self_inflictedexhile | Recent Entries

"Uh, Sophie? We might have a problem."

"A good problem or a bad problem?"

Sophie is perched on one of the desks outside the office. Nate was inside, working the mark, while she was pretending to do some PR work. She's also supposed to be running interference on anyone trying to disrupt the meeting. Parker is in the ducts, as per usual, Eliot on the grounds, and Hardison in the van. So far, this whole job has been routine. Almost boring.

She's grateful for the distraction.

There's a pause before Parker responds. "Not sure. I thought I saw a friend, but last I heard he was supposed to be dead."

"You had friends before us?" Hardison teases.

"I do have an actual problem, if anyone's interested," Eliot snarks. "We got FBI snooping around the front door."

"Yep, I got him." Hardison frowns. "Sending a shot to your phone Sophie."

Ah, yes, that would be a real problem, indeed. She waits for the picture from the security cameras to arrive and she takes a glance. "That is certainly an FBI suit. Parker, follow your ghost. Keep us in the loop if there's any trouble. I will deal with our FBI friend." Adjusting her jacket, she leaves her desk to make her way down to the door.

Tipping her head to the side, she shifts into her current persona, taking her voice up, making it a little more nasal, and bumping oh so gently into the agent's shoulder as she comes out the front door.

"Oh, no. I'm so sorry. I didn't even see you there."

stupetballs

[The fog has been rolling in for weeks now. Curling up out of the trees, messing with people's minds, and while Waverly and Wynonna did go through a stretch of forgetting things, there's also things that she remembered too.

Things from somewhere else.

Things from Hell.

She doesn't know if Wynonna remembers, and she doesn't want to ask. She doesn't want to think that if for some reason she doesn't, her question is the thing that triggers the deluge of memories of the pain and suffering they spent there. So she keeps it to herself, toiling away with Jeremy and regular cases and hoping that one day, she'll be able to put it all behind them.

They get a call one day, about someone having been found in the fog. It's unsure how much of an affect it's had on him, but Jeremy manages to divert him back to Shorty's so they can get a better look at him. He doesn't have any ID, any phone, and he's definitely not one of the locals. But the moment they place him on the pool table to get a better look, Waverly almost drops the bottle of whiskey in her hand.]

Oh my god, Aiden.

hackedhistory

alias_savant

Despite his time spent in magical realms, getting magic for himself from an agent always felt like cheating.

Neal's a man who's always prided himself on his own skills, on giving the illusion of there being something more to what he was. It's about the flourish, the presentation. He's never been a smash and grab kind of thief, so he didn't want to up his game with second hand magic he got from an agent. Only the longer they stay in Teleios, the longer he stays in Dylan's realm, the more he starts to feel that maybe it wouldn't be cheating.

Maybe it's a way to up his game, without being completely obvious about it. That's what the Horsemen did, after all.

And when it just so happens that your friend is an agent and has those magic dispensing powers, he might be able to help you out. Still, as much as he feels intrigued by magic, he feels weird about asking Dylan to just grant them do him, so he structures the conversation the way he would with any other agent.

"Hey." he smiles as he catches up with him, sliding his hands into his pockets as he walks. "Have a minute?"

vampireboulevard

Nestled just on the outskirts of the tiny town of Mystic Falls, Virginia is the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted. As far as most of the town is concerned, the school is exactly how it's marketed - a boarding school for rich and gifted students - but a few are aware of it's real origins.

A school for young supernatural students, so that they can grow up somewhere where they didn't have to hide.

The headmaster is actually much older than she looks, having not aged a day since she was seventeen, but she's learned to dress herself up to fit the part. Her long hair is swept up into an elegant twist, her pant suit is perfect and polished, and her makeup is appropriately adult. Still, there's not a lot that can hide the youthfulness of her features no matter how hard she tries.

She's standing at the front of the school, watching as the car pulls up in front before flashing the man who arrives a bright smile and wave. Once he emerges from the car, she waves and makes her way closer to shake his hand.

"Mr. Rhodes. Welcome to the Salvatore School."

onebehind

In another lifetime, Dylan Rhodes never existed. In another lifetime, he didn't need to, because Lionel Shrike never drown in the Hudson River, Dylan Rhodes stayed Jacob Shrike, and his life went in a very different direction.

At age fifteen, his father started teaching him the tricks of the trade: sleight of hand, how to build a rig, how to do a little bit of actual magic, despite the fact that probably wasn't something he should be sharing, just yet. Shortly after that, Jacob met a young Alma Dray, tagging along with her grandfather, a friend of his father's, stopping by to check up on him. They grew up together, life continued on, and Jacob eventually went to college for Theatre Design and Stagecraft. At twenty-two, just after graduation, Jacob was chosen to join the Eye, his test to help the LVPD clear the name of another magician, despite all the evidence in the world making him seem guilty as sin. There, Jacob met Michael Fuller, his partner a lifetime away, and the two became friends as they managed, despite all odds, to pull off what had been asked of Jacob by the Eye. He continued on into a career as a stage magician in the Eye, eventually married Alma, and continued to occasionally work with Fuller as a consultant, when time allowed.

Over the course of the next few decades, Jacob and Alma tried to have children and failed, and eventually adopted one Jack Wilder, age 10. Using Eye resources, he helped Merritt McKinney get a good lawyer and clear his name after his brother screwed him over. He followed the rising stars that were J. Daniel Atlas and Henley Reeves, and when they decided to call it quits, pulled the both of them back together, forcing Daniel to give Henley a more active role in the show. And eventually, yes, he called the four of them together, not for revenge but something similar, to get them into the Eye. And somewhere along the way, Jacob and Alma tried for children again, and this time managed, giving Jack a brother, Lio, Lionel, named after his grandfather.

Basically, this is the best possible timeline.

And now, it's just after dinner, Jacob off to his nightly rehearsal at 5Pointz, that his space, now, like his father before him. He takes a detour tonight, though, to grab a cup of coffee, beforehand, a little bit of magic pulled around him, to make himself not completely invisible, but at least a little less noticeable. Normally, he doesn't mind showing off or signing autographs, when a fan approaches, and fans do often approach, his notoriety somewhere up there with Penn and Teller, Seigfried and Roy, but -- not tonight. He's not feeling it tonight, a little tired for whatever reason, hence the coffee, so magic it is. And now he's sitting at a table, idly people-watching as he leans into his cup. Have at him, if you can still see him (or, maybe, in certain party's cases, sense him) despite his best efforts.

veneratia

prosecutorial

Free for all for superhero based fandom smashing. Make a top level with your hero of choice and someone else will smash into it. I figured this would be easy and fun to do until we figure out actual plot and then we can do that.

For now, shenanignans!

kiss_evilgoodbye

[Once Dean and Cordelia are gone, and Buffy and Peter have gotten some sleep the three of them gear up and head out to the local cemetery. Not that there are many baby vamps coming up these days, but for some reason they still want to live there. Buffy doesn't understand it.

Spike probably would try and explain it to her, but she doesn't think she would get it then either.

All the same, they walk into a clear part of the cemetery before she glances back over her shoulder.]

Okay. Vampire 101. They're undead and they don't have a soul so they're pretty much gonna do whatever they can to eat you.

Current Mood: working

letsbe_clear

[After talking with Peter, Cordelia makes her way upstairs to the room that Dean had claimed as his own. She probably could let him sleep a little longer, but considering they wanted to be out before Peter and Sylar could reveal to Dean what they were going to be up to with Buffy later that evening, she figures it's probably for the best if they get out first.

She knocks on the door - loudly, because what is common courtesy - before pushing her way inside and hoping that he's decent.]

Dean? You up?

Current Mood: awake

hadtobeahero

[Peter knows that, when they spoke on the phone, Buffy said that Sylar was fine and that they don't need another pair of hands in Cleveland and all, but ... well, he worries. add in the fact that, after spending what felt like years in Sylar's head, he's a little attached and a little unsure of what to do with himself without Sylar around, and that probably explains why, despite Buffy's reassurances, he shows up in the city about a week later]

[perhaps thankfully for him, considering he doesn't have Claire's power at the moment, he arrives during the day and finds the house easily enough, and now he's standing on Slayer Central's doorstep, waiting for someone to come answer the door after having knocked. he's not sure how well his appearance will be received by Buffy and her friends, but ... at least he can take comfort in the fact that Sylar will be happy to see him. and maybe talk Buffy into letting him hang around, assuming she's against him being here]

verymature

[after he, Sylar and Buffy confronted the Chaos Demon, and they got back to Slayer HQ, Dean helped himself to a couple of drinks and shower. he sorely needed both and, well, both were as good an excuse as any to avoid having the 'adult conversation' he'd promised Buffy he'd have with Cordelia. it worked for him for awhile. unfortunately, though, now he's out of ways to stall that won't end in him getting banished back to the sorority house next door or sleeping in his car for the next however long, so ... it's time to find Cordelia]

[maybe, he hopes, he'll get lucky. maybe she'll be asleep or something. that would be nice. while he's not going to hold his breath, however, he is sort of sneaking around the house, just in case, so he doesn't wake her]

letsbe_clear

[Naturally, Buffy calling to tell her that Dean made it to Cleveland is an invitation. One, because this is Buffy and when is a conversation with her not an invitation to troll her life, and two, she needed to keep an eye on her champion. She couldn't really do that from a diner in the middle of nowhere, now could she?

So this is Cordelia, bouncing up the stairs to the house that Buffy had left her with, and knocking on the door. It's the middle of the day. Someone should probably be home.]

Current Mood: bouncy

kiss_evilgoodbye

Buffy spent most of the night sitting in the kitchen, going through news articles.

She didn't do this when he first got here. She knew the way the internet can skew things, and honestly -- she was more interested in having the backup than anything else. He said he wanted to help. He helped. He learned and took cues, and he didn't give her an overly creepy vibe, so she trusted that. And now, with how that conversation went from zero to intense in a matter of seconds, she wasn't entirely sure that she should have.

He was a killer. He was a killer, who was once again claiming that he was trying to redeem himself, and she wasn't entirely sure what to make of that.

She paged through the newspaper articles regarding Sylar, one after the other, just watching as the kills got more and more graphic, until she eventually had to close the screen. It all turned her stomach. She had been face to face with a killer before, but the look in it’s eyes was demonic. It was supernatural, which meant the rules were simple—you kill it before it kills you. It wasn’t a person anymore, it was a thing. Unless it had a soul, there was no redemption for them. They just were what they were.

Sylar was a whole different beast. He was human—powers or not, he was. He wasn’t some kind of monster where a demon had taken his place, which meant that she couldn’t simply kill him, and be done with it. He had a soul—but regardless of that soul, he had still done evil things. He had made the wrong choices, but he was out of her jurisdiction. Besides, she wasn’t entirely sure she could kill him, and not just because he had regeneration as an ability. Somewhere along the way, he had become her friend, and suddenly, it was Angel all over again—she was blindsided by the strong person on her side, and didn’t dig into his past because she didn’t want to, until she had to, and what she saw disgusted her.

At the same time, however, he was human. He had a soul, and he was working to redeem himself. He was trying to atone for his mistakes, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could turn him away. Not after how she had fought for Angel, for Spike. If anything, he stood more of a chance than they did, because there wasn’t a soul to lose. There was still a nature to fight, but Sylar’s soul was his own, and didn’t have a demon trying to force it out. At the same time, there were still too many questions. Too many things that she didn’t have answers for, and that the articles couldn’t answer. Only someone who knew Sylar could, which meant that she needed to talk to the one person who knew him better than anything.

Peter.

Sylar hadn’t given her a last name, which meant Googling a point of contact was probably out. She could probably ask Giles to look—start with Peter in New York City, and work their way through, but there was a much more direct route that she had been avoiding . It wasn’t right, and going through his phone, going behind his back to do this probably wasn’t going to win her any favors, but she had to know.

And his phone was sitting right there on the counter.

It was about three AM when she finally caved and picked it up. There weren’t a lot of numbers with names attached to them, which made finding Peter fairly easy. She dialed the number into her own phone, before hitting ‘send’ and making her way out of the room. She wanted at least a small amount of privacy for this—no need to worry the other girls if she didn’t have to. She closed the door to the downstairs bathroom behind her, before moving to sit on the edge of the tub, listening to the phone ring as she did.

All she had to do was wait for someone to answer.

Current Mood: restless

kiss_evilgoodbye

[All in all, it was a fairly routine patrol. A loop around some of the more empty areas in Cleveland, hitting up the local graveyards, and then heading out to the border. Not that they got a lot of traffic these days -- most people knew to stay out of Cleveland -- but sometimes they found vamps waiting to pick off the stragglers who didn't know better.

It wasn't a big group. A handful of Slayers, Buffy, and Sylar, who pulled their cars up to the edge of the city limits and parked for the night, headlights shining out into the darkness. Sure, it gave away their position, but it also drew people to them as oppose to trying to flag them down in the dark. It had been a quiet night so far, and Buffy and the other Slayers are mostly chattering about nothing important until one of them nudges her with her shoulder]

Ma'am -- we've got headlights.

[Buffy turns and looks out over the road and raises her eyebrows]

Looks like we do.

[ ... it never could just be a quiet night, could it?]