It has a million and one uses, fine purple mist.

[wrathfulkhan]

Characters: Gene, Jackie, Peridot, Alex, Miles, and YOOOOUU!!
Date: All of March
Location: All up ins
Situation: ALL THE THINGS!
Warnings/Rating: Will be added as they come up

A. [Gene] | throughout Keeliai | March 1-11| open
So, Gene's having a weird month.

He's not sure if he's happy or sad that his mother's here - she has no soul gem, so he knows she'll disappear. And he wants to apologize to her, but he doesn't know what to say, or how to tell her that in becoming the Mandarin he'd nearly destroyed the world that she'd claimed was his birthright.

He can be found at tea houses, writing in his notebook and thinking, and trying to avoid being home while he thinks. He'd wanted this since he was a child, but he can't wrap his head around it.

As much as he'd wanted it, he has no idea what to do.

B. [Jackie] | Sky Sector | throughout March | open
So, Jackie's having a weird month.

Well, last month was weird too. His girlfriend's a werewolf, he killed his murderer, and Wei has shown up. He's trying to think about what to do. Brigid being a werewolf doesn't matter to him; hell, he's experienced weirder. And he likes her a lot.

He's having nightmares about killing Mr. Tong. He'd been justified, but the way he'd done it had been so brutal...and he'd liked it. He's looking a little haunted these days.

C. [Peridot] | Metal Sector | throughout March | open
Finally! Despite the garbage that passes for technology around here, Peridot's sort-of managed to get her replacement limb enhancers working! Sure, they aren't especially fancy or anything, but they're better than nothing.

Now: time to test.

Everyone is welcome to pass by her garage and enjoy the show.

D. [Alex] | throughout Keeliai | March 1-11 | open
So, Alex is having a weird month.

Aside from reliving all of that shit (and David has a Bostonian twin? What???), Mo's here, and that's all that matters. He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed the psychiatrist until the man had shown up.

He's looking a bit distracted, which is weird for him.

E. [Miles] | throughout Keeliai | throughout March | open
So, Miles is having a weird month.

He sure did have a lot of fun reliving his torture, and of course there was that incident with the Walrider. He's scared of himself, and trying to lie low.

At least he's got his laptop and his camcorder's been fixed.

H. [Jackie] | Midnight Hotel | March 13 | closed to Kylo
The thing with Mr. Tong and how ineffectually Jackie had used the Force had made him decide to get trained, even though he thinks Kylo is creepy. He needs to learn to defend himself.

"Okay," he says when he finds Kylo. "I want to be trained."

I. [Miles] | the Turtle's Head | throughout March | open
There's one thing Miles has heard calms people down - visiting the Turtle's Head. When he gets there, he sees some of those Ban Om guys meditating there, so he opts to go sit somewhere very far away from them.

He sits there, staring at the ocean, trying to wrestle with what the Walrider had done - what he had done.

---

Feel free to PM me or hit me up on plurk at Chatvert if you want a starter!

Comments

E

[schrodingersghost]

You know who else is trying to lay low? A certain ghost boy. Mostly because he wasn't used to dealing with multiple people who knew about the half-ghost thing.

It was weird.

What was even weirder was that no one seemed to mind the ghost thing that much.

So Danny figured the best thing to do was avoid people until he figured some things out. Weird how he nearly walked right into a guy he vaguely recognized.

[upshore]

It's not Danny's fault - well, not totally. Miles has been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he's wandering through the streets almost in a daze.

"Oh. Hey, sorry," he says, looking apologetic and clutching the camcorder in his hand more tightly. The last thing he wants to do is drop it and crack the lens. Again.

(Despite the fact that HAD NOT BEEN HIS FAULT well okay it...sort of was....)

[schrodingersghost]

Danny shakes his head and takes a step back to give the other guy space.

"Nah, I wasn't really looking where I was going."

And he was kind of relieved that this had happened. These days, half the time Danny subconsciously went intangible when he was about to walk into something. That might have been a little awkward to explain.

[upshore]

Honestly? At this point, Miles would have just rolled with it and been thankful Danny didn't juice him in the process.

He looks the kid up and down. "Danny, right?"

D

[spoilsfun]

Conan spots Alex up ahead, and promptly attempts to vanish into the crowd. If he could make it another half block without being spotted, he could slip into an alley and take a short cut to get home.

After their last meeting, he was sure Alex had all kinds of questions he would prefer not to answer.

[saintoflangley]

Yeah, that's not going to work, Conan.

Alex spots him and follows the kid down the half-block. "Hey, Conan."

Busted!

[spoilsfun]

Great. So much for that plan. Conan turns around to face him.

"Hello Mr. Conklin."

D

[pandapanov]

Mo's since been given the rundown on what his being here means - primarily that it's a temporary thing - and while Alex now knows that Mo survived and all turns out okay, he's under no illusions of what his inevitable disappearance might mean. Alex clearly missed him, and Mo's sure that only having him here for a few weeks will seem a little cruel in the aftermath.

There are also advantages to being in a place where one apparently doesn't remember it upon returning home.

"How did you prepare your team for missions when you knew you were going to lose people?" Mo asks out of the blue one evening, when they're in private.

oh, fuck me, i'm crying now.

[saintoflangley]

Don't, Mo. Don't do this.

Alex has been worrying himself sick, trying to find a way to fix this, to make him stay. There has to be a way. There has to. And while he knows that Mo is alive, that everyone's survived, losing him again will be almost like he's died, and that's just too cruel for words.

The question seems to be abrupt, but he knows that Mo's been stewing, too. They know each other too well to keep things like their anxiety hidden for long. "Every mission for Medusa was one where people could die," he says quietly. "That was just the way it was. It's always been that way, my whole life. One wrong move, one piece of sheer bad luck, and someone could die, if they were lucky, or be tortured if they weren't. That's just...the way it is. You know that. That's the way it's been with David, with Marie, with the kids. We tried to protect them, but we knew that something could go wrong."

:c ;~;

[pandapanov]

Letting themselves avoid the issue of Mo leaving isn't going to help. It's especially not going to help Alex; Mo won't remember, so maybe him broaching the subject is unfair. Even so, it's necessary. They both know Mo's time is limited here.

He nods at Alex's answer. "I do know that. I'm just hoping you know there's quite a significant difference between losing someone on a mission and me going back to where we come from. It might not feel like there is one, but there is. First and foremost, you haven't made any wrong moves, because there are none to make. You can't blame yourself for what some run-amok spell does, and if you do I'm making you take another Rorschach test," he teases gently.

I

[celticromanstone]

Heather is still dressed as a whore, from the night before. She's comfortable in her role. The Ban Om people don't bother her, but she does steer clear of them, walking over to find Miles contemplating the ocean.

Nothing wrong with the ocean, and at least the waves have a rhythm to them.

"Good morning, darling." She says, stifling another yawn. It was a long night.

[upshore]

Miles doesn't mind the ocean, either. He misses Seattle, honestly, and Puget Sound; it's not the same as the East River, and neither is this. But water makes him feel better sometimes, if he's in a mood.

His brain won't stop throwing things at him, though, even here with Tu Vishan's calming influence. His skin's prickling the harder he tries to keep the Walrider down.

"Oh. Good morning." He'd been out here since predawn, because he couldn't sleep. The nightmares had come back.

[celticromanstone]

She settles into a lotus position. Her hands settle onto her knees, and she takes a deep breath. Tu Vishan's calming influence settles over her shoulders. It wraps around her like a warm cloak and just takes her to a calm place.

"Most people like me from where I'm from learn to meditate. It helps with the nightmares." She takes a deep breath.

"Now, settle into position. Make sure it's comfortable." She advises. "You'll be in it for a while."

A

[lasergrenades]

Gene has, understandably, been a little off lately. First the thing with the memory sharing, and then their parents all showing up. She had thought that Zhang showing up was the worst that could have happened. Never in a million years would she have guessed his mother would show up.

Pepper hunts him down at a tea shop one afternoon, putting a sweet bun in front of him before she sits, a mug in her other hand with a cookie across the top of it like a lid. "Gotta wonder what it says about us when we try to avoid things, that I go to the dojo and you go to a tea shop and write."

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene grimaces. Of course Pepper would find him. She's like a bloodhound.

At least she's brought a snack. He accepts the sweet bun with a murmured thanks and looks at her. "I work at the dojo. I beat people up regularly enough that I need to do something else to avoid things," he points out. "And I need to write my thoughts out, anyway." He's been writing in his notebook - he's been so rattled that it's half-English, half-Mongolian, entire paragraphs in the vertical Mongolian script with English words sprinkled awkwardly through.

[lasergrenades]

"Fair enough," Pepper concedes, only glancing briefly at the notebook without trying to read anything. She's seen him do this before, when he's troubled, but this is an extraordinary circumstance. Frankly, she's surprised that Gene is holding up as well as he is.

"If there's anything you want to bounce off me, I'm just gonna be over here eating my cookie," she tells him, and proceeds to take a bite. There questions she wants to ask, but Pepper knows this is a very sensitive subject, so she'll wait for him to give her the opening to do so.

H

[no_light]

"That... is a surprise," is all Kylo manages to get out when Jackie just walks up with that announcement. He looks him up and down, and shakes his head.

Same old Jackie, as far as he can see. But something fundamental must have changed.

"What brought this on? Are you no longer afraid of yourself?"

[jinzhong]

You have no idea, Kylo.

"I'm way afraid of myself," he says. "But I need to be able to defend myself. And I think that's more important."

[no_light]

Kylo gives an annoyed snort, crossing his arms over his chest as he sizes up Jackie again. Nope, still just as unimpressive as ever, but something must have changed.

"You should be afraid. What I'm going to teach you is more than taking self-defense classes. If you only want to learn how to fight off a pickpocket you'd do better taking classes at the dojo."

D

[ten_zero]

Bisi catches up with Alex in the college library, trying to catalogue what books they'd found/written on her subject matter. It was still an ongoing task, trying to create a library from scratch, but seemed to be going well.

"Alex!" Bisi was spry as ever, doing the whole 'walking' thing still, wearing the same jumpsuit as always. It was self-cleaning and pretty functional so she rarely had reason to change out of it.

"Is something wrong?"

[saintoflangley]

Alex turns and smiles - or tries to. His usual excellence at poker-facing has been somewhat compromised of late. "Bisi. Good to see you up and about."

Quick, time to deflect. "Things are fine." Well, they are fine. In a few days, though, they decidedly won't be.

[ten_zero]

"I think I've done it enough now to recognize when someone is just saying that," Bisi said.

But she also knew that if she was saying that, it probably meant she didn't want to talk about it. She probably wouldn't be able to help, anyway.

"Have any city council members been approaching you?" she asked, to change the subject.

I

[ten_zero]

"Can I join you?" Bisi asks.

She comes up often to the turtle head to meditate as well, and noticed Miles sitting by himself, and decided to try to branch out and meet some people.

[upshore]

Miles has been trying to apply Heather's lessons, and sometimes he has more luck than other days. This is not one of the lucky days.

He looks back at the kid. "Yeah, sure."

[ten_zero]

Bisi takes a seat next to him and adopts his gaze of the ocean.

"My name is Bisi. I like to come here to meditate sometimes. The atmosphere is really conducive towards it. Calming. Makes clearing your head easier."