Participants:
| Scene Title | Veiled Eyes Can Kill Titans |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Titan Killing 101 - Gather the people. |
| Date | January 1, 2020 |
The Oracle Room has dimmed lighting today. Not as much smoke but a joint is lit and hanging between Eve's pale fingers.
Her bloodred irises stare at a painting of a group of people with red scarves. One with a scar, one with blonde hair, Eve presumably with blood on her face.
All lies.
Misdirection.
Don't wallow silly.
Nothing matters remember?
Her dress is muted blue, her feet bare. Soles dirty and bopping up and down as she waits. This was a risk, everything she was doing since last night would be a risk.
Eve could only hope that in the long run, this would all pay off.
Cat's Cradle is, mercifully, fairly empty when Silas arrives; everyone's probably still sleeping off their New Year's Eve cheer. Silas, for his part, hadn't had a lot of cheer last night and isn't feeling particularly cheery today. Not after what he'd seen last night.
Not after that awful dream. If it was a dream.
He slips through the barroom, heading down the stairs that lead to Eve's lair, pausing just outside the door and knocking lightly on the doorframe. "Avon calling," he says. Normally he'd be sardonic, but it comes out flat today.
Avon? Asi arches an eyebrow at Silas over that reference, shifting her weight as she lingers behind him. She wasn't going to let him go someplace alone, not even to Eve's. She'd be furious with herself if so close to securing his safety they lost him.
She likes to think she makes better company than Kain does, at least.
She's snapped out of her thoughts as the two enter and gives them a soft grin, "Come come inside," Motioning with her hands but not getting up, there's a pull from her joint and she holds it as smoke wafts around her face. She waits for the right moment (right when the duo walk inside the room) to blow almost perfect smoke rings. "Sit, there's tea."
She's calm, more calm than either have ever seen her. Eve is just on an extreme emotional rollercoaster, her stomach drops periodically as if she were actually on the rise and fall.
You think this can work?
Charlatan.
Fraud. Fool.
The pale woman doesn't make a sound on the outside. Instead she focuses on Silas and smiles again a streak of lightning popping on her fingertips. "I had a curiosity… maybe a favor… hmm?"
Taptap.
Eve's fingers drum along the large circular table in the middle of the room.
Silas steps inside, quirking an eyebrow at the smoke rings. But for all that, Eve seems… somehow different than usual. She's not exactly worked up — definitely not that — but there's a difference there.
For now, though, he doesn't ask any questions; instead he settles in and takes a seat, pouring himself a cup of tea and listening, offering the pot to Asi once he's done.
The crackle of lightning brings a momentary narrowing of the eyes as he inevitably remembers the sight of this very woman being struck by that very lightning, but he pushes that memory aside, listening as Eve speaks.
At Eve's request, he nods slightly; one part of his mind is already slipping back into engineer mode — where are we at right now, how do we go about accomplishing this thing, what do we need to make it happen, how much of that can we get by without if we have to, what can we kludge together if we have to make do.
"I can't make guarantees, but ask away. I'll answer what I know," he says, his expression calm, focused, as he watches Eve.
It’s no offense to Eve that Asi keeps her distance. Their physical incompatibility was something both of them have had to live with, even when that living space was close quarters and tempers ran high. Remaining near the door, she leans against the frame while she wonders at Eve’s behavior in silence. Her eyes narrow briefly at seeing that spark, feeling the disruption the electronic-frying crackle puts off.
That’s why she needed to be over here while Eve was over there. If not for the phone and drone hidden on her person, then for her own sake. Eve’s aura brought a fuzzy static to Asi’s senses when she wasn’t negated— and that was the least of the things she could do.
“It seems only fair we try to work something out. Favors for favors,” she chimes. If it’s not something Silas feels he can help with directly, she’ll try her best to make up the gap.
Without further ado Eve closes her eyes and smiles softly, "Can you show me what you can do? The gift you spoke of?" It had sounded like quite the interesting ability and Eve had begun to have ideas.
"There is a spirit on the loose, you were there in New Mexico yes?" All the travelers had been. "You saw what blew me into tiny pieces." By now Asi knows what Eve might be angling at but maybe not why. Pale fingers bring the joint back up to her lips and she puffs away on it, bathing in the smoke it casts.
"I wonder if you could hide from it. Maybe even hide it." The latter was a very last option because in order for that to happen Silas would have to be on at all times, it's a life sentence with an interdimensional being so she's not keen on going that route.
At Eve's request, Silas frowns, raising his hand to rub at his mouth. He rarely shows off… but Eve's request isn't really that unreasonable, especially since she's going to be fighting against someone with the same ability. So he watches. Waits for Eve's eyes to close again, and when they do, he uses his ability. Not to hide himself, no — just to conceal his hands from Eve as they move towards Eve's teacup. Concealing the teacup, too, for that matter.
He listens as Eve explains. A spirit, huh? Silas regards Eve with a carefully blank expression… although as weird as the idea seems, he's certainly seen some strange things. But spirits? he asks himself. Leaving that aside, though… he certainly was there in New Mexico, and he certainly had seen what had happened to Eve there.
"I remember," is his response to Eve's opening questions, his voice grim. He glances over to Asi for a moment, gives the tiniest of winks… then he turns back to Eve, leaning forward slightly and catching her gaze with a serious, grim stare. Holding her gaze while he steals her teacup from right in front of her, then sliding the third teacup on the table — the empty one, presumably set out for Asi — over to Eve's place instead, then passes Eve's over to his other hand, moving it down below table level. Then, and only then, does he relax the veil he'd used to hide his actions. "So… you're wanting to know if I could hide from this spirit thing?" he asks, frowning as he takes a sip from his cup of tea. "I might be able to, but a big part of that depends on what kinds of senses it's got." He leans back, still letting the hand holding the cup of tea he'd swiped from Eve dangle below table level.
He waits for a moment, waits for Eve to reach for her cup of tea and notice the switch. "The question you really need to be asking, though…" he says, his voice incredibly serious, his eyes boring into Eve's. "…is when I stole your teacup."
Asi doesn’t react to noticing what Silas does save for a narrowing of her eyes. That could be at anything. At the mention of New Mexico— of the ‘spirit’— definitely not at Silas playing a game of switcheroo under the guise of leaning in with interest. Any feeling she gets from watching him work his magic, being able to see what Eve herself can’t, is kept to herself. She crosses her arms before her, hands slipping into the tight fold.
“Hide it?” she asks aloud to Eve. “Why that route?”
Eve opens her eyes and gasps in pure delight, Leaning forward so much she falls out of her chair. "Wow! That's really something Siguy…" When did he take the teacup… Eve likes games and she grins. "Before you leave I'll have your answer." That's a promise. Unless this was a timed based game, oh no.
"Because not even the brightest minds in the 80s could figure out how to kill it. Not even the man who first encountered it. All options must be kept on the line." Eve waves her hand, this another possible avenue if Silas so wills it.
"It has all the senses you can imagine and more but if you can hide in plain sight. It could prove so so useful Si…. maybe even hide me if necessary." Eve's body fizzles and pops with lightning in that moment as if to emphasize her point. "There's something here, it's gonna take us all to defeat it." She quickly asks another question.
"Can you hide a whole boat in motion?"
Silas's expression gives away his answer when Eve says it has all the senses he can imagine and more; when she asks her question about hiding a boat, he shakes his head slowly.
"My trick… it doesn't really work like that. I can stop perceptions from getting recognized, but if this… spirit… has got some kinda crazy sensory abilities, it's gonna be hard to hide from it until I get used to the way it perceives things around it. And if it can keep bringing new senses online…"
"And as for hiding a boat? I mean, technically I could, but it'd have to be within fifty feet or so And, again, there's the problem with sense types." He shakes his head, looking glum. "Hiding it would be easier, but that's assuming it can't just… get out of range. And I can't veil something indefinitely, either…" he says, giving Eve an apologetic look… though he doesn't miss the opportunity to cloak his hand again and replace the teacups as they had been before.
Asi purses her lips down into a frown, one hand lifting to cover it as much as possible. It was a good idea, for helping get closer, maybe… if they were already close. And how would they get that close? What she'd not give to be able to persuade Miles into all of this… and maybe else something just as important.
But alas.
"Were we able to get close enough undetected… I wonder what a negator would do to its presence," Asi muses aloud.
"I wonder the same."
Eve nods towards Asi before her attention is taken again by Silas, digesting his capabilities and throwing them on the large whiteboard in her mind. Hm. "There are two issues. Large ones like big fat spoiled coconuts, one with the immortal. Adam Monroe. We have to strike and there are little butterflies that have whispered in my ear. Told me where he lies, it's on the sea. We will need a boat. The closer we get… you could give us the element of surprise… perhaps."
Asi is given a look, when the technopath said she knew someone that could help with this.
"The other has to do with the spirit. If we have to get close," They would, "Maybe you can blanket, it or yourself and someone else." There would be time to put a firm plan together, this was just a testing of the waters. Seeing if Silas would even be game. "These tasks will be dangerous, the fate of the world is being decided by two things older than anyone we've ever known. Titans, do you know the legend?"
Smoking more on the joint and blowing a plume of smoke out towards the ceiling exploding outwards when it makes impact, "They were asleep. Imprisoned in Tartarus. What we are doing, is slaying Titans."
"I do not offer money, nor do I have enough that would make this worth it. I do not offer an easy way forward because the road through the ruins is filled with the unseemly. But what if I told you that saving the world… bringing peace… was such a wild reward in itself mmm? Would you do some good Si?"
Silas lets out a dry and not entirely happy chuckle when Eve mentions Tartarus; there's a look of knowing on his face, and a hint of a bitter twist on his lips. He knows the legends of Tartarus, oh yes. I've been there, Eve. I walked into the underworld, far beneath the surface, and circled to the far side of the Pit…
…and like Orpheus, did not emerge with all I had hoped. He banishes the thought; melancholy and self-pity aren't things he has time for, and especially not now. He squares his shoulders and looks back to Eve warily. "I've never been someone for easy ways, Eve," he says, a sardonic smile on his lips. It's replaced by a serious expression quickly, though. "I'm part of the reason this thing got loose anyway, so… I'll do what I can, at least. I'm… just not sure what I can actually do. Aside from get vaporized, anyway. It took the Olympians to win the Titanomachy, and I'm no god."
He sighs. "As to Adam… I knew him, back home. Not closely, but I'd met him a time or two. The one here, though… from what I'm hearing, he doesn't seem anything like the one I knew," he says glumly.
He falls silent for a moment, tapping his foot against the floor as he thinks. "If you come up with something that I can handle, I'll do what I can. But killing Titans ain't something you can do half-assed," he says, meeting Eve's gaze firmly. "You'll need a sound plan." Plans have a way of going awry, it's true, but having one is important — especially with stakes this high.
Asi’s attention from the topic at hand is derailed by Silas’s admission that he knew Adam where he’d come from, her head turning quickly to regard him. To think: for all her attempts to never invoke his name, to never— as she would perceive it— drag him into that mess, he was aware of Adam Monroe all along. The tension that had started to gather in her releases as she hears of an apparent, stark difference between the two. Her arms settle in their fold again, and she resumes her lean against the doorway. No need to press the matter after all, it seems.
The world he came from truly did diverge from this one, didn’t it.
She looks back to Eve with a quirk of an eyebrow. Silas’s calling of their needing a sound plan isn’t far from what she’d said or thought before about this endeavor, and it’s a little vindicating to hear it from someone else. “It may take time,” she voices. “But one will come together.”
"Oh but you are a god. We all are here, the personification of myth and legend." Eve slinks forward, looking between the two. "Super strength reserved for Hercules. Water under the dominion of Poseidon or the Ap." Her smile widens as she looks over Silas, "Trickster gods that could hide in plain sight. These weren't just urban legends, I truly believe. They were speaking of people like us."
She is always so passionate on this subject, "Never forget, we are special, and when we unite… nothing can stand against us… even our very own."
She stops as he speaks of the Adam in his world. "How interesting." Head cocking to the side and she blinks, "A friend there? I wonder what kept him from crossing The Line there," Eve muses openly before she off hand nods to the earlier stated point. "Plans are made, infinite amount of variables can undo the most well crafted of strategies," Tapping her fingers along her leg as she goes to sit back on a pillow on the floor.
"We will have one. And then we will have another. We have no choice but to succeed. We all play our part in taking the blame for this. I allowed the Crossing, knowing what helping you and Otter Eyes would mean for my world. Together, we fix our broken mess." That isn't something Eve had admitted to Asi before.
"I'm a long ways from bein' Hades. Or Coyote, come to that," Silas says dryly. Then you'd better get to work on that, hadn't you? he thinks to himself, and there's a grain of truth to that; given the challenges that seem to be falling onto his plate, he really is gonna need to be on top of his game.
Eve's point about plans falling apart causes Silas's lips to crease into a frown; the best laid plans of mice and men may oft go awry, but having a plan that's gone off the rails is a very different matter than going in with no plan at all. Thankfully, Eve doesn't seem inclined to press that particular point.
He leans back a bit, still regarding Eve with a grim expression. One way or another, this can't be ignored; Silas knows that. But he also can't help but wonder just how much this fight, this Titanomachy, is going to cost. How much it's going to cost all of them.
He remembers the devastation at Sunspot; all the empty places where people should have been but weren't. And that's just what it had done coming through. How much worse could it do if it was actually trying? If it was in mortal combat? As it always was. As it will be. An unending circle of death. Those words, from that awful dream.
Silas lowers his head and rubs at his eyes; for the moment, at least, he's got nothing to say.
Eve might not have admitted it out loud, but she didn't need to. No matter her guilt, the blame wasn't entirely hers. Many people saw the risks and took them anyway— threw open the doors and tore down the walls separating reality from reality. It took an army of people following their hearts to let the Entity out. It took more than the sins of the past, and it took more than planted whispers.
No one person could take the fall for this, Asi hopes Eve knows.
Her gaze drifts back to Silas as he fails to produce any more words, arms uncrossing and falling by her sides. “In the end, to succeed it will take more than us here. More than a boat of people. If our many plans do not include recruitment, they are all doomed to fail.” While that’s what this was, for sure, recruitment one by one wasn’t something that would save them. But the problem is something Asi does not have a solution for. Not now, not at this moment.
Despite that, she and everyone else still needs to try.“Find your message,” she suggests to Eve, “And I will endeavor to find you a larger platform to recruit on.”
Asi looks back to Silas with a small nod. If he’s ready to go, she’ll see him home.
"You might be closer than you know," Eve says softly before repeating, "Closer than you know." Asi is given a look from the former seer and she smiles a bit.
"Ah yes, recruitment." She was good at gathering the folks but it would take them all working together as she had stated but even then, it's not that Eve had lost hope. Hands raise and she waves them in the air, "Sometimes you just need to nudge people in the right direction," Eve was a nudger.
"To get them to go in the right direction. So many pathways getting lost is easy." Clapping her hands together, "Now whose hungry?" Because Eve liked to smoke and eat while she thought.
And she was beginning to think she had just the thing for all of this.