27.01.2019: The Ark That God Forgot
| The Ark That God Forgot | |
|---|---|
| Evaline performs routine maintenance on Oktav's A/C unit. | |
| Players | Evaline, Oktav |
| Location | Canyon Park Apts |
| Spheres | Mage |
Transcript
When Oktav picks up Evaline in his busted, pale blue-mottled brown Impala, the Magi grunts in acknowledgement. "Countach won't fit, and I don't want my neighbors to know I'm in with money." The passenger seat is filled with old fast food receipts and the long-abandoned wrappers thereof, and Oktav sweeps it all onto the floor with one arm. "Today you get to learn how the poor live, I guess. Not really a lesson that needs teaching. If you weren't a mage, maybe, but when you can bend the world to your will how the fuck are you gonna end up poor?"
Oktav doesn't comment on this obvious contradiction.
Evaline keeps a face like stone as she waits for Oktav to deposit this miniature ecosystem of old refuse and food into the footwell of the seat. Her eyes tell an entirely different story as they follow his cleaning routine. "I take it that you don't often have company with you on your excursions?" she asks politely, without a hint of venom or sarcasm in her tone.
She elegantly slides herself into the worn leather seat and immediately sinks into it. The cushion has almost entirely deflated, now the thickness of cardboard. Her feet crunch into styrofoam burger boxes and loose sheafs of receipt paper spill over her Valentino flats. She doesn't seem to care, instead carefully moving to put on her seat belt, until she realises there's nowhere to click it into. She just kind of hooks it onto the lever used to recline her seat instead. "I wouldn't expect someone as busy as yourself to find the time to clean your car, anyway. Surely your home is better? A sanctum is an important place of reflection, after all."
Oktav winces at Evaline's clearly expensive attire, then turns the key in the ignition. Then he turns the key in the ignition. Then he- ah, there it goes. The Impala sputters to life, an infernal engine of despair, its every choking chug a death rattle. "Company? No." Oktav's lips twitch upward. "Something seems to put them off." The Magi puts his foot to the gas pedal, carefully avoiding the rusted through hole in the footwell. It's not so big that it must be fixed, no, couldn't be more than a few inches long and a couple wide, just enough to see the road race by, really, so it's fine. As they leave Evaline's neighborhood, Oktav takes a turn that Evaline might know from her deeper beacon excursions - it's to nowhere good. "My home is my reflection, yes. Everything I am, though not everything I was."
The journey to Oktav's apartment is like watching a fairy tale get strangled to death. The bright, happy streets of upper-class Prospect give way, first to brownstone, then to concrete, then to boarded windows and the shells of cars. Finally he pulls into an apartment complex - Canyon (P)ark Crossroads, though the P seems to have been stolen recently. The building stretches into the slate-grey sky, up and up. The kind of building that cares no more for the comfort of its occupants than the internment room of a morgue. "We're here." Oktav says.
The whirring and clicking of the motor failing to turn over doesn't raise any alarm from Evaline. As soon as she touched the seat, she had already evaluated the thing like a doctor reading the clipboard at the foot of a terminal patient's bed. It'll go, she has life in her yet, even if it's not as fierce and sprightly as she once was. And finally, there it is. "Put them off?" she asks, this ominous statement hanging in front of her eyes. It flairs up the same guardedness every young female may have about sliding into a rusty old car with a man wearing bloody combat boots.
Evaline eyes the passing monoliths of slate grey failures to the social housing system. Every single one looks alike, but to Evaline, a budding magus still timid to take the training wheels off, they send her supernal senses wild. Thousands of lives in every building, coalesced into an amorphous blob of suffering and contempt. It becomes too much at long last, and she diverts her gaze to a folded newspaper in her lap. A method of obtaining data so old and outmoded it seems unreal for her to be carrying. "I've been meaning to show you this," she says as they ride, and holds up the front page for Oktav to see. On it, in beautiful black and white print, is a picture of a large supercar making a hasty getaway through a red light. In the drivers seat is a cowled figure, and something in the passenger seat is so blurry it can't be made out. "I was hoping I'd be able to stay hidden for a little while longer, but I have been careless. All this beacon placement and data gathering has let me get a little ahead of myself. I'm on the radar, now." There isn't a hint of worry. She almost seems pleased.
As they enter Canyon Ark, a place unknown to Evaline, she raises an eyebrow, as if she didn't expect them to stop quite right here. She had assumed, completely without her notice, that Oktav might've lived somewhere a few blocks on, where the middle class suburbia stretched on into infinite. The gun strapped to her ankle becomes a little heavier, and she's thankful for that weight. "Excellent." she says.
Oktav grimaces when Evaline shows off the newspaper. "You should be unhappy about this, Detrevni. At least my little ability has kept it confined to the newspapers. If any old guys give you more than a passing glance and seem like they're about to say something, just shout "PERVERT!" and run away." There's something drained in Oktav's countenance today. Probably just got bad sleep. As the pair exit the car and make to enter the building, far from growing relaxed at the sight of home, Oktav grows more keyed up. The reason why quickly becomes obvious.
The lobby of Canyon Park is like a lazy level designer copy pasted the DMV and took away the chairs. A TV drones in the corner, some daytime talk show blather filling the room. And there, behind the desk... "Ah, Mister Petrom! I am so, so happy to see you! And you have brought a... friend, yes?" It is a small man, with skin like teak and a flabby, disproportionate amount of fat. "Hahaha, yes, a 'friend'. Very lovely! Where is my rent, my lovely little tenant?"
Oktav flashes a hand signal to Evaline - easily recognizable. No magic. "I'll have it tomorrow, Hakam." The landlord, Hakam, sits back in his seat, a pleased expression resting somewhere in his jowls. "Oh, tomorrow! But clearly you have enough for a little fun tonight, yes. How about this - how about you give me your little nightly friend, and I will take a little off of your rent. Let's say... fifty dollars. Only because she wears those nice shoes, yes?"
Evaline goes to put the now unneeded newspaper into the bin just outside the front doors, but finds it already overflowing, so places it on top of the overflowing pile. She then follows Oktav inside, her hands in her pockets, Oktav's advice still on her mind. She shouldn't be happy for the attention, but she is anyway. It is rare for her to feel conflicted on such things.
Hakam's offer makes her blush. She has been leered at, and approached, and cat called, but it has always been from stately young bachelors, who felt it was their right to say such things, as if it made them more attractive. This was the seedy, lecherous evil that inhabited lowly predators like Hakam, and now Evaline slowly begins to realise how out of her element she truly is. She approaches the desk. "I am afraid that you've misunderstood. I am Mr Petrom's accountant, and am in charge of his spending for such matters. She plays with a money clip in her inner coat pocket, and removes a cash sum somewhere just shy of $1,000. "This will cover the rent. In the mean time, please call this number and a direct debit will be set up for future payments for Mr Petrom's payments and any current arrears he may have on his account." She walks away before he has a chance to respond, the crisp money still laying there in front of him, if he didn't snatch it up immediately. Gosh, even the money clip looks expensive.
"I gave him my spending money. We'll be a little light if you want to buy anything with cash today," she says quietly to Oktav, as she rejoins him.
Hakam is so overjoyed at the sudden windfall that his attention is distracted for almost ten seconds - more than enough for Oktav to swiftly usher himself and Evaline through the door. Hakam is still able to call to them, though - "And the safety deposit! You will not get that back, Mister Petrom!" Oktav grumbles, stomping his way up the steps. "Let whoever that number goes to know - that fucker is going to come up with seventeen kinds of 'arrears' to be paid. They'll need to be on guard against horseshit. Anyway."
The third floor is no better or worse than any of the others. It seems that today's domestic dispute is going on a couple floors up, so the sound is pretty distant. Only the highest of shrieks and loudest of shouts make it through the layers of flooring and insulation. "I hope everyone in this place dies." Oktav says, echoing the thoughts of every tenant in every apartment ever. "This is me." Room 304. Oktav pulls out his key, puts it into the lock, then performs a strange sort of ritual involving shaking said key as he turns it. In time, the door opens to reveal...
War is hell, and Oktav brought it home with him. For reasons understandable to few, the entirety of the apartment save for the bathroom is strewn with broken glass. Some of the pieces still have labels attached - "-pov, -ickey's, -ball". Even without them, though, it's clear they came from alcohol. Oktav walks over to the fridge, the glass crunching and breaking up even further under his boots. "Take a seat. The bed's the only place. Set up the beacon wherever you want, I don't care." The fridge is empty except for a couple of bottles of malt liquor. Oktav takes one - hestitates, then grabs another.
If the thick, syrupy life aura of placid, sickly, banal evil that inhabits all large concentrations of financially and socially repressed peoples was bad outside, it becomes so intense inside that Evaline finds herself nurturing an irritating stress headache by tracing small shapes and circles into her temples. She climbs the stairs with her eyes half closed, and actively tries to dim her view into the life, forces and matter energies of the world around her. It is difficult for her to do on command, and the active effort it takes to keep it under control puts her on edge. The shrill voice of a woman who hates her life and everything it has become screaming profanities, barely muffled through the paper thin walls, does not help things.
When Oktav opens his door and takes a step inside, Evaline stands at the border. Her mouth doesn't hang open, but her wide eyes are screaming. She actually begins to perspire. "Oktav." she says, and trails off. She realises she has nothing to say. The broken glass would instantly perforate the bottoms of her admittedly thin soled shoes, but suffice to say, anything short of thick, rubber soled combat boots, such that might be worn by people who drive rusty shitbuckets and live amongst the filth of Canyon Ark, would be insufficient. The boat that God forgot. Oktav walks over to his bed, glass getting crushed all the way, and sits down on it gingerly. The thin mattress creaks under his weight, and he stares dumbly at Evaline for a moment. Then he looks at her shoes. He sighs, putting the 40s on the ground and grabbing an extra pair of boots from the closet. He tosses them at Evaline's feet. "Here. Shoulda said something when you came wearing those things. Top of the closet's clean enough." It isn't.
Finally, Evaline's eyes manage to communicate something to the older Magi. "I could've sworn I told you about this at some point. Look, it's impossible for you to even walk in here, yeah? Your shoes are too weak, you're worried about tripping and cutting yourself into ribbons, yeah, yeah. Now consider what a robber would think in your..." Oktav looks down. "Well certainly not in -your- shoes, but theirs. I keep some high powered shit in here, and while I don't have to sleep much, I don't want to wake up to someone holding my rifle to my head. Especially because someone desperate enough to live here is also desperate enough to pull that damn trigger. Get the boots on and come in."
Evaline wordlessly picks up the dusty old boots and upturns them. A bunch of dead spiders and moths fall out, mixing amongst the glittering shards of deadly sharp glass. The entire situation seems unreal to her. She drops the boots on the floor of the hallway with a thud, slips off her own shoes, then puts her comparatively tiny feet into the huge, unlaced boots. Clomp, clomp, clomp crunch, clomp crunch. She walks over to the bed and sits at the foot of it, but the dip where Oktav's weight stresses the thin matress and the flimsy frame pulls her closer toward the middle and him. The matter of the beacon has been lost somewhere in her mind. This new hell she has found herself in is worse than anything else in her short career as a magus. Oktav's comment about his sanctum rings in her head. Before, it fell flat, but now a new light dawns on it. Oktav is one weird, scary motherfucker. She looks at him, and takes in his features in this new dawning light. But she still isn't scared or put off by him. Sure, he may be insane, twisted, violent, et al, but the same despicable seed planted early in the minds of people like Hakam and his ilk does not seem present in Oktav. She has no insight into his mind, but her intuition and gut feeling is still an ancient, evolved instinct that she feels she can rely on.
Oktav's explanations don't convince her. "You don't have to explain yourself to me, Oktav. I will take that bottle, though." she says, pointing to the other 40 that Oktav retrieved from the fridge. She has yet again assumed that he is being hospitable, and not just intending to drink them both himself.
For once, Evaline's assumption proves correct. Oktav hands her the bottle with a grunt, then cracks his open. "When you're done, just toss it against the wall. It's surprisingly liberating, actually." Oktav smiles, then drinks deeply. The liquor has a bitter, faintly metallic and chemical taste. Any food it could possibly complement would be as ghastly as the liquor, but good god, the price is just right. A receipt laying by the bed puts the entire 40 ounce bottle at about two fifty. Finally, as Oktav sits on his bed, drinking his booze, his muscles relax a little. "Safety deposit my ass. Fucking Hakam. But if I start throwing around magic in a place like this, who knows what I might stir up? It's a hideaway for all the damned in Prospect. Some might just be drifters like me, but others might be outcast vampires or some shit. Hakam has no idea what he's got on his hands." Oktav grins widely at this.
"Sorry he got all fucky with you, though. Still, it's good experience. His type are all over the place once you get down in the dirt. He'll try and bleed you dry, and if he realizes the connections you really have, he'll go for blackmail." Another long, deep draught of the shitty drink. "Not the worst of his ilk, though. He thought you were my whore, that's probably the only reason he offered. I'd read him, but like I said..." Oktav scoots himself further onto the mattress until his back's up against the wall, making his position maybe five percent more comfortable. "Anyways. You wanted to place your beacon, right? Since this is my place, you can have it be the sole part of your little highway or whatever in this part of the city. Branch out from here, that sort of thing. Be the easiest one for me to guard, too."
There's another sharp PSST as Evaline twists the cap off the drink. It is far from a champagne flute, and the large glass bottle, made even more slippery by condensation, wobbles in her one handed grip. Of course, when she sees Oktav take a swig, any hope for a glass to decant into goes shattering against the wall like the many empty bottles. She takes an experimental drink, and immediately raises a hand to her mouth. Unknown to her, she has developed a somewhat trained palette for fine alcohol through her years of schmoozing with the high roller types. This drink is the culinary equivalent of cleaning an oil painting with a power washer. The harsh chemicals and bitter carbonation go against every sense in her body. But she can't deny that the warmth it brings is nice. It's strong, and that's what she needs.
By the time Oktav is halfway through his bottle, Evaline has barely taken more than a few sips, but already the headache is gone. She puts the bottle on the bedstand, assuming there is such a surface around, and removes a grenade-like canister from her inner pocket. It's painted black, metal, with no real features other than a red LED that blinks intermittently. "Thank you, Oktav. For the drink and the offer to store my beacon here." She stands up. Crrrunnchh. "The more desolate parts of the city are very keen on expensive looking equipment popping up on their roofs. I could put five of these things on the roof of my neighbour and they wouldn't bat an eye. I should've expected differently in other parts of the city." She walks over to the window, where a dust clogged, yellowed A/C unit hums, pumping out an endless, heavy stream of heat and carbon dioxide into the outside world in exchange for a paltry bit of stale, cool air to be passed into the apartment. She pulls a hand back, and stabs the thing into the unit, snapping through the plastic blades meant to direct the air and nestles it haphazardly into the machinery. There's a whirring and a clunk and the LED turns green. Something is happening inside, and the A/C unit begins to whirr a little louder.
Oktav appraises Evaline's first sip of the malt liquor, and smiles. "Good. Some people don't understand it. The fact that you do means you know there's plenty of shit out there so bitter that that can taste... not sweet, but less. In a place like this, that can be the only medicine bitter enough to work. It's cliche, but the cliche lends structure to our lives. It's almost like a magic charm. 'If I drink this, I can keep going on. Dad used to drink this all the time, used to say this..." Oktav takes another deep swig, then wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his longcoat. "That sort of thing. That's what I think, anyways. I've got a thimbleful of wisdom hidden in a barrel of dipshit."
Evaline's apparent destruction of the AC unit gets a hint of stinkeye. "If you're gonna shove it in -there-, I'd like a replacement unit. In fact, I'd love one. In the summers that thing's as useful as a pen fan. Not the type of shit you appreciate when you're wearing body armor and a coat to hide your guns all the time." Oktav scowls, screwing the cap on the 40 and placing it on the floor. "Out and about I can do something about it with some magic, but like I said - don't like doing it in here. Too many crawlies around."
Evaline nods at this nugget of wisdom. She has no experience, specifically, of such a view on life, but she can see it play out fairly clearly. Everyone has their vices, and alcohol is one of the more powerful succubi. She has nothing else to add after the nod, though. She has been sufficiently shielded from many of lifes more desperate situations.
"Ah, Oktav, what must you think of me?" she says. A smile crosses her lips. The alcohol has had more of an effect than she may realise. "I would not deprive you of something so basic as air conditioning." The canister continues to whirr and click. It extends some ways, exposing intricate, tiny wiring amongst a condensed mess of tiny internal electronics. The clicking and whirring extends from the canister into the unit itself. Some inexplicable change is happening deep within the cheap, aged chinese components. On the other side, A glistening chrome spine stabs out of the plastic shell and juts into the air. It whirrs and points in different directions, then blips happily when it finds what it seems to be looking for. A number of thin, slender mesh petals then unfurl and form a sort of radar dish. The unit continues to rumble. The old, tacky control panel with worn buttons and a fading digital screen wiggles and is pulled back into the machine. Moments later it's replaced with a touch screen. Evaline touches it, and her eyes glaze over. She's inside another world now. A few moments of silence and the dead machine seemingly comes back to life. Ice cold air silently flows into the room, and Evaline shakes herself back into the present.
"Evaline!" Oktav says, eyes wide. "That looked pretty fucking magical to me. Is there any chance, any whatsoever, that that was all purely technological and not your fucking magic?" As though the drinking was just a dream, Oktav's up on his feet with a faint crunch. "Ahhh, shit! I thought your beacons were just little, I don't know, GPS things! Ah, shit. I should've been paying closer attention!" The AC is nice, certainly, but no longer Oktav's top priority. Since the cat's already out of the bag, Oktav sends out the faintest, subtlest probe he can - is anyone listening to what just happened?
...Oktav breathes a sigh of immense relief, slowly setting himself back into his bed. "We're fine, most likely. I didn't pick up anything that would imply something just woke up. Still, Evaline... Seriously. Thanks for the fucking Gundam air conditioner, but no more magic, for the love of fuck on high."
Spinning on the spot, Evaline seems a little taken back by Oktav's response. She steps away from the unit, because it's now pumping out freezing air, and her arms are covered in goose pimples. "Yes," she admits. "There is magic in there. There is a limit to technology, and I can overcome it. It doesn't send out any supernal signatures after the transformation, though. The data is transmitted digitally, just like anything else." she explains, putting her hands in her pockets. "I supposed I had better get back to home base. I need to review the data of our other missions, and ensure that this beacon is hooked up correctly." clouds of heat plume from her mouth as she speaks. It's becoming a fridge in here.
Oktav nods, taking the opportunity to lay back on his bed and open his 40 back up. He seems willing to deal with the cold, at least for now. It's amazing what one can be driven to after an entire summer with no real AC. "That's fine, then. If there's no opportunity for them to pick up on it after installation, then we're already safe. I'll call you if I need to get that AC back to simple temperatures." Oktav pauses for a moment. "Tell me, does that thing happen to be sucking up a whole lot of electricity right now? If so, I have an idea..."
Her eyes light up. Evaline rarely gets a chance to divulge in her designs. "Yes, it is using much more energy than it was before. It attemps to mitigate this by diverting power to and from other connected appliances and electronics. This way it's much more difficult to pinpoint, using mundane means, where the origin point of energy consumption is. It's more or less camouflaged, and your gracious landlord will likely have no choice but to foot the cost." She says all this while standing at the doorway, changing her shoes back over. She places Oktav's spare boots nearly down by the door, tucking the untied laces inside the boot.
Oktav smiles widely, even showing his teeth this time. He leaps out of bed, strides quickly towards the AC, and turns it -colder-. A faint, very hypocritical flash of magical energy adds color to Oktav's cheeks as the frigid air becomes positively arctic. "I think you should head out, Evaline. This place is going to black out in... well, I'm sure you know better than I do." Oktav laughs as the air in the room grows, perhaps, too cold for reasonable human habitation.
Evaline follows Oktav's advice, and closes the door. Cold, frosty air pours out from under the door. As she walks away, Oktav's laughter echoes through the halls behind her. She lets herself smile, too: the thought of Hakam opening his power bill in a few weeks will surely be a sight to behold.
