Ursula Meyer (adealerinfaust) wrote in poseidonacademy, @ 2007-12-30 10:29:00 |
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Current mood: | awake |
Who: Mulder and Ursula
Doing what: Meeting for cocoa, also, talking.
When: December 28, evening.
Where: Ursula's quad
Warnings: None, really.
Ursula glanced at her comments page and half-smirked before she double checked her appearance. Looking all the part of a twenty-five year old college student, she closed the lid of her notebook computer and then headed into the quad's common room, making sure to lock her bedroom door behind her. While her potions and ingredients were well hidden, she didn't need or want anyone deciding to play detective. She looked around the common room, saw that it was empty and then moved into the kitchen, where she began making hot cocoa.
Adapting to life on land had been interesting- she still had a few problems, mainly with the potions she used wearing off sooner than she expected, which had lead to a few slip ups with her voice, but she could correct that easily with a trip back to the ocean to collect stronger ingredients. The businesswoman side of her hated being at the campus, since she had yet to make a deal with anyone, but she reasoned that they would come to her soon enough, and then she could get back into the swing of things. Idiots willing to sign away things in exchange for a short term gain were plentiful in Atlantica, why would it be any different here? She hummed a bit as she finished making the two cups, picked both of them up and reentered the common room, taking a seat onto one of the couches and setting the cups onto the coffee table in front of her. This meeting would be interesting for a lot of reasons. The Byangoma sat perched on the couch opposite her, chirping a bit before it mentioned the “brown haired man” again. Ursula shot the bird a frown and spoke, her voice still matching her appearance. “He'll be here soon.”
Mulder double checked his gun. Still loaded. Not that he expectd trouble, and he certainly wasn't planning to enter a student's room and just shoot her without questions... but he had to expect the unexpected. He was dealing with a potentially insane entity here. He didn't know if it was the real Ursula, but some demon mimicking her was bad enough. He headed over to her quad, finding it easily enough. Getting used to this place wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be, so far. He'd also taken a few of those patrols hunting for aliens, which also helped get him adjusted. He knocked on the door and then waited, with a call of, "It's Mulder!"
Ursula glanced towards the door before she stood up and called "Coming!". She headed to the door and opened it, looking at him for a minute. Well, his picture matched the ones she'd seen on the network. She gave him a bemused grin and then stepped aside. "Come in, come in. I was wondering when you'd be getting here."
At Mulder's voice, the bird snapped to attention and began chirping again. Ursula frowned and then indicated the bird. "And this would be the bird I told you about. Maybe now he'll be able to do whatever it is he does." Ursula wasn't very interested in hearing whatever it was the bird had to say. She walked back to the couch, took a seat and then nodded to the two cups. "Help yourself. We don't have any marshmallows, though, but it should still be edible."
"I'm sure it's still good. Thank you," Mulder replied with a grin. "And hello to you," he addressed the bird, as strange as it seemed to do so. Inwardly, he was only mildly concerned. Should he accept food or beverages from someone who could potentially turn him into a quivering green piece of seaweed? Or even someone who believed they could? He turned his attention to the bird, who was seemingly the reason why he'd come. But all the while, he kept looking back to Ursula, who really was, for all intents and purposes, a normal-looking student. There wasn't anything about her or her quad that seemed out of the ordinary, as far as he could see.
"Something wrong?" she asked as she picked up one of the cups and blew on it before she took a drink. She sat the cup back down and regarded the bird as it flew over to the table and landed in front of Mulder. The bird chirped a few times as it moved its left wing out and then brought it towards its chest in an attempt at a bow. Ursula arched an eyebrow and watched as the bird began to speak, it's voice matching it's appearance.
"You- the one I've been searching for! I have a very important message to give you; In two days time, you and someone you care for very much will become closer, and through very good circumstances. Your cat will also probably destroy the pile of papers you keep on your desk again." The fortune finished, the bird busied itself with grooming its wings.
Ursula eyed the bird for a moment before she gave a laugh and then looked at Mulder. "Well, aren't you lucky?"
Mulder raised his eyebrows. Sure, anyone could have guessed the thing about the cat- Max had practically made an Olympic sport out of paper demolishing. But the other thing... someone he cared for getting closer? There was only one person it could mean, if they were talking... caring for like that. He had made some good friends here, but Scully remained the one he trusted above all else. "That's not bad. Here I was bracing myself for news about the upcoming apocalypse or something along those lines." He laughed and then looked at Ursula. "Thanks a lot for letting me know it was here. I've never met one before... I guess it got lost along the way." Or she'd captured it for some reason? But that didn't make a lot of sense, unless... she'd wanted to draw him here? No, probably not.
The bird blinked. "The apocalypse won't be happening for several hundred years." it answered before it took to the air. "Your trials will continue, but things will work out." it said simply before it circled around the table for a minute and then flew towards the door, addressing Ursula.
"Open the door, she of the water." Ursula started and glared at the bird. If looks could kill, the animal would have been dead and buried about five times over. She stood and moved to the door, opening it.
"There." The bird regarded the both of them and chirped a few more times before it flew outside and took to the sky, flying away. Ursula shut the door after the animal and muttered something beneath her breath about "stupid all-knowing animals" before she headed back to the couch and took a seat.
"You're welcome- from the way things were going, I had the option of getting you to show up, or dealing with that thing constantly asking about you." Ursula expected the bird's little comment would lead to a round of Twenty Questions and she briefly wondered if she could explain away what was said without too many problems. She picked up her cup and took another drink, more than a little annoyed at the turn of events.
Mulder tried to keep a blank expression, and to his credit, he managed. But a round of ohshitohshit ran through his head anyway. Now that he had further confirmation, he was a little unsure how to proceed. It was like the succubus scenario all over again... different, sure, but one thing remained the same: he couldn't do anything to stop her unless he had evidence of a crime occurring. He'd have to get to what she was doing and expose it somehow. "I understand. It would have kept your whole quad awake all night. I guess while I'm here I might as well learn more about your story. That’s a habit of mine." He took a seat himself and eyed her curiously, the same way he did anyone who he was on to. It was that half-amused look that dared the other to keep up their game. He would wait and play his card when the right time came. "Everyone has something interesting in their background, so what about you?"
"And we couldn't have that." she replied as she finished her cocoa, sat the cup down and regarded him. This entire thing could go quite a number of ways- she could lie, hope that he bought it and forfeit any business from here because of the attention it could call, or she could give him just enough information to keep him satisfied. She weighed the scenarios in her head for a minute and then noted the look he was giving her. She partially recognized it, as she often got a similar expression when she knew she had a window of opportunity with a client. Well. There was no point in denying the inevitable any further. He wasn't the first curious person she'd dealt with.
"I could ask you the same thing, really, but why bother with that right now?" She idly flicked some lint off of her shirt and went back to the conversation at hand. "From that look on your face, you think you know something." She crossed her legs at the knee and gestured with her right hand. "So let's hear it, sweetheart: What is it you think you know?"
A slightly incredulous look crossed his face at her referring to him as 'sweetheart'. This wasn't what it looked like, though, right? Nothing quite as it seemed. "Ok, I know that there's more to you than meets the eye, that you seem fond of secrets, or so our first network conversation led me to believe... and that you have a secret now that you'd rather I not get ahold of. Perhaps something damaging enough to drive you out of this school. Who knows what it is... Maybe that you're concealing your identity somehow." He took a long sip of cocoa. "Maybe something else. I'm not going to draw any conclusions until I have the full truth straight from you. That's all I'm really after." Another pause, another sip. "We could start by you telling me about your connection to water."
Well that wasn't expected. She gave a chuckle and then began to answer. "I'm a fan of it- I'm quite the swimmer. Concealing my identity? Not at all- Ursula is the name I was born with, and 'Meyer' came from my parents, obviously." A small lie, since she actually didn't have a last name, but most merpeople didn't. "And I'm not fond of secrets, but they have their uses. But what things don't, really?" She half considered inviting him back when her potions were due to wear off when the realization hit her that they were due to wear off today. Inwardly cursing her lack of longer-effect ingredients, she shot a glance to her hand and noted it still looked normal. Her voice also still sounded the same, and she was pretty sure if her hair had gone white, Mulder would have noticed.
Still, it wouldn't do her any good if she suddenly de-transformed. One, she wasn't near the ocean so she'd be at a disadvantage and two, she wasn't sure how Mulder or the rest of the campus would react to suddenly having a forty year old merwoman instead of a twenty-five year old human on their campus. She stood and headed towards her bedroom door with a call of "Be a dear and excuse me for a moment, I'll be back in a few minutes." She produced the room key, unlocked the door and darted inside, closing the door behind her and re locking it as soon as she'd passed the threshold.
"Ok," Mulder replied as she excused herself. "When you've got to go..." he muttered jokingly, before turning back to the anxious, uncertain feeling he'd been having. He hadn't noticed anything amiss about her just then, so had no reason to feel suspicious... but he did, anyway. She'd taken off so abruptly that he had to assume she'd gotten uncomfortable at his questioning. Something about her answers had been a lie. He weighed and evaluated everything she'd just told him, carefully. She struck him as someone who could tell a good lie, and pull it off. Getting restless- and extremely curious- Mulder got up to pace around the room. Maybe even out here in the living room area, he could find something of interest. All it would take was one slip, one unusual thing left out where it shouldn't be.
Ursula, her skin now its usual shade of purple, frowned and made her way to her dresser, opening a drawer and pulled out a small collection of glass bottles, each labeled to what it did. She uncorked the first one labled 'Skin' and drank the contents in one gulp, shuddering a bit as her skin broke into goosebumps before it went back to her human skintone. She followed with the other bottles ('Voice', 'Hair' and 'Above water') and examined herself in her mirror, saw that she looked human again and headed back into the common room.
"There that's bette-" She froze mid sentence when her actual voice reached her ears and cleared her throat. Sometimes the refreshers would take a few extra minutes to kick in, and she hoped that happened soon. She made her way back to the couch and took a seat.
That made Mulder sharply turn his head toward her. Ok. Either he really had gone crazy, or that voice had sounded distinctly like the sea witch. As far as he remembered. He hoped Scully didn't think less of him as a man when he got an overwhelming urge to watch Little Mermaid later on. At present, though, he went back to his own seat to join her, hot cocoa almost completely forgotten. He did pick the cup up after some hesitation, wanting something else to focus on. "Are you having a problem?" he wondered, while he stared curiously.
"No, not at all." she answered, her voice now matching her appearance. She'd wanted to snap that the problem she was having was seated across from her, but why bother stirring the waters? She picked up her cup and headed into the kitchen, where she dropped it off into the sink before she walked back into the common room and sat back down. "Now, back to the topic at hand: You mentioned you think I have a secret that I don't want you finding out. Surprise me, and tell me what you think that secret is." She wasn't about to de transform in front of him, and with the refreshers in place, it would take quite a bit of effort to manage to do it anyway, but she figured she could at least humor him for the time being. If he got too noisy, she would handle it accordingly.
Well, fine, he might as well lay his card out on the table. Mulder figured he had nothing to lose. He was armed, and he had handled things like her before. Right? He eyed her carefully. "I have reason to suspect your motives in coming here aren't what they seem. That you're only posing as a college student to gain new clientele. That you intend to make outrageous bargains with them in exchange for something from them... perhaps a very dangerous bargain from their end." He was really going now, and getting worked up as he went along. "I don't think you're even human."
Ursula eyed him for a moment, taking in what he said before she gave a smirk. "And I don't think you know what you're talking about, if we're going to be perfectly honest with each other. Outrageous bargains? Hardly!" She gave a dismissive flip with her right hand. With the gauntlet being thrown, Ursula figured she may as well get the entire thing over with. She was dealing with a human not with Triton. "There's nothing dangerous about it." Which there wasn't- it was just that the deals turned out to be Faustian in nature. It wasn't her fault that the majority of Atlantica had never read Goethe.
Ha, she'd admitted it. ...Oh wait. Shit. She was admitting to it. Of course, it stood to reason- the crazier the theory, the more true it tended to be in Mulder's world. He shook his head. "How can you say that, when your bargains could potentially wreck people's lives..." He set his drink down and leaned forward, focused entirely on her. "Or do you think you're entitled to diplomatic immunity when you're up on dry land, Ursula?" Another significant glance was cast her way. "I'm going to be the one to tell you here and now, I'll be watching you. Carefully. If anything happens that causes trouble, I'll be forced to act."
"Diplomatic immunity? No, but let me put things into perspective for you, since you don't seem to understand how things work. All of the people who come to see me did it of their own free will, and I helped them. That's it. They were made aware of the consequences if they didn't uphold their part of the deal, and it's hardly my fault that sometimes they didn't follow through. What kind of business woman would I be if I gave someone the chance to back out on something they agreed to and signed for? The contracts are legal and binding, and they fully understood that when the deals were made." At his comment about watching her, she gave a laugh. "Oh, that's precious. Listen to me, dear, you may think you're the first person I've dealt with who's gone on the crusade, but you're not. When you can do something besides throw around vague threats, then I'll be concerned. And I'll tell you this now:" Her eyes narrowed. "If you so much as breathe a word to anyone else on the campus about what I really am, I'll make very sure you regret it." her eyes went back to normal and she sat back.
"It's taken me quite some time to get settled here, and I won't be chased off by the likes of you."
This put him in a bit of a fix. It wasn't like he hadn't received his share of threats during his time in the Bureau, but he still had to treat it seriously enough. Just tread lightly for now and find some way around it later. He would be writing up a file, and nothing could stop him from doing that. Telling Scully was another possibility, once he found a way to explain it to her without being committed. "All right. Your secret will stay with me." Mulder was tempted to flash his badge, but it wouldn’t mean anything to her. "Just know that my warning isn't empty. I can and will back it up if I have to. I won't interfere unless I know there's trouble." Damn straight he'd still keep an eye out, too.
"Good." Ursula answered, satisfied. "I'd hate to have to do something rash." Who was she kidding? She'd love to have an excuse, but she really didn't need that going against her. As far as anyone else knew, she was a normal college student who just happened to like the ocean. Nothing more, nothing less, and it wouldn't help things if she threw magic spells around, or turned one of the staff members into a living clump of seaweed.
"As far as trouble, please. Things will be perfectly fine."
Sure they would. Mulder eyed her suspiciously and then nodded. "I'm sure they will be." He had what he'd come for, and he really did feel better knowing he could keep an eye on her, all threats aside. It made him uneasy to deal with her, but her normal-student look still kept throwing him off. "And I'm sure we'll stay in touch, too." Yeah, she was definitely going on his list of suspicious characters. "Now, unless you have any other fortune telling birds hiding around here, I think I'll head out. I don't want to overstay my welcome." Or extend his welcome. Permanently. In a fishtank.
"No, I think that was the only one, and I'd hate to keep you from doing something important. By all means." she stood and moved to the front door, opening it for him. Her human appearance had that effect, but that was how she'd planned it. She hadn't felt like applying to be a teacher, so being a student seemed the next logical step, which just happened to include altering her appearance and age, albeit temporarily.
"Oh, I'm sure we will. Unless the school's network suddenly vanishes or something absurd like that."
"I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me over." Mulder somehow forced himself to smile before he headed out. Talk about a real learning experience. But he'd confirmed a theory, gotten closer to the truth... and now had a handle on what would have erupted into a campus-wide disaster. All in all, a success. So why did he still feel so uneasy about the whole matter? Oh, yeah. Because it was the Sea Witch in disguise here on campus. It didn't get much crazier than that.
"You're welcome!" she called before she closed the door after him and rolled her eyes so hard she was surprised they didn't fall out of her head. She had another laugh, cleaned up the remaining cup and headed back into her room, where she closed the door behind her. This would at least keep her amused for a while, in between finding new clients and observing things, anyway. She grabbed a note pad and a pen, sat at her desk and began working on a list of fresh ingredients to pick up on her next trip back to the sea. She'd need them.