undergrounds | start again in the month of may

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start again in the month of may

1 // "office hours" // mid-may // open to hillingdon

Arthur never thought he'd be in a position where he felt obligated to defend Sylvia Redbright from media slander. It's not even like he has to campaign for her, but if he managed to get cornered into a conversation about it, she is the lesser of two evils and still one of the biggest pieces on the board when it comes to dismantling Daybreak. He thinks it was a good move not to remain neutral like they have in the past, but it still manages to bug him.

Either way he's spending more time at Hillingdon House lately, realizing that his sprawling collection of research is too much to keep at his apartment. He's taken over one of the smaller rooms and sometimes he just sits there staring at a wall plastered with news articles and photocopied pages of old arcane books. He's still around to help give the hunters a bit of structure when and if they need it but mostly he's obsessing over the Daybreak problem and what exactly he can even do about it from his position.

Still, he'll try not to be too disgruntled if he gets interrupted from his long bouts of silence interspersed with cliche Edith Piaf "thinking music." His door is open, after all.

2 // he's still a hunter // may // open to all

The guy still has to eat, which means he's still taking bounties when he can get them. Islington shaping up has been a bit bad for business but it's good for humans in general, so he tries not to complain, but this does mean that he's taking a lot of low energy reconnaissance jobs instead of the more exciting ones he's used to. That means a lot of time at coffee shops and diners staking out offices and homes and various other places that are boring to watch. Clearly he needs a distraction.

(ooc: hit me up if you want a different/personalized prompt!)

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Rorschach doesn't so much come walking through the door as he does phase through the wall. There's no boundaries when it comes to being a ghost. He doesn't materialize right away, though Arthur may feel a cold spot suddenly in the room. He gazes at the wall with the news articles on them, putting together pieces in his mind.

When he does eventually manifest, he taps a finger on the news article proclaiming that Sylvia and Millicent worked together to get her elected. He'd learned a long time ago not to believe everything that the consumerist media came out with. Then he looks at Arthur, voice with its usual deep growl to it. "Something's not right."

Arthur breathes in sharply and says "Jesus" under his breath before he regains composure and looks at Rorschach over his shoulder. No one but a ghost could sneak up on him like this, so he's not exactly used to it.

"No," he says after a moment. "It's not."

At least he's scaring people like a proper ghost should.

"Always corruption in government." Rorschach has always been paranoid about too much power in the hands of the wrong people. It had never worked in America and it didn't work now. He taps the newspaper article again. "Smells like something is rotting."

Arthur shakes his head, looking back at his wall with a frown. "Usually it's Sylvia, but not this time. The timing's too obvious."

"Very convenient timing, this--" He points at the news article and then points at the one proclaiming Samantha the Mother of Witches. "--and this." He's not saying he's entirely against it happening, considering everything that had been happening recently, but he didn't like the way it was unfolding.

For some reason, it itches at the back of his mind. Something important was being covered up, but that wasn't it. It was something he had forgotten, an echo that said he'd been witness to this before. Covering up something for the supposed 'greater good.' What was it? He couldn't remember. "What are we going to do about it?" That's right, 'we'. Rorschach considers himself involved now.

"I think we need a little more information before we do anything," Arthur says, looking down at the desk where there are a few scattered papers and his laptop. He's so frustratingly far away from this one with no connections in Daybreak to provide him with some perspective.

Rorschach walks over to the desk. It's moments like this he wishes he could still slam his fist down for emphasis. "You want information? I'll get you information." Quite a long speech for the laconic ghost. He usually only said about three words at any given time.

He's quite serious about the offer to help. Aside from salt and running water, there's not much that can keep him out of anywhere he wants to get to. It makes him the perfect spy.

"Without getting caught?"

He doesn't sound impatient, not yet. Just a little tired of having the same thoughts and conversations over and over again. "Even if witches aren't great at sniffing out ghosts, they have fae that they could be using as watchdogs."

"Yes." Rorschach's gone this long in his unlife without ending up getting stuck in the wrong situations he couldn't get out of.

He waves away the concern regarding fae. "Usually don't notice ghosts unless they're hungry." And any of them who tried to chow down on Rorschach was going to find he was a hell of a lot harder to take down than he initially looked.

Daryl hadn't been happy with how things were going in Richmond for a very long time now. He'd done his best getting some of the younger or more bored members of the clan to help him patrol the territory a couple nights a week. They didn't have as much a pressure to do so with Jean-Claude in charge of Islington, at least not for a couple months. But with Daybreak's new leader acting out the way she has toward the fae and the general dismissal most witches had towards Shifters, life in the territory had been growing more and more stressful and worrisome. If the witches felt they could do what they were with the fae, what was to keep them from eventually deciding that Shifters were perfectly good targets useful only for bolstering their magic, too?

He was glad Faolan had taken the stand he had, but it wasn't nearly enough in his eyes. Something more needed to be done. But Daryl didn't feel comfortable going to Faolan on this. Not with all the shit going down with the Night Council lately.

That meant Arthur if he was going to go to anyone in 'leadership'.

Daryl knocked lightly on the doorframe, "Hey. Got a minute?"

Arthur is lost in thought when Daryl arrives, but he's just going around and around in circles in his head, and he's grateful for the distraction. He may not act it, glancing at the man and taking a deep breath as he prepares for human interaction, but it's at least a change of pace.

"Yeah," he says, sounding tired. "Sure. What's up?"

Daryl stepped inside and moved to stand behind a chair. He let his hands rest on the chairback, squeezing it it some in his nervousness, but doing his best to not let it show anywhere else.

"Richmond," he started and had to stop almost immediately. Wording this right was going to be a bit of a challenge when the topic got him so worked up in the first place. "Daybreak's got that center built out there. Anyone above my paygrade planning on doing anything about it that ain't just barkin' to make noise?"

"If they are, it's above my paygrade too."

Arthur sounds tired when he speaks, sighing at the wall like he's finally starting to accept that it's not going to give him anything new.

"I doubt it though - our default here is neutrality. We don't have much business telling witches what they can and can't do."

"Bullshit.

Daryl growled low and started to pace, "Daybreak's been holding that territory for the last year and all the shit that's gone down in it, all the people they ignored that got hurt, not a single inch of Richmond deserves to be under their thumb. Hell, me and mine's been doin' more the last six months to keep the people there safe than anything Daybreak's done."

"That doesn't make it yours," Arthur says, not sharp but there's a level of impatience in his voice to suggest he doesn't like Daryl's tone. He waits a beat, looking back at his wall of papers and sighing.

"The witches still run things in Richmond. I want them out too, and I want that center shut down, but we operate in a specific way."

"Yeah we sit with our thumbs up our ass and do nothing." Daryl's pacing continued as his tone grew more agitated, "How 'bout instead of waitin' for shit to get worse over there, we stop it? We make Richmond ours."

"If we get involved it means we have an agenda, and then we become a target," Arthur says, noting Daryl's pacing out of the corner of his eye. He has a gun, but it's stowed away safely right now, unloaded. "We're not organized enough to open ourselves up to that."

"Of course we have an agenda. Keeping ourselves and our people safe and right now, with that eyesore out there, we ain't doing that." He sneered a bit, disgust and disappointment in equal measure on his face before pointing in a wide arc that vaguely indicated Arthur and Faolan's office. "Y'all might not have your shit together, but I've had patrols out there for months and we ain't had no problem with being more organized that a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off."

Arthur clenches his jaw in an attempt not to tell Daryl to get out. He sees where the man is coming from, but it doesn't change his own stance, and his voice gets louder and sharper as he responds.

"So when they come to take it back, we'll be ready to defend? In Bromley they had werewolves fighting for them, and for all we know the vampires might be on their side too. Samantha knows how to make friends and she might decide to hit us back harder if we push her out of her Innovation Center right after its grand opening."

"Vampires ain't with 'er," Daryl said a touch too fast. It wasn't that he knew for a fact Jean-Claude wouldn't back her, it was that he trusted the man wouldn't. Wanted to o believe it.

He paused and went quiet for a moment, clearly thinking hard before he continued in a much more cautious and uncertain tone, "What if I could get Islington to back us?"

Arthur shakes his head in doubt. "We'd need them to back us long term, because even if we're in a good position to take Richmond now, it's the backlash we have to worry about. You could try, but the fact that half of us make our money hunting them down might create a bit of an obstacle."

"That's business and Jean-Claude knows it. We could offer ta relax the kill on sight rule for our territories so long as they ain't eatin' no one. Might be enough for now. Least 'til we know we can keep it ourselves. Couple months, maybe."

Edited 2017-05-22 15:07 (UTC)

Arthur levels Daryl with a thoughtful but hard look for a moment. A couple months might not be enough; if they put an expiration date on any kind of deal like that then they'll definitely have to take care of Samantha before it's up, but Daryl's determined to make this happen. "I can't stop you from doing this," he says, lower in volume than before, "and I'm not going to sit back and let the witches kill any of ours or our allies if you do. I'm just telling you that if it were up to me, I'd wait until we can play it safer."

Daryl snorted, frustrated and a little disgusted, "I been waitin' for a 'safer' time since November. Ain't gonna be one. Rather nip it in the bud now than let them dig in there further."

Arthur looks away from him, frustrated but keeping it cold rather than letting his temper get away with him.

"You better have good connections in Islington."

His head dropped for a second before he nodded, looking a little small and now slightly unsure of himself. But he'd already thrown it out there, might as well double down.

"Yeah, I do," he answered, voice confident as he turned and headed out the door. Just past the threshold, he glanced back and asked idly, almost as an after thought (though it was far from it), "How long you think Faolan's gonna be able to keep balancing that loyalty of his 'tween us and the Council?"

Arthur doesn't look over at him. He just clenches his jaw, recalling his meeting with Faolan when he first found out the man was a Guardian. It still makes him uncomfortable and he's careful with his words around Faolan, despite the fact that he otherwise likes him.

"Long as he gets enough pressure from both sides," he says plainly.

Daryl nodded, letting out a soft 'mmhmm', and left. The problem, and he was pretty sure they both knew it, was that most of Hillingdon was just hands-off enough not to put the pressure where it needed to be.

It has taken her some time to ease into living in a new city, but that always happened whenever she moved around with her family. It had made Allison reluctant to form any sort of connections and lay down any roots. Her first month in London saw her keeping her head down, making new friends. Last month's shenanigans, however, have made her pay even more attention. Perhaps she ought to involve herself more in the supernatural community than she had previously thought.

"Hey – hi," she greets upon finding Arthur in Hillingdon House. Without her father around, she's feeling a little aimless. Best talk to someone who knows what's going on. "Are you free?"

It's hard to tell how old Allison looks at first glance, but Arthur knows she's young, and young people in this business always make him a bit wary. Too often they have something to prove.

Thankfully none of that translates to his expression, and he turns to her when she speaks with his eyebrows raised in mild curiousity before he tilts his head in invitation. "Sure," he says, "come in."

He isn't wrong about that. It's always complicated behind the scenes and Allison has yet to divulge much information other than her main reasons why she's always battle ready, even when visiting the wax museum.

"Cool," Allison exhales when she enters the room, one boot after the other, leaning against the doorway awkwardly with her arms crossed over her denim jacket. "I'm just – I've been pretty much on my own for a while. Like, my allegiance is here, obviously, but I haven't checked in as much as I should regularly."

Arthur lets out a dry laugh. "It's not like we keep attendance," he says, raising an eyebrow at her and wondering exactly what she means. He doesn't want to scare her off, but it's not like he's ever had a knack for being nice. Or dealing with young people. There are just some pockets of social interaction that he's not good at and has accepted that he's not good at.

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start again in the month of may

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