Tailgate hesitated but then let out a sigh and gave a reluctant nod. "Yeah. I'll go too. I was recommended by Mr. Mushingi, so I should show up." He said that but then realized it was unlikely that someone would tell his counselor if he showed up or not. Frag it. He'd already said he go in.

Nikola arrives together with Vamp, she looks at the Celtic designs and remembers how she was once fascinated with the concept of the Celts as “european noble savages” that worshipped sacred trees under the guide of Druids and Witches connected to mother earth.

She sighs and comments to Vamp  “Ok here we go, i think we can look for Daryna, she might be in some reading club somewhere here, maybe we can have some luck and get invited with some stout beer or something we can say ‘Slainthe’ to, i like te fact that is a public place, i mean it feels safer in case we are poking the wrong people ” and she proceeds to get inside

"I'll follow your lead," Vamp said, looking around at the various decorations. "This is not my scene at all. I won't say no to a nice stout, though. Come on, Tailgate. We can be out of our depth together."

The woman behind the desk looks up from her book, looking at the juvies over her reading glasses.  With a half smile and without standing, she asks, "Are you kids looking for something in particular?"

Tailgate looked uncomfortable, and he wasn't pretending. This wasn't his normal scene. He gave a weak smile that quickly vanished. "We...uh..." He looked down and scratched his chin. "We were told there was a support...meeting?" He then added another word lamely. "here?"

Nikola was checking behind the book shelves to see if she could spot Darina somewhere while she kept her hands inside her trenchcoat pockets when she heard Tailgate talking "Oh and sorry for interrupting tailgate, let me also add that at least one of them is supossed to be Juve, a girl that looks like having the same age as we do, they might all be juves actually"

The woman looks at the three kids for a few moments before smiling.  "The support group meets tomorrow, but I think someone is waiting for you, upstairs," she says, and her mild Irish accent becomes just a bit more noticeable.  She then goes back to her book.

"Yeah, thanks. Can I get a pint to take upstairs?" Vamp asked the woman before leaving to follow the others upstairs. She had a fake ID ready just in case.

Tailgate's eyebrows rose up a bit and his eyes widened slightly at that phrase, "someone is waiting for you, upstairs". It shouldn't be ominous, but after recent events he was a infused with a bit more than a 'healthy does' of skepticism. He scratched his chin for just a moment.

Then he shrugged, took a deep breath, and then slowly headed upstairs.

The woman behind the counter shakes her head at Vamps's order and returns to her book as the three juves head up the metal spiral stairs to the second floor.  The second floor looks more like a library than a book store.  The shelves reach the ceiling and are filled with real books, many of them seem quite old.  There are also big, comfortable chairs strategically place around for people to snuggle in and read.  The second floor is a balcony the wraps around the store, the center open to the first floor below.

Curled up in a chair thoroughly engaged with her phone is Darina.  As usual her shorts are very small and her t-shirt is cut to show her belly and also hangs off one shoulder.  Her shoes, black Vans, are on the floor in front of the chair, her ankle socks have an incongruous bit of lace along the top.

"What? I'm old enough," Vamp said, giving the woman a scowl before heading up the stairs with the others.

"What is this place, eh? Real olde-timey vibe here with all this knotwork and tapestries on the walls," she quipped as they walked up to the second floor. "Oh-"

The library was impressive. Despite her bluster and general bad attitude, she did appreciate old books so this was her kind of place though she'd never tell the other that. She wandered off to look at some of the titles before remembering why they were there and coming back to talk to the girl waiting for them.

Tailgate smirked slightly at the rebuff and refusal Vamp got - but only once his back was turned to her as he headed up the stairs. It had helped ease his tension a little bit for a moment at least, which was something. And if Vamp wasn't angry at someone or something, then they were in real trouble.

When he got to the second floor, his eyes widened. "preem." Books. Real books. A lot of them. It was...very cool. And cozy looking.

He noticed Darina then and blinked a few times. He cleared his throat and said, "Hoy, Darina. Lookin' chilled."

Darina looks up from her phone and then smiles.  "You brought friends!  Okay," she says turning in the chair to sit cross-legged and face the three of you.

"This is... quite a place.

Every bookstore I've seen were either third hand gomi or autofac produced." Normally, he'd have to commit an extreme act of will not to look at Darina, but the sheer antiquity of the place managed to hold his interest (even if he did have to force himself not to stare). The only books he was used to were ancient pulpy books in second hand stores you sometimes found.

It was the sort of scenery you'd see in some kind of AR.. only it was real. The odd smell of the books was the hardest to fake. AR goggles couldn't quite manage that, or the individual little creaks in the book cover, the verisimilitude that had always limited his enjoyment of AR.

He wasn't much of a reader, but he respected antiquity, tradition and the passed down heritage.. something other than the ubiquitous disposablility of the corporate world.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:44, Thu 06 Oct 2022.

Tailgate stopped in mid-step, looking hesitant, first at Darina, then over at the people with him. "Uh. Yeah. Sort of." He made a face and spread his hands. "Is that alright?"

He glanced at Shin-ji when they spoke up but then his attention went back to Darina for her reply.

Darina holds Shin-ji and Tailgate's looks for second each, holding the phone in two hand in her lap, but when she speaks again she directs it at Nikola.  "That depends on why," she asks the other girl.

---

Remember that she and Nikola spoke outside school and she told Nikola to come tonight.  No worries, you guys aren't messing anything up coming together.  She only knows that Nikola is evolved.

Hearing her name made Nikola go back to being present, as they walked through the shelves she had started to be distracted by some of the titles on the books while also wondering how many trees could have been cut down to make this material back in the day when this type of books, the ones made of paper were more common.

She decided to address Daryna."Hi daryna, well i think i mentioned i was bringing company,, lets say that at least one of them was affected by the carbon plague and we want to know what do you know about all of that and that weird thing that happened in the school with the connections"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:04, Mon 10 Oct 2022.

Darina watches you all intently, then she smiles in a devious, 'I've got a secret' sort of way.

"Alright then," she slips on her vans as she stands up and leans over the rail in a way that has a precarious effect on her modesty considering the shorts.  "Miz K, can I use the back room?" she calls down to the woman behind the counter.  The latter waves an assent without looking up from her book.  Darina then straightens out and points to a door between two stack at the back of the second floor.  "We can talk in there," and she leads the way.

Assuming everyone follows.

The backroom is set up with a table and comfy chairs, evidently for meetings or role-playing games.  Once the others are in she closes the door, then leans with her back against it, melodramatically.  "Okay, so I'm what we call a 'scanner.'  I can make out emotions and sort of read what people are thinking, though that is much harder.  Helps if I know them well, and I don't know any of you well, yet," she starts blurting it all out.  "This room is shielded, like a Faraday cage.  I don't know why Ms. Kavanaugh did that.  The static at school was me, I can do that too.  Short range, but I like to fuck with people and it was fun messing up everyone's cell service," she ends with a shrug.

"Called it." Shin-Ji couldn't help himself after Darina mentioned it.  Though I thought maybe you'd messed with the phones through the net or something.

Welp, no point in delaying the inevitable.

This whole plague thing is crazy. Makes no sense. Like something out out of those old holonovels with aliens and shit.

Though mind reading seems insanely preem, choom. Even if it'll takes you a while to get there.

I had my arms and legs basically get replaced by that weird carbon stuff. I can move it around, give myself some armor or turn it into a big knife. Takes a bit of mental effort though. I guess it'll save me a lot of eddies on chrome. I think they call it "Tinman" or something. "

He removed his gloves and showed off the weird carbon latice patterns that made up his arms. He didn't do anything with them. Nor did he volunteer the others abilities: it was up to them to do that if they wanted.

Anyway, we'd like to know what the hell is going on with some of the missing kids. Lost a lot of friends just in the raids: thing at my dojo got real ugly, hardly any senior members of my claat left.

Darina steps towards Shin-ji and reaches out hesitantly at first to touch his arm, then caresses it with fascination.  "Ooh, sexy," she purrs while she does so.  After a short while she seems to focus again and then steps back out of his personal space.

"I wasn't at the Obelisk that night, I was infected a couple weeks ago.  You may remember a rumor went around last month that I dropped out 'cause I was pregnant?  Yeah, not pregnant.  Carbon plague, and I didn't drop out," she says very matter-of-factly.  [ooc: up to you if you heard that rumor about her.]  "What I did learn is that the government is rounding up kids with the plague.  Some are being experimented on, some are being recruited to work for them and the corps, and most are sent to the camps in the burbs,"

Vamp leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms as the others talked. Show and tell was fun but she wanted something she could use to figure out what to do next. Maybe how to survive all of this.

But then Darina said something that caught her attention.

"Camps? Like concentration camps? What the actual hell? What are they doing with them there?"

"Huh?" Darian says taking her eyes off of Shin-ji's arms.  "Oh, that's where they sort 'em.  A boy told me they were given a choice, work for the government or the unknown.  At least some of them were.  He was," she says.

Shin-Ji was (arms and legs aside) human, and while he was trying to maintain a cool disaffected attitude, and above physical distractions it was clear Darian's attention had him thoroughly distracted (unsurprisingly).

At least until she mentioned concentration camps. That snapped him back to reality and anger like a punch to the face. He certainly looked like someone had hit him and he wanted to retaliate.

"Fucking zombies!"

He took a few deep breaths and tried to think, gather the implications. They were pretty damned horrifying. It took a few seconds for the initial desire to punch the wall to fade.

"Well.. that's just... fucked.  I'd thought I could at least trust anyone hit with the plague at least, but I guess there's no guarantees in this life.

He sighed, hoping he'd have the guts to die with some honor rather than do that sort of shit. He couldn't imagine anyone in his claat saying "yes" to that offer, though talk was cheap until someone was sticking a gun up your nose.

Whole camps though.. that's worse than I thought. Only question is what the hell do we do about it, chooms?

Han was ready to go risk a gunfight with the corp-goons, but he wasn't some dumb mega ready to go out in a blaze of glory. This needed some clever thinking, strategy.

Nikola had remained silent while processing all of the new information that Darina unleashed on them , so far it seemed to be that she was going full disclosure just as Nikola herself did  back in school, maybe her abilities as a scanner allowed Darina to her to sense their honesty : “Well I have to say that although at first I’m a little disappointed that the network glitch was not hiding something bigger ,I find your revelations more interesting Indeed, as you may have realized we got the plague at the obelisk incident”. She then stopped it ocurred to her that she might be to open about the whole thing, also found her interest in Shin ji a little curious. before she would continue disclosing about the people that helped them, she would like to check she was trustworthy for real

OOC: 09:11, Today: Nikola Net rolled 14 using 1d10+9, rerolling max with rolls of 5.  Get a clue (2) + INT (7).

This message was last edited by the player at 12:14, Fri 14 Oct 2022.

Tailgate had mostly stayed silent and frowning as he listened to the others talk. When the words 'concentration camps' came up, the frown deepened a little. He thought he had heard of that in history class. They were "very bad". If anything close to that was happening to kids with the Carbon Plague, that would be effed up.

He wished Val was there. He glanced at Vamp. She was being uncharacteristically quiet.