ZincAboutIt

Lita blinked, then shook her head, clearing her thoughts and turning toward Laurelai. She replayed the woman's words, then pulled a face and chuckled. "Ugh," she whispered, crossing her arms and putting one foot up against the wall to give the impression of greater ease. "I thought I'd seen the last of Callingfale red after I left Scadrial. Don't remind me now. And as far as my 'escape method,' well, let's say it wasn't exactly my first choice. Nearly lost my spectacles after the flying wonder over there flung us through the rusting wall." Lita looked up at Laurelai, then back to Voidus and the Stranger. "Don't miss much between them, do they?" She said quietly, nodding towards the pair. It was like watching two gods play in a sandbox, except the sandbox was her world, and she was one of the sand grains. She suppressed a shudder, trying to focus.

Lita clutched the coin - now cool and blank - in a white-knuckled fist as she watched the Stranger wield at least four separate powers with terrifying ease. Her eyes widened of their own accord. "Ruination," she breathed softly, almost without thinking. At least a few people in the room looked equally amazed. She edged a little further away until her back pressed reassuringly against the wall of the Alley, and she breathed a little easier. This is the person who wants to speak with me later? She thought, fighting down a strange mixture of awe, terror, and excitement. Keep it together, it won't do to faint at your first big meeting. Lita managed a small bit of pity for whoever had made the terrible choice of eavesdropping here, though what could they have honestly expected? Glad I'm spying for the Dark Alley, not on them, she mused, taking another look at the coin in her palm. Lita had about a thousand questions, but those could wait. Clearly, now was not the time for interruptions.

Well at the end she does basically freelance herself out to go kill Cersei so at least there's that. The Night King is all well and good, but he wasn't on The List.

Seriously why is no one saying this? Come on Bran, you know basically everything, at the very least you should suggest it!

Lita nodded at Mac's dismissal, stepping back towards the wall and casting a look out over the crowd. Lethal indeed, she thought, thankful for her brassminds. I'll have enough heat stored to last me through a lifetime of burning tin by the end of the day if this coin doesn't cool down soon. She saw Laurelai moving along the wall a bit further down the Alley and tried to catch her eye, raising her one free hand in a wave and keeping the other curled around the coin. Lita felt a genuine smile tug the corner of her mouth at the sight of Laurelai, along with a small twinge of guilt. How, exactly, did one apologize for leaving someone at a doomed dinner party after a giant Horneater burned a hole in the wall? Did they sell cards for that sort of thing? Rather eager to put some distance between herself and Voidus, she edged along the wall some six feet or so and raised her hand again, hoping to catch Laurelai's eye. @Voidus ----- Vivica Alleytravelled to Alley 0 still clutching her notepad, grinning. When she'd heard the message on the speaker system, she hadn't even bothered to worry about being covered in bits of ferret. Besides, this would be the talk of the Alleys for weeks, possibly years. Maybe, in all the excitement, no one would ask Vivica how her experiments with Ferretchemy were coming along. She stood and waited, waving to a few colleagues, and watched Bennington swim lazy circles around the room like a glowing pink comet. Her new recruit was standing over by the far wall, looking around in awe. She gave him a bright smile, then took her pen out from behind her one remaining ear and made a few notes on her pad, smudging the ruled sheet with blood. No time like the present for noting down ideas.

Lita did her best not to fidget as she thought about the party. When she'd left, it had seemed a ridiculous waste of time, but now that she thought on it, perhaps what she'd seen and heard would be of more use than she could know. "The party was clearly a show of force - mostly to dazzle the citizens with all that flashy food, waiter service, free wine, the whole bit. But at the end of the day, what they wanted was money - great guild money. Pretty tight-lipped about all the 'ground-breaking' Investiture research they were doing, though their palms were wide open for chrysts. I tried to tease out anything useful or prescient about why we might want to hop into a partnership with them, but... well," Lita hesitated, tapping one finger on her upper lip. She sighed a small, irritated sigh. "The way I see it, Sir, is that if they wanted to research Investiture, why not come right to us? The work being done in the Alleys has taken years, even I know that. Rusts, I knew it before I even met you or Laurelai. Everyone knows that the Dark Alley is where you go if you want to find those kinds of secrets. So why start new? Why re-invent the wheel? I figure the only reason PlasmaCore isn't parked in some Alley down here is that they are trying to do something that even we wouldn't do. And honestly? I don't even know what that is. What I do know is that every inch of that place was crawling with security: cameras, double-authentication lifts, you name it. Almost everyone was ushered inside the party room when they entered, but as we arrived, one man went up to the receptionist, handed her a note, and was taken to a private elevator bank. If they are merely a group of scientists testing the boundaries of Investiture then I'm the Lord Ruler. Someone is already backing them, and what they want from us is money, information, or both. Maybe they wanted to get our measure before they tried something." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Everything went to absolute hell when that rusting Mastermind person hijacked the screens. Then that... sky boat?" Lita grappled for the word. "Ship? Yes, the ship arrived and it was madness. I... uh..." Lita forced herself not to look down at her hand, down at the coin that had alerted her to the danger before it had arrived. Did she tell Mac about the coin? What would he do if she told him? What would he do if she didn't? Don't play a fool, Lita. There's no trinket more valuable than your life. She cleared her throat, then lifted her hand and showed Mac the coin in her palm. The spiked skull still grinned its jolly, too-wide grin. "This coin grew hot enough to burn me seconds before that ship arrived, and those marines showed up. It allowed Okame to get us out of there before things got too dicey. I'm the one who sent you that Alleycant message, the one about the Stranger. He gave me this - or, a part of him did. Said it was mine to keep." He hadn't quite said that, but he'd implied it, and as far as Lita was concerned an implication was an invitation. "It's hot," she said preemptively, in case Mac reached for it. "Grew hot as a tea kettle right after I stepped foot in here, and hasn't stopped." @MacThorstenson

Lita caught Mac's subtle motion and began weaving her way quietly through the crowd. When Okame zoomed in and touched down with a fanlike symbol spreading out beneath his feet, she was caught somewhere between rolling her eyes and applauding. Since he had possibly saved her life back at the party, she decided to humor him with a tiny clap and a little bow before stepping up beside Mac in the shadows. "Hello, Sir," she said, voice low. "Quite a gathering here." @MacThorstenson

Lita stepped into Alley 0 and turned her tin back on, allowing the quiet sussurus of murmured voices to wash over her and upward into the high, pinprick ceiling. It felt different here, old. More than old. The dim light cast from the single lamp was more than enough for her to see by with her enhanced eyes, but even with tin, this Alley, more than any other, felt dark. As though the light were only a visitor, tolerated but not welcomed. She spotted Mac standing just behind another man, tall, with a serious expression and deep eyes. This must be him, she thought with a slight shiver. Voidus. She kept along the wall, not wishing to attract too much attention, and tapped brass. The warmth radiated through her, almost completely covering up the slight warmth in her pocket. Suddenly, the warmth turned into heat, then scalding heat. Swearing quietly, Lita immediately began filling brass instead, hoping that her dress didn't catch on fire in the middle of what was clearly an important meeting. Lita pulled the Stranger's coin from her pocket, siphoning all that warmth into her metalminds and still feeling an echo of its heat. The face showed the spiked skull, bright and grinning. She turned it over, and the image remained the same. This was a different kind of heat than what she had felt at the PlasmaCore party, though Lita had no doubt that she was definitely in potential danger right here and now from any number of nearby Denizens. But no, this felt new. She smiled at the coin, lifting it between her fingers and cocking her head at the skull. "Now what?" she whispered, excitement growing within her despite her cautious attitude. "What kind of secrets shall we learn today?" Lita closed her palm around the coin, not daring to put it back into her dress pocket and risk singing it beyond repair. Instead, it burned in her hand like a tiny star, and she pulled that warmth into her brassminds for later use. She leaned against the Alley wall and waited, green eyes flicking over the growing crowd, ears listening for any news. Something big was about to happen. Lita smiled, and watched.

I spike the syrup into the waffle.

@xinoehp512

Vivica smiled again, wider this time. "A pleasure!" She said. Then, as if only just remembering something, she slipped her left hand into her coat and pulled out another spike. She shook Raekerb's hand, then pulled him towards her. "Almost forgot," she said, grinning, then stabbed the spike down into his shoulder, through his clothes. "Loyalty spike. Standard issue, I'm afraid. Don't worry, you'll hardly notice it after a while."

Renata took the pan of wine and carefully poured it over Lisa’s hands first, then Aderet’s. She looked over at Arun. ”It’s not so terrible,” she said quietly. “I’ve had wounds stitched before. And like we said - may not even be needed.” She tried to smile, but it probably came out as a grimace. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep from looking off into the darkness behind Arun, searching for that eye. Watching? The Doctor had underscored that word time after time. How many hours had he spent feeling exactly as she did now: tense, unsure, afraid? They’d never know, now. @kenod @Silva @Blessing of Potency

"You only have two eyes, Brightlord," Renata said, closing the Doctor's journal and tucking it into her pack next to her own notebook. "And there are too many sides to this fire to watch at once. Two at a time makes more sense. Besides, you'll need to rest at some point. You're the only one with a Shardblade, and we'll need you alert as we travel tomorrow." She stood, then crossed around the fire to Arun. The girl had been nursing the bottle of white and grimacing. "We'll need to get that out of your leg before we sleep," she said, kneeling down to look at Arun. Upon closer inspection, she looked nearly the same age as Renata. "We might stitch it, might not. Either way, you'll not like what we're about to do." Renata looked over her shoulder at Lisa. "Is everything... um...sterilized?" she asked, saying that last, unfamiliar word slowly. "We'll need to get it cleaned and have Arun rest before tomorrow. We can't linger here." @kenod @Blessing of Potency

Guy Fawkes Day? Plots, assassinations, schemes... seems ideal.

Renata nodded at her. "You're the expert," she said, still distracted thinking about the red eye in the darkness. "Just be sure I get them back if we don't use them." She began picking through the pile of belongings they had stripped of the dead, fishing out the pair of fine boots and holding them up to Wilhelm. "Try these on - they may fit you. We'll be walking tomorrow morning, and the last thing we need is you cutting your foot on something. We can't afford more injuries." @I think I am here.

"We're trying to decide if anyone is skilled enough to sew up Arun's wound," Renata said, not bothering to look up from the journal. A tiny, wicked smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth as she thought of Aderet trying to stitch up Arun's leg. I wonder if she'll faint. Renata gotten out her own notebook and started copying the writing on the loose letters so she could re-read them all in one place. "Though perhaps she won't need it." She looked over a Lisa. "If that's the case, I'll want my needles and thread back. I only have so much gut thread, and I don't want to make more..."

I'd be ridiculously overdue for a spren at this point.

Renata set down the journal for a moment and opened her pack, taking out the small leather pouch that contained her needles and gut, along with her pouch of clean bandage. She handed them to Lisa, then scooted over towards her with the journal in hand. "This is the Doctor's journal," Renata said, opening the journal to the last page, where the round eye peered up at them with its glaring, charcoal stare. "Lizanne saw this eye not half an hour ago," she pointed out back towards where they had found Nitinyas's body. "I think it must have been watching him too, before this expedition even started." She flipped back to the page with the large black hole drawn into it. "He called this thing 'the rift,'" she said. "Do you know what he might have been talking about?" @kenod

This is such a nice thing! I’ve dealt with diagnosed anxiety for over a decade now, and over the past year have had some dark depressive periods as well. If anyone wishes to talk, I’m here for you! Life breaks us, but we fill the cracks with something stronger

Renata felt a sick feeling settle into her stomach as Lizanne confirmed that the eye she'd seen matched the one in the journal. "It says 'watching?'" Renata read. "The Doctor has written it as a question, like he's asking it of himself..." She flipped back to the loose notes, looking them over. Even missing gaps in this language, she could tell that the writing was terrible; words were misspelled, sentences constructed oddly. The handwriting was different. A correspondence of some sort, then? Likely, whoever was writing these letters knew even less of this language than she did herself. "Something happened, even before they called for this expedition. He knew about this...thing." Renata waved a hand at the darkness beyond the ring of firelight. "It was watching him, too. And now..." And now, he's dead. Renata shook her head, flipping back to the page colored almost entirely black. She pointed to it, careful not to smudge the charcoal further. "He called this thing the..." she squinted at the page, "...rist? No, rift. Like... a chasm? Some sort of crack? Does this mean anything to you?"

This is excellent! Pledged something each month. It’s great to support this place, I love it here!

Vivica watched the man chew with barely-concealed enthusiasm. "Oooh, a recruit? Well that's fun, isn't it? I don't think I've ever recruited anyone..." She turned to her right, where Bennington continued to swim through the air, glowing with a soft, comforting light. "Have I ever recruited anyone, Bennington? I'm sure I'd remember something like that... do you think anyone else remembers?" Vivica looked at her coppermind ring, then back at the visitor. She slipped the spike back into her pocket. "We've had a few new recruits lately, actually, and there's news that the Stranger might be returning. You've certainly chosen an exciting time to join up!" She tried to brush some of the blood on her hands off onto her lab coat, but only succeeded at smearing it around. Shrugging, she stuck one hand out to the visitor, then looked up at Bennington. "People still do this, right? Shake hands?" She asked. Bennington wiggled his tentacles in what could have passed for a shrug, then began swimming around the visitor's head. Vivica sighed. "I'm Vivica, research assistant. And you are?" @xinoehp512