Nazareth Awakened - Chapter 02: Wives of Solomon

[Rubberneck]

Law responds to the woman on the phone,

"This is Officer Hawthorne with the Nazareth Police Department. I'm looking for information on a recent fare. I have a feeling she'd stand out. Woman in her late 20's and dresses like she's out of the 50's. Goes by Earnshaw. Looking to speak with the driver of the cab."

 

[TillForPie]

Law
There's a long silence. "Uhh... I have no idea. Do you have a cab number?" He doesn't. "Or anything? We have, like, a hundred cars, officer. We don't keep track of every fare." Law gets the feeling she's willing to be cooperative, probably just from his mentioning he's a cop, but this is a woman sitting behind a desk who likely only makes occasional face-to-face contact with the drivers and their customers. "Wait, did you say Nazareth?" There's another pause. "We don't really go out there too often..." There's the sound of typing in the background followed by another period of silence.

"Yeah, someone made a cab reservation for Nazareth, a ride for today, from there to Sky Harbor." She's referring to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the largest airport in Arizona and one of the busiest in the United States. "They made the reservation three years ago?" She sounds amazed by that. "That's back before we changed systems... the name isn't listed anymore. I can talk to the manager, he'd know if we sent a car out to Nazareth." God bless her. Law could've been anyone calling and saying he's a cop. "Do you want us to call you back? Or you can wait on the line? I don't know how long it'll be."

 

[Mosier]

Agnasci flashes a final smile at the woman, carefully crafted to show just a hint of disappointment and concern. "Thanks," he says. "It was a long shot anyway." Agnasci steps out of the store and starts walking toward Weinberg's home. Guess I'll just do this the old fashioned way.

On the way, Agnasci will look up Weinberg's office number and give it a call, just to make sure the doctor isn't in.

 

[Shayuri]

"They're Syrian militia groups..." Constance starts to call after him, but the package distracts her rather effectively. It was, she had to admit, concievable that the militias attacking Iraq could be funded by American black ops/psyops funds, to recreate a wartime environment and perhaps provide a credible pretext for re-occupation. But...what the hell was this?

Grand Canyon. Creepy Indian doll. Fifty bucks?

There was nothing, nothing that got her motors grinding more than a mystery. In moments the Internet hive mind had spat up a wikipedia article about the katsina dolls, and she was greedily devouring it.

The price tag, if authentic, suggested it was probably one of the modern dolls, made specifically for selling to tourists; not one of the originally designed, handcrafted ones...which tended to sell for quite a bit more, but wouldn't be likely to have a 'price tag' on them. Grand Canyon was about right though, geographically. Hell, the spirits that the dolls were meant to resemble, and educate people about, were said to live on a mountain near Flagstaff.

Not just people. Young girls and new brides? Constance snorted at that.

So. Someone sent her a postcard and a piece of Native American tourist trash, anonymously. Why?

Stop thinking like a sleeper. Wikipedia? Lets try a little wand waving.

So Constance balanced the postcard in her right hand, and the doll in her left, and closed her eyes...while opening other eyes within.

(Casting Interconnections (fate 1) and Sybil's Sight (fate 1) with the two objects as the targets of scrutiny; especially as they relate to her own fate)

 

[TillForPie]

Angasci
The red-haired woman smiles back at Agnasci before continuing her work. No bridges burned between them even if she could have probably helped more. As he jogs across the street through traffic he's pulling out his phone and dialing 411. A few moments later he's being put through to Sonoran Medical facility in Nazareth, the place BR told him Weinberg works for.

"... business hours are 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday. Stay on the line to be connected to our Phoenix headquarters-" Agnasci hangs up. He's probably not at work.

About thirty minutes later Agnasci is in southern Nazareth, in what's probably the nicest part of town, walking down the length of a narrow road flanked by hedges. Up ahead is a roundabout with a security booth at its center and beyond it a pair of gates. Between the gates and the booth is a freestanding panel for drivers to input a security code to open the gates. Inside the booth he can make out the silhouette of a sitting person. Beyond the booth, the panel, and the gates are the large two-story homes of Pleasant Heights.

Brrrrrrzzz. A security guard in a golf cart whirs by on the other side of the gate.

He could try to talk his way in if he didn't mind being seen by the cameras that top the booth and the walls on either side of the gate. Or he could double back from the entrance and circle the wall looking for a safe place to try to hop over.

Chance
Chance successfully casts Interconnections and Sybil's Sight.

The world explodes into a tapestry of interconnected strings, an immense and dizzying web of sympathy and destiny. Cords of sympathy connect Chance to the objects at her desk, the desk itself, the building, Donnie in the studio, and to something beyond the door in Joel's office (Chance assumes it's Joel himself). Everything touches and rests against everything else. Though Chance's capabilities are limited for now, she can just imagine plucking this string or that and seeing the ripple of change affect all the others.

Two things are immediately clear to Chance thanks to Sybil's Sight. First, the doll isn't magical. Second, something has... changed its destiny. She isn't quite certain how, but the doll's fated journey through the tapestry of the world has been nudged off course by something she can't identify. There's no active spell affecting it that she can discern.

She focuses and uses interconnections to examines its sympathies. Tiny, barely perceptible threads branch off in several directions from the doll, some of them spanning to her. She knows that these are the meager sympathies formed from its construction, transport, handling, sale, and so on - all the brief encounters everything experiences during its time in this world. It has no significant or noteworthy sympathies that she can determine.

"You're on in five, Abels!" Joel shouts from his office.

 

[GlassEye]

Harper, Thyrsus mage

[section]

Harper doubts he would be much use if trouble started, let alone Crow. And with his mouth full of noodles he can't do much more than nod and squint up at the officer. Harper gulps down the noodles in his mouth and sets the takeout box on the bench to pick up his guitar. He strums it quickly and asks, "Anything in particular?"

Harper doesn't really expect an answer and finds himself continuing on. "Um, I started working on a Johnny Cash song recently but I don't really have the voice to do it justice. How about this? It seems to be pretty popular." He realizes he is rambling and shuts up to play the beginning notes of Jason Mraz' 'I Won't Give Up'.
​

[/section]

[sblock=OOC]Unplugged, of course, unlike this video. Harper has Expression 3 with a specialty in Guitar (although this song doesn't really showcase guitar playing. Oh well.).[/sblock]

[video=youtube;jj-rnWmEhY8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj-rnWmEhY8[/video]

 

[TillForPie]

Harper
Bailey waits silent and unmoving as Harper rambles, his face invisible to Harper from behind the sun's glare.

[sblock=Playing for Bailey]Intelligence 3 + Expression 3 + Guitar Specialty 1 - Hostile Audience 1 = exceptional success with 5 successes
Thanks to two 10-again reroll successes Harper managed to score an exceptional success[/sblock]Harper may not have picked a song that showcases guitar playing, but he manages to play the hell out of it anyway. A minute in and he finds that, for reasons he might not entirely understand himself, he's putting everything of himself into this song. He only manages a performance like this very occasionally... and he's doing it for this prick.

When he finishes he and Bailey sit in silence for a few long moments. There's an air of hostility and Harper is sure that Bailey is going to make him leave, or worse, but finally the cop breaks the silence. "Pft." He turns to go without further harassing Harper.

Then Harper feels a surge of the supernatural, like someone casting a spell. He looks at Crow, who continues to stare at the cop's back. Bailey reaches his car, still parked beside the female officer's (she's still waiting in her car) and stops, hand patting blindly at his belt. "Where the hell-" He turns on the spot, checking the ground all around him. The keys on his belt are gone. After a moment he heads back toward the front door of the Gold Dragon.

Harper looks to Crow. It gives him a brief, knowing look in return before helping itself to his food.

 

[Rubberneck]

Law smiles, it's rare to get someone to be so cooperative.

"I'll hold."

 

[TillForPie]

Law
A few minutes later, with Law still basking in the glow of his success, a man picks up the phone. "Hello? This the cop?" He has a deep, gravelly voice thick with impatience. "Well, it ain't our policy to give out no information."

Why can't anything ever be easy?

 

[Rubberneck]

Law responds

"Listen Sir, I really don't want to drag your company into this. There is a reason I need this information and which I'm not at liberty to divulge to you. If you just give me the information I need I can take care of things without having to drag you into stuff like courtrooms, subpoenas, warrants, so on so forth. You sound like a busy man and I don't want to tie you up in stuff like that."

Law will try his best to persuade the pain in the ass supervisor.