I don't regret dating many of my ex-boyfriends. OK, so they usually ended up being jerks and the relationships usually crashed and burned like drama was going out of style, but at least I learned something from most of them. With Peter, though, sometimes I wish I'd been more... insistent about what we'd done as a couple. Maybe if I'd not let him show me every horror movie in existence, I wouldn't have been aware that I'm the token blonde in this little soiree and today might have been not so ovum-shrinkingly scary. Hmm, the cars still aren't ready yet, so I should have just long enough to finish this entry.
I got to the MIST headquarters early in the morning. The whole place is basically magic: it isn't on any map and you can get to it from almost anyway. And it's vast, simply huge. I have no idea how many people live here, but there's room for thousands in just the sections I've seen.
Anyway, after I parked my car in a basement garage, a nice-looking attendant named Georgino gave me directions to a conference room in the building. I though I'd get lost but it would seem my sense of direction is getting better: I got there without a hitch. There were already a couple of people there so I sat down in the back and waited for the meeting to begin. I thought it was going to be an orientation session, but a woman one of the others called "Madame Director" came in folders blazing and gave us a mission: to investigate an operation in Alaska that had gone bad. ALASKA. I tried not to freak out too much; I think I did ok. Things move fast for the children of gods, I guess.
Speaking of which, the other people in the room are scions too! I get the feeling that we're going to be working together a lot, so I'll give them a proper introduction here:
Hal's a son of Njord, whoever he is. He seems nice, a little condescending maybe but I can't really blame him. He has these five soldier-guys (Steve, Ryan, Luke, Joh, and James, I think?) who do what he says, and they're nice to hide behind. Hal clearly needs an entirely new wardrobe, and I might ask to help him with that. I don't know why it is because it's not like I care about clothes as much as most of my college friends anyway, but it's so much fun finding clothes for guys!
Then there's Cindy, and she's Poseidon's daughter. She carries an axe (the weapon) in a guitar case and is really imposing when swinging it. She's really pretty and seems like a fun person, though, and said she does a little art. I read a little about the Greek gods and I don't think Aphrodite and Poseidon are related in any way, but Cindy still feels a little like family, I dunno. I'm hoping we'll be good friends!
Next is Claire. She said Mannanan mac Lir is her father; I should look up who that is at some point, maybe get a smart phone so I can look it up on the fly. Anyway, Claire kinda scares me. I haven't spoken with her very much so I can't be sure, but I get the feeling that she's angry like all the time. I wonder why that is.
The other guy in the group is Andrew, a scion of Thoth. Now Thoth I know: he's Egyptian, I think a Death god? Anyway, Andrew seems like one of those chipper, breezy business-ey types, well-composed, focused on jetting from one goal to the next, eyes level, neither glancing up nor down. It's good to have at least one person who gives off that adult, responsible vibe. Not that the others are childish, but they don't hold themselves with that air of casual competence that high-class businessmen all seem to have.
Lastly (but not leastly) is Kennedy. Her mom is "the Morrigan," another name I have to look up. Kennedy has one heck of an intense look to her, but her demeanor is actually quite calm and collected. She has the most adorable dog with her and seems to be pretty good with guns. I would love to get to know her better.
So, back to the action: we all went off to get stuff from the Requisitions Office and then popped through the Stargate thing we use to travel. We rented some trucks and drove for most of an hour; the terrain was beautiful. I had been expecting much more snow, but it would seem Alaska comes alive during the summers. I snapped a few pictures with my phone and I'll pin one or two in here when I've gotten them printed.
We finally arrived at the building, and my skin shivered as we pulled up. This place... something bad happened here. We're sitting outside it right now and I just keep hoping everything will get in order soon so we can hurry away. The further from here we are the better. I took a few pictures of the building, too, so I'll toss those in as well, not that I need any help remembering how awful it looks.
Andrew called some owls and started talking to them, asking them to run recon for him. It was pretty adorable, almost enough to make me forget the creepy building.
The others all fanned out once we got here and dashed towards the building commando-style. I wonder if they learned that from when they were "civilians," or if I really just missed out on one heck of an orientation course. I grabbed my sax and followed them, but honestly I don't know what I was doing there, what I am doing here. I can't swing a sword or throw boulders, and though I'm Aphrodite's daughter I didn't even get any love arrows. Maybe someday...
We busted the door open and rushed in. I played it off like I was just fine, that I was steeled against all this and I think I fooled them (but I managed to force myself through the door, so I guess I fooled myself too. Funny how that works). Pretty quickly, something, some people?, attacked us. The others started shooting and I jumped behind a wall, though the whole thing was over almost before it started anyway. Cindy had taken a hit (she strode in like a madwoman with that axe of hers -- from what I saw, I don't know why the attackers didn't turn tail and run!), so they tended to her wounds. The dead bodies of the mysterious men were brutal to look at, long and gaunt and inhuman, like people who had been stretched and pulled until they looked like monsters.
Hal's men ran through the rest of the building like a SWAT team in a movie and made sure the rest was clear. They found something in a room, though, and had us come over to take a look at it. They said there were bodies stacked inside all gruesome, so I stayed outside the room. It didn't seem right to leave the corpses just lying there so unceremoniously, so I decided to take out my sax and play. The next time I see Aphrodite, um, mom (is that what I should call her? Maybe she's prefer "mother"? I don't know...), I need to thank her, this is just the most beautiful instrument I could imagine. It gleamed even in the darkened ill-atmosphere of the creepy building even before I started playing.
I played an old funeral dirge meant for wakes I'd heard once back in college. You gotta hand it to the Irish: they sure know how to write a song to be both terribly sad and terribly happy at the same time. As I played it, I felt some sort of... presence? More an emotion than anything else. A wave of sadness and utter hopelessness; it felt like death, some kind of awful end that had come to someone. I fought against it, played harder, and as I heard the others in the room talking to someone, I just hoped and hoped they'd hear it and take heart from the song.
After my song ended, we all went back outside to get ready to head out. Hal told me there had been a ghost in the room, a hungry wretch who had been part of the crew working on the site until a man named Ives came and promised them power, and all they had to do was eat and eat and eat. I don't know who this "Ives" is or what's his deal, but after feeling the depths of that poor ghost's despair, I have little love for him and little sympathy for what will happen to him when we find him.
I got to the MIST headquarters early in the morning. The whole place is basically magic: it isn't on any map and you can get to it from almost anyway. And it's vast, simply huge. I have no idea how many people live here, but there's room for thousands in just the sections I've seen.
Anyway, after I parked my car in a basement garage, a nice-looking attendant named Georgino gave me directions to a conference room in the building. I though I'd get lost but it would seem my sense of direction is getting better: I got there without a hitch. There were already a couple of people there so I sat down in the back and waited for the meeting to begin. I thought it was going to be an orientation session, but a woman one of the others called "Madame Director" came in folders blazing and gave us a mission: to investigate an operation in Alaska that had gone bad. ALASKA. I tried not to freak out too much; I think I did ok. Things move fast for the children of gods, I guess.
Speaking of which, the other people in the room are scions too! I get the feeling that we're going to be working together a lot, so I'll give them a proper introduction here:
Hal's a son of Njord, whoever he is. He seems nice, a little condescending maybe but I can't really blame him. He has these five soldier-guys (Steve, Ryan, Luke, Joh, and James, I think?) who do what he says, and they're nice to hide behind. Hal clearly needs an entirely new wardrobe, and I might ask to help him with that. I don't know why it is because it's not like I care about clothes as much as most of my college friends anyway, but it's so much fun finding clothes for guys!
Then there's Cindy, and she's Poseidon's daughter. She carries an axe (the weapon) in a guitar case and is really imposing when swinging it. She's really pretty and seems like a fun person, though, and said she does a little art. I read a little about the Greek gods and I don't think Aphrodite and Poseidon are related in any way, but Cindy still feels a little like family, I dunno. I'm hoping we'll be good friends!
Next is Claire. She said Mannanan mac Lir is her father; I should look up who that is at some point, maybe get a smart phone so I can look it up on the fly. Anyway, Claire kinda scares me. I haven't spoken with her very much so I can't be sure, but I get the feeling that she's angry like all the time. I wonder why that is.
The other guy in the group is Andrew, a scion of Thoth. Now Thoth I know: he's Egyptian, I think a Death god? Anyway, Andrew seems like one of those chipper, breezy business-ey types, well-composed, focused on jetting from one goal to the next, eyes level, neither glancing up nor down. It's good to have at least one person who gives off that adult, responsible vibe. Not that the others are childish, but they don't hold themselves with that air of casual competence that high-class businessmen all seem to have.
Lastly (but not leastly) is Kennedy. Her mom is "the Morrigan," another name I have to look up. Kennedy has one heck of an intense look to her, but her demeanor is actually quite calm and collected. She has the most adorable dog with her and seems to be pretty good with guns. I would love to get to know her better.
We finally arrived at the building, and my skin shivered as we pulled up. This place... something bad happened here. We're sitting outside it right now and I just keep hoping everything will get in order soon so we can hurry away. The further from here we are the better. I took a few pictures of the building, too, so I'll toss those in as well, not that I need any help remembering how awful it looks.
Andrew called some owls and started talking to them, asking them to run recon for him. It was pretty adorable, almost enough to make me forget the creepy building.
The others all fanned out once we got here and dashed towards the building commando-style. I wonder if they learned that from when they were "civilians," or if I really just missed out on one heck of an orientation course. I grabbed my sax and followed them, but honestly I don't know what I was doing there, what I am doing here. I can't swing a sword or throw boulders, and though I'm Aphrodite's daughter I didn't even get any love arrows. Maybe someday...
Hal's men ran through the rest of the building like a SWAT team in a movie and made sure the rest was clear. They found something in a room, though, and had us come over to take a look at it. They said there were bodies stacked inside all gruesome, so I stayed outside the room. It didn't seem right to leave the corpses just lying there so unceremoniously, so I decided to take out my sax and play. The next time I see Aphrodite, um, mom (is that what I should call her? Maybe she's prefer "mother"? I don't know...), I need to thank her, this is just the most beautiful instrument I could imagine. It gleamed even in the darkened ill-atmosphere of the creepy building even before I started playing.
After my song ended, we all went back outside to get ready to head out. Hal told me there had been a ghost in the room, a hungry wretch who had been part of the crew working on the site until a man named Ives came and promised them power, and all they had to do was eat and eat and eat. I don't know who this "Ives" is or what's his deal, but after feeling the depths of that poor ghost's despair, I have little love for him and little sympathy for what will happen to him when we find him.
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