InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "did you dust the duck?"

lotte karsten {christine daaé} (still_lotte) wrote in bellumlogs,
@ 2010-05-05 15:10:00

Entry tags:

cheshire cat, christine daaé

Who: Rick and Lotte
What: A running-into
Where: Lobby-stairs-hallways?
When: This afternoon
Warnings: TBD

On a whim to at least fight her fears a bit more, Lotte had headed down to the lobby. Unless she walked by with someone else so far, she’d rushed through, refusing to look at anything, especially the door leading down to the basement and catacombs. A bit foolish, she realized. More than a bit foolish and with the signs up…and the next moon a month away, she couldn’t be too scared to walk into her own building.

She spent a good half an hour with a book in the lobby, forcing herself to remain still in a chair without a panic attack. It started out well enough until her eyes fell on the bullet hole in the wall across from her and the shattered light by the stairs. Her mind escaped her and the copy of Arabian Nights was forgotten in her lap. Of course she’d seen things on the forums – she shut her eyes, trying not to imagine whatever showdown had occurred. It only contributed to her anxiety, making her even more jumpy then when she had come down.

By the time her allotted thirty minutes were up, she was shaking but glued to her chair. She got up eagerly, heading up the stairs intent on getting out of the lobby as soon as possible. She caught a glimpse of the sign-up board and hesitated. After this failure, how could she be that helpful on a watch? The answer was embarrassing and Lotte glanced around, shifting from foot to foot before writing her name on the list.

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takingsides
2010-05-06 02:07 am UTC (link)

Rick had a rough day. The morning had been fine: he'd gone into work, crunched some numbers, confirmed a few alibis and exposed a few lies. Then, around midday, he'd done some invisible reconnaissance and got into some serious trouble. It had been a bar, and he was waiting for a laundering money drop, a connection he needed to know about. Somewhere, he made a slight mistake, and someone brushed his arm, and knew he was there. The bar had been dark anyway, and they hadn't thought much of the fact they couldn't see him. It had been an all-out brawl, swinging fists in the dark, and Rick almost didn't make it out of the tiny room in one piece.

It took effort to keep himself invisible, so he had cleaned himself up at a halfway apartment he kept in cash before returning to Bellum Letale. He still had a few fantastic (and very visible) cuts and bruises, but for the most part he was his cheerful self, and his suit didn't have a thread out of place. He pushed through the front doors, put his hands in his pockets, and began crossing the lobby toward Lotte.

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still_lotte
2010-05-06 02:22 am UTC (link)

She'd turned back from the board, intending to head up the stairs when he heard him come in. There was an automatic tensing, that she couldn't help - and it didn't go away as she saw how beaten he was. Lotte winced despite herself, automatically sympathetic towards him. She couldn't imagine how that felt and... She realized she recognized him from somewhere.

Of course she'd passed people in the hallways before, but she bit her lip. Why couldn't she place him? A minute of staring ocurred, before it clicked. The invisible man - or as she'd guessed towards Evie, maybe a cat.

Before she could stop herself, she called out, "Hey - er, I'm sorry to bother you but...I think we met a month ago." She added, almost as if to prompt his memory, "I think you were invisible?"

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takingsides
2010-05-06 02:46 am UTC (link)

Rick recognized Lotte as she recognized him, and it was obvious when he sighed a little, but offered her a little smile over a split lip as he sidled up to look at what she'd been signing. He leaned forward to eye it and then rocked back on his heels thoughtfully. The sunglasses hid the worst of a black eye, but the color showed purple through his very pale skin over the cheekbone. When he spoke, however, he seemed cheerful enough. "Mm, yes, that was me. I'm sorry if I startled you. Signing up for the Watch, are you?" He said it all in one breath, almost as if in friendly conversation.

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still_lotte
2010-05-06 02:54 am UTC (link)

She stepped out of the way, automatically. (Far be it from her to stop someone from protecting the building.) The book she'd been reading was tugged a bit closer to her chest as she shook her head. "It's fine - I'm too jumpy these days. Everything's making me nervous." A helpless shrug accompanied that.

"I did," she said, frowning slightly. "The more people the better?" It was almost as if she wasn't sure of it herself.

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takingsides
2010-05-06 04:32 am UTC (link)

Rick took a thin metal pen that shone in the dim light out of his inside jacket pocket and wrote his name evenly "RICK AUSTIN / 505" on the appropriate line. He looked back at her as he replaced the pen (clearly a common tool) and pocketed his hands. The badge was on his belt, and he still had the gun in a holster because this suit was his spare he kept at work, and he felt better having it after he got his ass beat to hell. "You're probably right," he said, showing no sign that he should underestimate her assistance on the Watch. "There's enough horrible things happening." The dark glasses were cool as the Cat had not been.

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still_lotte
2010-05-06 04:41 am UTC (link)

From where she stood, she caught sight of the name. There was a moment of frowning as she tried to place that too, before she looked up at him. "You don't know James, do you?"

She nodded, slightly reassured by what he said. "The Full Moon's are making things worse, I think." Everyone was rushing after all, linking things to the fables. Which reminded her. "I - do you know yours?" It seemed a safe way to approach it. "Your fable that is."

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takingsides
2010-05-06 04:50 am UTC (link)

Rick nodded. He had been avoiding James--talking to James, thinking about James, or bedding James--to concentrate on his little invisible difficulties with the Giancoma. Right now he just nodded, casually, and left it at that.

"I'm going to go with the Cheshire Cat," he said, easily enough, staring up at the ceiling for no discernible reason. "I'm certainly not myself." He opened his eyes (not slit pupiled, but certainly emerald green) very wide over the dark glasses, and said, "Speaking of which... you wouldn't mind keeping the invisible thing to yourself, would you? I have a few people who really wouldn't be happy with me." That was sort of an understatement. One of the spies sent for the Giancoma was found a month later, wasted away, with his hands sunk in concrete and the rest of him about ten feet away--since he'd managed to chew through his wrists, but died of blood loss right after that. They weren't nice people.

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still_lotte
2010-05-06 04:55 am UTC (link)

Placing where James had mentioned him was beyond her, but Lotte was sure it hadn't been on the list of names to avoid like Boyd. (Whom she'd talked to anyway in the past.) As a result she was reassured about it and felt better that Christine had run into him versus someone else a month ago.

She didn't say it had been her guess, smiling slightly until he asked her to keep it to herself. Lotte cringed, "I...can try in the future? I may have told someone though." She didn't think Evie was a problem but... "My fable told someone when they were figuring things out." The book was pulled closer to her chest and she winced. "You might want to keep an eye out for him."

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	takingsides 2010-05-06 05:02 am UTC (link)
	His interest sharpened. It was almost a tangible thing. This Cat had claws. He didn't take his hands from his pockets, and the lines of the well-cut suit didn't change, but there was an impression of space as it moved around him, of being closer. He smelled like cinnamon and something burnt and sharp--gunsmoke. "Who is this?" The eyebrows arched over the lenses. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	still_lotte 2010-05-06 05:05 am UTC (link)
	For a moment she wondered if maybe she misremembered about how Rick had been mentioned. It was banished a moment later and Lotte looked away from his sunglasses around the room. There still were a few fliers about and she grabbed one from the bulletin board, passing it over. "It was an accident," she said, honestly. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

takingsides
2010-05-06 05:15 am UTC (link)

He didn't bother berating her about revealing what he could do. What was done was done. Rick was the kind of man that dealt with what was, rather than what could have been or what he would like life to be. "Describe him for me." The flyer did him absolutely no good. Did the unknown poster seriously imagine they were doing anything of use? There was a reason they couldn't find criminals very easily before the time of Pinkerton's mug shots.

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still_lotte
2010-05-06 05:23 am UTC (link)

She did glance around to see if anyone else was nearby. Being this close to the entrance to the catacombs, combined with the simple fact that she didn't want her fable publicized was enough to cause uneasiness. She really didn't want the connection made to her, before she knew who the other man was.

"When he's not his fable he doesn't care," Lotte said, biting her lip. "But I don't know what he looks like then either. Otherwise?" She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "He wears a black mask, usually dresses in black. He's er, pretty recognizable once you've seen him."

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	takingsides 2010-05-07 06:18 am UTC (link)
	"What about height and weight? Was he taller than me? Did he reach out more with his right hand--" here he stretched out a hand, "or his left?" Now the other. The majority of the population were right-handed in this generation, but that didn't stop him from trying to find some distinct feature. "Was his voice lower than mine? Did the mask cover his hair?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

still_lotte
2010-05-07 02:49 pm UTC (link)

Lotte blinked. She hadn't realized this much could go into indentifying someone and her mind went to the other person, rather than Erik for a moment. She brushed it off though - he wasn't a danger to Rick, Erik was.

"Six feet maybe? He's thin - when someone says they eat so little they look like a skeleton-" She gulped, not finishing the sentence. Christine had to fight in order to not think of how he looked. "I didn't notice one hand more than the other. His mask goes high but..not that high." A hand reached towards the top of her forehead and she said, "He really always wears a mask. And his voice..." There were't adequate words for his voice; there never were. She fumbled for something saying, "Dark, deep - there's nothing else like it. You have to be careful with it, because he knows his voice is beautiful..."

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takingsides
2010-05-07 03:57 pm UTC (link)

Rick sighed. His entirely career was pretty much questioning amateurs who didn't have much in the way of memory to begin with. Right now, he was questioning Lotte, and there was a good chance Lotte wasn't even there when this guy was around--it was the girl from the opera. (Such was the extent of Rick's knowledge of Phantom. He did not much care for that kind of culture.)

So right now he had a masked man without a mask, around his height, thin, with a voice in the lower register.

Great. That was only about half the state.

Rick pressed his lips together and the cool distance returned. "Well," he said, "let me know if something else comes up. Or if you see him..." He grinned at her, though it was truly just a gesture, "give me a call." He offered her his business card.

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	still_lotte 2010-05-07 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	She bit her lip, taking the business card. "I feel like there's an official Phantom-Patrol now," she said, shaking her head. "I'm really sorry again - I think it should only be a problem during the Moon though." If he didn't want anything to do with her what would he want with Rick? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	takingsides 2010-05-07 04:09 pm UTC (link)
	Rick very much wanted to know who knew what he could do and what they were likely to do with the information, if anything. His eyes, nearly opaque behind the sunglasses, flicked to the clipboard. "I don't think it's only the Phantom they're worried about." Funny how he didn't say 'we,' he said 'them.' (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

still_lotte
2010-05-07 04:13 pm UTC (link)

It hadn't been what she meant and she shook her head. "No - I've got a list of people who know about er, my story. So when he showed I warned them because I couldn't warn the whole building..." She didn't say she was responsible for the fliers or that she wasn't, mainly because she couldn't have that.

"I think it's because of the other attacks they've got the Watch."

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takingsides
2010-05-07 06:17 pm UTC (link)

Rick looked from her to the flyers and made the assumption anyway. They were a little presumptuous for a little, retiring thing like her, but sometimes women had hidden strength. "I agree with you." Now he turned his head back, speculatively, and his eyes were hidden again. The purple bruise made his pale skin seem nearly translucent. He paused, then said, with a note of farewell, "Well. I suppose I will see you on a Watch, then." He smiled at her. An innocuous one, perfect for the occasion.

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	still_lotte 2010-05-07 06:36 pm UTC (link)
	"Hopefully," Lotte said, a tight smile sent to him. She looked down to her book before heading up the stairs herself to the fifth floor. If she took off a bit quickly, she told herself it was to make up for the fact that she was only climbing five flights now instead of twelve. (Reply to this) (Parent)