It's Not My Fault - Working Lunch
Jun. 25th, 2023 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAmanda and Marie-Ange are having a working lunch in the Snow Valley offices when Amanda brings up a prospective mission.
A working lunch date was not the most romantic way to spend an afternoon, but it was not the worst date Marie-Ange had been on, and a spread of food, a few books and a map, and their respective laptops open on the conference room table was a nice break from a week that had otherwise been both infuriatingly unproductive and somehow chaotically busy. She'd been from contact to meeting to day trip to meeting to phone conference to sticking an inch of imaged knife into a low-level thug's groin to fruitless research project with Doug and lemon-moon-on-a-stick-beast-hex-the-computer. An office picnic with Amanda was the best part of the week.
"You are my favourite, just because you actually have real news." Marie-Ange said, between tidy bites of baguette and olive tapenade. "You are my favourite always, but today because you have real news and I can cross something off a to do list, somewhere. Also because you brought me olives."
"Any time, love," Amanda replied with a smile. She could have been referring to the olives, or the news, or both. As she scrolled through the mission projection she was putting together, she reached over for a stick of celery and crunched on it happily. "I've put together what I can about Meróz, based on what Enrique had to say. Seems like he's using the development as a cover for getting his hands on magical artifacts."
"Just once I want someone to just be open about collecting skulls and crystals and books because they just want to horde magic like a dragon." Marie-Ange said. "Just for a change. Evil, but honest." She continued to work through another olive-smeared baguette and a few rice-stuffed grape leaves while she read over the summary notes Amanda had already sent over. "So the area is genuinely supposed to have a railway, yes? It is not 'evil land development working with magical artifact collector?"
"Yeah, it's legit. And according to the planning documents, there's not a lot of options for the route if they want to get to the capital." Amanda shrugged. "I double checked that it's not just over-protective locals and there does seem to be legit reason to be worried - Meróz has a history of collecting things like this codex and I think he's using the existing development as a bonus to getting the codex, to be honest. And with the environmental and indigenous protests going on, we might be able to use that as a cover for getting close."
"Easy enough to get in as any number of covers." Marie-Ange agreed, tapping out a few notes about routes in onto her laptop. "I know you did a summary on the Codex, I have it, I just like when you explain things to me." She wrinkled her nose at Amanda, and pulled out one of her perpetually present notebook-slash-sketchpads. "Sometimes things stick better when I hear them, and something about this is already sticky in my brain, like, baklava but precognitive."
"Mental note, get baklava," Amanda said with a smile - Marie-Ange's similes and food cravings tended to merge. "Anyway, the Codex. It's in some form of ancient Maya and I don't have the actual book, so I can't just throw Doug at it yet, so I don't know much about the actual spells. Just it's very old and possibly doomsday-ish, and it's been in the region for a good long while - one of those family secret heirloom things. The local magic users - brujas, they're called - have been protecting it for a long time, or so my contact says."
Marie-Ange tapped away at her laptop for a bit, frowning. "Not related to that young man from last year with the tattoos that stole his power, no? One of those was Olmec." She flipped through photos on the touchscreen, shaking her head with every swipe. "No, on second thought, Doug and Topaz did analysis on the languages after the fact, wrong part of South America, and the Olmec are much earlier, so this is a different cult, probably a different book. The same result though, yes? End of the world, or end of civilization, summon a giant flying snake to eat an entire city, very big, very dramatic." She huffed, fussed with the laptop screen, and then pulled the deck of cards next to it closer to flip through. "I may as well, though, end of the world means The Tower, The Devil and Death, just like every other time."
She shuffled and cut, and then pulled a card, and snorted. "Oh, the future is being cheeky today." Marie-Ange flipped the card onto the table hard enough to make a little slap noise, showing Amanda the picture of the man dancing on the end of a cracked and crumbling cliff. "We have no idea what we are looking for, so I get The Fool." She glanced around the room, as if to make sure no one else but Amanda was there, and gave the deck a two-fingered salute.
Amanda also glanced around to make sure no-one could hear her and giggled - only Marie-Ange got to hear her giggling. "Somehow I don't think the card cares. Anything else?"
The next two cards were accompanied by a snort. The Tower, and The Devil, and Marie-Ange grumbled to herself. "Yes, thank you cards, I knew that. There is chaos and danger and destruction and...' She set down the last two cards, and poked at them with a fingernail. "Three of Cups and the Four of Wands?" She made a face, scrunched up in confusion. "The end of the world, and friendship and community. Fantastic, the deck has decided to make no sense at all today. Rocks fall, everyone dies, but we all die hugging." A noise of absolute disgust came out of her. "I need to stop being cheeky back, I ask questions of the future and I get instructions to take my friends on a trip to Mexico."
"What's the saying? 'Don't meddle in the affairs of tarot cards, 'cause they'll fuck with you'?" suggested Amanda, grinning despite the whole "end of the world" aspect. "Looks like we get to be Big Damn Heroes again." She paused and then added: "And I really need to stop listening to Doug's pop culture references."
A working lunch date was not the most romantic way to spend an afternoon, but it was not the worst date Marie-Ange had been on, and a spread of food, a few books and a map, and their respective laptops open on the conference room table was a nice break from a week that had otherwise been both infuriatingly unproductive and somehow chaotically busy. She'd been from contact to meeting to day trip to meeting to phone conference to sticking an inch of imaged knife into a low-level thug's groin to fruitless research project with Doug and lemon-moon-on-a-stick-beast-hex-the-computer. An office picnic with Amanda was the best part of the week.
"You are my favourite, just because you actually have real news." Marie-Ange said, between tidy bites of baguette and olive tapenade. "You are my favourite always, but today because you have real news and I can cross something off a to do list, somewhere. Also because you brought me olives."
"Any time, love," Amanda replied with a smile. She could have been referring to the olives, or the news, or both. As she scrolled through the mission projection she was putting together, she reached over for a stick of celery and crunched on it happily. "I've put together what I can about Meróz, based on what Enrique had to say. Seems like he's using the development as a cover for getting his hands on magical artifacts."
"Just once I want someone to just be open about collecting skulls and crystals and books because they just want to horde magic like a dragon." Marie-Ange said. "Just for a change. Evil, but honest." She continued to work through another olive-smeared baguette and a few rice-stuffed grape leaves while she read over the summary notes Amanda had already sent over. "So the area is genuinely supposed to have a railway, yes? It is not 'evil land development working with magical artifact collector?"
"Yeah, it's legit. And according to the planning documents, there's not a lot of options for the route if they want to get to the capital." Amanda shrugged. "I double checked that it's not just over-protective locals and there does seem to be legit reason to be worried - Meróz has a history of collecting things like this codex and I think he's using the existing development as a bonus to getting the codex, to be honest. And with the environmental and indigenous protests going on, we might be able to use that as a cover for getting close."
"Easy enough to get in as any number of covers." Marie-Ange agreed, tapping out a few notes about routes in onto her laptop. "I know you did a summary on the Codex, I have it, I just like when you explain things to me." She wrinkled her nose at Amanda, and pulled out one of her perpetually present notebook-slash-sketchpads. "Sometimes things stick better when I hear them, and something about this is already sticky in my brain, like, baklava but precognitive."
"Mental note, get baklava," Amanda said with a smile - Marie-Ange's similes and food cravings tended to merge. "Anyway, the Codex. It's in some form of ancient Maya and I don't have the actual book, so I can't just throw Doug at it yet, so I don't know much about the actual spells. Just it's very old and possibly doomsday-ish, and it's been in the region for a good long while - one of those family secret heirloom things. The local magic users - brujas, they're called - have been protecting it for a long time, or so my contact says."
Marie-Ange tapped away at her laptop for a bit, frowning. "Not related to that young man from last year with the tattoos that stole his power, no? One of those was Olmec." She flipped through photos on the touchscreen, shaking her head with every swipe. "No, on second thought, Doug and Topaz did analysis on the languages after the fact, wrong part of South America, and the Olmec are much earlier, so this is a different cult, probably a different book. The same result though, yes? End of the world, or end of civilization, summon a giant flying snake to eat an entire city, very big, very dramatic." She huffed, fussed with the laptop screen, and then pulled the deck of cards next to it closer to flip through. "I may as well, though, end of the world means The Tower, The Devil and Death, just like every other time."
She shuffled and cut, and then pulled a card, and snorted. "Oh, the future is being cheeky today." Marie-Ange flipped the card onto the table hard enough to make a little slap noise, showing Amanda the picture of the man dancing on the end of a cracked and crumbling cliff. "We have no idea what we are looking for, so I get The Fool." She glanced around the room, as if to make sure no one else but Amanda was there, and gave the deck a two-fingered salute.
Amanda also glanced around to make sure no-one could hear her and giggled - only Marie-Ange got to hear her giggling. "Somehow I don't think the card cares. Anything else?"
The next two cards were accompanied by a snort. The Tower, and The Devil, and Marie-Ange grumbled to herself. "Yes, thank you cards, I knew that. There is chaos and danger and destruction and...' She set down the last two cards, and poked at them with a fingernail. "Three of Cups and the Four of Wands?" She made a face, scrunched up in confusion. "The end of the world, and friendship and community. Fantastic, the deck has decided to make no sense at all today. Rocks fall, everyone dies, but we all die hugging." A noise of absolute disgust came out of her. "I need to stop being cheeky back, I ask questions of the future and I get instructions to take my friends on a trip to Mexico."
"What's the saying? 'Don't meddle in the affairs of tarot cards, 'cause they'll fuck with you'?" suggested Amanda, grinning despite the whole "end of the world" aspect. "Looks like we get to be Big Damn Heroes again." She paused and then added: "And I really need to stop listening to Doug's pop culture references."
