Exile on Main Street

[Dracos]

Dracos shrugs, "So we work our own ways.  I intend to go on as I think it's the safest route longterm.  Bjorn intends to protect all he can.  To stop them, if I read him right.  You intend to do what defends well...what right now Rez?"

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"You remember how Shade spilled everything.  Got a mental defence, you?"

[Bjorn]

"This isn't about vengeance," Bjorn says, evenly.  "If it had been, I would have been killing those guards we took prisoner.   Anyone who takes pleasure in killing is a murderer, and a danger.

"But at the same time, a person who refuses to kill when it's necessary is a danger, as well.  This is not about vengeance.  This is about stopping something that should never have been.

"As for mental defense... needs be, I can protect all of us, I think."

[Dracos]

Dracos sighs, Not to the degree, Bjorn does Rez, but best I can manage. I don't spill easy.  Either way, I'm not shade.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez visibly jumped and looked at Drac wide-eyed, looking utterly scared.

[Dracos]

Dracos raises an eyebrow, "Afraid of me now man?  Sheesh."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"Drac . . . I'd be fucking terrified of anyone who can pull stuff out of my mind at will."

[Dracos]

"Yeah...lovely.  Well, imagine that, I don't."  Dracos shrugs, turning and heading towards the kitchen to get a drink.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez just goes back to his attempted-hackery-ness.

[Bjorn]

"Insensitive prick, isn't he?" Bjorn says, almost conversationally, but sotto voce.

[Rezantis]

"Friends being scared of you doesn't do much for the cheer factor, but I'm on edge right now."

[Bjorn]

"Obviously.  He sent you a telepathic message or something?"

[Rezantis]

"Bingo.  The idea of people being able to read minds scares the crap out of me, but I hadn't made the connection yet . . ."

Rez sighs.

"I'll apologize later."

[Bjorn]

"Well, frankly, shoving your thoughts into someone's mind uninvited is a little on the rude side, really.

"Anyways.  You want to talk more about this Ayame thing?  I still don't completely understand it, I think."

[Rezantis]

"Mm."

Rez sighs.

"Alright.  Basically . . . several days ago, someone named Ceran logged on to Soulriders and left a message in a locked board.  A hack, basically.  So digging around through logs and the directory structure, we found an eggdrop bot.  We compiled it, it logged in to a server . . . somewhere, don't remember where, and started downloading stuff.  A few gigs and a lot of tinkering later, a linux box of mine has been completely reworked and starts talking to me."

Rez hums.

"Said that she wasn't really sure what her name used to be, but now it was Ayame (the name of the system she was compiled on).  So anyway, after a while of poking around and trying to figure out where she came from (Vatican, apparently), she ended up trying to access some of her old databases and realized it was a trap.  Dammit, I could have told her that."

"Anyway, being freaked out when she told me what she'd done and to run, because they were looking for me, I split the country.  Incidentally, my bank accounts had been locked up and my passport tagged . . . which she somehow managed to get me through."

"Then I ended up in Boston, and after about a day or so a swat team bursts into Drac's house trying to beat our heads in with batons and tazers, kinda implying that my paranoia was justified.  And since you were our only lead, we sorta road-tripped across the country.  Ayame gave us a bunch of gear and set up some false trails for us," Rez indicates the uplink on the table, "and we ended up rocking over to San Francisco."

"Incidentally, along the way we had a weird dream where I agreed to be her defender, which explains the hand.  It was a little more complex than that, but that's the rough overview."

"But basically, Ayame was the Oracle of Delphi, somehow made into an AI.  She ended up on my computer with about as much clue as to what was going on as I did - Pax sent her to me, apparently figuring that her trying to work out what was going on would draw the Seventh Cabal's attention to her and me, involving us in it .  She saved my ass several times, is pretty much the main reason we're here to talk to you, and . . . yeah, I couldn't return the favour when she needed it."