Margot
An evening was found where both had open availability. They'd meet at Margot's-- it's location was most convenient apparently, for it was where they met often. The weather had been plenty mild all the prior week but today had been windy and rainy and the forecast promised snow. Margot and Ned sat out on her narrow little porch, each on one of the two small chairs that furnished, with a little blown glass pipe on the table between them.
Wind whistled and whirred and the balcony faced west so they could see the storm clouds climbing over the mountain peaks and beginning to spill their way into the valley. It was quite an impressive sight. Margot insisted on sitting outside to watch, even though it meant that she had to pull on her coat as well as her sweater and keep her hood up over her head.
She was sitting leaned back with her right ankle propped up on her left knee, hands in her pockets and eyes on the incoming rain.
"So, have you spent any time in Doc's library yet? I'm thinking that I'll head over after class on Friday, if he lets me. Most of the things I'm thinking I could learn to do, or would want to do, I'd want distance on my side for it. Like, set up a ritual here at home and have it affect something not immediately around me. If this is going to come to danger, it sounds like the safer option."
She glanced to Ned and grinned.
"Like drones for magic."
Ned
"I keep coming back to the fact we're new..."
He'd stuffed himself into his jacket on arrival, not bothering to shirk it when his fellow apprentice made it clear they were going to be sitting out on the porch. The incoming storm has his attention, chin and cheeks tucked into the buttoned high collar of his wool coat, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets and legs kicked out straight before him.
"We should be in the library as often as possible picking up and learning about all the things..." He gestures before him, hands leaving his pockets to form some sort of invisible explosion of knowledge that expands outward in a 'Kaboom' like motion. They retreat back into his pockets immediately after.
"But for all the things we learn, there are people out there who have been doing them for years. Decades. Perhaps centuries. Drones for magic is prudent but it could just as easily be something others of our like can sense...and find a way around. It'd be like a target, wouldn't it?" He glances across at her, brow perked. "Identifying where to find you more easily."
Then back out toward the storm.
"I'm somewhat more inclined to remain as anonymous as possible. The less known we are...at leas until we can get some sort of upgrade....the better chances of going unnoticed until we're ready." He shimmies a little bit deeper into his collar and jacket, legs curling in a bit as the first thrums of thunder kickstart off in the distant sky.
"I've been considering Entropy some...and Time as well. Being able to predict things in advance and plan accordingly seems like it would negate a lot of reactionary efforts on our part. I'd certainly love to know when I'm gonna get a knife in the gut before it happens, rather than during..."
Margot
Margot nodded her head thoughtfully to what Ned had to say. The bowl of the pipe was blackened down already, and she was content to sit and muse for the time being.
"Those are good ideas. I don't know how I feel about putting toes in the river of Time just yet..." She pressed her mouth thin, then shruggged and was quiet for a moment.
"What did you think about the Doc's friends? Nick and Penelope?" She wriggled the slipper-clad foot that was propped on her knee and added, sounding quiet and bashful: "She makes a pretty astounding impression when she steps in a room, huh?"
Ned
"I think they both struck me as knee deep in it already, waiting for you and I to make the plunge they did. They're patient, nodding along and comfortable accepting our hesitation. I could almost hear the "We were like you once" tone coming off of them in everything they said and did..."
If Ned is suggesting he's found a new appreciation for the Doc, it doesn't come through in any obvious placement. He merely stares at the Storms beyond them, eyes a little narrowed for the weed in his system.
"They're bright. Intelligent and have had years to sort out who they are and what they've done. I'm also willing to bet for every one of them, there's been three or four others who didn't make it that far. Who got lost or went down the wrong path or just up and vanished trying out something they didn't know any better about. Knowledge..."
He coughs, a muffled thing.
"Seems to be the name of the game. It's like we're in a race and everyone else got given a headstart and now we're just learning that it isn't so much a race...as it is fleeing some vast and terrible force intent on giving us a hard time because of who and what we are."
A pause. Or maybe a reprieve. Ned catches his own tone, the sharp pessimistic quality of it, bordering on fatalism and shakes himself where he sits.
"I want to know more about our future enemies-" Enemies because he was tired of calling them some word he didn't know the full definition of yet "-and I want to sort out what sort of things they could do to us, so I can start studying how to make sure those things don't happen."
Margot
"Or what they would want with us in the first place," Margot agreed. She agreed with a lot, which no doubt had much to do with the Apprentices sticking together for this journey, continuing to meet up as often as they did to consult and touch base and plan ahead. They both sensed the patience off the guests of the Doc, but she had to agree that even though nothing they said or did really reeked of superiority she still had a vague sense of being a kid at a family gathering-- the adults were just waiting for her to go to the kids table or outside to play so they could talk freely amongst themselves.
She agreed on the front of enemies, too. In particular after he came to her door bearing news of a supposed ember of war sparked from the Technocracy's hearth.
"I don't really remember which is which, but one of them was, like, Death Wizards, wasn't it? People who murder and cannibalize for their craft and the like. They sound unhinged more than they sound organized. I don't... remember what the other one was, besides the Technocracy. Marauders and Nephandus but which is which?" She shrugged and cleared her throat. She should digress.
"Truthfully?" She sounded grim, and that was always an off-putting unsettling thing when paired with the cloak of the macabe that her resonance put around her. "I'm concerned about People. Humanity. I mean, clearly this has to be a secret, and not just because of Paradox and what reality does if we flaunt things about. People can't know that we exist, that we do what we do. Between frightened idiots who'd chase us away like Frankenstein's Monster and... I don't know, agencies that'd want to harness what we can do..."
She sighed and shook her head and reached for the pipe and lighter on the table again. "I can see how these people turn into hermits."
Ned
"Hermits at the best of times."
He snorts, softly, turning to pull a small jar from out of his pocket. The contents belonged in the pipe and he sets it down on the table beside them for when she's finished with her own haul. It could use a re-fill.
"Imagine someone with a penchant for old supervillain demands, enough information about Correspondence, Forces and the Doc's need for gadgets. Death rays galore and an Dr. Evil sense of accomplishment. One billion dollars tucked in their pockets when they hold the world hostage..." He pauses, frowns. "I suddenly see why the Technocracy might be a bit scared and demanding of our curtailing. Not all of us are bound to be rational about gaining phenomenal cosmic power."
He took up the pipe when she was done, flicking a zippo over the bowl. It was a new purchase, all chrome and black with a skull and crossbones on emblazoned on the shiny metal surface. A puff of smoke escapes him a moment later. The Storms have intensified, the wind gusting thick enough to reach them on the porch a bit.
"Humans are irrational, illogical and overtly concerned with comfort. They want to feel safe so they can continue to act dangerously. Smoking, drinking, unprotected sex, all of that nonsense that comes from feeling like there's a big blanket waiting to happen over you. Helicopter government or some such. We're on the outside now and there's no illusion of a blanket. I'm not so much worried about humanity as I am worried about breaking them eventually to get the job done."
He chuckles, a soft thing under the breath.
"But I can see why the witch with a war God for a Guide, is a bit scared of pitchforks and torches..."
Margot
nWinds whipped down the mountains and started making their way in through the city. A couple of modest potted plants that hung from the built-in awning cover over her balcony swayed about on their chains. She took her hit and handed things off to Ned, wiping her fingertips on the outside hem of her jeans and leaning back.
"I worry that maybe you're banking too much on their Sleeping to not have some idea of what might be going on. I think the masses would dismiss us, it's not them I'm worried about. It's the few people crazy enough to believe it when they see or hear the wrong thing. It's the agencies-- what if something beyond the Technocracy exists? Like, it sounds like they've come to at least some kind of treaty with us, even if that is questionable in its strength right now... But there could be other organizations."
She reached up to push a chunk of loosed hair back under her hood and secure it tucked behind her ear.
"Then that opens the door to questions like 'What else is there that I didn't know about?'-- monsters, goblins, werewolves, vampires, ghosts... Probably all of it, right?"
She shook her head and unfolded her legs, put her slippered feet on the ground so that she could rise to her feet. Her elbows tucked in and her spine curved back so it would pop and crackle away the stiffness accumulated from staying on a less-than-comfortable seat for too long. "Life is going to get really boring really quick if the whole time is going to end up spent trying to fortify and protect and ward against all of this shit."
Ned
"Already bored of breaking zombie necks and putting ghost girls to rest."
He laughs. A bit too hard but we'll blame that on the weed. The mirth subsides as the Storm sweeps in full now, pelting rain and frozen droplets in equal parts. The patter of metal being struck is oddly soothing, diminishing the moment and leaving behind a carefully constructed bubble of privacy. Few people would caught out in the midst of this and they were technically outside. It gave the impression of braving the Storm, even if they were still huddled under the protective bubble of an awning. Appropriate metaphors inbound.
"I'm not so much unconcerned with humanity as I am trying to sort out the biggest threats first. Werewolves and vampires...well, really those don't scare me as much. If they do exist, then we're the least of the Technocracy's concerns, right? Those sorts of things would need to be hiding a whole lot deeper than us.I figure we don't have to try nearly as much if the furriies and the undead are good enough to keep off the radar."
He takes another quick hit off the pipe, tapping the bowl against the chair's armrest to empty it out, before putting the glass piece back on the table between them.
"Way I see it, we're not really waiting for Life to be just any one thing. We're prepping and studying so we can get out in the world to make some sort of difference. The Doc? He's waiting for us to grow up so he's got colleagues to work with. Easier to interact with those you've helped raise, then the rest of the world's overly pedantic adults with powers equal to your own, afterall." Memories of their meeting with Grace, had him shaking his head.
"All the better to stick it out together and make sure it doesn't go pear-shaped."
Margot
Bored of zombies and ghosts? Margot grinned a little bit at him but didn't say much. Just chuckled a bit on her own, shrugged once as though to say You have a point, and looked out to watch as a sheet of rain visibly crossed the city to finally come up to the apartment's doorstep and begin splattering noisily off the roof of her balcony.
For a time they were quiet, being soothed by the rain and wandering the trails of thought let open to traverse freely by what they'd just smoked.
She was quiet still while Ned spoke of weathering the storm-- not the one they watched, but the one they were living. Margot felt as though it were day to day and she was the type of person that organized her school notes with tabs and colors and margins neat. The better part of her past year has been the most harrowing of her life. No wonder her hair color was beginning to bleed red near the temples.
When she finally did speak, it was quiet and simple what she had to say.
"The storms that we get back in Portland are better. You couldn't see it from my house, but you could hear it-- the rain on the ocean. I'd go to the beach road and watch them come in. Like big black tidal waves in the sky. And you'd smell the sea in the air."
A break, then: "I want to grow up then. I want to try some things. I don't like it in the kiddie pool, and I want to get ready to go back soon."
She jerked her head toward the apartment next, and said in a less wistful, less determined tone: "Come on, I wanted you here when I tried using Yorick as a dowsing bunny."
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