Mark & Amanda, Monday evening

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Mark gives Amanda a tour of downtown Manhattan to better acquaint her with the city.


With summer ending, Manhattan evenings had settled into a pleasant and clear pre-autumn chill. Stopping near the end of Wall Street, Mark looked up at the old stone building standing majestically in front of him and Amanda. "So New York City is technically our capital," he said to her. "At least as far as I'm concerned. Washington was inaugurated here, the Supreme Court met for the first time, and the Bill of Rights was drafted. Well, not here here. Federal Hall was torn down in 1812 and rebuilt thirty years later, but here as in this area. But it's still a monument to our supposed democracy," he added, the sarcasm in the last word clear as crystal. "There was a bombing in the '20s across the street. No one knows who done it, but most people blame the Italians. Truly an American tradition."
"Blaming someone else is a human tradition," Amanda said wryly, laying her hand on the stone of the building with only a slight hesitation. Nothing - just the slight chill of the stone beneath her hand and a slight tingle of power that felt almost refreshingly young compared to London. "'S all about finding easy solutions to problems." With a shiver, she pulled her hand back and stuffed it back in her jacket pocket. "Well, no getting up close and personal with New York, at least. Good to know I'm not going to get sucked into it randomly on the way to work." She forced a slight laugh.

Mark offered a laugh make her feel at ease, but his was also half-hearted. "Well, I'm pretty sure I could make New York my bitch and not be eaten by noise. Heh." He shrugged and led her up Wall Street back to Broadway. "Picking up anything here yet?"
"I'm not..." It was hard to concentrate on the subtleties of her power and walk at the same time, but stopping dead on a New York sidewalk tended to get you abused at best. But there was something, a faint trace of power that was different than Wall Street's. A slight tingle, of excitement, anticipation... "Yeah, there's something here. Not sure how I'd use it." She grinned a little. "All the world's a stage, sort of thing, so I s'pose some kind of illusion'd work."

"We're a bit away from the theaters. Maybe it'll get stronger when we get closer?" Amanda had asked Mark for an insider's tour to Manhattan, he supposed to get her bearings back after a summer of "fun," and so they'd started off near Battery Park and were making their way north, Mark spouting whatever stories and trivia came to mind. "Broadway is pretty much the most notable route in Manhattan. Very old, even older than the city itself. The Dutch started building it when they kicked the Native Americans out, and the Americans expanded it."
"That might explain it - the older something is, the more I get from it. And I'd say this street's seen a lot of drama, even without the theatres." Amanda breathed in the cool air, tasting the slight tang of exhaust that was almost natural to her now. "'S funny, comparing somewhere like here to London. New York's definitely got more energy, but not as much weight behind the power. 'S more aggressive, too - London takes a while to piss off, but when she is? Well, you lot saw that better than I did."

"New York's relatively young, but the people here are very . . . emotional. Open. Emphatic. That probably puts some extra oomph into it. I wonder if your magic makes money here," he mused, pointing to the twin towers of the World Trade Center to their left. "It's the center of American capitalism here. Emotions run way high. What can you do with that?"
"Not sure..." There was definitely power there, a simmering beneath her skin, but it was hard to hang onto and get a bead on. Unfortunately her powers didn't come with an instruction manual. Wiggling her fingers experimentally, she shook her head. "Nothing yet. I think it might be one of those "under pressure" sorts of things." She glanced at him. "Is this how it was for you? Experimenting with different music to see what you could do with it?"

Mark shrugged. "I guess. The past few years, any new ways of using my powers were 'oh shit under pressure' things, too. Like the magnetopathy when Esteban shot me, or the exoskeleton when I almost got shot by Candra's men." He paused. "Guns seems to be figuring into my life a lot. But my powers haven't gotten to the point where I can do something with anything. Like, country is just as useless as ever. Don't tell Jay Guthrie."
"Music's the last thing Jay and I talk about," Amanda snorted. "And I think there's a lot more guns than any of us expected in our lives. Still, better to have something come up under pressure than not at all." She paused, and then chuckled. "Even if it's not what you expect - remember the cockroaches?"

"Oh God, don't remind me." Mark shuddered at the memory of dozens of the bugs appearing out of nowhere to freak them out during an already tense episode. "Have you fixed that yet? Because that's really the worst spell ever."

"I make a habit of not trying sleep spells in places like New York. I need to find a city that likes its naps, apparently," she answered. "Maybe I should try it in Barcelona or Rome - they do the whole siesta thing, don't they?"

"You'd think you'd at least have, like, a rohypnol spell here." They trudged further up Broadway, passing the FBI headquarters in New York on their right which prompted an anti-authoritarian tirade from Mark, which lasted the five blocks to White Street, where they turned and entered Chinatown.

Amanda breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of cooking food and various little Chinese groceries. "I always like Chinatowns," she said. "Lots of energy and there's always a tang of actual China attached if it's authentic a place enough. And better than the actual China which has been stomped on enough there's parts that give me a headache to go to." She poked Mark a little. "Talking of authoritarian tyrants."

"I love this neighborhood," Mark sighed happily as the two weaved their ways through the throng of pedestrians and street vendors. "The ethnic diversity I think is what makes New York so powerful, you know? There's so much struggle to not assimilate. And if you go somewhere like to the Lower East Side you can see how that struggle, well, kinda failed. But then go to Silver and you see how it succeeds."

"Speaking of places I love - Silver's always great for a pick me up." Amanda paused to investigate the wares of a Chinese herbalist through the window. "But you're right about the diversity giving a place power. I think that's why there's only a few cities in the States I can work with properly - the rest are too bland. Suburbia doesn't have a lot of oomph to it. Where with Europe, I've got power oozing out of my ears. Um, metaphorically, that is."

Mark looked between Amanda and the foul plants and whatnot in the store. He looked vaguely discomforted. "With you, I would not be surprised if that were literal." He slipped into the next store and came back out a minute later with steaming pork buns. "Your magic is so specific. You seem to get different boosts depending on where in a city you are. Is there a change between, say, Manhattan and Brooklyn?"

Pausing in the act of biting into a bun, Amanda looked thoughtful. "It's not so much the magic," she replied. "It's more the sense I get from the place, the... flavour of the energy I absorb? Sometimes the difference is enough to power different types of spells, but for the most part, I seem to have an overall set. There's differences in how the spell looks, tho'. Like George." With a quick glance around, she snapped her fingers. The werelight that appeared was a ball of green and red and yellow sparkles, like fireworks. It began to circle their heads, and Amanda snapped her fingers again. "How George looks depends on where I am, but the overall spell's still the same."

"Oh my God, it's a magical Jubilee." It made Mark nearly choke on his snack. "So at Chelsea it's a strobe light and in the Lower East Side it's a menorah?"

"Something like that," Amanda snicked, biting into her own pork bun.