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Abigail nodded in response to Montag and with a slight gesture of her hand put her red locks away from her face and behind her ear; looking back at Montag she opened her mouth to reply to him, but before she could out of nowhere Mary seemed to just reappear between the pair again - with a rushing tone in her voice and a quick explanation of her unexpected return to follow. Abigail slightly frowned and cleared her throat meanwhile, sipping whiskey which she forgot about once the talk started. Still wet from the rain outside, she sipped the whiskey mostly in order to warm herself up from the clinging and sticky wet cold, the one which is the most dangerous to have around - the creeping coldness causing various illnesses able to lead you anywhere on the street, even into the grave. She could not deny though the fact that she liked the taste of the whiskey, and specifically this one served to her. As well as the aftertaste of it was helping her head to feel lighter and thus less stressed.
She never allowed herself to go hard onto the bottle. If there is a suffering to endure through, she has to come through it with her head clear.

The explanation coming from Mary meanwhile was simple enough - the pair of watches, given to both her and Montag would make the timer until the moment of the hit. It was a nice detail and a very convenient thing to have around, Abigail thought, which would help them both to track the time. She held the watch in her hands, carefully flipping them around, tapping at them with the tip of her fingernail - for no real purpose really. It was a really peculiar thing - in a way more sense than it would seem for a bystander - a simple pocket watch was somewhat mesmerizing to watch at and touch to, it felt warm with its faded gold of a material and it for some reason was just heartwarming to have this thing close enough. The way Mary addressed the watches didn’t help of course - it only made the impression of a thing to look and feel somewhat like a thing of being some sort of an animal. Or else.

The way the clocks worked confused Abigail at first, the watches despite their old and rusty look probably had some very intricate mechanism under its cover, due to how the arms would move around - the idea of mechanism was the simplest one to explain the oddity of how accurately the arms of the watches would point up directly at the time present in here and now. Or at least around it - not that Abigail had watches on her own, but the precision on where the arms of the watches stopped fascinated her. She did not know much about physical science - physics that is, it was way out of her field of skill, so who knows what fascinating discovery was made?

She closed the watches after that though and tucked them in the inner pocket of her coat, noticing the glance of Montag being pointed at her and the watches which were in her hands a moment ago. Abigail raised her eyebrow looking at the detective, but once he explained himself she nodded in response: “Aye, fai’ enough, mistah' Montag. I agree, we should find a bette’ place to talk”. With that said Montag pulled the empty pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and quickly scribbled down something there. Once the pack was given to her, she looked carefully at the words. The address. Fair enough.

Same building the newspaper is at, mistah’ Montag? Convenient for yer line of job. All the rumors and news are at arm's length from yer office”, she said with a chuckle, an attempt to break some ice or just trying to lift the rather dim mood - dim due to the convoluted mystery they all have found themselves in due to this invitation. It was all weird, and strange; but it was worth coming through if they manage to save the innocent girl. “And I got ya, mistah’ Montag. Meet ye in two hours. Don't worreh, I know this city betteh' than you might think of me. I won't ge' lost.”, she said and bid the man farewell with a slight nod, allowing him to leave.

She spent some more time sitting in the bar before taking a leave herself - she had nowhere to go anyway for tonight, and the place was warm and tidy enough. She waited there for some time to make sure her clothes are more or less dry, as well as her hair; as well as thinking and pondering over all of the information that was given to her. It was strangely elusive to make some sense out of, due to the weird nature of this context - once she tried to gather up all that was said and given to her the puzzle was not coming together, and not like it had a missing detail, more like it was escaping the glance at it. She sighed deeply, thinking she is not smart enough for this kind of job.

With the time passed, she gathered what little things she had with her in the first place and stepped outside of the bar again, aiming to go to the address Montag gave to her, in order to discuss the plan and set it into the motion.
Meropis. Really tacky. If there was humor in Mary’s words it certainly didn’t strike Abigail much - the place was quite known to her; especially the specification Mary then gave - near the Federal Shelter, a place for the homeless of the city to find themselves a place for a night. She knew the place quite well, more well than one would probably think and too well for somebody to actually confess ever being around this area. A few nights of sleep there, more than a couple of nights of work there, treating wounds of people lost to the turmoil of the life that swept lives here and there on its way. Drunks, vagabonds, hookers, unfortunate folks, some who just got into the wrong place at the wrong time, psychos, war veterans, bandits and thugs, robbed and beaten and tricked immigrants. She all treated them there. Healed them, cured them. Fixed their clothes, masked their bruises, cooked them food. Almost automatically attempted to read them passages from the Bible, even though she could not make her mind up about what she can do.

She could not explain why, though. It had little to do with her devotion - or at least she thought so. How she felt was different, it was always that strange sensation of as if being stuck - a compassion she felt was somewhat stained and dirty, she didn’t like much of these people, they were miserable and they reminded herself of her own misery, and the misery itself seemed everlasting, yet she could not help but to pity them over where they ended up in their lives - quite often not by their own doing, just by a mere chance it seemed, or an evil doing of other people - and their inability to come back to where they were - and that if they even were somewhere in the first place.
Sometimes she felt that God had left this place.
Sometimes she felt that God is present here through her hands.
Giving them another chance.
She had little assurance in either.

No matter. Abigail looked over the photos presented - a photo of the house didn’t tell her much except for the house looking fancy. She barely could make a distinction between houses which all breathed luxury in them - and not that she cared much. A picture of a girl however picked her interest better - the girl on the picture looked indeed coming out of a noble family, it was seen by an interesting contrast of her young looks and sharp and smart glance aimed at the camera’s lens - a trait usually dulled by either lack of manners or wits; this one was certainly not the case. Even though Abigail was not sure how much of a “noble” she could speak of this girl - she certainly looked so. Such a pity she ended up being amidst the hammer and an anvil, pulled into her father’s shady business. That pity rose again in Abigail - the pity over people being swallowed by this injustice and misery - even those like this girl, Marie, who looked like she belongs to being a movie star. Light details to her portrait added by Mary only made this impression more clear: a shy girl who likes to read and probably daydream.

“Thanks”, Abigail replied and nodded to Mary as their contractor stood up and bid her farewell, coming to the exit from the bar, leaving Abigail alone with Montag - a person she agreed to work with, and a person she had to trust her -and this girl’s - life to. Same thought also was a truth for himself.

“We betta’ start it at least now”, Abigail replied to Montag after a moment of thinking, “Ye look like a detective. And ye say ye are one. I’d say ye better with.. thinking over how to help people out in screwed situations. But I am just a doctor girl, I nee’ to know how to act meself, to not to screw things up on me end.”, she said. Even though she might’ve seen blood and what she referred towards as “screwed situations”, she could barely think of herself as somebody who would come with some master plan. She then continued after a brief pause with a shake of her head: “Nay. We are in this togethe’ now. So we should keep so. Why comin’ up together in this place only to take separate paths after that?”, she asked with a sigh and looked around herself, more out of precaution than any actual suspicion.

"Do ye have any smokes by the way..?", she asked Montag then, with a tone in her voice sounding more tired than before. As if she allowed herself to relax a little after all this intense talking.
A warning you say, ey..”. Abigail only responded to Mary’s cryptic speech - further she spoke, the more her words sounded more obscure; and even though the job’s initial task sounded simple enough - save the girl from the bullet - the details which surrounded it, the various words and explanations made little sense. At least it made little sense to her, to Abigail. Fates and the chances that would choose to kill a person in stead of the saved one, it all sounded like something from a folk tale, a tale like her grandmother used to tell her when she was just a little girl. It sounded.. magical.

Magical like all these people who embraced the various occult knowledges and whom Abigail thought mainly as people with poor minds. Like of somebody who would willingly turn around and come back into the dark times with its barbaric and cannibalistic beliefs. Even though her own path of faith took a rather stagnant shape; rejecting the world of Christ completely in favor of magical circles seemed ridiculous to her. Especially for her, as for irishwoman, who knew of the stories of how Saint Patrick proved the primacy of Christ over the magical deities with his words. Abigail only frowned on the thought.

A proposition of money - a sum so large that many would think of it as a joke - went past Abigail’s ears as it didn’t matter. And in fact it really didn’t matter much to her as at least one vow she took - what seemed to her like if it happened in the past life - she tend to keep, and frankly that helped her to survive this long, enduring to material hardships and general poorness helped her to remain still on the ground. Unlike how it usually happens to people, with poor existence resulting in poor judgment. It was not the case for her - what puzzled her the most was another series of Mary’s obscure words and references to old legends. The girl opening the Pandora’s box, her father from another world. Who could be even more influential than a politician as important as the mayor of this city? She at least got to know that the girl in question was not actually Thomas Arnault’s daughter. Like if this information actually mattered to Abigail anyhow.

She didn’t like this all. Not only Mary’s explanations sounded confusing and somewhat dangerous - for a very strange and merely intuitional feeling sitting somewhere in Abigail’s guts, her mind and something else; there was something about her words which made them feel twisting the whole world around - but the whole proposal was not just fitting Abigail’s personality. At least as if in the way she would think of herself, before this very moment. Why would she be invited here? She is just a doctor and an ex-nun.

However Mary did touch the nerve of the redhead woman. Or rather she played with her originally noble and idealistic nature and conscience. Words like “innocent girl”, “caught up in the mess”. it made Abigail remember herself, young and caught up in the mess of the Civil War. The girl who did not survive the damages of that time, and somewhat remained there mentally, while her physical body moved away into America and started to live on its own. A usual story of an alive double living on its own, a ghost of the self presence existing without a real connection to anything around, but some mechanical appearance before others, before the one, before God.
Something she became. Yet she was here enough to help others. That Marie is just another girl, yes. And yet she is the girl to help. Abigail can do that.

Aye. I agree on helpin’. But I ain’t no choosing anyone to die. If yer fates wanna do somethin’ - be it their sin to take on”, Abigail replied and in her mind she only added “and be God their mercy”.
This land is already chaos enough”, Abigail replied to Mary’s remark; “and godless”, Abigail wanted to add as well, but decided to hold up on such a commentary still. Even though she was not sure if God was still there, anywhere on this planet at all, as the feeling of being abandoned possessed her the first time her glance laid onto the victims of the Great War, and this feeling only kept growing inside of her into the control over her sensation and perception of the world ever since. God was grace and love, and certainly neither she could find around. She could only find an empty gaze in people around, one akin to the one she got used to witnessing before herself every time she was to stand in the front of the mirror.

Oei? Miste’ Montag attracts the storms?”, Abigail said in response in a joke of sort to the ominous commentary, a glimpse of what she felt about him was to be said in words by somebody else, a clear remark one would out under the character’s line for the better implication - and so it was something behind him that made Abigail to recall some people holding guns in their hands and driven by various feelings towards the various edges - Civil War had plenty of examples of any kind; and there was something in this young detective which made her feel the connection - a deeply rooted, hidden behind his somewhat careless, somewhat determent glance of the eyes. Nevertheless, Abigail had no moment to be able to continue this thought as Mary after a short pause started a short speech.
An explanation of why they were here.
An explanation which left Abigail numb on her mind.

What followed after the story she was often to hear amidst the common folk of the town was absurd. And not that kind of absurd she was taught of; it was not credo quia absurdum, it was a different kind of absurd - when each following word snaps the meaning of the previous one and in so they form a chain with no completeness - a sentence just crumbles and becomes a pile of useless garbage. Yet in this garbage of words something crept, and it was something Abigail felt was ready to look at her, through the words pronounced, in the gaps between the sounds there was something else, some other sound and some other meaning told to her, some other words in the unspoken language, some other in these gaps looking and watching. Abigail blinked a few times to allow her mind a bit of distraction in an attempt to process what was said - with a blink of her eye it felt like the whole world tensed up on her presence here: a sensation of her own existence being so heavy that it was about to create a massive hole in the being.
It felt so much like if she was looked at not only by Mary, but by everything.

She shook her head then. Of course. It is some sort of code.
Blinking again she managed to clear her head and concentrate back on what Mary was telling them. She spoke in riddles, yes. It was a code - a code to hide the true intentions, the true contractor of hers and their possible enemies. She got caught there for a moment, but she was not stupid. “"Marie Arnault is fated to die during this exchange. A stray bullet will hit her heart, unintended” - of course, it was a hit. Miss Amault was to be assassinated - as Mary said herself, the usual mafia stuff. Sadly to herself Abigail was not surprised by this. Mafia often was to do dirty, and she saw some of it with her own eyes.

Why to use this strange code was not clear to Abigail though, but Montag seemed to go with it naturally. “Fates”. Sounded like one of these occult circles, organized by the bohemian types dying of boredom after they’ve read the books of the kind.. Crowley was that name. She met the kinds like them seeking through slums, looking for people who would agree to come with them for money. Participating in some rituals.
Godless this land is.

So ye ask us to save that girl...”, Abigail said, mostly to herself than to Mary, in order to assure herself of that thought. If anything it was something she would do everyday. Even though it was to come from some shady kind like Mary looked alike. She learnt and knew to not to judge those who ask for help.

Wha’s that about choosing other to kill? Sounds like something mafias would do to hide their tracks. Miste’ Montag puts it well - sounds like some set up.”, Abigail finally asks. It is a question she asks, even though she has no intention in obliging this criteria.
The water began to gather around Abigail - the rain water stuck to her like a clinging mass and in the warmth of the bar started to drip down her clothes and hair, forming a little puddle around her feet. Same happened to the envelope she placed on the table - a water soaked piece of once pretty and expensive paper left some traces of water mixed with ink; thankfully though the presence of herself was enough of a proof to the woman sitting before her that Abigail indeed is Abigail, one and only, the one invited, or as spoke later - the one promoted. Promoted from where to what was something to question, as the spotlight of attention - coming from the woman in charge of this operation, the said young man and the bartender girl - gathered on Abigail’s drenched shape in a heating focus of the gaze concentrated on her, almost erasial on the background in its intensity. Before replying to her own questioning mind though or to the woman, Abigail looked at the bartender girl, who placed a clear glass just beside the puddle of water leaving the envelope.

Whiskey”, Abigail said, eyeing the glass, before adding a cough, clearing her throat from the humidness creeping through her neck. Taking a proposed seat she glanced over the gathered people, while fixing her drenched hair away from her face and a bit aside, allowing the water to drip down from it on the floor and aside herself, “Numbe’ two, ey?”, she asked the woman, puzzled by the phrasing, even though subconsciously curious about what kind of role she was about to take in. Listening to the woman talk was to give Abigail some introduction to the gathered company; even though the manner of Mary’s speech was to leave the floating gaps of meaning, leaking through with ambiguity and mist between the said words, resulting in leaving Abigail with more questions than any answers on what is going on here. Abigail felt wary of that, feeling some undertones she didn’t like about this way of speaking; but before she could wrap her mind about it, the young detective named Montag spoke up.

His face looked young, the voice of his matched the impression, the words that followed were too covered in a mist as they echoed across the bar, as if the ambience got slightly consumed by the sound of his voice.
Nice to meet ye. I am Abigail. McCarthy.”, she says replying to Montag as well as participating in this weird scene of introducing herself to each other - it felt like a distant memory coming back in a new clothing - a same moment of introduction back in the sisterhood now away from home, away from the people of home, away from the green fields, away from the idea of home itself, cramped inside of the narrow streets and shady bar, in the veil of the cigarette smoke, spoke in whispers.
I em.. a helper of sorts around ‘ere. Know medicine, surgery. Some.. languages too. Had a bit of a travel around. Not much to say”, she said of herself, not wishing to mention the religious side of her occupation yet.

But what was it her reason to be here, right here in the bar, the reason Montag referenced as he spoke to her directly? She didn’t know. He surely had some reasons - behind a cigarette there was a sharp glance, and that reasoning should’ve been shared between all of them.
What was hers? Why is she sitting here?
To find answers? Maybe. She nodded to Montag.
Ye. I guess we all share the same reason to be ‘ere”, she said.
Thing is she didn’t know the right questions.
It all started with a note. A letter. A white piece of fine paper sealed with a red wax stamp over its center, keeping it closed. There was nothing inside of it, but another piece of paper, a message written on it.

“.You are of interest to us. If you want to put your skills to the test and make a difference in this world, come to the bar tonight. Alone. Tell anyone about this offer and the deal is forfeit. We are watching.”

Words of simple meaning, yet little context. Little explanation. Abigail could not even remember how it came to be that she was in possession of this letter. She just found it amidst the day, in the pocket of her long black coat amidst a few coins, pieces of cheap tobacco, dirty handkerchief, stained with the remains of someone else’s blood. She thought it was a mistake at first. Envelope was not signed, so there was little option but to open it, and so the letter inside of it addressed her by her name. Name which of course was not very rare or unique and was common among people who surrounded her; but the chance of it to be a coincidence was getting smaller every time she was to browse along the fine print of the letters with her eyes.

Questions started to swirl in Abigail's mind, and one thing was clear at this point is that there will be no answers unless she would attempt to meet with the woman described in that letter. She could of course ignore this note. Anonymous invitation via a letter - it is always a sign of either a coward or a person of a selfish motive; someone afraid to show up face to face for a talk was to be claimed either of two on the streets.

On the other hand. Standing there, near the docks of the New Haven with the view being opened - of the midday clouds being scorched with the blackness of the smoke rising from the working engines of ships and the cigarettes of the workers; in the dimness of the light covered away by the veil of the industrial mist; in the acoustic chaos of the metropolis cascade of voices to blend together into a single droning voice of no clear indication, direction and purpose; in the massive of the crowd akin to the sea of spasmic motions. In there - was she not to pray indirectly, mutely, subconsciously, in a vague and weak hope - was she not to pray for the sign? Was she not in an attempt to find the path? The path to walk on, the path she was meant to walk on, the path she thought she was walking on before in her life, and of which there were only shards and pieces remaining.

Was that really the answer to her prayers? Or yet another mere joke of cruel faith? There was only one way to find out, and it was at this moment that her thinking was disturbed by a nudge into her shoulder. She looked around and met a face - a dirt poor dock worker, she knew him. Face covered in bruises, hands rough and hard like the tools. Even without speaking, just a glance into his deeply set eyes was enough to figure out that there was another accident in the docks. With a sigh and a curse under her breath, Abigail followed the man. People knew she was good and what she was doing, and at the very least this will earn her some sort of dinner, if not the satisfaction of help to which though she failed to see any gain for quite a long time at this point.

***

When Abigail finally finished, It started to rain, and the trail of water pouring down onto the metropolis washed some stains of blood off of her hands and clothes. Port workers fed and gave her whiskey to warm herself up, which she did not reject. Very few in the whole America knew of her religious community origin, and the times were that warming oneself up with alcohol in the rainy evening was the only way to keep yourself from succumbing to the sickness of cold. She did not have an umbrella, or a hat, so the only thing she was able to do to protect herself from the train is to raise the collar of her coat up to cover her neck from the humid wind and the raindrops threatening to slip under it and send the chilling trail behind her neck. With the leather suitcase filled with various medical supplies in one hand and holding her coat around her neck with the other she went along the streets of the evening city, drenched and with her red hair dimmed and dangling around her face like the pieces of fur on the stray dog. And she looked like one either way, a uselessly wandering dog, hungry for a bone to bite onto or chase after.

Finding the bar in question was not easy, despite some instructions written in the letter - it was no easy task to read them in the darkness of a night under the rain threatening to make the fancy font of the written words to be smudged into wet ink spots. The fact that the bar was hidden under the bridge, looking from the outside perspective like another abandoned warehouse inhabited by squatters. Nevertheless the sight of parked cars around the place gave her some idea of the place being actually the bar in question.

Stepping inside brought little attention to her figure, aside from water dripping down her hair and her coat. The place was warm - and this already was enough for Abigail to relax somewhat in a light dizzy of the comfortable temperature - but also luxurious, compared to how it looked from outside that is, but still. The clouds of smoke were floating over under the ceiling of the place, like a sea of dark grey clouds, aimed to cover this place in the mystery, the visitors of the bar hiding the shapes of their faces behind it. Not being the nosy type, Abigail though still wandered looking over the crowd, noticing the types of people who would confuse her with the street dirt, as well as some of the said street dirt type of people as well. A mixed party, of mixed standards - a weird place indeed. She was looking for the woman in question though, and quickly she noticed her - in the company of a young man, chatting over with the bartender.

“Oei”, she said, approaching the woman - just right by the moment the man stopped replying to whatever question he was asked. Abigail’s accent is heavy, quickly to betray her Irish origins, if it was not to be done already with how she looks, “Ye must be the one?”, she asks placing the rain drenched envelope with a letter on the table, standing in front of the woman still and observing over her and the man sitting beside her.


Greetings, everybody!
I have discovered this place thanks to friends, and so here I am now myself. I've been roleplaying for quite a chunk of my life, since it always appeared to me as a perfect combination of writing practice and some nice good fun to have whilst as well. When it comes to roleplaying, I tend to seek the stories and/or settings with the possibility of a heavy tension and impact between the characters and the world and events unraveling around them; without any heavy preference towards any specific setting to be honest. Though of course I have favorites - be it cyberpunk settings, or occult themed stories - I do tend to see roleplaying as a cooperative creativity event, and the motion of the process itself is enough to pick my interest as it is.
The rest of my interests centered mostly around art - mostly literature, music, movies and video games. The usuals, so to say. xD
Thank you for reading this, nice being here, and have a great time playing you all!
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