badfic_manor | 1st Storm

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1st Storm | Video

[The video feed shows Tris in what is most assuredly fancier, more expensive clothing than the last time she was here. It still shows the signs of Sandry’s hands, but Tris herself also looks older, her eyes and expression harder.] So, I’m in this place again. [Her voice has a slight growl to it.] At least this time I have Chime.

[As if her name were a cue, the glass-looking thing on her neck and shoulders uncurls. It's a dragon, made completely of glass, and about the size of a housecat. She crawls closer to the blackberry, until Tris shakes her head.] Chime, you can't eat this.

Ah- Saguru? I’d like a word with you in private, if I could.

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[As much as it looks like Tris has been through a good deal, seeing her is a relief - he hasn't seen Jake around for a while, Shiki's gone, most everyone else from his world is gone, and the few people he knows that have been active are hardly what he'd want to spend the foreseeable future stuck alone with.]

[So, while it takes a little bit to find her new room, he's at the door shortly, knocking.]

Hello, Tris? It's me.

[Tris is opening the door and gesturing him in.] It's not anything terribly important... but you were right about the yaskedasi murders. [She stretches a hand out so Chime can walk down.] Also, this is Chime- the glass dragon my student made by accident.

Chime, this is Saguru. [The glass dragon is trilling curiously and standing on her hind legs to get a better view.]

[Saguru smiles, shifting to be more on Chime's level.] Well hello there.

[And, glancing back to Tris-]

The case has been settled, then?

Several years ago, actually. [Chime is going to climb on you and inspect you! She's very curious, and Tris isn't actually seeming bothered by you.] Strange... you don't appear to have aged a day.

It's only been a few months here. [Well, he's not a climbing post often, but he's perfectly OK with this. ^^ ] I take it a lot's happened for you back home?

[Chime's being incredibly careful about her claws, at least! Likely more careful than Watson is capable of being. She's also purring, which sounds a bit like a glass armonica.]

Quite a bit, yes. [Not that it's totally obvious that most of it is bad and has basically eliminated her ability to trust people...]

Are you alright? It ... sounds like the trip home wasn't exactly kind. [And if there's one thing that's a new grate on his nerves the Manor has found, it's having good friends that he cares about where he's completely unable to do a damn thing to help them when they're in their own proper worlds.]

[Watson also wouldn't usually be climbing all over like an overly curious parrot, but... if he had any temptation to react to this as strange, it's been pretty well killed by the Author by now.]

It's not worth mentioning- simply academics acting to their essential natures. [Which probably says a lot more than she means it to.]

[Yeah, and if you have anything that is small enough for her to eat in any of your pockets she WILL find it and eat it. :|]

[....Oh. Dear.]

...It seems to've been worse on you than chasing a serial killer, and even in my time, I'm doing most of my college courses at distance to have as little contact with the academics as possible and they still manage to be a scourge on my existence. I'd rather be dealing with organized crime and psychotic murderers than career academics.

[He's probably lucky that the outside pockets have nothing more threatening than coins...]

I can handle crises well enough. It was their attitude- as if, simply by being born young and powerful, I had somehow stolen from them.

[Chime is totally going to grab a coin and inspect it.]

Ah yes, resenting you for existing, and I bet they probably were treating any crises you'd dealt with in the past as if you were "showboating" or trying to steal the limelight instead of something where people's lives were on the line. I'd also wager most of them had no idea what it's actually like being in a situation like that?

[Aand he is ok with her playing with it, although he is kinda keeping an eye on it - it's not like he's that worried about losing a small-change coin, but Chime hurting herself would be a concern.]

In a word, yes. And traveling north with Niko took years, and these are- Niko's not so bad about it, but he is an academic mage in all senses of the word. It's like he expects it as normal. [She's starting to realize that you Get It, Saguru, and remembering that... you know... you probably won't be stupid.] I suppose it doesn't help that in catching the Ghost, the murderer in Thairos... In order to help, I learned a mostly-useless skill that hasn't been learned for several hundred years.

[Chime knows better than to bite metal, though she seems to like the coin itself.]

[Slow nod - oh, it is quite familiar, even if the context and details are different.] I imagine that wouldn't - yet another thing they'd see as something to be jealous of without thinking about why it was necessary, or what went into it, or how much trouble it could be. [And there's just a slight frown.] I nearly died on my first case - in better moods I've said that I found the killer with my face - and he was ... The sort of criminal that turns up maybe two, three times in a century, if the world is unlucky; nevermind the sort where half the cases like his go unsolved for generations. I was thirteen, and most of the scars I have are from that one incident.

You know, I still get a lot of people in both active law enforcement and academic criminology who resent me for it, as if it's some kind of trophy to be fought over.

[Chime also happens to be a nice ... something that's not entirely srs bizness right now...which is why he's holding out another of the ten-yen coins he'd had in his pocket.]

[Tris snorts. Right now you're one of the best people for her, man.] Add to that not being able to do anything small and having a generalized and powerful dislike of most of your peers.

[Chime... is going to drag them over to the desk and stack the coins on each other.]

[He does remember enough of her magic to grasp the 'unable to do anything small'.] I at least have the ... concession on my own abilities that I bring some of it on myself; I could back off on the nastier and more difficult cases to focus on studies and minor whatever-happens-to-be-in-the-area ... except then I get left hearing about the cases anyway, only most of them have gone on much longer than they would have if I'd gone ahead and answered, and there's several more dead bodies. I could do "something smaller" for my field, I'd just be murdered by my own conscience. I'd rather be a target than a coward.

[.... You know, it's not like he's using his pocket change anyway, or like it'd be a great loss; he's going to set out the rest of it on the nearest surface to the desk.]

.... I doubt either of us do what we do for "our peers"... God knows with what I was like a couple years ago, when that was the majority of the human contact I had...

In order to be able to be financially independent, I would need to either work battle-magic or work the weather for people who do not understand the damage "just" moving that storm from there to here would wreak. Sometimes I wish that I had been born simply an academic mage; I wouldn't have had half the troubles I have now. [She only HAS a roof over her head by the good grace of her sister. :| Yeah. And even that... Tris is expecting the other shoe to drop any day after this disastrous trip to Namorn.]

[Chime is going to purr and nuzzle at Saguru's hand before moving the coins into the beginnings of a hoard. Dragons..]

[Aaand there's one where ... he knows some of his life plans haven't been entirely practical.] I'm currently living off my family financially as much as anything - it'll be ... at least three, four more years and quite a few credentials and hoops before it's legal for me to be involved in a manner that'd allow me to get honestly paid without sketchy loopholes, and when I hit that point, I'm left with the choice between continuing to be not-entirely-legal, or joining some organization and being on a short and tight leash. At the moment, financial stability is another casualty of my inability to sit on my hands and respect red tape over the idea that maybe I could make a difference on how much damage is done, and my father makes that ... [He frowns, and it's almost a flinch.] Difficult to navigate.

There may yet be something you can do - Either some kind of alternate use that isn't the norm, or something where you can keep up another trade alongside your magic.

[Awwww. You know at this point, he's liable to start collecting small shiny objects for Chime and end up spoiling her horribly.]

[Tris is nodding.] I do have academic magic as well; I'm going to Lightsbridge to learn to actually use that beyond what Niko, who is horribly specialized to the point he may as well be an ambient mage can teach me. [She's going to frown a little and just... set a hand on his shoulder. If only her foster-siblings were so easy to talk to.]

[Chime will love you FOREVER.]

[Having met Briar, he's honestly been wondering about that one - but with what he knows about the connection, it seems like something that'd do more harm than good to ask about right as she's arrived when he's not sure she's willing to talk about it, particularly when it's pretty clear something must've happened.]

Try not to let them get to you too much - it's easy to end up losing bits and pieces and getting miserable if that's all you have for human contact.

[\o/?]

It was all I had for five years. [Tris is just going to sit down on her bed and frown at her hands.]

[Chime is just trilling happily. You may get stalked around by a glass dragon, Saguru.]

...That's part of what I'm worried about.

[He has no problem with this. Well, he might depending on what shiny objects go missing, but at least he'll know where to look?]

[Tris is smiling, albeit crookedly.] I did make it out alive, at least.

[Your pocketwatch is too big to be kidnapped by her, at least. She wouldn't be able to fly well with it.]

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