So Much For Vacation Time

[Molly Quincannon] It's been less than a week since the strike on the Asylum; everyone's had their own recoveries and their own fish to fry in the interim. Still, the word gets out in many ways, and most everyone knows the scores on the doors by now. No one on their side is dead. Poor newly-Awakened sod. Mission accomplished, etcetera.

So Nathan gets a phone call from Molly; something full of yawn and groggy about "can I pick your brains on ... stuff quasi-related to recent shit? Here or yours is probably better, though here'd be nice. Y'know ... stuff not for coffee shop consumption. Ooh. Coffee is a good idea. Anyway!"

She's still in nightwear when Nathan turns up to the door - oversized sushi-print pyjamas, Vader slippers, and a look that says that the coffee has not kicked in yet. "Hey. Coffee's on. How're you doing?"

[Nathan Spriggs] Fish to fry, right... In his case, reading. A lot. With the short down time in between disasters and other dark clouds over the city, he's chosen to spend it on something worthwhile and meaningful... Well, to him anyway. A psychiatrist might disagree.

Groggy phone calls, however, turn out the be the leading destroyers of new happiness this week.

Not that he says no, much as his mind wanders to asking why at the spare moments he lets it. When he arrives at the door, knocking thrice as he always does, Molly'll notice he's wearing his casual-wear for what it's worth, a white shirt with an unbuttoned brown blazer, black work pants and black leather shoes. "I'm good. Could be better, but this city'll never allow it. May I come in?"

[Molly Quincannon] Confusing the Tired!Molly is apparently the new national pastime. She blinks at him, then says, "Well ... yeah? I did say about the coffee, right? And--" Then she realises she's standing blocking the doorway (perhaps it's the cold air) and steps aside to let him in. "Oh. Sorry. Yes, of course you may. And it's not all doom, is it? I mean, we're more or less between doom, for now, anyway."

She pours coffee for him before saying anything, then she sits down, curls up and asks, "...What do you know about the Rogue Council?"

[Nathan Spriggs] [Perc + Awareness; I forgot]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Nathan Spriggs] Following her in at those words, he throws himself onto the couch and watches Molly for a moment. A curious glance, piercing in a way too. Gauging about the reasoning behind the question. Magic and Resonance all around, in the air, on her, around her. Stronger than the usual.

"Would this have anything to do with the fact you feel like you spent the whole night throwing Weavings out as factory speed?" He asks, a beat before waving it off with a gesture. "In any case, the Rogue Council... I know about as much as anyone else. History and all. I also know they're in town and what some of them look like, a guy, a woman and a kid. But that's it, really."

[Molly Quincannon] "A guy, a woman and a kid? Like, family unit or...?" She's clearly trying to fit that into something she knows. The reason behind it becomes a little clearer when she asks, "What'd they look like?"

After which she addresses the question ... sort of. "Oh, not the whole night. Most of it, but the rest was a little visit to the DMV database courtesy a helpful backdoor I stuck in there around July. Not that I'm complaining, but I still don't believe they haven't patched that up yet. Probably haven't found it. Damn, I'm good." She looks around as if she could maybe see the resonance build-up on her. "I did mask resonance, so you ask. So it might be obvious on me, but not so much ... y'know, there."

[Nathan Spriggs] The look on Nathan's face at this moment is somewhat akin to what someone looks like when they're about to do a facepalm. It's an 'Oh CHRIST, what now?' sort of look, and it comes just after she mentions the DMV in her answer.

Still, coffee shop fresh in mind, he knows better than to start pointing fingers and jabbering of. So when he speaks again, it's a calm tone, "I won't ask what happened, 'cause honestly speak... I don't think I want to know, not right now."

A sip of coffee then as he considers. "Why're you curious?" are the words that follow, their true translation something along the lines of: Gimme what you clearly have on 'em and I'll give you my stuff.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly responds to the question by reaching behind her and pulling another one of her handy-dandy USB drives off the desk. "Met some people. They seemed friendly enough, but after the Retvier thing, I don't promise a damn thing unless I know them or have checked them out." She gently tosses the USB drive his way. "Bit of a twenty-twenty hindsight look at where they were poking around, including any phone conversations or similar that left the property over the last little while; and details of the owners of three of the four motorbikes the people involved were riding. The fourth ... had that thing. You know that 'don't notice or remember me' thing? Man, that gives me such a headache. He was standing two feet from me and I can't remember his face; it's a pain in the ass. Anyway, Mr No-Face, all I've got on him is that his name's Evan and he's a Euthanatos, but that's process of elimination. The others ... Nora the Verbena, Gabriel the Chorister - feels a little like a friendlier, more personable version of Solomon ... and Anya, the Cultist who greeted me with, and I quote, 'You have three seconds to tell me who you are and what you're doing here before I kill you'. She had a gun." She's so casual when she talks about that kind of thing. "Is that how we say hello, now? Seriously? Am I doing it wrong?"

Then she sighs. "Apparently they've been up to some kind of shit in Chicago and have mostly taken care of it but there's someone that got away that they're trying to hunt up. Also, big warning about how the Mirrorshades are moving in over here, which ... seriously, old news, right?" Then she frowns. "They talked about being under orders from the Rogue Council. Which ... I never saw them as quite so much an 'orders' sort of organisation. And since this is the second time I've had contact from members of that organisation, I'm wondering how long it is before they start trying to issuing me orders, and how to tell them to fuck off if necessary without getting shot again."

[Nathan Spriggs] Slowly, bit by bit, the rhythmic tapping he does when he's thinking becomes faster paced, a bit with every word Molly speaks. It only stops to take the USB, and then once it's secure in a pocket, back to the same exact pace it'd left off at.

A shake of his head when she finishes, and much as he's concerned for whatever this all means, it's also expected. So much for vacation time. No rest for the wicked, they say. After a quick open-and-shut of his eyes in thought, Nathan responds, at first with a slightly amused tone, "Right, well... If you ask anyone who was around in the early days, that's pretty much where I set the bar back when I was just the one, yeah." Then a chance, subtle as it is, to something more serious, concerned even. "So the Council's supposedly moving, huh? Well, I'll give you what I know, but promise me, no, swear, you won't use this to track down the people I'm gonna tell you about. Not even a bit. I don't trust 'em but they did bail us out in sorts, and I don't want things to escalate." It isn't distrust, Molly can probably understand that much, it's damage control. Sense. You don't poke at problems with a sharp stick when they have given more signs of at least not trying to murder you than not.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly has her own kind of sense. Her sense goes They're a terrorist group, more or less. They work in cells and none of them necessarily know what the other's doing. If I got involved with both, that would suck for them and me. And that's more or less what she says to Nathan: "Swear. Seriously, I've got enough to deal with knowing about just the one group of 'em without going and digging up shit about another one. I'll save that for if you guys ever need and ask for that kind of thing." Then, a little sheepish, "I felt bad enough investigating this crew - contrary to popular belief, invasion of privacy does not give me the warm fuzzies just in general - but ... y'know, better safe than shot some more, I guess."

Then, she addresses the other bit. "Really? I never saw threatening to shoot people as much of a greeting, personally. Actually, it kind of blows the element of surprise if they want to hurt you. You threaten them and they have an excuse to try to do something horrible, whether that was the game plan or not. But I guess whatever works for people..."

[Nathan Spriggs] "Oh yeah, if you look at it logically, sure. I'm fairly certain it goes without saying that I really wasn't, not at that point." He responds with a shrug and a small self-derisive chuckle before nodding and letting out a sigh, secretly wishing his lungs didn't still feel like freezing from the cold. "Right, well... Just don't get caught, or shot. Or both. By anyone. Consider the DMV hole carefully too by the way, avoid using it if you absolutely can, who knows if they left it open on purpose as a trap now that the MBI's in town." Yep, Solomon was rubbing off, everything was a trap. Before Solomon, it was only most things that made him think that way. He's not ordering her though, simply commenting to make sure she acknowledges the possibility.

[Molly Quincannon] The comment gets a raised eyebrow and a bit of a smirk. "Yeah, I'd have considered that a possibility if I didn't keep my backdoors well-hidden and well-guarded. If they were being watched, I'd know. I'd explain exactly how but you'd give me that sort of stunned look that, while surprisingly attractive on you, probably isn't how you want to spend your afternoon. Anyway, bottom line: I don't poke around the DMV for shits and giggles, it's an option I reserve for when it's a choice between informed or potentially shot, and I'm good at what I do. Taken under advisement, anyway. And I don't intend to get caught or shot. Particularly not by the Cultist that Nora-the-Verbena-with-the-funked-up resonance said had rabies." She gets thoughtful then. "I hope she meant figuratively."

Then she gives a self-deprecating grin of her own, swigs from her coffee and says, "Hey, I get that everyone's worried and if shit happens to me, it could have repercussions on you guys if anyone made me talk. I do get that; you know that, right? I try not to take too many stupid risks when it's others on the line. But I can't sit and not do my all to get potentially useful information either. That's not my way. But I'm not totally heedless of what kind of shit my being careless could get you all into either."

[Nathan Spriggs] With a wry smile, he responds more with a shrug than anything else. "Well, you know how it is. We reiterate just so we feel better about ourselves and sleep soundly at night, knowing we 'told you so'. Better to repeat yourself a million times than let it stand unspoken and someone not realizing it?"

[Molly Quincannon] Molly gives Nathan a bit of a skeptical look at that. "I ... guess. Though 'I told you so' always smacked of schadenfreude to me. Anyway, it's been said, I get it, and while I may not always act on it as much as everyone might like ... well, let's face it. I think people would 'like' it if I just stayed out of the way until they needed me to hack something, and that's just not gonna happen. But at least I'm learning to be a bit more careful? Kinda. It's a slow process; what can I say?"

Then she waves the whole thing away. "Anyway, I didn't really mean to dump this on you or anything. I can probably handle this as it stands right now, since it's not really a 'all hands to battle stations' thing. I just wanted you to know in case things went south all of a sudden, y'know? No more 'there are hidden flash drives with the stuff you need to know on them' kinda stuff. Which I figure was probably pretty much a huge pain in the ass; sorry. Anyway, it's just so someone else knows who isn't me. Just in case. Call it a ... meatspace off-site backup."

[Nathan Spriggs] With a grin and a nod, "Yes, it is. A bit. Schadenfreude, I mean. But thanks for the info, no complaints if I inform Israel on the side? Or would you rather do it yourself? I figure first-hand information always beats second-hand." With those words, Nathan downs his entire cup of coffee in what amounts to a few blinks of an eye and sets it aside.

"How goes the whole transition process, by the way?"

[Molly Quincannon] For a moment, Molly actually looks perplexed and then surprised - it had not actually occurred to her to tell Israel about this, and when the thought does occur, it's clearly a surprise to her on a number of levels. "Oh. Right. Yeah, I'll let her know. I wanted to invite her over anyway; I have this chocolate-caramel-pecan cookie recipe I wanted her to taste-test. Least I can do after she fixed my poor fried brain. Don't believe they spiked me. Bastards."

Then the question about the transition thing, and more sheepishness. "Oh, Kibo help me but it can be hard in a crunch-time situation. I mean, practicing the things is one thing but it's going to take awhile before 'fingers-on-keyboard' isn't going to be my default when I'm actually trying to do something. I mean, it's probably for the best because I want to be a lot better at it before I try using the new foci when it counts, but it's still annoying to know that when it comes down to it, it's always the laptop for the heavy stuff. Though the wards and stuff yesterday gave me a bit of an idea..."

It goes from there. A lot of Molly's ideas probably go a bit over Nathan's head, though there's talk of symbols and their application that might make sense if you get past the fact that said symbols are all generated with numbers and code. She also asks how his read-through of her Forces stuff is going, and tries to help explain in simpler layman's terms where she can. So it goes until someone has somewhere else to be.