The Jesus Mobile [Attn: Howl, Jamie, Joey]

[mnemosyne]

[OOC: if you want to find out about some of this storyline stuff IC, there are potential spoilers ahead so avoid reading!]


They are in a precarious balance. Sera, seated on the console between the seats, her head ducked down, the blooming scent of marijuana clouding out the heavier, sweeter funk of the clove she smoked on the way out here, spine and hips wedged against the priest's right shoulder and arm, both knees tucked to her right, pressing into Jim's flank. Her boots are off the seat, but she digs her heels into the plastic casing housing the parking break and gear shift to give her something like purchase, to anchor her to her uncertain perch.

Drive carefully, Padre. One short stop is likely to send her careening into, or right fucking through, your windshield.

Her free hand (the one not employed with the joint) is braced against the headrest, but as Jim starts his rite and she feels his consciousness, his will pushing through the weave all around them, she shifts that hand from the headrest to his shoulder, thumb flat against the cut of his clavicle, fingers splayed against his back. Much of what he's doing is alien to her, threads of the tapestry she has not yet learned to sense, let along manipulate. It's like waking up from a dream of the sea to find yourself surfing the edge of a breaking wave.

But there she is. Still along for the ride (and little more than that, for this rite) as Jim pushes more and more of himself into the Work spending himself and expending himself far beyond the point where she can assist. Still there when the vision begins; and still there - breathless, quickening - through all the stuttering possibilities, the endless branching divisions of what may come.

Pan will feel as much as hear her sharp intake of breath when the rite comes off. The sound of a choked off cry of alarm or warning, in those first few moments, which she mostly swallows.

Not long after:

"That's him - " low and hissed, her grip on Jim's shoulder strengthening by way of emphasis when the scene jump-cuts and the man she remembers makes an appearance. " - I saw him at the end, leading her away."

--

By the time the kaleidescopic whirl of potentiality resolves itself into a withering tangle of destructive ends, Sera (who, unguarded, gives herself to the moment as thoroughly as she does any other) is crying or near to it. Mostly soundless, the muscles flanking her spine contracting, her eyes shining, her nose beginning to redden. Sharp little breaths hitching in and out of her lungs.

She releases her grip on Jim's shoulder, shifts the joint from left hand to right, and reaches up angrily to dash the few tears that have already fallen to her cheeks, then rubs the incipient rest right out of her eyes with a fist. Right then left. They come back, but fuck them. Seriously, fuck them.

Then Sera flexes her feet and thighs, shifting her uncomfortable position to find a new sort of purchase there and opening her body language to include Pan in the conversation that follows. He has to keep his eyes on the road, but in his periphery he can see the swing of her hair against her profile, the reflective gleam of her gaze, greenish white from the dashboard lights. She takes one more toke from the joint, though when she exhales that stream of smoke before passing the joint off to Jim for use or disposal, look.

She is conscientious enough to exhale toward the passenger side, rather than into the driver's face. So hey. There's that.

--

"She's going to jump." Maybe Pan knew that. Perhaps that's the flashing vision he head in the middle of the park that sent the trio running toward his truck. "If we don't intervene: she's going to jump off the top of Aurora Presbyterian and she's going to die.

"Except: we're not the only ones watching her. They are watching her too. And when she jumps some motherfucker jumps after her, catches her, and carries her down to the ground."

Sera pauses, swallows hard, her voice raw from the pot, throat swollen with emotion - which is more grief than fear. And perhaps, more anger than grief. She harnesses that, pulls it inside and pushes it back through her body; feels the way her heart races in her chest.

"He's powerful Pan." A flickering glance toward Jim, in query or confirmation. All this in a rushed and hurried whisper. "We can't see him; he's all in shadow. Cloaked against our seeing - " another glance at Jim's profile, the question embedded firmly in the statement. " - I bet he's the fucker who put the illusion on the warehouse and pulled himself out of the timestream.

"He's going to save her and erase the memory of it from the witnesses. Then take her elsewhere, a hotel someplace. There are others there, including the bastard from my dream.

"If we go up there, though, up to the roof." A sharp breath out, all at once, which she swallows back just as thoroughly. Pan and perhaps even Jim can feel the subtle tremors in her musculature, shaking from the spike of adrenaline flooding her system even as her high is just starting to open. " - we don't do her any good. The rest of them are already up there. Two other Fallen at least. There's a confrontation at the least, and then a fight, and alot of shit happens."

Pan falling to the ground with a withered arm, screaming.
Or, Sera leaving with Leah, alone.

Now she scoots back a bit, her torso a concave curve, pulls herself so that she can wrap a hand around either headrest to keep herself in place.

Her attention swings back to Jim, here. "It'd be the warehouse all over again. A bunch of fucking bastards fighting all around her, pushing her further over the edge of sanity. She doesn't need another fight. Another fucking trauma on top of all the others. I wouldn't be surprised if those bastards led the Techs to the warehouse, you know? Engineered the whole fight to traumatize her into waking up. Or just took advantage of the situation as it presented itself.

"How else could they have been there so quickly to throw up that illusion?"

There is a pause here, Sera's eyes tick upward to the streets sliding anonymously by. Maybe they've within sight of the hospital now, and if so something cold seizes her at the base of her spine and sends a fresh spiral of shivers crawling up her vertebrae.

--

Then - unless one of the Disciples interrupts before she continues on -

"So here's what I'm thinking. Can we do that thing we did with Jake - where you joined him in to our scrying - and just talk to her?

"We wait at the bottom, where they're going to land. That bastard has so much to do right then. Right? He's got to fly and fucking catch her and land and zap the goddamned memories out of the witnesses he'll hardly have time to see us. And the other fuckers are still on the roof."

This is stream-of-consciousness, unspooling as Sera sits there, her eyes still bright with tears she's more or less refusing to shed now, staring forward, intent and intense, at the street in front of them, or perhaps at their own reflections - ghostly - in the windshield.

"So we do that ritual. And we open up a connection and we talk to her. We tell her - why we're here; and why want to help her. Why Shelby healed her. We're not chasing her. We're not hounding her. That she has a Fate, but she also has a Will and her Fate can be changed."

There's force behind Sera's voice; power in it even shaken and raw as it is in just that moment.

"I have - I have," she uncurls her fingers from one of the headrests and starts patting down her jacket with its many pockets, her hand shaking minutely from the adrenaline spiking through her body. " - that extra phone I bought, that night. We give her the number, right?

"We give her the number. And we give her some agency. And we let her make a Choice."

[Joey]

There is no peace in the visions; there is no peace in Jim's wide eyes as they see what may be. He seems as unsettled as Sera by the violence and many possible fates that play themselves out. It simply expresses itself differently on his visage. Sera's gripping hand is less an anchor to the present and more a reminder of the companion that joins him in his travels through time. His own hand raises to lay atop hers and squeeze it tight. His jaw is set, flexing as his entire body tenses. Each glimpse builds to a wave crashes against his stoic demeanor, and while his reaction is not as emotional as Sera's tears, each barrage takes a bit away from him.

As before, when they'd gone to the warehouse and seen things that must be repeated, he lets Sera speak the unspeakable. She is better at it. He seems thankful for her presence, though this is only one of the many reasons why. She even goes so far as to suggest a course of action as Pan drives them closer and closer to the hospital.

The significantly shorter joint, passed over to him, is pinched between his thumb and index fingernails. He takes a last pull, throwing the small circle of paper that's left out the window once he's followed Sera's lead and blown the smoke out the window.

Only then is he prepared to speak. "You're right. Give her the choice. Don't confront her. Don't make it about us or them. Make it about her. And maybe show her more in bared soul than we could in words," a final nod at the idea.

[jamie]

Of all the times to be glad to live in Colorado, the time the Cultists decide to spark a joint in the cab of a truck is chief among them.

Whatever the other Disciple does doesn't take long. They're only going a mile. The road wants for traffic but is not completely deserted and he doesn't speed. After five minutes, less, who even knows, time is relative, the pastor pulls the truck up to the curb and yanks on the handbrake and he waits. With the engine running and the radio dead it is the rise of her ribs and the sharp of her breath that catches his attention.

Sera and Jim come back to cognizance to find Pan has rolled down his own window. He rubs his lower jaw as he listens to Sera speak and when she comes to the place where the rhetorical question sits he cuts off the engine. The headlights aren't missed until they're gone. Aurora Presbyterian sits in the distance and they can't see the roof from here. He doesn't interrupt and he doesn't sigh until the very end of her stream of words when the sound comes out of him like he's been holding his breath and his judgment and everything else inside his head this entire time. Big as he is the sigh is a brief other entity for a moment and then he's removing a hand-rolled cigarette from the breast pocket of his work shirt, lighting it with one of the Cultists' lighter.

"Sounds better than going on the roof," he says.

The smoke isn't meant to feed an addiction but to Work. It's a small thing he does but he has to focus anyway.

jamie @ 4:11PM
[Prime 1: Watch the Weaving.
Coincidental, base diff 4. -1 diff for appropriate resonance.]
Roll: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 ) VALID
jamie @ 4:11PM
[+1 diff extending it.]
Roll: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) VALID
Joey as a Witness @ 4:16PM
[ Witnessed! ]

[mnemosyne]

"Fuck." Sera's curse is low but voluble, all force. Pan has parked the truck and cut the engine. He's smoking his cigarette and she's leaning forward, frowning out the windshield at the bulk of Aurora Presbyterian in the foreground. There's a big blue H sign mounted on the glass-and-steel exterior, glowing brilliant against the darkness, and another, equally bright, directing patients and ambulances to the ER bay. How is it that through all the possible futures she didn't see this right in front of her? The place is a fucking hospital. There is a moment there where she freezes, and then Jim's agreement registers, and Pan says it all sounds better than the roof. Some of that whipcord tension eases out of her spine.

Sera closes her eyes for a moment and tells herself, silently and repeatedly, like a mantra or a prayer, We don't have to go in there. We don't have to go in there. You'll be fine. You'll be fucking fine. Mouth moving with the words faintly, the way one might mouth the words to a familiar song on the radio, but no voice given to them. She seems, even, to believe it too, because then she's straightening, breathing out a shaky breath that grows more and more steady as her lungs empty.

Telling herself, "Okay," and them, too, Sera casts them both a stark glance, " - let's go. We need to find the spot where they're going to land." - and waits while Jim and Pan climb out of the truck. She'll follow.

In the meantime, Sera finally finds the second of the prepaid cell phones she bought at that convenience store in the middle of the exurbs the week prior. Reads off the number, not once but several times, repeating it so that it is embedded in their heads.

Sera clambers after Jim out the passenger's door and onto the sidewalk. Pulls her hands up over her hair, tugging the bulk of it back and twisting it upon itself, then reaches back with an arch of her spine to shake out the hood of her a hoodie - one of her many layers tonight - from where it's been trapped beneath the bulk of her leather jacket, then pulls it up over her head. She is sparking, bright with nervous energy, gaze drawn back, repeatedly, to the bulk of the hospital in the foreground. Keeps looking, up and up and up, at the glow of the navigation array that guides helicopters to the rooftop landing, heart firmly in her throat for more than one reason.

[Joey]

Full disclosure.

At first glance it may seem like business or legal terminology, in the same league as terms like due diligence or mea culpa. Its true origin is in technology and software, though it is bandied about on the pages of rags from Cosmo to the Paper of Record.

But deeper than all that there's an ethical connotation to it.

At least in Jim's mind. Which is all that matters to Jim. Because it serves as impetus for the effort he begins as they leave the truck.

And as he gathers his Will, it is that weight of connotation that he lends to the working.

Serafine wanted to connect them with the girl. To implore with her while she jumped, fell, was caught by that darting mass of darkness.

Words could only do so much, though. And if it was a connection they were opening, why not let it run freely? Why not bare the truth? Not just some of it. All of it.

To share that they were of the same cut as the woman, Shelby, that had given her life for Leah. Visions of what they'd seen in the past, showing her what Leah said to the others of the Traditions, demanding they protect her. That they all didn't want to control or even save her, but to simply free her – from the foregone conclusion some named her Fate, from the cancerous stigma some placed on her budding tsunami of an Avatar, and from those who would try to blacken her very soul.

Jim's fingers sink into the Tapestry again, the sensations already alive from the lightening substance in his system. He is enlivened by it, the inhibitions melting away as his own memories rise to the surface. And like the tide to the moon, he tries to raise them up, draw them toward where he knows the girl is. His own mind brushes out toward Pan and Sarafine.

Waters joining. Watershed welling. Tributaries becoming confluences and returning from fresh rains and ancient glaciers to the oceans as he tries to join their thoughts into a cohesive whole. Will working to craft an ocean for her to swim in.

[ To-be-rolled... ]