ArchivedLogs:Pocket Aces

Pocket Aces
Dramatis Personae Emma, Lucien, Mirror
In Absentia	2014-07-14 Planning. Part of Prometheus TP.
Location <HFC> Solarium - Hellfire Clubhouse
The Solarium at the Hellfire Club is nearly as old as the building with architecture that mingles the original Victorian with Art Nouveau stained glass, flooding the covered balcony with sunshine and warmth in all seasons. Some of the plants within date back even further, moved inside as the land surrounding grew more and more urbanized. Small trees that could not be moved any longer share soil with fragrant flowers and coiling vines, keeping the air clean and smelling sweet all year round. Small tables of wrought iron with mosaic surfaces are surrounded by matching, padded chairs, limiting group sizes to three or four at the most. The sunset is glorious in the solarium, lending the surreal mixture of the natural inside and the neon world without at night. There are times when this room can be quite bustling, a lovely sunny spot to /feel/ a little closer to nature without the pesky hassle of actually venturing out of doors. This is not one of those times -- awkwardly between-meals hour, rain pattering down against the glass; the solarium is nearly deserted at the moment. Nearly deserted. Grey and rainy and devoid of people may be just how Lucien /likes/ it here. He fits in with the rainy backdrop, anyway, in an elegantly tailored dove-grey suit -- though the jacket has been shed to drape on the back of his chair he still wears its vest over top of his dress shirt. He is, at the moment, tucked into a corner near one glass wall, a pair of crumpets fresh and warm in front of him; there's devonshire cream melting over the top of one. Small tubs of cream and jam on the plate beside him. A pot of tea still steeping. He has a tablet in hand; he is paging through email in a somewhat disinterested manner. Green eyes flick up occasionally, faint expectation in his gaze. Expectation is /rewarded/ soon enough -- partially rewarded, anyway. With Mirror it can always be a little hard to /tell/ when the person you're waiting for has arrived; today she arrives dressed in the form of a plump middle-aged white woman, hints of grey touching her brown hair, crows-feet crinkling the corners of hazel eyes. The owner of a small but successful personal finance/money-management tech company that has blossomed in past years out of the start-up phase, her entry into the Club comes not wholly out of her own work but out of her parents' membership as well. Dressed simply in minty-green dress and sensible flats it's mostly the fact that she heads straight for Lucien's table that gives her away. A smile tugs at her lips at the sight of /tea and crumpets/ and she slides into a seat opposite the young man with amusement dancing in her eyes. "{How very British of you.}" Her French today is flavoured Parisian in contrast to Lucien's usual cadence, textbook-learned and tutor-taught, no doubt at some prestigious prep school in this woman's past. Quiet and mostly devoid of people is exactly how Emma prefers the solarium, but the call of rain against glass is really what draws her to the room a little after Mirror's entrance. She slips out of the jacket that goes with her suit, leaving only loose linen trousers with a light silk shirt gently embracing her torso, both garments in lightest of ivories. The material of her blouse is just thin enough that where it rests across the top of her breasts, a hint white floral lace of her undergarment can be scene, the clear relief utterly undisguised at her sides by the low slit openings of the sleeveless shirt. They are small concessions of immodesty in the light of the high and forbidding collar. She stretches before sliding her jacket onto a chair, a ways away from the other party, giving herself a second to take stock of who is around. Eyes sparkle as they drift over Lucien's form, but given exchange of expected looks and the obvious greeting, she does not greet him, mentally nor audibly. She settles into her seat and lays a tablet before her, using the intranet to order herself refreshment. The sole of her high heeled, sling back shoe pat gently against her heel as she crosses one leg over the other and leans back, reviewing her work as she waits on her tea, gaze dancing back toward Lucien and his company from time to time, taking some interest in the other woman. Lucien exhales a breath of quiet laughter, brilliant emerald gaze tipping up towards Mirror. "{It is Earl Grey, too.}" There is a hint of self-deprecating amusement touching his (very much /Quebecois/-tinged) words. "{They were fresh-baked, I could not resist indulging. Shall I pour you a cup?}" Neatly manicured fingers unfurl to indicate the teapot, the empty cups on its tray. His mind is polished glassy-smooth as ever but something opens -- just a tiny blossoming hint of awareness uncurling like quiet mental greeting. "{Of course it is.}" Mirror nods at the empty cups, when offered, though it doesn't stop the linger laughterin her eyes. "{And why not? Everything about this place is /built/ for indulging.}" The colour of her mind is /odd/. There's a cheery warmth brushed over its surface, a pleasant bubbly personality that for all its levity has a sharpness to it, keen wit, keen mind -- but this mind is layered /over/ something else beneath the surface. Another personality, deeper and quieter, cool and methodical that ticks calm and steady in solid foundation below. Like someone dressing /up/ their mind in a new costume, Monica Agee's thoughts clothing Mirror's being. At the moment, though, both these disparate mental identities are largely focused on Lucien. Warmer interest from Monica, cool appraisal from Mirror, and under it all an almost playful consideration of the man opposite: << (what mischief) (shall we make) (today)? >> Emma's mind brushes against the small note of recognition Lucien provides her, the touch as gentle as the touch of her cheek against his. She does lean a little more on him than usual, not necessarily probing him, but peeking over his shoulder at his companion, her interest piqued and relayed to him - not asking him about her per se, but she'd be interested if he wanted to divulge. Back at her chair, she looks a little more tired, her gaze softening over the words on her tablet. To the casual observer, she is simply bored of what she is reading, lost in thought and listening to the rain. The tiny note of greeting furls back in, smoothing over once more to close Lucien's mind off neat and crisp and quiet again. It takes a moment before a thought is permitted to slip to the surface: << Have you met our intrepid reporter? Her media prowess has been somewhat invaluable this past year. >> He's pouring tea with this, opening the pot to remove the basket before replacing the lid and pouring two cups. "{It suits my profession well. It suits /me/ well. And you, at least, in the past have been amenable to indulging me.}" "{You always make it so tempting.}" Mirror curls squat fingers around her teacup, eyes drifting away to watch the rain patter down against the glass. "{Dangle your favour like a prize to be won and I imagine people will line /up/ to indulge you.}" She ignores the tea, for the moment, stretching out one hand to pinch a cream-laden morsel of crumpet off of Lucien's plate. "{Or maybe I just make it too easy. It's a weakness. I hate to be bored.}" And Lucien, fills in her mind easily, is nothing if not /entertaining/. Emma's brows quirk in the silence around her table, a small smile growing upon her lips, her head tilting toward the door as one of the servers brings her tray of tea and finger sandwiches - a small plate of petit fours waiting for a miniature dessert afterward. She inhales deeply and sits up straighter, helping to settle the whole tray on the table, rather than allowing the server to leave with the silver carrying surface. << Oh, no. I have not officially met your secret liaison to the public. I have to say -- she's nothing like I imagined. >> She turns her attention to the offerings and begins with a pate sandwich, nibbling on it as she peeks under the lid at the tea. << Should we arrange something casual - perhaps I could borrow your sugar, or would a more (and secretive) approach be warranted? >> "{That's the trick, of course,}" Lucien answers, light, with a small twitch of smile on his lips. "{That's always the trick. If the only indulgences I ask are ones you're dying to give -- then everyone always stays happy. If it's excitement you want --}" He turns his eyes upward, too, glancing up towards the water sheeting down off the glass. "{Tell me, do you think much of the future?}" << Join us, >> he invites Emma silently, << these plans, you may be interested in. >> "{Far more than I think of the past.}" Though it's an amused response it comes with a faint uncertain /twinge/, a discomfited void at the thought of the /past/ that Mirror slips past easily. To move on! To more excitement. More challenge! At least that is the hope in her mind as she pops Lucien's stolen crumpet into her mouth and licks cream off her fingertips. "{You seem to think of little else. Living for today never really took with you, did it?}" Without pause, Emma gets to her feet and lifts her jacket to loop it over her arm. She inhales deeply before lifting her tray off of her table and moves over to Lucien and Mirror. She slides it onto a near by table and begins to transfer her tea pot, cup, and plates of snacks onto the surface of their table without a word of introduction. Only when she is finished and settled into a sitting position does she dare speak, as if her approach wouldn't have interrupted conversation before that point. "Good afternoon. I hope you do not mind me joining." This is directed at Mirror alone, no objections expected from Lucien's quarter. "{I live to have a tomorrow.}" There's a very small flash of teeth with this, thin and brief though Lucien's smile warms and widens with Emma's arrival. "{Emma, dear. Not at all. You two haven't met before, have you? Ms. Agee, Emma Frost. Emma, Monica Agee. She's given me quite a bit of help this past year.}" In mental notes though he supplies a different name, simply: << Mirror. >> "{Monica excels when it comes to PR.}" "Never in person, no." Mirror drops back into English, briefly, as her mind ticks over what she knows of Emma -- from reputation around the club as well as from slipping here and there into /Lucien's/ skin -- not that she's mentioned that to /him/. He's just always a puzzle and it's the quickest way to crack one. Her words follow in French once more, continuing on in that tongue when Lucien does: "{Though by reputation I already feel as though I know you, everyone around here has such high praise.}" Though her mind is ticking more over the trickle of respect gleaned from time in Lucien's body, not a thing easily /earned/ and weighted, therefore, more heavily than the abundant flattery that drifts around the halls of the Club. "{A pleasure, Ms. Agee, a most welcome pleasure at last.}" Emma extends a hand to the other woman, made dainty only by the fact that she is reaching over the dishes available. She does take a moment to bow her head in humble appreciation for the praise, the mild blush that accompanies a direct result of the source of the good opinion. "{May I interest you in a pate sandwich? I will admit that I have developed a taste for the vegetarian version as of late, so the flavors may not be what you might expect. Or, perhaps, a petit four?}" She gestures to the dishes, her gaze shifting between Lucien and Mirror. "{I have heard some of your reputation from our mutual friend, but would love to get to know you more in the future.}" She falls silent then, beginning to prep her own tea as the others are ahead of her in that regard. "{It is praise that she earns well.}" Lucien picks up his (half-thieved!) crumpet, knifing a thin layer of dark jam in with the cream and taking a small bite. "{It is the future that I wanted to talk about.}" For a brief moment his eyes skip around the room, but the dreary grey and the rain are still keeping the solarium quiet and empty. "{Most specifically, Prometheus's future. The media campaign after the plague was a good start, but --}" His other hand turns up, before dropping to take his cup and lift it for a small sip. This awakens a bright spark of interest in Mirror's mind, curious and a little /pleased/ at the thought of their previous work. "{But it needs a good end?}" She lifts her tea, too, watching Lucien over the rim as she sips at it -- though more than a little of her mind is devoted to scanning back through what borrowed-memories of Emma she can remember, gauging what is and isn't safe to talk about though Lucien's ease with bringing up the subject helps click these pieces into place faster. "{/Prometheus/ has nearly been ending a few people, lately. The aftermath of the last facility they dropped was ugly.}" She's ticking through memories of burned and bloodied bodies in her mind, Flicker with /bits/ missing, Jax's face hanging half off, bullet holes and misplaced entrails -- though aloud she doesn't extrapolate on these memories. Lucien was /there/ plying his calm. Oddly enough in memory she is a /he/, taller leaner darker-skinned, moving among the wreckage of bodies with a paramedic's trained eye and dispensing a borrowed healer's touch where it can be helpful. "{And the last not much better. If this pattern keeps the next will be a slaughter.}" Emma's expression grows serious, her mind half focused on the words that are spoken and half absorbing information from Mirror as it spills through hir thoughts. Her brows furrow slightly as her jaws sets, her gaze shifting back to Lucien as the expected results of the next raid is voiced. She pours herself tea as she inhales sharply. "{So. How do we give them an end? A permanent end.}" "{The next may be a slaughter,}" Lucien acknowledges, quiet. "{Prometheus seems to have made great strides in the suppression of mutant abilities. Drugs that nullify powers and in this last one, too, a /machine/ that does the same. We've had -- some suspicion that this next raid may go very ugly indeed. There's a chance that these brainchips Prometheus has been implanting may have been modified to -- detonate. Efficient disposal of all their labrats at once.}" Mirror draws in a slow breath at this -- one layer of her mind reacts with a reflexive horror to the thought of all those dead all at once but beneath it there's a quieter steadier consideration that simply takes in this information and turns it over slowly. "{Efficient.}" This agreement is grim. "{So how do we stop that?}" "{I don't suppose... Could we get our hands on one of the personnel in advance?}" Emma's mind turns over the problem as well. She selects a sandwich and turns the small square of thin bread around in her finger tips instead of nibbling immediately. "{Or, perhaps, send someone on the inside?}" she lowers her gaze, but her thoughts shift in Lucien's direction - so many people at the club, so many who could be nudged into taking a tour, easily stirred into fervor, intent on getting their hands dirty with this affair, with her following after. "{Or perhaps one of those nullification machines? I do have a background in electrical engineering. If we could provide the ability to nullify it's effects before they hit?}" That would make a inside person more effective, should they be immune to being turned off. "{A number of people already have their hands on the brainchips and on the drug in question -- studying to see what they can make of it, how to counteract its effects, how to nullify the chips before they detonate.}" Lucien takes another small nibble of his crumpet, setting it down to just curl fingers around his tea. "{The machines would be harder, they are from what I hear quite /large/ and non-portable. Nevertheless --}" He takes a slow sip of tea, a very faint crease wrinkling his brow; across the polished surface of his mind there's a small ripple, shivering there and then sinking away with a passing flutter of unease that vanishes before it is ever fully formed. "{-- Jackson Holland's team is working quite hard to see that this does not turn into a slaughter. That isn't -- why I wanted to talk to you, though. I do not want you to help me stop it. I want you to to go in with them and record it.}" Mirror is following along with this, mind drifting from one thought to another in quiet contemplation of how to infiltrate -- find a Prometheus employee to impersonate? That's easy enough done, and once /inside/, find someone who /knows/ about the chips and be /them/ for a while to steal their knowledge -- but this train of thought blows away like so much smoke in the face of that last statement from Lucien. Eyebrows tick up on Mirror's round face, mind abruptly wiped blank into just the steady cool tick-tick-tick of Mirror-under-Monica. "Ah." Just ah, for a long while. A slow sip of tea. A careful evaluation. How many labrats to an average facility? How much damage would such a slaughter -- on camera, perhaps -- do? Her eyes close. She sips the tea again. "{It's entirely possible to counteract a field in small ways - for individual...}" Emma pauses as well when Lucien begins his final thought, her eyes lifting to study his face, her mind reflexively chasing that moment of unease. Her distant observation shifts, her presence tainted with the horror of a group of martyrs and what damages they could do in the sacrifice of their lives. She slouches back in her chair, her eyes retraining on the steam rising from her cup, then to the rain pattering on the glass above them. "{Blunt... but effective.}" "{There is at least enough outrage floating around about Prometheus still -- and Holland is a sympathetic figure. /He/, at least, takes care that his team doesn't wantonly destroy life. The backlash if such an attack was captured --}" Lucien's mind has calmed again, stony-cold and flat as his quietly neutral expression. He lowers his tea, fingertip tracing against the rim of his teacup. "{If we play this right,}" his voice is soft and carefully level, "{it would be an end to Prometheus.}" Mirror's fingers tighten around her cup and there's an echoing tighter /clench/ in her mind, Monica's horror that she pushes aside. "{This is pocket aces. We would have to work to play this /wrong/.}" Now she's pondering how close Jax's team might be to /thwarting/ this massacre, whether or not she should get in with /them/ to help nudge it on its course. Out loud, all she says is: "{Isn't your brother in Vermont?}" Emma remains quiet, hanging back, cold and quiet. She tears her sandwich apart, popping half in her mouth and chewing quietly. "{Your... brother?}" This brings a little more animation back to her form. "{Matthieu is in Promethean custody there, yes.}" The cool surface of Lucien's mind hardens further. "{His powers are a world and away too valuable to them to simply dispose of him. He is unlikely to be tossed out with the rest.}" His eyes drop to his tea, a thread of tension wrapped through the set of his shoulders. "{You'll need to get in with his team, Mirror. Be reasonably up front about what you want -- they want Prometheus ended as much as you do. A reporter there to document what goes on in one of these facilities may be a godsend /regardless/ of the raid's outcome.}" "{Unlikely --}" Mirror turns this one word over thoughtfully. Possibly some part of her mind is running a calculus on what she knows of Lucien and how /likely/ he'd be to sacrifice his brother to the cause of bringing down Prometheus. This thought puts a very small frown on her face. "{I imagine they'll be glad of the extra hands. In Joshua's guise I'm useful far beyond the media presence. Soon, then.}" "{I suppose that's that then.}" Emma does not seem pleased, but she does not say much else on the topic. She reaches out and takes her tea in hand, sipping quietly. "{Soon.}"