2020.08.05: SHORTCUTS

Shortcuts
Pax teaches Goldie a few shortcuts.
Players	Pax Georgina
Location	Lady Of Fatima Mission
Spheres	Wyrm

<Phone> (Text from Pax) Go to Magadon. There'll be a woman outside in a gray van. Get in, and she'll take you to me.

Were Goldie to follow these instructions, she'd end up in a gray van driven by a twitchy shaggy haired young woman named Shelley, who doesn't seem nervous at all about making conversation during the hour and a half drive to the northeast of Prospect, out into the middle of nowhere in the scrublands. After leaving the highway, it's a bit of a drive across dirt roads before they arrive in front of Our Lady Fatima Mission, where Shelley throws the car into park and unlocks the doors so Goldie can exit. "Just go through the gate on the north side." she advises Goldie.

The drive is long and the conversation is inane to the point of mind-numbing, so when Shelley slows to a stop on the dirt road, Goldie already has her hand on the door ready to jump out. She offers a quick, 'thank you,' and exits the car, dressed for work in a sheath dress and stilettos. She slips a pair of sunglasses off her eyes and shuts the door without taking her eyes off the Mission. The dirt and dust is still kicked up from the tires, forcing her to squint to see past the cloud. When she hears the car start to pull away, she's prompted to move or get splattered in dust and sand kicked up in the vehicle's retreat; as she struts toward the gate, trying to stay on whatever serves as a walkway or path, listening for any familiar sounds or voices carried from beyond the walls.

There isn't any immediate signal of a population here, but as Goldie steps around the north end of the building an armed patrol comes into view, with a few men decked out in riot gear and carrying AK-47s patrolling past her without really paying her much mind. At the north gate, there's a larger twelve foot gate that's closed, as well as a second smaller foot traffic gate next to it that's also closed. Next to this gate stands another riot geared guard, who promptly reaches over and swing the door open for her as she approaches. The door, as it happens, seems to be whatever portal that changes the day from the bright, dusty, baking sun outside to the impossible interior of the courtyard itself.

Goldie's eyes turn to take note of the guards as they pass, the guard stations and walls, all surrounding the Mission and the contradiction makes her mind fuzzy. Her stride slows, but doesn't stop until she reaches the riot geared guard at the door. "Thanks," she says, when he opens the portal door. A moment’s hesitation passes, and then advances cautiously through into the courtyard beyond.

Aside from the alien appearance of the inside of the courtyard, the most obvious thing is that the Mission is somewhat populated. There are people visible through windows on the western side of the structure, some eating in a dining room, some working in a kitchen. A few are visible walking along the hallway that encircles the remainder of the courtyard, and others are in the courtyard itself, sitting and talking or otherwise seeming to meditate in some form or fashion. There are even a few people playing cards on a stone table near the fountain.

It's here that Goldie will find Pax, who is currently in a bathrobe with wet, matted hair and standing next to the foot gate as she steps into the alien landscape. As she goes so, he gives her a grunt, then motions her along as he starts for the eastern side of the courtyard. "Mernin." he grumbles out lightly in greeting.

Goldie is looking ahead as she comes through the gate, mindful of all the unfamiliar faces milling through the halls, behind the windows, and then there is Pax and the sight of him gives her a start that makes her skitter-jump in her heels. She belts out a laugh at his dry grumpy 'Merning,' and quickly recovers, pushing the gate closed if it isn't already being shut from the outside. "Morning." Her gaze sweeps the yard, swiveling sharply back to him, "What is this place?"

"Mine and Raquel's home." Pax explains with a little wave and snort at her jumpiness. "Don't worry, you won't have to make the drive again." Pausing to motion at the sky, then the grass, he tacks on, "I have control over reality here. It's a good place to handle things like teaching of a supernatural nature. Or whatever." Continuing to lead her towards the eastern part of the courtyard, Pax suddenly disappears in an implosion of shadows, and reappears next to the door on the eastern wall, which he proceeds to open. "And that's what I'd like to teach you today. Easy shit to learn, to be honest. Just need some adjustments up top."

Goldie follows Pax across the courtyard. "So the armed guards are your addition?" she asks, amusement still lingers in her voice from the surprise moments ago. "And they don't see you or them?" she asks of the Mission occupants. When Pax disappears, she draws to a scritching stop, blinks, and looks to the door when he reappears moments later, "Okay." A little dizzy, unsure of what just happened, she turns to face him, sly smiling, "What do I need to do?"

"The guards are instructed not to acknowledge Mission occupants when they're on duty. They were told you'd be coming." Pax explains with a bobbing of his head. "I have some projects going on out here that make guards necessary, unfortunately." Not explaining any further than that, Pax proceeds to lead Goldie into the east wing of the Mission. In other words: A very long hallway with bedrooms on one side and windows peering into the courtyard on the other. "Well, usually I'd give you a bit of focus training and see which psychic abilities come naturally to you, if any. But that takes too fucking long, and we want to go for one specific ability, so I have a shortcut. You'll just have to remember the rules: You can only go to places that you can see, and you can never bring anyone else with you when you do." Goldie's clipclapping footfalls are audible behind Pax. She follows at a steady pace mostly, listening, while her eyes peer quizzically around at their surroundings, but there are a few moments that he can hear her . . . go astray. Her footfalls skitter or slow as she goes up to doors, tests the handles, peeks inside. (Curiosity flaw). It does appear that she is still listening and her wandering attentions have not impacted her hearing, "That seems like it has limited utility," she says, glancing back from a gently pushed open door to smile and waggle an eyebrow playfully at him.

Pax's own feet plip plap against the stone of the floor as he walks, but he doesn't seem to mind her peeking into rooms. Some are occupied, some aren't. Some people hiss at her as she opens the doors, but as she opens one, there's just what appears to be a woman sleeping on a bed, and a ghostly whisper into her ear to 'Be careful.' Though, if she turns to look, there's no one there. "It is both limited and extremely fucking useful." Pax says, returning a grin towards her as he stops before a cleaning closet to open the door. "But remember those rules. But unrelated. Are you familiar with the portal doors?"

A hand flies up to Goldie's ear, flinching up as she jerks back, circling to look behind her. She hms, blinks at the door and guides it closed, before turning her focused attention back to Pax. She smiles sheepishly at his grin, wondering if he did it, wondering if he knew it would happen, wondering if he knows why it happened, but she doesn't ask. She comes to a strutting, heels together and hands in front, ladylike pause alongside him when he stops in front of the cleaning closet. "No," she side-eyes him, slow shaking her head.

The longer she's here, the more she might start realizing that this place is distinctly 'different.' It's like the slow dread of walking into a haunted house, only the place is active and alive, and fairly well put together on the inside. It's an uneasy place to be, until you get used to it. "Look." Pax says, as he proceeds to point at the corner of the doorway. Each corner has an elaborately carved serpentine pattern in them, partially hidden by the doorframe. "This is a portaled doorway. It's a project that's nearing completion, but some are functional early. If you step through here, and imagine whatever doorway you want in Magadon, you'll step out the other side there. There's a second one /at/ Magadon that works the same way, the walkway entering the Barracks."

Goldie comes up to the door and looks closely at the etchings he indicates, nods and then looks at him quizzically. "Wait," she says to him in an almost whisper, as if someone might hear them. "I thought you said that you had to see it?" "I mean, to use it, you had to be able to see it," Goldie corrects.

'Which is why you're here." Pax explains as he motions around at their surroundings. "Any doorway in Magadon that you've personally been to. You've been to the Research Lab, so you can go to any of the doors in there. Preferably the one you best remember. The Barracks is just across the hallway from the Research Lab." Nodding, Pax closes the door, then rolls up his robe sleeve as he starts back down the hallway towards the curve at the end to reveal a reddish geometric arrow tattoo on his shoulder. "This doorway is unrelated to the teleportation I'll be teaching you. It's powered by a spirit, and can go long ranges, whereas your personal teleportation is short range and limited to your field of vision."

"Really?" Goldie's excitement translates in the enthusiasm with which she puts forth the rhetorical. "So, you're going to teach me something different, but -- " she thrusts up a hand, " -- just so we're clear, these go between here and Magadon, and -- " she raises an eyebrow at him, suspended by hope, and whispers, " -- is there one in the pit?"

Pax shakes his head a few times. "Not yet, that I'm aware of. /Technically/ they can go to any doorway you're familiar with, but keep that between us. Not everyone needs to know they don't just go to other places with linked doorways." With a wink in her direction, Pax continues to lead her down the hallway, which is actually pretty long. Bringing his free hand up over the tattoo on his arm, he starts to make a pulling motion with his fingers there, causing a faint string of red to begin to be drawn from it. Small at first, but building and wrapping around his index finger. "I used to be a Sorcerer as well, but there's a state of being above it that I moved on to a while back. Before that happened, I Enchanted a basic as fuck understanding of this type of teleportation into this tattoo, so I wouldn't lose the ability to do it at will. Things like that take more effort now, and fucking reality punishes me for them. It's like a loophole."

"When I was a little girl, I remember two reoccurring dreams that I had. One -- doesn't matter, but -- the other," Goldie tells the story in a soft voice that echoes in the hallway, not dramatically, but enough to notice. All the other sounds seem far away, but for the rhythmic tap-tap of her footfalls and her voice. "A woman and a man in black, a severe looking woman was in a dark black dress and a hat, like 1920s with grey dried flowers, the man in a dark suit and hat. I can't see their faces. Their silhouette is what stands out. Walking up steps to come find me. The sound of her footsteps was the sound of fear. Impending doom. Closing in on me. Closer, and closer, and closer." Her eyes are on the string unraveling from Pax’s arm, "I'm reminded of it here for some reason." She blinks and refocuses her attention on the topic at hand, "I wish I understood things better. I know I've been pushed at you and I'm probably a burden you didn't want," she shrugs despite his inability to see it, "I'm sorry about that, by the way. But I don't understand."

The reddish ethereal string continues to be drawn from the tattoo, until suddenly it tightens and draws itself, quickly winding its way around Pax's index finger before coming lose and sticking there. Drawing the hand back before him, Pax allows the sleeve to fall so he can grip the string with both fingers, and seems to begin molding it into a thicker shape. "This is a place of very unpleasant feelings and emotions." Pax explains with a bobbing of his head. "It's not unusual to feel uncomfortable here, or reminded of shit that makes you uncomfortable. But you're not really a burden yet. If you were, I'd just pawn you off to a breeding pit somewhere to make you useful again." As stable as Pax seems, he states this in the same conversational tone he usually uses, as level voiced as ever. Reaching the bend in the hallway, he pauses to open the door into a fairly large library with a view outside, into the heated and sunny scrublands that's so opposite the interior of the courtyard. "You'll get used to it. You'll learn and understand in time. But shit takes time, and rushing it will only get you killed and waste my effort."

Goldie follows behind him at a steady pace. There is no drifting in this hall. No doors draw her curiosity here or perhaps the unease represses any sense of curiosity she has to try them. She comes to a stop in the mouth of the door, leaning her shoulder to the frame, and observes the interior with a left-to-right and back again sweep of her gaze. "Are we still at the Mission?" she asks.

"Yep. The rooms on the outer wall have a view of the outside." Pax explains, the string in his grip slowly thickening until it takes on the qualities of play-dough. Rubbing it between his hands, Pax starts to shape it as one would shape a snake, though it only ends up being a few inches long. "Do you prefer the ear, or the nose?" he asks her conversationally as he works... Whatever that is. Motioning towards the rows of books, he starts at the ones closest to the doorway. "Occult topics. Good place to start. Then Sorcery-" he says, nodding at another shelf with his head. "Psychic ability, and Enchantment has its own case, next to them. I want you to read up to the enhancement of people's abilities using Enchantment, then we'll pause once you've gotten to that point of understanding. With the Occult, read whatever strikes your interest. Once we're done with this teleportation shit."

Goldie steps into the room, arms held close to her sides, as if she were afraid she might knock something important over. Her fingers sweep at surfaces, touching them to get a feel for the wood or the cloth. She'll test drawers, and examine the names of the books on the shelves. Her close inspection of the room and its contents is stayed only by his question, "I'm sorry?" she turns sharply, grinning as she asks the question.

Pax continues his molding of the ethereal substance, until at last he brings it to his lips and blows slowly over its surface. All at once, it seems to start wriggling on its own, with a hundred small legs sprouting out of its tubular body. Once this is done, he holds it up by the tail, the thing wriggling beneath him as he repeats the question of "Nose, or ear?" The library is full of books of all types, some with bindings well kept, and some with handwritten titles like 'Notes on the Enhancement of Enchanting Abilities' written on the spine.

Goldie murmurs a disgruntled whining, 'oh my god,' when the play dough comes alive and starts to wriggle in his hands. She turns away from him, pressing a hand to her brow and jumps anxiously in her heels. She struts over to the nearest chair, sits with her legs played, bows her head into her hands. "Ear," he can hear her respond, shouting it into her lap, the sound dampened by the arms folding protectively around her head. One arm is curled under, clawed-grip holding her head steadily in her lap, the other curled over top, pulling it down. Her ear is exposed.

"Short cuts are unpleasant." Pax explains, his face breaking into a somewhat sadistic grin as he steps over to her chair and rests his hand atop her head. Mostly to keep it still. "And gaining power requires a lot of fucking uncomfortable situations. So-" Without further speech, Pax leads the end of the ethereal centipede to her ear, where it eagerly latches into the rim and proceeds to crawl its way eagerly to the interior. Aside from the feeling of legs, the first thing she might notice is that it /hurts/, as if something was clawing at the inside of her skull.

The brunettes breathing starts to quicken and she's already trembling when he gets close. She whispers his name, 'Pax,' in panted gasps, 'Pax.' A gulp of air is audible, and, 'wait, maybe we --,' and then she feels it start to wriggle in. At first she jumps in the seat, grabbing at her neck with one hand and the side of her head with the other. She skitters out of her heels and crumbles to the floor, shudder yelps of panic, cries both at the pain and the uneasy feeling of hundreds of creepy-crawly legs tickling, then clawing at the inside of her head. Her knees and feet swim on the wood floors, kicking at nothing, while she attempts to steady herself from the dizzying vertigo and shake it out.

That pain continues to increase, as Pax stands nearby, crossing his arms across his chest and watching her wriggle and writhe on the floor. He doesn't say anything, instead allowing her to ride it out in relative peace. From his end, anyway. It's like the worst migraine she's ever had all at once, and the longer it goes on, the more she can feel the centipede disintegrate and become smaller and smaller. It takes a minute or two, but soon enough the centipede /does/ completely go away, and she's only left with that empty pain in her head that usually follows a severe migraine.

When the pressure subsides, Goldie wriggling, writhing, knee-kicking, swimming comes to a gradual, painful stop. She lay on the floor, head buried in her hands, exhausted and still in pain. She doesn't get up, but lets her body recover, breathing pained grunty noises into her inner bicep.

It's at least more of a mental pain than a physical, and as she takes time to let it rest, her mind will recover quickly enough. There's no new 'accessible' knowledge to really tell that it did anything, only the dull ache that says something was in her ear. Even if, she'll soon realize, there was never anything physically in her ear. Taking the chair she vacated, Pax relaxes back in place and waits, advising her "Take time to rest. Get up when you're ready, and we'll get you teleporting."

Goldie sits up slowly, a mess. She palms her blood-shot eyes, glassy still from the hurt, to press away the strain behind them. She dabs her fingers at her brow, the sides of her head, looking to him with a quizzical headtip. "You like doing that, don't you?"

"The slow unraveling of a mind and rebuilding in the Father's image is the best fucking feeling I've ever felt in my life." Pax admits, drawing an even broader, toothy smile at her once she's back up off the floor. "Now! You won't have any accessible memory on how to do it, I just implanted the ability to do so. So, look over there-" Pax says, pointing at the other side of the room. "-and imagine appearing there. It's just as easy as that. If you can see /any space/ at the place you want to go, even under the crack of a door, you can appear there. Even works through cameras, if you have the skill to go far enough. Focus, try it."

Goldie stands unsteadily, barefooted now, kind of looking around for her heels as she gets to her feet. She looks to Pax when he speaks, drawing her attention back to the lesson and where he points. Without saying anything, she reaches into her mind for some idea of where she is supposed to be or what she is supposed to do, even as he says the memory won't be there, but thinking about it appears to be enough. She fades out of existence, quick as a wink, and reappears where he indicated, only by focusing on her intent to do so.

Pax watches her disappear and reappear across the room, his grin growing broader as he brings his hands up to clap a few times for her success. "And there you go, you're fucking psychic now. I'm glad it worked, I've never tried directly implanting it like that before." Leaning back in his chair, his face seems to become more thoughtful for a moment, only to seemingly be pushed away so he can focus on the here and now. "So, not everyone has psychic ability, but it can be implanted in those that are open to it. Enchantment and shit is all about learning rote and ritual, whereas psychic abilities are just things that you will yourself to do. If you have the talent for them."

"That is a trip," Goldie murmurs, throwing hands up to the walls that suddenly surround her body. She blinks and looks across the room at the spot where she stood, sly smiling, confused, and -slightly- concerned. "Was it a mind fuck when you first started doing this?" she asks, looking to Pax with a quizzical squint, as if checking to see if he understands what she means. "I feel like -- my brain hurts sometimes, this is breaking down of my reality and my mind is resisting it."

"It was, actually." Pax says with a nod of his head. "It just started happening around the time I hit puberty. I'd want to get up and cross the room badly for some reason or other, stupid fucking hungry or a real need to shit, and I'd just blink over there. It was easier for me though, I grew up around spirits and Garou and shit like that, so the mind adjusted better to it." Waving a hand, Pax says, "But yea, I get what you mean. Reality is changing for you, and it kinda hurts your head to try to wrap your mind around it all. And that's exactly why you need to be careful as you do it."