Bazmund

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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By the Billy Bus

Abigail and Billy

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As Siobhan appeared practically out of nowhere, and began having a go at Abi, Billy’s eyes widened in shock. He stuttered for a moment as she threatened Abi, standing sharply and holding out his hand to tell her to stop - as she vanished.

“I- I, what the fuck? Shit, Abigail, you alright?”

Abigail stared at the space where Siobhan used to be, open-mouthed and silent. She turned to gawp at Billy, then at her hand, then she sank back into the seats with a low hiss. "My hand hurts," she croaked.

“I-” he stuttered again, looking between Abi’s hand and the void Siobhan had left behind. After a moment he started to look all around, too, as if Siobhan would still be there, just watching.

“Fuck.” Billy swore, fists clenching for a moment as he tried to decide what to do. “Shit, Abi, what- no, what the fuck, Siobhan?!”

"What. What?" Abigail watched Billy as a frown started to creep onto her features.

“Well, I- I- Look, Abi, I don’t know what all this is about her race or ethnicity, but she ain’t allowed to just go round threatenin’ you. Are you alright?”

"S'fine bud, I kinda had it comin' to me," Abigail slurred as she continued her gradual melt into the vehicle's furniture, twisting her body so she was lying on her back, hand in the air. "Hand still hurts though," she reminded him with a twinge of cheeriness. Her expression was clouded by thought.

“No, that ain’t fine. Ain’t no part of that fine. I don’t care what you said or did, you didn’t visit violence upon ‘er and ought not have had it threatened against you. An’ I didn’t ask if it were justified, Abigail,” he added, his voice softening a bit as he handed her the little tube of anaesthetic cream, “I asked you if you were alright.”

"Peachy, chief, I'm fuckin' peachy." Abigail grabbed the edge of the dressing and tugged - once, twice - with grunts of discomfort. She muttered under her breath. She gingerly tried to peel back the swabs of material. "AwyagoddabefugginkiddinmeeeeRRRRARGH-!" she groaned, growled then yelled out as she tore off the wound dressing like a cheap bikini line wax strip. Her back curled with the pain, launching her back into a sitting position. Clumps of her hair stuck to her face with the residual sweat of her wound treatment and she squeezed half the tube in one hefty blob, smearing it into her hand and down her arm.

As she tore off the dressing and a part of her own hand Billy paled a little.

“Holy shit. Hey, ya might wanna keep that on.”

"I'm gonna fuckin' 'visit violence' on your ass in a minute if you don'-...fffuck it, man! It's FINE! Now ain't the time for this shit!" Her voice was shrill and her breathing ragged. "We got bigger shit to deal with," she wheezed, regaining some composure. "Forget about the-...the lady. There's corpses everywhere! Priorities!"

At the comment of visiting violence upon him, Billy’s eyebrow quirked upwards.

“Somehow, I doubt I’ll have to worry about you beatin’ the shit outta me, Abigail. Alright, you have a point, we can talk about this later - but Abigail, we are gon’ talk about it later. As for that crazy bitch…” Billy’s fist clenched again as he turned and looked towards the house, where he could only imagine she’d gone.

“She won’t try anything, Abi. I ain’t gonna let her make good on any threats, alright? If she does try something then I hope she brought water, because she’ll be walkin’ home.” He spat into the dust. “An’ I very much mean that.”

"Good. Yeah. I…" she was staring at her hand again, watching it shake and ooze. "I shouldn't have done that."

With Billy's assistance, Abigail redressed her wound and mumbled something about lightheadedness. She was lying back on the seats when Ellen came in, and waved her bandaged hand around like a prize. "Hand's fucked!" She chirped. Her other hand pulled down the brim of her greasy baseball cap over her brow as she tuned out for the rest of the discussion, half-turning towards the backs of the seats as everyone crowded back into the bus.

Billy turned to face Ellen as she asked for the phone.

“Well shit, it’s good to know someone made it, even if they are in bad shape.” He replied, handing the phone over as Brooks approached. “Yeah, no, I reckon we prob’ly got a bit more than we bargained for with this one. Let’s just see what the folks at Goodnight think of it.”

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The House

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As the wounded bootlegger was heaved up, he gave a weak, agonised groan.

“Shit.” He muttered. “Fuck, wait, if you- if you need weapons, I had my gun with me in the kitchen, Alex- Alex dropped his in the living room when he got hit. You gotta, you…” he trailed off into mumbled grunts of pain as he was moved to the basement.

Just as they approached the basement, the door down to it opened, and Hans and Mark stepped out into the house, dressed in light clothes and carrying weapons; Hans was the more heavily armed of the two, carrying his rifle and wearing a body armour vest, magazines for the rifle tucked into pouches on its front, whereas Mark was holding an uzi uncomfortably in one hand, and had a baseball bat in the other. Which he awkwardly dropped about as soon as he saw all the blood in the house.

“Hallo.” Hans held up a hand in greeting as he approached the group. “Get him into the basement, they’re going to perform the transport to bring him back to Goodnight in two minutes.”

After that was done, and the wounded man no longer an issue, Mark and Hans organised everyone. The injured bootlegger was right, and there were two pistols to be found in the house - a browning hi-power in the kitchen, and a 1911 that had been dropped under the sofa in the living room, handle bloodied and stained, but perfectly functional.

Once they were all by the van, they broke the bad news.

“We have orders from Goodnight.” Hans began.

“Yep.” Mark agreed, before continuing. “You ain’t gonna like this, but it turns out this delivery was needed a lot more badly than we thought. Unless it turns out we’re somehow going straight up against the fuckin army or the FOE or some shit, we’ve been told to come help you track down and retrieve the supplies, a cool box in particular.”

“Yes. By any means we deem necessary.” Hans nodded grimly, patting the side of his weapon.

“So uh… what do you think, guys?”

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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The House

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“Not an offer? Fuck me, that’s a shame.” He chuckled weakly, forcing little pulses of blood up through the padding around his stomach wound. “Real shame.”

As Siobhan entered the room he looked up, and gave her a foul grimace and a grunt of pain - the closest thing to a grin he could muster.

“I… uh, Niki, Niki an’ I were in the army together for about ten, fifteen years. She was always a pistol. Pretty intense woman, honestly, but like, my best mate. Very moral. This operation wasn’t exactly her idea, but I couldn’t just let ‘er do it alone.”

“I always wondered if things would’a worked out between us, but I don’t think she was made for marriage, you know what I mean?” He coughed weakly, and then gave a little chuckle, laughing at something he’d thought of. “I mean,” he closed his eyes for a moment, before forcing them back open, “she tried it about three times. Bless her, three weddings, two divorces, one bloke just disappearin’.”

“Michael. Me an’ Niki knew Michael from the pub. Bit of a strange guy honestly, but that’s the sort of person Niki just seems to attract. Eccentric is a better word for Michael actually. It was always like, if you- if you need somethin’, maybe don’t know where to get it? You can ask Michael, he’ll probably know where to get it.”

He went silent for a moment, still and quiet.

“He, uh, it was his idea, all this. I dunno if he knew someone who was a mage, or anything like that, but he seemed to know people, and when he pitched it to Niki she liked the sound of it.

“Well, are ya here to join the threesome, beautifu-[i][b]uuuuuuck![/i][/b]” He gave a tortured scream, stifled by clenched teeth, as he tried and failed to raise himself to a sitting position to get a better look at Siobhan.

He gave up on sitting, and eased himself back down to lie flat on the floor, letting his head roll to the side. He stared at the other body numbly, and swallowed hard.

“Alex… Alex was Niki’s son. Good kid. Good fuckin’ kid. Real eager. Cool head on his shoulders. I- I don’t think smuggling was enough for him. He was plannin’ to ask if he could go back with you guys. To join in proper, be more direct about things. He…” he trailed off, mouth open, words caught up in his throat.
“Fuck. It’s all gone to shit. Look, I don’t care what happens to me now, you gotta get the coolbox if nothing else. There’s- there’s shit in there, needs to be kept chill, and it won’t last once the sun comes up proper and it starts gettin’ hot. You understand?”

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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The House

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"Shit." He muttered as he drew his hand away from the gut wound, and saw that the blood was still fresh, red, and running. He shook his head in what might well have been disappointment.

"They hit us about two hours ago. I'd say maybe six guys? Two of 'em came in over the westward hill, had a rifle, killed Michael where he stood. We fought back, but the guys on the hill managed to get Niki before they-" He gave a grimace and a loud, agonised grunt, as he tried to shift himself into more of an upright position. "- oh, fuck. Fuck. Before they pulled back. Alex and I came out when we heard gunshots, but we took gunfire from down the road. Didn't get much of a look at em. Hit Alex in the chest, me in the guts. Alex ain't- he wasn't moving, wasn't breathing."

He stopped, staring at the body of his fallen comrade.

Meanwhile, Brooks was stalking about the house, taking note of the details of the fight. The most immediate thing he noticed was the distribution of the structural damage - the bullet holes where more or less exclusively on the front facing side of the house, and scattered all over, forming three general clusters. The individual shots weren't terribly close together, and did not form obvious patterns of fire like an automatic weapon would - so it was at least three separate people, from three separate angles, firing non-automatics.

One of the patchwork clusters had fewer, but larger, holes - the one that went through the door, in particular. Brooks could recognise that this, at least, was rifle-caliber. Probably a bolt action rifle, firing hunting rounds.

The other two were harder to discern, mostly because one of them had gone mostly through a wooden-shuttered window. The sheet glass on the inside of the shutter had been completely shattered, and there were about twelve holes in the shutters on the other side - but Brooks couldn't see any specific, well-bordered holes on the other side of the living room that would match up to these ones, just some areas of patchy damage to the wall, not unlike buckshot or birdshot. The third source of fire hadn't penetrated very much, but had left lots and lots of much smaller pellet holes where it had - so the third weapon was probably a shotgun.

Overall? Three specific sources of gunfire. One probably a hunting rifle, one most likely a handgun loaded with hollowpoint ammunition, and one a shotgun loaded with buckshot.

The spatter of blood on the floor seemed consistent with a major injury at gunpoint, but at the point where it had happened the blood was too smeared to be easily readable. Enough was on the walls to be sure that they'd been shot and not stabbed, but nothing further could be told. When he took a closer look at the blood though, something else became apparent.

Off to the side, stuck to the floor by the congealing blood, were shell casings.

9mm Parabellum rounds, six of them. Plus one larger, .45 ACP casing.

It didn't seem like very much fighting had happened inside the house, if any. Whoever had hit the bootleggers had been satisfied with killing two of them, suppressing the others, and presumably stealing their cargo.

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The Witcher: Under the Shadow

I am also in. There was a *lot* going on at the time of our first shot, and there still is, but I've honestly been missing the game a lot. I'd be down to play Alan again too.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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The Outback at Dawn

05:40 - Local Time

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Angeline

The first thought in Angie's head when she made contact with the skin of the casualty was that although they were very cold - for a person, at least - they weren't as cold as she thought they would be if they were dead; there was a noticeable chill against her hand when she touched them, but it wasn't quite as bad as the chill of the morning, or the cold of the earth underfoot. Were they still alive?

The answer came with the absence of pulse or breath. The woman by the shed had been shot in the chest at least twice, and had either been killed then and there by the trauma, or bled to death at some point quickly after - just not quite long enough ago that she'd gone completely cold.

The man who'd fallen in the road was a simpler, and more gruesome, story. He wasn't moving, he had no pulse, and the sheer extent of trauma to his skull made it all but impossible for him to have not been killed instantly when the bullet struck him, probably in the back of the head. Angie didn't want to look at the exit wound.

No point giving these people first aid. Not any more.

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The House

As the four of you approach the front door, you get the benefit of a closer look at it. There is blood spattered over the wooden frame, and bullet holes dot its body - just the same as they dot the front of the entire right hand front of the house, cracking windows and wall panel alike. When the door creaks open it becomes obvious that the blood staining the door had been from more than a flesh wound, as much the same lies in a congealed pool of even greater volume on the floorboards of the hallway too, smeared and scraped around by what seems to have been the movement of the injured person. A bloody bootprint on the back of the front door suggests that whoever got shot must have kicked it closed behind them when they fell.

The blood forms a trail, and it leads across a sparse but homely enough living room - still stocked with dusty furniture and a television - to what seems likely to be the kitchen.

Further up the hallway, unmarred by gore, two other doors seem to be ajar; the one on the left leads to a room you can barely see into, but which has tiled walls at the very least, the other of which leads down a set of stairs, presumably to the basement.

The air is still stale in here, bearing the faded scent of ancient, forgotten residents, barely detectable underneath the iron, cloying smell of the blood and the gunsmoke. It smells of beer, cigarettes, and tinned foods.

Brooks in particular is able to recognise the current state of the blood on the floor - congealed and clotted, but still wet, this blood is no longer fresh but certainly no more than half a day old, if that; combined with the strength of the smell of burnt ballistic propellant lingering in the air, this combat must have been no more than two, maybe three hours ago.

As Zephyr takes his own first step over the threshold, he invokes another of his gifts, and immediately he sees things a little differently to the others. His senses both sharper and better guided, he re-evaluates the environment, re-processes the sights, smells, and tactile sensations of it all, and comes quickly to a stark conclusion; the fight was recent, yes, but not all of the blood stinks so equally of the beginnings of decay, and not every room in the house is so quiet.

Through the gap between the door to the kitchen and the walls surrounding it, Zephyr can smell fresher blood, and Zephyr can hear shallow, faint breathing.

Somebody is still alive in here.

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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The Billy Bus

12:30 PM, en route to the Outback

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The van kicked on with a stutter, a gulp, and a sudden waft of fried food as Billy turned the keys with a jerk and what had once been fryer oil streamed into the chambers of the practically-bespoke, homemade, kitbashed engine. For a couple of terrible moments, the engine seemed as though it were drowning, coughing and spluttering under the sudden stress of working again, and a small cloud of blueish blackish smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe - but then, after just a moment longer, it all calmed right down; the fearful yelping under the hood subsided, the smoke cleared, and Billy started to grin as it was all replaced by what almost sounded like a purr.

He turned to face the others in the car, adjusting the position of his rifle - muzzle down, safety on - between the door and his leg, as his grin grew and grew.

"Y'all underestimated me, dintcha?"

The journey was paradoxical in both duration and direction - firstly, in that it took less than fifteen minutes overall, and secondly, in that rather that leaving Goodnight, once everyone had settled into the ancient kombi Billy drove in entirely the opposite direction to what you'd have expected. Instead of turning out of the car park and towards the main road, Billy turned straight back towards the shopping centre and drove around the rear side of it, towards the loading bay. Once there, he parked up about twenty metres from one of the shut bay doors, and waited.

Two or three minutes later, a scruffy looking middle aged man in grey jeans and a tank top emerged from an employee entrance, and gave Billy a thumbs up as the bay door started to open, sliding upwards.

Billy returned the thumbs up, and gently accelerated, pulling the van into the loading bay - which was remarkably empty inside.

"Alright kids, I'd tell ya to buckle up, but from what I understand we ain't even really gonna be moving." He added as the door came down behind them and left you in pitch black darkness.

A minute passed.

Another minute.

Then there was a moment of uncertainty - a most bizarre moment of uncertainty, because it was neither an emotional nor a mental feeling of uncertainty or doubt, but a decidedly physical one, spread across all of your body at once, like a dark stain across pristine white cloth, or like the cold of the sea in the moment after you dive in. It subsided as quickly as it came, but left an impression of itself for a second longer - and in that moment, as opposed to the moment you first felt it, you realise that this is the same feeling as when you passed through the Blue Magic gate on your way to Goodnight, just more intense.

Well, it was either more intense, or you were more sensitive to it.

Whichever it was, Billy didn't seem to react. At all. Another minute passed in the darkness.

“Well, that should be us. I sure hope some of you felt somethin’ there, because I sure as heck didn’t.”

Fearlessly, he opened the door of the kombi and stepped outside, flicking on a torch to reveal surroundings that were completely different to the ones you’d seen before the doors shut on you back at Goodnight. Wherever you were now, it wasn’t where you’d started.

Billy strode up a slope towards a smaller garage door, and tugged on the rope to tilt it back and open it up. Pale morning sunlight streamed into the basement - it was definitely a basement, you were sure of that now - as the door opened up, and Billy took a big breath of the fresh, cool air.

About fifteen seconds later, you were all pulling up the slope and out into the open in the Billy Bus, and that’s when it hit you that something was terribly, terrifically, violently wrong.

There, cast in the wintery light of the early sun, thrown down at the foot of the shed opposite you, a body. The dirt underneath her body was stained brownish-red with blood, and more of the same speckled the ground behind where she had fallen.

Up the road slightly, towards the outhouse, another body, male, crumpled over forwards on the spot like he’d been caught unawares, blood pooling and trickling downhill of the corpse.

The other two bootleggers - and crucially, the medical supplies they were delivering - were nowhere to be seen.

“Oh shit.” Billy said after a moment.

He spoke for everyone.

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[+]

@Gentlemanvaultboy@Pascal@duskshine749@Jessikka@Lady Selune@DinoNuts@Stitches

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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Goodnight Car Park

12:30PM

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“Well, here she is. Ain’t she a beaut’.” Billy smiled proudly, cutting an awkward, sweaty figure against the midday sun, as he gestured to an ancient looking VW combivan that honestly seemed to fit in perfectly with the rest of the abandoned derelict cars and trash floating around the empty car park. “Fixed ‘er up myself, runs like a dream.”

There was a hollow, tinny clank, as something came loose underneath the van in response to a strong breeze.

Billy swallowed.

“I mean, not like the best dream you ever had or nothin’, but…”

He stopped there, mulling over the rest of the sentence in his head, before glancing over the crew and evidently deciding against finishing it.

“She drives. An’ runs on cookin’ oil. That’s all we need ‘er for.”

With a slight turn of the breeze, the scent of the exhaust pipe drifted back towards you - and if there was one good thing about the van, it was indeed that the exhaust seemed to smell like doughnuts.

Even if the rest of it smelled mostly like really really old weed, and maybe meth.

“Come on an’ saddle up, folks. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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The Office

Goodnight

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At the mention of turning the coffee pots into grenades, a slightly older looking guy who'd just entered the room with an empty cup gave a start, and quietly moved in front of the coffeemaker.

"I'd uh, I'd uh, rather you didn't, do that." He sniffed, pouring himself a coffee.

Simon nodded at the older guy.

"Hey, Jake."

"Hello, Simon."

Then he turned back to Matthew.

"We can talk more or less whenever I'm not actively working. I'm planning on getting some sleep soon, but you do have some time before you head out so if you did want anything really burning answered, we can chat after this meeting. Just you volunteering is favour enough for me, if you know what I mean."

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

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Goodnight - the Briefing Room

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Simon clapped his hands together, and a big stupid grin grew on his face as everyone answered in the affirmative.

“Fantastic! Oh man, you guys- you guys have no idea how happy I am to hear that.” He sighed in relief, standing up straighter and blinking the fatigue from his eyes a bit.

After a moment, he leaned back down and shuffled some of the papers on the table about, eventually producing what looked like a printout of a google earth image centered on a earthy red patch of desert, punctuated only by the shifting colours of the sand and rock, and by what looked like a small set of ramshackle structures off to one side of a seriously disused dirt road.

“In about six hours, we’re due to meet some of our bootleggers at this location in order to collect a shipment of supplies from them. Most of the goods are just stuff like canned and dried food and toilet paper, but there’s also a package of medical supplies being kept in a cool box that we need quite badly. There’s insulin in the cool box, which we’re running dangerously low on at the moment. That’s really the focus here.”

He poked his finger down on the map, against the outline of one of the larger structures.

“This is where you’re going to be coming out, using Billy’s van. “

Then, he gestured to what looked like an outhouse next to the dirt road.

“This is where the bootleggers will be waiting. They’ll probably have one or two men elsewhere in the area to keep an eye on things, but that’s where the meet should take place. I’d recommend some of you go make the handoff and load things into the van, and that the rest of you keep an eye on the surroundings and keep watch for anyone else approaching, but I’ll leave that to your discretion.”

He moved his hand back over to the entry point.

“Once everything is loaded up, return here and send an affirmative text to the only number stored on this phone.” Simon added, as Syl produced an ancient Nokia and plonked it down on the table next to him. “Once we receive it, we’ll have someone open the way home. If you need to get in touch with us for any other reason, that’ll be how you do it too - but ideally, don’t. It’s disposable, and we think they’re reasonably safe to use, but we’re keeping things as quiet as we can for the moment.”

Simon leaned back again, folding his arms and looking over the map.

“Oh, uh…” Billy started, turning the attention of the room to him, “... we prob’ly oughta mention, this is in Australia.” He nodded sagely, as if his contribution had been ancient wisdom and not completely bizarre.

“Right. It’s gonna be about 4AM local time when this all goes down.” Simon added.

“Any questions?”

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

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Goodnight

20th of January - 2020

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The weeks since you had arrived at Goodnight under the protection of the Violet Underground had been chaotic, exhausting, and stressful. The atmosphere was initially lifted by the sudden availability of hot showers and reasonable food - especially after the days gone without either by the arriving refugees - but before long it had become obvious that keeping a good few hundred, maybe even a thousand, of the most stressed, outcast, magically supercharged people on the planet all together in one mall would be trying.

The incident with Abigail was the first, and to the veterans of the underground it was probably the most outstanding on account of the revelations that came with it, but it was by no means the only one.

The Violet Underground had promised everyone basic instruction on how to control their magic, and use it safely, and these classes were delivered by more or less whoever was on hand to give them; they were useful, surprisingly thorough, and if nothing else an engaging diversion - but even still, accidents happened. The medics were kept busy by a constant stream of self-injury and magical exhaustion, and the sentries had to get used to keeping as much of an eye on the refugees as they were on their surroundings - but even worse were the fights.

It could have been because tensions were high, or because of something one person had done, or simply because people liked violence, but life in Goodnight had become punctuated by arguments which had an alarming tendency to devolve into violence. They weren’t so commonplace that you couldn’t avoid them, but they were frequent enough that everyone knew it was happening - and it was leading to tribalism in the mall. Worse still were the times people tried to bring their magic into the matter - more often than not, they were shut down almost instantly by the more experienced mages of the Underground, and the few times things did get out of hand still weren’t all that serious… but the change in atmosphere was obvious.

At 7AM that monday morning, two weeks after your arrival, things changed for you again.

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Headquarters was not a place most of you had been before - only Abi, so far, had been inside the bare, freezing room at the back of the mall - but it was the sort of environment you were all familiar with in one way or another. It was a cross between a staff room, an office, a war room, and - bizarrely enough - an AA meeting, what with the row of coffee urns that had been repaired and refilled since Abigail in particular was last here.

Simon had sent some people out to find you, wake you if necessary, and bring you to him first thing in the morning.

When you got there, he was standing at one of the tables, his eyes deeply shadowed from lack of sleep and a cup of what might genuinely have been military grade instant coffee in his hand.

“Morning, guys.” He said, with a voice that screamed all-nighter. Simon looked up from the map, and drew his gaze across the assembly that had gathered in front of him. He paused then, for a moment, as if he were deciding where to begin. In the background, Brooks was filling his own cup with coffee, and Billy was idly thumbing through a small book, looking up at you as you entered. Brooks inclined his head - almost begrudgingly - towards Abigail.

“I’ve had to listen to well over a hundred reports from the bootleggers - the smugglers responsible for getting you here - in just the past two weeks. My colleagues have had to receive many more still.” He placed the cup down on the table, next to the stack of papers he had been looking voer. “But in the middle of all that, you guys and a few others managed to stand out.”

He nodded, pacing around the table, folding his arms, looking the party over again.

“I’m looking at a group of people right now who can do some pretty amazing stuff. Turning your skin to volcanic rock and lifting steel beams, fighting street art come alive and helping your own rescuer pick up where others had fallen, healing the dead flesh of the seriously injured, even taking up arms against an agent of the FOE. I’m very impressed.”

Simon laid his hands on the table, leaning on them, taking some of the weight off his feet and sighing loudly.

“Look, I don’t really want to beat around the bush with this, so I’m gonna just… come right out and say it. We are not doing great at the moment. We were never exactly a well coordinated group to begin with, but there have been entire cells and groups of our people that have just disappeared in the last couple of weeks, and we’re recording a lot of…” he stumbled, struggling for the right word to make it seem less than it really was, and failing to find it, “... losses. Casualties.”

A young woman with dark skin and a serious expression wordlessly took his cup and refilled it as he continued.

“To get to the point, I’m asking you if you might be interested in volunteering. Working with us. I need to be completely clear right now, you have no obligation to, and it will not be held against you if you refuse.” He held his hands up, cutting an X into the air for emphasis. “We do dangerous work, as you all know, and while we’re certainly not in a position to refuse anyone who might be willing to help, we are not holding it over anyone. The Underground will continue to protect you regardless.”

“But we need the help.” Brooks added, curtly.

Billy nodded, tucking the book away into the chest pocket of his body warmer.

Simon’s lips curled downwards, a bitter expression on his face - bitter and, possibly, disappointed.

“We do need the help. In fact, if you were interested, I’d even be able to set you up on a job with Brooks and Billy here, get you started right away.” Simon looked up at you, hopefully.

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[+]

@Stitches@Jessikka@Lady Selune@gentlemanvaultboy@duskshine749@Pascal