuffed in earbuds. Zipped up a hoodie. The mechanical set of her movements flowed one set to another, culminating in the slam of her front door. Still fucking cold, and gloriously bright. She tugged up her hood.

Ori knew where she was going. Knew too the only way to actually get there was to trick herself into it.

When she was a kid, she’d had found a damp, muddy flyer stamped a thousand times underfoot in one of the mostly derelict neighbourhoods around her house. Nine years old, an age when most girls were playing with dolls, and she was sifting through trash to find little pieces of precious. She’d laid the leaflet out on a chunk of broken wall to dry, then folded it in her pocket like a prized piece of muslin. It was for a boxing club, new back then – or as new as things got in Zamoskvoreche, which meant that it was tired and worn and scabby. An endeavour in local charity: so kids could fuck each other up in a ring instead of the streets, and with fists instead of knives.

It accounted for the leanness of her limbs – that and the running, though the benefit of the latter had been a lesson learned much later. For a while, before she’d understood the talents she’d been born with, it had been a sanctuary. A place to vent frustrations, to feel that the dissatisfaction she sensed at life – and it was already burning a hole in her chest, even then – could serve some brief purpose. It was as close as she ever remembered to a little slice of acceptance. When clocking someone right in the face because they’d pissed you off was not met with shocked abjuration, but applause.

Of course, fate had fucked that up, years later, when she’d met Luka.

Night had come and gone and Aria had gotten very little sleep. Between monsters and the strange man she'd met in the cemetery Aria's dreams were hardly peaceful. The world around her seeped into her every waking moment, and when she slept it was even worse.

But morning dawns a new light, a new day and the start of a new quest. How does one kill an Ijiarq when they just get up and turn to mist when you try to kill them. There had to be another way.

With trench coat, swords and guns all sitting at the ready, Aria started for the headquarters library from her tiny apartment above the shop. She looked around and sighed. It was a far cry from her room underneath the Vatican Historical Society. Aria wondered if this is how other hunters lived. But it didn't matter she had a job to do no matter what she felt about her course and the Atharim itself at the moment. But it she wasn't about to let a monster hurt another human if she could help it.

The walk was short and Aria was thankful for the brevity of it. The back entrance was guarded as per usual. The walk into the dank basement left a chill in Aria's bones. But the library, it was warm, the fireplaces were lit and the soft flickering glow of the fire was comforting.

Aria started straight for the books on monsters. Hopefully someone from some day and age knew how to kill an Ijiraq or knew something of it. But for now she had to find a book on them or something. That was going to be the challenge unto itself. She wished for the comfort of her old library, but this one would do in a pinch.


Edited by Aria, Feb 12 2014, 12:48 PM.