(Perception 3 + Awareness 1: Just because we all know it's there, but gotta make it official)
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
During the day the building where works the individual whose resonance felt like an icy finger slid up the spine only to disappear so soon as he turned around is tall and inviting but its design is both bureaucratic and inviting and one can only go so far as the lobby without either an ID badge or an escort from a person wearing such a badge.
Ned had first encountered him a few days ago when he appeared in the corridors of the hospital where he worked. Had no reason to be there so far as Ned could tell. He was dressed like the doctors tend to dress but he wasn't wearing a lab coat or any form of ID. Was carrying around a plastic THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS bag whose contends were occluded from sight and after a moment's wandering he made a sharp left turn and continued on down the hall with purpose.
The next day he appeared again. Same time give or take a few minutes and after making brief eye contact with Ned he continued on straight through the hallway intersection and disappeared.
Maybe not literally. The way he felt though it could have been literally. The man was as real as anyone can claim a body to be real without laying hands on them and he did not appear a third night. This isn't a fucking Dickens novel. And he doesn't work at the hospital but it doesn't take a lot of investigating to determine the man's name and his title and what the hell he might be doing wandering the hospital at night. Nurses like to gossip and if you want to find out anything the people to ask work for environmental services.
His name is Dr. Sepúlveda. Andy or something like that. Works for the city or the county or something. Morgue doctor. He's banging Dr. Kaklamanis.
Scandalous.
Ned
He was waiting outside of the morgue doors. A 'visitors' pass was left for Margot at the front desk, with a name drop attached to 'Dr. Sepulveda' for the receptionist. (Trusting in someone with Sepulveda's rather notorious appetites, it would not be difficult to entertain Margot's youthful presence as a 'future internship' or 'piece of strange tail' for a bit of variety). Ned himself had procurred one on the grounds of the former, via a little fancy digital work at the hospital administration level.
Directions down to where she needed to go were simple. Ned himself had been waiting in one of those long overly dark hallways with the single row of segmented flourescent lights you always imagined or saw in television and movies.
If he had known the cliche was real, he might well have packed some sort of weapon to fight off the hordes of Zombies they were no doubt about to unleash. Hindsight though...
Ned is at one end of the hallway, the double doors of stainless, immaculate steel a good fifty feet down the hall. He is staring at them impatiently. Aggitatedly, one shoulder fetched up against the hard grainy concrete walls. The Dead needed no comforts or luxuries afterall.
He was dressed in his scrubs still, these ones a touch cleaner than the last time Margot and he met.
Waiting.
Margot
The girl who appeared at the receptionist's desk that night looked bright eyed and a little nervous. It was kind of a deer-in-the-headlights thing that she got going on when she didn't have much confidence in what she was doing. She looked exactly like an intern, or some poor girl serving as a 'flavor of the month' (though she wasn't traditionally beautiful, but distinct looking all the same) in that regard. The pass was used to get through the doors, and she soon found herself in a stairwell re-enacting scenes in her head from the last scary movie she'd scene.
It was a poor choice, working herself up by letting her imagination run wild down the gambit of horror flicks she's seen in the past ten years. It made it all the more daunting to look down that long ill-lit corridor to where Ned awaited far down at the other end.
She actually paused in the open doorway, he could see, just holding the door open and looking. For a moment she may have actually considered turning around and leaving-- some sensible part of her mind that reminded her she had class the next day and a goddamn life to worry about living. A mixed spirit of adventure and social-animal need to be with like kind made her gulp and finish walking through that doorway, though.
"Hey," she hailed quietly to Ned when she was near enough to reach him. She'd lifted a hand for a small awkward wave when she was halfway up the hall first. She was dressed in a maroon sweatshirt with a black leather jacket unzipped overtop, a pair of jeans and black sneakers and more pins to keep her hair from her face.
Speaking in a low voice, she asked: "What are we doing, jumping the guy?"
Sepúlveda
And the receptionist is barely paying attention to who is doing what going in and out of here because they pay a private security team to give a shit about who is going in and out of here and given the building's association with the biggest regional trauma center and teaching hospital in the entire state there is a lot of traffic even during off hours.
So a couple of kids who look like they're with the university are here to shadow the weird medical examiner who just started working here at the beginning of the year. The young-ish guy who would be cute if he smiled ever. As long as they don't trip any of the fire alarms or try to break into a room they don't belong in the guards have football games to watch and Facebook feeds to check.
Basically: everyone in here is busy and it's the end of the day and night falls fast this time of year so nobody gives a shit what these two are doing.
Except for the guy they're here to visit. He gives a bit of a shit but he's delayed at the front desk asking the receptionist what the hell she's talking about so Ned has a few seconds to explain himself.
Ned
These facts don't seem to occur to Harry and Hermio-
Let's just cut that shit out right now, yeah? These facts aren't really in the vein of thinking for two would-be Magi who have about as much of a clue about this sort of thing as the aforementioned books of fame explained. One of them is bound to pull out an 'Expulsio Santorum' at some point in hopes theyve stumbled across a Slitherin turncoat or a basilisk.
So when Margot finally appears, Ned spooks briefly, starting in place while he was busy checking his phone nerotically for a possible text from her to let him know she'd arrived. Instead she 'pops in' and he breathes a little deeper, staring at the far wall with briefly wild eyes and a heart-attack sort of intensity.
"Hey." He says a bit breathless, stuffing his phone away a moment later, a flash of a smile that didn't quite make it to genuine, creasing his face before he's peering at the double stainless doors leading into their 'Perps' office.
"I figu-...what would we jump him?" Ned looks genuinely confused for a second before he's shaking his head. "I just felt...weirdness and difference when I saw the guy is all. I figured you'd want to know and...well we're about up to speed on what I had planned right now so if you have any bright ideas." He's quiet. Because staying quiet is what you did when you were doing something like this.
Margot
The young woman looked briefly apologetic when her newfound compatriot startled, but didn't linger on it. She raised an eyebrow at him and grinned a little, the expression quirked on one side of her face more than the other. "I mean, you're lurking outside the doors like a creep," she explained.
He just figured that they should check him out-- didn't really have plans laid out on how to approach him or what to say. Margot's already-wide eyes widened a little further. It dawned on her that just because this guy was able to better explain what he was perceiving about this Other Energy Magick Thing, that didn't necessarily mean that he had any better idea of what he was doing than she did.
As if trying to buy pot in Denver with an expired prescription didn't clue her off on that already.
"Jesus Christ, I don't know." She looked a little exasperated and suddenly regretful-- maybe it would be a better idea to go right back up that stairwell and back to her books. She had homework to do anyways. "I mean, was just coming out and telling you that you feel weird the best way to do that? It's all I've got up my sleeve."
Sepúlveda
Cue the footfalls in an otherwise empty hallway and the cut of a shadow come around the corner before the arrival of the individual who has the keycard to the door they're currently hovering around.
The man who comes around the corner is the same one Ned saw at the hospital several days ago. This is Margot's first introduction to him.
He can't be more than five-foot-six even with the generous cushioning his dark shoes provide. The word "sprite" might come to mind if not now then after they get to know him better. Sprites are small supernatural creatures with a good amount of energy and an alienness in comparison to their human counterparts.
Unlike the last time Ned saw him he is dressed the part of a medical examiner and not a clinical physician out answering a booty call. Blue scrubs and a lab coat. Dark-rimmed glasses instead of contacts or the nothing he had had on last time. If glasses worked as a disguise for Superman why not a mad scientist who feels like someone walking over your grave. He's carrying a load of manila file folders in one arm and has his other hand in his coat pocket.
One of the fluorescent lights overhead flickers after he passes underneath it. Could just be coincidence. Coincidence happens all the time. They haven't realized it yet.
"We-ell," he says. Sardonic delight in his voice. The more he speaks the more they will pick up faint traces of an accent. Certain phonemes get it more than others. A ghost of an accent more than anything. "Interns! At the start of the springsemester! How lucky am I?" As he comes close enough to have to zero his eyes on one or the other of them he stops. Still lets his eyes flick between the two of them but that much distance seems acceptable to him. "Your advisor... s... didn't see fit to call and tell me you were coming. Maybe I misplaced an email. These things happen, I suppose." Heavy throat clearing. Even though he's not moving forward that doesn't mean he's standing still. "To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
Ned
Ned freezes. Margot's going to have her own reaction to the sudden chill that sweeps in the man's vanguard, but Ned's own is that of 'Oh shit. I should have had a plan. I'm a horror movie cliche. Fuck you, John Carpenter!'
His body goes shock still and he has a brief flash of consideration for all things regretful that he could have done better and more. The light overhead flickers with Sepulveda's arrival and Ned winces visibly, a grimace dragged across his face, hands vanishing into his pockets, forming fists of tension and sudden absolute certainty this was probably a good idea.
""We're...interns..." Ned lies, on the tail end of Sepulveda's declaration of them...being...interns. To which he tucks his lips between his teeth, eyes snapping toward Margot with a 'You Go with This and I will' sort of throat clearing desperation.
"Right. Dr. Uhhh...They...Se...pull...va...duh?"
Margot
[I suppose I better throw these dice too]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
The man coming up the hall had Margot standing a little straighter and looking more alert in an 'oh shit we're busted' kind of way. The man with the glasses and small build and armful of manilla folders seemed fine with dismissing it as a couple of fresh-faced interns having no fucking idea what they were doing and being nervous about that itself.
When he arrived and presumed them as such, Ned fumbled over going along with it and glanced to her to see if she'd do the same. Margot cleared her throat and fumbled around for her identification pass. Found his name on it and read it, decided she wouldn't have an easier time of sounding it out, and looked back up to the man.
When she finally stopped to look at him when he was nearer, as opposed to approaching from the other end of the hall, she found her shoulders trembling almost violently as a shudder ran through her. Between how standing beside Ned having her feel like she'd smoked for the past twenty years and just ran a marathon, and how this fellow made her feel like somebody was holding an ice cube to the back of her neck, being in a morgue was all the worse (she had no idea what her own resonance felt like to people to know that she had no room to talk).
"This is Ned," she gestured to indicate, then put on a somewhat shaky smile. "I'm Margot." A pause, and then she glanced to the doors they were standing in front of. Raised her eyebrows in question. "Uhhh, do we go in?"
Sepúlveda
We're... interns...
The doctor lifts his eyebrows about as high as they can go and though he doesn't support the expression with words he doesn't need to. The No shit? could be read from further down the corridor.
Margot tries to help her new friend out and asks if they go in. At least the doctor does them both the courtesy of not outright laughing at them. Even with the glasses and the fluorescent light they can tell his eyes are a bright green. It gives them a sense of merriment that isn't entirely appropriate to the current milieu.
"Mother of Christ, you two are precious. Let's..." He blows out a breath and starts forward. Fishes his keycard out from under the lapel of his lab coat where it's hanging from the end of a lanyard. "... drop the 'interns' act, before we do anything else."
The little gray box at the edge of the double doors has a small LED bulb. It flashes from red to green when he flashes the card at it. Hauls open the door and lets them into the airlock first.
'Airlock' may not be the technical name for it but that's what this corridor appears to be. A vestibule between two locked doors. They can practically smell the negative pressure keeping the stink of disinfectants from leaking out into the rest of the building. Once they're actually inside the morgue they come upon an unoccupied reception desk and then the option to go left or right from there.
In either direction the lights are on a sensor with a timer built into the circuit. Both halls are dark.
Welcome to the morgue, kids.
"It's Sepúlveda." So seh-PUHL-vey-dah, not sey-pull-vah-duh. So close, Ned. So close. "Or Doctor, if that's too difficult. I belong to the Society of Ether, I'm currently in the midst of research that is going to revolutionize end-of-life treatment, and you two couldn't lie your way out of a goddamn wet paper bag." He thumps the manila pile down on the reception desk and turns to face them. "Let's try this again: who the hell are you?"
Ned
"...Sepulveda." Ned repeats. it's the only thing concrete in what the Doctor's offered that he can comfortably call a certainty. He doesn't even pronounce it comfortably enough to call it full accurate, ditching the accent in favour of his own all american one. His head is shaking when the Doctor offers a matter-of-fact "...Drop the interns act", silently cursing himself for wandering into this without a better plan in place.
Really? Cause there's a plan for weird dreams, strange tastes and the sort of Creep factor better left to B movies?
They push through the doors and Ned is listening with increasing confusion as the man begins to talk about some...Society....and research into-who the hell are you?
Ned is blinking, the odd interrogation combined with the sudden access to the morgue, throwing mixed signals his way that the young fellow seems a bit lost to accept comfortably. He clears his throat, turning to stare at Margot for a heartbeat, as if he could telepathically deliver something...to her.
"Curious, would probably be the best place to start-" Lying was a tool, for Ned, but the truth. Well, the Truth and Ned were a scalpel and an anatomy book more often than not. "Given you've got a similar sort of oddness about you that tells me you're familiar with our...uhh...type? Kind? Sort?" There's a pause, the lack of a proper term for this obviously beginning to distress him, brow furrowed. Like a Textbook without terminology to lean on. Might as well be learning a foreign language from inside a box.
"What's this Society? Is that like...uhh...like a club or something?"
Margot
Ned appeared to regret the fact that they didn't have a better plan coming in, not much appreciating being called out on their terrible lie and being advised to drop the act. Margot, on the other hand, seemed relieved. She liked honest serving as the best policy-- it was far easier and less stressful.
She looked around at the walls and swallowed-- didn't seem to much care for the death that clung to the air in here. Kept her hands in her jacket pockets because she'd be fidgeting otherwise and stood stiffly touching nothing when they stopped before the vacant receptionist's desk.
Ned tried to start explaining for them, ending in a question, and then attention turned to Margot because it was her turn to explain who the hell she was (because frankly Ned didn't really know based on what they talked about last night, he couldn't explain for her). She shifted uncomfortably on the spot.
"Look, guys. I don't know what's going on. I just know that I broke reality once and now when I do magic it works. And apparently we, like, stand out to each other." Doubting how intelligent her last sentence sounded, she trailed off, then added:
"I'm Margot, and I have no idea what I'm doing."
Ned
...Ned's facepalm can be heard halfway down the corridor.
Sepúlveda
Vision and progress require a certain degree of diligence if not patience but patience for the process and patience for other people are two different things.
Once his hands are free Dr. Sepúlveda stands with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted not wide-wide but enough to keep his balance in the event of an unexpected blow. As Ned goes on to explain himself he sits down against the edge of the desk. Crosses one ankle over the other.
Jesus Christ, says his expression. Beleaguered and a bit tired but almost as if he was expecting this. Predetermination or else it's going exactly like that old gypsy woman said. The air of a guilty man not yet absolved.
As Ned is slapping himself in the face Sepúlveda is peeling his glasses off his face with one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. Uncrossing his legs and sighing and getting to his feet again.
"Well, knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom," he says. Clips the eyeglasses to the V of his scrub shirt and crosses the distance between them. Claps one hand on Ned's shoulder and the other's on Margot's. His hands are bony and more than a little cold. "You'll forgive me if I don't have a speech prepared. You see, I belong to a tradition of scientists, and while I've heard of disparates awakening unprovoked like this, I haven't ever heard of them just waltzing into one's place of business and announcing themselves, so--" Canned laughter. "--quite frankly, I'm about as lost as you two are."
A clap to each of their shoulders as he leaves them to digest this and crosses back to the desk.
"Listen." His back still to them as he walks. "Lost--" He taps his left temple with his index finger. A wedding band flashes on its next-to-next-door neighbor. "--does not mean hopeless. We stand out to each other for a reason." At the desk he turns around. "Don't call it 'magic' again in my presence. If you want to be wrong, do it on your own time. On my time, if you're going to call it anything, call it 'work.'"
Ned
(Wits 4 (Quick Thinking) + Expression 2: Testing the waters of understanding)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Ned
"...Work is what I do to pay the bills."
Insistent. His gaze had caught Margot briefly at the reprimand the Doctor had laid out on the word 'Magick'. Even if Ned was in agreement, he didn't seem content to leave it at 'work'. Too much in one direction with Magick. Fantastical, unbelievable, ridiculous. Too much in the other with Work. Mundane. Dogmatic. Equally ridiculous.
"You're..." He pauses. Seems to collect himself briefly, a step forward putting the focus on him in his dirtied scrubs, a finger jutting at the Doctor.
"You're like a shock. Or after it. The body shudder after a splash in the cold. I could walk you through a Halloween exhibit and get the exact right feel I need to scare kids and parents and She-" The finger turns on Margot, though Ned's attention stays with the Doctor.
"She's a trauma ward once the morphine's worn off. Flesh and blood in the ugliest ways. Like I'm scraping my veins down with a nail file. That?" He looks incredulous. Offended almost. "That's what you call work? That simple? Really?"
"...Cause I feel more like a Ghoul. Or some...fucking patient zero." He takes a breath, wiping at his mouth, pacing to one side. "What the hell are we?"
Margot
The echoing slap of his own face earned Ned a quick glance. What?
She listened up when the doctor spoke. Looked between the lot of them when they were standing with this medical examiner's hands clasped on their shoulders and his cheerfully explaining what an unusual and unanticipated event their showing up had been. He told her it wasn't magic, kind of like how Ned told her that was a word for when the real explanation hadn't been unearthed yet. Appeared appropriately scolded too ( if not a little offended, but not up to the task of arguing to defend herself when she just confessed to not knowing what she was talking about).
Then Ned jumped in, explaining the chill that the doctor gave her first, then moving on to describe what sharing space with her was like. What her expression did while she listened to this was sad, but would be infinitely moreso if it weren't almost comically sour. Apparently this information was new, and it wasn't anything that she was pleased with hearing.
Distracted from her own introspection into how she came across to others by Ned's pacing and growing aggravation, she scowled a little and glanced back to the doctor.
"I don't really get it. A 'tradition of scientists'? Like a club? Was there some kind of bus that we missed, or invitation or handbook or something? Because I don't know about how you learned about all of This." This, with a capital letter to explain Everything, with a vague handwave to explain it all away. "But 2015 has been a very shitty year for me."
Sepúlveda
The smartass in him has plenty of self-amusing answers to give to Ned but he isn't entirely without either a heart or the capacity to act in a manner one would consider appropriate. They are dealing with a man who is a professional if not a pioneer in his field and has found a way to balance both his work life and his social life. Maybe both his work life and his Work life.
To his credit he lets the younger man get all of his thoughts out of his head before he responds and when he does respond it's as plain as he can say it without being a total fucking asshole. Lets Margot say her piece too. They may have just waltzed in here and derailed his evening but everyone has to start somewhere.
But 2015 has been a very shitty year for me.
A finger-snap that ends in him pointing at her.
"That's the bus. You're on it."
Anger is an appropriate response to trauma. So is outright denial. If the doctor realized he was going to be a fucking tour guide when he woke up this morning he didn't see fit to take proper steps to mitigate the impact when he left the house.
"Look--" A quick eye-rub. "Okay. I get it. This is all new and scary and you're looking for answers. I got a handbook. It's not going to do either of you any good. That handbook allowed me into, yes, 'a tradition of scientists.' There are quite a few of us, and there are quite a few folks who believe they can perform magick, with a K, and they have their own name for themselves, and for us, and for all of this and everything that happens. I prefer the term Enlightened Scientist," he says. With an eyeroll: "There are plenty of other words for it: awakened, wizard witch what-have-you, mage, learned person, reality deviant--that one's my personal favorite, really encapsulates the duality of the situation in which we find ourselves, but I caution you against using it in front of the others unless you're looking to set off an alarm in their paranoid little heads that says--" He puts a hand up by his temple and starts to pulse it open and closes like he's imitating said alarm. "--TECHNOCRAT. TECHNOCRAT. TECHNOCRAT." Enough with the pidgin sign language.
Another sigh. He runs both hands hands through his hair and holds it back off his brow a moment. He has nice hair. With great power comes great body and shine.
"Until you learn how to alter your own mental patterns I suggest you figure out which chemical substance achieves the optimum balance of both emotional stimulation and stability and begin testing the limits of your capacity to abuse both it and yourself." His hands go to his hips. Why does he look as if he regrets what he's about to say before he even goes ahead and says it. "In the meantime... I will help you, for a given value of 'help.' If you encounter anyone who recognizes you for what you are--and you will, by the way, normal human beings can't sense your resonance, the ah, jim-jams that we all give each other... your resonance, I say, because you're new, and you're weak, and in the grand scheme of things you don't mean shit, so you and reality have had your love at first sight moment but not the first falling out or the first black eye or the first moment of real earth-shattering let's-take-this-to-the-next-level commitment--" Pause for breath. "I'm getting ahead of myself. You can sense my resonance, and so can normal people, because I have a degree of power that will take you years, at least, to achieve. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And your life as you knew it was over, so you may as well wrap your young nubile brains around that now, but... fuck. I'm losing the point. What was I saying."
He knows what he was saying don't interrupt him.
"IN THE MEANTIME. Right--in the event you're recognized and questioned, you tell your paranoid new friend that you are, write this down, 'a student of Andrés Sepúlveda,' and then you contact me for a debriefing because I have the sneaking suspicion that you two are going to be the collective cause of my first fucking gray hair."
Ned
Ned is.
That's it, really. Ned just is, for the moment. Andy, as he likes to be called, has laid out a rather tome quantity amount of information without any footnotes to explain what the terminology means but that...is beside the point. It's terminology. Reading and renewing and revising as he goes, one can assume that Ned is absorbing what he can with slow and methodical effort. Each name, each moniker, each hallmark of threat or fear, comes up and gets stored away for perusal. Or reminder. Or eventual designation. It isn't so much that he's scientific about the entire process. More that he's....obsessive. Just a little.
So Ned, Is. For the time being. Hands in his pockets (thumbing the pipe he'd pre-packed for this particular occasion), staring not at the Doctor but at a space somewhere a few feet in front of his face.
"...Student." Is the first thing out of his mouth. The first thing he feels comfortable commenting on. "Like you're our teacher?"
Margot
Taking in that much all through one energetic spiel left Margot quiet and still, for the most part. She only seemed to snap out of it efficiently when Ned clarified that he was going to teach them what he (the Doc) would call Work and they (she and Ned) would probably go on calling Magick or something else.
Lantern eyes blinked in the dim morgue hallway, and she looked at Ned for a few seconds, off into space for another few seconds, then to Sepúlveda.
"Thank you. And I'm so sorry already."
Sepúlveda
Like you're our teacher?
He widens his eyes like to ask if Ned is fucking kidding him and then he peels the eyeglasses from their dangling place at the throat of his shirt and unfolds them. It's a silent ritual meant to enable him to count to ten before he says something he can't take back.
"I am now."
He steps behind the reception desk and hauls open a drawer as Margot considers what just happened. Blinking as she does so. The fuck is he supposed to do with not one but two wide-eyed baby mages. He can barely keep himself out of trouble.
Thank you. And I'm so sorry already.
"Add 'sorry' to the list of words you're not to utter in my presence." He finds what he was looking for and uses his thigh to nudge the drawer shut. Comes back around the desk and thrusts two business cards at whichever of them wants to take them. The cards announce his name and the address of this building and his professional email address and a slew of phone numbers. "Here. So you don't have to pull the intern stunt again."
Ned
He takes the card, not bothering to glance at the inscription on it. He is studying the Doctor, with painstaking scrutiny. It isn't until Andy's quieted down some (a few precious seconds of waiting to see if the man utters anything else) before Ned chimes in once more.
"I'd like to go on record as saying, I'm not sure I like this. On the one hand, it presents an opportunity to actually know what's going on. It isn't like I-...we-" He flicks a glance and a gesture between Margot and Himself "-were given a choice in this whole mess. I'd like to think we at least have a choice coming to us at some point. So first question on the table, Doc-" That...if his tone is any indication, is probably going to be a nickname that sticks.
"...How dangerous are you and...well the rest of those like you?" because Ned didn't exactly think of himself as a part of whatever world Andy had jumped right into over the years. Not yet.
Sepúlveda
"Define 'dangerous.'"
This is the stillest he's been since those two inserted themselves into his path for the evening. Hands in the pockets of his lab coat like he's got a set of weapons sheathed and his eyes are set right on Ned though Margot knows she's in his periphery. Can feel his icy attention on her even if he's not looking right at her.
It's a rhetorical question.
"Let's get one thing straight: as of this moment, you are a liability to me. You are a drain on my finite resources, and my layman's understanding of the law of averages tells me there's a better chance of some harm befalling me than there is some harm befalling you. You know absolutely nothing about anything. There's an alternate universe out there where I'm the last person you want to approach at--" He consults his right wrist like he's consulting a watch. He does not wear a watch. A digital clock on the wall behind him collaborates that not only does he he knows exactly what fucking time it is he also knows exactly how much time has passed between the moment they met and the moment he's saying: "--five twenty-seven on a Friday evening."
Another sigh.
"In this universe, I just don't give a fuck if you don't like this. You didn't have a choice. You do now. You want more answers, you call me. You don't call me, I won't lose any sleep over it."
Margot
Each of the young mages would accept a business card of their own-- Margot taking hers right after Ned. He didn't look at the details, but she scoped out his name, what part of town his office was in, the slew of phone numbers and all. It was tucked into the pocket of a jacket she still hasn't taken off.
"Dangerous?" She looked at Ned, mildly surprised-- danger hadn't even occurred to her yet.
Then, after the more experienced science-wielder laid his terms on the table, Margot cut in.
"You know, I'm pretty sure you had work to do--" work with a little 'w', not a big one, "when you came here tonight, so we should probably let you do that." This with a quick and pointed glance at Ned. "Myself, I'd like to go home now and call another time. Do this someplace that isn't in the morgue where you guys work."
Ned
Ned frowns. A choice is a choice. That doesn't mean he's going to like the options, though. He's thinking, when Margot pipes in. Ned doesn't offer anything more really, beyond a nod at their new Teacher. Whether it was a quiet acceptance or some brief relenting, didn't seem to matter. His hands remain in his pockets when Margot says it's time to go.
"I don't work here." It's all Ned has to muster, really. He sucks in a breath, mostly to calm himself down. Slight shakes running through his knuckles. He grips the pipe he had packed a little tighter and nods at Margot.
"Thanks." He offers, though it feels odd. Like maybe this wasn't something to be thankful. It's there though, left at Andy's feet. He doesn't meet his eyes, just turns and moves towards the door, following or leading after Margot.
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