[b]White:[/b]

Crystal pulls out two business cards. Iridescent ink on charcoal cardstock. The back lists her email, phone number, and her title: Founder and CEO. “One’s for you to keep.” She winks. “I get more jealous than she does.” 

“Please,” Fiona looks at you, here, “She wants to tie me up and see what you do with me.” 

It would be wrong to say that Crystal’s mask slips. A mask implies a falseness, a concentrated effort. It would be more correct to say that even the most graceful and effortless figure skater will trip if you stick a foot out in front of them. “Dearest?” She says in a warning tone. 

“I’d also like that, just so you know.” Fiona raises her hand to call the bartender over. She must be a regular here, a water buffalo in a waistcoat already knows what drink to put in front of her. He’s already pouring. “We’re both switches, but she only ever wins when she has help ganging up on me.” 

Crystal clears her throat. She’s still off balance, unable to look White in the face anymore. The fur doesn’t entirely hide the flushed cheeks. “I’m not used to her being so bold.” This explanation comes with her trying to unball her hands from fists against her side. She’s getting some success. 

“I’m not used to meeting my heroes. I only recognized you because I did a book about the aftermath of BlackSun. Nobody read it, but I think it was worth writing if it means I could know who you are, now.” She’s grinning. She takes a sip of her beer to compose herself. She’s a messy drinker, foam catches across her top lip and she doesn’t think to wipe it. “Everything you just said is a massive turn-on for both of us. I used to be completely body dysmorphic. I would dissociate really hard whenever I remembered my brain is attached to the rest of me. Used to drink a lot of meal replacers so I didn’t have to feel myself eating, that kind of thing. ” She sips her beer again, to watch White’s reaction. Not one note of embarrassment or regret in her voice. Still, she betrays something when she touches the polished chrome of the interfacing connection in the back of her neck. “I came here to find other people who hated their bodies, too. The pretty unicorn here gets off on helping with that. She’s pretty good at it, too”

“Listen,” Crystal’s hands clench at her side, she pouts and she stomps. “Learning and becoming my best self was such a rapturous experience for me, that I cannot help but appreciate the feeling of re-experiencing it through others. Is that such a crime?” 

“Only if you’re so embarrassed to be called out on it you don’t tie me up and throw me to a [i]fucking dragon[/i], otherwise it’s really sweet.” Fiona sips her beer again. “Our place?” 

[b]Blue and Orange:[/b]

There is a shift. A pressure that has been building under the surface of the conversation, released with a shocking suddenness. Call it dinner plate tectonics. 

Charlie Euler lets his own sandwich fall to the plate like it’s a serpent. Wendy Cummins takes a deeper, more thoughtful bite of hers. ‘Robocop’ Perez nods thoughtfully, and makes that humming noise again. 

“How interesting.” His voice is flat, but unlikely to be sarcastic. “But the Florey’s Floozie case?” 

“The forensic accountant learned that it wasn’t our division’s case any more, so it was pulled.” Starlight clears her throat, still taking curious glances back at Blue. Still, it’s something she feels safer to say, now. 

“Right.” Perez nods. Stops. “I wasn’t told why.”

“No, it was…” Starlight trails off.

Perez’s eyes widen. He looks, for a moment, proud of himself. “Oh! I get it. It was a politicians horse, wasn’t it? Something like that. That makes sense.” 

There’s a sound as Charlie’s knee kicks up against the table from how hard he jumps. Wendy’s face is in her hands, and she shakes her head into them. Starlight takes an uneasy breath out.

“Please, Daniel, some tact.” 

“What?” He blinks, looking at Blue. “She knows how this works, doesn’t she?” 

“She might. But I’m not sure you do.” Starlight scolds, but the frustration bleeds out of her voice. “Please. Drop it this time? For me?”

Perez blinks slowly, reading the room. He takes a slow bite of his sandwich. “I was enjoying that case, is all.” He mutters. “I wanted to explore my illegal twins theory.”

“Sorry,” Charlie cuts over, addressed to Blue, “You’re saying you knew Dr Urosaki? It sounds like you have a story, there. Did you… meet him through your work?” 

The Everest name still demands fear and respect, it seems. He can’t ask what he actually wants to. 

[b]Persephone:[/b]

No traps on the door. Whoever was in here - [i]is [/i]in here? - had different priorities. 

The living room’s a hurricane site. Knife marks in the couches, the plastic fibres torn. Loose floorboards ripped up and holes put in the walls. 

It’s hard to tell what the shape of the room was, before. You can tell the desk in the back right of the room used to be in the back left, though. A picture frame of a younger Marco in a graduation gown is shattered on the left side floor, the picture ripped from the frame. He’s the only one in it, no friends or parents. Surrounding it are programming books - thick, heavy, not searched through, just ripped from the desk’s shelf to make it lighter to move. The electrical outlet is ripped from the wall, there. The desk is foreign to its final location, pressed against an LED wall panel.

The smell’s stronger in here, but it’s mixing with other things you do recognize, now. A thick pool of congealed mineral oil cuts through, here, from where it leaks from a shattered aquarium and soaks into the textbooks on the floor around it. Removing the desktop from its liquid cooling rig was not done delicately.

Burglars haven’t been through yet. The stereo system’s still here, as is the electronic drum kit, and those headphones still plugged into them look like they cost a week’s wages. Might want to take those yourself, actually. 

It demands a question of what you’re not seeing. Sometimes there’s context to know what’s missing. Two monitors, but no desktop, no router. An empty wall bracket mounting for a TV. Why the TV? And what’s missing that’s not obvious? 

Kitchen around a blind turn to your left. Bathroom to your right, closed door. Bedroom is behind a half-open door in the back right of the room, pitch-black. Marco keeps his medication in the bathroom, and the laptop’s probably in the bedroom. 

All the windows are to your left, but you’re too high up in the building for any of them to be viable to escape. Curtains all shut tight. Whoever controls access to the front door controls the only way out. Right now, that’s you.  If someone is in here, you just cornered them. 

[Three rolls here. 
Quick + ACAB to do this in stealth, meet or beat 10. The best you can do is be silent. If you succeed, no problems. If you fail, was it because you were tired, sloppy, careless, made a mistake, or just really bad luck? 
Clever + Thieves Tools + ACAB, meet or beat 8. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what you find, and you can tell me how you found it.
Clever to search the place. Hit 6 to find what you already know to look for, meet 9 to be more thorough. You can use ‘Astrodemolition’ as a bonus here if you work it into your answer in the post after this. Same deal. I’ll tell you what you find.

If you succeed at the stealth roll but fail at one of the searches, I’ll let “break stealth” be your “succeed, but with consequences”. 

If something’s going to happen here, it’s going to be fast. Now’s your chance to get your bearings. Eye a weapon, assume risks and make an approach.]


[b]3V:[/b]

Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it. 

You’ll probably be expected to write a story about this later, though. Might be worth remembering. Work out an angle. Or maybe that’s the last thing on your mind, right now. 


[b]Black:[/b]

You are under no obligation to help 3V actually do work. [i]“Do what thou wilt” shall be the whole of the law. [/i]


[b]Pink and Green:[/b]

Here’s what Pink can watch happen, out the window of the locked down apartment. 

Numb’s busy the second their van arrives, a beach camper leaking acrid smoke. A tanned blonde mop-head that ends in frayed curls kicks out of it, shoulder to hip covered in black canvas bags. Stoned out of their senses. They stumble, sway and trip the entire way through the street to the front of the building, bumping into half the news crews you can see, before you lose sight of them.

The Numb that arrives at the secured apartment, though, is clear-eyed and solid. Through the door, and the bags are rapidly being unzipped, and batteries are getting pulled from every pocket of their cargo pants. 

“Only thing I couldn’t get was time to charge, and I was doing a burlesque gig last night.” They explain. “I’ll give ‘em back if they’re still here later, don’t worry about it.” 

“You do you.” York takes a hit of a vape and passes it. “I don’t sweat taking from vultures.” 

“Yeah, well.” Numb’s got the chairs out, now, first camera on a tripod and checking the angles. “Only keep what you need. Where’s our guy?”  Pause. “We got preferred title yet? Picking ‘guy’ over ‘man’ here.” 

“Marco’s drying his fur in the bathroom. Waking himself up a bit. You’ll love him, you can ask when he gets out. I can sit for him if you’re doing framing. He’s about my size.” 

“Yeah, thanks.” Numb agrees, fiddling with a camera while York moves to the chair. “Okay. How big is this?” 

“By the time this is done, we’re going to get every cop on Aevum fired. And maybe we can get it to stick.” York cricks his neck. “Ready to get even, for every search, for all the stolen shit, for every beating?” 

“I-” Numb stops. “Don’t say shit if you don’t mean it.” 

York’s gives the camera a smile so toothsome it throws off the white balance. Even his bottom teeth are bared. “Too happy you’re here for this.” 

There are no great speeches left to make here, unless you want to be the one to make it. No more great moments. No problems to solve. It’s a day of simple work. A day of someone else navigating a witness through explaining things you already know. A day spent in a place you and Persephone have both made sure is safe for this. This moment is inert until it has an audience for a reaction.

But it’s still history. One day, people will write books about this, and a paragraph will be about your place in this moment. The next few hours are not an interesting thing to experience, but people will be interested that you were here to experience it. Because they’ll know how this turned out in the end, because this will be how they learned what you already know.

As Marco towels himself dry in the bathroom, as Numb aligns their cameras for the payload, as York clears his throat and rehearses his questions. How do you leave your mark on this moment? Is there anything from the interview that you want to capture?