whoops

[rootbound]

Who: Geir, Vern & you!
Where: Shehui (various)
When: Day 196 (backdated to just before the telepathic fail hijinks)
Open/Closed: Mostly open!

i. setting it up (closed to geir)

[this is it. they've spent days discreetly smuggling a small heap of Palai bones one by one to a public park in a less-busy area of the city. with traffic drawn away from it by the festival, and minimal risk of anyone actually getting hurt, it's time to finish up their plan and place the final bones. one to be the trigger, one as bait for the monitors...

they peer down the street.]

...I think we can go.

ii. kaboom (open)

[and if you're in that sector of the city today, you're likely to hear a thunderclap of noise and see a brilliant flash of light coming from said park. Shehui citizens and visitors around you exclaim and turn to look, and you may see monitors making their way through the streets to the source...

Vern speaks telepathically through the entire coven's signets before the dust of the explosion's even settled, voice clipped and abrupt]

Vern and Geir here. If you're walking the city today, don't go near-- [he names the neighbourhood of the park.] If you're already near it, don't actually go to the park; make sure there are eyewitnesses that you weren't there at this time. You don't know anything about this, you weren't involved. All right?

iii. in the aftermath (open)

[Geir and Vern don't actually get themselves arrested; they're on the ground floor of the coven house as usual that evening, if you want to ask them questions face to face in a reasonably private space. they look kind of pleased with themselves...? mission success?]

Comments

[dawninglight]

[she nods, and then remembers that he can't see her nod via telepathy.]

Yes! I told Geir I'd wait at your room, so I'll see you there later. Good luck.

[rootbound]

[LATER, INDEED

depending how long she's been waiting beforehand she might actually catch them walking in. Vern looks pretty speculative, frowning to himself in thought]

[dawninglight]

[with nothing better to do after being told to not poke her nose around the park, she pretty much went straight back to wait for them and is on her feet as soon as they arrive.]

--There you are! I was starting to get worried. Well? How did it go?

[rootbound]

[he takes his time getting a seat first just to annoy her (sorry)]

Actually better than expected...? They didn't exactly stand around and tell us all their secrets or anything, but we got a location and a clue to where the magic in this city might be. Maybe Qri, too.

[dawninglight]

[she taps her foot impatiently while waiting for him to speak, but doesn't do anything beyond being a Visibly Impatient Teenager about it.]

That's better than anything we've learned so far, so it's not a bad start. Do you think they've got Qri locked up somewhere? It's possible she was just kicked out of the city too, right?

[rootbound]

I mean, maybe, but that seems hard to do. She's got at least some protection on her, and her magic obviously works, since ours does...they could be trying to find out why. They didn't mention her specifically, though.

[dawninglight]

If she's not here then the only other place she could be is outside of the city. Well, if that's it then she's got to show up eventually to get us out of here.

If they do have her, they might not know it either. If they can't get inside of her caravan they might just think that it's a weird magic box, right?

[the realm of magic is still new enough to her that she's not sure quite how that works, but it sounds logical enough to her]

But, aside from that, do you know what this magic we're supposed to find looks like? I'm guessing they didn't mention that at all, but it would be pretty nice to know.

[rootbound]

I mean, we still don't know if they took her or if she's somehow gotten out and about on her own...

[SHRUGS; for all that he's putting 'find Qri' about as a reason to justify blowing a hole in a park, he doesn't particularly care about her except insofar as her health failing more might fuck up the coven]

I've got no idea. I'm guessing it might be a jumble, though, if it's confiscated artifacts like the one we left them. A lot of traffic must pass through this city, right? Maybe magical items taken away on entry, or if people actually believed the hype here and joined themselves and gave it up.

[dawninglight]

I would have thought they'd throw it all out if they hate magic as much as they say they do. But maybe it makes more sense for them to keep it so that no one else can use it.

[mulling it over for a second...the options at hand are "steal magic items so Qri will let them all leave, wherever she is" or "don't steal magic items and be stuck" and while neither is particularly appealing, stealing sounds fine.]

We could just grab what we can, if we're sneaking in to get it.

Are we sneaking in to get it? I thought that might be the plan, but I wasn't sure.

[rootbound]

I think we have to? Unless you want Geir to tear the building up, which is not really...great...?

[dawninglight]

N-no, I don't think we need to tear any buildings up if it can be avoided. And we can definitely avoid it in this scenario! Just because we don't like it here doesn't mean we have to make it annoying for everyone else.

[rootbound]

If this was a situation where they were actually hurting us I'd go for it, but you're right, they're mostly just doing their jobs.

[sighs]

I hate big cities. I hope we go to a desert next.

[dawninglight]

[she nods along until he says "desert"]

Why a desert? A forest with no people would be better. Finding a water source big enough for the whole coven and Geir in a desert would be terrible.

[rootbound]

Obviously I'm thinking of an ideal desert where we have sufficient water. I'll take a forest, though? But just...somewhere that isn't an enclosed bowl of people.

[dawninglight]

Just say that, then! There are plenty of places without people. Where I'm from sometimes it seems like there's more wilderness than there are villages. It seems more surprising to me that there are places like this in the world, just full of people.

[rootbound]

Got get annoyed with me when I say I don't like people!

[:T]

...most of our cities are near the coastline. But they're smaller than this.

[dawninglight]

I'm slowly learning to accept that part of you! Don't make me change my mind.

[huffs!!!]

...The capital and the palace are big where I'm from, and so are a lot of the port cities along the coast that might be as big as this. But otherwise most villages are very small. That's probably similar to your cities, so I can see why it would get overwhelming if you're not used to it.

[rootbound]

[*you get annoyed, my typing ability is incredible

also ew are we bonding]

...it's not like I haven't stayed in cities before. But not this long, and the combination of being on a payment system to stay and not knowing where you go when you leave is just...ugh.

[dawninglight]

[does agreeing about something count as bonding]

I'd rather just leave. Nobody wants us here, and I don't particularly want to be here! The hub was preferable, even if it is just an island floating in space.

[rootbound]

[it could]

...yeah, I'd rather just stay on the hub. But as long as our fearless kidnapper needs to be fed magic...

[dawninglight]

She can't be fed magic if she's in hiding! Or kidnapped.

[it would serve her right to be kidnapped, actually]

...It's not the most charitable thought, but if the government has kidnapped her caravan I hope it makes her reflect upon her actions at least a little bit. So far she hasn't done much except inconvenience us and inconvenience the worlds that she throws us on. There's got to be a better way to get the magic that she's looking for.

[rootbound]

I don't actually mind the time away for myself and Geir, but our circumstances are pretty unique.

I wonder how long we have to wait to have that actual conversation with her.

[dawninglight]

She made it seem like she'd speak to us as soon as she could. Since she could say that much it shouldn't be long.

...What kind of a unique situation makes it so that you don't care if you're at home or not?

[rootbound]

It's really more Geir's story to tell than mine, but basically we were hiding out at home anyway.

[dawninglight]

[she could make commentary about how they're both hiding out in their home countries and reluctantly concede that maybe they have something in common

but, instead of that,]

If you're hiding out I bet it's because of something that you did, not Geir. So it's just as much your story to tell.