revivalproject | ♤ There's a Method in His Madness

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♤ There's a Method in His Madness

WHO: Cayde-6 and yooou
WHERE: Around this weirdo city
WHAT: ~~Getting into trouble~~ Trying to track down people he knows
WHEN: Mid-May
WARNINGS: N/A

Arson
We'll both have to do something separately. Each should try to get the attention of one of those groups or try to find others that remember Temba. It had sounded like a decent plan to Cayde. The question had just been the what. He supposed vandalizing Stark's place was out of the question, not to mention the security he'd have to avoid. The same probably goes for the other big-name buildings. Who's this Djarin anyway?

In the end, the only casualty is a billboard. That had been a slight mistake on Cayde's part, having underestimated how quickly one would catch fire, and he only hoped at least something of that by now trademark Agrii face he'd traced out had been seen before the rest of the board had been caught up in flames.

The second attempt had been bolder, down a street and done at late hours when traffic was near non-existent. Few witnesses would say they'd seen a hooded figure running about the middle of a street for the length of a block. Just before he vanished, the street was lit up in flames. Images taken from above street level would see the message better, a fiery, strange message by someone who obviously couldn't spell:

DON'T FORGET, HE ROWS

((OOC: Not actually a prompt Cayde will be responding to so much as a 'here's a thing he did' but reactions are welcome! Unless someone wants to catch him leaving the scene of the ~~crime~~ message. If so, only one taker please!))

The Super Sleuth..?
The newspaper he'd borrowed from Echo had shown him some interesting things, and not just Captain America in a tree trying to rescue the cat Cayde had also borrowed. Obviously after that strange alien invasion the other day, it's probably safe to assume that this city is anything but normal- aside from the fact that it probably shouldn't even exist. He'd seen Ikora blasting aliens with void magic. The Soldier had suddenly taken on some hero roll and seemed downright chipper about it. And then there were other names floating about in articles that got him thinking.

Hopefully Echo doesn't expect this paper back. It's got circles around names in headlines and things. Names of local heroes (he rows?) and vigilantes.

"Oh yes, Cayde, you are so very clever," he tells himself as he folds the paper up while he crosses a street. Which he totally has the right of way! The hand thingy's not flashing yet! It's the truck's fault for having its brakes go out as it comes down the sloped street, horn blaring as it lurches this way and that in the driver's effort to shave off some speed but it's still coming rather fast. "-seriously?"

Warlock Hunt (For Lark and Ikora)
Spending time thinking and reminscing about Ikora to, what was it- acclimatize the wool thread he'd bought had been extremely strange and borderline creepy in his opinion, although it had also been a sobering suggestion of what could easily just be gone if whatever was going on in this city continued. Cayde had given Lark the thread once she was ready to work with it, eager to see how things panned out with this magical map she said she could create. And he had not been disappointed.

"So does that work with like...objects too or just people?" he asks as they set foot into the library. That map trick had worked spectacularly, and Cayde being one who liked his paper maps had bought a city one just to match up with the one Lark had woven. He'd almost smacked himself in the head. Where else would a Warlock be in a city?

"Let's see. Do we ask for Miss Rey...?" he wonders aloud even as he tries and fails to stifle snickers at that. He wonders if Ikora's ever been called 'Miss Rey' in her entire Guardian life.

Wildcard
((OOC: Want his 'sleuthing' to have him end up where your character is, provided he might have seen a hero name in a paper and took a guess at who they might be if it seemed obvious to him, or if they had their own names come up in it! ~~...oh gosh is he gonna get kicked out of the newspaper office too...~~))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thankfully Cayde's not being as loud as he possibly could be.

"-have I not? Wow, you are on top of things, Cayde," the Exo mutters to himself, shaking his head. He gestures with a hand even as he continues to look around. "Anyway, she's about this tall, dark skin, hair cropped close to her scalp, kind of a regal beari- Ikora!"

Okay, that is a wince-worthy volume, which he at least has the decency to realize as he hunches his shoulders and ducks his head just a touch, however still pointing in the direction of the warlock. Naturally it's not a state-of-being he tends to remain in for long as he all but bounds over to the reference desk, metal face beaming.

Almost everyone in the library looks over at the man's shout of her name. A few library regulars know her that well but this man... this metal man... is a stranger to her.

A part of her mind says no, that's wrong.

But it's not wrong. She doesn't know this man shouting her name like they're old friends. Ikora motions the young man she is helping to wait before she turns her attention to the blue man shouting at her.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asks, no real warmth in her tone just polite professionalism.

“You are not reasonable,” Lark sighed once Cayde bellowed. Yet it was with reason and she moved to follow the man to the reason for his shout.

Upon seeing the woman she offered an abbreviated bow.

“Forgive my companion. He is excitable and, I believe, seeking you. For answers as to why we are here.”

"I am most reasonable," the Exo insists. He leans against the counter as Lark delivers the preamble.

"Would've said hi sooner after I saw you hurling void magic at aliens but you seemed kind of busy." That and he fell into a dumpster, but he's not going to mention that.

"Now. From that look you're giving me you're either trying to pull my leg and make this difficult or you really don't know who I am. Which is ridiculous because really, who can forget my handsome face?"

"People come here looking for books. I'm not sure what you're hoping to find." Ikora looks them both over, torn between deja vu and a complete blank in her mind. It was a strange conflict of thoughts.

"I'm afraid I don't even know your name," she said with another, longer look at the robotic man. "You might have me confused with someone else you know."

But he did recognize her from defending the city which was a bit surprising. She wasn't usually recognized for her superhero persona. There was some magic around Vanguard that made her face hard to remember.

Lark reached out over the counter, her hand settling briefly on Ikora’s arm.

“She is bound by the spell,” Lark advised Cayde. “It has her in its weft and weave. But not as tight as it might wish to.”

"Oh, I'll look at the books later. Can't miss out on that- and the ramen. Okay, the food in general, but I'm getting off topic."

His face faltered slightly when Ikora stated so plainly that she didn't know his name, that he was obviously confused. It stings more than he would have anticipated. They'd known each other for years. It only takes a second for him to recover, or at least slip back into a familiar mask. "It's me! Cayde! With the six at the end, no more, no less. Fellow Vanguard? Life of the party? Are you telling me you don't remember the Last City? Or that Hunters are vastly superior to Titans and Warlocks?"

When Lark makes her appraisal he looks back towards her. "I'm surprised it got her at all. She's usually better about things like this." He turns an eye to Ikora again, grinning crookedly. "Shame on you. If this was the Crucible that'd be a bad slip. Shaxx wouldn't let you hear the end of it. Hell, I probably won't."

The words all touch something. There was that heavy deja vu and Ikora felt a headache forming behind her eyes. She rubbed at her temple. The library didn't have security otherwise, she was certain these two would've been removed.

"What are you talking about? Spells and vanguards. Are you looking for a book?" Though... when she went out to help the city she used the name Vanguard. It had felt right when she chose it. Important. Powerful.

She dropped her hand and frowned at the pair of them. "Shaxx isn't here," she said and then stopped short. She didn't know Shaxx. She did? Didn't she? Damn it, what was going on in her mind?

"You must understand, Cayde, that there are ways in which those of us who possess the blessings of magic are rendered more vulnerable to it, especially as this spell is quite powerful."

But she thinks she might be able to help some here. Lark returned her attention to the woman.

"Is there any chance do you possess a pair of sheers and a handkerchief?"

"I'm not talking books-!" Cayde started to protest, cringing when even he realized he was getting a bit loud. He wondered how many people were looking at them right now thinking 'well why are you in a library then??'

The feeling didn't last long as the Exo let any embarrassment slip from his shoulders as he looked pointedly at Ikora then, a grin lifting at his metal jaw. Got her.

He looked at Lark then, brow furrowing. "Wait, really? I thought you'd be less sususpeti...suscer... harder to hook because of the whole magic thingy." Thinking about it, he supposed it made some sense. If you didn't know what it was you were dealing with then it was easier to ignore, maybe. His expression brightened as Lark requested things from Ikora. "Ooh, are you going to do a magic trick?" Surely he was six and not over six hundred.

For the sake of the other library patrons Ikora motioned for them to follow her. She led them away from the reference desk and back towards her office. Once they were inside, she closed the door.

Now, if Cayde couldn't control his volume the sound would be muffled and less distracting.

Without a word she got a pair of scissors from a desk drawer and set them on the desk. She sat down at her desk chair. "Unfortunately, I don't carry a handkerchief."

If the pair were paying attention they might notice a strange shadow following them, the black cat from before but somehow it slipped under the closed door.

No handkerchief, how frustrating. She needed to cut the threads of the spell, and the best way to do so was merging symbolism with the truth.

"Your sleeve. Please give me your hand so I might touch your sleeve."

She had, of course, taken the scissors. No doubt she was going to be in a good deal of trouble soon.

At least if they were being brought into her office that meant they weren't getting immediately kicked out. Cayde sauntered in and had a look around, nosy as he was. He glanced back at the glimpse of movement, a grin parting his metal jaws.

With Lark running the show, the Exo stuffed his hands into his pockets, trusting that she knew what she was doing. Magic stuff. Ikora would at least be curious, that much he'd bet on. His wandering eye brought him towards the whiteboard to look at his friend's busy schedule. Even in this weird place she was up to her neck in events.

When he thought no one was watching, he picked up the dry-erase marker.

It was her curiosity that did it. Ikora couldn't explain these people and their familiarity to her. Or the strange deja vu that dogged her mind.

"If this is a joke..." She trailed off because the worlds were absolutely meant as a threat. She had plenty of power, more than enough, to remove these two from her office without breaking a sweat.

Then she held out her hand and let the woman take it.

"I assures you, Miss Ikora, that if I were to tell a joke, it would be far more funny than this," Lark said. She reached out, taking the woman's arm in one hand.

Better to act before the other woman could stop her. Lark wove the image of the spell clutching at her, trying to grasp her as it had grasped Ikora, into the very fabric of the shirt the woman wore. Like for like, so that sundering one might sunder the other. And then, once she felt the sympathetic magic catching, she thrust the scissors forward, between skin and shirt, and snipped with both the sheers and with her magic.

Perhaps it wasn't the most elegant way to tear the woman from the spell-net, she'd have preferred something she could literally unweave, but perhaps even a small cut might return some of the woman to herself, and then Cayde, or even the woman herself, could do the rest.

Cayde couldn't help but shudder at Ikora's implied threat. He studied the board before him, uncapping the marker to start putting down some bright red lines.

At the exchange between the two women, he glanced back at them, just as curious to see what would happen. Of course, to him he only saw Lark taking to Ikora's sleeve with a vicious scissor snip that made him gape.

The cut made and the magic around her snapped. The first thing Ikora heard was the chanting of the Darkness, her constant companion since her ressurection. Then it was the warmth of the Light and her memories flooding back.

She gasped and yanked her hand back simply out of surprise.

"Cayde," she said his name with weight, with meaning. Ikora remembered. "What is happening to us?"

“I believe,” Lark said as she placed the used scissors on the table and reached into her pocket for one of the unfinished spoils of thread Cayde had gotten her. She had no needle so she pulled the thread free by two measures of the length of the cut she had made, “I am a better one to explain it than Mister Cayde. There was a spell, a very complex combination of misdirection and charm which caught you up in it’s pull.”

The thread snapped at the lightest pull from her.

“Your arm again, my dear. It would be remiss of me to leave you with a torn shirt. Allow me to repair it.”

There was something to that tone that made Cayde grin, abruptly abandoning rewriting Ikora's busy schedule save a ramen lunch date. He immediately bounced back over to the desk to rejoin the two.

"Yeah, what she said," he added oh-so-helpfully. "Anyway, it's weird stuff but it's somehow pulled everyone into thinking they live some weird, pre-Golden Age lives in this place that just seems to have appeared overnight or we got transported to it- I don't really know the details of that part. Some of us still remember who we really are and where we're supposed to be." He paused, watching Lark work. "Very few, actually- I can count everyone I've found so far who has some kind of inkling of that memory on one hand."

Ikora kept her hand out for Lark to work on her sleeve as she absorbed all that. She was quiet for a moment.

"It's a very powerful spells. Almost like a Hive throne world. Reality shifted and contained." She looked between the two of them. "We're going to have to break it."

Because trapped in this alternate reality was not how Ikora wanted to spend her life, as much as she loved being surrounded by books.

"A spell this large will be hard to unravel without a better understanding of the source, the means, and perhaps more capable magic users than merely myself and you," Lark noted, setting the selected bit of string against Ikora's sleeve along the cut. Then she twitched her fingers and fed magic and intent into the string.

It wove itself into a quick ladder stitch down the length of the tear, binding the cut and then the thread even went to weave its ends into the material of her shirt.

"Nicer than Hive-craft, I think. Although maybe that's what also makes it more sinister," Cayde opined.

He leaned in close to watch as Lark magically mended Ikora's sleeve. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her work, but it was no less entrancing, and he stared like an overly curious child. When it was completed, he grinned even as he shuddered, straightening. "That will never not be weird- in a good way!" he amended quickly. Just as creepy as Petra with her magical knife tricks.

"So yeah, breaking the spell. That's the million glimmer question- where's the source?"

"You've said in the past that these Agrii have played tricks and taken you through time and space. I would think they could be responsible for something like this."

She inspected the repair and then inclined her head towards Lark. "Thank you."

"But a spell this strong has a source and if we can find the right energy to track perhaps we can find it." She had no idea what sort of scanning capabilities pre-Golden Age technology had. It might not be able to detect magical energy like ghosts could.

"I am pleased to amuse," Lark told Cayde, her voice flat and clearly far from amused. Yes, she did not think that this was all that interesting. But once it's done she steps back and offers a brief curtsy.

"I could try and weave another map, but maps to magic and of magic are not my specialty."

"I don't see what good making us all think we were in some city living out normal lives would do towards fixing up their own city," Cayde pointed out. "Otherwise they'd be the first to point fingers at. This? This isn't helping with anything. Also, I don't think magic's their style."

Not that there was really any hard proof that they didn't use it, and something was getting them to go do this or that without them being aware of it. The Exo frowned, shaking his head. He stuck with his gut feeling, even with the lack thereof.

"Anyway, they didn't really play tricks. They sent us on vacation, then they asked us to come rescue them, and then there was that surprise trip to Coruscant. But there was always a point, and usually they'd say something if they could."

Either way, it still left them with no leads. Cayde glanced at Lark then. "Might not work out so well if this whole place is magic. We'd have to find something else to home in on." That wasn't really easy either, but they didn't seem to have much options. "Guess in the meantime all we can do is keep an eye out for others who might still remember."

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