[Open and Closed] Hypnotic Takin' Over Me

[tearmeanewone]

Who: Elizabeth DeWitt, Eames, Lancelot, Simon, Alex, and assorted welcome guests!
What: Mind Control School is in session, Elizabeth has a mind to shut it down.
When: March 14th-16th
Where: Fontaine's School for Young Women in Camden, a cafe in Westminster
Warnings: Violence/mind control in Part III

[Part I, the 14th - Closed to Eames and Alex]

Before her class even steps through the gates, Elizabeth can feel the dark magic caked on the walls of the building. It's a familiar and unpleasant feeling that brings her back to times before she'd arrived in London, but focus comes quickly enough when she realizes that whether she wants to or not she's going inside the school with the rest of her fellow engineering students. She keeps herself alert as they meet their tour guide and enter.

The inside seems normal. Quiet, because, as the guide explains, the girls are all in class. But she promises that in a few minutes, they'll change classrooms and Elizabeth's class can see how perfectly the layout facilitates the flow of foot traffic from one room to another. She goes on about building planning and problem-solving for a few minutes as Elizabeth tries to sense where her discomfort is coming from. Without any kind of signalling noise, all of the doors open and girls of varying ages from grade-schoolers to teenagers come pouring out of the rooms.

It's silent aside from the sound of people walking. No talking, no socializing, nothing. No one crossing paths awkwardly or bumping into one another. And in three minutes all of the doors close again and the hall is empty. Her classmates think it's cool. Elizabeth thinks she's going to be sick. The magic is on all of them. They're moving in orderly rows because someone is puppeting them around.

[For Eames]

No luck finding the source during the tour, but Elizabeth breaks off from her class and circles around back behind the building. Once she's sure she's alone, she opens her bag, digs out her phone and a business card. It only had a number on it, and it had seemed so cool when she'd been blitzed, but now it's a little creepy.

She dials the number and waits for someone to answer.

"...This is Elizabeth, the... the witch?" Hard to say out loud in public, but who was around to hear? "How would you feel about breaking into a school this afternoon?"


[For Alex]

Plenty of evidence, but no face to put it to. She's already called Eames once, she's not going to listen to him turn her down over wasting more of his time. It's dark now though, maybe no one is around the classrooms and offices... she just has to get in.

Elizabeth gnaws her lip as she looks through the locked bars of the gate. It's going to be a rough climb on her own, but it's that or just hope that she can catch him when she comes back with help. Not the most solid of plans...

She should have brought help now, but better not to get a guardian or a Maiden involved if they come up empty-handed. So it's up the unadorned bars she goes, apparently...



[Part II, the 15th - Open]

So now what?

Elizabeth sits with her coffee, completing ignoring her course reading and zoning out on the little white spot floating in the middle of the cup. Who does she report a metahuman gone mad to? The Night Council? Will they do anything, or are there bigger things they're concerned with? Certainly not Norrell, he'd drag her over hot coals for even calling Eames, let alone partnering with him briefly. In both cases, Elizabeth believes that eighty-to-one hundred lives being lived under someone else's control should be a priority no matter what the circumstances, but everything in London seemed to be so bogged down in bureaucratic posturing.

...so she's doing something, apparently. By herself? Probably a colossal bad idea, she needed help in Virginia to take on other magic users and it's probably no different in London. But who to ask? She picks up her cup and sips at it, eyes still blank as she flicks through her list of contacts.



[Part III, the 16th - Closed to Lancelot and Simon]

In the end, the best thing to do would be to contact her friends who were guardians. This was the sort of thing they were supposed to do after all... keep order amongst the supernatural of London. But she'd insisted on coming herself, too, even if officially this problem should have been handed off to the Night Council. She hasn't been able to get the images of the girls' unseeing eyes out of her mind, and if she doesn't find closure on this she'll never sleep again.

She waits for Simon and Lancelot outside the gates after dark, her crossbow in a duffle bag on the ground for the moment. Elizabeth hopes they arrive before someone spots her just standing there...

Comments

[tearmeanewone]

Well, he's intrigued enough to ask, at least.

"Fontaine's School for Young Women. In Camden. I think there's only one, anyway."

Though a couple other things with 'Fontaine' on them popped up when she looked for an address prior to the trip. But just the one school, she thinks. She hopes.

[falsify]

First step: Google. The school has pretty good... Well, everything. Great OFSTED reports, great grades, parents love it. No collection of hundreds of teenage girls is ever this consistently well behaved, but he can't find a single complaint or even a less than outstanding comment about the school.

It's definitely suspicious.

"And what's in it for me if I help you out?" Eames asks. He doesn't do anything for charity after all.

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth is patient during the silence, realizing that Eames must have been doing his research before sticking his neck out. Fair enough, fair enough. But the question he asks is a good one-- because Elizabeth is fairly sure she has nothing Eames wants.

"...the knowledge that you freed dozens of lives from exploitative mind control?" Pause. "...that was a joke, you didn't hang up did you? ...you're just silently laughing, right?"

[falsify]

"I'm silently laughing." And shaking his head at the idea of him playing the good Samaritan. What a ludicrous concept. "It looks like there's a cafe near the school. Give me a couple of hours to finish up here, and then I'll come meet you. We can discuss this in person."

[tearmeanewone]

"A couple of hours?" Elizabeth looks around at where she is right now, hovering suspiciously behind a school for children, and realizes a split second later that she's really not in a position to be complaining. She pinches the bridge of her nose and nods.

"Right, okay, I'll meet you there."

[falsify]

Eames hangs up with a casual goodbye, and then a couple of hours later indeed, a teenage girl shows up in the cafe. A girl probably no older than about fifteen, totally nondescript and forgettable, and wearing a Fontaine's uniform. It may be a little alarming, all things considered, to have a girl from the school just sit down opposite, but anyone who's had a conversation or two with Eames can probably recognise the smirk and raised eyebrow.

And if not that, maybe there's the way she says, "Ms. DeWitt," with exactly the same cadence as Eames used on the phone earlier.

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth looks bored and done with her sandwich when she spots the student enter the cafe. She sits up, unsure of how to proceed with this, afraid that this is some kind of emissary from the source of the control. It wasn't as though she had walked away from the school before calling Eames, and she's regretting that right now.

But then she sits, and there's that look on her face, and Elizabeth's name.

"...Eames?"

She feels like an idiot for asking, but she has to ask. He's a fifteen year old girl in a skirt. It's a bit of an image change.

[falsify]

"I was thinking 'Sarah'," the girl says with a thoughtful smile, and a small 'thank you' up at the barista who brings over her hot chocolate. The way her expression changes is like a light switch, from 'shy schoolgirl' back to 'Eames' as soon as the barista's gone back to the counter.

'Sarah' smiles, leaning back in her seat with her drink, "I can be a student by the end of the day, but I've still yet to find out how that benefits me."

[tearmeanewone]

Oh that is uncanny and a little frightening. But, everyone has their skills-- apparently one of Eames' is impersonating school girls.

"Sarah... alright," she says, watching the barista come and go with an awkward I'm-Wrapping-My-Head-Around-This frown. But once they're clear, Elizabeth goes back to their business.

"Right, yes, I was thinking about that after we hung up," she says, scooting forward on her chair, preparing to go into full pitch-mode. "It's a long shot, but if this... person, being, et cetera is controlling this many people, they have to be some kind of powerful magic user or practiced fae. It has to be a teacher, I'm thinking, and teachers have offices. Offices they keep things in. Things that might help them control hundreds of girls.

"...not that I think you're into that kind of thing, but if there's something valuable you want, I will conveniently look the other way while you relieve them of it."

Her father wasn't a saint, neither is she. She needs help, obviously that's not going to come free from anyone.

[falsify]

Makes sense, but there are innumerable ways to control people. Especially when handy things like class registers give you the names of every student in the school. And honestly, Eames has little interest in magically controlling people for more than a free drink every now and then.

But something like that would be exceedingly valuable. If it exists.

"And if there's nothing?" Hypotheticals don't pay the bills, as it were.

[tearmeanewone]

"If there's nothing, you can have my next paycheck for TA-ing Basic Chemistry. Such as it is." But there has to be something right? That much dark magic radiating off a place couldn't just come from the control over the students?

Well, it might very well. But in case it does, she's keeping this transaction strictly monetary. No favors, no offers of support, nothing that could be twisted around. Cash is king, right?

...they had a king in this country, so the turn of phrase should count for double.

[falsify]

The offer gets a laugh out of Eames and an expression of almost mocking that looks decidedly incorrect on such a childlike face. A TA's wage? Why not offer him a Starbuck's giftcard, they're equally useless to him.

"Determined to keep the payment simple hm?" He's fairly certain he could press Elizabeth toward owing him a favour if he really wanted, but fine. He nods, "fair enough. Next time you get paid, the money is mine to do with as I please."

[tearmeanewone]

...hey she had to interview for that job, like a real adult. She's offering him two weeks' worth of coffees, eating out, and used books as far as she's concerned.

"...yes, that's generally how money works..." Elizabeth says carefully. "If there's no magical object. If there is, no check and I can eat something besides instant ramen."

[falsify]

"If there's no magical object, then I get your next payslip. If there is, you keep your wages and I get the object." That's an expression that looks more like it should be on a teenager's face; tired exasperation as Eames dutifully clarifies the terms of their deal. A sigh and rolled eyes too while he's at it. "Happy?"

[tearmeanewone]

"Thrilled."

It's aggravating for him, maybe, but Elizabeth got this fae's card when she was three sheets to the wind and oversharing enough to have her own supermarket tabloid. Maybe she's being just a little overzealous to make up for that hour's worth of indiscretion, but it makes her feel a little bitter.

"...you do that too well, you know. Finish your hot chocolate."

[falsify]

"Okay, pushy." Eames shakes his head and gives the drink a cautious sip to see how hot it is. It's cool enough at least to drink without trouble, and he takes another mouthful before he speaks again. "If I burn my tongue I'm charging you extra."

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth fights not to giggle, but she does. Not over being charged more, but the threat is pretty funny, honestly.

"Alright, alright, I'd rather not have you infiltrating this place with a burnt tongue of all things. I hear it puts a damper on everything, burning your tongue, especially espionage."

[falsify]

"It's quite a distraction," Eames smiles briefly over the rim of the mug as he drains the last of his hot chocolate. No burnt tongues in sight, everyone will be pleased to know.

[tearmeanewone]

"So, obviously you're getting in... like this, what about me? What's your plan?"

Because clearly he's thought about this more than she has, going so far as to look up the uniform of all things. Elizabeth had assumed there would be stealth-related magic involved.

[falsify]

"Ah--" Eames reaches into the tasteful satchel he's left at his feet and pulls out a folder, flipping through it until he finds some handy papers that he passes over toward Elizabeth. All the requisite registration for a student transferring from another school - a Sarah Winters with an older sister by the name of Elizabeth Winters listed as guardian.

He's certainly come prepared. It's almost as if Elizabeth's stumbled right into Eames' actual profession.

"Seeing as this is my first day, it's hardly uncommon to have a family member stick around to speak to teachers and offer a little support."

Unusual, certainly. Especially for a fifteen year-old. But not unheard of.

[tearmeanewone]

She takes the pages and looks through them, frowning as she scans the first page then raising her eyebrows. As she flips through the pages she looks increasingly impressed and stunned. A few hours he'd said-- and he'd produced a uniform and transfer paperwork.

"...so if anybody ever threatens to kick me out of the country, you'll fix it, right?" Kidding, honestly. "Alright, I suppose I could have a sibling I'm overprotective of for a day."

[falsify]

"I can get you indefinite leave to remain if you pay me well enough." He says it absently as he stands, in a manner that suggests there's not a hint of untruth in that statement, and takes the papers so he can slip them back in his bag. Though that does bring an important thing to mind-- Sarah should be American. He's not really willing to take a chance on Elizabeth's ability to fake and maintain a passable accent. If he had to guess, he'd say that's not a skill she has.

Something to keep in mind once they get to the school then. "Shall we? Or do you need a moment?"

[tearmeanewone]

It's sounding like Eames will do just about anything if she pays him enough. Which is probably pretty standard for a lot of people into this kind of document-replication, but to her it's still straight up magic. All of it looked so official...

She hands it back to Eames. "I'm ready. ...been ready since I set foot in that school, the atmosphere is just... creepy," she says, standing up and shouldering her bag.

[falsify]

Well, here goes. Eames smooths down his clothes, making sure to look as presentable as possible, and then looks to Elizabeth with a nod.

"Let's go then."

[tearmeanewone]

"Let's go," she agrees, leading the way out of the cafe and back across the street towards the school. The girls were out in the quad for lunch as Elizabeth and Eames passed through the open front gates, eating and reading in complete and total silence. Elizabeth manages to shove down a shiver as they pass by.

"If you were actually my sister," Elizabeth mutters under her breath. "Like hell would I leave you here."

They pass through the doors and take a detour into an admissions office. "Good morning, I'm here to... finish enrolling my sister. Sarah." Elizabeth smiles and puts her arm around Eames' shoulders. Sisterly affection, what a perfect picture. The man at the front desk looks confused and asks them to wait while he checks his records-- and Elizabeth goes a little rigid. He took care of this too, right? Right...?