"Yeah," Liam concurred. "A really big fire. You should've seen it up close."

He opened the door and stepped out so that he could watch the skies unobstructed, eyes glowing faintly in the dark as he peeled back the gloom.

Robyn crept off the driveway into the ditch. She made some gestures with her hands, and the darkness seemed to melt to cover her.

"You might want to hide," she said from the shadows. "Unless you want to be the bait."

Liam nodded. Under other circumstances he might consider taking Robyn up on the offer, but after weathering an explosion point blank he wasn't about to tempt fate. He too disappeared from view, though without the benefit of magic to cloak his passing. His sunglasses at least had survived the impact and did serviceable work shielding the glow of his eyes.

After a minute or so, a crow alighted on the road, and walked towards the abandoned police car. He looked through the rear window from a distance, cautiously gauging the situation. He was still too far to strike with ease.

He paced from the safety of the road for a moment, his eyes continuing to search from the sky. After a moment, he unholstered a flare gun from his belt.

Before he could raise it to the sky, a bolt of lightning fired from the shadows. This was no glancing blow. The poor scout was instantly blasted into ash.

Robyn made no move to reappear just yet. She lurked in the darkness, waiting for more to come.

After several tense minutes, no further reinforcements arrived. Robyn reappeared, patting at her uniform, which had begun to smoke. She moved tentatively towards the car. "I think we're in the clear. You gonna live?"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:49, Sun 14 June 2020.

Liam reemerged from the brush and paced over to the heap of ashes, kicking it over with his foot.

Did anything survive the lightning?

"I'm going to be thirsty as heck for the next few nights, but yeah, I'll be fine," Liam said, turning back towards the car once he was satisfied. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Robyn replied. She started the car, and sped towards home. "For a moment, I wasn't sure you'd survived that blast. I'm guessing at the very least they knew that apartment was a hideout for someone that wasn't them. Still, Jesus Christ."

“If we make it home safe and sound, I’m prepared to cut my loses. The guns are replaceable and we can pick up new clothes anywhere. Most things of any real importance I carry with me everywhere, and there’s only one thing I can think of that burned up in that fire that’s truly irreplaceable.”

“Poor Caleb is going to have to subsist on potato chips for another night though.”

"Your vamp buddies are extremely well-armed," Robyn said. "I'd ask our roommate about getting more kaboom-boom. As for what you lost... Well, I might be able to help you there. What was it?"

"A book," Liam replied. "A book about your Book, in fact. The one on your coffee table. Not the one you're working on."

"I had it in my possession for a few months a long time ago. I spent nights trying to make sense of it, and a little bit I did. I wrote everything down."

"I was going to give it to you tonight. I thought maybe it could help with your work."

Robyn smiled, and scratched her cheek. "If you'd given it to me when I first got my hands on it, things might have been different. But now, there's not much about that book or its history that I don't know. We're pretty intimately acquainted. I appreciate the sentiment, though. If you'd like a faithful recreation, I can probably pull that off. Once I'm recovered, of course. Tonight took a lot out of me, and I was running on empty to begin with."

“I won’t worry then,” Liam said. He smiled, and with the state of his face it felt raw and painful.

“I don’t think I was ever intended to be more than a custodian for the Book. When I look at the pages - it’s hard to put into words, really. It’s like it’s trying to show me something and I can just about grasp the edges of it but the more I try to grapple with it, the more it grapples right back with me. And it hurts. It gets right to your sense of self.”

“But you solved the puzzle. I could never do that.”

"Turns out the solution was to let it blow up your brain," Robyn said, her stare going distant again. "Flood yourself. Lose yourself. And when you come to, you'll have held on to a fragment of what you came in for. Do it often enough, and you'll have the whole puzzle. Hallucinogens help, believe it or not. You can take a bigger piece out with you when your mind is expanded. But it's hard work no matter how you go at it, and every time you go in, you come out a little more fractured."

Her hands were shaking violently now. She had slowed the car down to compensate. Nearly home. "It's... nice to talk to someone who gets it."

“I’ve never talked to anyone about it before,” Liam confessed. “I was always afraid, I guess.” No longer.

“It’s going to take a few days for me to convalesce. Maybe you can show me what you mean, if you’re up for it.”

Robyn was quiet until she pulled the car to a complete stop. "I'll have to consult with the book about that," she said frankly. "And as long as we're being honest, you're also going to have to have a very frank discussion about just how many mutual friends connect you to my murdered partner. I'm sure you understand."

She didn't bother changing out of her uniform. She walked right into the house and buried her face in Caleb's neck.

"I'll make you a deal, O'Farrell," she said, her mouth muffled by fur. "I help you with those wounds and I get to borrow your dog tonight."

“I’m sure he prefers you to me already,” Liam remarked. “Can you actually help me to heal this?”

He’d glanced in the rear view mirror on the way back. He was under no illusions of how close he had come to death. It would take him days to heal on his own, and he’d be little good to anyone until then.

"I can," Robyn replied. "Just give me a few minutes to prepare you something. It won't fix you right up, but it'll help speed up your natural mending process."

Pockets emerged from the basement, a pair of giant headphones around her head. She glanced at the pair, nodded upward with her chin, and fished through the open road case for some indecipherable piece of electronics. She was halfway downstairs when she slid the headphones off, and peered over the top of the steps.

"Yo, are you aware you've been on fire?"

"Painfully," Liam replied, watching her disappear down the stairs.

"Pockets, honey, a moment," Robyn called to the Malkavian. Pockets paused her retreat. Robyn opened up her impressive spice cupboard, and retrieved around two dozen herbs, roots and fungi. She set about weighing and portioning each ingredient, feeding them all into a large mortar. She paused, and transferred the contents out of her good mortar and into an older, rougher-looking set.

"I'm gonna need some vampire blood," Robyn said. "Liam's looking a pint low, so maybe you should volunteer."

"No skin off my sack," Pockets said. Then, to Liam. "My shit's pretty trippy, though. You ready to go for a ride, mate?"

Liam nodded. Robyn had said hallucinogens helped with the process. Malkavian blood was likely the closest thing he'd get to that as a vampire, and it was probably a whole lot crazier.

"Lets have it," he said.

"Don't worry," Robyn said. "You'll be out for most of it."

She slid a large mug towards Pockets. Its face proudly declared 'BIG HUG MUG.' Pockets sliced open her wrist with a fang. She bled into the cup until Robyn directed her to stop. She poured enough of the blood to cover the collected phytocopia, which she proceeded to mash into a paste. She then spooned the bloody mush into the reminder of the blood. She gave it a stir, and the poultice effervesced. She set the nug in a pot of water to steep. She stared at it impatiently. "Can't rush this part," she commented.

Pockets had found something more interesting than her gadgets. She watched with morbid fascination. "I bet you make good weed butter," she remarked.

"I make great weed butter," Robyn retorted with a laugh. "I'm not big on edibles, though. That was more Sunny's thing. That girl could put 'em away."

No shit, thought Liam.

"I had to learn for Mike," Pockets said. "He couldn't make it through the night without 'em. I botched my first two attempts, and by the third batch I was overcompensating so hard I kicked his ass. Poor fucker woke up so stoned he forgot how to walk."

The three shared a laugh, then a sigh. Something unspoken passed between them, and they all thought of the respective pieces of themselves that had left them behind.

After a moment, Robyn cleared her throat, and attempted to dispel the increasingly awkward silence. "Well, no worries about hangovers with this," she said, changing the subject. "It'll put you to sleep and you'll wake up refreshed. You might have some trippy dreams, but I'm not even sure vampires have them." She gave the simmering potion a stir. It gave off a few small sparks, and fizzled quietly.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:08, Mon 15 June 2020.

As Robyn had set about working her Alchemy, Liam doffed his cap and overcoat. The former had come out relatively unscathed, having been blown clear off his head by the concussive blast. The coat had taken a bit of a beating but it was black to begin with and hopefully would still do serviceable work at night.

He picked up the concoction, sparks and all, and held it up. “Well. Bottoms up, I suppose.”

Robyn swatted his hand away before he could retrieve the potion. "Whoa there, cowboy," she said. "Not quite finished yet. And you want to make damn sure you're in bed before you drink it. You wouldn't even make it down the stairs."

She took the poultice off the heat, and strained the concoction through a cheesecloth bag. Then she decanted it back into the Big Hug Mug and passed it to Liam. She tossed the solids in her compost bin.

The concoction certainly smelled like hot vitae, however it was curious that it wasn't congealing into a puck. It bubbled and sparked like an electric soda pop. He had little doubt he could safely ingest it.

Pockets smirked at Liam. "Guess this is goodnight."

"I suppose it is," Liam replied. He picked up the elixir.

"Try not to get into too much trouble without me," he remarked. "I'll see the two of you tomorrow."

Saying his evening farewells, Liam made his way down to his basement sanctuary. His clothes stank of smoke and he removed them gingerly. He had one spare set in his wet-bag and it would have to get him through until the next night out. Finally he lay down and brought the potion to his lips.

Hopefully things would start to look up again tomorrow.

Liam could hear the two bantering as he retired. The potion tickled on its way down. He could feel its electric pings work their way down his throat and then through his body. The pinging amplified and resonated in his brain, drowning out his thoughts and eventually his conscious mind altogether.

He dreamt of fire.

[4 exp for the scene. You can heal up to three levels of aggro, with BP cost, instead of one tonight. You wake up rested and gain +1 temp WP. Or would, if you weren't full.]