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2nd floor common room ; saturday afternoon

Sam didn't really know what to think of the whole England thing. He'd never been out of Washington and in the last few years, he hadn't even really left Seattle. He probably should have been out exploring the new location but laziness was strong enough motivation to not go anywhere but one of the common room sofas.

He didn't expect to find anything on TV but it was on anyway and one of the eight thousand news programs was getting ignored for the very gourmet bowl of cereal Sam was eating. One class on cupcakes did not a chef make and if he messed up milk in a bowl then he really was hopeless.

There'd been a message from Brid on his phone when he'd woken up. It hadn't been anything monumental, nothing revelatory. She was just saying hi, telling him what her brothers were up to and promising to check in on Ramon and Frank. He hadn't called back. Sam was sure Brannoc had plenty of things to say to Brid about him so he was just gonna lay low for awhile.

Lay low until the next torturous Council meeting, at least. Sam pushed that thought away and glanced up at the TV. Lucky him, now there was an infomercial on. Quality TV right there.

[CR's an open place]

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"That is some great television, right there." Saturday, Kate was bored, there was someone in her common room to bother while she made herself coffee. Why wouldn't she go for that bait? "I didn't know you were so cultured, Seattle."

"Yeah, this is going on my Christmas list for sure," Sam replied, rolling his eyes. "Want me to order an extra one for you? Bet you can get some use out of it."

"Aw, how sweet of you to think of me, that is exactly what I wanted." Kate smirked and leaned over the back of the couch as she watched the guy do his little demonstration.

"How did you guess?" Because she looked like such a domestic, stew-making sort, perhaps?

"I'm psychic," he said dryly, rolling his eyes. "A friend I know back in Seattle liked to watch these late at night after we both got off work. We made fun of them and felt better about ourselves. Seems stupid now."

"Please, I did that with the bulletins back home when tech was up." Kate shrugged. See, it wasn't like she could really judge.

"It's all 'Please don't summon demons of hell. It's illegal and hazardous to your health!'" She threw in the sort of demented smile you often saw on the faces of people who recorded those, and swiftly let it drop. "No shit?"

"Wow," Sam said, eyes widening at what she and her friends apparently used for fun. "And summoning demons from Hell, that's a common thing where you're from? Sounds like the perfect place to take a vacation, Savannah."

"It feels like it." Every other week SWAT were freaking over something. "People are dumbasses, and will do anything for power."

"But hey, they're working on making it tougher for people," Kate offered. "There's this square in Atlanta with, like, the government buildings and stuff that's been flattened a couple times. Now they just won't name it. I think they figure if they don't name it, no one can summon anything there."

"Wait, name it?" Sam repeated, not following. "Name it what? Like, Atlanta Square? Or Bob?"

Kate squared him with an odd look. "They have squares called Bob much in Seattle?"

"They might." Sam shrugged a shoulder and ate a few more spoonfuls of his cereal. "I don't know Seattle that intimately. Maybe there's a squared named Bob and a road named Jane. I don't know."

"Well, as far as I know, we dont," she supplied. Of course, she didn't know every inch of Atlanta, or even Savannah. "And not just because the government are too scared to name shit all these days."

"So, what's with the naming thing?" Sam asked, still curious about that. "What's so bad about giving things name? Seems like it'd make things easier on everyone."

Kate shrugged, blowing some dust out of a mug she'd yanked out of the cupboard. "It's better when you're summoning weird crap to be specific," she told him. Otherwise, who knows what you'd get.

"But uh, 'I summon ye to this grotty piece of concrete between the morgue and the PAD office' doesn't really roll of the tongue."

"Yeah, I guess it doesn't," he said, squinting at her now while he tried to figure out what she was summoning and why names were so important. Predictably, he couldn't really figure it out.

"So, your government doesn't name things so people can't summon things to...what? Join their merry band of rebels?"

"Mostly I think people summon things to do their bidding or grant them impossible powers." Kate tipped some grounds into the coffee maker and prodded at it to make it work. "Usually they fuck up, monster runs rampant, rocks fall and we lose another city block."

Which is why they needed those urgent bulletins reminding people that summoning things was a Bad Plan.

"You can see why they might not want that."

"Yeah, I guess." The whole 'doing their bidding' reminded him way too much of Douglas Montgomery and how he treated those he raised from the dead. Sam suppressed a shudder.

"What kind of monsters are these?" he asked, trying to shake that feeling off.

"Oh, you know, whatever people can get. Three headed slavic god, hell worm, winged snakes... That sort of thing." It usually didn't work out very well for the people involved.

"You want coffee?" Be warned, Sam, her coffee has been described as engine oil.

"Nah, I'm good," he said, holding up the bowl of cereal he was still nursing. "But, you can only summon things if you know an exact location? Kind of inconvenient, isn't it?"

"I don't think magic means to be convenient." It was never the feeling she'd got. "It really just seems to screw with things." This was why Kate preferred her giant sword to all the magic in her blood.

"Who knows if their whole 'ha, you can't summon it if there's no place name!' logic actually works. Maybe it's just a theory."

"It's just that..." He paused and hesitated, thinking twice about sharing. He shook his head. "Yeah, never mind. Summoning the only thing your magic can do? Just use it as a weapon?"

"No." Kate poured her coffee and wandered over to drop down onto the couch. "Magic tends to be pretty flexible." If you know how to use it, and if you had enough of it.

"For the record. I'm not one of the crazies that summons monsters to wreak city-wide havoc." No, she was the sort of crazy who took a sword to things like that. Completely different.

Edited 2011-07-10 00:17 (UTC)

"Aw, too bad. I had you pegged for crazy, insane and efficient. Guess I've gotta cross the first two off my list," Sam quipped, wondering if he'd get a look for slurping the milk in the cereal bowl.

"What kind of crazy are you?" he asked curiously.

"The kind that people skirt around on the street." Usually when she carried her large glowing saber around.

"I feel like I should be offended you pegged me as both crazy and insane. That's a double hit on my sanity, right there."

"You telling me you haven't made judgments of your own about me?" Sam asked dubiously. Everyone was judgmental. No one was immune to that.

"No." No, she wasn't immune to that. "But I haven't told you I think you're a nutjob yet. Somehow, that doesn't seem an altogether smart move, if you think someone's a little unstable," she joked.

"You know I'm a necromancer," Sam stated, deciding just to go ahead and slurp the milk. Yep, he raised the dead and he liked to slurp his milk. "My own mom's afraid of me. I'm used to people thinking I'm a headcase."

"I've been dealing in blood and death since I was four." He'd shared, so could she. "If my mom was alive, she'd probably be freaked by me too."

"But it does help when you want people to leave you be." Which worked perfectly for Kate. Playing the crazy bitch with a giant sword had people keeping their distance and acting a lot nicer.

"You use your -- " He paused and just made a few gestures with his fingers and hand towards her. " -- stuff to scare people off? Sounds kind of harsh."

"No, I use my glare and a big pointy sword to scare people off," Kate corrected. Which was also a little harsh. "And generally only with the ones who deserve it."

Magic was only the very last resort, because the more she used it, the more likely her discovery, and she was in no way ready for that showdown yet.

It was probably better for everyone if they stayed at arms length. Or further. Once people knew what she was, and what she'd done, that wasn't usually a problem. Sane people avoided killers.

"I bet you make friends wherever you go," Sam quipped half sarcastically. He hadn't seen her glare or sword so he couldn't really judge how well that worked. "Find many that deserve it?"

Oh yes, Kate was a BFF magnet. Ask anyone!

"Not lately," she admitted. "People here..." Unnervingly friendly, for the most part, and none of them had tried to kill her yet, which was generally her indicator of really deserving threats.

"Maybe I'm getting soft."

"Guess you should find yourself an enemy to keep that from happening then," Sam suggested, half serious. "I bet that would stop you from turning into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man."

"I don't know, that thing was pretty scary..." As scary as her, possibly. "I'm betting he doesn't have many friends."

"I think mostly because of the size thing, cause that's pretty intimidating. I'm missing a trick there." The downsize of being a not-particularly-huge girl.

"He was made of marshmallow," Sam pointed out, shaking his head. "I could never find it in me to be scared. Sure, he could stomp on cars and stuff but he was made of marshmallows. That's not scary. That makes me crave s'mores."

"When I was four, car stomping seemed pretty bad." Of all the nasties in that movie, the one that could squash her flat seemed the toughest to take down. "I was small and didn't run very fast."

"Now, I think I'd be okay with marshmallow monsters." In fact, she'd take them over most things she had come across.

"You're not four anymore," Sam pointed out before frowning and giving her an appraising look. "Are you?"

Yes, he was just kidding.

Kate rolled her eyes, "I'm six, obviously. God, Seattle. Get it right!" Sixteen, same thing.

"And somehow, also a sophomore. I must be super smart."

"And I'm eighteen and a senior," Sam shared, shrugging. "Does that make me smarter than you? By your logic, sounds like it does. Eighteen is greater than sixteen, senior is greater than sophomore thus, I'm smarter and older."

"Being in high school at six, would be way more impressive," she decided. Kate's schooling over the year had been... unconventional, at best. A lot of people here were likely smarter than her. She could speak a couple of languages and decipher several more, but math and any form of science was way beyond her.

"But hey, you hold onto your achievement old man," she told him with a grin.

"Hey, I know I'm not smart." He shrugged, resigned. "I dropped out to work at a fast food restaurant. Nothing says Ivy League like cooking meat that's not really meat."

"Sounds like we'll be the losers sitting in a corner at the college fair together. Rolling our eyes and mocking the high aspirations of everyone around us." There was no way Kate was throwing herself in for further education. "Sound like a plan?"

"Deal," Sam said, giving her a thumbs up for no other reason than offering a hand to shake on it meant he'd have to move more than he wanted. "Good plan."

Kate raised her mug in a sort of toast. Not moving was also a decent plan.

"Now shut up, your nattering is distracting me from... the guy with the super knives."

Sam could do that, sure. There was more cereal to have and a...really bad infomercial to watch. Yeah, Sam could shut up and eat cereal for the rest of the afternoon.

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2nd floor common room ; saturday afternoon

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