[Ashley McGowen] [Mind 4, diff 7, coincidental. -1 for focus, -1 for taking time, +1 for never having done this on somebody else before! Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6) [WP]
[Molly Quincannon] Since she doesn't really want to fight against Ashley's resonance or violate Ashley's Sanctum in any way, Molly extends the invitation to Ashley to do this thing at Molly's place. Not the living quarters, though; for this, Molly wants the workshop. There's a bit more open space, for one thing, and there's way less chance that there'll be interruptions (even if Molly wouldn't necessarily notice unless the place was burning down; she really gets into a groove when she works).
So she's cleared the bedroom furniture away as far as she could, parked the TARDISmobile as close to the wall as she could, and left a fair bit of free floor space and workbench for her laptop and whatever Ashley chooses to do with the space. (There is also gumbo for later.)
[Ashley McGowen] [Corr ward! Corr 2, diff 5, -1 for practiced rote, -1 for focus (runes.) Successes needed = 1 for effect, 2 for area, 2 for duration.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]
[Ashley McGowen] [Extending! +1 diff.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[Ashley McGowen] [Extending again!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Ashley McGowen] [Telepathy! Mind 3, diff 6, -1 for practiced rote, -1 for taking time, -1 for focus. Spending WP. Successes needed 4 = 1 for effect, 1 for target, 2 for duration.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]
[Ashley McGowen] [This again. No more modifiers to add, alas.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley's preparations take a long time. It probably seems like half an age to the Cultist, who is aware of the mutability of time itself and to whom the Hermetic doesn't really seem to be doing much. It's the feel of the place that shifts, though. Ashley marks out boundaries, claims the area for her own, however temporarily, in runes shaped from a cut on the ball of her thumb.
Claims Molly too. Having a connection of this sort with Ashley is not a pleasant or comfortable thing: it feels, for a moment, as though jaws are closing around some part of her she can't quite articulate, that which is her, and it feels for a moment like being Subsumed, like that consumption blots out the traces of Molly's Will in the process. It's not painful. Just - it sure as hell isn't comfortable.
[Molly Quincannon] I can work through this, I can work through this, I can work through this...
The feel of Ashley's resonance is creepy, but once she starts at the computer (takkitatakkitatakkita at Ludicrous Speed; she may not be overall dextrous but she can type like a champion) that all goes away, or at least it doesn't matter so much anymore. So between the bits of mathematics, the 'insert-symbol-here' stuff that wouldn't make sense to very many people at all and occasionally dicking around with the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, it's Molly's turn to be busy.
[[Time/Corr/Entropy; future-scrying. Diff 5, -1 time, -1 focus (clock/maths/very-hacked-Google) = diff 3.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 10 (Success x 2 at target 3)
[Molly Quincannon] [[Extending, +1]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 3)
[Molly Quincannon] [[And again! With a little bit of added WP because this is taking way too long.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 9 (Success x 3 at target 4) [WP]
[Ashley McGowen] [Masking Molly's resonance! Mind 2 Prime 2, diff 5, -1 for focus, -2 for applicable resonance Entropic: Hungry, +1 for being unfamiliar with Time magic. Successes needed 5 = 1 for effect, 1 for target, 3 for duration. Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 3) [WP]
[Ashley McGowen] [Extending...]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4) [WP]
[Asylum] [[Now I get to roll stuff! This is for Thess. This will be done 3 times. No one panic.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Asylum] [[Again]]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Asylum] [[Again]]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Asylum] [[This is for something different. 3 times again]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Asylum] [[Again]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Asylum] [[Again]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Asylum] [[And one more thing to check.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Asylum] [[Lessee...]]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Molly Quincannon] [[WP, -1 die for the WP spent...]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Ashley McGowen] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Asylum] This impression is immediate as the Rote begins to take shape.
Immediate and bold.
Chaos.
Unsettled and roiling. Molly knows this much: It is more difficult to scry the future. To discern what is as yet still mutable; fluid; dynamic. Nothing set here. Nothing written in stone, so to speak. Perhaps she's heard that, conversely, it is easier to affect the future than it is the past, for much the same reasons. When all is said anyone who learns divination learns to anticipate the flexibility and uncertainty that is looking forward.
This though... this is sheer madness. And at first it hits hard: A blow to the gut. Molly feels it more directly, but Ashley can feel the residual pulse of how startling it is. Both women recover: Molly with something of a grunt, Ashley with barely a blink. To witness that moment of vortex shards of images, none of it making sense. Like shattering a wall with a hundred televisions, each one showing something different, each shard of imagery still moving: Minute but vibrant. Unintelligible.
...then it clears. And they see what might once have been a large recovery room in an old hospital: Seeing the broken down, rusted metal bedframes and the ripped up, soiled mattresses that remain you can almost imagine everything neat in a row. Sterile once. Curtain dividers. Smells of human waste barely masked by disinfectant and medication. No more: Now it's dark. Moonlight shines in. A shadowy figure is moving through the wreckage of the space: A human figure dragging something still and heavy; grunting -- with the effort or something else. That being dragged could be human. Maybe not.
The figure doing the dragging is half-laughing; half-sobbing.
"I'm afraid now.... I'm afraid now..."
The place feels... lifeless. Flat. Like something has been sucked out of it; like the very room itself has been well and truly abandoned in ways even simple decades of disuse and decay and neglect cannot explain.
Like once this place was so much.
Like now it is a still breath of apathy and void.
"Sorry... so sorry.. I'm afraid now... FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU------"
Twist.
Chaos. Swirling shards of countless, fathomless images. Truths. Lies. What is, what was, what might have been. What may be. What will be. Endings and beginnings and dizzying circles.
Twist
Battle. In a room nearby. Once an operation hall. Instruments still dangle and from the rust it still looks nauseatingly bloody. People are screaming. Gun shots. The burning, brilliant arch of a attack of purest Flame: Someone is hurling around Forces effects like it's no ones business. It likes up the pitch of the room - unnatural darkness - and if you count fast you might make out at least a good dozen people in total, scrambling, running, shooting from behind cover. Some of those people aren't moving at all -- and they probably won't ever again. [Maybe Ashley's seen enough battle and death now to just know that kind of stillness] In the adrenaline rush of it all its hard to make out what people are yelling, groaning, seething.
This is clear:
Detonate it, Sergeant! That's a fucking order.
There's no way we'll all get out in time, sir!
Yeah, well, neither will all of them.
Aw, Jesus... Jesus fuck, Jesus Fuck... CHRIST.
A red glow of digitized numbers, counting down from 30...
Twist.
Chaos. The same. Cyclone. Nauseating. Too much, too much. Thriving dynamism.
All that is possible. All that is real. All that is believed.
Twist.
It's the once-operating room again. It's twilight from the look of things. There is bird song. An impossibility in the centre of the room: Brilliant colours, vibrant and almost liquid as fresh oil on canvas. Grass creeping outward, growing, thriving and in the centre of it is perched a dragonfly. A very very large dragonfly. Iridescent its wings: It's wings in motion though it is not flying. It's easily the size of a cat. It should look alien - maybe even grotesque - but it is beautiful. When its wings beat their strongest plumes of sparking dust rise; so much diamond clouds in the air. From those clouds fly hummingbirds. Grow orchids. Life. Strange things, too: Blink fast and you might swear that was what can only be called a pixie that just dove from gorgeous, large blossom to the next. There's the sound of water, of tides coming in, coming out and a rising song that is heartbreaking in its clarity [Filtered through Molly's perceptions it is, alas, only dissonance to Ashley]. A roar rises: Lion waking. The dragonfly beats its wings and a chimera form leaps into existence while beside it a delightfully ungainly looking pelican waddles to birth: Dopey looking as it walks - gorgeous in flight as it ascends and disappears.
Twist.
Chaos.
[Molly Quincannon] [[And we're rolling again - another WP because we need this to go right.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 3 (Success x 1 at target 4) [WP]
[Molly Quincannon] [[Again!]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Asylum] [[And again for me]]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[Asylum] [[And more besides]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] Somewhere, in her heart of hearts, one must imagine that Ashley is afraid of the recovery room, of the battle. She's human, after all, even if she's losing touch with that humanity in many ways the longer she's been Awake, the closer she draws to (eventual?) Ascension.
She's used to maintaining distance, though, when she connects one Mind to another; it isn't some swirl of Hunger and chaos, what Molly feels from Ashley's mind. Every now and again she'll catch undercurrents, but for the most part, Ashley puts forth what she wants to put forth, and at the moment that isn't much; she and Molly don't know each other that well, after all, and any of that would be distracting given the nature of the task.
So there are stirrings, however brief, of unease and curiosity, and both of those things deepen (her heart beats a little faster, her blood tells her that this is dangerous, that she should be watchful.) She does indeed Know what death looks like without having to glance overlong at the bodies strewn about. She doesn't like it. At all. There's some deep, visceral revulsion.
And then just wonder, the stirrings of muted joy. Molly can feel all those things from the Adept seated nearby, though she knows they're not her own. But for the most part, Ashley remains disengaged, letting Molly do what she needs to do. She's juggling a lot, after all.
[Asylum] Twist.
Earlier now: Three people are walking into the operating room. No battle is going on yet but Molly can sense that is is the same night. Time slips beyond that though. Just that this is the same 'possible' night in a world where possibilities are mutable to say the least. The three moving in are dressed in night operation gear that lacks any visible ensignia that she can make out. One has a radio apparently because you can hear a voice over the static: Feminine.
"Your men are to hold their ground. If the insurgents do strike you are to neutralize and contain if possible: Eliminate and nullify if not. If the need for Contingent 233 arises then you know the appropriate protocol. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good."
The men take up flanking positions around what appears to be a sectioned off space int he middle of the room: Hidden beneath a makeshift tent of heavy, opaque plastic. A light glows within it, faintly. The sound of... beating wings? Strong. Strong. Fainter. Fainter. Fainter. Gone.
"Fuck, that sound gives me the heebie jeebies, man. Can't wait until those jokers back at Secca move in and we're done with this place."
"Can't believe the delay as it is. You'd think we would'a finished already after that skirmish those whackos threw down two weeks ago... can't believe they just waltzed in like no--"
BREACH! BREACH! BREACH AT SECTOR 4. Static over the radio.
Distant gun shots.
Twist
[Molly Quincannon] That skirmish two weeks ago...
There are other avenues to pursue, she knows it. But right now, what she really wants is to see 'that skirmish those whackos threw down two weeks ago'. It shouldn't be too hard. After all, it apparently happened here. She can check on Breach at Sector Four later if she has to. She thinks, anyway. But for right now, she wants to identify 'those whackos'. Not that she hasn't already got information - a few names, a few more avenues to pursue, more points in the prospective timeline to look over - but she wants more now. Ashley can feel it in Molly; the frantic, desperate curiosity, the need to know and see everything at once (but, for now, only having the one head) and making her decisions entirely on the fly, ever so confident that she's going to be able to work all this long enough to get everything.
Even if it's been hours now and she's starting to flag. She can hack it. She's not doing half of what Ashley is, after all.
[[Again! -1 for resonance match so back to diff 3. And the WP again.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]
[Asylum] [[Twisting roll.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Asylum] [[Counter Magic]]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 8)
[Asylum] Twist.
Chaos.
Twist.
"Keep them back.... keep them back, I can still heal her, I just need need a few more minutes, please."
Molly and Ashley both have no problem recognizing that voice: It's Israel. Her voice is calm, but it's the kind of calm that covers and distances an upwelling of emotion.
Gunshot. An explosion. Screaming: Curdling in its pitch and frothing pain.
Twist.
Chaos.
Twist.
Images have gone out. There's but a flicker of the operation room again and then static, darkness, just sounds now...
"I've read about places like this... do you have any idea the magnitude of power here? We can't just let this fall to the Tech's, we can't.."
The voice is too hard to discern: The worlds are clear but filtered, like they do in documentaries when they want to mask someones identity except this is by no means the work of a sound technician. It's the element of chaos to this place, the Twisting. "From here we could see whole worlds if only we knew how to..."
The Time feels wrong here though, just now. Maybe only be days... a week?
Twist.
Chaos.
Twist.
"Out o' your bloody minds! No duracell's worth this rot!"
Tom's voice amidst the chaos of battle: Not as intensive as the large affair from the first interlude of scrying but even a smaller 'skirmish' can prove all too deadly.
"NO. We hold our ground. We HOLD, dammit..."
Molly doesn't recognize that voice.
Ashley might.
TWIST.
Cha--
...Diminishing.
Something is interfering with the Rote. Molly feels it first but Ashley can pick up on it as well: Something is sapping away the strength of not just this viewing but unraveling the very Effect itself.
Something - someone? - has taken notice.
[Ashley McGowen] We HOLD, dammit...
That voice is instantly recognizable to her, and she was not expecting to hear it here. A young man's, a leader's, chivalrous and valiant and - probably - doomed to die blazing, the way Flambeau do. Ashley is too surprised to hide the initial flood of emotion and confusion that accompanies hearing it, and a complex emotional response it is: too much, too brief, for Molly to suss out specifics. Some odd mixture of tenderness and deep, abiding resentment, of admiration and scorn, sorrow and impatience.
No. She'd know it anywhere.
And he shouldn't be here. He should be in Boston, in two weeks.
Ashley's Words form in Molly's mind, shape themselves out of nothing, and her "voice" is an odd dual-natured thing, something high and sweet like her speaking voice with some sort of sibilant undertone, something dark and primal. You're seeing possibilities, I think. It's not stable. A pause. That's a former cabalmate of mine talking. Bran Summers. If he's here my guess is that the Technocracy is going to attempt to seize the node. They're here to prevent that from happening.
[Molly Quincannon] [[WP roll. Curiosity. Diff 8.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 6 (Failure at target 8)
[Molly Quincannon] The first response from Molly is not any kind of verbal. It's a complex sort of thing that denotes something that's not quite impatience I know I'm only seeing possibilities and not quite determination I threw in some Entropy; these are the likelies and...
Well, it's Israel. Israel and gunshots and explodo and she can't just leave without knowing why they're fighting for this place so damnably hard.
So she pushes; not towards the battle but towards that place where the time felt wrong. The place the chaos threw her. The place where it sounded like an explanation as to why whole worlds could be seen from here might have happened.
[[Again! Still diff 3, and we're putting WP into it. May as well make this count.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 4 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]
[Asylum] [[Twisting]]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Asylum] [[Counter Magic]]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 4 (Botch x 2 at target 8)
[Asylum] TWIST.
It's getting stronger now the distortion. As if the very nature of this place Molly is scrying resists this kind of intrusion: Or enjoys skewing it. One or the other. The mutable resonance is strong here, nearly overwhelming as it builds and stretches. Twisting indeed, but not in an Entropic sense. Dynamism is the key at work here. Potential. Drive. Possibility. Birth. Thriving motion.
[the sense of Diminishing halts.]
TWIST
"...the node is powerful. Not anything earth shattering but, I mean, it's still building so who knows what it could be. But that's not the half of it. I don't think it's that Verbena stuff -- I mean, if it was we shouldn't be able to use it. But it gets us there and..."
TWIST.
The room is cold. Empty. Frigid. A roach skitters by from one pile of debris to another. There's a void here. A nothingness. All sense of Resonance is gone. A Null. A cavern. A mystical dead zone.
Sterile, no matter the decay and squalor of its mundane appearance.
TWIST.
"Yeah, Quincannon, M. McGowen, A is all the orders read. I just saw it for a second before Doc shuffled the papers away. They'll get the word and lead the rest right here: HQ figures they might as well snag themselves some Ardees while they finish up here.. with whatever the fuck they're doing behind that fuckin' quarenteen tent."
They see the man from behind. He's sitting on one of the decrepit bed frames, a steaming cup of coffee in his hands, firearm laid out beside him. "Can't wait to PCS out of here, man... place gives me the fuckin' creeps."
"Least we'll get to see some action," another mans voice, facing away, looking out a glassless window frame.
The time is skewed again.. but it's sometime in the future. Weeks? Months? Days? Sometime.
TWIST
[Ashley McGowen] They'll get the word and lead the rest right here.
The emotion that had cropped up upon hearing Bran's voice has subsided into something else, retreated back down: it's like peering into the ocean, wondering what's lurking underneath the waves, looking into Ashley's mind like this. Just something hungry while she listens and works through what's going on, that these are the likelies, and what, from that, might be the best possible course of action.
There might be too much of a flux to get a clear idea, she tells Molly. You should probably stop. It's unstable.
Ashley's concerned. It's not hard to figure that out. Torn, too: there's a course of action she believes they need to take, but one that the Technocracy seems to be counting on. Is expected to be counting on. But they can figure that out later.
[Molly Quincannon] Molly hasn't got much left in her anyway - she's tired, she's stiff, she's sore and all she wants to do is sleep for a week - so she backs it up and backs it off. "That last..." She says out loud, stretching as she pulls back from her keyboard, "...That might well have been going on a likelihood that I'd have kept going 'til I dropped." (So, from the look of her, maybe a half-hour from now.) "I think ... we're going to have to talk about this. With us ... and with other people. 'Cos ... after that last ... I dunno who to tell what to, and what it's going to mean. This ... can we talk it out? Before we go info-dump mode?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley seems a bit less tired - then again, even if she's been doing more raw Willworking, it hasn't been nearly as intensive. Still, in all likelihood she'll be able to use some time to let her mind parse what they've discovered, and food will be welcome.
"Yeah," she says, and Molly feels the connection to Ashley's mind recede and ease away. "As soon as possible, though. We don't have a lot of time...and I think they're going to try to take the node whether we try to stop them or not." The Hermetic runs a hand back through her hair, pushing herself up. "Let's not sit on it for too long."
[Molly Quincannon] "I will call you," she says, "in the morning, when I wake up. There is gumbo and various leftovers in the fridge, help yourself--" And with that, she's heading over to her bed, collapsing on top of it, and more or less dead to the world. Yes, she just gave Ashley carte blanche to raid her fridge.
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