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Ezra felt the web of a slow, creeping migraine spread from the back of his eye to the base of his neck as his family threw their pennies into the pot. Nisha’s asinine idea (which she was still embellishing upon in the background, underneath the voices of the other Vanburens) was followed with a more sensible one from Arabelle. His eyes lit up as Georgie stashed the ram skull in her secret vault of roses. It was potentially an ingenious solution to their little theft problem, yet the only kudos he gave her was a nod of approval upon her return. 

Whatever warmth had begun to radiate from him for his family was quickly cooled as Shane excused himself to go raid the old man’s bar—Ezra’s bar, actually. Ezra thought to go after Shane, either to stop his half-brother from sliding further into his addiction or to, at the very least, stop him from drinking Ezra’s good scotch. Alternatively, the idea of grabbing a nip to ease the throbbing in his brain sounded pretty good too. Unfortunately, he was obligated to stay and play his part as head of the house, slipping away only for a minute to grab himself a cup of tea. 

Justin had moved on from making it clear that they had to deal with the Triple Goddess no matter what and had moved on to dismantling Sabrina’s suggestion to call the cops. As a rich, white, middle-aged man it had been Ezra’s first thought, but he’d quickly come to the same conclusion that Liao did. Naturally, they wouldn’t say anything about magic being involved, just that a group of hooligans had raided their house, damaged their property, and assaulted their persons. Nevertheless, it would be negligent to call the cops on people who commanded hellhounds and whipped up tidal waves—might as well just call Officer Dewey over and feed him to LeBeau and save the time.

[color=red]"So, uh, what can you all do by the way?"[/color] asked Justin before he demonstrated his own abstraction. 

[color=darkgray]“How to even...I improve people and things. Temporarily, anyway,”[/color] said Ezra with a wave of his hand. [color=darkgray]“I can Configure the size of an item or make it a perfect Masterpiece, nigh indestructible, flawless in its design, and even capable of being an infinite resource...as long as I am able to maintain the spell, that is.”[/color] 

As he spoke, the tea cup served as a model for the demonstration. As the memento bracelet on his wrist glowed orange and swirled with faint sigils, the cup doubled in size and then shrunk back down to normal as he channeled the entirety of the item to become a Masterpiece.  He walked over to the edge of the deck so as to not make a mess and the channeling stopped, the cup radiating an orange light before the energy faded. Then, he glowed for a split second as he made himself a Prodigy. He began to pour the steaming hot tea out, his eyes focusing on Justin nonchalantly as the drink continued to endlessly flow. 

[color=darkgray]“I could spend the next several hours explaining to you the proper etiquette for a tea ceremony, the history behind ceramics, or just blindly taste test teas til the charm wears off of me explaining to you the subtle difference between Earl Grey and Lady Grey, but I think that’d be a bit excessive,”[/color] said Ezra. He tilted the cup back up, which by then had poured out several gallons worth and had melted a fair chunk of the snow below him, and dropped the spells. [color=darkgray]“After all, my siblings need their go, and we still need to get back to the real discussion on hand.”

“Which, for the record, I think Arabelle's idea to contact the girl is the most sound. At the very least we’ll know what we’re up against. We don't even know if who attacked was the entirety of their cult or not,”[/color] said Ezra. He gestured to his siblings. [color=darkgray]"But we'll get back to that. Who wants to go next in show-and-tell for Mr. Liao?"[/color]