save you a seat next to me down below

[rookvision]

Who: Jacob Frye and you!
When: early April pre-event
Where: Free Cities
What: catch-all for early April!
Warnings: blanket Assassin's Creed warnings (violence, guns and otherwise, murder, suggestive humor, death, conspiracies). possible mentions of period-typical prejudices. likely mentions of parental death and complicated/strained father-son and sibling relationship.

Comments

[itookashot]

"Every other month, I don't know if it's because the spell takes a lot of power, or they have it on a rotation. It's nice of you to offer to go. Anyone I should keep an eye out for you? Friends or family? Sometimes people are snagged from the same world. There was five from mine, once upon a time." It's only gone down to three, technically, but the loss of Inej and Wylan were heavy ones for the Crows. It has been a few months but it still stings. It's one of the things people get used to, they have to.

Jesper grins at him and winks. "Wait until you see how fun the Horizon can be, love. It's not headaches, mostly a good time." Jesper likes teaching people about the wonders of a space where anything you imagine can exist. He only has the Horizon these days for his liaisons so it's been getting quite a work out. There is nothing holding him back from openly flirting with handsome men. His world may have issues, but that's not one of them.

"Yeah, the Singularity's an entity itself. Doesn't seem like it can communicate with humans well, so we're usually in the dark about what it wants or can do. Not much we can do about that." Jesper shrugs and sips his drinks, no sense in putting it to waste if he's going to be explaining things. Julie knows more about the Singularity than anyone else and she's at a loss to handle what's going on outside, so the rest of them are useless.

"Oh yeah, definitely some terrible power. To be fair, it did kill the person who stole it, so it didn't want to be in his hands. Ripped him to shreds." Jesper was sober enough to watch that, although not so sober that he put in a vote for it. "The vampires wanted to put it back in hiding, there was no telling what would happen if it was destroyed. The Summoned were asked their opinion, group vote was to leave it alone. I was too drunk at the time to cast a vote." In fact Jesper didn't bother to think on it, he was too busy stumbling back to bed.

[rookvision]

Once upon a time. Implying they can leave—or, perhaps, are forced to leave. "What happened, that two of you are gone?" he asks, and his voice is noticeably gentler, softer. Like he gets it, to some degree—he knows loss well enough to know how it can still hurt even a little while later, and it sounds like Jesper's grief is far less complicated than Jacob's own. "And...yeah. My twin sister, Evie, and her friend Henry Green."

Or, well, they're not exactly just friends anymore, if all the gushy looks Evie and Greenie keep exchanging are any indication. Jacob—knows it's being selfish, but he kind of hopes he doesn't have to deal with that here for a while. Not until after he's figured out where to put this misplaced grief and hurt over Roth.

Love. Jacob quickly ducks his head, a corner of his mouth tugging upward into something real. That's. Very sweet of him. Daringly so, at least back in Jacob's era, but perhaps things might be different here. He hopes so, anyway. "Well, now you're raising my expectations for it," he says, going for casual and hoping he's succeeded. "My schedule's wide open, so I might try going into it soon. You're not busy tomorrow, are you...?"

Is it flirting or is it not flirting? (It's flirting, a little bit. Nothing serious.)

"What a surprise, the magic entity can't talk to humans all that well." Jacob sighs. One of these days he ought to stop being so surprised when something unexplainable happens, or when he's told about something so fantastic he can barely believe it. Anyway. "I'm less surprised the artifact did that, though. I heard a rumor about a powerful artifact on my world that once blew up an entire building—one person barely managed to escape." This is actually true, save for the part where it's a rumor. It's Evie's fault, he heard it from her own mouth.

"Probably a good thing, to leave it alone," he says now. "Things like that shouldn't be messed with. Who knows what they'll do in the wrong hands? And in a place like this, it's hard to know whose hands are the wrong ones, and if there are even any right hands at all."

[itookashot]

"We still don't know. People just disappear. We do know that they appear to go back home because we've had a few folks return, having remembered their time here and that they experienced their life like normal." Jesper has accepted this as fact as he knew one of them, Peter Parker. It's the better option for him to believe in, given that he knows both Wylan and Inej are going back to a happy life. The Crows got lucky in that particular time and were thriving. If he goes back, he also has a good spot, so it makes everything a little less tense.

Jesper knows flirting when he sees it and that pleases him to no end. The man seems a little tentative, interesting. Then again, few people are as blatant and forward as Jesper himself is. "For pretty people like you, I make the time." He is actually a fairly busy person but that's what he has a business partner for. They cover each other when they have other things to do. "Start thinking now about your ideal spot. I share a bar from back home with my best friend and have a cabin with a shooting range. Some people have giant libraries or parts of castles." It's a choose your own adventure. Jesper loves seeing what other people come up with.

If he's also thinking about showing Jacob the wonders of the Horizon when it comes to one-on-one discoveries, that can wait.

"Nah, the fellow learned what happens when you mess with things you don't understand. There even was a story about how a person was ripped to pieces by using the artifact. Hubris came for him." Jesper didn't meet the man although he sounded really hot by all accounts, but it also sounds like he got what was coming to him. You don't mess with things like that willy nilly, it's asking for trouble. That's why Jesper is fairly hands off on the major supernatural elements of this world. No god or Singularity obsession for him.

"Well and they stomped into their rival's space and demanded to destroy something powerful with no promise about how safe that idea was. Foolish." Jesper didn't vote but he probably would have voted against that sort of nonsense. "You'll get used to all the ridiculous politics here, although I mostly recommend staying out of it."

[rookvision]

“There’s that little comfort, I suppose,” Jacob murmurs, relieved. There are people he’s left behind back in London, work that still needs to be done there, and while he trusts Evie and Greenie to be able to manage the Rooks in his absence, it’s still good to know everything will be fine back there if he stays here for a time. “It would be rather inconvenient to come here right in the middle of something urgent, otherwise.”

Not the case for Jacob. With Starrick’s death the Templars have been dealt a grievous blow, and it’ll be a long, long time before they can recover. No better time for the Assassins to move back in.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead he huffs a soft laugh, receptive enough to the flirting. “Pretty, am I?” he asks, playfully. “Careful there, if you keep flattering me like that I may just swell up like a hot air balloon. And then where would we be?” This feels nice, though—sweet, a little bit refreshing, so long as he doesn’t think too much about Roth calling him brave. “Hm. How about a train station?”

The station in Whitechapel, to be precise, where he and Evie first set foot in the teeming city of London. If he closes his eyes he can trace every detail in his mind’s eye as fresh as if he’d been there yesterday.

“But I would so love to see that shooting range of yours,” he adds. “I like a little gunplay, myself.”

A little.

“From all the stories I’ve heard about such artifacts, destroying them usually tends to end in rather catastrophic explosions.” As he’s sure Evie can attest to. He might’ve gotten a train derailed but Evie got a whole building blown up. “Though I imagine it was a hell of a dilemma at the time.” He waves a hand, with a snort of laughter, and says, “Oh, believe me, I will. I’m not one for politics myself.”

He’s more of a direct action sort of guy.

[itookashot]

"There are people who are lucky to come here when they have; it's not common, but there are a few Summoned who are dead in their world, so this is their only option." Jesper knows at least one of those and he suspects there's more than one, but they haven't revealed themselves. It means losing that person would mean a lot more than simply missing their presence. He counts himself lucky that missing is all he has to do for Inej and Wylan.

"You have a mirror, you know you're gorgeous, but I'm happy to keep pumping up your ego, it's one of my favorite hobbies." The hobby is technically flirting with hot people, but it falls under being complimentary. Jesper is the person who has made a list of attractive qualities of every Summoned there, a census of thirst.

"Sure, a train station, whatever you like. And I'd be happy to have you come to the shooting range. People have added types of guns I've never seen before." He doesn't comment on the gunplay reference because it's too hot for him to elude to at the moment. But it is the truth, more modern Summoned have added weapons that are futuristic to him.

Jesper shrugs. "Yeah, I wouldn't have voted for destroying it. Seems stupid. It was a tense situation though. The werewolves are pissed at us over it, so don't be surprised if they seem disgruntled the next time they open up Nocwich."