Scene #9409: Guns Don't Work On These :(

Owner	Pose
Audrey Basque	THE GRAND DORADO Rather than lead Schneider to the Warpgate in Hydrochoerie, between its awkward position and the first impression it can give, Audrey has instead requested her fellow Partner meet her near one of the Warpgate complexes of the Grand Dorado, from where she'll take them directly to the tower's storage area. It's busy, of course, especially so early in the evening. The crowds of all manners of people come and go, but for Partners, there's not much waiting involved; skipping lines is part of the benefit packages. Audrey's chosen rendez-vous point is a Starbucks-like little place not too far away from arrivals, partly so she can treat her guest(s?) to a drink, partly because SHE needs the caffeine quite badly lately. Black slightly heeled shoes, dark blue jeans, a black half-fancy shirt and a dark blue blazer on top; her hair is drilled up, unlike their previous meetings. It's a lot more casual a look than what she wore at the dinner. She's already sipping from an iced triple espresso mix, the perfect dose of both coffee and sugar, which is slowly refilling her health bar. The thought of simply bringing the crates had crossed her mind, but not all of them were quite the same make, so it was a lot easier to just bring Schneider and her entourage (if she'd found anyone to help) directly to the tower. Also she likes her tower! It's cozy. What didn't cross her mind until now is the thought that Schneider is 'from the past' and might not be acclimated to this kind of environment yet? Audrey pales a bit, suddenly worried now that she can think straight. No, no, surely she's the kind to adapt really quickly and be able to follow directions?
Schneider Greco	"Ahh, why do you look so droopy in the sunlight?" If Audrey's paying attention, her spatial senses might pick up that slip of a girl weaving soundlessly between customers just a dozen feet away. If she's not, those words- purred from close behind- are the first sign of 'Schneider Greco' at all. "Mhmhm~" Either 'noticed' or 'startling', Schneider straightens up, preens her hair with a smile, and scolds: "Even here there are birds singing, governor. Crea-tures of the night have, ahh, no right to complain. The flower that blooms only at night has no color, you know." The young mob boss is poking fun at the very idea of 'casual attire'. What she wears is just a tenth of a notch below what she wore for the party: a gauzy white slip on her upper body (generously, a spaghetti dress; ungenerously, a negligee) trails into red flower patterns at her shoulders where the modesty is least needed. Her mobster coat is tied around her waist by its sleeves, just above her guns, as an affectedly-nonchalant splash of decency; it's the only thing sparing all of Grand Dorado from finding out how high up her hips that negligee rides. She carries a little picnic basket, holding Angela's umbrella and several... potions? Are those just drinks again? Hard to tell. Some twenty feet behind her trails a clean-shaven man in a white suit, clearly of her era but not keen to associate himself with her spectacle.
Audrey Basque	(Un?)fortunately for Audrey, she doesn't keep her magical senses up all the time! It's overwhelming, and in a place like this, especially so. This means Schneider not only has no trouble slipping behind Audrey, but gets a brief yelp that only barely results in her not losing her drink. "Ah! W-- o-- o-oh. Apologies, I..." she turns, to look, and then to not look (directly), at the sight of Schneider's attire. "Lady Schneider! I'm thrilled you managed to find me. I was concerned, but evidently over nothing at all." Indicating her iced drink, she asks: "Would you like something, before we depart? It's not as classy as the cafés of your era, I concede, but it's quite good nonetheless." She glances down, at the picnic basket, curiously. "Or did you bring your own?" Whatever her answer-- and if the answer is positive, Audrey will happily buy Schneider whatever she (and her distant associate) want-- this chains into the matter of getting to the tower. "If you don't mind following me, I'll show you to my storage," she says, before motioning ahead and tugging on some kind of unseen thread. The energy that flows in the Dorado is rich, so it's trivial to rupture space here. A tear, mirrored and glass-like in sheen, as tall as Audrey, silent save for the sound of subtle glass cracking. The tower interior is visible through it. On the other side is a massive circular room. The air here, too, is rich in magic, in that way that it would feel effortlessly to reach out and take it. The walls and ceiling are a deep blue, with golden sigils and symbols all related to the sky; maps of planetary systems and the lunar phases, constellations in great detail. It's pointlessly luxurious for what is a storage area, filled to the brim with crates of all sizes. Some a dozen feet tall, some no larger than a lunchbox. Dozens and dozens of them, strewn about with enough room to walk between. Stairs going down are south, going up are north, and there are no windows. Upon every crate some kind of arcane mechanism; crystals like keypads, layers and layers of enchantments, but none dangerous. No keyholes. Metal, all of them, strange magical alloys meant to be tough. "And-- here we are. I'm afraid we had to retrieve these in quite a hurry, and have no idea how to open them. They may be easy to, for all I know, but none of my skills deal with these kinds of things."
Schneider Greco	Schneider is a little smug about Audrey's yelp; a subtle bit smugger about Audrey averting her eyes from her attire (and lack thereof); and is buoyed by a too-sweet iced drink after a brief protest ("Coffee? Am I now a tee-totaler, my-lady?"). She examines the portal shrewdly, and for a moment the smile drops off her face. Idly- and this may spook a few passersby- she twirls one of her guns on her finger, as if to self-soothe. "That is, ah, quite the talent you have. It is lucky I can trust you not to, mmm, spirit me away, to some unsafe place." Can she, though? She steps through only after Audrey does. "Anthony. If you don't come, there will be no money." "Ma'am, my boss didn't say anything about--" "I said come." "Yes, ma'am." The man in the white suit, with the unsettled demeanor, is last. And while Schneider lounges atop one of the couch-sized crates to stare up at the sparkling 'sky' of the ceiling, he kneels down and starts to examine one of the locks with a jeweler's eye, murmuring something to himself. "Never seen this before..." "Lord Forget-Me-Not's potions will do, if you cannot." "Mmh. Just give me a damn second." Schneider amuses herself as she reclines, in the magical atmosphere, by playing a trick with one of her guns: like she's a magician spreading and shuffling a deck of cards, she plays it into a spray of red-black feathers, then back into a gun again. "The things they do with the resins and bakelites," she muses while looking down at her plastic cup of coffee. "... And what is an astrologer doing on such heists as get you these, my-lady? Is it the money? Ooh, the thrill of the romance?"
Audrey Basque	"Coffee? Am I now a tee-totaler, my-lady?" "A... I'm sorry, I don't think I've heard that term before. I didn't mean offense, if it's a problem." Slang like that is wildly outside Audrey's vocabulary range! "That is, ah, quite the talent you have. It is lucky I can trust you not to, mmm, spirit me away, to some unsafe place." "You are... not the first to voice that concern. But I'd never willfully harm another Partner like that." She's happy to step through first, to demonstrate this isn't a blender. "Mmh. Just give me a damn second." The crates seem to have been designed to require another set of crystals to open; essentially keys, meant to be swiped in a specific order. There's faults in the design, in that way something that was built on a huge budget but in a hurry might. It's a pointlessly complicated arcane lock system that makes up for 'surely you could just brute force this' by just adding more components. A rich man's toy, with all the flaws. Cool gun trick! Audrey's mostly got eyes for Schneider's little trick though; the sudden change from gun to feathers, and back to gun, makes her ooooh approvingly, easily impressed as she is. "I bet that must come in handy if you ever need to conceal something. Is it just with the gun you can do that, or any object?" "... And what is an astrologer doing on such heists as get you these, my-lady? Is it the money? Ooh, the thrill of the romance?" She has to hesitate before answering that one. It's a bit of it all, but maybe most importantly... "Research. In one of these crates is an object I wanted to study, a gemstone that has infinite weight when worn. Unpleasant to experience, but! A property I'd love to understand. The rest of the crates were acquired on a whim. They were there too." Although, the big issue... "Truth be told I don't know what's in half of them. If you should happen to see anything that strikes your fancy among them, we could trade? My magic doesn't really use reagents, but the ones you showed at the soirée seem interesting to study." Or simply to have, for a rainy day.
Schneider Greco	"Don't think I can finesse this," 'Anthony'- the white-suited professional- says. "Eh, but don't think you'd need to. Anything that just disrupts the metal... you've got that stuff from Mister Flowers, right, ma'am?" She isn't paying attention to him, though. "Need to con-ceal...? Oh, my innocent lady," Schneider purrs with her eyes half-shut. She lets the gun drop carelessly from her fingers again, and-- --at a delicate twist of Schneider's hand, the air around her buzzes with razors. There's a whirlwind of red-black around her, like a rotary saw or a solar system. Milliseconds later, her fingers twitch downwards. Half the feathers tchh-sizzle-teleport(?) to a defensive stance around her, and the other half whistle off to the side to-- One eyeblink later, an intruding fly is nailed to the wall by a razor quill, dead. "When there is someone to kill..." "Have you lost your god-damn mind?!" "... you will see a beautiful withering." Poor Anthony is sprawled out on the floor where he'd dived away from Schneider's blood-chilling demonstration- it was aimed safely away from him and Audrey, but he still seemed to take it like a gunshot indoors. "You fucking freak! You'll get my bill in the mail, alright?! I'm not sticking around!" "Mmmm... am I too irrational for you? You don't even want to see what surprises La-dy Au-drey has for us?" Schneider says, pouting. But Anthony's already standing, straightening out his jacket, and looking around for the portal back out. Schneider looks to Audrey and shrugs: what can you do? She's already withdrawing a lock-dissolving potion.
Audrey Basque	"Need to con-ceal...?" Audrey raises a brow, fascination turning into a brief moment of shock and a step back. The air around her distorts, like layers folding back to hug her invisibly and yet, infinitely there. The fly is already dead; and if Schneider had meant to, she could've struck before whatever Audrey did took effect. There's no concealing the fact her host's guard was down. She trusts way too quickly. But where Anthony takes the little trick as quite the affront, Audrey has learned to laugh about these things. If her head is still on her shoulders, then there's no reason to fret. The distortions cease, and Audrey ends up the one who looks apologetic for her reaction. She rubs the back of her head, unsure what to say. Anthony leaves, furthering Audrey's confusion, until a few seconds too late she understands what 'irrational' means here. "I admit I knew of the woes and prejudices arcanists contend with daily, but I didn't expect to see it so... viscerally," is the word she ends up choosing. She returns to Schneider's side, to watch her work, only slightly more on-edge than before. "But your arcanum... if you don't mind me taking a guess, and trying to understand you a little better... the feathers, are they your afflatus?" Oh god is she using the word correctly? All the while Audrey frets, the crate's locking mechanism dissolves under Schneider's care. There's an audible click and pop, as the crate's pressure equalizes. Air-sealed, apparently! This particular crate contains piles of ammunition, mostly in the lower calibers, from .25 to .40 and everything inbetween. Runes and inscriptions on the boxes label them for different uses; ranging from magical incendiary rounds to lightning bolt rounds and even rounds that detonate only once they're lodged into something. Or someone, most likely. Audrey frowns, in that way that someone who does not and likely never will use a gun would. "Oh. Petra's going to love these. Were they... selling this stuff alongside the actual priceless artifacts? Ugh, extras." She catches herself. "Apologies, Lady Schneider. But I'm glad to have called on you now. I hope that potion isn't too difficult to procure; I might need quite a bit of it."
Schneider Greco	Schneider sighs, fraught with long history but airy with casual dismissal, and frowns as she fluffs her hair again with the barrel of her gun. "That man was an arcanist too," she says, not bothering to glance after him as she gets down to her sizzling work. "But even among arcanists, ahh... one should not be too much an arcanist." "It's the same as us immigrants. Ah, the first generation, everyone sees you have the dirt of the old world on you. By the third... the sparkling-clean children say to their grandmothers, 'why do you not speak English?' 'Why do we eat these gross foods?' 'Must you be so Sicilian?'" She laughs while popping the lid. "Mhmhm, and the fourth generation, now, they are the ones saying 'no immigrants'. That is how it is, Lady Au-drey." For a moment the forty-cal bullets intrigue her, and she leans on the corner of the crate while rolling one around her fingers. Hasn't she seen them before? But they're not quite the right kinds for her guns. She lets it drop back into the crate, reaches over for her coffee, and takes a long dainty slurp through the straw. "'Afflatus'... you learn such fancy words," she laughs lightly. "No. My magic is killing ghosts. The guns and their feathers were... a gift, from a generous one in the Manus. But they are good in my hands." Her smile, though, is satisfied and warm. Job well done, even if simple. "Lots of things can be procured," she answers at last, "for someone who calls me 'lady'."
Audrey Basque	"He was...?" Audrey's surprise turns into a bit of a flat stare when Schneider explains; she tries not to comment about the fact she's using her gun to fix her hair, too. "To be told by your own that you should be 'less' of yourself must feel like an insult at times, mustn't it?" Her frame of reference is... nothing. Audrey is a rich white British-American prodigy from a world controlled by her peers. She can acknowledge these matters but she can't Feel them. "The era you're from sounds so..." She has to think about that one. Find the right word. "Unkind. I hope the Concord never makes you feel that way. It hasn't for me, despite my laundry list of problems and failings." On matters of magic, she simply nods. "The Timekeeper did mention "disks" that store teleportation spells, so I shouldn't be surprised firearms can too." Killing ghosts sounds so specific! But everyone has one, if you push it far enough, and it's clearly gotten her this far. She doubles back to smile, looking at the sea of crates still to open. This might take a while... "I think it's only proper to refer to someone who commands respect as you do as 'Lady'. I hope that if there's ever anything I can assist you with that you won't hesitate to call upon me. Whether mundane or taxing."