[OTA] Paint the Town

[uncutclarity]

When her close girlfriends were around, they'd had a routine. End of the relationship rituals. But it seemed strange to do them on her own, so Avery didn't dig out a short dress or high heels, and she didn't leave the Castle with Wren and Tegan to go first to the Four Suits and then to the Wild Card. Instead, once shed cleared her inbox, she changed into jeans and boots and headed out to the quieter, grittier bar Ben Mackinnon had opened near the Spade section.

She got herded a bottled beer and a set of balls from the bartender and proprietor, and it wasn't until shed set up the game that she was reminded that it was Davin's game. Maybe she should have gone with darts instead.

Well, she thought, it would just be weird to turn around and change her mind now.

Comments

[theacethatmatters]

No, Julien certainly wasn't including him in the number of those missing. People left the Deck often enough anyway. This was different.

"Mmm, but they can't call back and tell us what they're seeing, can they?"

Then again, they could always end up somewhere there's no phone infrastructure and a phone would do shit all for them. So there's that.

[uncutclarity]

"I feel relatively sure that among the Diamonds, at least, someone would have called if the could. " One of their missing had even been on the phone when he disappeared and the call had just...cut off. Like he'd hung up.

Mid sentence.

"So I dare say that's a safe assumption. "

[theacethatmatters]

He leans against the pool table, game more or less forgotten, as he finishes his drink.

"There's nothing that says they have to go back Outside, either. Or that they came from there."

Of course, that was the most frustrating thing. They didn't have enough intel to make any good assumptions about what to do with this. Except wait for the other shoe to drop.

[uncutclarity]

"It reminds me of what happens when a machine gets out of sync," Avery says as she takes another drink of her beer. "The problems aren't insurmountable at first , but..." It gets worse and worse, until the machine breaks down.

"Maybe we need to go back to the beginning. The Arcana seems like they're the likeliest culprit, but since returning the artifacts to their position didn't help, we need to consider what else it might be."

[theacethatmatters]

"Isn't that what the researchers are working on?"

Not that they've found much of anything.

"Or did you have something else in mind?"

Did you stumble across a cache of this is how you do Deck magic manuals, Avery?

[uncutclarity]

Oh, yeah, she's been using them to shore up the furniture that's been breaking in the mini earthquakes. Except not so much.

"Earthquakes usually have epicenters, don't they? Maybe we should try mapping them." As much as they could map anything.

[theacethatmatters]

"I suppose I shall add looking for geologists to the list of people I need to co-opt into doing things."

Like the engineer-types for making sure the Castles actually weren't in danger of falling down.

[uncutclarity]

She gives him a highly amused look, and nods in the direction of the center of Town- where the school was.

"I hear the teach it in the high school science classes." So the science teacher was probably a good place to start.

[theacethatmatters]

"Lovely," he remarks, draining the rest of his glass and setting the pool cue down on the table. "We can set students to the work, then."

Not that he had anything against child labor. Considering.