Amanda and Adrienne - Staffing and Staffs

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Amanda and Adrienne spend their Friday night checking out a magical staff and discussing career options.


"It's been far too long since we've done this," Adrienne mused, flopping down on Amanda's couch, holding out her beer bottle towards her friend for a toast. "Here's to not waiting so long next time." With her other hand, she snagged a piece of the margherita pizza she'd brought over to Amanda's apartment.

Amanda clinked her bottle against Adrienne's. "Especially since the reasons we don't do this are usually tied into me being up to my ears in work, or someone being kidnapped, or demons invading," she replied, wryly. "Of course, now I've jinxed us and dinosaurs will come charging through the door. Again."

"Now you have to knock on wood, turn around three times, curse, and spit," Adrienne instructed. "Although I think dinosaurs would be a welcome change from the rash of kidnappings lately. Ugh. Speaking of which; did I tell you I'm likely into my last semester as a teacher at Xavier's?"

Amanda raised her eyebrows. "Oh?" she asked, taking a sip from her bottle. "I thought you liked teaching?"

"I do like teaching," Adrienne confirmed with a shrug. "I just... it gets more and more difficult every year. Every time another one of them goes missing. With my powers being what they are, it's getting harder and harder to go into that classroom every day and face them, knowing I could be out there helping to find the ones who are in trouble. Anyone can teach. But not everyone has the powers I do," she tried to clarify, furrowing her brow. "I guess I just don't want to waste my... talent, you know? I want to use it to help people. I think it's time I did that proactively, instead of waiting until the FBI or the X-Men call me."

"I think that's a bloody great idea," came Amanda's response. "Which is funny, considering I've been doing the opposite - teaching because I have the knowledge and experience they need to learn. But I get the logic behind it - 's been a fucking horrible couple of years, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better." She reached for a slice of pizza. "Got any specific plans 'bout where you might go?" she asked, before taking a bite and chewing. "Looking at the Leather Brigade?" she added, mouth full.

"Hell no," Adrienne responded quickly, snorting some wine. "I'm not heroic enough for the X-Men. I'm not really a team player when it comes to life-and-death situations. I'd always be fighting my instincts for self-preservation rather than obeying whoever's in charge blindly," she smirked. "Actually, I've been thinking about picking up the slack over at X-Factor Investigations," she admitted. "Bishop and Vanessa aren't at the office very much anymore, so the business is having trouble maintaining an even keel. I think it would benefit from someone who stays local, can man the office, go out on the nine-to-five jobs that pay the day-to-day bills while they continue with the the big, complicated, out-of-town jobs." She polished off another piece of pizza. "Aren't you already pretty much a teacher?" she asked curiously. "Seems like you have more magic students than I do math."

Washing down the pizza with more beer, Amanda nodded. "Yeah, 's what I meant. I can do more for the kids right now than I can do with the Trenchcoats. It doesn't mean I'm leaving them, just... considering my options. Like you. And X-Factor could do with someone on the ground more often - 's a brilliant idea, you taking it on."

Adrienne nodded in understanding of Amanda's comment about doing more for the kids than she could do for the Trenchcoats. She did understand- it was just that she was pretty much thinking the exact opposite about herself right now. "Too bad my sister's expressly forbidden me from joining the Trenchcoats, or I'd suggest we just switch. 'Course then you'd have to teach math," she pointed out with a wink. "And on the topic of helping kids, how have things been going with Tandy?"

Amanda's eyes widened in mock-horror. "Oh no, no maths. I'm still barely comfortable with fractions, myself," she protested, shaking her head. "And Billy's a handful enough without adding more to it." She gnawed on her pizza while she considered Adrienne's question about Tandy. "As for Tandy... we're working on things. This whole Dweller shite's tied up with the whole cave thing from a couple of years ago, which means I've got Namor to deal with as well, and all of it's this ancient magic I can't find any records of." Then her expression brightened. "Actually, you can probably help me out."

"Uh oh." Adrienne narroed her eyes suspiciously. "I do not like that look. I recognize that look. I'm afraid of that look." She waved her hands at Amanda as if to ward her off. "Is this going to be one of those things where you want me to Read something and it traumatizes me so horribly it makes me vomit and pass out and vomit?"

"Well, yeah, I want you to Read something. But it's really, really old and was originally used to cage the Dweller, so it can't be all horrible memories, right?" Amanda gave Adrienne a pleading look. "Please? I wouldn't ask if I didn't need the help. I'm totally stuck on this damn thing. And it would help me help Tandy."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had me at 'I wouldn't ask if,'" Adrienne muttered with a smirk in Amanda's direction. They were many years removed from the time when Adrienne wouldn't help Amanda, no matter what it was she asked for. "But if I pass out and vomit, you're taking me shopping for something really shiny."

"Deal. I'll even hold your hair back." Setting her beer down on the coffee table, Amanda got up - half a pizza slice still in hand - and went to the closet to pull out the staff Namor had brought back with him from the smuggler's cave. "'S normally in the secure room at the office," she explained, coming back to the couch. "But I wanted to work on the runes carved on it. 'S the staff they used in the ritual with the Dweller. The same one Tandy's been dreaming about. Namor brought it back with him when he and Sue escaped."

"Did she tell you much about the ritual?" Adrienne asked, polishing off her beer and wiping her hands on a paper napkin. "I Read her clothes so I could try to see what she went through, try to relate to her when she woke up screaming every night with another dream. So I can walk you through it, but I'm hoping she already did so I don't have to," she added with a wry smirk.

"Yeah, we've been through it," Amanda replied. "And it's not so much the ritual I'm interested in, it's more where the staff came from and what kind of magic it uses. And its connection with the Dweller." She grimaced. "There's nothing in any of the research I've had done that can give us answers."

Adrienne grabbed her notebook and pencil for scrawling down her findings. "You know, we used to spend our Saturday nights having a lot more fun," she mumbled, tying her hair back and then holding out her hand to take the staff Amanda had retrieved.

As soon as the ancient staff touched Adrienne's skin, time started to play backwards in time. Starting with the most recent of the staff's history. Playing like a movie going backwards, Adrienne saw Amanda looking at the staff and then in the possession of Namor and Sue, followed by the ritual taking place. This wouldn't be the first time Adrienne would see the same ritual as the staff never left the cave but instead with different people, some not having the same results.

The timeline continued as D'spayre picked up the staff and moved it away from the cave but this time into a different era. It traveled back to an Victorian looking house and placed back into it's display case. From there the staff continued to move from location and location so quickly, some times it was stolen, other times people were murdered for it. It finally came to rest into a family that looked like they were passing the staff from daughter to mother before it was placed into the hands of an elderly woman that was dressed in ancient robes.

As the scene continued to re-wind it was obvious that the woman, becoming younger, was a magic user and was well received in her own community. A lot of healing and protection spells were cast. At this point, the book was always accompanied by a book with the same markings etched into the cover as it did the staff. The scene changed to darkness as the same ritual was played out but this time out from the portal was a man and though the language was foreign, the man in the scene had the same marking as the one Tandy had on her shoulder.

The scene quickly changed to the chaos and destruction of where the owner of the Staff. Shades ran everywhere and people were cringing in fear. Villages were being destroyed, fire and the sounds of crying, and the smells of death were heavy in the air. Whenever the Shades came close, the staff would shine brightly and they would cower back. The staff was carried far away from the village to a seclude place where it finally left the owners hands before everything just went dark.

Adrienne dropped the staff and immediately began scribbling down details, including descriptions of the people she'd seen. Tongue poking out between her lips, she wrote quickly in her compact but messy script, that of someone much more suited to numbers than flowery phrases, for several minutes before passing her book to Amanda and cracking open another beer. "Hey, I didn't throw up or pass out. Extra points for me," she muttered as Amanda read the notes. "Is the stuff about the book significant? That it seems like the staff can do good things when coupled with the book? Or am I interpreting that wrong? What with me knowing absolutely nothing about magic and being terrified of it and all that."

Amanda didn't answer for a moment, being busy reading Adrienne's notes - luckily, she was used to messy writing and could make out most of it, squinting here and there to make out a particular scrawl. "No, sounds right to me. What I got from Tandy was that the staff was used to trap the Dweller, and since I didn't get any demonic magic feel from it either, I figured it was benign. This helps a lot, thanks. Especially if I can track down the runes on the book as well as the staff... you say they were the same?"

"Same markings, yeah," Adrienne nodded. "What's the stuff with the Dweller about?" she asked, taking a swig of her new beer. "I don't really get that."

"The Dweller's a demon, or something similar. Basically really fucking old, powerful and mean." Amanda picked up her beer and took another swig to wash the taste of the memory of Tandy's nightmares out of her mouth. "Same basic MO as most demon-lord types - take over the world, bring misery and ruin, destroy the human race. Any way, way back when, the magic users who owned this staff used it to defeat the Dweller and seal it up in another dimension."

"I don't get it," Adrienne frowned, shaking her head. "Why do they always want to take over the world and destroy the human race? I mean, what the fuck? What are they gonna do afterwards? Like, what's the fucking endgame there? Are they just gonna be hanging out in some bombed out city next to a mound of dead bodies, like... playing with kittens or something? Is that why they want to destroy the human race? So they can rule over, I dunno, cats and dogs or some shit?"

Amanda grimaced. "Actually, it's not our bodies they're interested in. It's our souls. Souls are big currency for demons - our souls are an energy source and prestige, all wrapped up in one handy package. So, for the Dweller, taking over Earth would be like knocking over the biggest bank in creation."

"Ahh." Adrienne started on another piece of pizza. "Okay, that makes sense now. Actually," she mused, "that makes a lot of sense. So do you really think you can find this book?"

The witch shrugged. "Probably not, if it's as old as it seems. But then again, you never know what you might find on Ebay."