ALL KNIGHTS ♔ AUDIO CALL

[wynn]

This afternoon, Sir Jeanne Gar was abducted from downtown London, and despite our best efforts to halt the attempt, was taken to an undisclosed location by a woman called the Mind Master.  This same woman worked with Dimitris Sarandis and his fellow cultists, and participated in the attack on our castle this winter.  

This woman is extremely dangerous, and I advise anyone who thinks they have a means to locate Sir Gar to work directly with myself and Sir Hasmed to do so.  I will not risk losing more Knights to these fanatics.

We will find her.  For now, remain vigilant, and I would advise you all to be cautious when venturing outside of the castle.

That is all.

Comments

not here / open for action

[slay]

[ The phone slips in Buffy's grip, but she catches it in time to keep it from ever leaving her palm. Her mouth runs dry, and quite suddenly, the ground feels not-so-groundlike. Gar is a constant. Their constant. She steers them, and based on the most recent briefing, she might be the one thing actually holding them all together. To accept that she's gone now, taken by the worst monster imaginable, leaves Buffy paralyzed by her own impotence. How was she not there? Why couldn't she do a thing to stop it? ]

No ...

[allmydreams]

[Felicity is down the hall from Buffy when the message gets broadcast, and when it's over, her eyes glance to the other woman. While she's not as attached to Gar, being new to the team, she can't help but feel the loss all the same. That was their leader and the Mind Master took her.

Still, her own concerns get pushed to the side for now as she makes her way closer.]

You okay?

[The answer's probably no, but sometimes you just need someone to ask.]

[slay]

[ Buffy suppresses her strained alarm with haste when Felicity approaches, gulping it down and looking all the more cool and stony-faced, but she shakes her head in a fleeting moment's emotional honesty. ]

Did you hear?

[allmydreams]

[She nods, reaching forward to give the woman's shoulder a small squeeze.]

We'll find her. We'll get her back.

[It's a bit startling that the Mind Master could just take her like that, but Buffy's been in this longer and she needs the reminder more than Felicity does, even if she is saying it for them both.]

[trackability]

I'm not sure who Jeanne Gar is, but I'm pretty good at finding people. [ He pauses. ] Monsters specifically, but I can adjust.

[wynn]

I'm not certain how much of a trail there will be to uncover. She was taken via teleportation magic.

[trackability]

Hunting for the captor is as good as hunting for the captive. They're generally hand in hand.

[wynn]

Yes, but it usually requires more tracks than she tends to leave.

open for action.

[watcherjunior]

[ When the call comes in, Dawn is in the library, nose in a book as always. At first, the words don't soak in; it can't be Gar he's talking about. She doesn't question why they'd take her. Gar is important, even more so to herself. She just got home, she got to see Gar more regularly, and now her mentor has been taken away.

Dawn is stuck somewhere between panic, anger, and sadness. The combination is enough to fill her eyes to brimming with tears. She hides her face in her hands and lets the tears slip down her cheeks. ]

[likeababyduck]

[Sweets isn't exactly glad to hear this either, and when he sees Dawn's reaction he makes his way closer, resting one hand against her back gently for comfort. He doesn't say anything yet, just waits for her to tell him what she needs.]

[watcherjunior]

[ She doesn't pull away from the touch. It barely registers at the moment, as she's sniffling and rubbing her eyes with balled fists. It's stupid, crying isn't going to do anything, it isn't going to stop whatever they might have planned. But it was Gar herself who told Dawn about the Mind Master, about how dangerous a foe she is, about what she did to Finnick. ]

I-- [ Hiccup. ] I'm okay. [ She's not, the tears are still coming and her shoulders are shaking. ] We're going to get her back, and she's gonna be okay.

[likeababyduck]

Yeah. She'll be okay.

[He keeps rubbing her back gently, not pulling away until she tells him to.]

But it's okay to be upset too.

closed | barry & thea

[supertardiness]

[Barry returns to the castle, bruised and bloody, and really just intends on heading to his room and passing out so that he can take some time to heal. It isn't until he glances down at his phone to listen to Wynn's broadcast that he seems the stream of text messages from his mentor for the sushi ... he neglected to bring her. He sighs heavily before running one hand over her face and veering to head towards Thea's room instead.

He knocks lightly on her door frame, already ready to make this big apology in his rumpled state with ... no sushi.]

Hey, I'm really sorry ...

[withasouvenir]

[ she's all ready to be like BRUH WHAT THE FUCK, but then he's bleeding and her eyes widen as she leaps up from the movie she has paused to listen to wynn's message. ]

Shit, Barry! [ give it a second. ] Jesus, were you there? Come here, sit down.

[ she gestures him toward the bed, not seeming to care in the least that he's going to get blood all over it. ]

[supertardiness]

[He will let her drag him over to sit down as he tries to pull together an explanation.]

Yeah. I was in the kitchen when Wynn was rounding people up to go find Sir Gar. I'm sorry, I should have texted you back.

action;

[andblockbuster]

[as the team returns to the castle, Topher drags behind, feeling lost and despaired. it hasn't been that long since Pegasus fell apart, and the cold, heavy weight of what little he could do to fix things is hard to ignore. Maybe he never really will get his hands clean from that. Maybe people will constantly screaming in his nightmares, telling him in angry tones that he was supposed to help them.

it's not even really his fault. or his responsibility. he has no real connection to any of this beyond it being something that affects the knighthood in a general sense, but the fact that he couldn't do anything and his friend is in trouble and he still can't do anything just makes him want to bury himself in a hole.

or at least find a warm blanket and a couch and bury himself there while Netflix attempts to soothe him with horrible movies. Sharknado can cure many wounds, but not this one.]

[felidity]

[ warm blankets are kali's comfort of choice, so she's not even surprised when she finds topher buried under one and looking like he wishes it would smother him. she doesn't say anything, climbing on the couch and wedging herself between the back and topher so he can be the little spoon. ]

It's not your fault. [ heck, maybe it is, kali doesn't know, but topher is useless when he feels guilty so she is trying to save him from that. ]

[andblockbuster]

It really isn't in the sense that it had nothing to do with me. [his voice is muffled by the couch cushion but he deeply appreciates Kali's presence and the tension in his body lessens some.] But if through some weird twist of fate you'd been having lunch with Gar today, she probably wouldn't have been taken in the first place.

[he's really fixated on this. trying to rationalize it with wynn as predetermined destiny, playing out the parts in God's great programming scheme didn't do much to make him feel better.]

[ambitionist]

[alex peers into the rec room, lured in by the dulcet sounds of sharknado and expecting to see kali probably ... but instead there's topher being the saddest bump on the sadness log. even though he was able to brush off the botched mission after spending who knows maybe an hour being pressed about his own personal ineptitude and move on, apparently topher does not have the same shitty coping mechanism. so he takes a seat next to him.]

I love Sharknado. Have you seen the third one yet? It's the best.

[andblockbuster]

I thought at that point it was pandering too hard to its cult audience. [he pokes his head out from under the blankets.] Do you think we should feel better about screwing that up, 'cause Wynn and Hasmed couldn't do anything either? 'Cause mostly I just feel really overwhelmed there's things out there that can make freakin' snakeblood Gandalf cower like a little girl.

[bredinthebone]

[Malina wanders in somewhere in the middle, a more serious look on her face than usual. A knight being taken is a big deal, and she's not going to make it see otherwise. But she stops when she sees Topher and it softens to something a bit more congenial.]

Hey, kid. You okay?

[andblockbuster]

I'd be better if I had enough couch cusions to make a blanket fort. [he actually seems to be trying to wedge his skinny body between the cushions right now.] I'm settling for a cushion burrow.

[a beat] You heard about Gar?

action;

[shootfirst]

[ so the hall is on fire. or rather a section of the wall is, where kat angrily exploded a fireball and is standing there with her drakenet phone clenched in her fist, staring at the flames. this is healthy. ]

[twistingveil]

[Ashe doesn't know Gar personally, but Wynn's message had been more than adequate in expressing just how dire the situation is, and she can only assume that the hall being on fire has to do with just how strong an impact the abduction has made-- she fumbles with her phone, dropping it immediately when she rounds the corner just in time to see the flames. There's nothing elegant about her spellwork at the moment, but she acts quickly, conjuring water to try and put out the flames with the result being a localized downpour over that section of the wall.]

Are you--

[No, she can't ask that. She shouldn't ask if the girl in front of her is okay-- she clearly isn't. She frowns instead, unsure of what she should say, what might be appropriate.]

[shootfirst]

[ kat doesn't flinch from the sudden deluge, her hand clenching and unclenching as she stares at the wall, the flames dying out slowly ] No. [ the word comes out tightly, her shoulders braced ]