Scene #9626: In Our Time

Owner	Pose
Timekeeper	The air in the Walden tonight is electric. Not just because of your adoring host, the monochromatic arcanist with the black roses around his collar, but because of the party that's already going on before you arrive. This far into the evening, the energy of the humans at the bar is practically delirious, with ceaseless cheering and drinking and music. The cause is obvious-- the stock tickerboard, the one updated by continuously downwards-flowing sand that's always hung behind the bar like a sports broadcast, is so bloated that it had to be expanded. There's an almost exhibitionist glee in how ramshackle the extra wooden addition looks on it, mismatched with the sleek dark backboard of the rest solely to make more room for more digits and more stocks and more money. The prices have ballooned higher than ever before, and every human in this building, by a well-timed sell and a savvy buy, through the swell of the market, has become generationally wealthy. And why shouldn't they be happy? This is the best the world's ever been. America, that sacred land, has made good on its promise, for all of them. Though you're brought up to the door in limousines, no one past the doors even thinks to ask your names or give you a second look. You're instantly brought into the fold, handed drinks by other bargoers, slapped on the back, cheerfully jostled around as another cell in the same riotous mass of wealth and revelry. No one parts for Forget Me Not either when he descends from the stairs to greet you. It's like they don't even recognize him as the owner of the bar anymore. Still, his mood couldn't be better. His slit pupils are glowing with excitement for the promised celebration, which seems to be entirely unrelated to the stocks, and a near-giddy upwards tilt touches his charcoal lips. He's the most untidy you've ever seen him, which is to say that every petal of every flower is immaculately in place and his clothes are gleaming and ironed and his hair flawlessly frames his face, but, he's excited enough to move hurriedly. Even upstairs, once you're elevated above the seething rabble, the atmosphere isn't calm. You're not the only people here anymore; there's a cubist painting of a woman propped up in a seat on her own, eyes moving around within the canvas, a man with a crab for a head, a little girl clad in a blue-black doll dress sitting like a princess and drinking the Walden's alcoholic potions. The main table, set up as if prepared to welcome a queen, still doesn't have anyone sitting at it, and only has room for one.
Timekeeper	The stops are all pulled out. There's Manus Vindictae masked waiters pouring the glittering potions for whoever wants, but there's shamelessly visible alcohol too, and the best food available in the city. The flowers overflow from their planters, vivid blue and white and purple and black. The clamor below is reduced to the susurrus of waves of human pettiness, and the balcony the yacht lifted by the rising tides. Forget Me Not stands with his back to the railing, arms spread out wide. "Lords and ladies, my esteemed Partners, my dear friends. Tonight, I hope to lavish you to a show that will delight your senses and sensibilities, a triumph over the sickening falsities of this world never before seen. In these next hours, you will be treated to the height of the Manus Vindictae's truth, as beauty beyond measure reasserts itself over this hideous world, orchestrated by none other than our very greatest." He gestures with an upraised palm to the empty seat. "The Guiding One has blessed my Walden with her presence. In this rotten world, next to none are fit for the honor of looking upon her, but you, you-! You, my friends, are the cream of the crop! Oh, how Lady Arcana has yearned to meet you, those who share in our dream for a better world!" "And what better backdrop for this glorious joining, than a slate wiped clean?" He laughs, a sound that cuts through the roar of the crowd below as the tickerboard updates with even higher prices. Forget Me Not scoops glasses off of the table in front of him, wine stems held between his knuckles, gesturing out to place them into the hands of those nearest. "So drink, my friends! Celebrate! Soon, we will have work to prepare for the coming era, but for now, rejoice!"
Schneider Greco	Schneider's men- five or six of them among the crowd, here, some recognizable from that first dinner with the arancini in the Grand Dorado- stand out by virtue (or vice) of their cheaper, coarser jackets, their duller excitement, and their pensive locations by walls or corners. Unlike the revelers, they do have work to do, even if that work is only 'waiting around'. Schneider herself, with a rich blue rose tucked into her headband to better blend in with her comrades, is strapped for her gladiatorial duty but hasn't been called to the stage yet. When she first frequents the upper story with a platter of appetizers (fancy deviled eggs; canapes; shrimp cocktails), there are slight bags under her eyes. Maybe she just didn't get enough rest? She gives a little smile to the three other Manus members up on the balcony- the four, and Forget Me Not- and her eyes are magnetized away from the empty table of the Guiding One. "Do-not buy stock with any money you cannot lose, my-lords," she advises while setting down foods, and then she parts a little while-- but as she sets down the shrimp her eyes meet White's, and perhaps White's alone, with a note of alarm that means 'this soon?'. This world will not leave her without regrets. ... She's absent again for a couple more minutes; and then is visible in a little service corridor adjoining the balcony, positioned so your table can see her but the others cannot. Urgently, she beckons for someone- anyone- to get up and meet her, but it's probably better if you're discreet. Here in this dark mahogany hallway, where the roar of the Roaring Twenties and the glare of its gold are a little more distant, Schneider looks down at the gun in her hands. Her thumb strokes the safety that has never, ever been on. "My youngest sister, Marian," she begins as a breathy little confession, without having her words straight first. "I have been calling home. The o-thers, they are ready to go, but... Marian, we have not seen since last night. My lords, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do..." There's something else behind those words that she isn't saying.
Holly Asturias	Not a single part of the stock market is familiar to Holly. It hasn't existed for over a century! And the patched-together tickerboard and its expansions, then, are just novelties that attract her eyes and make her oooh and aaah, at the sight of the wondrous device that seems to have everyone's attention so completely enraptured. Oh, but there's the host! Holly's all to happy to politely half-bow to Forget-Me-Not, for how polite he'd been. The hanging chains and ornaments from the golden headdress sticking out of her head jingle as she does so, and the freshly applied purple polish on her long and almost sharp nails is evident. She took a moment to refresh, from the eyeshadow to the little imperfections of her dress (though there's just no cleaning up those golden bloodstains on the inner skirt, sad to say). Not to mask up, but to be polite back. The masks, the variously-headed individuals, it's all... odd, but not unfamiliar. Revenants, especially, do enjoy their masks, and their headdresses, and their eccentric clothing. She feels the place could use a bit more gold, but then, she's biased, isn't she? She wears so much of it. Holly is happy to take a drink; maybe she sniffs the air, out of curiosity, to see whether or not any of it's blood. But failing that, she'll settle for wine just fine, even if it's unlikely to affect her. Unless it's magical wine? It's the sight of Schneider, amidst the speech heralding a Lady's eventual appearance, that catches Holly more. Tired? Concern causes her to shuffle over, to steal a deviled egg from her platter, and murmur ever so subtly: "My you do not look well. Should I take a moment to heal you? It wouldn't be a bother at all." But eventually it's more direct; after Schneider disappears and reappears, Holly can make a subtle little ascent, as much as her figure allows her, to listen to her story, and then frown a little bit. It explains the bags. "Would you like us to go look, if you are stuck here?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's back in his nice suit. The one with the soft, high-quality deep-blue jacket lining and tie, the one he actually got properly tailored and the whole thing. He doesn't match the masks by any means, but if you looked at the sides of his sunglasses, you'd see the faint etching on a luxurious alloy rim, of the shape of a finger might imply fingers on temples. His hair is immaculate. His mindset is calibrated. He's ready for something important. His eyes dart to the cubist woman. Did she notice him? Back then? Can't have. It doesn't matter. This night, charged with intense energy as it is, can't be dampened by the Donner Pass. Flamel drinks, socializes, and most of all, he imbibes the atmosphere as only a telepath can, drinking it all up. He stakes a piece of his heart on the continuous rise of joy. Because soon, Arcana will be here. Discreet, though. He can be discreet. And Schneider, the one who has him in her pocket (through no effort of her own) finds him joining her in a movement so subtle nobody saw him vanish and reappear next to her. "Missing person?" He whispers, tensely. "Gonna be tough to get to your home, given the night..." He purses his lips. "Unless you don't think the trail starts there." He turns away a moment, looking back the era's shining gold and vibrant tones. "If you don't have an idea of what to do, well, you came to the right guy! I can track down any idea. Let me see that memory of last night." Given any permission, he'll close his eyes and simply casually walk into her memories, psychically stepping through a threshold into her home -- and telepathically bringing any others who choose to join. And, where Schneider turns to leave Marian, he'll continue following her, letting Schneider's extrapolations and Flamel's familiarity with great conspiracies, alongside his basic-level clairvoyance about upcoming apocalyptic events, fill in as much of the gaps as he can about Marian's trajectory afterwards. Surely it's things Schneider would have known herself. But not said. And hopefully, it's enough to go on for this. At least, without tearing him away from the chance to see Arcana, an important event. It's critical for a casual telepath to get in proximity to the leader of Manus Vindictae, after all.
White	Without a strong idea of the tone of the night or the specific allure of tonight's stage, White decided on wearing 'her usual, but a bit longer in the skirt' again rather than going all out on a full length gown or anything so elaborate as the last time. Her hairbraid is let to hang except for the end of it being tucked into a small pocket on the front of her dress to be sure it doesn't drag or get trampled. After a slap on the back startles her quite badly she hesitates for a short moment before returning the favor; fully open-palm and loose in the wrist, she knows better than to put her hips into the motion... But it still might've been a little loud if the stranger's back were bare. It'd just be rude not to participate, right? Well, that's her excuse anyway. She kinda just wanted a justification to get payback before trotting off further into the crowd. By the time she's face to face with Forget Me Not, she's back neatly in order herself, hands folded in front and pretending she's never roughhoused in all of her life. Led upstairs, she recognizes the dynamic of the VIP section's arrangement immediately. These must be the other 'Commanders' then, to equivocate terms blindly. She would be tempted to snoop a little and get an idea of who they are, but something more important has to come first. Schneider is stressed. White has seen her tense or serious before, but not this sort of sleepless-bedraggled. That moment of eye contact, too... White's expressions are glacial, but her lips are drawn out longer, pursed a little bit thin while she waits to see Schneider again. It seems tonight is a work night after all. When it comes time to slip away from the celebrations, White has years of experience in excusing herself from social functions to draw upon; she had only lightly eaten, so she spends a few moments needlessly cleaning her fingers before striding off downstairs again, slipping into a blindspot beneath the stairs where the crowd itself is a dense wall against observation. She places a hand on one stranger's shoulder as if to gently pull him out of her path, only to gently turn him away from her as she teleportively vanishes from the crowd, directly arriving at Schneider's side and stepping around into her periphery rather than surprising her with a sudden touch. The situation isn't ideal. The pressure of time is growing, and for something like this to be sprung on Schneider suddenly now... White thinks for several long moments about how she might be reassuring, but there's really only one thing that makes sense. "... We will find her. Do you have any clues? Was she... Taken from home?" Her fingers curl slightly, unsure whether to try and comfort by touch or work her magic in a literal sense. As for Flamel's comment about it being hard to get to Schneider's home, she notes, "... If I know where to go, and don't need to navigate... I can arrive quickly." She can just very rapidly teleport in a straight line to the end of her line of sight over and over, but it's easy to overshoot that way; it's not like it affords a chance to get one's bearings in the process. Either way, she follows Flamel's lead when he leverages his own talents, letting her awareness be pulled along more readily than she would normally like. She's not going to let everything collapse on Schneider. Not now.
Schneider Greco	"If you like. I am not hurt, my-la-dy," Schneider says to Holly; which is a lie, because she's a little scuffed-up as she often is from her brawling, but that doesn't even register to her, and so maybe it's a truth after all. While one thumb fidgets with the never-touched handgun safety, her other hand smears up her face to find, uneasily, the rich blue rose. "I could tell you where to go for my home, my-la-dy White, but..." "Unless you don't think the trail starts there." Schneider nods, weakly, as if admitting that she has other thoughts takes a lot out of her. Marian vanished from somewhere else. "She never got to home. Wednesday night. She had the practice for her choir, and she was to go by the market for bread and things, and..." "Thank you." She is grateful for White's help; surprised by Flamel's; and some mixture of the two for Holly's. Schneider lowers her head at Flamel, as if he might need access to her scalp for this. Past the pearl-and-rhinestone headband, and the short mess of mousy-black hair, and the skull and cerebrospinal fluid, is . . . - - - - "Mamma, pappa, what was for dinner?" "I thought we'd have the groceries for it, but..." "Didn't I give you the money, mamma?" "No, no, it's Marian. I told her to get the vegetables, but she's run off." "Be easy on her, mamma. Do with what we have now, and she can come home to a warm dinner, right?" "I suppose... you've rubbed off on her too much." The memories manifest like a toy-set you can move around in; a lifesize diorama, not quite realistic. You can peek through the windows of a home on Chicago's outskirts, larger than it used to be, still cozy-packed for a family of fifteen. Everyone else here is taller, more conservatively-dressed than the one girl you know. Is Schneider the youngest, or just the least-fed? Across the toyset of the city and its simplified gray-block buildings, major places Schneider knows stand out as more detailed effigies. The Church, with its books blank and its windows remembered as smears of color she never looks at closely. The Market, hyper-vivid in its goods and money changing hands, but no trace of Marian there. The Walden, in her mind, sprawls out with black-gold roots... Nothing smells of blood, in her awareness. There's no evidence Marian has been hurt. That should be a good thing, but quietly, it almost distresses Schneider more. This memory intersects with others; Schneiders going about their lives in different places in the diorama. Here she is hissing to her subordinates, Loreto and Achille, about who could have motive; so far as they know, no-one in the underworld does. "Then keep asking," she says dangerously, and they nod and put up their hands. Somewhere else, she checks and re-checks her death-discerning arcane skill. Null result, every time. And elsewhere, around noon in the private rooms of the diorama-Walden... "I know you are busy, but I would be grateful for anything in your power to find my sister, Lord Forget-Me-Not. Surely the Manus, they have seers, or fortune-tellers, or...?" "Of course. I assure you, you are placing Marian's case in the very best hands," says the pale man at the desk. "... Thank you, my-lord." In retrospect, her memory of that squirms with a nameless unease. It's not hard to tell that she's sometimes on-guard around her employer, but... in the memory, Forget Me Not seems just a slight degree more relaxed than even his norm should be. In the real world, Schneider's fingers tense, beginning to bruise a petal.
Holly Asturias	"If you like. I am not hurt, my-la-dy," "Please, hold still for a moment." It isn't hard. It's a bit of fatigue, a bit of bruising, a bit of stress. It's not as though limbs are missing. Holly can raise her hand, place it on Schneider's shoulder, leaning into the fact her big puffy sleeve covers it up and only makes it barely perceptible that there's a bit of a golden glow to her hand for a second or two. Schneider will find her bars refilled! Or at least, certainly closer to her normal than she is now. Like a good night's sleep and a warm meal, for a change, and some painkillers rather than raw nerves. Memories! "This is... incredible. Why I think I'll never stop being amazed by your skills, Flamel. Such a thing... I've only read about them. 'Incursions' we might call them, wherein a Revenant's self overflows into their human or Revenant Hunter host, and -" Holly shakes her head. No, truly, it is neither the time or place. And she's amazed either way, to see this at all. Since it doesn't smell like blood, she has no reason to be stiff. The various places make Holly wander, not too far away from the group, but enough to get her bearings in an unfamiliar toyset. A finger trails on the edge of the church's wall, as if to ascertain how real it is, if it scratches or not from the tip of her nail. Then, finally, she looks at Schneider. "Has this ever happened before? Perhaps a secret place she hides in when stressed, or a hole only the two of you know about?" These games... aren't her forte. She's a bit naive, by nature; not suspicious, except of the obvious worst. But she can draw on sympathy, that if she had a sister, and she wishes she did, she'd do anything for her. "Does anyone anything to gain from your unrest? Not from her kidnapping, solely, but from the state it puts you in. Desperation, and... dependance, maybe, on others? Or simply tiring you out. Compliance?" A brief image in her mind. Holly clicks her tongue uncharacteristically, dismissing it. "Has anyone asked more of you than usual, of late?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel watches the play of figures, the conversation between pawn-like shapes. He explains to Holly, "It is amazing, isn't it? But, it's important to remember, the real amazing thing is the mind we visit, not the way we visit it!" He smiles, broadly. "Remember, the trip means more than the vehicle you arrived in. Don't hesitate to use your abilities here, though, memories are always more dense with information than we give them credit for." He turns, and begins to wander the set. "That's what I'm counting on. Miss Greco's perceptiveness and intuition. A lot of what we don't see and don't remember, that comes from our uncertainty, our mental blocks, our limits, or the confabulations we're willing to indulge. In an astral projection, we can cut through that..." He is a man looking for a child's favorite toy, the one to whom personhood has been most assigned and who has been held the longest and the closest. He is moving furniture and dollsets, his telekinetic hands -- larger than they should be -- lift whole buildings and put them back down when he can't find what he's looking for among them. As his life-size self checks windows and rummages around the marketplace, a giant self working in parallel checks under tables, in boxes, behind shelves. His larger self hisses with sudden, uncharacteristic annoyance, turning away from the playset he was rummaging through to look back at Forget-Me-Not's office in the Walden. And he starts to tense up. Looking at Schneider, he waits until the memory is finished, and then turns to the desk. "I need something for the party." He explains, as if a memory of Forget-Me-Not might object, when he moves over and reaches into a drawer. With recent memories of Garrett Kinney's imprisonment to work with, he rummages in the desk for a figurine of that man, to find anything attached to its memory-concept of recent Manus abduction. A hidden element of Schneider's intuition ought to reside in a place like that; if he gets his feel for her brain right, a figurine for Marian ought to be there, and ought to be attached to something. Force a short-circuiting nonconfabulation, force a deep memory to surface, force a link of insight or prediction. Schenider has seen Forget-Me-Not a hundred times, and though he surely doesn't share any secrets with her, the memories she refuses to act on and the intuition she can't stop should give him something important. Namely, a forced, deep-intuition estimation of where Marian would be held if Forget-Me-Not had any hand in this, synthesized out of her year or so of working with the man and all of that time's deep understanding of the logistics. Schneider knows this more than he does. And if she's wrong, he'd rather support her dead-certain intent anyway. Truly: If Schneider felt in her heart that the Manus were at fault and they hadn't factually touched her, he'd rather support her feeling. And if they had taken her and she was certain in her heart that they hadn't, he'd rather believe that too.
White	Not around home. Wasn't there for dinner. Disappeared while alone, in the market or near it perhaps. Nobody with a known motive in the underworld. Nobody should have a deliberate reason to time a kidnapping to just last night, either. By White's reckoning, there isn't much chance that Schneider and her men are such an unknown that anyone with the means or motive to do such a thing wouldn't know who they are after. Schneider is good at dissuasion and deterrence, and she's already known to any of the clientelle of the Walden after all of her gladiatorial bouts. Maybe there's another, baser reason why, but those are the ones White spins up to justify her hunch retroactively. With Flamel escorting her awareness through Schneider's memories, he's probably at least a neighbor to the noisy chatter of her ten selves talking over and around each other, trying to reason through the possibilities, knocking options off the list, and... Really, working themselves into a bit of a yappy fit with one-another. Schneider's own implicit suspicions, alongside the image of Forget Me Not's utter calm in what Schneider remembers, starts to stoke a smoky, half-smothered anger from deep in White's chest as her own conclusions land crookedly in proximity. Not enough proof to risk popping over to punch Forget Me Not in his stupid peaceful face, but enough to keep stoking it for herself and rumble her way toward an unusual sense of impatience. White had already tried to set these suspicions aside, from very early on, damnit. And now she's being justified? Now?! No. Don't jump the gun. Don't mess things up. Just... Look. "If... Nothing else..." White begins, having to untense her throat before continuing, "... He isn't... Taking this seriously enough. You mentioned... Cells, here. Have you checked them? ... The back rooms, also?" White's eyes snap open, prepared to take every step to scour the building that she might need to, to eliminate every possibility as quickly as possible before moving on. She doesn't have to physically enter every room, just walk through an ajacent passage or the like while looking through the walls and floors; the Walden isn't so massive that she can't sweep it in a few minutes' work. "If not here... I can... Check the market, after." That said, she's probably about to just start running around different parts of the building out of view of the customers, once she gets her bearings on where those cells are- assuming nobody grabs her to give her a better place to start at least, such as Flamel via whatever he might uncover. Most of the Manus representatives are out there too, but it's no guarantee that nobody will be there to see her, even if they only catch a glimpse of her. Too bad for them.
Schneider Greco	In the real world, Schneider's downturned face squirms uneasily at the words 'confabulation' and 'mental blocks'. Under other, prouder circumstances she might insist she has no such things. With the right definitions, maybe she doesn't. If any ego could long survive under conditions of absolute reality, it might be Schneider Greco. But there are always the possibilities you don't bother considering, just because they'd cost you too much if true. "Has this ever happened before? Perhaps a secret place she hides in when stressed..." In the distance, another piece is added to the diorama: a foggily-rendered orchard of beautiful orange trees, an ocean away. Sicily. Barely-rendered as crayon scribbles, two girls talk there; the shorter one in a tree, the taller one on the ground... A fantasy. Marian didn't cross the Atlantic overnight. 'No. Not in years.' Schneider murmurs the words under her breath, in the real world. In the diorama of memories, her disembodied voice comes from somewhere beside you. Her thoughts turn to how little time she has to spend with her family, these days. "Does anyone anything to gain from your unrest?" 'The Foundation. But this does-not seem like them,' Schneider speaks into the mindscape again. '... The Manus is asking as much of me as they always do. That has-not changed.' "You mentioned... Cells, here. Have you checked them? ... The back rooms, also?" 'I can't,' Schneider says uneasily. 'The Walden is... I do-not understand it. Sometimes it seems... al-most alive. The cells are in the tunnels below, but the tunnels change. Only the Manus can find the way through.' With a gut-creeping tinge of shameful bitterness and cold unease: '... The Manus they trust more than me.' It's easy to imagine her not-quite-flat face as she says it, even if your eyes aren't on the real world at all. Flamel finds the little figurines in Forget Me Not's desk- Marian looks nearly like Schneider does, it seems like; but taller, with longer hair, and a less fierce expression. Tugging on it reveals gossamer threads of suspicion, leading to a half-dozen indefinite possible locations in the labyrinth beneath the Walden. [INSURANCE SO I COMPLY?] is how one of the threads-of-doubt in Forget Me Not's office is labeled. But that seems unlikely. If they only wanted to guarantee Schneider's good behavior, they would tell her her sister is hostage. That leaves only one alternative: [THEY ARE FINDING OUT], says another thread.
Schneider Greco	From the way it looks in the memory-diorama, it doesn't seem like it'd be beyond White to canvas even if the geometry does shift, though it'd probably be beyond anyone else. In the back of the Walden, just as in Schneider's mind-diorama, there are ominously wide stairs that lead down into a maze of mahogany-and-then-brick tunnels, intermittently-lit, senselessly opening into ballroom-like spaces or wine cellars or crate-filled storage rooms. Masked Manus grunts go about their party-facilitatng errands down there, not too terribly tough to avoid. As Schneider warned, the hallways shift whenever you aren't looking to conspire against the unauthorized-- but 'whenever White isn't looking' is harder, and peering through walls, she can eventually find a seemingly-bricked-off cell where a black-haired girl lies unconscious on her side, lips and cheek wet with blue-green arcane goo. But if Holly and Flamel are willing to stay by her, for a moment longer... "La-dy Holly. Lord Parsons. If... if they have questioned my sister... it can only mean they are turning against me. I have, not always been meeting what the Manus requires, in truth. So why..." She rubs her arm, through her jacket, unable to lift her eyes to meet theirs. It's the least Schneider-like this girl has ever seemed; or maybe the most like the under-fed urchin who wears her name that Schneider has ever seemed. "Why take my side, over theirs? I can-not offer the Concord much. You know this."
Holly Asturias	Sicily. "Oh my... how beautiful..." It'd be hard to ignore the addition. The flash of younger girls talking, family and... Holly's hand shakes, for a moment, and so she places it on her hip, as if everything were fine. This isn't about... "Why take my side, over theirs? I can-not offer the Concord much." "Because I am here for the woman who reached out for help, not for her benefactors. I... do not have a horse in the race of your world. Or any other, besides mine. Not yet. So what am I to do but trust that if I want to help someone, it's the correct decision?" Holly shakes her head, and reaches into the purple fabric of her bustier. She pulls out a coin, golden, adorned with the twin snakes often depicted as the asclepius rod, their base forming a heart rather than intertwined around a staff. She places it in Schneider's hand, and it pulses, briefly. It doesn't come with the rush of sensations that her 'slipping in' did, not quite; there's nothing in the blood, nothing 'entering' or 'invading' or 'sharing' her. But Schneider can tell, if she squeezes the coin, she can draw on that same strength again. Some of it, at least. Enough. "... should we be separated, and things escalate in some way, use this. It's a lesser kind of heart-to-heart, but it offers much of my boons even from afar. And if you focus, you should be able to call me to your side, too, though... I cannot say how it will work here, in this place. Hold on to it, either way. Even if it can't call me, it's still power." A pause, to look down at the smaller woman and smile. "And a little bit of warmth, if you need it right now." White & search begins. "Now then... this won't hurt~." It's the same as last time; though Holly makes sure to look left and right, to make sure no one will see her turn into liquid gold and blood and gush into White's back, mostly silently, but bringing with her all sorts of odd feelings. The feeling of your blood being heavier, of an extra 'mana bar' you can tap into with its own little set of skills, just for you. White's equipped to handle this in RPG terms. "How... rich. White, you never mentioned!" Slow pulses, like golden light travelling through her limbs. "Oh to have a chance to fee... ah..." Slower pulses, like the feeling of clearing your throat with embarrassment. "Apologies, this is a bit overwhelming. I'm ready."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel finds what he's looking for, the figure stowed away in a shitty uncle's desk. He narrows his eyes and adjusts his sunglasses, both in the real world and in the memory. Tugging along, he follows, from Schneider's memories to her intuition and into the spaces she has inhabited. "I need someone else to handle this part." He says, "I'll..." He pulls away. He steps out of the memory, adjusts his tie. He's having a bit of a tough time looking at Schneider right now. And he turns over what she says. He works his jaw, paces a bit, and stays a bit too silent for a bit too long, before he finally turns to her, lips pursed and tense. "The way this is supposed to go is, I prioritize the mental health of this world, I prioritize fighting the Storm Syndrome. The way it's supposed to go, is that I do everything I can to leverage the Manus, so that I can get access to Arcana, her secrets, her knowledge of the Syndrome, and fulfill my function. Which would mean turning against you right now. The thing I was built for, was to hurt you to try to give the world a few more days of clear thinking." And then his friendly smile surges back up. "But, only fair, you showed me what you couldn't stand to say out loud, I'll show you mine. You saw what happened. In the Motherlobe. I've... been trying to make this math add up, a little too much, a little too long, and the outcomes have been a little too wrong. And when I try to counterbalance them, it turns out..." His smile only gets a little weak. "I'm not sure exactly when, but somewhere along the line, one plus one has stopped making two! Funny how math seems to break after you use it a little too much a little too long. So instead, it seems like what I'm doing, is that I'm stuck paying back a favor I owe you for helping the Psychonauts at the Motherlobe, which has a price that's lower but worth more than the functions and the self-interest, somehow." "But I think I'd do it even if you hadn't. The math's not been adding up for a long time." He says, taking his sunglasses off to wipe them clear on his jacket sleeve. "Maybe it's that UPE-1929 effect. Survival solving backwards and puppeting me through whatever it needs, rationale or no. Sounds like something that'll fit a Psychonauts report. Might even fit the facts of, 'The identity of Schneider Greco.' If we're lucky." The sunglasses go back on. So does the focus. "Double VIP extraction. Stay linked on telepathy. We'll need to all move simultaneously. White's a better VIP-mover, Dr. Asturias is going to be better for recovery and making sure nobody dies. You'll need me up front, to get Forget-Me-Not to be forgetful about anything that's going to compromise you and your family -- as long as you can keep his mind off me long enough to work, he might not even realize I've flipped. If this is right, he's shown his hand and he's willing to hurt them to get to you." "Let's get you through this Storm."
White	Peeling away from Flamel's guidance to return to her own senses, White's impatient urge to get moving wars with a sort of acquired unrest, feeling how affected Schneider is by all of this. She had really, truly, deeply hoped that her original concerns over Schneider's relationship with the Manus had been unfounded. She'd thought months ago, about how Schneider's simple desires for herself and her family were... Uniquely exploitable. But now, it's finally time to do something about that. This isn't the ideal circumstance to be meeting one of Schneider's sisters, but... White was already resolved to this if the time came. It's time to begin work now. She moves her hand, altering the thread length in her dress to shorten her skirt to somewhere nearer her usual, to avoid getting in the way of her movements. She alters her boots, to be softer-soled and more easily reduce the noise of her footsteps with the proper stride. This kind of prep gives Holly the opportunity to merge before she starts off along her way, and it shouldn't be an issue to find bare skin given her shoulderless dress. If there's a pinch or sting, she manages not to flinch; her body's energy shifts like firm jelly, thick and resistant to entry at first while White adapts to hosting another being in her own flesh. Certainly, her body is close enough to human, by design. White takes a breath to adjust to the altered sensation that results from Holly and her own supernaturality overlapping, but she'll find her stride within moments after they begin to move. Holly's overwhelmedness and enthusiasm, meanwhile, earns a small sigh while she rolls her shoulders one last time, and a comment clearly meant to do nothing but stun. "I didn't know... So many would think... A god was edible..." "We'll be back soon... Miss Schneider." is said in passing as she puts on the kind of speed that feels almost impolite to use indoors. She takes to using Holly's power almost immediately as if she'd done it before at some point, using her eyes to check around each corner before she even clears them, leap-stepping more than she traditionally runs and even compensating for turns that come up between steps by teleporting around them. She can't skip too much of the intervening space without risking missing a spot though, so most of the exploration has to happen on foot, cutting corners with magic here and there to skip around the sightlines of staff as she goes. She runs so low to the ground like this that one might almost call it scampering... Shifting tunnels are, as expected, completely manageable. She might take an odd turn into a dead end now and then, but between flicker-vanishing back to a previous spot or gazing through the walls to teleport into the next passage over, none of it can really stop her for long... Though she would prefer if she were able to make a proper map in her head, rather than feel her way through on pure spatial sense. While it isn't as if she can just no-clip through every part of the moving tunnel system, it's doubtlessly the fastest possible intrusion this place has seen. Consequently, as long as there aren't miles upon miles of tunnel to laterally explore, finding a hidden room like the one she does has to happen eventually. Her face all but presses against the wall when she finds it, confirming Marian's appearance. Her arm rears back for a moment as if she's going to punch straight through, but she stops herself before that impulse reaches its conclusion. Holly can probably feel the odd tension in White's body right now, as she restrains herself and warps inside the hidden chamber.
White	White's eyes focus on Marian and the magicked drug smeared on her face, immediately trying to ascertain her health, and double check her identity. White taps her own chest, as if to get Holly's attention by knocking (she doesn't know how this works!) before reaching out to lay a hand on Marian's side. "Can you help her? If we can't take her away now, then we need to leave her in a similar condition to how they last saw her, but we can't risk her dying either. I'll try to teleport some food to her stomach, something small. That should be fine, right?" She's... Talking faster than normal? It seems like she doesn't have as much trouble when she thinks she's just talking to 'herself', even if she's still mumbly and basically speed-muttering at Holly.
Holly Asturias	"I didn't know... So many would think... A god was edible..." "Aheh..." The pulses are still a bit embarrassed. "Everything is edible at least once. But I admit, this is... pray do not judge me if my baser instincts make me... salivate, as it were. I do my best to stay fed, but I still do it far less than I should." It's good she has Nicole to push her, but she's still constantly playing with fire there. White's movemements. "How swift... and you manage to keep track of how you navigate, like this?" She's watching from a comfy White PoV and it's still dizzying! These kinds of fast, rapid movements... she can run, and that's about it! Marian. But then they find her. An agitated but sad pulse. A 'I'm glad we found her, but I wasn't ready for this tonight' pulse. Why yes they're very specific, in that gold hue that travels across White's body when Holly speaks. "No, don't - unless you have food that's extraordinarily easy for the stomach to break down. Saliva and chewing help - nevermind, I can give you the anatomy lesson later. Needless to say, it would be very hard on the stomach if she's weak." Holly gushes back out, strands of gold and streaked in red that reform seamlessly into a whole being, clothes and all. She bends down, to place her hand on Marian. Check her pulse, check for quick signs of inflammation or breathing obstructions. And then, with Ichor and golden light, just go for a magical diagnosis outright. What ails her? Symptoms? The vial, does it smell like any drugs she recognizes? If White can afford her a minute or three, she should be able to leverage most of her knowledge here! Maybe even pour some energy into the girl, purge the foreign elements and heal any damage that's present from them.
Schneider Greco	"Ah... thank you, my-la-dy?" Schneider takes her hand off the blue rose she's been fidget-picking-at to accept the coin, then looks at it almost dumbly for a long second before closing her pale fingers around it tight and squeezing. It feels nice to be given things, but scary to rely on the things you're given. What if borrowed power, borrowed safety, or simple dependency are jerked out frm under you at the last second? Isn't accepting a gift, really, the same as letting someone else put a knife to your neck? Well. Borrowed safety is being yanked out from under her right now. In for a penny, in for a pound. If she lets herself relax... that almost feels nice, too. "But, you know," she says, regaining a little of her devil-may-care smokiness at the instant of resignation, "I would not dress this way if the warmth inside me weren't enough, right?" As Flamel explains, and she waits anxiously on news from Holly and White, her eyes slide over to the empty table that's set for the 'Guiding One'. "I know," she tells him, tight and assured, and for a second it isn't clear what about. "My accounting... it hasn't been coming out straight, ei-ther. The 'Timekeeper', she can-not give me what I want. And the Paladins, the Watch, they can-not give me anything at all. And still... 'making friends'. Not killing Garrett. These things, they don't come to the numbers at all." A little laugh. Her eyes shut, and she lets her head lean back against the wall. "Choosing now, to put 'those unfortunate girls' first... I am glad you've learned, but you pick the worst times to change your mind, my-lord. You could make out like a bandit, if you kept your con-science down one more day." "Now, as the rain comes down, why don't we sit and eat with the appetites of the innocent?" She holds out a hand, to lead him back to the shrimp cocktails. - - - - Using Flamel's networked telepathy, Schneider reaches out as White and Holly navigate. My-la-dies, can you hear me? ... Right. To survive the Storm, we 'on-ly' need spend its worst in places that are safe. Her 'voice' is quiet, but it's too-crisp, like speaking a little too close to an ultra-quality microphone. There will be a slow building-up; and then for per-haps an hour or a day, the world will become nothing, and ev-ery-thing in it, too. Between the Manus and the Foundation... every minute we can buy is precious, I think. And that means to play dumb, until we can no-more, or until they move to kill me.* The room with Marian is completely dark on top of being completely doorless, but lighting it up is unlikely to be a challenge. The only obvious injuries are her bruised wrists and ankles (not currently bound, but formerly tied with rope), but that'll heal. She's unconscious because whatever she was forced to drink was partially a sedative (the rest of its ingredients, if Holly can manage world-specific arcane analysis, make it out as a truth serum), and also because she's utterly exhausted from twelve-plus hours of god-knows-what being done to her, but she is breathing. As White says, though, healing her would look suspicious. Marian stirs groggily when nudged, without opening her eyes. "Nnnh... I'm, I'm so-- I'm not-- she's-- so..." It doesn't come to much more than sleep-talking, but most of the things she tries to say just cut off. "P-please, I'm... want to go home..." That might be the only truth she's tried to say.
White	White doesn't spare much on small talk right now, so Holly's appetite is brushed over somewhat with just a short remark. "If you don't eat right, you won't grow well." But... Holly's..? Maybe White's just really distracted and thinking about Sophia or something..? As for her movements, "I was born underground. The Elroe Labyrinth had lots of predators. If I couldn't move fast, I couldn't eat or escape being eaten." As Holly parts from her body to examine Marian, White remains seated on her own heels, defaulting to a loosely curled-in posture with her hands on her knees and her boots flat on the ground. It's odd to keep watch through the walls of the place, but convenient. Still, she tries to stay away from Marian's gaze, even for as disoriented as she is. It wouldn't be good for 'a bright white woman' or even just 'a god', processed as it might be through Marian's unclear state of mind, to come up in any other interrogation. But, it seems there's little to be done for Marian right now. White gently rubs her back and attunes the Evil Eye to... Well, it's not exactly a 'sleep mode', but it has a relaxing effect. Aimed at someone as tired and exhausted as Marian, hopefully it will help her get as close to a good evening's rest as she can have, in circumstances like these. "... I'll be back... Soon." is all but a whisper. From there, she stands back up abruptly, walking around Holly to find the ceiling-corner of this room that seems least visible from the doorway or from any position an interrogator might stand. She puts her boot against the wall, then the opposite palm, and hefts herself up partway despite the lack of handholds. Then, she reaches out to allow one of her little spiders to crawl from beneath her sleeve, tucking itself into the corner there. Silk emerges from White's arm and fingers, gathering and spinning together into a smooth, featureless little web-nest, the color darkening to match the stone almost perfectly as it encases the spy-der. That little soldier is going to be very hungry, and very unlikely to be able to move from its spot at all, but this at least gives her an active 'camera' on Marian, and a way to know for sure she can return here in an instant. "Okay. We should go." is said matter-of-factly, but not in full comfort. Not even being able to feed Schneider's sister at a time like this sits poorly with her, but if they've done what they can... White begins to alter her clothes back to how they were, checking for dirt and moisture from the trip here before reaching out to Holly. "I'll take us back, to the bathrooms. If you're nervous... Maybe Mister Flamel can... Cover your memory, for a bit."