Nikki's motorcycle rumbles up to the White Rabbit about ten minutes after she hung up with Gand. She parks it and walks up to the door.

"Gentlemen," she salutes as she passes the bouncers.

She goes and sits at the bar, waiting for Gand to make his entrance. She knows he knows she got there.

The sturdy bouncers both lower their large heads to Nikki and immediately put out their arms to bar people trying to sneak in behind her.

Gand will join her almost immediately, taking the seat to her left and turning to face her he will click his left hand on the bar; when he removes it a small crystal bottle with about six ounces of pale green liquid rests on the bar.

'I need to time this so it finishes as the sun is rising. You want any coffee or coke or anything to keep you up?'

"I'll take some really fucking strong coffee, I think," Nikki says.

"It's gonna be a long motherfucker of a night, isn't it? So what is it that you're putting together here? As if I would realy understand it, but hey, better to be informed," she adds as she gestures to the bartender.

"Oy! The usual, please!" Nikki grins as she slaps some money down on the counter, enough for her usual double shot of ice cold vodka and a good tip. Always keep your bartenders happy.

Nikki eyes the vial of green liquid near Gand's hand.

"Oh Gand, is that for me? You shouldn't have...except I'll probably need it if I'm gonna keep you alive all night."  

--Last edited by Nikki Bard on 2009-01-08 10:45:08 --

2009-01-08 09:02:52 Seamus rolls 6 dice to Int + Computers 3,10,3,6,5, 6,2 (3 successes) (umbral echoes roller)

Gands cell phone will begin ringing incessantly, though not with any ringtone he remembers placing on his phone.  For some reason his phone seems to be playing the theme music from the old 16 bit Doom.

'We had a deal. You can have all you need from my stock upstairs for tonight; That one is your payment for keeping my heart beating.'

Gand wont recognize the little tune his phone has started playing and being less than technology obsessed he will assume something is horribly wrong with his Blackberry. Theres really only one solution for broken blackberrys as far as Gand is concerned.

Destroy and replace.

He clicks the silence button a few times and will be throwing his phone into the sink if it doesnt cooperate. For a time mage, Gand has very little patience.

'Fuckin thing...'

Gand mutters, returning his attention to Nikki.

'Its a little number i like to call Cant Touch This. Basically i have to do all the legwork tonight so i can trigger the effect tommoro. In lamens terms, I step outside of the normal flow of time for a little while to remedy whatever horrible situation im bound to end up in with little miss vampy pants.'

Nikki smiles and pockets the vial of potent green liquid.

She raises an eyebrow at the weird tune coming from Gand's blackberry, but she doesn't recognize it either.

"See, that's why I have a shitty little cell phone with no features. The complicated ones always wind up doing weird shit."

She listens to Gand's explanation of what he's going to try to do. It is way beyond her expertise.

"That sounds...complicated. But it's definitely good to have safety measures, especially where  miss wacky bloodsucker is concerned. I take it you're going to have to partake rather heavily of dangerous substances throughout the night, then? Once we set up for it, I'll start monitoring you."

'Yeah im liable to overdose or be useless tommoro without your help.'

Gand admits, slipping his finally behaving phone back into his pocket.

'I was hoping you could do more than just monitor me. The cult has a rote that ups our tolerance, i just dont have the right command of your specialty to do it myself. We could probably work out some way to do it together so i can blow half a pound if i need to and still be bright eyed and bushy tailed come game-time tommoro night.'

"Well, what I did to that Karlie girl was basically lower her tolerance, so I'm sure we can work something out," Nikki says.

"Getting our magics to work together could be pretty interesting, though. Let's go raid your tass cabinet and get this show on the road, why don't we?"

Nikki smiles, slams the rest of her vodka shot, and stands up.

'Yeah its about that time.'

Gand will agree and stand. Upstairs has an entirely different feel than the club. For clearly non-acoustic reasons Gands office isnt flooded by the music from downstairs. His office, for once, is immaculate and put together. It rarely stays that way long, but he pays a cleaning service to reset it every now and then.

There is no sign of Alice up here. Her office door is open and most of her stuff is gone. Even the lingering smell of her sweet perfume has fled the place. Gand doesnt mention it or even look at her office.

'Anything you need just help yourself.'

He motions to his bookshelves that are lined with more bottles than books. From his desk Gand produces his little kit. All the little items, powders and pills that will help him manipulate time. He opens the box and lays out a few things, a hypodermic needle, a bag of white powder, a little smelter piece [the rich mans spoon and lighter] and a few pills with small purple butterflys on them.

Gand removes his watch from his left wrist and sets it on the desk. It will be the focus of his effect and have to be destroyed to trigger it later. Gand removes his suit coat and tie and throws them over the back of his chair so he can roll up the sleeves of his white shirt.

Nikki takes a rapid mental count of the bottles lined up on Gand's bookshelves. They will be more than fine for tonight, the tass will definitely be a godsend, though.

Nikki begins by taking a long swig out of her flask then stabbing each of the fingers of her right hand briefly with the ceremonial knife. The blood from her fingers she uses to write a complex array of runes on her body. She takes her shirt off and carefully folds it, setting it on the back of one of the chairs, and continues painting her torso with runic designs.

'Thats what im talkin bout!'

Gand comments when Nikki loses her shirt. He is entirely incapable of being professional; but Nikki probably knows this by now. Gand wont have time to oogle her though, time is of the essence here.

Gand shakes a small amount of the powder into the smelter and switches it on. By the time he uncaps the syringe the powder has melted so he sucks up as much as he can int othe needles resivior and flicks it to make sure theres no bubbles. Nothing ruins a high quite like an anuerism. Gand yanks off his belt in one swift motion and wraps it tightly around his bicep so that his viens budge. If Nikki looks close she will see the tackmarks his sleeves usually hide; he has definitely done this all before...

Nikki, painted with runes, walks up to Gand.

"Mind if I draw on you a bit? Promise I'm healthy," she says, raising a few bloody fingers in his direction, subtly looking at his trackmarks.

"No hepatitis of HIV or gonorrhea or anything. Definitely no Ebola."  

--Last edited by Nikki Bard on 2009-01-15 17:28:05 --

Gand looks from her bloody fingers to his wrinkled, but still very white, shirt. He decides its best to just follow her lead and get topless.

'Go for it.'

He tells her. Gand has a few scattered tatoos. Most of them are simple black ink and looks like they were done dab-and-stab style. A few are mutated tantric symbols; Gands bastardization of his own traditions mythology combined with a few typical prison tatoos. He spreads his arms to let her paint him up. As soon as that needle goes into his arm there will be no turning back.

Nikki briefly examines the tattoos, seeing where best to apply her runes without interfering with any power that could emanate from at least the tantric symbols.

She paints the same pattern of runes on Gand as she had painted on herself, only mirrored. Her work is done relatively quickly.

"Alright," she says, grabbing several bottles of tass from the shelf and putting them on Gand's desk, "I think we can get started."

When Nikki turns Gand has already jabbed the needle expertly into one of his viens at the elbow. He injects the heady drugs into his blood and removes the needle, followed quickly by the restricting belt around his bicep.

[Gand loses one die from all dexterity based pools and suffers one level of bashing damage from the heroin dose.]

The rush hits him nearly immediately. Nikki would see it plain enough as his pupils dialate out to the size of pennys and he puts both hands on the desk to steady himself.

2009-01-20 10:31:44 Gand the Great rolls 5 dice to Arete [Time: 4, Mind: 2, Corr: 2, Vulgar as hell Diff:8, Foci: Drugs, Watch. -1 diff, Inside level 3 Node -2 diff.  (Diff 5) 9,7,8,8,9 (5 successes) 5/20 successes needed.

There is a subtle vibration in the air as Gand begins his rote. Nikki would note all the clocks in the room have begun to move at different speeds, some even go backwards or have stopped completely.

Dynamic Resonance: Chaotic- 3.

Nikki concentrates on the route the drug is taking in Gand's system, through his veins and into his liver and brain. She focuses on the runs she has written in her blood along the major pathways in Gand's body, before beginning to chant quietly in a distinctly Scandinavian sounding tongue.

As her blood sits on Gand's body, she has no need any longer to touch him, channeling her magic through her blood to increase the amount of punishment Gand's body can take from the drugs.

Before releasing the forces she has built up, she drinks down two of the bottles of eerily green tass.

2009-01-21 11:08:34 Nikki rolls 3 dice to Arete (Diff 2: Life 3 = 6, vulgar +1 =7, level 3 Node -2 =5, focus -1 =4, 2 pts Quint from tass =2) 4,4,9 (3 successes)

As Nikki's will begins to work, all the small sounds in Gand's office become magnified. You can almost hear the drug hitting his bloodstream. Her quiet chanting becomes progressively louder, reaching almost ear-splitting levels at the crescendo of it.

Dynamic Resonance: Loud 3  

--Last edited by Nikki Bard on 2009-01-21 11:11:56 --

[Not that it makes any difference to your roll, but a difficulty can only be lowered by a maximum of three through modifiers. So just save one point of tass for later. ]

[Nikkis casting will give Gand 2 dice to soak any further drug damage he inflicts on his body as long as she maintains at least 1 success every round he takes more. (I used the table for scoring on page 209 and treated this as an attack spell) Nikki takes 3 paradox that will hold until the effect is ended.]

2009-01-21 20:06:46 Gand the Great rolls 5 dice to Arete [Time: 4, Mind: 2, Corr: 2, Vulgar as hell Diff:8, Foci: Drugs, Watch. -1 diff, Inside level 3 Node -2 diff.(Diff 5) 2,4,10,10,9 (3 successes) 8/20 successes needed.

2009-01-21 20:15:39 Gand the Great rolls 5 dice to Perception+Awareness 7,1,3,2,7 (1 success)

Gand can feel the connection Nikki establishes. The din of her chanting is muted and skewed to his ears as the drugs fly through him and time begins to melt, all spiraling around that watch in his right hand. The clocks on the walls all speed up, whether they are running in the right direction or not.

A fine sheen of sweat forms on Gands exposed skin from both the drugs and the exertion of the effect. His right fist clenches around the watch while his left hand autonomically reloads the smelter and liquifys another dose of the heady heroin.

((My bad, forgot about that rule))

Nikki continues her fierce concentration on Gand's well-being, her mouth alternating between swigs from her flask and nordic chants as she chews on her tongue, the blood foaming out and forming strange shapes down her chin with each syllable of her chant, the loudness of which ebbs and flows with the power she is forcing into it, into Gand's drug-riddled body.

2009-01-25 12:45:25 Nikki  rolls 3 dice to Arete (Diff 3 (Life 3 vulg =7, node -2, focus -1) 5,2,2 (1 success)

2009-01-26 10:10:10 Gand the Great rolls 5 dice to Arete [Time: 4, Mind: 2, Corr: 2, Vulgar as hell Diff:8, Foci: Drugs, Watch. -1 diff, Inside level 3 Node -2 diff.(Diff 5) 2,7,3,2,9 (2 successes) 10/20 successes needed.

Gand rather expertly operates his syringe with one hand. He flexes and relaxes his recoeving arm over and over as he fills the needle, jostles it to avoid bubbles and stabs it right into one of his viens. The double dosing immediately causes his pupils to expand to the point where there is no color left in his eyes save for black and white.

2009-01-26 10:12:39 Gand the Great rolls 2 dice to Resist toxin 1,7 (failure) Gand takes another level of bashing damage and is hurt -1.

Even with the heightened tolerance the drugs are still slipping past. Maybe she misjudged the potency or Gands initial tolerance for heroin has been cut down for whatever reason.

"Hmm...that doesn't look right," Nikki mutters to herself as Gand's skin takes on a paler tone and a sheen of sweat.

She resumes her chanting, louder this time, as if she could force her magics to work sheerly by being more forceful with them. She traces the runes on her torso as she chants, louder and louder, the already deafening sounds going beyond the range of human hearing.

2009-01-28 16:56:34 Nikki  rolls 3 dice to Arete (Diff 4, used willpower) 9,1,6 (2 successes)