Issue 1 Downtime

Victoria was good at keeping up appearances.

Actually, she really was good at distracting herself enough that it could be easy at times, but other times, it was an effort. Today, she was apparently reading, which gave most people a good excuse to leave her alone. She sat on the steps to the building... which while it might see more traffic, looked much less suspicious and likely to attract people who might want to come see if she was all right. So she sat there, pretending to read, trying to just... not feel anything. She went over her spells in her head, started going through recipes she was trying to remember to write down to try out, anything she could think of to keep her brain on an ordered track.

Walking across the Quad Nailah spots Victoria sitting there. Part of her tells her to just keep walking and that the issue is done and over with and to just leave the girl alone but another, more vehement part is insisting on setting her straight and a book isn't enough deterrent to make her change her mind. So she makes a beeline for the stairs she's sitting on.

"Good afternoon, Miss Valentine."

All right, you can do this. It's Ms. Weaver, not some annoying nosy person. Victoria looked up, putting on a smile that was... pretty convincing, really. "Hello," she said, closing the book and setting it aside. "Been a bit since you've graced my door. Or vice versa."

"Yet we are dealing with the same thing. Or so I hear."

"Mmm. THe little oblivious boy who was half-sacrificed, then? Came waltzing through my door without even bothering to tell me he was carrying a stack of Chthonian black runes with him."

"That was likely my mistake. I was there when his little outburst happened but I did not quite tell him what I feared was happening. Maybe because I hoped to be mistaken."

"Ugh, I wish it was a mistake. Now if he'd just realize that this isn't a little game that he's playing, or a fun little mystery out of a book that isn't the Darkhold, maybe we'd be a bit better off."

"Indeed." she says, letting that hang for a moment.



"Yet you had to take a piece of Sam to scry on them. Regardless of the kind of personal infraction that is, we both know damn well that if they are aware enough that this can work both ways and you just had to show them a piece of the Morrigan on the other end?"

"No, I used a piece of shadow," Victoria corrected her. "And if there was some kind of link, that bit's unclear, I stored it all back inside my power before anything could see me looking and look back."

"No no no, stop right there. You do not get to harp on about the severity of what we're facing here and then assume that you managed to obfuscate this. No offense to your competence but that was foolish and in the worst case you alerted them to who we have on our side. Not to mention putting my girlfriend in the line of fire."

I... wait, did I? It's just a shadow, but you even said it was for the symbolic significance, you self-absorbed little dolt.

I put the shadow away before it could be traced, so everything should be fine, but... I could've managed that scrying with the shadow of the table, or his shadow if I needed something more significant...

She was obviously rolling it over in her mind.

You over-clever little snot. Had to flex your little talent, didn't you, show just how mysterious and knowledgeable you were, and you went and did something idiotic like that. Gods... what would mother say right now.

"Even if that's true, there are ways to fix it," Victoria said with a little shrug.

Realize that you're a worthless idiot. But for god's sake, don't let them know that you know that. That's what she'd say.

"I'll commend you for giving it back but what's done is done. Just think a bout it and maybe cut Sean some slack. We all started into all this as naive idiots. We just had the luxury of much smaller stakes."

She did not just- what the BLOODY HELL has she ever had to pay for this!?

Oh. A year trapped in some nightmare world getting tortured. Right.

Face it, Victoria... you're nothing special. At all. You worthless, naive idiot.

"Yeah," she said quietly, nodding.

Nailah quirks an eyebrow, knowing Victoria well enough to realize that quietly admitting 'defeat' is not something the girl does.

"You don't have to keep up the facade. I know how much bullshit dealing with these things really entails."

Ahem. Rule number one, Victoria.

"Well, if anything did manage to get a whiff of her- and I don't think it did, mind you," she said, in a much more normal 'Victoria' voice, "I should be able to redirect its attention. I can work on it tonight."

"You don't have to draw something's attention to yourself. Sam and I aren't exactly helpless and I'm not expecting you to chastise yourself."

"She didn't ask me to do that," Victoria pointed out. "It was risky, and she doesn't need to have to pay because I did something silly when I wanted..." to help "...to show off."

"To help. You're not nearly the ice queen you want people to think you are."

"I just..."

No. You're not over-owning this one. She swallowed.

"I just wanted to help... and I didn't want to screw it up for her and... I screwed it up anyway and I'm sorry. No one needs to pay for the messes I make."

Okay, little too much honesty there- no, Victoria, you will NOT CRY.

"Goddess... Victoria, calm down. I don't even know if there has been a mess. You took something... intimate from Sam and held on to it, something that didn't sit well with me so I looked for a problem that's more than just offending my beliefs. Nothing happened and if something does try to come after her you know damn well I'm going to rip it to shreds."

"I just... thought it was a shadow... I take them all the time from tables, behind the sofa..." It didn't sound much like an excuse, more like another admission of stupidity.

"It's part of her. Not... a crucial one, I'll admit, but still. A living effigy we all have and that's tied to us. The actual shadow, like from a table isn't the issue, it's what it's tied to and what it represents. A sofa is just a tool no matter how you look at it. Even with your own shadow you may not even notice because it's an extension of yourself."

"I... should have figured that one out," Victoria said. She had felt rather clever about it, how much easier it would be to make a questing agent out of the shadow, since Sam could do that herself, how she could give Sam the information the scrying had given them... But she hadn't stopped and thought about why that was. And so all that 'cleverness' was rather useless.

"We all follow our own path. But I do think there's something to be learned from letting them cross once in a while."

"Right..."

And now pull your damned self together, girl.

"...Right." She blinked, took a deep breath to steady herself. "We can still do this," she said. "I... hell, this is going to be nasty before it's over. Even more if we can't convince him that this is, in fact, something dangerous."

"He's going to find his old nanny. Tomorrow. She sounds harmless if not even benevolent but I find it hard to trust that. There's someone in this who is on their own side, going by their own agenda and that may be her."

"If you think we're only going to find one person working their own twisted angle in this, I want a house in the happy reality you're living in. And a pony."

"This is bigger than some cultist plotting their own little agenda but I couldn't pierce the veil sorrounding her."

"And there's only so much I can do from a distance. Judging from my conversation with the Headmistress, though, you agree that this isn't something we just leave to him?"

"If we leave this solely to him I certainly hope you like darkness because there's going to be a lot of it. And that's assuming they don't actually found a way to raise The Other..."

"From my experience, it takes quite a lot of effort to avert a horrible crisis, and just one or two idiots playing with things they shouldn't to create one. So yes, I quite concur we can assume 'what could go wrong would go wrong.'"

"I'll take it you'll be coming along then."

"Well, even if I was inclined to let things go to hell, what else would I be doing while you were all off having fun?"

"Why do I feel you're going to regret saying that." she chuckles faintly.

"You can only collect so many regrets before they start to lose their effect," Victoria said. "Right now, putting myself in danger doesn't seem like any big deal."

"Certainly sounds familiar."

Across the quad from them, a diminutive man in a tailored suit stood in the shadows of a tree, simply watching.

"I know. At some point, things..." Her voice trailed off as her eyes fell upon the figure. ...The hell?

"I may be psychic but I'm not good at completing other peoples' sentences." she points out when Vickie doesn't resume talking after a moment or two.

Victoria shook her head to clear it. ...the hell's wrong with me? "...don't seem nearly as threatening. I think that summer holiday might be very much needed soon."