mission ♔ somewhere between our hearts and minds

[rationalizes]

♬ We Are Mice - Azure Ray

WHO || Gar, Kat, Mark, Dumage, Martha, Myri, Buffy, Sven, Spike [Closed]
WHAT || Following up on the Nightscape incident / Jade
WHERE || Chicago.
WHEN || Mon March 12th - Mon March 19th | BACKDATED
HOW || Actionspam

Welp.  That was a wild and crazy time.  So the Eternal Jade was... actually a person, Buffy tried to kill Spike, Sven snared himself a pet displacer beast, Mark and Myri got in a car accident, and Des stole their lead away.  Go team failboat go.  

The Saturday after the events at Nightscape was spent healing up those who needed it and piecing together everyone's memory of the incident: Spike and Buffy luckily remembered everything that had occurred, for now, at least. The singer, Jade, had given them a little bit of information that they could begin looking into for now: that she was being pursued by a church called the Brotherhood of the Enlightenment. On Sunday, Gar called Des to find out whether she was still safe, and learned that she currently being held for questioning by the Hoffman Institute.

Which merited a big unison 'crap' from the team - who had been trying to keep her out of their hands in the first place. Gar, however, didn't see this as a total bust. After all, she was ideally placed to learn anything that they might get out of the girl. Because of this, she returned to her undercover position on Monday and spent the next week spying on the proceedings. Her reports have not been particularly helpful, however. The girl - Eterna Jade - claimed to have no memory of anything remotely tied to the Talisman, and didn't seem to understand what the church wanted with her, or why her name was connected to the talisman's mythology. She couldn't answer most of the questions put to her, actually, claiming to be from the Shadow World recently, and remembering nothing but coming here and living at the club, ever since, which she says was given to her. Though she insists that she is the owner, she appears to have very little information about its daily operations, leaving that to a team of executives she calls the "Dreammakers". When asked, she cannot even name any of the men on this team. She's acted generally sullen and uncooperative, but Dr. Hoffman seems to have concluded, to his own frustration, that she isn't lying either.

She wanted to return to the club shortly after being detained, but the Doctor insisted they make certain it was safe first, and has, indeed, been monitoring the building and Brotherhood movements, to try and make certain that they aren't still after her, or hunting her down. There's been no evidence to suggest that they're looking for her currently.

In the meantime, the Knights have been working on researching more about the club, Jade, and the Brotherhood. And Buffy went on a personal crusade to hunt down information about the man they let take Jade to the Institute in the first place: Desmond Descant, who claimed to know Wynn. (Threads below!)

It's on Monday, March 19th, that Gar comes home excitedly from her job to draw something wrapped in cloth out of her bag and asks everyone to gather around. (Thread below!)

[[Various threads will go up below: as always, pick and choose what interactions you want your character to be involved in. Please make research checks where indicated! Also, you're free to make your own threads for general socializing!]]

Comments

[slay]

[ Yeah, while you guys are all sitting around researching Nightscape, Buffy's more interested in the guy that they met there. The one who had betrayed them -- predictably so -- and turned Jade in to the Hoffman Institute. Dick.

So, Buffy's just going to go ahead and steal whatever laptop got brought, legs crossed in a comfy chair with the computer in her lap, hunt-and-pecking her way to looking up whatever she can about Desmond Descant, private investigator. On google. Research check of 10. No one said she is good at it. ]

[nosdacaraid]

[With skills like that she... is not coming up with much initially. We'll ask Chris for deets when she gets home. Mark is talking out loud to himself, because apparently no one is paying attention to him]

Huh. That security firm that the club hired? There's no names on file of who their contact is.

[slay]

Uh huh. [ Buffy says it in a detached way as she continues to click around on ... whatever results did pop up. That we will learn about when Chris gets home. ] That's nice.

[nosdacaraid]

[Omg Mark actually noticed something, it's a national holiday. he glances over at Buffy]

Yep. Oh wait. Found it right here. Someone named "Mr. Rogers".

[slay]

Uh huh. [ She chews on a pen for a moment, then sets the laptop aside and grabs the phonebook to start looking through it. Maybe he's local. If he is, she could break into his office and go through his private files. That would be sure to help her learn something, and might even have info on how he knows Wynn. ]

[nosdacaraid]

It looks he hired allll the little soldiers just to be his neighbor.

[slay]

Sounds nefarious.

[nosdacaraid]

Maybe it's all a conspiracy to siphon money into public broadcasting. [He's just staring at her now. Waiting.]

[slay]

Yeah, that's definitely it. [ Her attention snaps up at that, though, as she processes public broadcasting. ] Wait, what? Mr. Who?

[nosdacaraid]

Earth to Sir Summers?

[slay]

Sorry. Guess I went kinda space cadet for a while there, huh? [ She shakes it off, setting the phone book aside. ] What have you got?

[nosdacaraid]

Whole buncha nothin'. Just wondered what you found so interesting over there.

[slay]

Equal heaps of absolutely nothing. [ She sighs and shuts the phonebook. About Nightscape, anyway. ]

[nosdacaraid]

How can this place be so good at covering its tracks, anyways? Maybe it has something to do with that... forgetfulness magic.

[slay]

I don't know. I mean, that stuff's really not all it's cracked up to be. I still remember just fine. I thought we were supposed to forget before we even made it home?

[nosdacaraid]

Maybe you're immune.

[slay]

... Right. Maybe. [ She distances a little as she considers this, then she looks up at him. ] Wild curiosity talking, but how exactly does one get immunity to forgetting magic?

[nosdacaraid]

Natural spell resistance? Some people have it, usually a bloodline thing, I think.

[slay]

Oh! Right. I knew that. [ She chews on her lip for a moment, wanting to ask if it's a human bloodline thing, but it'd be too obvious and she doesn't want to get too far off track. ] So ... the people who work there, they'd have to have it, right? I mean, otherwise they wouldn't be much good. Maybe we should start there, and ... [ She sighs, slumping. ] And still come up blank because they're crazy psychos who would rather shoot you than talk to you.

[nosdacaraid]

Maybe they have some other way of nulling the effects. Or maybe the way it's cast means it only works on certain kinds of people. It could be a lot of things.

[slay]

And we're somewhere between diddly and squat on having any way to narrow that down. This isn't working.

[nosdacaraid]

Have you got a better plan?

[slay]

I just don't get why we're looking into Nightscape to begin with! They don't have Jade anymore, Des does. Des and that stupid Institute because he's a big dumb backstabbing traitor.

[nosdacaraid]

But Jade says she doesn't even know anything.

[slay]

There just ... has to be a better way.