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Schneider Greco      Whatever official warpgates the Foundation knows of, the Manus seem to know of their own. Schneider Greco has given an address to a shimmery purple-green tear down by the Illinois River an hour or two south of Chicago, hidden from prying eyes by sheer rural distance and scruffy undergrowth. It seems otherwise untrafficked.

     It's quite late already. The stars are out; only the aside-glaring headlights of a puttering nearby car and the shimmer of the warpgate behind provide illumination.

     The year is 1927. Humans haven't yet painted the world with enough light to blot out the Milky Way. It's gorgeous, once your eyes adjust.

     Three figures stand by the car, their features washed out by the glare from behind, but...

     "Hey, it's Lady Kukuru! Remember your pal, Cosimo?"
     "And they've got the fed, too..."
     "What have I told you, Achille?"
     "Uh, yes, boss."

     The girl who wears the name 'Schneider' sashays down out of the blinding light with little delicate steps, glare sparkling through the sequins on her stark black jacket, and greets you all with a bow. Her guns are holstered, and she's still half-naked in her red feathers; the odd umbrella that Angela granted her is tucked under her arm, and a heavy briefcase is in her other hand, probably stuffed with cash..

     "Please, come. We are only some distance from the, ah, point of the sale. It is time enough to talk, my-lords."

     'Cosimo' is driving. The boxy convertible car feels oddly spacious and oddly brittle compared to modern machines; the walls are so stiff and so thin you can just imagine it crumpling like an aluminum can. There are no seat belts. The floor is carpet, and the seats are like leather sofas; it should probably 'only' seat six across two rows, but this era has no concept of armrests to enforce such a thing.

     A small open cargo trailer is hitched behind, little more than some planks with wooden rails and two wheels. It's empty, but full of promise.

     "Look, Cosimo, it's not gonna fit this many people. I told her. You go back and--" 'Achille' starts to say after sliding in behind his fellow mobster. "Speak to me or don't speak, Achille," Schneider replies, sliding by his window to lounge on her side on the cargo trailer. It's an effortlessly comfy posture for such an uncomfy seat. Her face is just a foot or two from the rear view window; you'll still be able to talk to her by looking back.

     "... Boss, are you sure--" "I'm comfortable, Achille. Drive." "Y-yes ma'am."

     The car pulls out, and starts to tear down close-wooded dirt roads at a majestic fifty miles an hour. It's a beautiful night.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons perks up brightly as he walks. "Hi! I'm the fed -- but like I've always said, I'm in Miss Greco's pocket." He adjusts his sunglasses and they gleam in the headlights as he heads to the car. He takes up little space in the back row, preferring not to bring the sinister surveillance van to an era where that, frankly, doesn't make a lot of aesthetic sense. But he does wind up looking up often -- something on his mind as he watches the stars, like a twinge in his thoughts.

    "Psychological refeeding," He says. "Is probably our main issue. Once the chance to have a huge amount of stability comes in... Psychohazards in their minds are more likely to go off, because that also means a huge amount of power, control, things like that -- *or* they can get you really scared that you're about to 'miss your chance', so weirdly, getting a lot of safety really fast can incite *fear*-typed psychohazards."

    "Anyway, all that to say, I'll try to run mentals." He taps the side of his head. "But no guarantees. Getting a huge change to material circumstances has a lot of mental effects. Wish me luck, and if I zone out for a long time, make sure nobody depends on my reaction time!"
White White has nothing to hold her up from arriving promptly again, and steps out of the obscure rift in space looking much like she usually does. The main difference is that the top of her dress is actually connected to her sleeves, and said sleeves are a single enclosed piece of silk without the typical gaps she leaves; not enough difference to change her silhouette, just to cover her a bit more with 'the times' in mind.

Not that she really knows if it'd make a difference, but it was a last-minute adjustment anyway, so she's not going to overthink it.

     Stepping out into brush in a rural space doesn't seem to bother her at all, despite how delicate her dress seems at a glance. She steps over or around whatever's in the way, and if something's blocking more than knee-high she can just draw it aside with her webbing, like one might hold up a curtain with tape. Even after stepping out from admist bushes or whatever else, she still greets Schneider and her men with a small bow of her head and shoulders, her hands neatly folded at her stomach. The darkness doesn't hinder her especially much whether her eyes are closed or not, but she still spares a moment to one-quarter crack the left eyelid open and see the sky directly. It's not as if the stars are close enough for her to analyze with the Evil Eye... But it would feel a bit odd not to take a 'real' look.

     But, back to Schneider's group her attention goes, and her eyes go back to fully shut, helping to mitigate the brightness of the headlights for comfort. If there're too many people to ride in the same car, White can make suggestions... But it doesn't *seem* like an issue here, so she's just as content to nod and slide into a seat as soon as she's asked to. She's already defeated the devil called 'Motion Sickness' after years of riding in decidedly less comfortable, manually-drawn wagons, so she doesn't have to hesitate! Though, she does kind of squish into the far corner at the end of the seating, trying to leave both literal and figurative elbow room for everyone involved.

     Schneider seems to have beaten her to the simplest solution to a lack of space, anyway. She turns to look back once they're settled, seems to contemplate silently for a few seconds while blind-staring, and then effortfully tries to raise her voice enough to be clear over the noise of the car (and still ends up speaking on the quiet end of things). "Would you... Like... A pillow..?"

It feels like it might be an insult to hospitality in some obscure fashion if she offered to just stand on the roof of the car at this point. Either that, or maybe Schneider just likes taking the less secure seating..?
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine arrives having just stamped the mud off her boots from another work-day in the outdoors. She's kinda sweaty, kinda tired, and hoping that makes her seem tougher than she's feeling. Despite her taking a minute to change clothes, the smell of animal blood faintly lingers on her. It's been a day.

    Stepping out under the night sky is more than just a literal breath of fresh air for her. "You're kinda lucky," she says, not taking her eyes off the stars overhead. "So many worlds have too much light to see all these stars. Losing sight of this natural beauty is just the price of progress, or something. Maybe your employers have the right of things, turning the clock back an' all."

    Madeleine slips into the back of the car, claiming a seat with a good angle for talking to Schneider. "So, how's business? If this Forget-Me-Not fella's ordering so many supplies I bet things are booming."
Kukuru One of the many Concord members arriving at the address Schneider provided looks kind of out of place today, yet also looks like she could almost right in as someone's secretary rather than an enforcer. Kukuru, dressed in a formal green blazer and skirt combo, actually made sure to dress up nicely tonight, even taking some amount of time to straighten her hair out for once.

Schneider did say that she wanted people around to ensure manners, after all, so Kukuru's made sure to look every part the proper educator. She greets the three figures at the car with a polite little wave and a beaming smile, and her voice is still about as sleepy and melodic as ever. "Ah, there you are... He-llo, Schneider! He-llo, Cosimo! And he-llo, Achille! It's been a bit, huuuh...? Mhm, mhm, from the reception, riiiight? I looked up an aracinis recipe after that, but I think I put a biiiit too much other stuff."

For emphasis (and for today's snack), she brings out a plastic takeout container packed with her first attempt at arancini: A little heavy on cheese, extremely heavy on ground meat, and the texture has clearly suffered due to being shoved into a takeout container and reheated before being brought here. The flavors are still pretty okay, though! Just lukewarm, a little wet, and a lot of greasy.

As always, that container comes straight out of a pocket on her jacket that doesn't look like it could ever fit anything bigger than a phone inside.

Joining Schneider and Achille in the cargo container, Kukuru doesn't have to try all that hard to get comfortable. She's fallen asleep in weirder places, and she's already making herself comfortable on the floor of the trailer with a nothing more than a blanket to sit. She's even patting her lap a few times while looking around expectantly at Schenider, Achille, Flamel, White, and Madeleine for any of them (or anyone else) to accept the nonverbal offer of that spot to sit or rest their heads.

"It's really nice out tonight... It looks so different here than it does on the other streets I've been on, too." She comments with a pleasant little hum, not quite realizing that this is the 1920s instead of whatever 20XX night sky she's seen time and time again. "Nice and clear, just like back home... Hmm. Oh, that reminds me..."

There's no clear connection between what she asks and how the sky reminded her of that: "What're you buying today? It must be preeeetty big if we're gonna need this whole thing." A pause, as Kukuru glances around the trailer before patting one of her pockets idly. "Maybe I could fit some of it in here, too. Would that help, dear?"
Angela So Angela sent the Red Mist and Tiphereth. While her Librarian outfit is the least intimidating outfit Gebura owns, it isn't obscuring her the giant sword that has teeth and eyeballs that's strapped to her back. And she's still Gebura. Since she knows FOR CERTAIN that Lilian isn't going to be around to get on her ass about it--and there's few people whom she lets get on her ass about it besides Lilian--she's already smoking. Tiphereth looks like a blonde teenager in a similar uniform so it might seem weird that Angela sent her as muscle. Then again, she does have a giant golden gauntlet around her right arm that is humming dangerously, though she isn't really carrying herself as a hired goon in quite the same way that Gebura kind of effortlessly manages without even trying.

"Schneider right?" Gebura asks.

"Is there gonna be room in the car for everyone?"

"I can sit on top. Free up a spot." Gebura says, outright clambering on top of the vehicle before being given permission--or being asked--to do so.

"She's some kind of monkey I swear." Tiphereth muters before curtseying to Schneider. "I'm Tiphereth. I'm here on behalf of Angela. Lady Angela doesn't really ... act in the capacity of a goon, but if you need pure muscle you can rely on Gebura. I'm here to help in case management skills are necessary but I'm armed as well."

Her gaze travels to the umbrella. "...We used to be a bit more cautious in handing those out, but Angela's always going on about paying forward the aid the Concord has provided. It took her a while to really feel like she was one of the Partners too, though. She saw her as an asset first. But I guess eventually she decided to accept it."

Tiphereth is going to sit inside the vehicle, though. She doesn't seem to mind being scrunched up a bit, though she does set Gold Rush on her lap rather than allowing it to take up even more space.

''Make sure nobody depends on my reaction time.''

"Don't worry, fed." Gebura says, with the confidence of the infinite speed die, "I'll make sure the governor hiring us doesn't have to worry."

''It's White!''

Tiphereth looks over to White and adds, "Oh hey. Sorry that Angela's not dropping by today. She's busy setting up for the next visit of the nieces." And arguing with Benjamin some more as usual. Tiphereth's frankly glad to get out of there.
Metamorph One     Dianna and Elara arrive in slightly staggered sequence to the middle of nowhere, Illinois. The idea of dressing to blend in hasn't even occured to either of them at any point before this, both of them apparently treating 'a trip to 1920s Earth' as a touchdown on an alien planet; which it is to some degree. Both of them are still dressed as if lunarcore was a legitimate fashion, in the usual Applied Ontology company colours, save Elara's pretty little blue hat. She chose to wear a warm knee-length coat for a rural autumn night; Dianna didn't think it prudent to wear a real neckline, much less sleeves.

    "Oh wow. It's really not bad."
    "Isn't it~? Didn't I tell you~?"
    "It's not even that different from Io. Except the dirt's shittier."
    "It makes you wonder how they screwed it up between now and then, doesn't it?"
    "Nah."
    "Really? Not even a little bit?"
    "All the fuckups were already in motion; everyone just pretends they weren't. Like everything is some novel disease of modernity that's never ever happened before."
    "Oh. I guess, yeah . . ."
    "But you were totally right. It's really pretty."
    "And the air is almost pristine!"
    "And that car is kind of cute."

    Despite speaking before, it is both their first time meeting Schneider in-person. The visual impact of her swaying out of the hi-beams is a lot, to say the least. Elara's wide eyes and covered mouth say 'can she really do that?', while Dianna's double up-down-up-down visual track says 'where's the rest of you?'.

    Everything that comes to mind between the two of them-- even their shared glance-- almost feels as if it has subtitles: 'And she runs a mob?' Both of them are, otherwise, almost egregiously casual about it; to the point one might wonder what the fuck the girls are doing up in space.

    "Nice. El's gotta calibrate that distance, so better it's not too long." Dianna says, standing around the Warpgate as if she doesn't plan to go anywhere. Elara speaks next, "Mhm~ I'll be riding with you all, so please take good care of me~" and mounts a radio headset over her head, replacing her gay little hat after. "I'll catch up in a little. In a way of speaking." "This is how we usually do things, so don't worry about it!"

    'so weirdly, getting a lot of safety really fast can incite *fear*-typed psychohazards.'

    Both of them do stare at Flamel for a little while. That line appears to settle something between them. Dianna rolls her eyes in a way that indicates she's accepted something, and turns toward the gate. Elara giggles at something privately funny. She addresses "Elara Stelloj. Nice to meet you!" towards the mobsters.

    'Is there gonna be room in the car for everyone?'

    "I promise I don't take up much space." Elara says, hustling into the car. One might get the impression that she's a little bit excited to ride around in a janky vintage piece with big stupid couches and no seatbeats. "Plus it's so roomy in here. If you're going to sit around and look stupid, you could at least do it on the floor instead of the roof, right?"
White White has to reckon briefly with the fact that so many others offered or decided to sit in weird places to make room while she was waffling about it, but that's far from the worst dissonance she's dealt with, it'll be fine. She politely declines Kukuru's offer of a lap by raising one hand and shaking her head slightly. Her posture gets a little bit less prim and her spine a little less straight as more people pack into the seats, and while she makes a valiant effort to squish against the opposite side she's probably going to be shoulder to shoulder with someone before long. It's really hard to mind your posture for appearances like this! Come onnnn! But it'd be really pitiful to complain about it, so... She's gotta find something else to think about.

     The first choice is nodding back to Tiphereth (a little awkwardly). "I'm glad... Too. Everyone needs... Things to look... Forward to." But she seems to run out of steam without further prompting; she's not really the type who can talk at length about any one person or thing without some help. Or like, a grudge to air out, y'know? D makes it easy to complain about her.

     The next choice, naturally, is acknowledging Elara and Dianna from what might be over the top of Tiphereth's head, or around Flamel's shoulder or the like, from her squished corner. "It has been... A while." she notes. She's not entirely sure she'd get their names right without getting them backwards without using the Evil Eye, but she remembers them from her welcome dinner at least! But then Diana's off again for what White can only assume is some manner of overwatch or shadowing, and the best she can think to do is wiggle her fingers slowly in place of a farewell wave. Then there's a dull moment of silence from her, before she reaches for the lowest caliber bullet in the proverbial box with Dianna.

"Cute hat."
Metamorph One     'It has been... A while.'

    "Aha . . . It kind of has. Sorry!" Elara says, pressing curled up fingers to the side of her neck and smiling apologetically. "I was worried you'd end up shutting yourself in and avoiding people when you first got here, so I'm very happy to see you going out and socializing with your comrades." she adds, as if this were a 'social visit'.

    'Cute hat.'

    Elara makes a 'hmhmm~' noise from the bottom of her throat. "Been practising our conversational skills have we? Thanks for noticing. You have a good eye for someone who never opens them, haha~"
Schneider Greco      Schneider is utterly at ease under Dianna and Elara's twin stares, and after eyeing them up in turn, pinches her coat wider and holds out its hem. The gesture feels eighty percent like getting curtseyed to, and twenty percent like getting flashed.

     "So, you've got one already?" she purrs to Elara, after half a second of watching their duo dynamic. For a second she glances (approvingly) at Gebura and Tiphereth too... oh no.

     "please take good care of me~"
     Her gaze tracks up (and up, and up) to Dianna, where her smile turns confiding with a little happy-wiggle, as if they were obviously comrades in arms. "What an honor. You may entrust her to me as yourself, my-lady."

     "Yes, ma'am!" Cosimo answers Elara with a little salute, just a second after.

     The two mobster guys laugh at Flamel's crack- "I don't know, smart guy. She's got pretty small pockets"- but he does put them at ease.

     For some reason, he's the one they'd rather talk to. "You're pretty into that Freud stuff, huh?" Cosimo says, glancing over while driving. "I dunno much about that, but I guess so. My little sister, she brought in this stray cat- I told her not to, believe me- but it was jumpin' at shadows the whole first week. Little like that, huh?"

     "You can just say everybody loses it at the finish line." "No, no, it's kinda different, Achille."

     - - - -

     "Mmmh. This is some pretty good arancini, Lady Kukuru. You said it was your first try?" Cosimo says, one hand on the driver's wheel while he munches. "Reminds me of mom's." "Try fryin' it a little hotter and shorter next time, makes it less wet. You might have a talent though, I tell you what."

     Trees roar by, and except for a moment where Cosimo has to swerve to avoid hitting a deer, everything goes smoothly. There's a great big city brightening the horizon to the left- "And there goes St. Louis," Cosimo says- but otherwise the headlights catch all fallow fields, thick forest, and gentle grassy hills.

     Achille reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cigarette carton, hesitates, and then puts them back while murmuring under his breath.

     "A pillow, my-lady?" Schneider says to White, lifting her eyes from the hard briefcase that serves as her cushion so far. "How much for it?" Surely there's an end to the generosity, right?

     That brings her around to what Tiphereth had said earlier. At last she's done chewing on those words. "The Concord... is a strange institution, my-lady Tiph-er-eth. It feels as though everyone is wanting my approval, or to feel that I 'belong'? I cannot complain for your kindness, but... surely I should be wanting yours, fair governors. What I think of you can-not be so valuable?"

     "I'll make sure the governor hiring us doesn't have to worry."
     Schneider stifles a laugh up at rooftop-Gebura. "And wearing red, too... oh, you are not taking my job, Lady Gebura?" First comparing herself to Dianna and now the Red Mist. This tiny girl might have an inaccurate self-perception.
Schneider Greco      Kukuru, in the back, gets leaned-against... but when she pats her lap as a place for Schneider to rest, Schneider giggles and pats her own instead. So it's a challenge...

     "So, how's business? If this Forget-Me-Not fella's ordering so many supplies I bet things are booming."
     Ahh, but right, business. Schneider exhales, and her sigh blends in perfectly with the cool breeze, as if she weren't even there.

     "Business is always booming, my-lady. My-lord Forget-Me-Not wants reserves, as things may... strain, with the coming Storm. With unrest coming, one cannot count on a supplier, you know?"

     She keeps going, now that she's on the topic, although there isn't any urgency in her delicate voice. "The 'Rock City gang'... they are arcanists, from the south. I have known them eight months. It's, ahhh, hard to find such a group that will deal with me.... but they have been reasonable."

     The money she still cradles in that briefcase seems like it puts her ill-at-ease. An unspoken-of gravity well that her thoughts keep circling around, deforming the local social fabric.

     . . .

     The car turns onto smaller and dustier roads, until it reaches a ploughed field scattered with the husky remains of harvest, dead plants crunching under its tires. Up ahead are three more cars parked end to end, their headlights off; a scattering of men in white suits or pale robes, none with their faces entirely visible; and a dilapidated barn and caved-in wooden home, neither used in decades. That must be the meeting's landmark.
Schneider Greco      "My first time seeing 'em," says Achille, craning his neck to see around Cosimo and try to make out the still-distant white figures. "Aren't they Sicilian too?"

     "Third-generation," Schneider says, neutrally.

     "What's that supposed to mean, boss? Just because you remember the home country..."

     "It means nothing," Schneider lies.
White White eventually gets used to the mild squish and seems to forget that she was fussing about her lost posture moments ago, watching through her eyelids as the roadside scenery zooms by without ever turning her head very much at all. Schneider's confusion over the pillow seems easiest to resolve by just teleporting it from storage right into the smaller woman's lap; it's a little square white one like you'd see tucked into the corner of a sofa or occupying a rarely-used chair, but it's thick with stuffing and goes from silky-cool to warm in the hands rather quickly. There's a big black spider design on one side, fashioned simply like it was meant to be for a halloween decoration. "It's an extra. I practice... My weaving... A lot, too."

Really, she'd expected to *lend* the pillow, but after Schneider offered to pay for it it'd just be soooo much more work to clarify that compared to letting her keep it. The stuffed animals and such she keeps giving away really aren't an imposition, as long as nobody asks her to decorate their entire house, so unless Schneider pushes, White probably won't bring it up again later.

     Schneider's confusion over the apparent sentiments, though, seems worthy of an attempted answer though. It wouldn't do to let her become suspicious or uncomfortable because of it, after all! At least, that's the first place White's concerns land. "Miss Kukuru is... Just like this." is where she starts, setting the baseline. "I have a few... Reasons." she continues, sounding like she's going to lay out some kind of sinister plan in her soft-murmured voice, before breaking the spell before it can sink in too deeply. "I just think... It's nice... To make people happy... When it's easy." Only to then, slowly, swing back around to something more 'material'. "And you... Have useful abilities... Connections..." Finally, somehow, she lands somewhere completely different on the last point after meandering her way to it. "And perspective."

It isn't the first time she's become more invested in what someone thinks because she believes she can infer something from it, or learn something about people in general. It might not be terribly flattering to Schneider that the first example of this was probably Petra, though.

     But, the moment escapes eventually as it always must. She listens quietly as work becomes the topic of focus again, and gets distracted by her own thoughts for most of the rest of the ride. Still, she's alert enough to gently open the door for herself and slide out onto her own two feet again once the car stops, calmly brushing her dress flat of any wrinkles from how she was seated. If anyone after her wants a hand down the bar-step beneath the door, she reaches out a hand without looking at them; her head is turned toward the people waiting for them instead. Quietly and naturally taking count of their numbers, looking closer for weapons, checking postures to evaluate the overall tension of their group, and watching any high vantages in the barn or the home behind them for more men in wait.

She's expecting a certain amount of tension, but past a certain point it does lose reasonableness... And Schneider would want to know if she's walking into something sketchier than expected.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel catches just enough of the psychic context to recognize that he's authoritatively commented on something significant with the Metamorph One gang. A flashed smile shows that he's happy to settle something, whatever it was! He sadly can't partake of Kukuru's invitation, since he's enjoying the seating in the car itself, but a positive appreciating smile gets flashes to her.

    "I'll make sure the governor hiring us doesn't have to worry."
    "Appreciated! I've really gotten a chance to understand the value of people who can move faster than I can think these days, especially when I'm doing a whole lot of thinking at once." Flamel says, thinking a lot about the Big Event a while back, as well as some key lessons he's learned in Elibe. This leaves him sort of cross-chattering under White to Gebura while White chats with the Metamorphs. As for the rest of the ride...

    ---

    "St. Louis... we're getting out of Illinois, huh? I suppose they're always gonna be pretty nervous, even with a small thing. Interstate stuff, in a place and time like this... And I *am* a fed, even if it's for a different government." He scratches his cheek as he readies to disembark. "Well, I'll put on my game face."

    Sunglasses at night. He adjusts them as he heads out, running a constant psychic read on them -- he won't be able to get high-depth information, gathering from so many people, but he'll be able to give everyone a running view of total tension, individual spikes, and estimated causes, as well as clearer indicators for combative intent. Once it comes time, he'll be taking an official-looking posture to one side, letting Schneider take the center stage and expecting her pair of wonderful henchmen to handle the drama of her own disembarking.
Angela ''Everyone needs things to look forward to.''

"...Yeah. I just worry she is always thinking about the big picture and neglecting the smaller stuff. So it's good she's making other plans."

''The Concord is a strange institution, my-lady Tiph-er-eth.''

"If Tiphereth's a mouthful I don't mind 'Lisa' even if it was a lifetime ago." Tiphereth pauses, looking over as she actually digets what Schneider is saying. "Well, I'm not a Partner myself, but they were like this with Angela too and she was just as confused. I think everybody expects the Concord to be brutal powerbrokers constantly sniping at each other for power and maybe they're brutal to people who aren't in the Concord, though they usually don't have to be in my experience, but with one another--they're allies. Sometimes even family. Sometimes both in lowercase and uppercase. And even if you're just--the face, the secretary, the... middleman. You're the face they see. And that's who they'll support. Especially if you make some effort to lend a hand back, loan out men, weapons, whatever."

She and Angela probably have the best relationship relative to Angela and any of the other Sephirah. They are, indirectly in some ways, siblings. And in some ways essentailly strangers who had to become coworkers for one another. But Tiphereth, who believed the least in the project, has the least reason to be upset with her. She can still seek out the meaning of existence like this. And in turn, Angela treats her with a certain brand of respect that she doesn't even show the Color or the Arbiter or the Dad.

''What I think of you can-not be so valuable.''

"Seed of Light project was to help people like you." GEbura blows smoke out from her nose. "Don't worry about it."

"Mm. I don't consider myself special. I'm just a street urchin whose village got wrecked who got picked up by that idiot on the roof along with her brother and then kept there until her brother died and then I died shortly after. I just happened to be the one who made it back." She pauses. "But you said living is worth it, right? Even if you've lost everything?"

Apparently Angela considered those words relevant enough to share.

''And wearing red, too...''

"They don't call me the Blue Mist." Gebura says. "But don't worry, your job is safe. I'm just here to be a sword." She pauses. "And you've got guns."

Gebura shifts to standing on the roof. She spits the cigarette out onto the dirt and then crunches it out with her sword.
Metamorph One     'So, you've got one already?'
    "Huh?"
    "Sorry~"
    "What?"

    'What an honor. You may entrust her to me as yourself, my-lady.'

    Dianna scoffs "I'm not her dad." then smiles anyways. "Thanks. I have a feeling I can."

    'You can just say everybody loses it at the finish line.'
    'No, no, it's kinda different, Achille.'

    Elara, who is an expert in this topic, and who had, in concert with Dianna, decided to trust Flamel to a certain degree exclusively because he had some kind of ideological proximity to understand it, says, "When you're constantly in danger, or trying to figure out where you're going to sleep tonight, the parts of your brain that are for living out in the wilderness are permanently active, non-stop. And your body just isn't really built to shift gears that fast; not in any way."

    Fidgeting with the odd little doodad covering the back of her hand, twisting and tuning the cylindrical inserts, she continues on with, "That's why your chest feels horrible when you go from sprinting to a dead stop, or your stomach feels sick when you try to go vegetarian all at once." She suddenly snaps her fingers. "Or quit smoking cold turkey. So, like how your brain still wants cigarettes, it wants to keep looking out for danger too, and not being able to find any makes you go a little crazy."

    Adjusting her had, Elara turns to look out the window, staring at the stars. "You could say that we're all such flawed beings that we crave stability and predictability more than our own health and happiness. If everything sucks the same way every day, you always know how to handle it. If it gets better all of a sudden, you don't know what to do if you suddenly lose it."

    'How much for it?'

    Elara, unblinking, slips her wallet out of her inner coat pocket. "Oh, don't worry; I'll spot you. It's fare for the ride, so don't argue." Despite her ability to put on a peppy affect when meeting someone new, the preempting tone she uses is a subtle reminder that she is, in fact, probably older than Schneider, and used to dealing with weird and difficult people younger than that.

    'The Concord... is a strange institution, my-lady Tiph-er-eth. It feels as though everyone is wanting my approval, or to feel that I 'belong'?'

    Elara smils, distantly. "Some people, when they spot someone else 'they think is like them', can't help but try too hard to be the person they wish they met when they were more alone." She turns just to look Schneider up one more time though. "But I think anyone can tell that you're the kind they should get in good with now before you make it even bigger? If it's okay for me to say, you're smooth, fearless, pretty, fashionable, smart, and you give off this aura that you know exactly where you stand and what you're doing, y'know? It just screams 'celebrity in the making'; and people are pack animals by nature, haha~"

    Her fidgeting comes to a halt. A hand-trigger, like a miniature cockpit joystick, pops from her inside wrist sleeve, and double depressing it makes something at her lower back hum and give off warmth. The trigger, connected to her glove by some sort of etheral blue string or wire, voxelizes orange at one end, and Dianna's voice comes through a speaker that wasn't there before.

    "Calibration complete. I'm point three behind you."
    "Acknowledged. No sensors, so maintain heading and distance."
    "Confirmed. Got you clear on mine. Do they even have radios here? I'm picking up nothing."
    "I'm not a historian, Severance. L-transmit telemtry just in case."
    "Standing by to receive Ghost Light."
    "Sending."
    "Received."
Metamorph One     Barely three seconds pass before Dianna's voice comes through again. Thinking about it, Elara was already wearing headphones, so there was no reason for that otherwise. "And yeah, people are stupid as fuck when it comes to the 'end of the world'. Between telling the landlord to fuck off or buying up ten years of toilet paper, they do the second every single time." Elara laughs. "What does that mean anyways Schneider? 'Such a group'. Do arcanists avoid you for some reason? I assumed you'd get along better, not worse."

    . . . . . . . .

    'Aren't they Sicilian too?'

    "You can tell?" Elara says, blinking in innocent confusion. Is this magic?

    'Third-generation'

    Her expression firms up again. Strangely neutral; perhaps not in the same way, but in a way means something.

    'What's that supposed to mean, boss? Just because you remember the home country...'
    'It means nothing'

    "It means you have to try and forgive them a little. You have to remember that they're not being that way on purpose; there's just no way they could know what it was like."
    "It means they get one shot to be on your side instead of zero. You draw a line somewhere. If they wanna be like everyone else so bad, you can punch them in the mouth like everyone else."

    An uncomfortable silence persists on the line between them for a minute after that.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine spends more of the car ride listening than she does actually participating in conversation, almost nodding off once or twice as she gets really comfortable. She does however perk up when Schneider talks about her business with the Rock City gang.

    "Rock City, huh," she says. "I've done some work around there, assuming it's the same one. I bet it's awful pretty without all the touristy stuff. I mean, it's still pretty in the- on other worlds, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Nature can make better views than any person, I think." She nods up, indirectly pointing to the stars overhead.

    "Hard to find a group that'll deal with you? I thought the whole point of this Manus Vindictae stuff was for arcanists to stick together. Or is that the issue, that most gangs don't touch arcanists on principle?"
Kukuru "She's some kind of monkey I swear."

"Oh, maybe I'll go up there on the way back. That could be a comfy spot, too..." Kukuru replies to Tiphereth while watching Gebura go up, chuckling softly as her mind wanders towards being rocked to sleep atop the trailer under the moonlight. "Maybe a whole bunch of us could go up there later ,like aaaaa... Sleepover? Oh, but then Flamel and cosimo wouldn't be able to get up there, and that'd be a shame..."

"I'll be riding with you all, so please take good care of me~"

"Of course, Elara. Don't worry, there's pleeenty of food for everyone, and I've got drinks if anyone forgot to bring water along." Sleepily chipper as always, Kukuru pats her lap lightly in a repeat of that same offer earlier. "And don't you worry about space. I've got pleeenty of room here, too."

"Try fryin' it a little hotter and shorter next time, makes it less wet."

"Hotter and shorter... Huuuh. Okay!" Kukuru confirms that thought with a quick nod towards Cosimo, grinning stupidly once again at her attempt apparently being compared to his mother's. That's definitely an easy way to get on her good side. "I like it crispy, too, but I was worried about the outside burning and the meat not being cooked enough becaaaause... what was it. Um... Food safety? Like how meat's gotta be thiiis hot for humans to eat without getting sick."

A beat, and then Kukuru strokes her chin. "I wonder if Sicilians can handle bloodier meat better than humans... Oh, that'd make cooking some things soooo much easier. Then I could really make some things the way I do back home, or at Gran Dorado..."

White's hand raise signal to Kukuru draws another amused noise out of the lady in green, somehow amused by that reaction and just watching her squinch up against the side of the car. Her smile actually softens a bit at that, too, and she's content to settle in against Schneider once they're seated together. Schneider quickly learns, however, that...

Kukuru is extremely weak to such challenges. She doesn't just dive right on her lap like a barbarian, though, since she's actually quite mindful of her horns being what they are: big honking drills coming right out of the sides of her head. She doesn't want to stab anyone with them unwittingly, after all!

Instead, Kukuru slides forward, then back again so she can get her head flat on Schneider's lap. No stabbing risks that way! "Comfy... Hehe. Thank you, dear~ Just make sure you get some rest in a nice spot, too, okay?" She asks/suggests, already yawning quietly and covering her mouth after the fact. She doesn't seem too worried that the back of her jacket might get messed up like this, because she's already getting comfortable.

"The 'Rock City gang'... they are arcanists, from the south."

"A gang? Oh, that could be...." Kukuru purses her lips, deep in thought or whatever might qualify for thought in that head of hers. "... Tricky. Teaching people in gangs to behave can be reeeeal tough sometimes if they're more worried about the way they look than anything else. But.."

She brings a hand up to pat the back of Schneider's gently. "I'm sure it'll be okay. We're all here, and we'll make sure of it."
Kukuru By the time the car reaches the barn, Kukuru's managed to doze off and wake up at least twice. She's had enough time to get her jacket mostly straightened out, too, although her hair's already starting to flare out a bit at the ends like it normally does. Regardless, she peers at the cars up ahead even with their headlights off, staring straight at them for several seconds uninterrupted before leaning over to address Schneider and company.

"I think they might be really shy, but... Confused. Their stuff's off like they don't look like they want anyone to see them out here, but their clothes are so light. That'd stain so easily..." Frowning a little in concern, Kukuru smacks her cheeks softly before getting up. "Ah, it'll be okay. I'm sure they'll be less shy once they see us all."

With her defenses sufficiently low the time being, Kukuru steps out of the trailer and holds her hands out to help anyone out of it that might need it. Once everyone's disembarked, she stands a bit off to the side opposite Flamel near Schneider, keeping mostly quiet to start while smiling politely and waving in greeting at any of the suited and robed figures that look her way.

Maybe her good manners will rub off on them, and maybe even convince them to be less shy.
Schneider Greco      "Hotter and shorter... Huuuh. Okay!"

     "Yeah," says Cosimo, animatedly: "When you fry somethin', it's actually water vapor leavin' the food that keeps the oil from soakin' in, right? Like with bubbles. Soon as there's no more water to vapor, bam, the oil comes in. So that's how you figure it."

     Then, awkwardly: "Sicilians are human, miss Kukuru," Achille leans forward to say. "Uh, except Schneider."

     "You can tell?"
     "What?! No," Achille says. "Heard it on the grapevine. We're not little green men."

     "Or quit smoking cold turkey."
     "See, quitting does do that! I told her. Hey, boss," Cosimo says, glancing back from the road, "you're supposed to taper off! I knew you weren't just sick." "That is not real. It's only cigarettes. You just stop," Schneider sniffs. "Boss..."

     Confronted with both a free silk pillow in her lap, and Elara's wallet thrust at her just in case it wasn't, Schneider covers her open mouth with one hand... and the tiniest tinge of a blush can be seen between her fingers.

     "Thank you, fair governors. Both of you," Schneider says, with a little laugh to purge her odder feelings. "Hah... be careful I do not lose my bite for you. A fat hunting-dog will not catch, my-lords."

     Lurking behind her words is an achey, transparent sentiment: Come on. We're past the honeymoon. When does the transactional part start? I can prove myself.

     ... But it goes unspoken, as Kukuru puts her head on the lap-pillow, and Schneider falls to stroking her hair with a very distant look.

     "Look at her," Achille says, leaning up to Cosimo ahead of him. His voice is lowered like he might awaken a sleeping kitty. "She's got a new favorite goon, huh?" "Well, she sure as hell didn't catch me that way, Achille."

     Schneider can't object. She's still pleasantly distant. Words roll around in her head...

     "It's nice... To make people happy... When it's easy."
     "You're the face they see. And that's who they'll support."
     "Some people, when they spot someone else 'they think is like them'..."
     "you're smooth, fearless, pretty, fashionable, smart..."
     Her body trembles, just a tiny bit. One hand stays on top of Kukuru's head. The other hugs herself.

     The soul that named itself 'Schneider' draws inward, lost in its feelings, and so for a long moment her face is not Schneider's face. It's the face of a delicate girl of eighteen or twenty, dewy-eyed and a little too thin. The corner of her mouth trembles. Refeeding syndrome.

     "Signuri mei..." Schneider finally says, taking her face again. But the voice is still that delicate girl's; not Schneider's. She tries again. "... My-lords. Please. You'll unsteady me. We are on a business, and I must be sharp. ... Please."

     ... the car stops. The spell is broken by the little jolt. Schneider gently removes Kukuru's head from her lap, then gets out, briefcase in one hand and umbrella under the other. Achille and Cosimo pat their handguns inside their jackets.

     "... living is worth it, right? Even if you've lost everything?"
     On her way out, she regards Tiphereth carefully, with a new kind of kinship. "Just so, my-lady. How else... is one to find new things to lose?" A bright, tense little laugh. "I'm glad someone else here is from the gutter."
Schneider Greco      The near-dozen men in white are maybe fifty feet away. Schneider trudges forwards, with her two men a ways behind her.

     "Hard to find a group that'll deal with you?"
     "Not Italian enough for the Italians," she says, in tune with her trudging. "Not human enough for the humans. Not man enough for the big mafiosos. Barely arcanist enough for the arcanists..."

     With a glance back at Elara, and a hapless smile-and-shrug: "... Not American enough for the Sicilian-Americans. Lord Forget-Me-Not is a man of forgiving discernment, to have me still as his face."

     Flamel detects high tension, but maybe that's normal; antsy men about to be rich seeing unfamiliar strangers approach. White's penetrating vision can spot a couple of men on the upper stories of the barn, and a couple more inside the house; those are definitely precautionary, but with the amount of destructive power your own group represents, hard to call it unreasonable.

     Their rank-and-file seem to be a quartet of men standing in front of their semi-circled cars, in white hooded cloaks wand carrying bows and arrows(?!). A few more instead have a genteel cowboy look, with nice white suits, mouth-covering bandanas, and brimmed hats; their holstered handguns are connected to small ampoules or larger back-tanks of sloshing red magical fluid.

     Their leader's a tall, broad man in military gear: some kind of old-school thick body armor, a helmet, and a hard gas mask. God knows why he just goes around like that. A machine gun, nearly as long as he is tall, hangs from his hand.

     Schneider stiffens up when she gets a little closer.

The tall man nods to Flamel. "So, you're Mr. Schneider?" he says in a strong voice; used to cutting through the muffling mask.
"I'm Schneider. You're not Jack," she says with a dusting of suspicion, although she continues walking closer.
"Pfahaha!! His callgirl's having a laugh, ey?" The leader glances at his men, expecting a laugh; he's startled when he looks back to find Schneider almost in his face.
"Where's Jack?"
"Alriiight, settle down. They busted him last month. You get me instead. Got a problem with that?"
"Show me the mandrake. It's in your car, yes?"

By now the-guy-who-isn't-Jack is looking past Schneider at the rest of you, hoping you'll be more level than she is. "Jesus, what's with this girl?" he asks you.
"I said--"
"Okay, okay. Tommy, Dave, get the mandrake." Two of the cloaked men move to retrieve a wooden crate from a backseat. "Now can I see the money?"

     Achille and Cosimo glance at each other tensely. Nobody's hands are on their guns yet, but moment by moment, this is feeling more and more like a powderkeg...
White White spends a few moments evaluating the situation once she's spied out the most accessible details, and with the help of Flamel's own examination being shared amongst the others. She aims a small telepathic impulse in the more professional mentalist's direction; less of a verbal cue and more of an intangible pointed finger up at the barn loft, then again at the roughed up house. He probably can't get eyes on the people hiding there directly, but he has a direct line to pass the warning along to the others, so White sees it as the best way to delegate.

     From there, she has a few options. She could go silence the reserve gangsters from outside of their friends' sight, but that could backfire for a couple of reasons. She could use the Evil Eye to spook the lot of them and make Schneider be taken more seriously, but that could just make them jump the gun if they recognize her eyes as magical... This isn't the kind of world where she can freely use them without expecting anyone to catch on. Interfering with their weapons... The most dangerous weapon she can see is in the hands of the most noticeable guy here. It'd be hard to slip some metal-twisting Earth magic by unnoticed under these conditions.

She only briefly, barely pauses at the disparagement to Schneider as a representative. But she can handle it. This is Schneider's job, and White's just here to help.

     That ends up settling her decision. Gebura doesn't need protection if bullets or arrows fly, and neither does Kukuru. Tiphereth and Elara... Uncertain. So, Tiphereth she sends another mental signal to; a gentle suggestion to 'step to the right a little', that would put her somewhere vaguely behind Schneider. To Elara, she doesn't quite send the same signal and instead just steps halfway in front of her, making it look natural, like she's only getting closer to the front of the car.

     Under the sole of her boot she's working a glyph for prepared Earth magic to create a solid two-layer wall to shield Schneider (and Tiphereth, if her suggestion is taken) if weapons do get drawn. The kind of thing that isn't so big that the smaller woman can't move around it freely if she needs to, with more emphasis on the durability. Simultaneously, she's working a low-scale teleportation spell behind her back and slowly, carefully 'locking on' to the archers' arrows and any firearms she can, so that she can steal a bunch of them away into a heap on the ground between her and Elara when the time comes. If shots come her way, she's confident they won't be carrying enough force to pass all the way through her and into the other woman, at least...

At the end of the day, this is just the privilege of not being the one negotiating. She rather likes being 'insurance'.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     "Not human enough for the humans... Barely arcanist enough for the arcanists"

    "Tell me about it," Madeleine says, a sympathetic air to her voice. But there's not much time for her to elaborate. "Forget-Me-Not sounds chill."

    "Pfahaha!! His callgirl's having a laugh, ey?"

    Madeleine is half ready to step up and get in that guy's grill by the time Schneider's already done so. She exhales through her teeth, scowling at the Rock City gang's leader with her arms folded.

    "Jesus, what's with this girl?"

    That's enough. Madeleine steps up, diagonally closing the gap between herself and Schneider. "Hey," she nearly spits, lip curling in disgust. "If you're asking that about her and not the rest of us, you've got another thing coming. I've sent bigger brutes than you packing *today*. Which means I'm already warmed up." She clenches a fist so hard her knuckles crack, but the hand stays at her side. If she's just pretending to be a barely-restrained mad dog, she's a damn fine actress.

    "Now can I see the money?"

    Madeleine barely restrains herself from pouncing on the guy for just brushing past his own insults to Schneider like that. Shutting her eyes briefly and taking a deep breath, she puts her hands on her hips and speaks up again, only somewhat calmer. "Money's money. Quality of our stuff's not in question. Mandrakes, though, that we'll want a look at to make sure we're getting the genuine article. Ya dig?"
Angela Tiphereth smiles at Schneider easily. New things to lose, huh? "No want of company down there." Tiphereth quips back. "Good to know you, Schneider."

She gets out the car normal-like. Gebura drops down shortly after. Gebura is the sort of person who has preferences in what sort of goon she comes across as so she stays in close range of Schneider, though she keeps Mimicry lowered. The visible eyeball wiggles around a bit before looking right at the tall man and blinking at him. The flesh lower down warbles gently as a tongue flops out and licks at the air. The teeth glisten faintly with saliva.

"Behave." She tells the sword and it snaps back into a more securely sword-like shape.

Her mouth works as she counts the men carryying bows and arrows, and others with handguns, and then of course the man up front with the machine gun. She nods a little to herself and doesn't interrupt Schneider. Pushing too hard on these guys might hurt their little fee-fees and they'll attack. Pushing too light might make them think, well, why not just take the money and keep the goods? There's been what feels like hundreds of exchanges like this that went bad because there wasn't a proper negotiator around to enforce the deal and there really isn't one this time unless, of course, you count the Concord. There isn't really any danger to Schneider here, though there is a danger they might lose the mandrake if they spook these people or go too light on 'em. There has to be an appropriate balance and maybe nobody has to get cut in half today.

''His callgirl's having a laugh, ey?''

"I don't know how things go where you're from," Gebura says. "But there should be respect between traders. This land only cares about product and cash. It's modern times."

''Jesus, what's with this girl?''

"You don't have to be nervous. I understand."

With a casual motion she shoves Mimicry all the way down into the ground, through down to the hilt and sticks her foot on top of it until she pushes it all the way down underground.

"It makes anyone nervous when the power gap between the two sets of hired help is too much. So you can let your guys take the day off. I'll be your bodyguard for the day. That oughta equal things up nicely."

Tiphereth, annoyed, rushes over to Gebura who is staring ahead with her dead-eye stare as usual and grabs at her arm. "You said you would try to ease tensions...!" She hisses under her breath at her.

"I am. I'm offering to make sure the deal goes square on my honor as a Fixer--" Gebura says.

"Why are you like thiiiiis...?" Tiphereth says.

"We can show the money first." Gebura says. "That's our privilege."

"If you embarrass the Library I'm hiding all your cigarettes--"
Flamel Parsons     Flamel feels a twinge of discomfort when he hears about the, well, the huge disparity and societally-enforced misery. Huh! That's a lot of stuff to... put out of his mind while he works on relaying relative tension levels. "Ah, no, not Mr. Schneider! I'm Flamel Parsons, a    representative of a vague yet honorable international organization." He had to halt and rethink that one there, before he turned this into a huge problem. "I'm here to monitor the exchange and ensure the *healthy* and *stable* handout of the benefits."

    "If you feel like it, I'd love contact info for Jack's legal representation or closest colleague among Rock City, I want to make sure Jack doesn't wind up missing out on things. It's important," He gestures in a friendly way. "That *nobody* be cheated in this. That's Schneider, that's Jack, that's Forget-Me-Not, that's any other honorable colleague -- I just want to make sure everyone walks away from this, and that they've got something better for themselves."

    He didn't absorb any of the critique about racism, classism, sexism, misogyny, or, god forbid, anti-arcanist sentiment and its connections. Which is, like, bad, objectively-speaking, in the sense that he's not a good person, for failing to recognizing the materialist elements of Schneider's precarious situation. But it *does* allow him to speak in a way that unconsciously uses (and perhaps telepathically-amplifies) the I Am Of Your Ingroup signal that may be shared with southern third-generation Sicilian men above a specific threshold of misogyny. He's here to be the civil influence in a suit and polished shoes that is respecting a status quo that results in money changing hands, and that money will go to the Rock City boys -- surely that means a great deal, if they've had three generations to bake in the social radiation.



    <No ambush, just overwatch. From the barn loft. And the house. Thanks, White -- I'm counting a few men there, but no plans to attack. They want a good deal. I'll scout for psychohazards that might give us trouble.>

    Flamel's eyes glaze just slightly under the sunglasses. He's invisibly, astrally scouting the brains. Stealth first and foremost, back off if security gets tight, caution is the priority. It's unlikely he'll be dredging up any secrets. But if he sees the tracks of any vicious psychohazards likely to cause a problem once they sight a huge amount of money, he'll need to alert people, and see about maneuvering around those threats or negating them himself.
Kukuru "A fat hunting-dog will not catch, my-lords."
"We are on a business, and I must be sharp. ... Please.""

There's a slight twinge of guilt hitting Kukuru as she starts to realize that she might be indulging herself a little too much around Schneider. How many times has she seen the consequences of being too nice instead of kind already? And now, even their newest member might be worried about getting spoiled rotten from being too comfortable around everyone.

Kukuru's going to have to keep that in mind once she actually wakes up, since resting her head on Schneider with those hands in her hair is still too much not to fall asleep to. Once she does awaken, though, she seems to awaken with a firmer look in her eyes. Comfortable as the car ride, Kukuru knows that it's time to actually get to work, and she makes sure all her things are straightened out before she gets out.

Mostly, it's just fixing up her clothes so they're not too wrinkled-looking from lying down. The food can stay in the car, along with thoughts about how to fry her next attempt at arancini even better than the first. Right now, it's time to meet the men in white!

"Not ... enough for the ..."

"Even looking kind of like them isn't enough, huh...?" Kukuru runs a hand along one of her horns idly as she considers Schneider's reply to Madeleine, her expression darkening somewhat. "That's... Mmnh." The similarity doesn't make her feel great in the moment, but it's something she might be able to offer Schneider some comfort about later.

For now, though, Kukuru holds back instead of trying to offer further comfort. Instead, she steels her expression while standing to the side-ish of the mafioso. Rather than standing in front of anyone protectively to be a shield or behind anyone to narrow the range of targets, she instead makes sure that there's nobody behind or in front of her while looking right at the men with bows and handguns. Even though she's presenting herself as an easy target in an environment already filled with them, she's also trying to show that she knows that they're right there without making any attempts to be a smaller target.

"His callgirl's having a laugh, ey?"
"Jesus, what's with this girl?"

Kukuru's polite smile fades quickly as her desire to inflict violence on the-guy-who-isn't-Jack skyrockets shortly after he opens his mouth. She doesn't, of course, because she knows what restraint is, and also because that wouldn't help Schneider at all. Kukuru even remains silent instead of correcting him as much as she wants to! Schneider has the questions handled, after all, and speaking up now doesn't feel like it would change much at all with things already as tense as they are.

Part of her inaction also comes from wanting to see how Schneider handles this, but she won't admit that out loud just yet.

Despite her mood souring and rising tensions, however, Kukuru herself doesn't look tense at all. Her hands remain folded over each other in front of her waist, her heels are about as flat on the ground as they can be rather than being poised to spring forward, and her gaze remains focused on Schneider and not-Jack rather than any of the other dozen men in the area. She just listens instead with her enhanced hearing, staying on alert for any whispers or warnings that something untoward might be going on.
Metamorph One     'That is not real. It's only cigarettes. You just stop'

    Elara looks back at Schneider with the visual equivalent of a low whistle. Her gaze contains equal parts uncertainty and fascinated awe, like she isn't totally sure she hasn't miscommunicated something somehow, and yet, 'even if she had'.

    'Hah... be careful I do not lose my bite for you. A fat hunting-dog will not catch, my-lords.'

    "Oh don't worry about me." Elara says, waving off the implication as if she'd misunderstood this time; she obviously hasn't. "You're hosting us! It's normal to bring something for the ride, isn't it?" Dianna's voice trickles through with the tail end of a laugh her microphone doesn't quite catch. "Sorry but you'd be a pretty useless dog if that softened you up too much."

    '... My-lords. Please. You'll unsteady me. We are on a business, and I must be sharp. ... Please.'

    Something leaks into the space between the behind-space of Elara's eyes and the between of her shoulders and hands; something taut, sharp edged, held gingerly by its flat side. She looks searchingly at Schneider, opens her mouth, closes it again, and curls up her unconsciously outstretched fingers. "Hah . . . if you're feeling overloaded, then I'll stop. I'm sure people probably tell you that enough with how far you've already come; I don't mean to be the one-too-many today."

    'Not Italian enough for the Italians. Not human enough for the humans. Not man enough for the big mafiosos. Barely arcanist enough for the arcanists...'

    The silence on the other end of the line is unmistakably uncomfortable, but far shorter than Elara's. "Ah. Yeah I get it." comes back to her, a little awkward, but without that specific yearning tension behind it. "Thanks for the straightforward answer. Makes this simpler."

    'Lord Forget-Me-Not is a man of forgiving discernment, to have me still as his face.'

Elara tries to smile back. "You think maybe it's 'in spite of' and not 'despite'?"

    Shortly after, Elara gets out of the car at the rear of the group. She's already cognizant of the fact that she's far from the most intimidating member of the group; clearly; any experienced mobster could read that off her. She's just slightly incorrect, though. When she stands that kind of straight, keeps one hand that close to her coat pocket, the other so firmly on her headset, and scans the group of gangsters with more attention paid to their numbers than their culturally fascinating getup, all of a sudden her hat seems to resemble a military cap from the right angle. The way she checks her watch(?) from the bottom of her field of vision, not letting her eyes flick down, is just a little bit of a sign.

    When White edges in front of her, Elara paces sideways as if it were the most natural thing in the world, occluding most of herself behind White's body without a second thought. It wouldn't be the first time.
Metamorph One     'Alriiight, settle down. They busted him last month.'

    "Convenient." Elara murmurs to herself; a shared thought between her and Dianna, not-so-distant according to their uplink. Her eyes would look hard on a woman four inches taller and a scar or two less pretty. She neither budges nor speaks at 'call girl', nor the masked man's laughing disdain; she sets her jaw and speaks to herself in quiet and even tones, just on the edge of audibility. ". . . twenty three by . . . or four meters; verify? . . . your mark . . . effect."

    Making certain to still stay in the conical arc behind White, Elara continues to sideways pace until she's close enough to be heard by Schneider, pushing back her earpiece to lean forward, monotoning "Parsons is right. He said 'busted'." and implying 'not dead, so don't let off'; her first urging of the evening. Then, pulling the earphone forward again, she pauses to listen to something, glances at not-jack, and raises her voice enough to speak to him.

    "How many units?" she says. The question isn't curious. "That's more trustworthy than just asking for names, right?" She pauses to listen to another burst of chatter. "I hope you listened to Jack. Schneider won't be happy if you get it wrong."
Schneider Greco      Gebura drawing a sword made of flesh with eyes and then stomping it into the ground has the predictable effect on the gathered men. Not-Jack is the coolest of the bunch, but he still takes a half-step back; the others fully flinch and start glancing at each other, edging away. It certainly keeps their eyes off White and puts some extra weight behind Maddie's threats.

     "That some kind've Awakened? What the fuck kind of freaks did you bring here, girl??"
     "They're associates," Schneider replies coolly.

     But taking Gebura's suggestion, she tosses the briefcase aside to the ground, vaguely in the direction of the Rock City gang. One of their hooded goons scurries forward, pops it open on the ground, and riffles through one of the bundles of bills before nodding up at the boss.

     "Two hundred grand, Andrew. Uh, more or less. I can do an exact--"
     "Good. C'mon." 'Andrew'- the boss's name, apparently- tilts his head, and the two other men bring out the crate to the tensely small neutral zone between him and Schneider. "Appreciate that, Mr. Parsons. The beauty of business is we can all walk away happy, right?"

     He lifts his chin at Elara, like he can't quite believe he's being addressed, and then grunts approvingly at her question. "It's fifty pounds. That was the deal. Not my business whether the girl decides to be happy with it."

     But Flamel detects something odd. There's the expected amount of sweaty-palmed glee about a life-changing lump of money being put in front of them. But their kettle-whistle dread at the idea of the deal going wrong doesn't diminish in the slightest. In fact, it seems to be going up over time.

     Everyone in the Rock City gang but Andrew is terrified, and even Andrew's sweating. What do they know that he doesn't?

     Kukuru overhears murmurs:
     "Look, if they don't like it..."
     "Like hell I'm fighting..."
     "Whose goddamn idea..."

     Clunk. 'Dave' and 'Tommy', one a genteel cowboy and the other a robed archer, set down the crate. "Mandrakes" was shorthand; the crate's mostly salt-packed magical roots, but there's a couple ingots of odd metal and wine-bottles of violet liquid thrown in.

     Schneider steps on the crate's edge, halfway leans down, and pokes the roots with the tip of her odd umbrella. Everyone else seems to be holding their breath.

     ". . . Where is the rest?" she says, perfectly calmly.

     Oh, no.

"That's everything you asked for, 'Schneider'," Andrew growls.
"Per-haps this was fifty pounds unsalted. I needed fifty pounds dry."
"You've got to be fucking with me. Fifty pounds dry weight for two hundred--"
"Shut up. Jack said you had it." The sweet purr sharply leaves her voice again.
"If you want to smooth this over, we'll take one hund--"
"I relied upon you."
"There's just--!!"
"SHUT--!!"
Schneider Greco      It's hard to tell who moved first.

     But then, in that first millisecond, there's hardly any motion at all.

     Andrew's finger tightens one more infintesimal degree on the trigger, and then his machine gun kicks up and to the right, sawing from Schneider's hip to her shoulder just ahead of White's rock wall rising from the ground. That absorbs the rest of the burst. Moving thoughtlessly, like her body just hasn't registered the pain yet, Schneider raises the EGO umbrella to deflect a shot from the hayloft sniper to her left.

In the next heartbeat, four things happen at once:
- The four bowmen have the arrows teleported out of their quivers by White, and two of the cowboys in the open similarly lose their liquid-pistols, put right next to Elara.
- While half the Rock City gunmen scramble to cover, the other half open fire in a panic, forming two lanes of gunfire split by the rock cover. Cosimo drops with a red-liquid bullet slashing open his neck.
- The jets of blood punched out of Schneider's back hit the ground, like a delicate pattering of rain.
- And Schneider steps around the corner of the protective rock wall, still blank-faced as if in a dream. A wrist-flick pulls Andrew's ghost out of him; she shoots it in the leg, and when he falls to one knee, she puts her other pistol under his chin, heedlessly out of cover and intimately close.

     It's such a delicate pop, and the white lenses of his gas mask paint red from within.

     The screaming starts, then, from just about everyone but her and Cosimo and what-used-to-be-Andrew. The two Rock City archers hiding in the rotting house scramble out the door, belated reinforcement. Achille is trying to drag his fallen comrade behind the barn's outer corner for safety, but the wooden building isn't much cover.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel stays still.

    <Something's wrong. Psychohazards are spiking even when--> He starts, tensing up. <This only makes sense if the Mandrake isn't good.> He mentally whispers, and then... Then it goes wild.

    He doesn't move. But he does vanish. He can't defend anyone else, but he can... Focus on what needs dealing with here. Jack. Jack got busted -- and Jack knew where to get that Mandrake, had the Mandrake stashed, *something*. And something went bad here, they tried to close the deal without Jack and get the money despite it. And more importantly... Schneider is about to have walked into this situation with two hundred thousand dollars and an expectation to come back with fifty pounds dry of Mandrakes. And one way or another, she's being deprived of that -- which means issues with Forget-Me-Not, and issues with her position going forward.

    Something about recent events has him... agonized about that.

    So, what can he do with this? Well, somehow he isn't noticing Schneider's injuries and pain because she's blocking it out and that means his partly-psychic senses don't see them. So he's not about to jump in front of her. What he does, instead, is more suited to his skills.

    He skims some of her spare tremendous, unthinkably sharp focused motivation off the top -- it comes off her in waves. Using the mental search-key of Jack, and that force to target what he's after, he rushes through the meeting place, getting close to gangsters and astrally trying to find brains that are still inside of skulls that contain information about Jack. Where is he? How can Flamel get to him? Flamel rushes invisibly through the space to try to find that information while it's still inside of a whole brain -- and he'll smash apart any fighting motive he can as he goes.

    If this deal's bad, he'll find what he needs to go get at Jack and pull the information he needs from Jack himself. He'll make sure that, even if the meeting turned to violence, Schneider will walk back to Forget-Me-Not with those mandrakes come hell or high water.
Angela Gebura seemes pleased as the tensions seem to fade until, well.

Gebura sighs when she hears 'where is the rest?' and rubs at her eyes before drawing out her pack of smokes. She summons her EGO armor so she can light the cigarette with her hair and then banishes it away just as quickly. She puts the cigarette between her lips and makes her way over to the car, bullets and arrows whizzing around, as she sits back down on the roof of the car and completely fails to actually help out in the ongoing battle. She'll get the sword once people stop dying so fast. She is vaguely annoyed. "Yeah." She says. "Che peccato."

"Shit! Fuck! God damn it!" Tiphereth shouts as she covers her head with ehr hands, then shees Schneider is way out of cover--but she can't do much about that and it doesn't seem like Gebura's about to do something about that either so instead she runs over to Cosimo and Achille, to cover them, Gold Rush glowing as it powers up. "Gebura! Don't just sit there!"

"Promised on my honor as a Fixer. "

"You are so annoying sometimes! Kukuru, can you help Cosimo, he got hit bad!" Tiphereth calls over to her. "We ran out of healing bullets ages ago!"

Gebura turns her head and watches Schneider for a moment and then he looks towards Tiphereth. "Pretty sure Angela wants you to get some combat experience."

"I'm going to combat experience YOU."

"Gotta watch your temper, Tiph. You're not a kid anymore."

Gebura looks back to Schneider. "Hey." She says. "Does mandrake grow around here? Want me to go looking?"
White It's so annoying to deal with guns. So, so annoying. It's so quick and easy to use one, that it barely takes as long for someone to blink as for someone to get taken out... But of course, even seeing Cosimo drop abruptly, she knows she already made her choices. She hadn't chosen to try and protect everyone... She hadn't even thought about it. She'd say it makes her want to sigh, but maybe that's a little dishonest. Maybe she was right the first time... It's just so *annoying*.

     She sees Schneider take hits to her right, but not drop- rather the opposite. Good. She's deeply, dearly tempted to lunge forward into the gang's midst and counterattack from too close of a range to possibly miss, but she still has other self-appointed responsibilities. Her scythe is called into her hand, held out sideways with the flat of the blade roughly covering the space in front of her face and chest where dark magic psuedo-flames and impregnable chitin can stop and consume any projectiles aimed at the parts of her that actually might frustrate her movements in the moment, and she takes another hard step back to perfectly silhouette in front of Elara until she's suitably behind cover, or potentially taken care of by someone else. The blade only lowers once her eyelids raise, and the magenta glint of all ten pupils comes with an *oppressive* new weight on the shoulders of every exposed gangster in sight.

     The Heavy and Jinx Evil Eyes work together to siphon stamina, drain arcane reserves and make the subjective gravity of each shooter several times higher; for people with normal human physique, it's going to be just about infeasible to even hold a gun at extension to aim, let alone draw a bow properly. Even as much as she wants to include her own glare, it doesn't matter; her eyes are wide open for maximum coverage, and she won't let anything distract her for even a moment. Only once Elara is out from behind her does she bother to line up a Black Spear and shoot it through the wall of the loft into the sniper there, if someone hasn't taken them out just yet. Only then does she finally think to do the obvious, and invoke "Kukuru." like the name is a magic spell; whether she tends to Schneider or Cosimo first doesn't especially matter, and White isn't even paying attention to see if Kukuru's already on it... Partly because that would mean having to acknowledge a potential allied death during live combat. And White's... Not a healer. Not anymore.

     Given Gebura isn't actively on the attack, after that point White designates herself as the appointed striker. Definitely not to let off some of that annoyance she's feeling... Noooo. She's cool, calm, in control, level headed... And that's just how she assumes it'll look when she finally gets the chance to lunge off of defense and teleport out ahead, splitting one man around her scythe only to appear again behind another and drive a Black Bullet into his back to blast him into what might be several pieces. She's restraining herself still, despite appearances... She's trying not to destroy the buildings, at least, since that could be where the goods are hidden. And... After all this, if she was the reason the rest of the goods got ruined by mistake, she'd feel some kind of way about it. She hates wasted effort more than anything, even if it's not her own.
Metamorph One     'What the fuck kind of freaks did you bring here, girl??'

    Still no reaction from Elara. It'd be eerie, if it weren't exactly what a powerfio mafioso should hope to bring to a meeting like this. She only stands out by virtue of being the only freak like that; in the line of fire just as much as the Rock City goons, unarmed, and looking like all she's doing is staring at dots on a screen.

    'It's fifty pounds. That was the deal. Not my business whether the girl decides to be happy with it.'

    Elara looks at Schneider for verification, then takes her lack of objection as having it correct. She nods back at not-Jack; Andrew; apparently satisfied with him having at least this level of prudence.

    Back when she was nineteen, and it was ammo instead of mandrakes, she'd dealt with men of lesser patience tham him. If only somewhat.

    '. . . Where is the rest?'

    A third of a kilometer away, Dianna settles deeper into her seat. Rolling her shoulders without releasing either grip-trigger, a monitor reads the flick of her eyes and responds to structured brainwave spike, panning over the center overlay of the canopy. Tapping her ring finger on a length of blank bar, tiny rings of orange pulse over the white plastic, repeatedly brightening and magnifying the image. She breathes in down to the diaphragm, then releases only half of it, and ceases to blink.

    'That's everything you asked for, 'Schneider','
    'You've got to be fucking with me.'

    "You had one job, Andrew." says Elara. There's only a moment in the rapidly heating argument where her voice can cut in, but it's just sharp enough to take it. "Do you think Jack pays you to have fun and be yourself?"

    'There's just--!!'
    'SHUT--!!'

    Under calmer circumstances, Elara might feel for the guy. It's not as if it seems like they scammed Schneider; not on purpose. The rest of the items in the crate are clearly trying to make up the missing value. Andrew is willing to settle for half. It sounds as if there simply wasn't enough mandrake, and either Jack overestimated the patience of Manus Vindictae, or thought of them as too similar to a for-profit mob to realize this was a bad idea.

    But these aren't calmer circumstances. Before she turned old enough to drink, Elara had already condemned men to death for acting just a little too unpredictable at the wrong time.

    "Severance. Fire for effect."

    One sixths of a second later, the barn loft disintegrates; ripped apart sideways and scattered far and wide over the field at a shallow upwards angle. An ugodly roar follows nine tenths of a second later, and Elara's hair whips out fowards from behind her head; she's already holding down her hat.

    She clicks the hand trigger in her pocket once, says the word "Mark." and then gestures slightly lower, towards the first floor of the abandoned house. A third of a second later, the ground catches fire, the grass ripples flat, and a thirty degree ignition cone sweeps through the field; everything still in the way, isn't. A wave of black smoke billows off the dirt and mixes into the night sky.
Metamorph One     "Ghost Light confirm." Elara kicks the loose handguns by her shoe under the car. "Mark two. Lead hit." She hurries towards Schneider, but she's much slower than the arcanist is. "Closing. ETA twenty-seven seconds." "Hold AM, free AP." "Acknowledged. Range in fifteen."

    Running as far as she can in a few more seconds, crouches down behind White's earth wall, as if it were somehow necessary, and counts to six on one hand, rolling over to her thumb a second time, then gestures to the two men taking cover to come her way, flattening her hand down towards the ground to indicate to stay low. Timed to expecting them to need a few seconds to make up their mind, a distant-growing-closer rumble in the distance becomes a sharp, electronic roar, like a buzzing chainsaw, and a flat fan of blue-white incendiary streaks cuts through the clearing, scything right-left at a height unlikely to hit anything if people dive down.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     "We can get salt at the grocery store, bozo." Then-

    Gunfire and blood. Madeleine pounces, one hand outstretched while the other goes for her knife. Not at Andrew, because that's directly into the line of fire. Instead she goes for the backup goons, which is still into *a* line of fire, but not an automatic-weapons one. The first guy she hits bowls right over, his back-tank of red Danger Liquid shattering under the impact force. He's probably still got one in the chamber, which Madeleine fixes by just stabbing him through the hand to toss his gun into the dirt.

    Schneider executes Andrew, and Madeleine takes that as a cue that she somehow got out of that first barrage unscathed - she was standing near enough to not see the sprays of blood out Schneider's back. Hopping to her feet, she tackles another goon and starts beating him into the dirt with her fists. After a few blows she picks him up with one hand and drags him behind the stone wall, holding a knife to his throat but waiting for Schneider's cue as to whether more people are dying tonight.

    "Was this the plan?" she growls to her makeshift prisoner. He may or may not be up for answering, but it's worth a try.
Schneider Greco      It's over nearly as soon as it starts. Nearly half the Rock City shooters were disarmed off the bat, and not all of those left felt like fighting in the first place; the ones in White's line-of-sight collapse from amplified gravity and stay down from fatigue, the barn and the sniper covered in it more or less disintegrate before he can take a second shot at Schneider, and the ones who take cover elsewhere can be subdued by Flamel.

     The way Schneider stands so confidently out in the open gives the one or two men still in fighting condition nerves. One of them behind a car takes a panicked shot at her, going wide; she looks to the gunshot, steadies her aim while he blunders a second, and fires without blinking. He drops.

     The bullets plinking against Tiphereth's gauntlets slow to a pinging trickle, and then stop. When they cease, she can hear Cosimo take a raspy gurgling breath to her left. "Come on, Cosimo! Don't turn your head-- look at me!!" Achille demands, trying to put pressure on the wound. At Elara's beckoning, he curses, lifts up Cosimo with a heavy grunt of effort, and hurries over.

     Dianna raking fire above sends the remainder scattering like roaches, into the dark woods at the field's edges or their one functional car. Thank goodness the mandrake's behind that stone wall. Before they all go, Flamel manages to place Jack from a panicked brain: Pulaski County Penitentiary.

     Not far from there, Maddie's cowboy prisoner- just about the only survivor to still be sticking around- is coughing up the details.

     "Was this the plan?"
     "N-no, man! You gotta believe me!" he sputters, trying to pull his bandana down from a bloodied mouth and putting his other hand up placatingly. "Andrew said he'd squeeze you a little-- said you couldn't get another source-- we didn't want a shootout or nothing!! Please!"

     Schneider rounds the stone wall's corner again with the briefcase full of cash under her arm, looking down at him with hatefully dull eyes. The feathers decorating her front are no more or less red than ever.

     "Thank you for keeping one, Lady Ma-de-leine," she says, back to her usual purr, and then looks down at the terrified man. "What an, ahhh... regrettable mess. But my lord Forget-Me-Not is kind. Bring me the rest, and you will all be paid in full. Otherwise..." He hurriedly nods, and when she lightly kicks him, takes the hint to scramble towards the woods.

     She sighs and smiles at all of you, a pale and peaceful figure in the beautiful moonlight- nevermind the wisps of smoke about her. But...

     "Boss!"
     "Quiet, Achille--"
     "Cosimo's hit bad! Please..."
     "... !! Lady Kukuru!! Come!"

     Schneider's already crouching down by him, cradling a barely-conscious Cosimo's temple and pouring a small vial into the wound- it won't fix him, but it'll help him keep. She murmurs fretful little curses under her breath that don't quite translate. "Idiot-- should've stayed back at the car if you were going to-- nnnh-- Lady Madeleine, Lady Steloj, the gauze in the car--!"

     It's more genuine feeling than she showed over getting shot herself.

     . . .

     It wasn't visible against her red-feathered front, but there are three clean exit wounds in a diagonal line across her back, seeping red down to the black coat's hem. The soul that named itself Schneider still hardly seems to notice that delicate girl's body.
White Ironically, the thing that stops White from man-by-man dismantling the resistance ends up being Dianna's aerial fire; once she realizes she's in the attack zone, she's quick to warp back out of it and begin keeping an eye on the angle from which it's coming, to give herself a more accurate idea of where she'll be in the way and where she won't. That first teleport has her accidentally bringing a man with her, gripped by his collarbone in one hand... And very nearly throws him back into the downpour of aircraft shot. But... She doesn't. She has a moment to reassess the situation because of Dianna, and that's enough to let out a faint exhale and drop him like an extra-weighted sack of bricks. She'd lost track of the situation there, and gotten a bit indulgent hadn't she? Well... It still felt deserved.

     She doesn't let off of holding the surrenderers and the passed-out with her Evil Eye, not fully, but she does step away from the immediate scene of the skirmish itself as Schneider and Cosimo are brought together. With her back slantedly-toward the injured so she can keep her attention aimed almost pointedly away, somewhere between keeping watch and allowing for implied privacy, she almost seems like she's just going to stand there in silence forever. Eventually, though, she does muster some words, with what feels like more effort than normal after managing to be semi-sociable on the car ride here.

     She has to think about what she's meant to do, after all. She's not a Kukuru, she can't heal wounds instantly for others. She's not a Flamel, and she's lost track of where he's ended up on his info-hunt, but she knows well enough to expect him to check in once he's finished with... Whatever he's doing. He's rarely doing *nothing at all*, in her experience. She's almost tempted to go hunting just to be distant from the scene for a little while, in the hopes that bringing back more of the gang for Schneider's satisfaction might be appreciated... But no. She, Schneider that is, is being pragmatic. It'd be disrespectful to offer her more petty blood while she's... While she's tending her friend's injury.

That should've been obvious, shouldn't it? Schneider's pulled thin. She doesn't need a distraction right now. Then what *should* she..?

     She takes a hand off of her scythe from where they'd settled together at the center of the haft like it's a closed umbrella, and reaches back without looking to hold a hand near Schneider's shoulder. Silk spins out in thin threads, almost invisible until they begin to weave together into an extending strip of cloth, carefully wrapping it behind, up, beneath clothing and around the smaller woman's chest to carefully make a closed loop covering the bulletholes while trying not to disturb her. It's more comfortable, and tougher than gauze... And that's about the best she can do right now. She's never had to bind someone else's wounds before, and it's been a long time since she had practice on her own, but it's a snug fit, doesn't chafe, and won't slip easily. She still hasn't looked back physically, but of course she's watching her own work; her eyes stay focused outward, though. "... When he's... Stable enough... I can move us... Back to the gate. Or... A hospital. If you aren't... Particular. But... Trust Miss Kukuru first."

Right person, right job. She just has to make sure Schneider doesn't push herself, for now.