abraxaslogs | Theft #1 [Closed]

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Theft #1 [Closed]

Who: Kay Faraday and various others
What: Catch-all log for August
When: Beginning of the month, post-Horizon
Where: All around Castle Thorne
Notes: No warnings; hit me up on Plurk @ awkwardpossum if you want to plot something! I'm happy to add more starters to this.

[Closed to Geralt]
In some ways, it feels a little bit weird to be visiting people in prison. Or perhaps it's just that it doesn't feel fair. Kay is very glad to not be stuck down here anymore of course, but as far as she's aware everyone else down here is just as innocent as she is.

In other ways, this is one of the only places she actually feels comfortable (though she'd never admit as much out loud). Kay is gregarious but she's still kind of finding her footing up in the castle, among all the honored guests. She has Phoenix of course, but... Well, she got her start here in the dungeon, and a lot of the people she has latched on to are still stuck down here. She wants to keep those connections, and make sure that they're all doing OK. It's the least she can do, now that she's in this more privileged position.

That's how she comes to stand before Geralt's cell the day after they're all back from their little field trip out to the singularity, a satchel full of extra food slung over one shoulder.

"Mister Geralt!" she chirps, announcing her arrival. Straight to the point.

[Closed to Phoenix]
When Kay discovers her new power, it's purely by accident. She's daydreaming about all the cool things she was able to do in Horizon, wishing fervently that she could have the same abilities in the waking world. With that, it's almost like she wills the sentiment into reality. Dreaming of flying, of becoming a bird and experiencing the thrill of soaring through the air, defying gravity on the power of her wings alone; she changes in a blink, from girl to corvid, without even realizing she's doing it.

It's an alarming change, of course; she startles herself so badly that she blips back to her normal self in an instant, breathing heavily and patting herself over to ensure that she has all the right limbs and no lingering feathers. But that's all it really takes for her to get used to the idea, just one transformation to bird and back. After that she takes to the skill with alarming ease, thrilled beyond measure to have gained this power... And all without having to crack a single book!

The glee that swells in her heart quickly leads to mischief. She has to tell Mr. Wright about this, right away. But why not reveal the news by having a little fun with him first?

She doesn't exactly have to search hard for him. She knows exactly where he is because he'd told her where he was going when he left their room: out to the library, as usual. Kay heads there in a hurry, grinning like a scheming little goblin the whole way. When she arrives, she leans around the doorway to peer about, scanning the room for him while trying to remain unseen.

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The day after leaves Geralt with a pounding headache, a tightness in his chest he can't ignore—and a burning desire to speak to not a soul. So it says something, perhaps, of how he feels about Kay that she manages to rouse him from where he's sat in the corner stubbornly blocking out all existence.

He cracks open an eye to look at her. Chipper as ever. Back to herself fully, then. Not that he'd especially minded the more subdued girl who visited him at first, either. He just thinks—this suits her. Even if it makes her a damn nuisance in exchange.

He relocates closer to the bars, settling down in front of them. If he tends to have a lack of care for his appearance, it seems to have magnified now: most of his hair's fallen out of its cord, and he's not bothered to fix it. She looks good, though. He's glad, really, to see her not trapped down here. One weight off his mind.

"You're back soon." He draws one knee up to rest his arm on it. "Missed our thrilling company already?"

Phoenix did not react quite so well to leaving the Horizon. It was honestly a really disturbing experience, not having his memories for so long and seeing what remained of him without them. The small, directionless man still in a hoodie and a beanie.

It was doubly disturbing going through the experience and coming to understand that, no, he's not going to go home any time soon. He's been gone for, what, two months? Three? He thought he was going to die when they put him next to that Singularity. What's happened to Trucy since then? Has Edgeworth or Apollo taken her in? How long will he be gone? Forever?

He somehow rustled up a pack of cigarettes--a habit he'd broken, but it was either calming down with cigarettes or with alcohol and he knows which vice he'd prefer to deal with breaking again. He's done his best to keep his smoking away from Kay, mostly smoking when he's outside and no one knows who he is and keeping the cigarettes hidden otherwise. It usually calms him down enough that he's able to get his poker face back on and get back to work, sitting in the library or talking to Ambrose where the smell of magical fire usually covered up the smell of tobacco.

The smell might linger on his clothes now as he pours over legal texts. A part of him bitterly wonders why he's even doing this, why he's bothering when it's clear that Ambrose has so little regard for the laws of his own nation--but it's only really visible in the deeper-than-usual furrow of his brow as he takes notes.

Kay laughs, moving to sit down at his level, even though that means she has to sit on the floor of the dungeon's hallway. Good thing she doesn't care!

"Guess I'm just more at home in the 'criminal' element," she jokes. "But I also wanted to check on everyone. See how you're all holding up." She clocks his messier than usual appearance just then, cocking her head with a slight frown. "How ARE you holding up? No offense, but you're looking a lot more grungy than usual."

Kay Faraday navigates conversations with all the finesse of a hippopotamus in a tutu.

Target sighted. Kay makes her move as soon as she spots him, slipping behind a bookshelf to make the change.

...Hopefully the nonsense she's about to pull will just interrupt Phoenix's general malaise, and not deepen it.

He might clock, in his peripheral, something large black and feathery zooming the air and headed right towards, but there isn't a lot of time to react. There's a woosh and a fwump, and then suddenly, there's a literal raven standing on top of the book he's trying to read. Its head is turned to stare him in the face with one beady little eye.

"Caarrk," it says in a croaky voice, fluffing up its feathers.

Edited 2021-08-08 16:57 (UTC)

Phoenix is knocked out of his stewing thoughts by rush and thump of feathers and he jumps with a yelp, leaning back as his brain takes in what just happened. What the hell, there's a bird.

He leans back in his seat, staring at the giant bird that is now sitting on his books.

"Why do all the weird things happen to me?" he mumbles to himself incredulously before turning his head a little, keeping an eye on the bird awkwardly as he raises his voice. "Did someone lose their bird?"

Novices throughout the library shush him. Which leaves Phoenix without an answer as he sits as far back and stares down the bird with all the awkwardness of a city boy faced down with a fearless wild animal.

Finesse, luckily for Kay, is the last thing Geralt cares about. She gets a lift of his eyebrows, anyway. Fully answering that requires far more detail than Geralt's willing to get into. More so because he knows Kay...saw. The girl. Kay was there, and he's—

He doesn't want to talk about it. That's what it comes down to. He's avoiding that conversation with the determination of a bull.

"Didn't realize the dungeons had a dress code." Fuck. He misses his own clothes, even. Before she can prod him for a proper answer, he adds, "I'm fine. Could use a drink."

Several. If he ever makes it out in one piece, that's the first thing he's doing.

Kay hasn't really thought this through at all. In her head, operation "Mess with Mr. Wright" consisted of two steps. Step One: turn into a crow and approach Mr. Wright. Step Two: ???

Right now, step two seems to be to stand her ground and continue to stare unflinchingly at the man, asserting her position atop his book. Congrats Phoenix, you're officially in a staring contest with a bird! Who will blink first?

"Take that," she croaks out in her weird little voice, throat bobbing.

Her face scrunches up briefly. "A drink...? ...Oooohh, you mean like wine or something." She snorts, looking vaguely disgruntled. "Wish I'd thought of that. I could've tried to sneak you something. Next time, I guess... I've brought extra food though, if you want some."

She pulls her bag over to the bars, flipping the top open. It's stuffed full of cloth napkins from the dining hall, which are presumably wrapped up around various food items offered at the same place.

Phoenix sits tense in his seat, staring down this weird bird. Is it rabid? Can birds get rabies? Bats can get rabies. Birds can probably get rabies. Oh boy, he's going to be--

And then it fucking talks and he yelps in a comically high pitch voice, jumping up from his seat. He can handle staring down a bomber threatening to blow up the room he's in, but weird talking birds?

"This is revenge for Polly, isn't it?" Phoenix hisses at the bird. Because surely it can understand him. Surely. "Her testimony was essential! Gumshoe rehomed her somewhere nice!"

Does he look crazy talking to a bird? Probably. Does he care? Nope.

Geralt peers at her, considering if she means that or not. He shakes his head just in case. "Don't get into trouble on my behalf."

Something tells him the released prisoners are on thin ice with Thorne. With the High Mage, at the very least. And Kay, he's learned early in, is not someone who walks delicately on the best of days. He'd rather not see her back down here. Though the guests, he senses, only hold the illusion of being in a better position. Nothing he's learned of the Singularity, of the Horizon, suggests any of them are safe from a thing.

Food, though. The guards are still turning a blind eye. Geralt's taken advantage from Jaskier; he'll take advantage now, too. Not being picky, he snags whatever's easiest to grab off the top. Because, fuck. He is hungry.

"So." He unwraps the folded pastry. His head is full of thoughts he'd rather not address. Might be preferable, to listen to someone else chatter on. "Tell me what you've been doing with your newfound freedom."

Inwardly delighted, crow-Kay (croquet?) bobs in place and makes a weird clucking noise at his reaction, evidently laughing at him. Stringing this along any further feels just a little bit too mean, though, so she decides it's time to deliver the coup de grâce.

The bird hops down onto the vacated chair and vanishes in an imperceptible blur of motion, and suddenly Kay's just there, seated backwards with her elbows propped on the top of the backrest, grinning like a loon. "Hey Mr. Wright! Whaddya think of my new trick? Pretty slick, huh?"

Good call on Geralt's part, since Kay's more than happy to chatter on when prompted to.

"Well, I've been working as Mr. Wright's assistant for the most part... I'm helping him find evidence he can use to argue his case for all the prisoners, so maybe we can get everyone out of here."

There's a subtle strain to her tone when she relays that. This really is where her time primarily has been going, but... The tangible ways in which she has actually contributed to that cause versus the amount of time she has spent getting distracted and generally being the opposite of helpful is... debatable? She knows it, too. Tedious research and library work is not this girl's strong suit. She needs a crime scene to investigate, not a legal book to read. She needs tangible results, and she's starting to become antsy the longer she goes without getting any.

But on a much more enthusiastic note: "Oh right! I've been learning magic, isn't that awesome? We don't even have magic where I come from, 'least not that I'm aware of..."

Uh-huh. Of course she is. Geralt's skepticism regarding the petitioning of the prisoners remains as high as ever. At least when it comes to all of them. A handful yet, he presumes, have their chances of cutting loose. Though to where, he doesn't know. They'd still be in Thorne, in his world.

He keeps his thoughts to himself. They all need something to focus on; Kay helping her friend with some research is a hell of a lot better than her running about getting into trouble.

"Are you?" His eyebrow lifts in interest. He's aware just about anyone can manipulate magic in this world. Still unusual to consider. He wonders—could he? Were he not down here? Maybe. A Witcher's magical aptitude is limited; it's always been that way. The mages had never quite worked it out, in all of their Trials. "Magic is not uncommon on the Continent. Not as widespread, either, though."

"Wait, seriously?" That's news to her. She crosses her arms, looking huffy. "Geez, like half the people down here must've all come from worlds that sound WAY more fun than mine. We don't have magic, we don't have dragons..."

She shakes her head like a disapproving school teacher, before zeroing back in on Geralt. "So, wait... Does that mean you already know how to do magic? How does it work where you come from?"

Fun is not the way Geralt might've phrased it, though at the same time, imagining worlds without magic is...he can't. It's always been there. Like the sunlight. Even as he's aware, on an objective level, that it wasn't. That the chaos that hums through the earth, that humans learned to harness, was never originally part of the land.

Which begs the question of why Ambrose believes what he does of the Singularity. If it's the source of all magic, what stopped it from flowing through the Continent until the Conjunction? Or is it the collision of spheres itself that brought them into alignment with the world they're in now? (But then, wouldn't Thorne know of the first cataclysm? Wouldn't they mention it somewhere in speaking of their fear of it?)

His attention turns back when Kay's does. "I'm not a mage. A Witcher's magic is...basic." He still misses it. Not as a mage might, but it's been a part of him all the same, however small. "From what I see? No different than here. Harnessed and manipulated for a purpose."

"Hey, basic or not, that still sounds pretty cool to me, considering I'm used to having zero magic."

Something he just said nags at her though, and her brow furrows a bit as she frowns thoughtfully. "Um... Sorry, but just now-- Did you say you're a witch? Like... Pointy hat wearing, cauldron stirring, black cat loving witch?"

She rubs her chin, squinting at him intensely. She is absolutely imagining him flying around on a broomstick now.

Edited 2021-08-22 01:24 (UTC)

A what? Geralt looks, for once, a little startled—not because she's misheard him saying witch; he's only ever mentioned offhand that he's a hunter—but because her image of a witch is so wildly disproportionate from anyone he's ever met. Even the smallest village has some idea of what a mage is. Or a witch, as they'd sometimes refer to them.

Though he supposes rumors of a familiar aren't unusual. The hat, though.

Anyhow.

"No. A Witcher." He waves a hand, as though the term itself isn't significant. Which it isn't, in a way. To a foreigner, it says nothing about what they actually are. "We hunt monsters. Promise you, not one of us has a cat."

The hissing and all, when they're near. Not an ideal companion for his kind.

Perhaps it will be to Geralt's dismay that Kay's eyes absolutely shine upon hearing this information.

"You hunt monsters!?" she repeats, eyes wide and wondering. She sits up a bit more straight, scooting a bit closer to the bars to peer at him with a refreshed curiosity. "How come this is the first I'm hearing about this!? Is that how you got all those scars? What kind of monsters do you have in your world? What do you have against cats?"

"You didn't ask," Geralt replies, in a way that suggests he's deliberately missing the point. Kay has asked him a great many things, some of which he's simply not answered—less out of any desire to keep it secret and more out of a desire to not want to explain. Their worlds, he's discovered early on, are far too different.

A few seconds pass by as he decides which one of her questions he wants to tackle first.

"Ones with teeth." He considers; skips over his scars altogether. Self-explanatory, he thinks. Where else are they from? (The occasional princess, but that's neither here nor there.) "Sensitive to magic, supposedly. They aren't fond of us."

"Hey, how would I even know to ask about something like that!?" Kay protests, vaguely indignant that the responsibility for this lapse of communication should fall on her. "And anyway, that doesn't tell me much, I mean what kind of monster wouldn't have teeth??"

A beat.

"...No, OK, I guess monsters with beaks might not. Like a bird monster. Are there bird monsters in your world? Do you ever have to fight them?"

"Holy f--cheese and crackers." Just excuse him while he has a goddamn heart attack thank you Kay. He holds a hand to his chest, looking gobsmacked at Kay.

"Is that--since when can you do that? Is that a spell you just learned?" Where's the 'turn into a crow and harass your local father figure' spell? He needs to hide it away forever.

Ha hah, he almost said fuck! Incredible, provoking expletives is exactly the kind of reaction she was hoping for.

"You could say that," she grins. "Not like I studied a fancy spell for it or anything, though. I just kind of realized I could, and then I did. Just like in the Horizon!"

A faint tilt to his lips is visible in reply to her protest. Even if that is a fair assessment. Not every one has teeth, to get deep into technicalities. As far as he's concerned, though, if they want to take a chunk of flesh out of him, it's all about the same at the end of the day.

"Some believe so," Geralt says. "But they'd be wrong. None that aren't hybrids of a sort."

The amount of times some villager or other has claimed their cow or goat was swept off by a giant bird, however, is numerous, and Geralt has long given up on correcting misconceptions about monsters. (About what, exactly, constitutes a monster in the first place.) Even if it makes his job irritating when a big bird can mean anything from a cockatrice to a wyvern.

"You just... could?"

Phoenix will never claim to be an expert on magic, but he's pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work.

"Do you think the Horizon had something to do with it?"

"Sure seems like it to me!" Kay says brightly, though a slight shrug of her shoulders kind of indicates that she isn't totally sure either way. "I was thinking about the Horizon when I figured out I could do this. It's almost like some of its magic followed me here into the real world or something, just by daydreaming about it real hard."

The daydreaming may or may not be coincidental, but to her it feels like an important component of the discovery.

You know, Phoenix thought he'd seen everything by now. He's already raised a daughter by himself. He's stayed up late reading female 'my body and me' books so he could explain things to her properly, he's dealt with teaching her the difference between a good boy and a cad, he's dealt with teenage fits of hormones and tears and trouble-making... but he never thought he'd have to deal with a ~~daughter~~ girl who could turn into a bird. What is there even to say to that? They never covered this in the 'my body and me' books.

"This... is insane." Phoenix rubs the bridge of his nose, processing for a moment, then drops his hand. "Well, do you want to learn how to fly?"

Seems like the next logical step to him.

Luckily, she doesn't seem to be looking for any kind of dadly advice in this case. In fact, she seems remarkably chill about the whole situation? Why should she care about how this is happening? She's certainly not about to look a magical crow form giving gift horse in the mouth!

(That's definitely how that saying goes, right?)

"What, did you already forget about my awesome landing just now? I've already got the flight thing figured out! Mostly. I guess there's always room for more practice, but it's weirdly intuitive! Almost like I've got animal instincts for it or something."

"Animal instincts? If you start stealing bread from people on the street, I'm out."

Okay, not really. But still, increased bird instincts seem like a recipe for disaster to him, but if it means that she can fly... well, that's a good skill to have, isn't it? He tries not to think about how easy it would be to send her away in that case if things in Thorne become too dangerous.

"Did you just figure out you can do this?"

"Yep! You're the first person to know about it, too." Aren't you just SO lucky, Phoenix? "I can't believe you think I'd stoop to stealing bread though. I'll say it as many times as I have to: Even as a literal bird, there's only one thing the Yatagarasu is interested in stealing, and that's the Truth!"

Kay ain't trifling with no stale-ass bread.

Phoenix chuckles, his smile coming to his face. "You say that now, but we'll see how far those 'animal instincts' of yours go."

He imagines needing to pull Kay away from old ladies handing out bread in the park. He can't help but laugh at it.

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Theft #1 [Closed]

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Feel free to lmk if you think they would've discussed witchers before now, I can edit haha

this is good! :D

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