Room 322, Sunday Night

[not_every_mage]

It had been barely more than 48 hours since Anders was last in this room, this safe space that was bright with Rapunzel's paints and littered with his own clothes and books. It felt like it might as well have been years. When he'd left, he could be flip about killing because he hadn't needed to do much of it, not enough to make it real. Now he'd done more than he had expected outside a war. (He didn't feel all that bad about it. Deep down, he wondered if that were a problem.)

In Rapture, he'd been fueled by potions and adrenaline -- too tightly wound by the situation to sleep, to rest, to eat more than a mouthful or so when they'd had the chance. It had gotten him through the horror of it all, and Nathan's pizza had helped dull the gnawing in his stomach. But now ... now he felt, all at once, as if he'd die on his feet if he didn't lie down immediately.

He took off his boots and sprawled on his bed. Drifting with his eyes closed, he imagined what would happen if he took the same crew back to Thedas.

The templars would never see them coming.

[OOC:Closed door, open post!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded. "It's how I mostly get around. No one ever really looks up and I can tail people without them knowing anyone's watching. Running down a sidewalk is a little conspicuous and running in the street is just asking to be hit by a car."

The cars that she sometimes had to keep pace with. On foot. Which she could do...

"I could show you some tips and things sometime?" she offered. "I used to practice on the warehouses and things on the island before I went into Baltimore. And it's a lot of fun!"

[not_every_mage]

"Sure!" Anders said, startled but agreeable. "Mages are trained to fight from a distance, but it never hurts to know more."

Who needed to chase a car when you could stand still and rain fire down on it?

[spin_kick_snap]

...Anyone looking to limit property damage and casualties?

"What can you do?" Kathy asked. "I mean, in stories, most mages are practically genies. You just wish for something and they can do it. But in real life--" and ha, it felt weird to say that "--it sounds like it's not quite that easy."

"But," she added, giving him a small smile, "if you are in the habit of granting wishes, I think I'd really like to be a princess."

[not_every_mage]

"A princess who climbs around on rooftops by herself protecting prostitutes?" Anders asked, raising one eyebrow. "Lovely thought, but that's not what I do. Too bad, really. It would save us mages a lot of trouble if we were that powerful.

"Mainly I make things like fire, ice and electricity come out of my staff, and there's this spell I'm still perfecting that throws a massive stone fist at someone. And I heal -- but you knew that."

It didn't sound like much, listed out that way. Not when compared to Kathy's powers. He added, as if in his own defense, "I should get a bit stronger after my harrowing. Most mages do."

[spin_kick_snap]

Funnily enough, if asked, Kathy would just say she was fast and bouncy. It was Anders who had the impressive array of powers!

"A harrowing?" She shivered. "What's that? It sounds--" harrowing. Go figure. "--scary."

[not_every_mage]

"It's the test apprentices go through before they're admitted to the Circle of Magi," Anders explained. "We aren't supposed to know much about it, but the rumor is you pit yourself against a demon somehow. Some people don't come back."

Anders didn't think that would be him. He was good at what he did, or so he'd always thought. But the possibility he was wrong was what made the harrowing, well, harrowing.

"It's terrifying. But it's what you have to do."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I thought you didn't want to be part of the Circle anyway!" Kathy protested, liking the idea of Anders going up against a demon no more than he liked the thought of her fighting off criminals alone in Baltimore. "I mean--demon. Who thinks throwing kids at demons is a good idea?!"

[not_every_mage]

"Templars, probably," Anders sighed. "And I don't like the Circle. But if I don't go through with it, none of the other mages will take me seriously. I won't know the secret handshake. It'll be a tragedy."

[spin_kick_snap]

Not as much as getting eaten alive by a demon would be. Not that it was Kathy's place to judge.

But still--demons?!

Guess who had officially lost all right to fuss about her heading into Baltimore alone. She just had to face car jackers and drug dealers, not demons.

"I am willing to put money towards bribing an older mage to teach you all the secret handshakes in the world, if it means you don't have to tangle with a demon," she offered. "Seriously. Barry's paying me some ridiculous sum to tell him not to be a jerk. I'll look up the exchange rates or something."

Maybe buy a bunch of gold or something? She could work something out!

[not_every_mage]

"Wait, Barry pays people to tell him not to be a jerk?" Anders asked. (He wasn't trying to change the subject; this was honestly what he thought the most interesting part was.) "Why hasn't he asked me? My rates are probably cheaper than yours."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I would have done it for free!" Kathy argued. "I think it was because I ruined his date with Elsa to tell him not to turn teachers into dinosaurs without their consent."

And this was how you knew you were on Fandom Island. You said sentences like this. And meant them.

"But he insisted that I join his company and be on his Ethics Committee and now I'm supposed to be drawing some huge salary and how am I supposed to explain to my dad that I make more than he does? He won't talk to me for like a week if he finds out!"

Which was normal parental behavior, yes.

[not_every_mage]

"If you're earning more than he does, why do you care what he thinks?" Anders asked. "I'm just upset Barry hasn't hired me yet. I could use the money. And I'm very ethical."

Kind of.

"He's dating Elsa?" Yeah, the dinosaur part was so Fandom-normal it slid right by him.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because he's my father," Kathy said, like that explained everything. "I don't want him to be mad at me over something so stupid as money. Not that money's stupid, but...oh, you know what I mean. I think I'm going to ask Barry to just put it all into a trust for me until I'm older so it's not even an issue."

Because peace at home was worth not having access to most of whatever money she made, it really was.

"Ooooh, you didn't know? Yeah, they started going out soon after that birthday party he threw for her. He's got it bad." In fact, he loooooooooved her, but Kathy wasn't going to breathe a word of that to anyone. She'd promised. "So...not very long after our...movie?" Date? Movie-date? Thing?

She'd never been quite sure how to quantify it.

[not_every_mage]

"He's across the country," Anders said. "How would he know how much money you have or don't have? Just don't go home dripping in diamonds and you'd be fine."

That practical advice aside, he considered what she'd said about Barry and Elsa, and the implied question about what there was between him and Kathy. (He'd never been sure how to categorize their movie night either. It had felt like a date at the time -- he wouldn't have kissed her if it hadn't -- but then nothing else had happened, and he'd never been sure what, if anything, Kathy wanted him to do about it. And then there was the way he felt when Nathan smiled at him, and the fact mages made horrible partners to begin with, and -- it was complicated.)

All of this was far too difficult to spell out. "Oh. No, I didn't know."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was vaguely relieved that Anders wasn't sure about what it had been, either. At least, she was assuming that was why he hadn't answered her half-question.

"I'm pretty sure it would still count as income that my parents have to include on their taxes, since I'm still a dependent," Kathy said. "Which means my dad would open up my W4s and end up freaking out anyway. He can be really touchy sometimes."

Fathers, right?

"Oh. Yeah, they are. They're really adorable together. It's fun watching them awkwardly flirt. Err, not that I can really talk about awkward flirting? But it's hilarious when Barry does it."

[not_every_mage]

"I don't understand this world at all sometimes," Anders concluded. "Why should parents have the right to know about money their children earned on their own?"

That quibble aside, he flopped onto his bed and ran a hand through his hair. "And now we got completely distracted from you telling me about whatever happened with that drug ring. You were out by the docks, it was quiet ..." Was he trying to get out of talking about flirting and relationships? Kind of.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was happy to stop talking about her dad (and awkward flirting) with Anders. She was happy to stop talking to her dad pretty much anytime he came up in conversation.

"Right, so Friday was quiet, but I found a couple of places that looked like they might fit the bill. So rather than going out after sundown on Saturday like I usually do, I went out in the afternoon and made my way to the docks and pretended to be a stupid tourist who barely spoke English."

It had been hard not reacting to some of this things that people had said about her, but Kathy was nothing if not committed.

[not_every_mage]

"What, were you trying to get robbed or worse?" Anders asked. "Though I suppose looking like an easy mark was the point,"

[spin_kick_snap]

"There's almost no reason for a teenage girl to be hanging around the industrial end of the docks," Kathy said with a shrug. "But I needed to be able to move around and sneaking's a lot harder in the daytime than it is at night. So since I couldn't hide that I was there, I decided it would be better if I just made them discount my presence overall. I was there, but I didn't matter, you know?"

She's had a lot of practice with that, growing up. Though achieving that through ditziness was new.

"People don't guard themselves at all when they think you can't understand what they're doing. Like the guy that passed a hefty bribe over to a cop while I was standing there, engrossed with my phone and earbuds in. They didn't know that I didn't have any music playing or that I was writing down everything they said in Korean."

[not_every_mage]

Anders frowned hard at her. People who looked like they didn't belong weren't benignly ignored where he was from.

"At home you'd be fielding offers from men who thought you were selling yourself every minute or two," he informed her. "Guards would probably pester you too, if one wandered past. But if it worked, I can't judge."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy ducked her head. "Once people realized I couldn't speak English, they, ahh, had comments to make about my availability that way," she admitted. "And it's not something I would have done after dark. But in broad daylight, it wasn't so bad, so long as I kept out in the open where lots of people were. And anytime someone tried to talk to me, I'd smile and jabber on in Korean and point to my watch and the sea, and they eventually gave up."

Leaning back, she sighed. "Guys are kinda horrible when they think you don't know what they're saying about you, I'll give you that."

[not_every_mage]

"You could have stopped at guys are kind of horrible and I wouldn't have argued," Anders sighed. "But all right. You seemed harmless, and confused, and like they might get into more trouble bothering you than you were worth."

He raised his head to look at her. "Smart. And brave."

[spin_kick_snap]

It was difficult to say which was taking up more of her face, her smile or her blush. Being considered smart and brave were probably the two best compliments she could have asked for.

"Thanks," she said, obviously fighting against her habit of ducking her head whenever she was praised. "So, umm, I saw the hand-off to the cop, figured if that wasn't where the drugs were going to come in, there was surely something going on there, and came back later to check it out. So I did and there they were, ripping open pillows and pulling out bricks of...some kind of drug. I never did figure out what it was."

[not_every_mage]

She was smart and brave, and deserved to be told that more often.

"I wouldn't know," he shrugged. "Drugs are different here, from what I can tell. Anyhow, if they're selling it at the dock at night, you can bet it's not powdered milk for infants."

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's pretty much what I figured," Kathy said. "I mean, whether it's coke or heroine or meth, it's still bad."

She peeked at Anders from under her lashes and said brightly, "So, yeah, that's pretty much the end of it. I found them and I called the police from my burner phone and, you know, they ended up getting arrested."

And she totally wasn't eliding over anything! Like jumping down from the ceiling and fighting them, which someone could consider being really, really stupid.