Here's the log from last night.  Let me just take this opportunity to
mention how much I enjoy roleplaying with you, and how difficult Buick's
poses are to run through a spell-checker. :)

Hope everything's okay.


heather

---------

Thomas curses softly and makes eloquent comments in the margins of a
student's paper.

Buick moves abruptly out of his office, as he has several times today. In
his hands is the large bow, and he's making adjustments to it as he steams
across the room.

Thomas glances up, suddenly wary at the sight of the bow. "Hello, there,"
he says mildly.

Buick shoots a quick glance at Thomas and grunts, then shoulders into the
kitchen.

Thomas watches the man go, then looks back at the paper, trying to
remember where he left off, more than half his attention in the kitchen,
in spite of himself.

It's not long before the kitchen is filled with shouting, mostly one
voice, and YT bursts out of the kitchen with much the same mood Buick went
in with. Apparently, she doesn't have to put up with 'this' (whatever
'this' is) and she tells the air around her this in a very loud voice.

Thomas sits back and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Oh, dear," he says
quietly.

YT hits the front door hard and keeps going, and a thick tense silence
falls over the building.

Thomas looks wistfully down at the papers before him. "Things were going
so nicely," he says to no one. He looks up at the kitchen door again, but
does not move to be YT's successor in this matter.

Buick bursts out of the kitchen door again, cup of coffee in one hand. The
other is stuffing a pistol into his waistband. It looks as if it would be
unlucky to be located between the kitchen and his office.

Thomas's expression undergoes a remarkable, if subtle, sequence of changes
at the sight of that pistol. His first response is to let his gaze slide
away as though pretending that he not only did not see any gun, he didn't
see Buick, and preferably did not exist to be seen, either. His hands
tighten on the pen he is holding and he frowns at it, then stands up,
slapping the pen down onto the desk and reluctantly moving after Buick,
not so much to intercept as to follow, or perhaps meet at the door of the
office itself.

Buick pauses at his door to tell the empty desk to 'hold his damn calls'.
Then he wrenches the door open.

"Buick," Thomas says, not so much a question as a futile attempt to
establish common ground. He licks his lips and tries to catch Buick's eyes
before he goes through the door. Very quietly: "What's going on?"

Buick turns sharply, sighing raggedly. "What the hell do *you* want,
Thomas?" he asks, fatigue snatching at the corners of his annoyance.

Very, very softly, leaning against the doorjamb, Thomas says, "To know why
the hell you're carrying a gun in the Project."

Buick rolls his eyes and moves through the door. He makes no effort to
shut it. "Fuck. Not *you* too. I just went through this shit with YT."

Thomas follows Buick in and does close the door. "Well, I would be obliged
if you'd be so good as to go through it again. You don't seem noticeably
to have settled YT's mind on the subject." His tone is mild, even casual,
which is nice because his body is screaming tension in eight different
directions.

Buick drops himself into his chair, at such a vector that it scoots back a
foot. "You wanna know? You honest t'God wanna know?"

Thomas braces himself. "Yes."

Buick nods. "Okay. Any minute now, some thugs from Chicago are gonna come
through that door--" He points toward the front entrance through a
wall,"An' they're all gonna have big fuckin' guns. An' they're gonna wanna
kill me. There. Good enough?"

Thomas takes several moments to absorb this knowledge. "No. What are you
still doing here?"

Buick rolls his eyes as if this is perfectly obvious. "If I leave, that
won't stop 'em. They'll start pluggin' people until I show."

Thomas gazes at Buick. "So you thought opening up fire yourself would
help?"

Buick takes a deep breath. "I--" That failed. He shakes his head. "You--"
That didn't do much better. He runs a hand through his hair. "You don't
understand."

Thomas leans back against the wall and runs a hand through his hair.
"Obviously," he says, more wry than sarcastic, now. "I never merited thugs
with big guns. How long have you known about this, and how long do you
have?"

Buick shakes his head. "The little punk came in last night. Said ... said
that they wanted t'see me, an' they'd be back. Didn't say when. Of
course."

You say "So you've known all day. Didn't it occur to you that you have a
mage and a garou in regular residence here, probably willing to help? I
mean, we might have bargained for your share of the garlic bread, next
spaghetti night, but it seems like a small enough price to pay for
assistance."

Buick closes his eyes for a long time. Then opens them. "Fuck." he
whispers quietly. "I'm -- I'm an idiot." he tells the desktop.

"It happens," Thomas says briskly, if with some sympathy. "Now, Pid isn't
here, and I'm a coward completely unused to gun fighting, but I'd like to
suggest that we move to the front door now, because if you're going to use
that gun, I'd rather it not be in the same room with the children. Most of
them are asleep already, and you know how hard they are to settle again
when something's woken them." He is nowhere near as complacent as he
sounds, but his suggestion is more than sincere. He pushes himself away
from the wall and puts his hand on the door, looking to Buick for
agreement before opening it.

Buick shakes his head. "That's the thing. If I'm -- wait. If I'm packin'
then..." He sighs. "Then it's kind of a respect thing. They'll let me go
quietly, instead o' puttin' holes in the place."

Thomas takes his hand off the doorknob, looking completely baffled by this
piece of anthropology. "Let me understand this. A number of gun-carrying
thugs who want to kill you will be arriving. If they find you carrying a
gun, they will refrain from shooting out of respect, while if they find
you unarmed, they will let fire, not only on you, but on the place at
large?"

Buick nods. "Then we'll go someplace quiet an' they'll shoot me there.
It's -- it's a respect thing. Less chance one o' their boys gets hit.

Thomas scratches the back of his head. "Fascinating. So that's what we do
if we want you to be shot quietly. What's the plan for not having you shot
at all?"

Buick shakes his head. "There ain't one. Look, you don't get it. They been
lookin' f'me for... three years. It ain't somethin' you stop. It's
somethin' you hide from. An' I did that already."

Thomas's expression drops about ten degrees celcius. "Here."

Buick nods. "Uh huh." he replies quietly. "Been a nice vacation, but I
guess I always knew they'd catch up with me." He shrugs.

Thomas's lips tighten. He carefully edits the first five things it occurs
to him to say, and finds himself without a sixth. He sighs, shoulders
slumping as some of the tension in his shoulders loses hope. He rubs the
bridge of his nose again. "There has to be something," he mutters.

Buick shakes his head. "It's like if the Project decided t'kill the Wyrm.
They're *huge*.

"Yes, but--" Thomas lifts his head again. "I'm not talking about taking
them on. Just--taking you back. I wish--" he starts, and then locks down
on what he was going to say, blocking it completely.

Buick shakes his head. "I crossed the line. If they're still around,
they'll still want me. It's--" He plays idly with his hair and frowns.
"It's completely outta your world. If ya cross the line, they hafta kill
ya so nobody else does it."

Thomas laughs softly. "Oh, I understand that much, anyhow." He runs his
hand through his hair again, until it looks like he's been in a hurricane.
"Whitey's going to go through the roof," he points out, filling in space.

Buick shrugs. "I sent her and Xan off to run an errand up t'Seattle.
They'll be fine." he says uncomfortably.

"Mm-hmm," Thomas says dubiously. "I don't suppose there's any way of
persuading these people that you're more use to them alive? Either that
your being alive serves some function, or that your death would have
negative side-effects?""

Buick shrugs. "I'm sure it's been tried. I ain't ever heard of it bein'
successful. Y'fuck with the Family, they fuck ya back." One track mind.

Thomas grits his teeth and keeps his temper. "Would removing whoever
actually comes for you at this point serve any function, if it could be
done?"

Buick nods. "Yeah. It'd postpone 'em until they sent the next guys." he
says fatalistically. This is not the Buick who grabbed this building by
the throat and whipped it into a giant act of charity.

Thomas jerks into motion, too annoyed and frustrated to stand still,
despite the inadequate pacing room offered by the office. "It might give
you a little time to come up with another plan. You don't know any useful
secrets, I suppose?"

Buick looks up to watch Thomas. "I could run again. But they'd find me
again."

Thomas looks at Buick, considering. "Even if you had a new face?"

Buick blinks. "Uh. I dunno..."

Thomas gives the younger man a short, sharp grin and resumes pacing. "If
you disappeared at some point after they took you, would they come back
here and start shooting?"

Buick licks his lips pensively. "I don't... they might not. Uh. Is
there... can we make it look like I'm dead first? *Then* they'd prolly go
away..." There. Through the years, Buick is resurfacing. The gleam in the
eyes, the conniving smile...

Thomas rubs his chin thinking. "That is classic, isn't it. Let me think. I
can do one of two things. I can create a visual illusion. It won't stand
up to touch or anything of the kind, but it can look like anything you
want. Especially if I have time to think about it ahead of time. Or I can
mess with your vital signs. I should be able to control your body
temperature, pulse, bloodflow if you're wounded, and so forth. But if you
actually die--I mean, I can't stop your heart and have much of a chance of
bringing you back. And there's a couple things I should say," he adds
seriously. "The first is, I'm not that powerful and I have relatively
little experience with this kind of amateur theatricals, and nothing is
guaranteed. There's always the possibility that something could go wrong.
Not a whole lot more wrong than your being killed by the mafia, of course,
but still wrong. The other thing is that, if we pull this off, you're
going to owe me your garlic bread for years to come."

Buick nods, grinning madly. "No prollem. No prollem. I... yes! Yeah, I got
blanks, could ya shoot me on the steps or somethin'? Yeah..." He starts
drawing out a plot of some sort on the desk.

Thomas is taken severely aback. "Me?" he repeats. "Shoot you?"

Buick nods emphatically. "Yeah. Yeah. It's okay, it's just blanks. I mean,
who else can I ask? I'd hafta explain it an' maybe Pid knows but who wants
t'give Pid a gun right?

Thomas doesn't even touch this last question. "Um. And why am I shooting
you?"

Buick says "So they think I'm dead, right? A gunfire victim right in front
of them, that's *cold* evidence t'take home, yeah? I mean, hell. Right?""

Thomas waves a hand. "No, no. I mean what is the purported reason? Am I
supposed to merely be a psychotic passerby?"

Buick shrugs. "I dunno. I'm not a drama coach, I don't do motivations."


Thomas glares at Buick in exasperation. "For a supposedly brilliant
founder..." he mutters. "Listen. They have to believe it, right? We're not
the only people in the world to have encountered the idea of blanks and
fake deaths. Any con is 90 percent a convincing set-up - you have to make
people unwilling to question what they've seen. I mean," he interprets
with exaggerated simplicity, "you have to make it look good. And what cold
evidence were you thinking about letting them take back? Cold..." he says,
suddenly abstracted. He gazes off into the distance.

>> You paged Buick with 'Okay. No doubt you're having fits at your ISP -
at least I hope it's that, and not some catastrophe that's called you afk.
I *must* go to bed. Thomas's plan is that instead of shooting Buick on the
front steps, they mock up a suicide for Thomas to show whoever comes for
him. Bathtub full of bloody water, slit wrists, clammy skin, no pulse,
"You're looking for Buick? Sure, boys, I'll be glad to take you to him..."
Thomas will achieve most of this by triggering hypothermia, and then will
make sure that there are no stray heartbeats at any point when anyone is
actually checking Buick's pulse. The inevitable drawback is that Buick
will have to leave the Project afterwards. :/ Thomas will, needless to
say, be delighted when he discovers that such 'amateur theatricals' are
not actually necessary, though if you catch his expression at just the
right moment, you may see a trace of wistfulness at not getting a chance
to test his plan.'.

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