Participants:
| Scene Title | Elia and Oni |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Elia deliberately seeks to cross paths with an ON1 for the sake of finding someone she's lost. |
| Date | February 18, 2020 |
Online
It had started, with a simple invitation left on message boards all over the net.
A gif of a blazing red, angry oni mask that winks and moves from side to side. A text bubble poofs up next to its temple: Hello. See. Hello. Between. Welcome. Beneath that image was another invitation. A gift so to speak, or a request to parley. Something that a hacker and technopath could easily find but the message inside didn't give out too much. Just a simple trace, an email along with a staticky video message:
The room is dark when the camera blinks on and fuzzes in and out of focus. A shuffle of movement and a small figure sits down in a. Just her mouth is visible, lips moving to deliver the final message to this mysterious woman of the web. "ON1, we have much to discuss. If you'd be inclined," Her voice is soft and childlike, a hand goes up to scratch at a bare shoulder. "We've a man in common, he with the luminous blue eye and skin dark as the midnight sand." The figure pauses as she starts to say more and then leans back a bit and swallows slowly.
"Will you help?"
Tibby Naidu exits out of the video after viewing it for the hundredth time. Her bibi had always said to be careful what you sought out, a snake might rear its head and bite you. Taking a look around the desolate hotel room she's holed up in, the blue light from her monitor illuminating her face and the tiny white scars at the corner of her eyes, Tibby couldn't imagine being bitten any worse qthen she already has been. The low, monotone beep of her Talon charging drones and she takes a swig of the whiskey in her glass. Clicking a few keys on the keyboard before lifting her knee to rest her face against it.
She had been waiting a few days already.
It took time for the ON1 that Tibby sought to decide if the invitation was bait— a snake of its own kind.
But the insistence of the message ultimately leads her to reply, if for no other reason than to limit the already glaring beacon that's been fired in her direction and smother it down. Only after several of the messages disappear from their posted sites is when a reply actually makes its way to Tibby, through an email rather than any public reply.
It's a simple enough message.
«What?»
The chime from her computer has Tibby's head snapping up and she leans forward to click the incoming email. Eyes widen a bit and she smiles, something had worked out after all. Clicking at her keyboard:
«Your accomplices could be better picked. They squeal too easy.» A friendly bit of advice, «An exchange of information is what I seek, no prison riots or break ins. There is a man you know who is family to me, I think you know from the video who I mean.» Tibby rubs at her neck and frowns before continuing to type, «He is my responsibility and I've lost him.» She hits send before she can think about changing any of it.
Accomplices?
Elsewhere, invisibly, Asi's mood darkens. Who the fuck is this? She takes only a moment to think through her own reply, frowning on her side.
«If he's lost and does not want to be found, who am I to meddle with those affairs? Beyond that, what proof do you have to your claim?»
Or more politely, why should she give a damn and do any tipping of her hand.
The South African woman had thought this would be the case, how do you prove that? The woman's bleached blonde head turns and her gaze drops to a faded photo on the desk near the keyboard. «You are a meddler, it's been proven, if the stories are anything to go by. You also free prisoners, no? This is just another form of liberation. That's two of your skills right there…» As soon as that email is sent, another follows seconds after. It's a jpeg with a message written out in the text body.
«Dirty Pool Pub, Sheepshead Bay. If you truly need a monetary incentive, there can be one. Daughters understand love for fathers though.» There is a time listed after that. It's a public place, Tibby hopes that's enough to have Asi not think it's a trap. Hopefully.
The photo is a dark skinned man that's clearly Baruti Naidu but he's younger and he's smiling down at a young girl with wild brown hair the sides cut, she points finger guns at the camera and one eye is closed as if she's lining up a shot.
The attached file is snatched up as though it runs the risk of otherwise disappearing, electric eyes roaming the photo. Naidu's daughter. His daughter?
Moments pass. Minutes pass. Enough that it begins to seem unlikely Tibby will receive a reply that night. It's over a half hour later before a text comes back, void of the context a vocal reply might give. Instead, all it says is:
«New York City?»
Dirty Pool Pub, Sheepshead Bay
One day later
The sounds of the bar are dimmed for Tibby she's hyper focused on the phone in front of her, checking her email. Waiting, hoping. The beer in her hand is half gone and she drains a fair bit more of it before proceeding to slam it on the table. Maybe she would just warn her father, that would be just as well right? She had to see him, somehow.
The text makes her eyes leap to the screen and her expression twists, not an email but when dealing with a woman like Asi this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. There's a stab of envy from Tibby who knows the inner workings to herself and other computers to a small degree but even that pales in comparison to the technopath. Tibby had held a healthy respect and admiration for them for some time now. The prospect of meeting one in the flesh and not just online or someone that's posing is quite the rush.
The message that comes through now is just as simple as the first communication, just as pointed.
outside.
Tibby grabs her phone and looks down at the message keenly. There's nothing more to say but there is so much in that one word. This is what she came for though and so with a steady hand she downs the last of her beer and gets up walking towards the door while swinging her long, dark gray coat over her shoulders. Without Talon attached she didn't have the ace up her sleeve but she was trusting in the orishas and the spirits her grandmother pray to.
Yet out the front door, there's no one at all. At least, not at a first glance.
But abruptly there's the sharp sound of swiftly-rotating blades hovering just above Tibby's head, better audible as a small drone zips into view from above. It comes to hover just before the tiny woman, making itself plainly visible to both her and the technology within her. For just a moment, it stays put.
Yoo-hoo.
The drone pivots on a dime and takes off down the sidewalk at a decent clip, humming while it flies. A decent distance down the block, it pauses just long enough that its transition and exaggerated turn is properly visible, then it takes off down a nearby alley.
The sound makes Tibby bristle but her head tilts up to square at the drone, not getting a direct reading from it but her sensors take it in all the same, white lines dancing over the machine and classifying it as an Unknown Obstruction. The limitations to what she was allowed to discern from the world was the equivalent of a leash to Crito. This was not on mission, whatever that mission is nowadays. She had found herself more focused on this than anything and lack of communication with Waugh or even Klaus signified something for Tibby but what exactly, she didn't know.
Her shoes clack on the wet ground as she follows after the drone, eyes also watchful on the streets around her. When it turns down an alley the woman slows down and feels the reassuring weight of her gun covered by her coat just tucked into the back of her shorts. The UI shows the exits behind her, continuing on the dimly lit street or the alley. Beyond she cannot tell at the moment but she's come this far hasn't she?
Baruti was worth it.
Footsteps echo down the alleyway as she enters and lets her eyes tell her what lies ahead.
The drone leads the way down one alley, then a wider, and then cuts back south again, firmly in a lesser-populated block now. The newest alley is abandoned and with exits on either side, fire escapes pinned like an exoskeleton to the side of one building while a dumpster is pushed up against the opposite side of the alley roughly halfway down it. The drone zips to the end, to the sidewalk on the other side, then rushes back to meet Tibby directly. Just before a collision would be imminent, the force of the blades propelling the drone shift and send it flying straight up toward the roof.
With that drawing of eyesight upward, it reveals a slender person standing three stories up on the fire escape, approaching the ledge. Their face is obscured by a black mask hiding the lower half of it, a black ballcap with a white brim the top. But even this far away, the glow of blue eyes can be seen.
The figure is too short to be her father. Too feminine. And now that Tibby is here, Asi tugs down the mask to make plain her appearance and make it easier for her voice to carry.
This is as close as she's willing to chance, apparently. The drone disappears over the top of the roof and heads who knows where, leaving just the two of them and the space between them.
"You went through a lot of trouble to find me, but I wonder just what you want of me, Tibby Naidu. I am not a miracle worker. I may meddle," she admits with a pointed lift of her brow. "But I also take pains not to deliberately endanger myself."
When the drone flies back towards her Tibby stands still but blinks a few times before it can become more of an issue at all its flying up, up and away but the figure that is now visible above her has Tibby tilting her head in the direction while stepping back a few paces. What an entrance. "The lengths I go, are for my father," Placing her hands in front of her to clasp, the white scars on them most prominently on her right hand shine. "Never said, miracles. Just meddle." The UI registers a person standing there, flesh and bone. Not a projection, they were both out in the open here.
There's a slight tremble that runs through her whole body, she hadn't taken her pain meds. Too excited and the ache of the augmentations her body has been put through begins to blare like a silent alarm. Tibby swallows that pain, it is nothing compared to when she first awoke from the procedures.
The more she lived her life outside of Crito's demands the more she reclaimed of her old self, save for one, final thing. Unobtainable. Asi knowing her name isn't a surprise, it was all laid out for her but she smiles a small smile nonetheless.
"From the news, you have been with Mazdak a while yes?" Tibby doesn't pace but instead leans against the wall while looking upwards, emerald green eyes searching the glowing blue from far away. "I left my pozzy-home long time ago, he and I have not spoken since. Rumours of Mazdak, rumors he was gone." Her face twist into something of disgust or fear, perhaps both, "Confirmed. From my own memory," her request is simple and not so simple. The words are easy but the meaning is heavy and she almost chokes back before pushing herself forward mentally.
"I need a meeting with him, we have much to discuss he and I."
Even from afar, the tone Asi emits carries. She rests her forearms along the edge of the fire escape, not putting too much of her weight against it. "You are a resourceful girl, I am sure you are aware that if Mazdak lured him from his previous life, it is certainly not holding him hostage to it. He is a leader, convicted in its cause. He may be an outsider to its homeland, but that bothers him little, it would seem."
A long exhale comes from her nose. Been with Mazdak a while is not how she would want to describe herself, but here they are, and Asi offers no argument against it.
Instead, she considers the need Tibby poses her. "The last time I spoke with your father it was in temple ruins in the state of Iraq, the result of months of labors. To get him to meet with me again, much less in a place of my choosing, will require an adequate lure— and you likely won't suffice." The technopath has no qualms explaining why. "If he wanted you, he'd have come for you already."
Though…
Her eyes flit back down to the woman on the ground. "What do you know of his cause, now? Do you believe in it?"
"The memory, it did not show a man that was bound. He is faithful, connected. Since I was a child," Tibby's fingers drum along the cracked stone wall and she frowns at the thought, "There was… A gathering, everyone in hooded robes, chanting something dead and ancient. I witnessed this, young before my teens." What comes next makes her stomach flip, to be altered by Crito was a heavy blow to her psyche.
To discover that her father had done it to her way before that and so early in her life left her reeling. "He made me forget."
What Asi says next makes her nostrils flare, as it should she was as emotionally invested in this as you could get. "He didn't send for me because I have not wanted to be found," That memory had been one of most recent to become less muddled. "I left home, left him. We had a row. I said… wanted nothing to do with him." She was going to go her own way, make a name for herself in the underworld. On that same note, "I don't share his fondness for fame." Shade at all the news stations running stories with his name and face. The name she works under isn't her own though, she's basically, "A ghost, in shadows."
"That wish, he respects. His pride." She stops there the fact that Asi has met him tells Tibby that the other woman knows at least a bit of her father on the surface. The last question gives Tibby pause. Considering what she knows, what she grew up hearing and the rumours that people back home had told her as of recent. "I know little, Mazdak has always believed that gifted humans are to be worshipped." So, the basics that anyone looking into Mazdak would find.
As to if she believes? A dark expression falls over her face and she leans her head back staring off into the sky, "I was one, an ability." Like her father and grandmother. "Now, I am not. I am… Something else." Tibby blinks before she leans forward abruptly, "Do not tell him," The please implied by her eyes, they shake with barely concealed emotion.
It's a lot to consider.
Asi stands up to her full height once she's done so, the glow in her eyes not diminishing as she looks down to Tibby below. There's little that can be read to her from this distance, the same way that most of Tibby's nuance in her expression is lost on her. But her tone, the generalities of her posture convey enough.
"That's for you to explain." Asi agrees of the cyborg's changes. "Though there are ways to solve that, depending," she muses, lifting her head for a moment to stare out at nothing. "Gemini is a process reserved for those who are useful to the cause, and if you were to return to him… who knows."
"But again, that is between him and you."
The technopath looks back down at Tibby with finality. "I'll ensure you get to have that conversation. Keep an eye out for details."
"Don't need that,"
Tibby's reply is bitter and she basically spits on the ground. The actual thought of her old ability, of a new one. Of any ability unnerves her, enough that she balks quite vocally at the aspect. She was more than that power, more than those wretched felines that plagued her dreams or nightmares.
Not wanting to be considered rude she looks off to the side and nods her head, "Thank you," Bleached blonde head tips upwards for a final look before without another word Tibby is walking out of the alleyway. Probably back to the very bar she waited at earlier to drown her emotions with the spirits in the bottle.
"Careful," The short woman stops at the entrance of the alley and calls over her shoulder, "My father is more than he appears," More than even she could have known. There was no way to know how he would take the news of his estranged daughter looking for him.
Only time would tell.
Tibby could wait.