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 Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 1:51 pm
The weekend was upon them, and as promised, Autumn had made her way to the local Starbucks. It was traitorous to drink tea places beyond Equinox, but the place made a decent meetup point. Equal ground and what have you. Cup in hand, Autumn thumbed through her phone, scanning over her messages. It was a rough uphill recovery, getting beyond this. But she'd make it.
Besides. Catching up with Cop Number Two was a perfectly good distraction.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:14 pm
Not long after Autumn arrived at the Starbucks, Shun entered. He got himself a small (tall?) tea of sorts, as well as a bagel, then walked over to where she had been waiting. "You were not waiting long, were you?" he asked.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:08 pm
"Not at all!" Autumn chirped, looking up to the detective with a smile. It was funny, how many cops had become regulars in her life. A mental note, she'd never be able to have sexy stripper-cops at a party. They'd have to be... exterminators or something. She'd figure it out later.
"How's the insanity of Ashdown hitting you?" She asked teasingly, sipping at her tea. "Sprouted a tail or ears, or anything?"
Here, she gestured to her horns. Autumn grinned, freckles bright in the light.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:30 pm
Shun let out a low grunt at that. Though, he paused as he spotted the little horns on her head. "...No. No physical changes. Not yet, anyway," he said slowly, "But I have accidentally jogged to the other side once already."He shook his head at that.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:46 pm
"Have you now?" She asked, genuinely curious. Her first trip to Other Ashdown had been before she was aware of its existence- it felt like a lifetime ago, honestly. In a way, Autumn almost envied Shun- at least knowing what magic could do and having some expectation of it before he went in. They were all pretty lucky Pax hadn't ripped them to shreds, honestly.
"How'd that treat you?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:10 pm
"It was wet. Mercer found me before long," he said flatly, "I have learned a fair bit thus far but... there is always more that could be learned."Shun took a sip of his drink. "The figure of the e...gardener concerns me most as of now."
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:13 pm
Her humor faded, and Autumn's face went grim. The gardener. She was endlessly thankful that Shun had taken up the pseudonym for THAT, rather than put himself at risk. Setting her tea down, Autumn looked earnestly at him.
"Glad the chief picked you up. He's pretty good about that," Autumn started, trying to segue easily into this. "Have you... heard anything about him? The Gardener?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:24 pm
Shun only used it that time because he recalled Autumn making a note of it the last time it had been brought up. "Not a whole lot. It is currently locked away in the other realm, and its wardens are three teenages who may or may not be the three who went missing. It wants to get out of its prison, and it is the reason why magic is leaking into our world."That summed it up.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:42 am
"It is the three who went missing, yeah. Heliodora and her friends." Well, friend, singular. As it was now. Autumn stared absently at her tea, trying to think of what to elaborate or explain on. This whole thing was a catch 22 of sorts- the more you knew, the more burdened you were. And yet, not knowing anything, you were liable to be caught off guard by Ashdown's s**t.
"Have you been told we've done this before?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 1:38 pm
Well that confirmed that. And unfortunately, that also meant they were down one of the three wardens. And one of them was a likely target sometime around August. That wasn't a good sign at all. Shun tilted his head to the side, trying to make sense of the question that had just been tossed his way. "We have done what before?"That could have meant a number of things. Had this happened once in history in the past and this was a case of things repeating itself? If that was the case, where were the records of this past incident so that they may be able to learn from it? Or did Autumn mean something else entirely?
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 3:52 pm
"This. Fighting The Gardener. Losing to him." More to it than that, but the point remained the same. Some version of them had tried this fight. Some version of them had failed. She'd had the number of attempts quoted to her multiple times, but that was a burden Shun didn't need. That, and she didn't want to be the bearer of that bad news.
"It's one of the things we're all getting dropped on us, at different stages in this magical journey. We've tried before, the whole of us, and failed." Still, she stared at her cup.
"I don't know what it is that makes us lose every time. But lose every time, we do."
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 5:35 pm
"Every time? ...How many times have we gone through this? How do you know? If someone told you this, why have they not told you why we failed so that we could try to fix what we ******** up?"That opened up so many questions. It was not a nice thought to think that they had failed several times already, from the sounds of it. But without some level of guidance from whatever was resetting things, they were probably going to be stuck in a perpetual loop until something gave on either end. A small part of him was still not really There were plenty more questions in Shun's mind, but he held back from unleashing them all just yet. At least until Autumn answered a few first.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:47 pm
"Fifteen was the number I last heard. I know cause I came across a journal that... some version of me wrote. My handwriting, my tone, but I'd never seen it in my life. About things that all came to be with my cat, but I'd never written." She snorted a bit derisively. "Cause I don't think anyone BUT me is going to be writing about a magical cat named Rosalinde anytime soon."
At the question of WHY she hadn't been told, Autumn shrugged.
"Pax- the Otherbeing I talk to a lot... I don't think they know. They only saw glimpses of past failures. The only person who does know... has a lot of s**t on her plate. I just now got to be friends with her, and that's pretty shaky, so I'm not gonna be bombarding the girl with questions." She thought of Sunny- tired and worn and freshly human. No way in hell did she need HEY WHY AM I MAGIC WHAT DID I ******** UP DID YOU KNOW ANOTHER ME HOW DID I DIE. Nuh uh.
Besides. Autumn didn't need that right now, either.
"The way I see it, and as far as I've gathered... we learn s**t about Other Ashdown and the gardener as we're supposed to, in time. So if I learn anything else about it, or vice versa, I figure we can text each other. It's basically what I'm doing with the chief."
She paused.
"Jeremiah. Jeremiah, I mean. Sorry, I'm kind of a d**k to him. It's our shtick with our relationship. But the point still stands."
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:35 pm
Shun stared at Autumn for a moment. Fifteen. Had there already been fifteen past versions of him going through this s**t only to fail? His eyes narrowed at the thought. He didn't say anything immediately, as he took a moment to digest all of this. There couldn't seriously have been that many already. It was... really hard to fathom. "Please do," he muttered rubbing his head. He didn't even give her a weird look over the nickname she had for Jeremiah, "So say this is all true. What... exactly happened upon our previous defeats? I am assuming we died but why do we get the subsequent chances?"To him, being given a second chance was a pretty big deal. And here they were on their 16th one apparently.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:10 pm
"There's no if about this being true. It's real. I've had the proof shoved in my face so many times, it makes me sick." Pax had just been the start. Everything after... was just more and more icing on the s**t cake of the tragedy of her life. Who she had been last time, she couldn't say. Pax had no information on it. Sunny wasn't a venue she was going to try.
"All I can figure is... we try harder this time. Keep each other- all of us- in the loop."
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