MERC XIX: Toss a Coin to your Goblin

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"Right. Modified human. Got it." Although why anyone would want to make themselves look like a devil is beyond me. Rose clears her throat and gets back to the subject at hand. "Right. Well, no, not really. I'm not here to learn it so much as learn about it. I'm supposed to be looking out for any information that might indicate it's being practiced, and I sincerely doubt my target's going to show me anything obvious. You know, like, a corpse walking around all-" she makes a face and holds out her arms, letting out a surprisingly convincing zombie moan. "Just doesn't seem like the kind of job you'd need a specialist for."

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Modified...?

Curious way to put it.

Astrana giggles at the zombie impression. "Right, I got you." She sits down on top of her desk, getting the distinct impression that Rose isn't the kind of person that would find that too informal. "However, this being the nexus there are all kinds of 'necromancy'." She says while making air quotes. "I don't even practice anything called that though I know that other people still recognize rituals I perform as clear examples of it." She shrugs. "So it's a bit more of a complicated question to answer than you might think." She looks over at a bookshelf in her office. Notebly, each shelf is encased by a glass frame with a lock on it.

"Buuut, I might still have what you need." Her gaze shifts back to Rose. "I first need to know a bit more about your frame of reference though. What's necromancy in your own world? You clearly know what zombies and undead are already."

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"It's... not really a thing where I come from." Rose replies. "Something we tell stories about for fun. A few of the higher-ups have contingencies in case that particular fantasy ever became reality, but even then, it was always kinda wrapped up as a particular subclass of infectious disease." She shrugs. "It usually goes out of control pretty quickly even in the stories, so I'm guessing it's nothing like what I'd run into here."

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

"You always could in the nexus. I heard of something like that happening in Inside once, more than once actually. But you at least know it's associated with death so that's something." She walks over to the shelf, unlocks one of the shelves, and picks out a worn green book missing a title. It appears that its cover is missing.
The warlock starts to flip through it thoguhtfully. "This should give you something, though I'd can't say you would find all the instances of necromancy within it. Keep in mind though, necromancy isn't a word that's actually used in here but there are rituals which involve animating corpses and accessing the memories of the dead... which is what you think of when you hear necromancy, correct?"

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"Hell if I know. That was always more of a nerd subject back home." Rose says, throwing her hands up defensively. "...No offense. We didn't have magic of any sort, so talking about the finer mechanics of what it would supposedly do was usually a huge waste of time." She shrugs. "Still, yeah, that's probably what I should be looking out for. Evidence of rituals and such."

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

"Alright, then this book should help you out. Let me just look through it and write down which pages you should have a look at. Reading the entire thing would probably be a waste of your time." She turns to walk away and sit down behind her desk. "Shouldn't take more than fifthen minutes but unless you have any quick errand you want to do during that time I'm afraid you have to just stand here and wait."

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

Rose shrugs and nods. She didn't really have anything that she could do in the mext fifteen minutes, and while she was tempted to ask Astrana about herself, disturbing the tiefling was likely to just make her job take longer. So, with nothing better to do, Rose does what she gets paid to do: snoop.

She wanders around Astrana's study, taking in all the details. As long as she didn't touch anything, she reasoned, she wasn't going to be much of a distraction. And besides, this was the spy equivalent of asking her about herself; people do a surprising amount of expression through their personal spaces.

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Let's describe Astrana's office in a bit more detail as it's hardly like any of the other offices in MERC.
Hanging on the wall behind her is a large mask. As Rose looks at it she gets a strange feeling that it's looking back though still seems completely inanimate.

Above the tiefling hangs the bones of various creatures, hopefully nothing humanoid though Rose probably wouldn't be unable to tell them apart without more of the skeletons. They're tied up in strings and seem to be set up in a very specific pattern around the office. Each one seemingly an equal distance apart from one another.

The only area of the office where these bones are absent is a circle which been carved out in a part of the office where the wooden floor gives away to what seems to be the rockbed underneath it. Here a large circle made up of strange symbols have been carved out in the very stone.

On the more mundane side there's a closet but the drawer underneath it also has a lock on it like the shelves on the bookcase. There's also a door which seems to be leading into a restroom if Rose decides to open it.
Finally, on Astrana's desks are several photoframes besides the usual office supplies. Though to see what's on them Rose would have to get on the other side of Astrana's desk.

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

If she were back home, Rose would look at all of these rhings and conclude she was dealing with sone kind if nee-age doctor; the bones were for anatomical study, the circle would be some kind of zen thing, and the mask would be... well, a creepy mask for a creepy mask's sake, probably.

But, since she already knew she was sitting in the office of a magic user, she concluded these were probably components to some kind of mystic rite she didn't know about. Security, perhaps? She didn't know the first thing about magic, so most of this meant nothing to her. Aside from being a surprisingly proficient display of feng shue, that is.

Rose found herself drawn to the picture frames, but she didn't want to call attention to herself by coming up behind the tiefling. Physically turning the frames around was going to be distracting, as well. Given the context of their placement and rotation, though, Rose could only assume the frames contained pictures of Astrana's family, as would be typical for an office like this. She'd sneak a peek whenever Astrana called her over.

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Astrana glances up on occasion as she can hear Rose move around in the room but doesn't comment on what she's doing unless she touches anything.

Eventually she holds up a note, calling Rose over. "I hope this should give you enough to work on. Though, I have to ask now, why is it relevant wherever this person you're visiting have used necromancy or not? I'm not sure why you've taken this mission but your unfamiliarity with the arcane arts might prove disastrous if you encounter curses or the like. It's quite a popular security measure."

If she approaches she can now see the photos in the frames. Looks like Astrana have a large, if tad unusual, family.

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"Fair question. To be honest... I didn't really pick this assignment. It was picked for me." Rose explains. "This'll be my maiden voyage with Merc... so to speak." She holds out her hand for the note and the book. "If I could get screwed over thaf easily by not knowing what to look for, I supposed I'd better study up on curses, too, huh? Gonna have a lot of reading material for the flight over there."

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Astrana's eyebrows raise and then a frown forms. "Who picked this mission for you and why? Since I can tell you that when I joined I wasn't sent on a mission that was completely outside my expertise. They just let me join."

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"Orders are from Dipsnig himself. He said it was in lieu of a background check... or rather, a background to check. Kinda hard to have much of a résumé when none of your references want to talk to you." Rose shrugs. "I just figured it was meant to be a way of measuring how quickly I learn, too. There's a lot of stuff here in the Nexus I don't understand yet; if I'm gonna be a halfway decent agent, learning on the job is basically a requirement. Plus, I don't think he's expecting too much trouble... who in their right mind would hand a super-dangerous mission to the new girl, anyway?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Astrana pinches the bridge of her nose fustratedly as her frown deepens. "I hope you're right, for your sake. Though... perhaps I can make this easier on you. Do you have one of those multi-use phones? Specifically, the type you can take pictures with."

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"One of those dinosaurs?" Rose chuckles a little. "Nah, but I know where I can get one." She flicks through her Hotbox's interface, finding an old (by her standards) smartphone that would suit their purposes. "Why? How would that help?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Astrana's Office]

Astrana shrugs. "Well, it doesn't matter what kind of phone it is as long as it can take pictures and send messages. The idea is that you take pictures of whatever you suspect is magic or the like and send them to me. Then I can analyze them for you." She qickly writes down a phone number on her note. "That's my number if you want to reach me. Might be a good idea to call ahead before you enter so I'm ready to look at whatever you send over."

[Ironsmith]

[Astrana's Office]

"Thanks. It'd always nice to know you've got an expert in your back pocket. You know... metaphorically. Literally a bit in this case?" She shrugs. "You get the idea. Seriously, thanks for the help. It means a lot."

And with that, unless Astrana stops her, she leaves the office, ready to get started.

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

As Rose gets ready to leave she will find a large brown minotaur in the lobby. He’s dressed very casually but carries a massive revolver in a holster even as he lazily flicks at a phone screen.
”Are you our rookie?” he asks as he looks up.

[Ironsmith]

Lobby

"...Yes?" Rose replies, looking the minotaur over. Holy hell that is a big cow-man. "Who wants to know? Is there gonna be some kinda hazing thing?"

She hoped so. It was usually all good fun for her.

"Oh, wait wait wait... you're probably my chaperone, aren't you?" She asks. "What's your name, beefcake?"

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Krayger might be a bit miffed at the beef joke but at this point he knows that's what he gets for going shirtless anywhere. Normally he'd be all geared up for a mission but he was told he's supposed to be subtle today so he has to dress how he normally does.
Which luckily includes carrying a large firearm because he tends to do that anyway.
"Krayger. Boss said your name's Rose?

[Ironsmith]

[Lobby]

"The one and only." Rose replies with a grin. "Ah, don"t let the nicknames bother you too much. I use them to get myself into a certain headspace. See, we're probably going to have to pretend to be- or to have been- a couple at some point on this mission. People that spend that long together tend to have nicknames for each other; some sweet, some salty. Think of it as a kind of method acting. That okay with you, himbull?"

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Himbull? That's a new one. Also one of those weird phrases that just means Guy Guy.
Krayger seems puzzled. "We're investigating an auto-body shop. I'm not following where you're getting being a couple from that. I mean it's as normal a cover story as it gets but I don't know if we're going to have enough time to get that to check under any scrutiny." he shrugs. "And I'm going to be out of practice. I haven't had a date in ages." He's not going to count his disastrous one-night stand with a fey or the nice trickster god who helped him with that one.

[Ironsmith]

[Lobby]

"For most of the mission, that's true." Rose concedes. "But at some point, we're going to be seen together. It's not ideal and certainly not the plan, but it happens. Maybe someone will notice us meeting somewhere. Or I'll get the attention of someone unrelated and you have to do backup-y things without jeopardizing the whole mission. If nothing else, I'm sure the extraction plan is going to involve us being in the same room." She gives a little shrug. "Now, I don't know about you, but I prefer being a little more prepared when things blow up in my face."

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Krayger nods. "Of course. Everything you just said is true. But my point was more that there's more than one cover story for a man and a woman to be together than dating. I think most people would assume I'm old enough to be your dad." And in truth he's almost old enough to have that be true if it had been a teenage parent scenario. Rose is older than his nephew Koshal though, and that was already a fairly young time to be a father for Krayger's brother.

[Ironsmith]

[Lobby]

"Oh, yeah, absolutely." Rose replies, starting to walk-and-talk toward the door. "That's exactly what people will assume we are. Father and daughter. Don't ya see the resemblance?" She snarks. "I'm sure that might work if you could claim we're not related by blood, but that wouldn't really explain the sneaking around. At least if you're an ex, there's a built-in reason to be all hush-hush about it."

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Krayger stands up and follows after. Obviously he has no trouble keeping up.
"Ah, so I'm your ex now? Dumped on my own hypothetical date already without even getting our honeymoon period!" he laments.
"Probably for the best. You probably don't want a bull hanging over your shoulder. Especially if we're in a hot skycar." Krayger is absolutely religious about hygiene so just being near him isn't likely an issue but he makes those jokes all the time anyway.

[Ironsmith]

[Lobby]

"Oh lord help me, I don't think I'll ever get over that cologne." Rose smirks, waving her hand.

"...But seriously, before we get too deep into character here; this is strictly professional, right? I don't want to see any messes after the mission's done and it's time to come home."

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Krayger looks like he's having trouble figuring out the exact words he wants here.
"Look, rookie. This is your op. I'm just here as insurance. If you want me to act like your boyfriend I can do that, but you're way too close to my nephew's age if anyone asks for real. No offense." Not that he really expects anyone to be offended by being told something as truthful as "you're young."

[Ironsmith]

[Lobby]

"Good. Glad to hear it." Rose smiles. "I only bring it up because other 'rookies' my age tend to get a little mixed up. Plant one on 'em for the cameras and watch the hormones fly. It'll be nice working with someone mature for a change." She gives him a little pat on back, since she can't reach his shoulder. "Oh, one more thing... how are you with flying?"

[Deathkeeper]

Lobby

Krayger shrugs.
"I'm no pilot but I'm not afraid of heights. Why?" he asks. Does she have a hovercar lying around?