07.02.3013: Subtle Recruiting
Summary: Lyrienne finds Rook and Nitrim at a coffee house. She brings up the dreams and her feelings about them. Nitrim cracks open the doorway for her into the growing Cabal of Awakened.
Date: 02 July 2013
Related: Awakened Insurrection
Nitrim Ithaca Lyrienne 


RP Suites
Room description available in scene
July 02, 3013

Mid-day has fallen and the area near the Ways gate on Volkan is where Nitrim has planted himself. It's a small, secluded coffee house, where he sits with one leg crossed over the other. With his tablet on his lap and a cigarette in his hand, he idly switches between sips of tea and news articles from the quiet, secluded corner of the catchy little shop. Strange for the time of day, the man seems to have the place to himself.

Rook has been off the Ring more in the last week than she has in years. She steps into the coffee shop with her eyes looking around warily. It's unfamiliar territory for the tattooed, pierced hacker. Nitrim is spotted and she hustles over to him, head dipped, hood up on her tunic, backpack over one shoulder. She slides into a seat at his table wordlessly and pulls out a laptop.

Lyrienne is not particularly good at blending in. Sauveur, Orelle, and relatively famous musician are things that tend to get in the way. What she is good at, however, is not drawing attention to herself. So while she does stop outside to sign an autograph for a particularly observant teenage girl, by the time she's inside, she's free of any obvious following. A quick scan of the room suffices to find Nitrim, and she weaves her way through the tables toward where he sits. "Cousin," she greets with a flash of a smile, even if it might be something of an exaggeration.

Setting down his mug of tea, Nitrim looks over to Rook and opens his mouth to say something, but is distracted by the sudden arrival of Lyrienne. He quickly stubs out his cigarette and offers her a little wave, motioning to one of the chairs at the table. "Lady Lyrienne, cousin, please join us. I wasn't able to speak with you after your performance at Phylon. Please, meet Rook. Rook? This is Lady Lyrienne Orelle, daughter of my uncle."

Dark eyes, limned in black (although one is blackened on its own, the bruising still visible beneath the makeup) slide over to Lyrienne. Rook is silently as she takes the woman's measure, looking back to Nitrim as he speaks. She nods to Lyrienne as she begins typing on the laptop keyboard with fingers almost too fast to keep track of. Chatty, this one.

"According to the tabloids, you were otherwise occupied," Lyrienne teases, the corners of her eyes crinkling with humor as she shakes her head. "No, no, don't worry," she laughs. "I know better than most just how much truth there is in those things. Hello, Rook," she offers amiably to the other woman as she settles into a seat, brushing a hand over her skirts. "A pleasure to meet you." Yes, she is one of those disturbingly friendly people. Shiny, happy people. She holds the smile for a long moment, then looks back to Nitrim, unruffled. "I heard that you'd been…talking to people. About dreams and the like."

At the mention of dreams, Nitrim casts a quiet look over to Rook and then settles his eyes back to Lyrienne. Like Rook, he has a black eye as well, a sign of some kind of recent fist fight. "Yes, well…I've fed the tabloids enough content over the last few weeks that it's really my fault they've been following me around. I'm a careless thing." He laughs. "But as for dreams, did you now?" He teases, allowing himself for the moment to feel like a bit of a crime lord. He lowers his voice and his smile fades, eyebrows lifting. "Did you get it, too?" He points to his forehead, waving his finger over it in a circle.

It looks like both Rook and Nitrim had recently been in a street fight or something. They have matching black eyes and split lips. Rook looks over at Lyrienne for her response, even as her fingers keep moving on the keyboard. She stops typing and digs out a cigarette, lighting it with a fingertip and taking a drag.

Lyrienne nods quietly to Nitrim, her smile fading. Though she's generally composed, she reaches out to rub a thumbnail across the edge of the table, a small sign of the effect the dream had on her. "The digging around, the taking apart. Which wasn't the first dream, of course, but it was certainly an…escalation." She may note the injuries, but she doesn't seem inclined to question them. It might be rude, after all. "I had a few thoughts of my own about them. But trying to talk about dreams on the Ring is opening a whole can of worms, and some of those worms are just…" She grimaces. "Sometimes I think living in space absolutely rots people's sense."

Reaching out to a couple of cups on the table, Nitrim helps himself to pouring two more cups of the bitter, woodsy tea. Without asking, he slides one over to Rook and the other over to Lyrienne while he listens to her story. Once being a good host has finished, he settles back into his seat and folds his hands in his lap. "Well, you're probably right to stay quiet about it, you're rather high profile. Rook and I have talked about it, but apart from that we haven't poked the badger. I've had the dreams, too, all of them. What do you think the dreams meant?"

"Looking on the wrong levels," Rook murmurs at Lyrienne. She reaches over to take the offered tea for a sip, then makes a hilarious blech face when she realizes it's not coffee. She slides it back to the center of the table. "Boroughs," she adds, to clarify that she's also from the Ring.

Nitrim whispers mentally, "Oh come on it's not that bad." to Ithaca.

Ithaca whispers mentally: Tastes like a tree. That's been pissed on. By a drunk.

Nitrim whispers mentally, "that's because I pissed on a tree and made tea out of it." to Ithaca.

Rook barks out a short laugh, for no apparent reason.

Lyrienne quirks a brow at Rook, adding milk and sugar to her tea before taking a sip. "It's less the place, I think. More that there's a higher percentage of people claiming to be experts in dreams. And some of them have very creative theories," she says with a faint smile before she looks back to Nitrim. "It's going to sound silly. But I think they're looking for our souls." She lets that sit for a moment, settling back in her chair. "I thought at first that it was the Awakened. There were the captives. And the dream where we were them. The blood. But more and more I hear about them not just killing people, but taking captives, and apparently experimenting on them. And then there was this dream. The digging around, the searching. They're looking for something in us, and now, with the addition of the chantry symbol, I can't help but wonder if it's a soul. Something, maybe, that sets us apart from them. The thing that makes us different."

When Rook laughs, Nitrim's lips part into a wide, friendly grin and he reaches out to her unused cup of tea. He brings it over his own mug and pours the unwanted portion in over his own. "That doesn't sound silly at all." Nitrim replies, leaning back in his seat and bringing the mug to his lips for a tentative, temperature check. "There's all sorts of information coming in from the field that I'm hearing too. Some of it I've seen first hand. I wouldn't put it past them to be tearing people apart, or maybe even branding them first." He sips again and then sets the tea down, his attention focused on Lyrienne. "If you had the power, what would you do about it, though?"

Rook sits back in her seat at Lyrienne's words and she presses her lips in a tight line, her jaw twitching. That's the best explanation she's heard so far, and the one that seems to fit best. "Souls." She chews on her lower lip at that, looking uncomfortable.

"That's very much what Ric looked like when I mentioned it to him," Lyrienne smiles faintly to Rook, rueful. "Except I think that's the point. If you don't necessarily believe in a soul, how would you go about looking for it?" Though she pales, she manages another sip. "Very much like what we've seen, both on the ground and in our dreams, I think." At Nitrim's question, she shakes her head. "I'm no soldier. But this is clearly different. They're not fighting us. They're studying us. Maybe we should be doing the same."

"Maybe we should." Nitrim stares at Lyrienne, as if inspecting her and reading her body language. Before the long, curious, and narrow-eyed stare gets to the level of creepy, he nods his head and reaches into his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He dips his head to it and snares two cigarettes between his lips. In front of the coffee house and all, he dips the cigarettes into a flame produced at the end of his finger, then offers one to Rook. "Cousin, I'm the one with the opinion that since we get these dreams we're soldiers whether we like it or not. Are you willing to share with me your ideas, or at least let me know when you have these dreams, too, so that we can coordinate?"

"Bugs under microscopes," Rook says quietly, deeply disturbed. Her glance flickers up to Nitrim repeatedly, and she takes the fresh cigarette, staring at the ember on the end before she takes a deep drag.

"Of course," Lyrienne says without hesitation, brows furrowing slightly in a frown. "Frankly, we all should be sharing them. I know there's no need or desire to frighten people, but if we as Awakened aren't coordinating…Well." She sighs, rolling her eyes and looking away for a moment. "Granted, that attempt at getting everyone together was laughable, at best. We don't coordinate well, it seems."

Looking down to the tablet on the table, Nitrim takes it into his hands and starts to quietly tap out a message. Pressing send, he looks across the table to Lyrienne and nods his head, sadly. "If only we could get politics out of the way for long enough to get something working, right?" He lets out a tired, bitter laugh. "But I guess we can start here, Cousin, and do what we can to get each other talking while working on figuring out what we feel about these bloody dreams. Could I ask you a personal question, though? How does your Lord Husband feel about this? Would you rather he didn't know you were networking about this?"

"Have to be careful," Rook cautions Lyrienne. "Can't let Hostiles know." If they can circumvent events by having prewarning, it has to stay under wraps.

Lyrienne arches a brow at Nitrim. "Ric's busy," she says simply. "But he isn't the sort to try to tell me what I can and can't do. He's known better than that for a very long time. I don't have anything to hide from him." She sits up straighter again, letting out a slow breath. "Nitrim, I am a Sauveur, and I was raised to become High Lady Arboren. Cedric knows that I understand how to be useful without being a liability."

Nitrim looks over Lyrienne's shoulder towards the door, then to Rook. There's something he's hiding, and for the first time he allows it to show. He quirks a slender, blonde eyebrow at Rook in an unspoken question before turning his attention back to Lyrienne. His smile is genuine, though filled with conspiracy. "You're perceptive." He laughs softly, saluting her with his mug of tea. Once the levity passes, he lowers his voice. "I'm sorry, Lyrienne, I'm honestly not toying with you. You and I have the same opinion about this thing. I've been speaking to other Awakened, and please keep this between us. There's a bit of chaos with them, but this is something I've been working on. I respect you greatly and trust you, so I'm asking you to trust me. Let me talk with them and I'll make sure you're brought into the loop so that we can try to save some lives, alright?" He holds up a finger. "But I need your word. Please, protect my anonymity. I want this to be a quiet, private thing for now."

Rook smokes her cigarette in silence, letting Nitrim hash things out with his cousin as she monitors the screen of her laptop, watching her algorithm continue its slow creep through the Infosphere.

Lyrienne tilts her head slightly, considering Nitrim for a long moment. "If what you've done is enough to bring consensus, then I see no reason to stick my nose into it," she finally says, softening the words with a flicker of a smile. "I'm glad to help however I can."

"I just want to be careful about what goes over the Infosphere. With all of those cables, there's no telling what the Hostile can see. So whenever you want to talk, please, send me a message that's vague if you can. I'd like for you to help, truly. I'll make sure you get the chance to. Just give me some time, okay?" Nitrim replies, crossing one leg over the other at the ankle. Brushing a hand through his hair, he lets his hand come to a stop atop the back of Rook's chair. "So, how was it performing again? I'm a fan, you know."

Rook tilts her head a little, studying Lyrienne with more interest now that music has come up. "Like the last album," she notes. Mind you, she's probably mostly listened to underground hardcore covers of the songs.

"Something tells me avoiding being caught by Hostiles is very much like avoiding being caught by paparazzi," Lyrienne says with a wry smile. As the subject changes, she settles back with her tea once more, taking a sip. "It was nice to be on stage again. Nice to see people respond to the new stuff. I caught a lot of skepticism from the producers when I said I wanted to move away from the old sound. Thank you," she adds with a smile to Ithaca.

"Well, I happen to be better at avoiding being caught by the Hostile than by the paparazzi. If only I could find a way to level out that skill a little bit. Gods know I've killed plenty of Hostile so far." Nitrim comments, pausing for a drag of his cigarette. The muscles in his neck pull against his skin as he looks to Rook, though he speaks to Lyrienne. "Perhaps the next time you perform you could get Rook and I some backstage passes, then?"

Rook turns to look at Nitrim, because she realizes the risk he's taking here. She arches a brow at him, then winces because that pulls at muscles that are still bruised in her face. "Would be cool," she adds.

"I don't see why not," Lyrienne agrees easily. "It's the least I can do for family. I'm not sure yet when it will be, but once I know, I'll send you the tour dates so you can pick one that works for the both of you," she says with a swift smile. "I would have tried to get you some for the last one if I'd known you were interested. Though with so many acts, I think they were much tighter with them."

"Sure, sure. I will be training with the Granthams and on and off the field with the fighting, so we'll have to factor that into the schedule, but it shouldn't be a problem. At least backstage I'll be left alone. Can you believe that Letha suggested that I actually feed the paparazzi a little so that they don't try to make everything look bad?" Nitrim rolls his eyes just a little at the idea of it. He presses a hand to his forehead and sighs. "Sloppy. I think everything's under control now, though."

"For now." Rook adds, with the faintest of smirks. "Thank you," she says to Lyrienne at the offer, or maybe for helping the Awakened.

Lyrienne chuckles to Nitrim, shaking her head. "She's not wrong, actually. I usually go with some picnic dates with Ric and the kids. They stay at a distance, they get some pictures, and they don't go digging too deeply. If you're going to be training, I'd humbly suggest some nice, sweaty shirtless pics from the training field," she teases, smile wry. "Just remember who they're trying to sell you to and give them something they can use." She looks to Rook then, tilting her head slightly. "If you hear anything interesting on the Ring, would you mind letting me know? Just for something to think about."

"You know, the idea of positioning myself just so that the cameramen can get some shirtless pictures of me sounds so…petty. I just might do it." Nitrim muses, rising from his chair as if preparing to leave. He reaches into his pocket and leaves some money on the table for the serves and downs the last of his tea. "Well, if you do see any pictures in the news, Cousin, and have any pointers, feel free to message me with them. Or if you know the names of cameramen worth giving exclusives to, I just might. That is, if I'm not covered in bruises from all of the training."

Rook nods to Lyrienne, a jerky little motion like she had to think about it. "Ok." When Nitrim rises, she does too, packing away her laptop and slinging the battered backpack over her shoulder. She takes a step towards the door. Stops. Thinks for a moment about properness. "Bye." Yes, that's what people say.

"Take care, both of you," Lyrienne says with a warm smile, wiggling her fingers in one of those cheerful waves before settling back to finish her tea.

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