Planning committee

River
River locked herself in the bathroom at work and stared at her phone like she wasn't exactly sure what it was Grace had done, or what had been stewing under the surface in this city and she had just missed. She was in there for a good ten minutes trying to process, patrons pounding on the single door before she emerged from the restroom, hair askew, eye makeup watery from what one could presume was a crying dancer, and River made her way back to the dressing room immediately.

Ignored questions, ignored people who may have gotten in her way save for the occasional insistence that no, no she was leaving. I'm leaving stop touching me I'm leaving. And she left. Tee shirt just thrown over whatever it was that she was wearing and purse slung over her shoulder.

It wasn't the first time a dancer's walked out. It's also not the first time someone has disappeared in the bathroom only to come out looking like a condemned man. Overall, the manager didn't care. River was paid in terms of rent for the next week. If she didn't want to work her contracted hours, more free time for the other girls, right?

--

The drive was quiet.

--

She got to the apartment, she didn't even bother to take off her heels, just dropped her purse and didn't even lock the front door. She smells like sweat and cigarette smoke and other people's cologne. It's a march to the bedroom, she's not gentle with it, though her brain tells her that she needs to be.

The only thing that is delicate is the way that River crouches beside Farrah's side of the mattress, puts her fingers in her hair and says with shaken voice, "hey... hey you have to wake up. I have bad news, you have to wake up."

Farrah
And Farrah hasn't always made a habit of sleeping like the dead but when she cannot count on having an extended period of time with which to sleep she has taught herself to keep on sleeping despite the presence of an interruption.

Some interruptions she cannot ignore. The hand of one of her people in her hair and a voice come along in its wake.

That hand has the doctoral candidate's eyes flying open and a breath shooting into her lungs. Not instantly prepared for a fight but not groggy. Too much adrenaline. It's River. Even in the darkness Farrah can read her distress. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks.

"What happened? Are you okay?"

River
"Mike's in Denver."

She could have said any number of things, and it sounds like River might just get sick or start crying but given the way her makeup looks she has probably already gotten most of her crying out of the way in the car, or she is in that strange point where she isn't quite ready to be the one who needs help being pieced back together.

She's trying, though. Farrah knows she's trying but her fingertips are trembling and she tosses a glance around the place. Tried to figure how well they may have warded the place.

"The mages in Denver have this internal messaging forum thing and apparently he's been in town for the better part of a week? Maybe two? They said he was from LA, though."

He got there not too long after they did.

Farrah
"What are you talking about?"

Temporary disbelief granted by the hour of night and the fact that she was asleep until a few seconds ago. Farrah does not reach out to turn on the bedside lamp but she does thrust back the covers and sit up. Leaves a space for River.

"What messaging forum thing?"

River
She is fiddling with her phone at this point, trying to get it to that stupid screen so she could find the stupid phone number and her hands haven't stopped shaking yes and-

"When I went out with Grace and Elliott I went back to their warehouse and Grace set my phone up with this hidden network access," this sounds about as strange as when River is speaking a foreign language, except this time she doesn't actually understand the full depth of what she's saying  "-hello, Ginger-" she says to the phone, which is enough to get her to their hidden number menu system.

She's going through messages before she finds one that she can play for Farrah. River hands the phone over, there is no color on her cheeks. October 11th:

Hey, I got word from Pan about a visitor coming to town. Michael MacCarrick is his name. He's of the Euthanatoi, and he's in town to investigate a Nephandus who might be ultimately responsible for that woman-chimera that ended up in the park.

Our little 'experience' wasn't the first. Apparently there's been a string of fused women cases. He'd like to talk to Elijah and Samir about what happened. I told him I would tell you guys.

So I'm telling you guys.

Farrah
"Mike's dead."

As if that is the answer River was looking for. She doesn't have quite the visceral reaction her friend began having when she heard the message but Farrah has been cramming down her feelings about what they did since they did it. As if burial will bring about renewal. They can survive as long as they don't talk about what they did.

"I shot him. We buried him. It's... maybe there's another Chakravat named Michael MacCarrick..."

River
"Another one from California that happens to know Father Echeverria? And-and- after that? There's another message about some guy who was slit open like-like a deer you're trying to dress-" the only approximation she has, but one she knows pretty damned well despite the fact that they both know River doesn't hunt. "and they said there was the feeling of someone Working there."

There's a build, Farrah is being calm, or as calm as she can be and River puts her phone down in favor of finding the other messages "- I... I really want to believe that this is all one really unfortunate series of coincidences but it's not."

Her voice is shaking. River is trying very, very hard to hold it together but her breathing is erratic and she looks at her phone like it might be possessed and she's trying to be gentle but she can't.

Farrah
Farrah doesn't want it to be true but disbelief is only an effective means of coping with things that defy explanation for Sleepers. There is a reasonable explanation for this. They neglected to check and make sure he was actually dead. She didn't put a second slug in his heart after she'd put one in his head. He taught her to aim for center mass because it does more damage and kills faster.

A headshot man could wake up later and crawl out of a shallow grave. Especially if that headshot man was a fucking disciple of Life.

This series of logical events is making Farrah breathe faster. They are not coincidences.

"Don't freak out," she says. She puts a hand on River's arm. Pats it a few times and then stumbles out of bed. In a state of shock but still able to function for now. "Just... let me look."

She moves out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to gather what she needs to look back. Farrah never had much use for looking over her shoulder but there's a time for everything and now is one of those times. If it turns out Mike crawled out of his fucking grave and made his way here that is something she would like to know for certain.

River
River rattles off an address, somewhere in east COlfax- "they found the body there if you need to look there or- I don't-"

Don't freak out.

It was very hard to not freak out.

She hasn't bothered to take her shoes off just yet and it's questionable as to whether or not River is actually even wearing pants right now, but the tee shirt she's wearing could double over as a dress if she damned well wanted it to be. She's got her eyes on Farrah, though.

"It's going to work out," she says. Certain when she has no right to be certain, "are we staying here or going?"

Farrah
"I don't know." Banging cabinets. She's pulling loose a big mixing bowl and a bag of loose leaf tea. "I don't know, let me make sure he's not going to kill us before we pack up our shit and leave."

This rote of hers requires her to sit and contemplate the tea leaves in relative silence. She is hoping to look back to nearly a month ago. She would like to look forward a year. This is not a difficult task with which she's prevented herself but the reality of the situation sits like a stone in her stomach and she is beginning to feel like vomiting.

[corr/time 2: divining the past. base diff 5, -1 practiced rote, -1 quint.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

River
"We can't leave," she says, stammers, "I mean, we can't leave Denver. If he's really here there are going to be people who are going to get hurt and we know something and we can't just... "

This is what caused the problem the first time, you see. Thinking that they had a responsibility to deal with the trail of bodies that Mike was leaving but they've shown that this? Is a little harder than anticipated given that the guy can survive being shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave in the same place he had a rather valuable epiphany.

River hasn't taken her shoes off yet, walks over with a measured grace and sits down. Watches.

Exhales.

Doesn't say anything, tells herself to shut up.

Farrah
And in the time that Farrah sits on the kitchen floor staring into the bowl as the leaves swirl with the passage of her fingertips through the water and then start to settle she doesn't say a word. She concentrates on her breathing and keeping herself calm even when what she sees does not bode well for their chances of explaining themselves to River's new friends.

"He wasn't dead," she says in a choked voice. "He was just..."

She blinks. Now isn't the time to cry. She's still looking at the tea leaves.

"He got out. He got out, and he... he drove to L.A., after that, and he... I saw him talking to some girl, this skinny Middle Eastern girl I've never seen before, and then he went to that... that church, the one that Chorister he knows runs, he had some vision or something while he was in the ground, about some Nephandus..."

Everything River read on Ginger checks out. Michael is alive and in Denver not because of them but because of a Fallen.

"... River, he's..." Her voice threatens to break but she swallows down the saltwater. "... he's killed two people since he got here."

River
"If I tell people that he's killed two people since he got here, they're going to stop making headway on finding that Nephandus... and more messed up things are going to happen," she says. Thinks. Tries to piece things together because the puzzle is suddenly more complicated because he's doing his job... he had always been doing what they'd sworn to do but this time feels different. She'd heard the recordings, the sparse responses that were left on ginger from the denizens of Denver.

She has an incomplete picture.

"What if... what if we just tailed him or something, or..." she exhales, she's reaching. She's really reaching.

"We have an opportunity to do it again and do it differently this time."

Farrah
Farrah scoops the sodden tea leaves from the bowl and stands from the floor with tears unspilled in her eyes. Throws them into the sink to deal with later and grabs up the bag of fresh leaves.

"We have to tell someone," she says. "Or... or tell him? Riv, it's like watching somebody else when he's..." When he's about to murder someone. "Either he's possessed, or he's just pretending to be..."

To be a genuinely honest and good-natured person. No one is that good of a liar.

"... to be him." Shit. "He never said shit about a Nephandus to me, why wouldn't he say anything?"

[view the scattered lotus petals. scrying forward this time. same modifiers as before.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 3) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

River
"Maybe we should just tell him? I mean, he might actually take it okay? I mean... he's never not believed us when we told him there was a problem," of course he would believe them , they hadn't done anything that would pin one as being untrustworthy until... well... recently.

"And maybe someone in Denver knows an exorcist or something, maybe he really is just possessed," it's sad, and she knows it is, when there is the sound of genuine hope in your voice when you're betting that your friend is possessed.

Though, there was the question of the Nephandus. River tried to piece through whether or not he'd said anything to her, coming up with nothing at that juncture.

"Maybe it just came up, or maybe this was one of those pet projects. It seems like... things just happened here. Maybe it's been a low lying case?"

Farrah
[extending!]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 7) ( success x 1 )

Farrah
Again she goes silent as she tries to read the threads of their futures. Their futures are intertwined with Michael's future. His future is intertwined with the Fallen's. When she comes back from the future Farrah blinks to clear her eyes. This effect is less concrete than looking into the past. The past has already happened. The danger in looking into the future is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and it's difficult to make sense of what one sees in tea leaves anyway.

"If it's fusing people together, that doesn't sound low-lying at all." She scrubs her face and leans back against the cabinet doors. She has been sitting on the tile in the kitchen this entire time. "Does Grace know anything about the Nephandus besides 'This Euthanatos guy is in town investigating and he wants to talk to these two assholes about what happened'?"

River
"I don't know, maybe Mike's standards for this is a terrible atrocity are a little skewed," she reaches, but sighs because she knows it isn't true. River knows what it's like when your ability to empathize with other human beings or recognize suffering starts to get out of whack. It's like your limbs going numb, but it isn't your hand or our leg that you can't feel but you know you should feel. Mike's never seemed like that. River's got an eye and an ear for that particular kind of taint on a person.

"I don't know what Grace knows yet. I got Ginger access almost a week ago and I just checked, a lot of things could have happened since the eleventh. I saw some girl disappeared on the news so many that was part of it?" she's reaching, but she shrugs again. It's a helpless expression. She knits her fingers together in front of her.

Looks at Farrah like an authority. She'd always been better at this.

Farrah
"I just tried to read the future, a little. I saw him with Grace. He looked like himself. Then I saw him..."

This is where she wants to keep what she saw to herself. She's already let River astray once. To do it twice in one lifetime isn't anything she can tolerate.

"That chick I saw him with in L.A. is here with him, too. It feels like this has happened before, like in another lifetime. I don't know how to explain it. But more people are going to die the longer it takes to find the Nephandus, I think."

Sigh.

"So what do you want to do? You wanna try and find him?"

River
There's a second when she mentions the chick from LA, the one that she saw Mike with and River's brows knit together. She'd been doing some research and-

"What did she look like again? The middle eastern woman?" a second, "tall? Serious? A little like a lioness?"

She waits for confirmation on that before she continues. Before she has to go through her database of people she has met and this doesn't feel like serendipity to River in the slightest, her heart is beating hard and she is holding things together with a tight grip alone. They have to do something, this was going to ...

Stop.

"Maybe we should just call him and talk. Somewhere public."

Because despite everything, she still wasn't... completely comfortable with the idea of the mentor they tried to kill knowing where they were living.

Farrah
A nod to confirm what the young woman she saw in her vision looked like and then the matter of calling Michael just to talk. Somewhere public.

That makes sense. It'll be harder for him to try and kill them if they do it somewhere public.

"Sure."

Dead voiced in this. She has to be up to meet with her advisor in a few hours and now she has to pretend like everything is completely normal and she isn't now dealing with the repercussions of shooting and burying her mentor and friend out in the fucking desert. Great. Fantastic.

"Who would we even tell about this?" she asks. As if they didn't already have this conversation a month ago when she first proposed putting a bullet in his head to keep him from killing anyone else. "It's not like he has a boss."

River
"I think her name's Ihsan," she tells, "we're meeting up in the afternoon to look into one of those crime scenes."

She doesn't like this. She very, very clearly doesn't like this. It's written on her features, in her voice, on her form, she does. not. like. this. Doesn't like how odd and intertangled this is, doesn't like how fate seems to be pulling things together in a picture that she doesn't undestand and why the holy hell does it feel like they've done this before, just with different costumes and River can't even grab from where this is going on.

"There don't seem to be any other Chakravanti in Denver. I think... I think it's just us," even if River wanted to appeal to a higher authority, they didn't have one.

Awkwardly.

"If you want, I can act like you didn't come with me. If... you're not ready to do this."

Farrah
"No."

Hard without being loud. Her voice hard and her eyes hard and she flares her nostrils as if she's preparing to argue with River. It does not often come to that.

"I'm ready, I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. And I'm not going to let you do it for me. We'll call him when you get back from meeting up with what's her face, alright? We came here together, we'll deal with this together."

A moment's suspension and then Farrah climbs out from behind her tea leaf basin and throws her arms around River's shoulders.

"Dumbass."

River
[WP: Don't start crying because you totally needed a hug]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (6, 7, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

River
River doesn't argue. Not often. Not that she doesn't have points, not that she caves when she does, just when it comes to things that she is ready to stand on she is non-negotiable. Solid. Unwavering whens he has convictions that need not waver... this was not a conviction. This was a new branch, fledgling and green. There is the moment that one has to wonder if she is going to argue.

But, she doesn't. Farrah throws her arms around River's shoulders and she, in turn, slips her arms about her waist. Pulls her in at her augmented height of pretty fucking tall. Platforms and heels, nothing quite like it. Closes her eyes and draws a ragged breath.

"We'll deal with this together," she confirms. Holds down. Like it's an affirmation. that neither of them were going anywhere.

Farrah
[WRAPPED :D ]