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 Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 6:07 pm
Helena would look toward Ben and gesture for him to hurry over. "When Jean attacked me," Helena began after giving Ben a few seconds to hurry over, "Ratio came for me after. I learned from the whole thing that Jean is the guy who beat Ratio in the past." Her eyes were fully on Salieris. There was a lot to say but this was the part that would keep Salieri listening.
"When I was at Ratio's cave I met his partner who introduced himself as Mozart Soledad."
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Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 6:17 pm
Benedict did go over and arrived to hear what was an odd and interesting first step in the conversation. Given that all of the key points were things he wanted to soak in for now, he stayed silent and instead appropriately turned to Sal when the name Soledad came up. All of this sounded like it might be about to get super complicated and rough.
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Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Mia hadn't intended on following, until Salieri stepped to this girl and Zack had to intervene. Yep, there was the trouble. She trailed after Benedict, and interjected herself as Helena was expositing.
She went pale at the mention of Mozart's name in conjunction with Ratio's. Partner... The unwillingness to explain himself. The secrecy he made her keep. His mysterious backer. His somewhat terrifying new ninja skills. Hotel Richissime. It all clicked at once, and suddenly Mia was thrust into a world of dread, and heartache, and feeling so very, very stupid.
Immediately, she wanted to vomit. Instead, she let the taste of bile fill her throat as she hit the blunt again, looking at Salieri. The Kalosian was looking up at Zack with flared nostrils, as if she was about to challenge him in her condition. But she did nothing, and said nothing, waiting on Helena to keep talking.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:26 am
Zack blinked.
Salieri looked beat to s**t. If it came to blows, a stiff breeze could probably finish her off, but Zack didn't want to have to fight his friend. A week ago, maybe. He kept his eyes locked with hers, except to glance briefly at Benedict as the Smoothtrainer sidled up.
'Deathwish. You look good, man.'
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:33 am
Helena could feel how tense everything was. It was probably worse for them after she spent so long having sat on this information but given how much more confident she felt in the moment the decision to say it now instead of before felt that much better.
"Jean-Pierre showed up at the party tonight to tell me that being a sponsored trainer isn't going to protect me from him. I learned from Juliet Nostrad that he's the direct bodyguard of Jullien Nostard." Now she was looking at Zack. "when I find out where he is I'm going to take him down."
She looked back to Sal. "We'll need to take down Ratio too. Partly because without anything keeping him in check I'm afraid he's going to kill a lot more people and partly because I want to personally beat up everyone whose decided I'm some helpless girl waiting to be taken advantage of." The jab was partially meant for Zack, who she felt treated her more like the subject of babysitting than someone he was on an adventure with. The thought stung, but she kept going.
"I want you to help, but I'm not going to barter or beg for it. I'm doing this no matter what. Consider this an olive branch - Mozart said he was keeping tabs on you. Based on everything he told me, I can only assume it's via through his girlfriend whom he described as your 'usual partner in crime'."
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:37 am
((DUNE IS MOZE'S GIRLFRIEND??!))
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:49 am
Ben waved at Zack. Oh, right. Deathwish. That was a cool name. "Thanks. You too man."
Benedict didn't know what to say. Jean-Pierre needed to be stopped, and that was that. It felt like it was someone else's place to speak up on that, after everything. His eyes flickered to Mia at the mention of Sal's "usual partner in crime" but... Ben knew he wasn't really the hero type. This needed doing though. And if Helena was going to do it without telling other people than them, that meant it was up to them.
"I'll help out then." He said, looking at the rest. "If you get his location, I'll back you up as much as you need. More than probably."
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 9:33 am
As someone who considered Helena to be a helpless girl waiting to be taken advantage of, Salieri couldn't help but snort at Helena's sudden assertiveness. The Unovan would've callously berated her if she'd made these propositions days ago. In fact, she had. The goodwill Helena had tried to make with Salieri was rapidly slipping away. Sal looked at Helena as if she had started speaking in tongues. "You told me that calling someone else's decision a choice, when you know they'll throw themselves into danger, isn't what someone who doesn't want help would do. You called me abusive for making this exact proposition a week ago, hypocritical dweeb."
She was once again frustrated with Helena, but it wasn't so much for the girl's inconsistency or immaturity. She'd dealt with that before. It wasn't really Helena at all. It was learning that Moze had joined up with Ratio, and had been keeping an eye on her. Letting her agitation loose was keeping her grounded.
It was a small relief to know that somewhere out there, Moze was alive. Of course he was alive. Salieri had hardly considered the idea that he could be dead, but the thought had crossed her mind. Ruling it out meant it never would again. Knowing he'd become Ratio's partner was a bigger hurdle to climb. From what she understood, Ratio wanted to destroy the Court. She could see why Moze would want to be by that man's side. But he wasn't like that man, a cold blooded killer. If she found him, she could find out his side of the story. What was really going on. This was her first lead on him in a long time. Salieri was doing all she could to spin this into a positive in her head, because the alternative made her sick. Dwelling on it in general made her sick. The momentum she had been riding all night was coming to a crawl, and the strong front she was putting up would follow soon after.
"We made this decision already, dude. Join the damn club." Sal glanced at Mia, who seemed as pale as a ghost. Her heart went out to her best friend. Miriam Aviad was, for all intents and purposes, her family. She was just as close to Moze as Salieri was. Sal could only imagine what was going through Mia's head right now. "Mia, theories about the girlfriend?"
Sal's first thought was Esme. The dots weren't quite there to be connected, but the librarian was close to Moze in age, and had recently reentered Salieri's life. No one else came to mind off the top of her head. Even that theory didn't sit right with her. They'd have to go to the drawing board for this one. She knew what her homework was.
Mia gulped. "I've got theories," she said quietly, stomping her blunt out of existence into the dirt. "I don't think the guy who attacked Hotel Richissme was Ratio." Her arms were folded, but they became more like a self-hug as she continued to speak. "...I think it was Moze. It must've been the same Whimsicott. The way he moved, the way he spoke..." She looked at the dying embers on the ground, drifting off into silence.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 10:22 am
Zack raised his hand, and was just about to tell Salieri to back off when he paused, stuck out his lip, and shrugged. She did have a point. But the main thing was that Helena had another run in with her creepy stalker. Not only that...
Did he tell them about Emily? The girl who had attacked him had done so on this Jean Pierre's orders. Zack wasn't a huge fan of keeping secrets, but Helena, for all her bravado, had been rattled enough by just meeting the guy. What else would she do if she thought he was actively going after her ********, remember the days when we just had the one Ratio to deal with?' Zack said, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning back. 'Uh, Tuesday last week?'
He did his best to grin, but there was no energy there.
'Not that I'm doubting you, little sister,' he said, 'but where are you getting this from?'
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 11:03 am
"I can take back everything and leave you completely out of the loop again," Helena said to Salieri as she frowned. She looked over at Mia as the girl approached and figured she was another member of Salieri's crew.
Then she looked to Zack. "I don't think it's just two. Shortly before the caesura I was attacked in my room by a girl who'd been snooping. I haven't seen her since, but she didn't kill me so I figured she might not be a dark horse hunter." Helena still felt the sting where the knife had cut her throat. "I kicked her in her lady bits." the teen said, sounding almost proud.
Finally, she looked at Mia. "I asked Mozart how many people Ratio had on his team and he said they had recently kidnapped a Flare scientist who was going to be cooperative and help them out. So it's just the three of them."
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 11:48 am
Ben stifled a spike of annoyance at Sal. If she kept shooting the messenger, eventually she'd stop getting messages. And this seemed like a straightforward thing they'd all want to know. Zack's question for where it came from was reasonable enough, but Ben guessed from context it had come from the mouths of the people she was talking about.
To be honest though, he didn't really have anything else to say at the moment on the matter. This all still sounded like a 'help me, here's the information, we'll meet up later' kind of meeting.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:23 pm
Helena had told Salieri she had been jumped before the caesura, and Sal had promised to keep it between them. Now she wished she hadn't. They could've have this discussion days ago. She could've known about her brother days ago. That was at least five days of letting Moze slip through her fingers. Again.
"Why didn't you tell us this days ago?" Sal prodded, saying exactly what was on her mind. "You knew we were already working on this. If this is a 'moves ahead' chess thing then please, please hold me back in advance, Zack." Her arms slackened at her sides, as if to invite that option and to show that she wasn't gearing up to slap Helena for now. Mostly, her arms were still sore. "It's the end of your secrets, right? Does anyone else have any super pertinent s**t they'd like to share? Now's the time, shoot straight."
Salieri detested a lot of things. Unreliability was one of them. Mia felt like that last sentence was aimed at her. She said nothing. Normally, she'd be the one to cool Sal down, but she didn't know the extent of Sal's beef with Helena and she was preoccupied by her own quiet panic.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 12:40 pm
Zack had spent his formative years at the Cerulean Academy with his nasty old Aunt drilling home a few key ideas. One that stood out, especially to Zack, was throwing your opponent off their game by acting like a total d**k. It was so easy to shift into character, to be the antagonist in an exchange, that it was sometimes more difficult to shift back. Years of sculpting his personality into that of the Perfect Jerk meant that Zack struggled when he had to push a conversation in the opposite direction.
There was clearly quite a lot of s**t going down between Helena and Salieri, with Zack literally caught in the middle.
'It's the end of your secrets, right? Does anyone else have any super pertinent s**t they'd like to share? Now's the time, shoot straight.'
'It's really not the time,' Zack said, putting his hand on Helena's shoulder. 'Everyone here except for Deathwish is stressed, let's just take a step back and chill. We can come back to it with cooler heads.'
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 1:26 pm
"It didn't feel like something I was going to survive," Helena told Salieri. "It felt like I wasn't allowed to, or I wasn't meant to. I thought 'as long as it's just me it's fine'. I didn't want anyone else to get hurt because of my own problems." She hadn't thought much further ahead than that for several days.
"I still don't know if I can win, and I still hate the idea of anyone else getting hurt because of me - for me - but I was told that I should trust people more. Truth be told, Sal?" She looked between Sal and Zack. "I'd honestly rather you all tell me I'm on my own with it, but at least like this I'm not hiding anything."
She looked at Zack as he tried to roll the conversation back and smiled weakly. "I'm gonna stay here and help clean this place up. According to basically all the papers on repeat criminals, recidivism rates are largely effected by being trapped in an unhealthy environment and," she gestured to the villa which was still trashed, "this whole estate is one giant reminder of the a** kicking Sal gave her. Besides, I have some things I'd like to ask Alanza Taine before the dinner party tomorrow."
Then she paused, looked at Zack for what felt like forever but was probably more like a few seconds, "oh, and I think I might be gay."
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2020 2:08 pm
Ben shook his head. "Look, Sal, put your head on straight and then do the judgment thing later. We know now, and we wouldn't have without her. If you want her to ever trust us with stuff that matters, that may matter to you, again, stow the ******** bullshit." Ben stepped forward, taking a position by Zac, but faced Sal.
"I remember you two treating her like a useless child the first time I saw her. So let's stop that now. Helena. I'm with you." He turned to her. "Not for you, though. Get that right. You too, sure, but he needs to be stopped. Even if you get away, who's next? So we stop him. Ratio's in a similar boat, but I'm not sure how similar yet."
He looked at Zack. "You're right on this. We're all tense. The information is making it worse. Split up, go home, rest. And I guess clean a mansion if that's your thing." He looked at Helena with a raised eyebrow. A good heart, but he didn't know this Alanza well enough to fully know if she deserved the help just yet.
"Do you want one of us to stick with you just in case?"
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