| A Customer! | |||||
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| What: Epiphany's lab gets two new guests! | |||||
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Word was spreading about Gotham, there was a new Alchemist in town. She had already met a few magical folk. So far she was already getting a fair amount of clients looking for potions, most were vain or so obvious. But it's been work
And currently Epiphany was holed up in her laboratory/home chopping up ingredients for a new potion. She was dressed in a white labcoat with goggles on her head, underneath she wore a blue and black striped shirt with tight jeans, and ankle high boots. While she worked she listened to her mp3 player.
Well, well, well. A new alchemist in Gotham. Guess who was told in no uncertain terms that he was going for a meet and greet? Nevermind that he'd already met said alchemist once before at a magic shop and assured Aiden that he knew everything he needed to know about her already. Nope, it was "Balor, you've been playing that game since last night. Get over to Gotham and talk for a while. It'll be good for you."
What Balor wanted to know was why it was always running Aiden's errands that was good for him.
Regardless, he's come (under threat of erasure of saves if he didn't), and is now standing scowling outside Epiphany's house, a faint dark red mist leaking from beneath his eyepatch. He raises a hand, and bangs on the door. Loudly.
Rowan had Epiphany's card from a small-timer source of his, a fringe psychic who had more knowledge than actual skill. His tips were always better than his readings, however, and when he heard she was a fellow Brit, he figured it wouldn't hurt to poke around. Plus, he's still looking for leads on something that happened to him a while back and an alchemist might be just the thing.
To there he is, trechcoat collar pulled up around his neck, only to find someone there ahead of him. He lights a cigarette, hanging back a couple of feet to see what's goin' down.
It wasn't so much a house as it was a building, a small one at that. And it wasn't particularly in one of the best Gotham neighborhoods. There is a voice from inside, "Yeah yeah I'm coming!"
She put the loose eyes back in their containers, and cleaned herself up before moving to open the door, "Balor. I'm getting all sorts on my doorstep lately. Come on in."
She stepped to the side to let him through, and glanced about outside.
Balor hmphs, scowling deeply. "Epiphany, right? Here for a ****in' meet an' greet. Thought we did that well enough last time, but 'parently that ain' the way Aiden sees it, so." The boy god steps inside as she steps out of the way, and looks about a bit. "This place ain' nearly creepy enough, lass, an' it don' look like somethin' 'xploded in at /least/ 15 minutes. Don' look like a proper alchemist's place at all."
Rowan steps forward, frowning slightly at Balor's tone, but he seems to be a known quantity and so he lets Epiphany handle her own business in that regard. He does make sure he's noticed, holding up the alchemist's card, "Hope I'm not intruding, miss," he says, his accent betraying his posh origins. "Just another stray occultist stranded on colonial shores and looking for a bit of alchemical advice. If I'm interrupting anything..." he says.
Piffy smirked as the 'boy' was just as sociable as the last time she ran into him. Not that she was the classiest of ladies herself. She shrugged, "I like a clean lab, and I aint making this lab look like something from Hogwarts, too on the nose."
Epiphany's own dialect wasn't as high class as Rowan's but it would do. Based on the way she speaks it would be obvious she at least grew up in the thick of London. She looked Rowan over and held the door open. It also just so happened that she had a particular fondness for trench coats, "Intrude anytime. Come on in, glad to see you snagged one of my cards. Apparently I'm getting popular."
"Hogwarts, hell. I'm talkin' skulls hangin' everywhere an' dark bubblin' cauldrons an' shrunken heads an' skeletons o'strange creatures with some gore still on 'em. Make it look like a proper shaman's shack, lass." Balor has a strong Irish accent himself, and a scowl on his face as someone else arrives. His eye glares over towards Rowan, and he crosses his arms, giving a hmph. "Intrude anytime. Ain' like I'm here for anythin' 'portant." He looks over at Epiphany, and then sighs. "Fine. Guess since y'keep stuff squeaky clean, you doin' business is how I'm gonna see what y'can do. Takin' what I can get." He looks at Rowan. "Tell her t'make somethin' complicated."
Balor is clearly not your typical kid, but Rowans learned to be adaptable in his investigations. Still, he can't help but be a trifle amused by the strange lad's surly attitude. Oh the other hand, he does sound Irish, so that explains that. To Epiphany, he smiles, the punk styled girl not what he was expecting, but in a far more pleasant sense than Balor. "I confess, I'd expected something more along the lines of the young man's description myself, but, the, we aren't in the Middle Ages anymore, are we? I'm a modernist myself," he says. He finishes his smoke with a couple of quick puffs, snuffing it beneath his heel. To Balor's comment, he laughs, "I'm afraid I'm more interested in Miss Greaves' analytical mind rather than any particular concoction, although I'm open minded should a useful unguent or potion catch my eye."
Epiphany reached out to Balor and scruffed up his hair. He claims he's a big scary thing but she just found him adorable, "That's just stereotypical. I could take offense to that you know."
She gestured towards the lab, "Well boys this here is the lab. Ain't much but I got enough to brew anything you might think of and then some."
What she doesn't gesture towards is her small living section in the corner. It's a fairly decent computer desk with two monitors, but a small little twin bed with folded clothing next to it. She hadn't quite had time to find a proper apartment yet.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a clove-flavored E-cigarette, "Thanks for snuffin' that out, love. You'd be surprised at how often I have to remind guests that. But I'm all ears, even if I'm a /girl/ and all."
"Y'wanna talk takin' offense, rufflin' my hair's a good way t'lose a hand, lass," Balor snaps, as that reddish mist leaks from beneath his eyepatch again. He hmphs, and stomps overloudly over to look at her cabinet full of ingredients, eye scanning up and down as he checks over the various items. "Y'got a good supply, at least. Y'seem t'know what you're doin' that way. All right, so I gotta do it myself after all, since trenchy there's no help. What's somethin' innerestin'...sure, sure. How 'bout somethin' t'dissolve a magically-strengthened lock?"
Poltergeist can't help but shake his head as the young boy snarking like an old grump. When the mist roils out from beneath that patch, though, his eyes widen...and, just momentarily, the lights flicker and some of the glass vials rattle softly, "Er, yes. I probably should give fair warning, given all the glassware and such, that startling me is..unwise. I have abilities which tend to go a bit...well, to be perfectly honest, haywire under stress. Very messy," he says. He reaches into his pocket, drawing out a ziploc bag with some flakes of something inside, "I rather hoped you'd be able to tell me something about this..."
Epiphany simply quirked an eyebrow at Balor's mist. Some of the shit' Epiphany has seen, she takes most things with a sarcastic remark or a shrug of her shoulders. Little hard to intimidate. She let out puff of her own smoke, "Could do somethin' like that, yeah. Would run ya about 120 wait wait, that's pounds...$200 US dollars."
She grabbed the ziplock bag from Rowan and looked at the contents, "Could take a look at this under the microscope. Could use a name first, if you don't mind, we aint been properly introduced."
"Y'oughta get that looked at," Balor says, smirking over at Rowan. "Don' worry. Nobody ****es me off an' I won' be doin' anythin' t'shock anybody." He looks up at Epiphany and shrugs. "That all? Fine." With that, he pulls a wad of bills out from his pocket, flipping out a couple hundreds from it and tossing them on the table. "Best get started then, lass." He walks over to Rowan, looking up at him with a frown. "So you're an occult junkie s'well, hm? An' a skittish one at that. Couldn' find too many worse combos'n that if y'ask me." He shakes his head, and offers a hand. "Whatever. I'm Balor of the Evil Eye. King of the Fomorians, god of Death."
Poltergeist hands over the baggie, "Oh, I'm sorry, manners. Rowan, Rowan Coventry,' he says. An informed Brit might recognize Coventry as a name associated with a particular Earlship, althogh his connection to said, of course, isn't necessarily direct. "The material's leftover from some sort of golem. A waxwork thing, demonstrated some pyrokinetic propensities an a distaste for the excesses of modern literature," he says. At Balor's self introduction, Rowan stares at the young man for a moment. "OF course you are, why wouldn't you be? A pleasure. And I'm not particularly skittish in nature, it's merely that my abilities respond to instinct and emotion, rather than rational thought. I can contain them, but, of course, instinct and emotion aren't always containable, no matter what my lord father and the finer disciplinarians of the English private school tradition might insinuate to the contrary."
Epiphany counted the cash before stashing it into her jacket pocket, "It'll be ready by tomorrow evening. And you can always feel free to tip. I need a dresser and furniture things."
She moved towards one of her counters and took the contents from her bag and placing them onto glass slide, "So you're a tough one to date? Good to know then."
She took a look at the contents through the microscope and hmmed, "Well it's wax, not animated by sacred oils like some golems are. Probably an animate spell, which is out of my area of expertise. But I could connect you to people who are. One might charge you more than the other, not sure which would."
"I am," Balor says, smiling wolfishly at Rowan. "I ain' kiddin', jus' so you know. Y'can believe me or not, I don' care. Jus' givin' you a fair warnin' what you're dealin' with. That way if y'**** me off you've already been warned an' I can get right t'the smitin'." He looks over at Epiphany. "Tomorrow's gonna be annoyin', seein' as Aiden wanted me /see/ what y'could do. How 'bout this...I pay y'another fifty an' y'start on it now an' let me watch." He walks over to inspect the the wax Rowan brought himself, curiously.
Poltergeist shakes his head, "Money isn't a particular object. And, for the record, I have quite an exemplary record among my female companions, those that are still speaking to me at any rate. And Maisie Covington is an horrendous harridan anyway, so you can't believe a word that comes out of her mouth. Even if you could, she deserved every bit and her grandmother's car was well-insured." he says. "And I wasn't being skeptical, Balor, merely accepting that I now live the sort of life wherein I might run into the occasional adolescent death god with an eyepatch."
Epiphany rolled her eyes and looked over to Balor over her shoulder, "This aint instant ramen or some whore on the corner where you can get a blowjob for 50 quid, this stuff brews for hours. Morning if you want it earlier."
She did however sigh at Rowan, "I don't know who that is so I don't care. So onto the interesting thing, this wax, that's what I got so far."
She placed the contents back into the bag and handed it back to Rowan, "Hope that helps. If not, got some ideas for contacts."
Balor actually laughs at Rowan's comment, and shakes his head. "Sure, sure, lad. Good that you're so acceptin'...life's more fun when you're allowin' the weird stuff t'happen, that's what I've found." The good humor doesn't last, though, and he scowls at Epiphany. "I know a thing or two 'bout brewin' this sorta thing, lass, even if I don' do it these days. I said y'start on it, not that y'do the whole ****in' thing with me watchin'. I got important stuff t'do tonight. Y'get started an' I can get outta your hair an' get you outta mine."
Poltergeist nods, "Nor should you know her, she's a terrible twat. And yes, contacs would be most delightful," he smiles. He chuckles at Balor's intemperance with Epiphany, taking it for more attitude and less actual aggression, "The strange parts of my life are usually my favorites. It's the mundane I find tiresome."
Epiphany moved to her cabinet and grabbed all of the ingredients, "The first part of the potion brews for five hours. Then I grab the other ingredients. I intend to use that time to get some sleep. Find a diner unless you want to brew this thing yourself."
She looked over Rowan and smirked, "I hear that. Then I got two blokes for ya, John Constantine and Daimon Hellstrom, I don't know who is gonna charge more but they are both talented. One's a son of satan and the other is...something else."
She looked him over again with a small smirk, "There is this weird garage sale going on tomorrow. John should be there, wouldn't be surprised if Daimon is too. Same with me. Goodnight gentlemen, I've got a bit of work to do hm?"
"Hellstrom's a ****in' arrogant ***, though I bet he knows his stuff. Least well enough that he's not dead yet. Y'see him, y'tell him I said so. Both parts," Balor supplies, helpfully. "Don' know the Constantine guy, but he sounds like an *** too." He sighs a little at Epiphany, and shrugs. "Fine. Gonna hafta be good enough, then. Aiden can't wipe my saves for /not/ bein' rude t'somebody an' forcin' them to stay up all night with me glarin' over their shoulder. I'll pick up the finished product tomorrow mornin'." He watches her pulling out ingredients and getting started, though, before he heads to the door.
Poltergeist smiles, "I'll remember the names although, if you're there, Miss Greaves, I might trouble you for introductions, merely to smooth out the rough edges. I'm still learning the ropes of the occultist game. Either way, I'm sure I'll be seeing more of you soon enough," he says, "A pleasure making your acquaintance as well, O Smiting One. I appreciate your allowing me to intrude upon your time."
Epiphany grinned at Balor, "Good. A lady needs her beauty rest, even if I don't get enough. See you in the morning. Coffee and bagels will score you cool points."
She then turned her attention to Rowan and smirked, "You're cute, at the very least makes things easier for you. My advice; just be confident and know your stuff. Otherwise men like these two will eat you up. Night gentlemen."