Summary:Koa is reviewing some documentation when in walk a brunette and a blonde Log Info:Storyteller: koa-turner |
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Beanstalk and Jack is a cutely named alchohol friendly coffee bar that for most people is just a place where you can get 'Bean and Jack' which is to say whiskey and coffee. It's hard to find people who know of it though. It's kind of obscure and foot traffic tends to flow past it rather than into it. This is despite it being in a pretty good neighborhood overlooking some nice open plazas where there IS lots of foot traffic.
The reason for this is of course that the places is warded. It tends to be a quiet hangout for the odd and magically inclined and is coincidentally a good spot for people watching - be they specific people or just people in general.
Koa Turner is off duty, sitting at one of the tables by the window of the long and slightly irregularly shaped dining area. He's got an Irish Coffee in front of him, still hot despite it having been there for the beter part of twenty minutes. Also at his table is a small stack of papers, some of them not written in English that all seem to deal with archeology in Egypt.
Despite the relatively large space there aren't as many tables here as one might think and they're mostly occupied. In fact the two best chairs available in the house right now are AT Koa's table.
Illyana Rasputina is only recently back on Earth, and before that she was mostly up in Westchester. She's not all that familiar with the interesting spots of New York City. She's never been here before, but it pinged her magical senses and so she pushes in, looking around.
The blonde is dressed similarly to the last time Koa and Keiko saw her. Lots of black leather and silver accents in the form of chains and skulls and pentacles. Given she just walked in, it's unlikely that the arcane symbols are entirely for show. No little basket this time, though.
Illyana draws a deep breath, taking in the scent of coffee and her gaze sweeps the room before she bothers to look towards the menu. Her gaze narrows a bit as she recognizes Koa.
Keiko avoids places like this, at least she tries to. She'd not been kidding when she'd told Koa - several times - she just wanted to keep her head down.
But work is work and the proprietor of the establishment had offered extra to get her there today. It's a dusty asiatic woman in long sleeves that steps out from the back. "Alright, Martin. That door is a good as new, just try not to use it as a step next time, mmmm?"
Turning, bag in hand, she pauses when she makes out the blonde. And rolls her eyes when she makes out Koa.
Koa looks up when the door opens and quirks a brow when he sees the dark clad woman looking like she's going to a heavy metal concert. That's the woman from the park, he remembers. The one doing… horticulture? He notes the lack of plants today so it must have just been a one night thing. That, or, well, he supposes that this isn't a good place to look for plants. If that plant is not coffee. And you don't want it in drinkable form.
He waves a small wave in greeting to the blonde just as Keiko comes out from the back. Now Keiko he knew was here. He'd heard her voice and knew he was in for an eyeroll when she came out. This is not strengthening his case about not following her around.
"Let me give you a drink at least for your time." The proprietor is saying. "You can sit and enjoy it with Koa over there. He doesn't bite."
Clearly Martin does not know her history - brief though it is - with Koa.
Who just flashes her a smirk.
"Hello Miss Kurita. And hello Miss… don't think I caught your name actually."
Come to think of it Koa doesn't think the blonde threw it.
Determining that there's no immediate threats, mostly in the form of someone looking to take exception to her presence, Illyana makes her way to the counter so she can order some coffee. With room for lots of cream.
The dark-clad blonde collects her coffee and turns in time to hear the proprietor say Koa doesn't bite. "Well what's the fun in that then?" She says, her tone a calm murmur. She moves over to add coffee and sugar to her drink and then heads over towards the open chair with the best view. "If you had, I'd be impressed."
"You'll be paying me too, I hope, Martin." Keiko raises a brow at the man. The look she turns on Koa is so very, very flat. "You don't think he will? What about me biting him?" Koa's seen at least some of her tattooes in action. He knows very well that some can.
"I'll take the drink though, thank you. I've some time before my next job." Working for ones self has some advantages at least.
"I didn't get your name either. Just that you were a gardener." That's to Illyana and she knows damn well, the blonde isn't a gardener at all.
"Most things I bite don't wind up liking it too much." Koa snorts quietly. He moves his stack of papers slightly to make more room for the blonde. Several of them are written in arabic, but a couple of them appear to be either photocopies or transcriptions of walls covered in heiroglyphs or clay tablets covered in cunaeiform.
"New in town?" That's to the blonde. "How'd your horticultural lesson go the other night?" It really was quite the impressive collection of clippings she had though it was equally clear that she was trying to identify them. He says horticulture though because he hadn't seen the book she had.
"Of course. The drink is on the house. Least I can do." And yes there is an envelope of cash. Easier to pay Keiko in cash really. Martin himself makes Keiko her drink and hands it to her.
Keiko's question gets a broad grin. "You biting me? Or your pets? I'm not entirely certain anyone involved would appreciate it though. I would like to remain unbit for now if its all the same to you, Miss Kurita."
He takes a sip of his drink. Still hot. How Martin does that is a minor wonder. "You DO seem to get around though, don't you."
"That sounds like a bad pickup line." Illyana remarks in an off-hand manner when Koa asks if she's new in town. She sips at her coffee and helps herself to looking at some of the papers he has strewn about, turning them so she can look at them a bit better.
As Keiko and Koa seem to be doing a bit of verbal sparring, she doesn't answer either of the questions presented to her or bother to respond to the insinuation she's a gardener. And she still hasn't given her name.
Cash is good. With any luck, it will keep Keiko off the Government radar for a little bit longer.
"You're too little to bite anything seriously." she snarks back to Koa. It's a poor line but that's what it is. With Illyana being enigmatic … or is it mysterious, there's little to say there either.
"Still believe the attack on the Embassy wasn't just a prank?" She indicates the papers now she can see them.
Koa rolls his eyes slightly at the lack of response. It's not unusual for beings of magic to not want to give their NAME but they usually like to be known all the same. Or perhaps it's just that he only deals with the ones who have big egos.
"Bad pickup lines are the only ones I have, sadly. But no wasn't trying to do that." He doesn't interfere with the blonde when she starts looking at his papers. Some of them seem to be reports on artifact shipping and smuggling. But others, the more interesting scans, all speak of Apep or various other gods of death and darkness. Several of these… might possibly be incantations of some kind. Incomplete incantations but incantations all the same.
"One does not attack Asgardians with a weapon that invokes a death god as a prank." Koa says quietly to Keiko. "And if one does, one should be taken in anyway."
"Anything interesting there?" Koa says, looking back to the blonde.
Illyana Rasputina moves pages around, arranging them with a thoughtful frown. She's quiet while Keiko and Koa talk and doesn't say anything until Koa speaks to her. A finger gestures at the pages. "Where's the missing page?" She finally looks up, looking around for a pen or pencil, making a gesture with one hand to mime writing as she does so.
Keiko can't read what's on the papers nor does she have the magical aptitude to know what's going on. When Martin brings her drink out she accepts it and shrugs.
"You're the Agent, Agent Turner. What would I know? I'm just a handy person who happened to be in the wrong place at the … right … time. Or maybe it was the wrong time."
Koa finds a pen and gives it over to the blonde woman with no name. "Those are the only pages I have. You can tell one is missing? Not just a flower picker then, are you?"
Egyptian wall art like that can sometimes be pretty severely damaged. And, more frequently, the people who are taking these pictures don't know what is significant and what isn't. So you might get a shot of the historical record NEXT to the incantation but an incomplete incandation. Either of those could have been the case here.
Turning to Keiko he explains a bit. "They're from Egypt, those cans. From a recent excavation. We took those files into our archives when we realized it wasn't just the usual inscritpions about Ra defeating Apep. It was more of an… exhortation for Apep to consume the light. Sounds familiar, yeah?" Which is why he had been studying it.
It might also sound familiar to Keiko for other reasons. More personal ones.
Illyana Rasputina gives Koa another long look as Keiko calls him 'agent'. She accepts the pen and then points out, "Not a lot of flowers at night."
Flipping over one of the pages that she's not as interested in, Illyana starts to make notes from what she can make out from the other pages. Heiroglyphics aren't really her thing, but spells of evil and darkness are and she knows how you build spells as well.
Finally Illyana thinks to ask, "Why do you have this?"
Keiko screws up her nose at Koa's explanation. "It sounds familiar, but the Egyptians did that sort of thing…" He can see pale just a little bit, though.
"There's enough flowers at night, if you know where to look. A number only bloom in the dark or the moonlight." Some do. Some is a number, right?
"A prank was played on the Asgardian Embassy was attacked the other day. Whoever the prankster was, they thought it would be a hoot to try and eat one of the gods light. I didn't get any of their names. But two were brothers."
Keiko, it seems, refuses to engage deeply in any of this.
"It wasn't a prank." Keiko is REALLY into that explanation. She saw what it was. Those shadow beasts she fought probably would have been an issue for any single Asgardian except for maybe Baldur himself. Or… Thor, possibly. "A serpent big enough to have leveled the building is no prank either. If the streets hadn't been cleared people could have gotten killed. Why do you think that would be a joke?"
To be fair some tricksters would find that funny… but he's fairly sure the resident Asgardian trickster wasn't involved with this.
"Plants then." Koa responds to Illyana. "And I have it because someone was using magic like this recently. I'm wondering where they might have gotten it and seeing if that might have give me a clue to who it is."
He leans over to look at her work and blanches slightly. "Thaaaaaaats not a good Incantation. 'A spell to open the doorway to the Utter Dark…'" Just exposing the mortal world to that kind of thing has effects let alone the things that could come OUT of it.
"I think the other question there is how do you know so much about how to put spells like that together."
There's no suspicion to that. There are lots of reasons to know dark magic but this is a very specific subset of knowledge.
Illyana Rasputina glances over to Keiko as the dark-haired woman corrects her and the blonde smirks, not acknowledging that she may have been wrong.
The blonde shakes her head. "Eating anyone isn't a joke. And this…" Illyana gestures to the pieces of the spell. "Is NOT a joke." Lips purse and she gnaws on her lower lip for a moment and she shuffles through the pages again. "I wonder which dark dimension they meant…"
Koa's statement gets Illyana to look up at him again, smirking faintly. "Should I be worried… Agent?"
Maybe Keiko really needs this to be a prank because if it is anything else then it might mean trouble for her.
"The street was emptied, Agent. There was no one there but you, the Asgardians and … me. No harm could come to the public now, could it?" She's reaching and she knows it. "And the snake was no challenge to the Asgardians. I didn't need to use Glydril, at all. In my books that makes the take down, easy."
The mention of the 'Utter Dark' gets a flinch though as she pales a bit more. She might not know magic but some of this seems to be cutting close to home for her.
"Whatever dark dimension it was, it's something that can be opened by an incantation to traditional forces. So… something possibly with a resonance of death." Someone knows a thing or two about traditional magic maybe ,though less about dark magic it seems.
"Worried? About me?" Koa quirks a brow at the blonde. Yes he sees that smirk. "Possibly not. About others? Well… I don't know what the Asgardians might or might not do about this. I'm a bit more concerned that someone seems to be using Dark tools…" The capitalization is defintiely audible there. "… and people who do that are often on the look out for more… and they don't often care about artifacts or people."
Lots of magi can defend themselves against coercion but it's always a concern in Koa's line of work.
"So Miss…" Koa pauses to see if he can prompt a name out of her, maybe. "… should you be worried?"
Keiko's flinch does not go unnoticed. "Well it's true that the Asgardians took down the snake rather easily but we also found the artifact powering it and I don't think that was expected. I suspect had we not done so the takedown would have been more difficult. But this seems to… have a particular resonance with you, Miss Kurita."
Does she know something? That's an excellent question.
Illyana Rasputina can't help but smirk again as Koa continues to fish for her name. At this point, it's a game. "I always worry. It helps to keep me alive." Not that she looks terribly worried.
"Egyptian incantations against Asgardians? Odd approach." The blonde murmurs. "Are you enjoying making her squirm?" The question seems off-handed, but Illyana's noticed Keiko's flinch as well, and Koa pressing the button.
"If someone wanted to set up an inter pantheon war, this would be a way to start it wouldn't it?" Keiko says quickly, trying to look casual. "The question you need to be asking, Agent Turner, is what do they achieve from it?" She doesn't seem to be inclined to answer that.
But Koa could extrapolate. At the very least the Asgardians here are likely going to be 'speaking' with the Egyptian pantheons minions. Er Worshippers. Followers. Whatever. Which is unlikely to go down well with the Egyptian Gods themselves.
"It resonated. All magic does." She answers, giving Illyana a flat look for her comment. "Agent Turner seems to … enjoy annoying me, yes."
"I'm probably not particularly worrisome, if it's me you're worried about. Others though… well, maybe." That smirk is a bit wider now on Illyana and… yes she's doing that deliberately now. Well she might have been before but he can definitely tell now.
"Enjoy making her squirm? I'm not trying to. But you do seem, if I may say Miss Kurita, particularly unsettled."
The approach is odd, yes. Koa nods to Illyana when she says that. "It's an odd tack to take yes. I'm not entirely sure why they took it. Not enough evidence… but that's a very good theory Miss Kurita. One I'll have to investigate."
The notion that he might enjoy annoying Keiko gets a smirk all it's own. "All magic resonates but not all magic makes you flinch." Still, Koa doesn't press the matter. He'd like to but he doesn't think that'd be productive. Nor is this the place for it. If he wants to press her he'll have to get her one on one.
Ditto for the mysterious nameless blonde really but he gets a feeling that doing that if she doesn't want it might be slightly tricky.
Illyana Rasputina gives a soft snort. "Inter pantheon wars come with very clear shots fired, in my experience. Not anything someone might think is a prank." She pushes the papers away, dropping the pen as she leans back in her chair and sips at her coffee again. Hooking one arm over the back of her chair she looks to Keiko and lets her pale blue eyes go glowing-white with power and there's the crawling, chill touch of things Dark and Wrong that ripples out for a moment before her eyes go back to normal. Not that her normal gaze is much less creepy.
"I see. Well I don't have any experience on the matter, as you can tell…" Keiko answers, taking a step back and rubbing an arm as Illyana's power ripples out.
"There are some things that unsettle me, Agent Turner. Just as I'm sure there are some things that unsettle you. If I flinched at all magic, I'd have very sore shoulders, wouldn't I?"
That's all she wants to say on that matter. Koa might be right that pressing her won't be productive. It might not be productive one on one. He might need to a little research into the Nightfall.
That sudden sense of something wrong from Illyana, along with those white eyes get Koa's attention and there's a very sharp and defined sense of a predator from the 'Agent'. Something about him that seems to cast all his features in a different light. It's like looking at a shark. Or a hungry wolf. Or something like that. Something that sees predator and prey only… and is sizing up another predator.
Then it's gone but Koa still looks thoughtful and curious. Keiko and Illyana will have most certainly felt that though. Koa pulls the drawings back and looks at them. "I'll look into this…" He's about to say thank you but something… tells him to hold back. Maybe its that sense of another predator. So he just nods.
"You might. And if you flinched at all shadows, Keiko, you might find that you have very sore shoulders as well. You keep saying you just want to keep your head down and running into me or not, I do kind of hope you get to exercise that luxury."
Koa's phone beeps and he frowns. "Mmmm. Well I need to make a call. Nice of you to drop by though, Keiko." Though he knows that wasn't her plan. "And nice to meet you, Miss…"
Okay, he'll try ooooone more time but he doesn't think he'll get anything. "Oh, I'm Koa Turner. Agent Turner, if you ever need to find me."
"Rasputin." Illyana throws him a bone, but only because she thinks it'll just put him spinning in more circles. The last name is infamous, and given her attire could easily be assumed to be another step in the game, yanking his chain. Certainly, her eyes glimmer with silent amusement.
Keiko's reaction just gets that smirk to widen into what on most people would be a smile. Koa especially, is likely to recognize it as something much more predatory, full of teeth and little actual humor.
Illyana finishes her own coffee and gets to her feet. Despite her comment about worrying about everything, she *doesn't* flinch at the flash of predator from Koa. She just gives him a long, considering look before reaching out to pick up the pen he'd given her. "Enjoy your investigation." She says, tucking the pen away and heading back out of the coffee shop.
Keiko shivers as the other two exude their strangeness. She nearly drops her mug as she tries to rub her arms. "Right. Well then …" Oh yes, she recognises Illyana's look and she doesn't like it.
"Don't be surprised, Agent Turner, if you get an unwanted visitor …" She saw the blonde take the pen.
Koa's eyes narrow slightly as the blonde departs. "She took my TWISBI…" It had been a slightly nicer than usual pen. The agent sounds rather amusedly indignant. Well, mildly indignant.
"I'd say I'm never surprised but…" Koa raises one hand in admission. "I am sometimes. I suppose we'll find out."
The look and shiver as she rubs her arms gets a smile from the Agent though still slightly sharp. "Don't worry, I don't bite. Usually."
There's still that look in his eye. The one that makes him look like a hungry shark. "I'm going to make that call. If you're still here when I get back… perhaps you can tell me why you don't like the Utter Dark so much. And if not well…"
The grin gets slightly sharper. "I'm sure I'll see you again…"