2017-10-20: Misidentification
- Log: Misidentification
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Dazil City
- Date: October 20th 2017
- Summary: Loren's assigned to meet a contact. Lan is not the contact.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It figures, in a way. Command decides to rotate in some of the previously on-standby medical -- likely because they're now on high alert and suddenly can't afford to have 'just the few officers' they've had on post for the past week or so at the palace -- and he manages at best ten minutes before he receives a direct order from Captain Petran.
He's starting to wonder: is she doing this on purpose?
(well, probably)
It's just past noon in Dazil, which means of course that it's mind-broiling hot out in the desert oasis-town. Most people are indoors, unless they're madmen or fools (or possibly both, to the medic's view).
Including such places as the tavern-slash-watering hole, which is cool -- relatively speaking at least -- when compared to the sand-encrusted outdoors. While not as bustling as during the morning or evening, it's still not exactly empty in here. There are a few people other than the blond alleged medical student... but not too many.
Which brings everything up to now:
The point where Loren sits and waits to make contact with the messenger from the northern border. It was, allegedly, something that couldn't be trusted to anyone from less-than-officer class, be overt, or bother anyone with higher ranking than lieutenant. ...Which had, apparently, left him as the only free soldier meeting any of the requirements.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Only fools or madmen would be outside during weather like this!!
The door opens, a tall figure in a long off-white cloak pushing back its hood to reveal a sheaf of long, sun-bleached blonde hair and a tanned face. "Fwaaaa," Lan Lilac sighs, the darkness inside the tavern a welcome relief from the blinding sunlight outside. And, let's face it, the dust. She's already tugging her cloak off to hang it up, watching in resignation as a small cloud of sand particles falls from its hem.
Underneath, she's wearing a sleeveless shirt and very short, rough-edged denim pants. Perhaps most importantly...
She looks around the room, silently judging the patrons. And when she sees Loren, she lights up.
Could... could this be the messenger he's been waiting for?
The blonde girl beelines for poor Loren and plunks herself down next to him. "Hi! Geez, it's so hot outside today. Hey, if you let me sit here with you and chat, I'll buy you a drink!" In other words the sky is blue, water is wet, and Lan is Helping.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Someone's gaze falls on him. If there's anything that Loren is acutely aware of, it's the attention of others. He doesn't even have to lift his gaze from the table he's currently studying intently, instead merely stiffening his shoulders a modicum as Someone's full attention lands on him.
Finally. He can get this over with and get back... where he's sure he'll be reassigned to duty. At least this time, circumstances make it somewhat more reasonable.
"You're late--"
Is as far as completely normal medical student 'Thomas' gets before he glances up and visibly doubletakes at the sight of Lan.
As she settles in alongside him.
If he'd been somewhat stiff before, he's utterly rigid now as he gazes at her sidelong in utter silence.
Is... this the contact?
On one hand, if they just wanted someone to pass the material along undetected, this... girl would do the trick.
On the other hand, well...
Loren weighs his options.
"...Fine," he says at last, perhaps opting for the one that is statistically least likely to get him a reprimand (or worse). "Talk away."
He's loads of fun, isn't he.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
You're late, he says. "Well, that's okay," Lan shrugs, settling in. Even if he seems to have been expecting somebody else, she won't stay too long. And if his dinner date shows up she'll just excuse herself and move along! Yup, Lan's got this all figured out.
He got all stiff just looking at her... maybe the poor guy's not used to seeing bare legs. Everybody else tends to cover up, but Lan would rather feel the breeze on her skin, even if it is from beneath a light cloak most of the time. "Don't worry about it," she advises him kindly. A waitress comes by to check on them and Lan orders a beer for herself and a 'whatever he'd like, please!' for her new pal.
"I guess I ought to introduce myself. I'm Lan. Nice to meet you," she smiles at him.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Nudity (or at least, partial nudity) is not all that much of a taboo in Solaris, as it happens. This doesn't mean of course that things couldn't still be awkward, but, well.
Besides it not being precisely the root cause behind his reaction, Seraphita is one of his ranking officers. You quickly learn to ignore such problems as 'doesn't that uniform usually come with a skirt' when the person in question can reduce people to ashes in a matter of a hot second or two. ...Literally.
But regardless: Lan has found herself sitting next to a rather dry-dull-seeming young man who has apparently wandered far, far, far away from his studies... or maybe that's why he's here to start? Some people do go digging.
Don't worry about it? Don't worry about what?
"...Water," he says, when the waitstaff comes around. He is apparently not a drinker. "And an order of those kebabs. Actually, double that..."
Well, if she's paying...
"Lan, is it..." Those pale blue eyes of his again look at her sidelong, as if in some mute appraisal. Lan. That's not an operative's name he's familiar with. Unless they changed their cover again? He jerks his head, as if to indicate himself. "Thomas Blackwell, formerly of Bledavik. I don't suppose you're local...?"
Second-class? ...No, maybe promoted third? ...Hired surfacer? He'd thought this was an officer-only class job.
Give him about two seconds here. This isn't really the outcome he was expecting.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan is, in fact, paying. For kebabs, even! "Ooh, me too!" she chimes in. "Four total, please!" Because wandering around outside in the heat is hard work and protein never did anybody wrong.
Whoever she really is, Lan certainly doesn't fit the usual picture of a Solarian operative, even one of the surface recruits. There's something so... casual about her, like she never had a serious thought in her life. And that must be what makes her so useful, right? Nobody would ever suspect someone like this of being allied with military forces.
"Nice to meet you, Thomas!" she chirps, resting her elbows on the table. "Not quite. I'm from Little Firelight, near the edge of the badlands. I went through Bledavik once, though!" Lan considers slipping out of her sandals, but decides it probably wouldn't be approved of - white people are so weird. "It was pretty nice. I don't remember too much of it though... I think I got drunk, because I woke up in Marze with the worst headache. How about you, what brings you up north like this?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
No, she really doesn't. Even if she was selected to blend in, she's a little too...
Make that extremely, entirely casual.
Paranoia and the possibility that she is a deep cover agent weigh against the equivalent of Occam's Razor, as it were. 'Thomas' regards her critically, his right eye squinted slightly, for several long moments.
...Drunk? Woke up in Marze?
Okay. Okay. He thinks he gets this now.
Auuuuuugh
Brief mental screaming aside, he at least rallies fairly readily, squaring his shoulders as if to face on a dreaded foe. Right, he's gotten himself into this, he might as well...
He glances up at the ceiling briefly. Emperor give him strength.
"Little Firelight, is it?" He pushes his glasses a degree up his nose. "Hmph, that's a long way to wander," he observes, at least being (relatively) polite if only because she's technically paying (and he likes a free lunch). "And you're out this way now, why?"
He indicates himself soon after. "I'm a Drifter now, I suppose," he says, as if to imply unfortunate circumstances. "There are a number of ruins and oddjobs out this way because of the ruins. It's one way to make a living..."
...He hopes her presence here isn't going to result in a mission failure.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan, unfortunately, is unlikely to do anything to soothe Loren's rising tide of anxiety. Unless kebabs and water are particularly relaxing, anyway.
For her part, she meets his half-squinted gaze with wide-open earnest eyes. They're a strange shade of lavender... "It's a ways," she nods, because he's not wrong. "I've been kind of wandering for a long time though, so it's not like I made the trip all at once! I've been all over Ignas!" It could technically be a boast, but any Digger worth their salt could surely say the same thing.
"A Drifter now?" she asks, leaning on her elbow. "What were you doing before? ...I bet you did something with paper, like an insurance salesman, or a student!" He's not old enough yet to be a teacher, is he?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
At least food is food. There's not much that one can complain about where food is concerned. Especially when someone else is paying.
...Which, let's be honest, is every meal in the military, even when he's billing it back to HQ. And technically, he should have some vague moral pangs about this. But when you're a somewhat nervous teenage combat with what amounts to psychic powers, welllll, sometimes pragmatism takes hold.
He's usually at least low-key hungry.
That's an unusual eye color, he notes in passing. "All over Ignas, huh? Well, aren't you well-traveled." He settles back a touch in his seat, though his gaze flits across the room as if to take in the other people here... to check the door.
The contact wouldn't just leave, right. They'd be obligated to hand over the materials, one way or another. There was a physical component. It wasn't just a note...
His attention returns to her. "Almost right. I was a medical student," he informs her. He sort of looks like the type, though it's probably -- to look at the state of his clothing -- been a little while since he's been in a lecture hall, huh... "What about you? You look as if you were a..."
What would she have done?
"...Barmaid?" he hazards.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"A medical student? Oh wow, I could have totally used your help a few weeks ago," Lan laments, resting her elbow on the table. "I got... really hurt and had to limp back to town." It's getting easier to talk and think about the time she came so close to dying, she reflects silently. Maybe if she does it enough, she'll stop being frightened by it. Maybe the blue-eyed boy will stop haunting the edges of her dreams.
Shaking it off, she tilts her neck a little, just enough to let a lock of hair fall over her shoulder; Lan takes it up in her free hand and rolls the end of it back and forth, back and forth in her fingers. It seems to be a comforting gesture, like rubbing one's thumb over a worry stone. "You're pretty perceptive! I've done that a few times to make some money on the road, but I do a little digging now and then too, and I'm a shaman. I guess I do a little bit of whatever's needed," she smiles.
Though... if she really wants him to leave her alone... Lan has to find him, doesn't she. Find him and stop him, and seal away that horrible upside down world forever.
"Say, Thomas..." Lan begins, somehow hesitant. "Have you met anybody that was weird, lately? With blue eyes, and a long sword?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"An accident? Those can be fatal in the wastelands. Are you traveling alone?" replies the 'medical student', his gaze shifting from her to slip briefly across the room, in search for anyone who looks like they might be looking for him.
Or anyone who has just come in. Either/or.
"I recommend not doing that," he appends, readjusting his glasses.
And this is him trying not to be rude to a surface-dweller.
Something's agitated her, he considers, gaze settling on her again. Then again, that's precisely the sort of self-soothing movement that he's well-acquainted with. "Waitress, Digger, and shaman? That's an eclectic mix of professions," 'Thomas' notes, brow crinkling somewhat. Shamans, they were some sort of tribal holy person if he remembers right. "Shouldn't you be with your tribesfolk?"
Has he met anyone who was weird, lately?
Loren gives Lan a look. It's the sort of look that reads, rather loud and clear, 'I meet way too many weird people'.
Lan provides context.
Recognition lights in his eyes.
"I've heard a rumor about it." Whereupon he sighs, long-sufferingly. "Don't tell me. Someone with that description attacked you? Honestly..."
Her and Lily both. Lambs are terrible at threat assessment.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She tilts her head to the side, as if she doesn't understand the question. "Of course I'm not alone. The Guardians are with me." Is... is she serious? Lan holds his gaze for a long, silent second before breaking into a rueful grin. "I'm joking, I'm joking! I mean, of course they're with me, but it's not the same as having another person around."
She's not entirely oblivious, it seems.
"I travel with people when I can," Lan explains. "But most of the time our paths seem to split apart after a while. The wind takes people in different directions all the time, after all..."
She watches him glancing around. Is he looking for strangers with blue eyes now? Or just the person he's waiting for? "It is a lot of different things, isn't it? But people do all kinds of jobs, all the time. If you only did one thing for the rest of your life, don't you think that would be kind of boring?" She does what she needs to do, when she needs to do it. A shaman without a community around her can't depend on anyone else to meet her needs! Shouldn't she be with her tribe? Lan would like to... Her face goes a little bit wistful. "I think outsiders call it a pilgrimage, though it's mostly just... a thing we do in my village, with no specific name. You go out into the world and become an adult. I wonder why white people don't have something like that?" she wonders idly.
The wonderment is short-lived, however, when he recognizes her description. "Do you know where he could be? Was someone else attacked too?" There's sorrow writ in her expression, and something like terror too. The fingers twirling that lock of hair have gone white-knuckled. "He has to be stopped. He's going to turn the world inside out and it'll stick like that, maybe..." she trails off, uncaring that she probably sounds like a madwoman. She can't expect a white person to truly understand that black sun and bottomless lake, can she?
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"The Guardians?" That's... not the answer he was expecting, the way that he holds her gaze there for those several long long moments telling in its own way. He tenses somewhat, lips parting as if he was about to ask a question--
"I'm joking, I'm joking!"
"...I'm certain you're a riot at your gatherings," he sighs out, as dry as the desert himself. "I've heard people say that traveling on one's own is dangerous between the bandits and the elements. You must be quite the lucky one..."
Or perhaps blessed.
Considering certain occupations.
"To be honest, it would be comfortable," he says, with a shake of his head. "Changing occupations that often... Isn't being a shaman a 'higher calling' with the tribal people?"
He talks like the sort of person who isn't attempting to offend but nevertheless has walked right into certain... choice turns of phrase that nevertheless suggest a certain bias or three. So in other words, intent means little here.
"A rite of passage. I've heard of those before. So you say you hear the voices of the Guardians, do you?" He pauses. "...White people?" he echoes, glancing down at his hand, then over at her.
He's pale enough to freckle. And burn, as he's found out first-hand. Sun protection is essential...
But the desert has more threats than an angry sun.
"I don't. I've heard a few rumors, that's all. Why, are you thinking about revenge?"
She wouldn't be the first one. That woman, Lily, she'd also been attacked, also vowed retaliation.
"...If I were you, I would forget about it and be happy you survived. If you lost once, what makes you think you could win the second time?" That's...
More than a little harsh.
But as a medic, even if she's a Lamb, Loren has feelings about someone throwing their life away. Or just getting mangled and becoming someone else's problem to stitch back together. He settles back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lucky or blessed... if only she could claim to be either of those things. But in her own way, Lan supposes she's luckier than some - after all, she's alive.
If Lan takes any offense to some of the terms Thomas is using, she doesn't show it. He's clearly just a scholar from the city! He'd probably never seen one of her people in his life before leaving his hometown. "Mmm, sort of. You don't ever stop being a shaman. It's not what you do, it's what you are." At least that's how Lan sees it, though surely plenty of others have tried to ignore the call. "The other stuff's just about making ends meet. What's that saying, 'man can't live on an island alone'?"
Wait, that can't be right...
"Sometimes it's a voice. But sometimes it's just a... a feeling. Like a compulsion, but not as direct. And sometimes they'll appear before you, if it's really important." Lan lets go of her hair and rests her hands in front of her on the table. "Well... white people. Not-Baskar people," she clarifies. "Though there are plenty of dark-skinned people who aren't Baskar too, aren't there? We need a different word," she frowns.
That frown only deepends. "I don't want revenge. What he did to me... He can't be allowed to keep doing it. I can't even really describe what I saw there, except that it was horrible... like the reverse of everything the world should be, and a sea of hands trying to pull you under the ground, and..." Lan trails off, plastering a hand over one side of her face. "Just... If you see him, stay away from him. Just run. Okay?" She doesn't know if she could win, not against an enemy like that. The memory of that other Lan, endlessly dying...
She swallows hard.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Some people have all the luck.
"Hmmph," the scholarly (?) man grunts, leaning back in his seat a touch. "So it's in the blood, as you might say. That's an interesting way to think about it." He glances sidelong at her as she attempts to explain the other work as putting food on the table and...
Mangles that saying. Even he knows what that ought to be. "That's 'no man is an island'," Loren sighs, touching a hand to his head briefly. Shades of the Fire Element, there...
But she goes on, explaining the nature of the Guardians' voices.
The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
His thoughts turn towards the stone tablet, still resting in his quarters, still refusing to answer or do anything. He should turn it in to research staffing, should apologize for keeping it and hope the punishment isn't severe.
It might have all been a hallucination after all, he considers as Lan goes on, his gaze unfocused as he nods in unconscious agreement at her words.
No. He knows what he saw. So the tablet should respond...
He finally glances back at her. "Mmm. Are there... agreements you need to make? Rites?"
The topic of kinship is soon left behind.
"Then what do you want?"
Lan explains.
She gets his full attention for a good 30 seconds or so. That's... definitely a match. Rogue ether? "To warn people? I suppose that's fair enough. You've got more sense than some, if that's the case." He closes his eyes. "I don't have any intention of engaging someone like that alone."
Not alone. On orders, as a part of a team... he can't rule out.
Rogue ether users of such strength -- if that is what's going on with the blue-eyed man. What could possibily be producing them?
Is it Shevat's doing?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"In the blood? I guess you could say it like that..." She certainly hadn't thought of it that way. "It's more... I want to say it's more of something that lives inside of you. Not a specific 'thing' or 'person' or anything! But the... the ability."
He's starting to look a little uncomfortable. "Are you okay?" Lan asks, a tinge of concern pushing aside her memories of that time. "You looked like you got spooked by something for a second." Maybe all this stuff about the Guardians is scaring him. He looks like the city-dwelling sort, maybe he's not comfortable with spiritual matters. But he asks a question, and Lan brightens. "You can! Everybody does it differently, and sometimes the Guardians choose someone who doesn't even want to be a shaman. Even if they never agree to a single thing, they can still use some basic magic. I dunno what it must really be like for them. It was just..."
Lan shrugs, eventually giving up on any attempt to truly describe it. "It was just always something I was going to do."
Relieved that he seems to grasp the severity of the situation, at least, Lan relents. "You're smarter than I am anyway," she sighs, leaning back in her chair. "I wasn't afraid, at first."
The barmaid comes around with their food and drinks and Lan wastes no time digging in. These kebabs aren't going to eat themselves!!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Some things are inherited. Someone from Solaris would know that best of all. Aptitude. Power. Even influence. There are things that blood alone affords access to...
He inclines his head in a shallow nod.
...And what is a blessing can also easily be a curse.
He shifts slightly, as if attempting to shrug something that isn't there off his shoulders.
To say nothing of other things lurking in the shadows of this world. Things he saw once then never again. Things alleged to exist. "Something that lives inside you, is it..."
Only to be met with her naked concern. "I'm fine," he insists, shaking his head as he emerges from what feels as if it was a partial reverie. "So there are different means to selecting a shaman? I see." The Princess had certainly claimed some measure of so-called spiritual power, and she's clearly no Baskar from the look of her. In their own way, that Guardian had put some degree of trust into him as well.
Not shamanism, precisely, but something else. ...If he's to trust what he saw. No, it had happened.
Slightly, some of the tension looses from his frame; 'Thomas' nods. "So you weren't precisely willing, yourself? Hmm. Well, it's not my concern," he seems to decide at length, shrugging his shoulders.
Of more concern is the person that Lily had identified as using ether, a more complex situation now than he had originally surmised. Not just illusion. Something more tactile, but still highly unnatural, at least as far as ether went...
"I don't doubt that," he responds, his gaze flicking away from her.
And at least this time he only thinks idiot rather than saying it.
He at least has enough tact to know when to close his mouth.
Particularly when there's food on the line, apparently. He also wastes no time -- he must not have eaten in a while.
(the reality is that Loren, being a teenage boy, is always somewhat hungry)
(and magic use burns calories)