you're what happens when two substances collide :: OPEN

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

Who: Sebastian LeMat and YOU.
What & Where: Various places about town: Nazca's boat, Hellsing's infirmary, etc.
When: Throughout the third week of Velldaren
Notes: If you want to set something up, let me know!

For the sake of safety and common sense Sebastian has been relatively quiet on the network, preferring to communicate via voice or text only, but that hasn't stopped him from making a few general appointments for others in his cohort and throughout the city. Most of his work for strangers has been in and around Sobek Croix, doing his part to keep Hellsing in the canton's good graces during the current blood shortage. At the guildhall itself, he's been working on getting the building ready for winter -- finishing windows, checking the roof for leaks (again), and making sure there will be enough room to dry their crop of tobacco.

Comments

[aviophobia]

McCoy is all too familiar with meatball surgery, even if it's clearly an unusual phrase for LeMat, and he nods. The condition of his body makes a little more sense now, even if it's alternatives he would never consider: turn the knee into marble to save it, leave the owl feathers where they are after sterilizing to focus on a more severe injury.

'Experimental magic' indeed.

"Are there others here who are capable of - " he gestures to Sebastian - "this sort of magic?"

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"At least a few working for Hellsing and presumably many more out in the city." At least McCoy will get to experience treating a variety of injuries?

"...I just, I had a thought. My world, there's no one applying any sort of scientific study to magic, it's all hidden, underground, but do you think with your whatever that is," he says, gesturing at the tricorder, "You'd be able to record what happens to a person when they do magic?"

[aviophobia]

McCoy's mouth opens, then closes, and then he looks at his tricorder, brows furrowing. "It ... would be worth a shot, I guess," he admits, frowning down at it. "What's the worst that could happen?" And then he answers his own question: "Besides from the damn thing exploding or something, or something going horribly wrong and killing us all."

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"That's hardly the worst thing," he says mildly, before calling Velcro over to reassure him. There's no need to fuss, he's just going to nick himself and then a little magic. Good dog. "I, ah, should warn you that this will require a bit of my own blood. Ready?"

[aviophobia]

"All right," McCoy replies hesitantly, clicking the tricorder back on, casting a glance down at the dog. "Whenever you are."

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

Sebastian pulls out a small pocket knife that he handles with ease and confidence before drawing a line over the pad of his thumb and cupping his hand to catch the few drops that spring up. Once he's satisfied with the quantity of blood, he stills himself, focuses, and whispers the incantation to bring his patronus into being.

It is the one spell he has left and as the manticore forms between them, it's image is still strong, sharp and clear. "You get anything?"

[aviophobia]

The tricorder is going crazy, and McCoy taps a button on the screen to record the resulting readouts. His eyes flicker over the spiking and swirling screen, trying to make sense of what it's giving him.

"I got something," he replies, then jerks back as he notices the manticore standing there. "What the fuck is that thing?!"

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

The manticore lashes its tail and grins with it's double-set of jaws. Charming beast.

"That's my patronus. It's an external expression of a happy memory that can be used to fight off similar constructs made from sadness or torment," he replies settling into what sounds like a talk he's given many times before. It's not a great leap to assume that Sebastian once taught this sort of magic. "There are different sorts -- a proper wizard uses a wand and theirs is a bit less solid, by changing the media to blood, you can create a stronger, more battle-ready sort, or if you imbue it with breath, you can create a messenger."

[aviophobia]

McCoy stops recording, then hesitantly moves, not coming closer, but as though he's about to crouch. He glances at LeMat. "If I try and scan this thing, is it gonna rip my throat open?"

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"She could walk through you and you wouldn't feel a thing." The manticore stretches and then jumps onto a nearby table to preen. "Although, I know that for wizards, if you touch another's patronus you might see flashes of the memory that created it. I don't know what it would do for you."

[aviophobia]

"I'm not touching it." Hesitantly, he taps the tricorder screen to start recording again, then holds it out to start scanning the ... thing. Whatever the hell it is. The tricorder is going crazy again, spiking with energy and impulses like he's never seen, and he keeps a close eye on it to make sure it's not going to explode.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"Are you getting anything useful out of this?" At the very least, it should help convince McCoy that magic is very real and while his technology might not be able t measure it, it must be quantifiable in some way. Perhaps he'll be able to set his tricorder to scan for a specific sort of crazy-pattern and that way he'll know a patient has been magically afflicted?

[aviophobia]

"I have," McCoy returns, "no clue. I think I am, but I'll need to sit down and analyze these one by one to get a better idea of what the hell I'm actually looking at. I've never seen readings like this before."

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"If you want me to come back and recast, I can do that for you. I think, well, in theory that should help eliminate a few variables?" Science is not Sebastian's strong suit, but he has a talent for intuitive leaps of understanding.

[aviophobia]

McCoy nodded, tapping the tricorder to stop recording as he stepped away from the manticore, still eying it uncertainly, as though he expected it to rip his throat out at the slightest provocation. "Might help. You okay with that?"

let me know if this setting doesn't work!

[amourpropre]

Back home, Lucius had started not going out too. So this excursion is relatively unusual, in any dimension.

When a war is over, people don't just forget. And strangely enough, not everyone sees honour in defecting, not on either side. With the wizard community's stifling smallness, the swamping rush of Muggle streets had offered some anonymity when he'd deigned to roam them, for all that Lucius had hated that as well -- being somewhere completely free of magic, for someone like him, felt like a tragic rainy afternoon no matter the actual weather, the air dead and the sounds loud and grating. Baedal is, reassuringly, not quite like this, some strange combination of the two, like that fresh hell notion of a world where Muggles and wizard kind combined.

Not the most striking thing approaching the tavern, considering Baedal, but Lucius doesn't completely blend in, either -- never mind the kicking his recent history has given him, fading into the woodwork is not a talent he possesses. He is tall, long-haired, carries around a cane and has adopted a sort of fuck off aura that has a more defense edge to the one of arrogance from before. His clothing is plain but well-made, rings on his fingers polished to a shine.

It will be late, by the time he gets back to the townhouse, but that's fine. The light of the Sobek Croix tavern reaches passed its own windows and doors in the dusky light, and Lucius doesn't yet sashay inside, contemplating whether he wants to.

Perfect, bb.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

Should he come inside, he's likely to spot a young man somewhere in his mid to late twenties, sitting at a small, well-lit side table reading a book. Spread out on the table in front of him, is a notebook, a mug of tea and teapot, and an empty plate. As much as he appreciates being able to live at the Hellsing Guild Hall, Sebastian has an almost physical need to get out into the city and be among other people. Ideally, among people who don't know him and won't interrupt him while he's reading. Reading remains slow, laborious task, and while silence might help some people, when it's too quiet, every little noise makes him jump and distracts him; it's only among the constant, low hum of conversation that he can really focus.

Faced with a particularly difficult passage in deMarcus' "An Introduction to Creative Cursebreaking," Sebastian removes his glasses for a moment, to pinch the bridge of his nose and scrub at his face, pushing aside a shock of messy black hair and revealing a faded scar.

[amourpropre]

There is really only so much debate to be had. Lucius can go inside or he can go home. Quotation marks.

He pushes through the doors, bringing in the cooler early evening air with him and the tinge of rain just prior. Lucius is not any kind of barfly, there are limits and standards and things, as well as fully stocked liquor cabinets, but he is not strictly out of place either, a hand dipping into his coat pocket for coinage-- charity-- as he meanders for the bar. He will go for something of small amount and high dosage, with the kind of shock of warm chemical that complements the sharply cold ice it douses. Whatever they have. Do they have firewhiskey.

Cane resting to hang from the hilt against bar edge, Lucius pushes the necessary money across the polished surface. The Boy That Lived goes unnoticed, even when chill grey eyes go to skim the room as he waits. And then a second time, as if the faint hint of subconscious memory--

Attention lingers uncomfortably and uncertain at that particular table.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

This particular tavern does not have an overly varied selection, but they do have firewhiskey or at least recognize the term and can pour a suitable equivalent.

He's dressed in muggle clothing with a cane of his own leaning against his chair; it's a practical thing, used to offset a limp rather than hide a wand. Should Malfoy look closer, he'll be able to pick up other differences between this man and the boy he knew -- his right hand is missing the the top joints of his ring and pinkie finger, he doesn't appear to be carrying a wand, but that's not to say he isn't armed.

It could be a coincidence. After all, a stranger that bears an striking resemblance to Harry Potter is hardly the most unusual thing in Baedal. Still, when the dog stands and turns to face the bar, Sebastian looks to follow his line of sight and resolutely Does Not Startle upon seeing an older Malfoy. He calmly reaches down to pet Velcro before returning to his book and sending off a text message to (the usual) Lucius and Integra.

( a side note )

[suninhades]

I'm sending someone anyway. If he so much as sneezes at you tell him I know his bloody wife.

[amourpropre]

The attention of his study breaks by the time the sound of a glass is being set down, with whatever amber fluid counts as hard liquor, the cracking of ice shards turning his head again. If Lucius understands the principle behind texting, being both a pureblooded wizard of old family bigotry inclinations, as well as from the 90s, then it isn't to a degree that the sight of it generates suspicion.

Which doesn't mean that by the time Sebastian is done, he isn't being honed in on. Lucius doesn't exactly invite himself, and isn't about to sit down, but by the time the text is away, the glass of whiskey is set down on the far side of the table.

If it's a coincidence, well, mistaking someone for someone else isn't the worst thing that can happen to him. He doesn't quite hold the same authority and entitlement as he did some several years ago in the bookstore, ticking icy stare over little Harry's legendary scar, but there is a probable amount of similarity in the way he now looks at where pieces are missing off the younger man's fingers.

Then goes the natural sweep up to more familiar injury.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"You're welcome to join me," he says quietly, moving to clear space at the table. Sebastian has made his call for support and its unlikely that Malfoy will kill him outright in public, so there's no point in being coy and pretending that they can't recognize each other. He doesn't bother to hide his injured hand. As with most of hexes and curses he'd been hit with late in the war, the injury to his hand wasn't properly healed. Although, his missing fingertips are due to a crushing wound instead of anything magical.

"I've been going by the name LeMat for a few years now." When he speaks, it's slowly, as if he has to force himself to take the time and think through his words. There's no anger to his words, but caution and some undefinable, but painful emotion connection to the capriciousness of time travel. What does it matter if Lucius has come from after the summer of '02? If he's been to Azkaban, that future is already too set to change.

[amourpropre]

The sound Lucius makes is arguably meant to be the beginnings of a laugh -- it doesn't really make it out of his chest, hitching partway and curling the corner of his mouth, and little more than that. Considering his own degrees of suppression and reserve, and to compare it towards that of more normal people, that must make this instance astoundingly funny.

"LeMat," he says, which signifies either testing this name for himself or implicit offer to pretend as well.

Still standing, too, despite the offer to join him -- although Lucius scopes over the table now, like a particularly overgrown and ill-content cat unsure of the offered accommodation. Eventually, he nudges back the nearest chair with the end of his cane, an eyebrow raising to himself in resign as he sits. "What on earth we'd have to discuss escapes me," he warns. But it's probably better than finding a separate table in the confines of the bar and pretending either of them aren't there until the other finishes his business.

And he was the one that wanted to see this up close for himself.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

While not common knowledge, it's not so obscure as to be unknown: 'LeMat' is an old name for the Fool tarot card. In the earliest decks, Le Mat was a beggar, a madman, a divine fool, or sometimes referred to the final move of checkmate.

"We could complain about how self-aggrandizing deMarcus is," he says, gesturing to the book upon the table and the post-it notes attached to the page written in his nigh illegible scrawl (Irritating. Intentionally vague?). Sebastian looks Malfoy over, trying to place when and where in the timeline he might be from. His hair is still long, so that means he must be from no later than Christmas of '01.

[amourpropre]

Just shy a few years, even, and at some stage he started not aging as well as he was, so it's a difficult thing to determine, exactly, how old he might be, apart from any evidence of the war still being a thing freshly ended. Closed up like a clam right now, of course, pulling on his resources to withstand even polite study as he takes a sip of alcohol, swallowing down the burn of it and flicking a mildly confused glance towards the book lying at LeMat's elbow, before familiarity flickers. More than likely, he has a copy of his own in the manor's library.

Back home. "You should try Kozlow. He reads less like pontification and doesn't use the word 'creative' in his titles. Where did you get such a thing?"

Lucius hasn't seen any artifacts of his world, here, but then again, he also probably isn't looking hard enough. Interest not in the book but in that potential tie back to the world he knows shows in the crack his aloofness takes, and that probably is a clue at least to how long he's been here.

Not very.