Accidental Crimes [M][DragonSong]

[Lowen Thorn]

"Oh dear," he said quietly. "Idara, go ahead and get her a cup of tea ready, and maybe bring a wet rag. It appears our new friend here made contact with her ghost."

He was calm now. He heard her body hit the floor, and the sound was enough for him to find his way over to her rather quickly. He let his hands hover over her body for a moment until one found her cheek.

Idara was right. She was quite pretty. He could tell by the way her face felt in his hand.

Muttering a spell, a light blue hues delicately glowed around her body before dissipating into the air around them. "That should at least help with the headache she may have had when she wakes," he said, mostly to himself. "She should be fine."

[DragonSong]

"Tea." Idara quirked an eyebrow, though she moved to take the kettle off the fire and pour three cups. "Right. Because tea is just the thing for errant ghost contact."

Maka simply lay on the floor, brow furrowed and breathing shallow. Her skin was cool to the touch--too cool, almost deathly, and a band of sweat had appeared on her brow.

[Lowen Thorn]

He waited, and then he waited some more. The healing spell he used on her should have woke her up by now, and her tea would get cold.

He felt her cheek again, this time more worried than anything else. She was cold to the touch. Freezing for someone with enhanced senses like his. "Okay, Idara," he said cautiously. "...Something's not right here."

[DragonSong]

The ice mage paused in blowing an icy mist on her teacup--she preferred the drink cold--and lifted her head warily. "What do you mean not right?"

While very advanced in her elemental field, Idara knew very little about primal magics. She knew enough to counter spells that needed countering and avoid certain rituals, but that was about it. Her eyes flickered to the bounty hunter; other than the slightly too-shallow breaths, she seemed fine. Well. Whatever fine was for unexpected contact with the dead.

"Look, Aspen, we can just...leave her. I'm sure she'll come to eventually." And she had a lot of questions for her friend that she hadn't exactly had the opportunity to ask yet.

[Lowen Thorn]

He looked to her, his eyebrows raised and a slight frown carved into his lips. "Leave her here?" he asked, a little skeptical, "at your place? Unattended? Do you really think that's such a good idea?"

Whereas he understood where the suggestion came from, he wasn't entirely positive he could get on board with it. Not that he really considered her a threat to either one of them, not by herself anyway, but he had become far too interested in the woman's... gifts. Plus, a deal is a deal.

[DragonSong]

"Not permanently, you great eejit," Idara huffed with a roll of her eyes. "Just...let her lie there a minute. I've got some questions for you, and I'd rather get the answers sooner rather than later." She quirked an eyebrow as she sipped at her now suitably chilled tea.

[Lowen Thorn]

His laugh was soft but genuine. "You're right," he agreed, getting back to his feet. "We should talk. And soon. It won't be long before someone comes here looking for me. Our friendship is no secret, after all."

As he walked slowly over to the direction of her voice, he reached an arm out so she could grab it.

Banks decided now would be a good time to go investigate the unconscious girl on the floor, giving her a few slobbery licks on the face for good measure.

[DragonSong]

Idara caught his arm easily and steered him into the chair beside her with the grace of long practice; she's rearranged the place some recently, and though she knew most of the time he could navigate fine on his own she didn't wanted him banging his shin on a chair leg that hadn't been there the week before.

"So. What exactly happened?" she asked softly after a moment.

Across the room, the bounty hunter stirred, just faintly. A soft groan rose in her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut tight, as though even the soft light of Idara's lamps was painful though her closed eyelids.

[Lowen Thorn]

Aspen began to speak, but could hear the near silent shuffling from the girl on the other side of the room. He decided not to focus any more of his attention on her, however, per Idara's request. That probably meant it was just going to take her a little longer to wake up.

"To be honest with you, Idara," he started, his voice a little uneasy. "I don't know. Well, I know. I was ambushed by three thugs in an isolated alley, and I fought back. But I let my guard down, and when they had me pinned down, I fought back a little too hard. I never intended for anyone to die. This isn't the first time someone tried to take advantage this blind man, as you already know, but I can usually just knock them unconscious and go about my day. This.. This is bad."

There was a hint of shame in his voice.

[DragonSong]

"Gods." Idara rubbed her hands over her face a few times before reaching out to clap him on the shoulder. "I--yeah. Yeah, Aspen, this is bad." She squeezed his shoulder gently and murmured, "I know you didn't intend for this to happen, but...but it did. I'm really not sure what we can do..."

Maka's breath became shorter, sharper, then she suddenly sat up with a gasp, wide eyed as she looked around the room. "Who--"

She coughed, doubled over, and had to brace a hand against the floor to keep from collapsing again. When she raised her head once more, her eyes were large and scared, almost childlike against the sudden pallor of her skin. "Wh-where am I?"

[Lowen Thorn]

Aspen held his hand out flat, facing up to the ceiling, and his tea cup floated through the air before landing in his palm. He let his thumb hook the handle and took a sip, looking off into the girl's direction curiously.

"You're still here. With us," he said slowly. "Are you okay, uh.."

He still didn't know the girl's name.

[DragonSong]

Idara watched, baffled, as the young woman began shaking her head almost frantically and scuttled back on her hands and knees until she'd pressed herself into a corner.

"Where am I?" she repeated, voice high and thin. It was still her voice, but...changed, somehow. The inflection was wrong, younger, and...

Idara's eyes widened. "Aspen," she hissed. "Listen."

"Who--who are you? What am I doing here?" The bounty hunter looked around the room again, saw Banksey, and muffled a shriek into her hands. "K-keep it away from me!"

"Her accent is gone," Idara breathed, bewildered. "Listen, it's just... She had a Thanati accent, didn't she? No real strong, but it was there. Just...gone." What the hell was the girl playing at? What kind of trick was this?

[Lowen Thorn]

Holy hell. Idara was right. She no longer had her accent.

A chill crawled down his spine as the relevation hit him square in the face. Not only could he sense the difference, he could smell it. Her smell was different now. it was faint, but it was bitter. It was cold.

"It's okay, little girl," he said cautiously. "We are not going to hurt you. Can you tell me your name?"

[DragonSong]

Idara snapped her eyes to her friend. "What the fu--?"

"E-Elissa." The bounty hunter--or rather the child possessing her body--stared at him, knees drawn up to her chest. "My name is Elissa." She looked around again and a small whimper rose up in her throat. "Please, I--I don't understand. Where am I? Where's Mother?"

[Lowen Thorn]

Banksy had retreated back to his corner in Idara's space when the girl shrieked, cowering in the corner like the brave fearless attack dog he was. Aspen, on the other hand, decided to try to get a little closer. He rose from his seat, and walked slowly over to her, his hands in the air to show her that his defenses were down.

"It's okay," he said again. "Elissa. That's a very nice name. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember? When was the last time you saw your mother?"

[DragonSong]

Her eyes locked on his, and for a moment the violet was eaten away by a soft, dark gray. "W-we were... She was sick. They're all sick, everyone's sick, and the man, the man with the mask, he said we had to stay in the house..."

She sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes, and wrapped her arms around her knees tightly. "I just want my mama," she wailed plaintively.

Idara, perhaps a little slow on the uptake, move cautiously forward to kneel beside Aspen, one hand out to the bounty hunter--girl--whatever. "Hey, easy," she murmured. "We...we wanna help you, okay?"

Mask.

Slowly, Idara got to her feet and lowered her voice so hopefully only Aspen would hear: "Before there was even a school here, this town was tiny. Some records say a plague hit almost four hundred years ago..."

[Lowen Thorn]

Aspen frowned, that chill down his spine evolving into a full-blown haunting of his soul. So, the mercenary was now possessed by the little girl that haunted her, one that was doomed to the plague that occurred four hundred years ago.

Tough luck, he thought. The thought of a little girl going through something like that, and reliving in day after day - trapped in her own personal hell - made him shutter.

He merely nodded in acknowledgement to Idara. "I'm sorry, Elissa," he said quiet but firm. "What can we do to help?"

[DragonSong]

"I want my mama!"

Idara flinched back, feeling a wave of cold that chilled even her bones wash over her as the child possessing the bounty hunter suddenly shouted, wrapping her arms around her head. "Gods!" The ice mage took a step back, entirely out of her depth--which honestly was a rare occurrence for her.

"Can we...I dunno, exorcise her or something?" she hissed at Aspen, watching the girl warily.

The girl-necromancer hiccuped a sob and buried her face against her knees.  "I'm cold," she whispered. "It's so cold, I don't understand, I just want to go home, why is it so cold..."

The mutterings continued as Idara tried to edge around her--and suddenly paused. "Aspen..." She looked toward him, frown clear in her voice. "If she...if she was sick, she'd have had a fever, medical practice back then would have been to try to sweat the illness out... So why is she cold?"

[Lowen Thorn]

Aspen took another sip of his tea. He really didn't have an answer for Idara. He had no idea why the girl was cold, or how she came to possess the mercenary in the first place. He really knew nothing of necromancy and how it worked, and he never cared to know. He didn't things such as this were possible.

This may have changed his mind, though.

He shook his head in response to Idara's question. "Do you know how to exorcise someone? Because I sure don't."

[DragonSong]

Idara quirked an eyebrow. "Elementalist?" She snapped her fingers and called a few snowflakes to drift from her hand. "What makes you think I have any idea how this sort of thing works. This is closer to primal magic than it is anything I know."

The necromancer was breathing raggedly now, the kind of breathing of a child fighting back sobs and not being quite successful. "Please, why won't anyone help me?" she looked between the two of them, her eyes flickering: violet, gray, violet, gray, violet, gray. "I just want to go home, I just want my mother..."

Idara's eyes widened fractionally. "Her--her accent is back."

Or at least it was for a moment. It seemed with every phrase her voice changed; still childlike, but lilting between the Thanati cadence that the bounty hunter had possessed and the higher-pitched Serenian highland brogue that belonged to the ghost child.