[Molly Quincannon] Okay then! First thing she's going to do? (Or rather - not going to do?) She's not doing this aboard the Lafette or anywhere that connects to anyone she knows. Since she booked her no-tell motel with cash and had it for another week despite having moved to the Lafette, she's going to go back there to do this thing. Let them think she's skipping around cheap motels for awhile, if they check for warded spaces. So she's going to ward that before she starts.
[Molly Quincannon] But first? What she's looking for is the sort of Time/Entropy (and probably Mind) equivalent of those human interest stories you hear after plane crashes, where someone had a bad feeling and cancelled their flight and it turned out the plane they were supposed to be on crashes and kills everyone aboard. Only also in reverse - her idea is to make it so when she thinks, "Should I scry out my old living space?", she'll have that 'bad feeling' if it's not safe to do so, and not have that bad feeling when it is. When she has a good feeling about it? Then she'll scry.
[Reprisals] Time is a difficult Sphere to maneuver, let alone Master. Of the Abstract Spheres it is certainly one of the most difficult to navigate. What is a ripple in the water? At the epicentre very, very little... but watch how it oscillates. See how it grows outward, larger, broader, gaining, growing, each iota less and less easily grasped. Time lends itself so very well to Entropy because the essence of Time is, in many ways, so firmly attached to the idea of Probability. Possibility. Chaos theory.
In this sense there is a boon to working the more rudimentary levels of this Art: Its very limitations give it some greater depth of control. Here and now Molly lacks that ability to enter actual Time manipulations into the equation which decreases the sheer magnitude of Chance. What if this little tweak.. this little change. What if option A, B, or T-Z^3?
On the flip side: Working oneself carries its own difficulties. Perception is the essence of Magic. The foundation of Paradigm. Will is Reality and our own wills are not generally inclined to being Objective. So as basic a question as "Should I scry out my old living space?" isn't precisely so simple. What hopes and fears colour this question? What Frantic need, urge, drive [Curiosity] wills a positive response? What little tell tale tweaks of negativity will Frantic and Curious and Dynamic, Questing surge ignore for the sake of information?
Which is all to say: She never gets a clear green light in terms of that illusive gut feeling she's seeking. Neither does she ever feel a foreboding sense of outright doom. It's a game a roulette Molly, dear, and your own need slips in there, colouring it a rosy hue... if you get no sense of outright, unavoidable danger, then certainly there's a chance. Certainly just minimizing the risks as much as possible then warrants trying to suss out just what went on in there. Just what remains. And so with each attempt to decipher the best time to go ahead and check the place out she begins to feel more and more certain that the risks are manageable... or so laden with various ripple-shifts of Probability and Possibility that certainly there are still good Odds on her side.
[Molly Quincannon] [[Rolling Curiosity, for my own personal edification...]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Molly Quincannon] Curiosity can be mastered, with effort. And once that's been mastered, an analytical mind and logic prevails. The question becomes, What will you gain by taking this risk?
On the one hand, does it really matter? She cannot go home. There are shell identities ready for her to take if she needs to. Funds have been discreetly moved to other places. She will not be left wanting, and as far as she knows, her name is still secure. There is no percentage in knowing when they're gone, because they will likely keep watching her former home, and even when they're gone, she can't go back. These are the things one has to consider - whether or not it matters, when there's a risk involved in even doing a hunt-around?
On the other hand ... if she scries the place, if she sees what they've seen, seen what evidence they've accumulated, then she might be able to figure out what they have on her, what they'll pin on her, how long she has before she has to make Molly Quincannon disappear (if indeed she does have to make that name disappear; she's confident in her set-ups, after all). Who knows what sorts of conversations they'll have had, while taking her place apart. Might give clues to how screwed Ashley is, too.
Knowledge is power. Forewarned is forearmed. She'll err on the side of caution - no elusive green light, but she'll wait until the risks seem as manageable as possible before throwing self-imposed Arcane over herself, masking her Resonance and going back to the motel she stayed in before moving to the Lafette. Circuitous routes, just in case. She still has the place another week. From there, it'll be ward-and-scry.
[Molly Quincannon] The ward is a little more complicated than one might expect. There is a simple Correspondence ward (dude, there is nothing here, promise...) but underneath that, there's also a ward to block out, for example, electricity. In case someone has decided to spike comms after the Asylum affair, she'd rather not get a heavy amount of electricity to the brain. Extra successes to add Mind for a resonance mask.
For the scry? Correspondence for location (it's across the city, but quite familiar), Time (to cover the last week), Mind (to cover the last week while there have actually been people inside, else it will be very boring - not to mention masking the resonance of the actual rote and) and Forces (pick up any cellphone signals or similar that have gone out over those particular points).
[Reprisals] This much is clear when the Rote begins to unfold itself: The area has been heavily tampered with. Distorted in terms of Time magic. But rather than just a ripple-fuzz on the edges of the small screen that might speak of someone else riding a similar frequency to likewise hack in and get a 'view', this becomes far more like bad static and spaces of all out visual white-noise; snow on the screen.
But just when Molly may be ready to curse up a storm and call it a lost cause, the screen clears. A snippet, a brief few seconds of clear view and clear voice:
There are two people in business suits standing in the middle of her makeshift living room. One is a woman, her hair swept back into a pristinely perfect - if simple - ponytail of wheaten gold. She is coming up from a crouch and tucking something small into the inside pocket of her jacket while she speaks...
"--it's well known that those who traffic in illegal animals sometimes also have fingers in other illegal imports and exports. Sometimes even small scale biological weapons trade, facilitating the need of domestic terrorist cells."
"Dont'cha think anthrax is a little over played these days?" It's the man now and he's turning towards the woman and Molly should be able to make out his face but it's all.. muddled. Fuzzy. Hazy like a fine mist was laid over it just so, staying in place so frustratingly exact.
The woman snorts, "I like the classics."
Then static again. Snow. White noise. Deliberate tampering and here is what Molly must ask herself:
Who messed with the Scry flow here?
And what's with the moment of clarity? Was as it a sign of a poorly done job? Or is it an attempt to keep Molly - or anyone else - 'on the line' so to speak, stretching it out for a chance at more information... keeping the connection active longer?
And if it's the latter -- then was what she just saw legit or fabricated somehow?
[Molly Quincannon] [[Curiosity roll again...]]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Molly Quincannon] Molly is capable of learning her lessons. She backs way off at that point, and stays backed off. Too much tampering, too much risk for not enough benefit. She doesn't know entirely what to trust at this point, but she's not sticking around there to find out how far they'd go to 'trace the call'.
She does, however, have something else to check out - the note that warned her of the impending strike. (At least she now knows - probably - that there was one, whereas she only had the note to go on before.) She wants to follow this note through its brief but eventful history - who wrote it, their intentions for doing so (sort of a psychometry type of effect) and where they came from. It's possible they wrote that note in her driveway, but ... it's unlikely.
[[Another, arguably safer, scry - same Spheres.]]
[Reprisals] Molly backs off, severing the tie [perhaps elsewhere in the city Israel breathes a sigh of relief and feels a warm, contented feeling for reasons unknown, eh?].
But she does have that note, yes. And in many respects finding out who tipped off her and Ashley may be just as important as finding out anything about the Techs themselves. So it is she uses the note as a Medium, as a Facilitator, as that psychometric link between herself and whoever wrote the bloody thing...
...Sweep back now, back to the notes origin. To the space in Time and Existence in which it became more than simply a blank sheet ripped out of of Five Star notebook. Traveling the past is easier than scrying the Future: The Past is set [for the most part]. The past is composed of fossils and sedimentary lines of the flood whereas the Future is the flood, the ripples, the currents and tides all cast upon the whim of a butterflies wings.
There is a man.
In a small room. With a Murphy bed. Clean but small and barren, this room. Except for that Murphy bed, now drawn down, and the man who is laying atop it, dressed in a suit that looks rather like it just got dragged out of the Pringles can it was recently wadded up into. There's the notepad on his belly, his head propped up on pillows, his large, rather buggy eyes intent on what he scrawls. This is the birth of Note. This is the perspective of the man: From the notebook face and up. Zoomed in.
He is not an attractive man.
He is an older man.
Thin hair. Receding hairline. Sallow toned skin and, well, decidedly crooked teeth.
He pauses his writing...
...and speaks to the note book.
"I hope you're checking this, whoever the fuck you are. I hope one of you knows to check this. Because we should talk." Now he runs a free hand over his face, a motion of aggravated tiredness. His tone a snorted musing, "Not like I haven't got enough to deal with as is. Anyway: Saturday afternoon, the 19th. The Green Mill in Uptown 'round 8pm. Bring backup if you like. I'll be alone."
He's lifting a hand then and upon this hand there is a bronze ring on the middle finger, heavy with scroll and etchings though if it has a stone setting atop, Molly cannot see it... then the hand pauses and the man looks down at the notebook page again, "Oh yeah: If any of you get the bright idea to Scry one of the hit locations, for fucks sake: Don't. They don't know identities but they know one or both of you dollies can manipulate Viewings of Correspondence and Time. Stay the fuck off it."
Then there's a motion of that ringed hand and unintelligible, thick, glottal words...
...and then the brick is flying, sailing, soaring through the air. A swan song and the note is the passenger and Molly is stooping to pick it up amidst shattered shards of glass and....
The life of a Note.
[Molly Quincannon] Molly blinks at the note, with the following thought: Next time? Check the arguably-safer thing first. After all, if she'd done that in the first place, she wouldn't have taken the risk of scrying her home. Probably.
Then again, if she'd scried the note first, she wouldn't have had a test of her self-control, of what she's learned.
So the note goes back into a pocket and she goes, via a circuitous route, back to the Lafette. And she wonders what to wear to a semi-clandestine meeting-date to which one's date doesn't even know if you'll show up.
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