[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/231110/8d749d906d93af45726a04f7ecf5f219.png[/img][/center][hr]Mercifully, the Scions and Templars weren’t left in limbo for too long. Dame Irina appeared with their armour crystals, and Jannick was thoroughly unnerved by her uncanny valley deference toward him – mere months ago she was breathing down his neck with all the reverence owed to gum on her shoe, and now she treated him almost like her better. To his relief, however, she couldn’t fool him completely: there was nothing she could do to fully rid her tone and icy stare of their intimidating edge. 

Jannick took his crystal quickly and without much interaction, and followed Dame Sonia’s lead when it was time to activate it. His opinion on the Templar costume, as he called it, was mixed; the little boy in him who once idolized knighthood couldn’t deny a little excitement, but this was much more than the parade garb of a Church Knight. This was the garb of a Templar, unmistakably setting him apart from the rest; it put every eye in the Cathedra on him (or so he felt), attention he increasingly wished to avoid. 

The ceremony went off without a hitch, mercifully; there wasn’t much for Jannick to do, and thus, not much for him to screw up. Funny how performance anxiety never dawned on him in the middle of a car chase or a shootout, but in the middle of the Cathedra with the eyes of Gaia on him – not to mention the eyes of the Goddess, which he never really felt leave him even after departing the blessing chamber – Jannick was starting to flag. 

The end couldn’t come soon enough, and neither could the afterparty; more importantly, the chance to finally sneak off for a smoke. The stress of the afternoon had been creeping up on him like a slow leak, at first unnoticed, and at length quite problematic. The first cigarette – in the car, using Wind magic to direct the smoke out a crack in the window – took the edge off, and the next was a natural consequence, and the third was a result of the agonizingly slow driving of the escort leading the Scions to their destination. Honestly, when he found out who was at the front of this police convoy he’d have to bribe his buddies to hide a fish in their locker. 

The party itself was a classy affair, the kind that Jannick had no experience with prior to his assignment to Hollyhock. He was grateful for his Templar uniform (sans armour), which constituted the whole of his formal wardrobe, and cut a sharp figure; that, combined with the title of Templar, usually won him the attention of reasonably attractive female company feigning interest sufficient to pass the evening without the time dragging too slowly. 

Tonight’s plan was no different, and going smoothly thus far: he was already one glass of champagne deep and chatting up a pair of young ladies from either Doumerc or Lorenzia connected to diplomats Jannick couldn’t remember the names of, and didn’t care much about anyway. Everyone involved knew where they stood, he politely pretended to know who they were, and they politely pretended to care about his police stories. It was a good system. 

[color=9A906B]“I once saw a girl – in the back of the police car, hands cuffed behind her back – take a cigarette out of her pocket, put it in her mouth and [i]light it,[/i]”[/color] Jannick recounted, eliciting a chorus of giggles – or maybe that was the one girl’s third glass of wine, but he’d take it either way. [color=9A906B]“Seriously – you gotta keep your head on a swivel, people can get up to some crazy shit when you least expect it.”[/color]
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