Wild Goose Chase

[Carina]

.

Glade 87 123

The Office of Imperial Revenue was a massive, imposing building, with multiple wings and many tiny little offices and closets — with very little to differentiate the two. Alike in locked doors and layered wards, it was difficult to get the full picture just by standing outside it. Carina lingered near the steps to the front door, a cigarette held between her fingers, burning up faster than she could smoke it. As focused on her Semblance as she was, it wasn't until it was reduced to a stub and burnt her that she dropped it and snuffed it out with a boot-clad foot.

She had stopped there every night for the past week, briefly enough for a smoke, her runed eye scanning and analyzing as much as she could before she felt she'd be noticed by the guards and ushered away. So far they hadn't noticed her, neither magically nor visually. It may have been helped by the particularly large shrub she stood next to, but also her cloak of concealment, averting the eyes of people who would have normally glanced her way.

The eclipse made it dark, always, and monsters lurked in the night, but in this part of the city it was well taken care of by the Kathar. At this point, she had been waiting for one of the employees at the OIR to make a mistake — an open window, a side-door not fully closed. Even with what seemed a calamity, the magic around the building was just as strong and the money flowed through the emperor's coffers with just as much importance as usual. Tax evasion was one of the more serious crimes, Carina had found out, as it had earned her a stay in prison for nearly a season. While she could have perhaps escaped, patience won out, and she was released with a warning and a debt. Not that she had earned much in the Imperium for them to tax. Most importantly, she wanted to see what information they had on her here in the tax office. As the Empire revolved around money, she had learned that many important dossiers were kept in some wing or another in rooms of endless filing cabinets. She just had to find hers.

Carina continued her walk, this time walking towards the side of the building. No one was watching her yet. Portals may have been too flashy for this sort of thing, and she didn't want to leave a magical residue. She had already reduced her aura to be as nonchalant as possible — visible, so as to not arouse suspicion, but devoid of magic and interest.

A woman with a briefcase came out of a door that Carina had almost missed, as warded as it was from Semblance. It swung wide open and had a slow arc closed; slow enough that she was able to Blink and catch it with a finger before it was crushed. The woman heard the sounds of magic and shuffling feet, but Carina was in the door before she caught her eye.

The halls were brightly lit by electric, almost blinding lights in the ceiling. She had little hope of slinking into the shadows, but with her cloak wrapped around her and a straightened posture, she hoped to go far. The inside was far less warded. It required less upkeep to simply make the most difficult part getting in, especially in such a vast labyrinthine location. Carina's runed eye already began to fill in the blanks in her map, the things that had been hidden from view on the outside. Locked doors, closed doors. Where people tread, where people were most likely to tread. Nothing yet on paperwork, but it was technically after-hours, and the building was mostly empty.

She walked casually, though no one was nearby to listen to her gait, and one eye was trapped in the visual mess of building auras. It was a well-maintained building, for sure, and the doors were locked on both sides, an endless field of offices. Many of them did not even have names, but she could see behind the doors that they were used. Finally, finally — up a flight of stairs and to the right — she spotted a room that had been locked, but the door not fully closed, resting on the deadbolt. It was not what she was looking for, but it was a start.

Carina was normally very, very careful, but she had lost her patience for just a moment, and when she opened the door she found herself face to face with someone whose aura had seemed so unremarkable, she had not noticed them at all.

.

[Valentin]

To say that Valentin was not expecting a break-in would be an understatement.

Of all the crimes imaginable within the lands under the Emperor's benevolent jurisdiction, trespass of a government building rated very highly. The civic "servants" who, in practice, governed the country, had marked disturbance of their own lives among the highest infractions. Still, given how much which was valuable or secret resided within certain facilities, it was known to sometimes happen. The Treasury was, from time to time, targeted by sneak-thieves. The hubs of military R&D were not infrequently habituated by spies and nervous men seeking to steal and sell secrets. Even stockpiles suffered occasional bouts of employee-driven theft.

The OIR, however, was uniquely worthless for most criminals. Certainly, its archives contained a shimmering constellation of figures which could offer a glimpse into the lives of thousands of powerful people... if you had a team of accountants and several months' worth of time for analysis. As a practical matter, no thief could make use of the documents within, and in fact the only recorded example of a serious assault on the OIR had involved famed family Boss Sigmund "Doless" Veltervelt, who had sent men to burn the archives in hopes of disrupting a major government investigation into his affairs.

(His attack was successful and he beat the rap at trial, but the fame he won in doing so attracted the then-Emperor's attention. He was arrested without explanation by the Kathar a month after his court victory, and never seen again.)

So it was that Valentin Valentin was not, perhaps, entirely derelict in leaving his office door cracked. With his Rune, he could have left the door locked all the time, but he preferred to have the floor secretary enter autonomously rather than being forced to stand and unblock the door at every knock. Furthermore, while this damned Frost seemed to be lasting forever--and, in fact, the cataclysmic effects that was having on the harvest were the primary drivers of Valentin's present conundrums--the air in his interior office, located just adjacent to the main gas line, was stiflingly hot. Leaving the door open just a crack was hardly the end of the world.

Thus, when he faintly detected his door's squeak, he didn't think much of it. The secretary often worked late, and several of the other inspectors had been pulling long shifts. In fact, without even looking up, he intoned drily:

"Lavinia, I am not prepared to discuss the matter of the cattle numbers with you right now. I have told you again and again, until we receive the final report from the Secretary for Agriculture's office, we are not going to publish anything which might upset the Palace. Understood?"

It was only when "Lavinia" did not respond that Valentin realized something was wrong. Then he looked up from his paperwork and suddenly everything was wrong.

"Scheiße." he swore suddenly, as he recognized the impossible intruder. At this point, two options presented themselves to the flabbergasted lawyer; to Blink away, to call at once the nearest security, or to go for the pistol he kept in his desk.

And in that moment of fate, Valentin Valentin made the wrong choice, reaching for the drawers.

[Carina]

.

Carina stared at the man whose office she had intruded upon. He was almost familiar, in an every-man sort of way, but... no, she'd never seen this man before in her life. She didn't pay much attention to his aura, but she could tell that he was reaching for something in his desk, and she didn't have quite enough time to scan for whatever it was. She could see the Imperial pistol as soon as he opened it. Seemed rather standard-issue, nothing special like her pretty rifle.

Before he could pick it up, she turned-tail and slipped out of the door. The door crashed against the deadbolt and bounced open just enough again that he could see her running to the left, back towards the staircase. She really did not want to leave an aetheric trace by opening portals left and right and slipping through them, but she already had a decent idea of the structure of the building, the rooms...

Carina jumped two steps at a time down the stairwell only to find that the door to the first floor was locked. She had already used considerable aether with semblance alone, but... No, she didn't want to risk it yet. She turned and started running back up the stairs. Blessed was her good cardio, and her heart was thumping in her ears from stress more than exertion. At least for the moment.

The third floor's door was unlocked, and she swung it open and ran inside, slowing to a walk as soon as she passed the first office on the floor. She pulled the cloak tighter over her coat. She didn't have her featherlight bag on her which was all for the better. If she were arrested, they'd take all her collection. She did have a pair of daggers on her, but she wasn't good with them, and she was not ready to face the repercussions of harming a tax officer. Tax evasion had been bad enough, and they practically let her off with a warning and a forced registration as a mage.

Another corner was turned, past unmarked door after door, and she came into what seemed like a lobby, massive and marble, with an endless labyrinth of options and layer after layer of balconies overlooking it. A security guard stood in the middle, talking with an inquisitor — rotten luck today. Carina leaned down to obscure herself behind the balcony railing but it slowed her down considerably. Her mental map was already filling in with broad strokes where she could go, but she knew she would soon be forced to make the choice between sembling the OIR and traversing the slipspace so she could find a door.

Carina ducked behind a large, leafy plant, a shaded corner that would perhaps provide her with just enough cover that her cloak of concealment would actually do something.

.

[Valentin]

It took only a moment after Carina fled his office for Valentin to disentangle himself from chair and desk, but he nearly ran into his own door swinging backwards. He caught a glimpse of the lithe woman darting to the left in the hallway outside, and he followed like an entire pack of stampeding elements, trying desperately not to lose sight of her. He brandished his pistol, but did not open fire- the last thing he wanted to do was set off alarms by staggering through the halls and firing at shadows.

"Halt! Intruder!" Valentin screamed after the woman, just managing to stop himself from careening into a wall. He glanced about wildly for any sign of security, but there was nothing.

Unlike Carina, Valentin did not bear the Cardinal Rune of Semblance, but he had worked in this office for a decade and his mental map was quite good. As the smaller woman began to pull away (fuck, he hadn't run any real distance since the fitness courses at the Imperial Academy, and he cursed his failure to keep up a regimen thereafter), he consulted his own mind, trying to imagine where her path was leading and how he could cut her off.

This, however, only distracted him enough so that when he reached the top of the stairwell, he completely missed the girl running past him and back up the stairs for several seconds. He turned on a dime, nearly tripping on the top stairs he'd already begun to descend, and clawed at the bannister to keep himself upright as she vanished out the doorway and around another corner.

The third floor... not very likely to run into an officer there, since it wasn't an entry to the Archives, but perhaps he could catch the eye of one in the lobby. He considered simply Blinking in, but decided he didn't trust the guards' itchy trigger fingers; they might be inclined to open fire immediately when they saw the portal form.

Valentin Valentin took the stairs two at a time, huffing with exertion as he ran, and turned out into the lobby. His eyes went straight for the lobby floor where- ah! The Divines were with him today. There was the guard, yes, and also a figure in Inquisitorial garb. Valentin rushed to the bannister and shouted down:

"Polizei! There's an intruder in the building, up here!"

The two chatting men looked up to Valentin.

"Herr Valentin, is that you? Entschuldigung!" The guard shouted upwards, "I cannot hear you! Please come down!"

"Nein! There is no time!" the lawyer shouted back, trying not to show his frustration, "Inquisitor! There is an intruder!"

The man in the inquisitorial garb shrugged helplessly and gestured at his ears. The guard exchanged a few words, then nodded and shouted once more: "He is suffering an ear infection, Herr Valentin!"

"Geh zum Teufel..." Valentin muttered under his breath. He scanned the visible balcony, from the benches at the far side of the room to the large fronds (taken from a cutting won in the Ecith campaign, it was said, and used to decorate the OIR for decades since), but saw no other person he could approach for aid. "Fine, fine!"

Valentin Blinked, reappearing down on the floor of the lobby, and grabbed the security guard, who nearly stumbled backwards in surprise. He muttered something to the man; after a moment, the security guard's head snapped up towards the balconies above.

[Carina]

.

Carina's eyes darted to the security guard as the man she had intruded upon portaled down to speak to him. Another Traverser. She wasn't too surprised — unlike Zaichaer, the Imperium seemed to know how to put mages to great use. The security guard started walking towards the stairs. She traced his aura for the most important part, and with a flick of her wrist, hitched his gun into the very middle of the room, where it clattered to the floor and let off a random shot into the wall. She neglected to do the same for Valentin.

Carina skittered out from behind the plant and continued across the balcony and into the hallway directly across from where she had left. The bright, sterile lighting continued here, and now she likely had 3 people on her trail — an unhappy circumstance, but one she must make do with. She didn't notice any runes of Semblance on the security guard, but she hadn't scanned the aura of the inquisitor or the random government employee. She made her aura as small and insignificant as she could, hiding any traces of her runes in case anyone deigned to check. There was no removing its traces entirely, but perhaps this would be enough for her to slip away. There were no empty offices, but there was an empty stairwell at the end of this hall that led into the basement, which seemed to be warded from prying eyes like hers.

She unhooked her earring. A simple polished aetherite, she kept dragonshards hidden on her person for the case of extended magic use. There hadn't been a need for them yet, but she clutched the dragonshard in her hand and blinked into the stairwell. It was unlocked, but she didn't want the slam of the door to reveal her too quickly. Down the stairs she ran again, two at a time, sweat making stray strands of her ponytail stick to the back of her neck.

The door to the basement was locked, both magically and physically.

"Shit." She whispered, but she had been trained for this a decade ago, and it was not a skill she had let disappear. Carina eyed the wards, looking in particular for the corner where they met. Negation mages sometimes took shortcuts — everyone took shortcuts, but for these mages, it was at the edges. Edges had weaker force and unless the mage was very lackadaisical with their aether, they wouldn't make them meet, but not overlap.

She held the earring so tightly in her hand that the stem began pricked her palm, and the portal spread across her skin. To any Traverser, it was clear that she was not simply creating a portal; she was creating herself into a portal. She stood still for a moment as a featureless window into slipspace, and then she disappeared through the corner next to the door and through the weakest point of the wards that she could reach. On the other side, through the reinforced-glass sliver of the door, she appeared, and the portal dissipated from her skin. The earring was half-depleted, judging by the dim glow, and she shoved it into her pocket.

.

[Valentin]

The guard swore with surprise as the comforting weight of his firearm disappeared from his belt. As he reached down to check his holster, the sound of a shot from the lobby sent him diving behind an ornamental fern for cover, further hindering the chase.

"Useless bag!" hissed Valentin, though he didn't imagine the man had heard him. Valentin was happy to abuse staff and colleagues to their faces, but he was too well-versed in the ways in which security could gain revenge for slights. Plus, the man seemed quite friendly with the inquisitor in attendance.

Speaking of the Inquisitor, the man had moved quickly, reacting not at all to the sudden shot but leaping into the air and jumping dozens of meters up to the third-story balconies. An act of Kinetics, Valentin expected; not a Rune he commonly associated with the quiet and stealthy Inquisition, but obviously one with a great deal of utility in general. Sadly, while this allowed his new ally to skip the bother of the stairwells, it still took long enough to let the girl dart out of view once more.

"Aufhören!" Valentin shouted after her once more, uselessly. It was plain that she wasn't going to come quietly, but something about shouting the command made him feel a little better. A little more in control of the situation, perhaps?

Well, he had no more time to contemplate. The auditor sprinted for the doorway, for to lose sight of the girl would radically increase her chances of escape. He saw her back once again and levelled his gun- just a bit late. She rushed into a stairwell, and Valentin silently cursed the useless guard once more; if he'd been running up, at least he might have stalled or redirected her.

Valentin Valentin jogged past the empty rows of offices, confident that she hadn't tricked him; none of the doors were moving, and even a master thief couldn't have opened, entered, and closed one in the seconds they'd been out of his sight. The stairwell led down, connecting to no other floor landings, and Valentin realized with sudden elation what the would-be thief had done.

She'd fled into the archives access.

This was the second most heavily-guarded and warded place in the entire OIC complex. The thief would not be able to get through the door- even a master mage would take too long to break through the layers of Negation which the imperial mages regularly recast. Physical access to the underground area was strictly limited to ensure that the Families could not set up their own accesses. Though it was a treasure of no worth to a simple sneak thief, the information contained below was essentially beyond price for one seeking to do any sort of business within the city. How fitting, that he would corner this intruder against the portal of the very sanctum of Imperial might.

Yet as Valentin Valentin turned the last bend in the stairwell, he saw something impossible. The girl was opening a portal, yes, but she was somehow opening it within herself. The lawyer cried out in shock as he watched Carina fold in on herself like some impossible origami, space folding as she slipped within some imperceptible crack in the Imperial defenses to bypass the Archive wards entirely. Instinctively, the man raised his pistol and opened fire; a clean hit, or it would have been had he shot just an instant sooner. As it was, he was forced to duck as the shell shot through empty air and rebounded against the reinforced concrete wall, whizzing just by his head.

When he looked up again, he saw--unbelievably--that the intruder had entered the Archives. No feat of Traversion he knew should have allowed this. Even the mages of the Palace of Spires, who were without equal, would have required much more time to break these defenses.

"No matter," Valentin snarled, his voice inaudible through the thick door, "You're trapped now, you stupid child."

Valentin Valentin stepped up to the door and quickly began going through the process of unlocking it. He had access, of course, and he knew how to disable the traps embedded in the door, but even hurrying it would take him nearly a minute to get the thing open. Still, as his ears picked up the sound of the Inquisitor's quick footsteps behind him, he grinned savagely. Whatever exotic technique the girl had used had gotten her inside the Archives, but she'd never find another way out. It seemed that the mouse had chosen to hide in the cat's own bed.

[Carina]

.

Carina used Semblance extensively to grasp herself and the world around her. She hated being lost or surprised, and at this point she had a basic grasp of much of the OIR building. She was good at grasping for surface-level auras and spreading from there, even under duress. Her little trick to get in would only work the once because she was seen, but there was always a way. Always.

It was easy to grasp that she was in the Archives once she had bought herself enough time to focus. The stark labyrinthine hallway led to room after room of floor to ceiling filing cabinets. Every copper that passed through the Imperium was recorded here for who knew how many years. She didn't have the time to study it, or even look for herself as she had planned.

It also seemed that the way she came in was also the only way out, and there was no chance she was going to be able to get out unscathed and un-arrested if she went back. As caught up in the aura of the building and mental map as she was, she ironically found that her physical self had come up to a dead end. The quick steps of the Kinetics-enhanced Inquisitor and the slower pace of the man she had intruded upon were rapidly approaching, and Carina was tempted to Vault, at risk of overstepping, as far as she could.

Then she saw the metal pipes, painted white against the wall so that they would blend in, but uncovered in this basement corner. She traced it down with her gaze. It was hard to see through dirt and earth or concrete, but she had a trick for scanning buildings — follow the wall. Now she followed the pipe, and it revealed the sewer beneath them. It must have been a maintenance room, though Carina knew very little about sewers.

The Inquisitor showed up first, watching as Carina almost inverted itself in the same way it had before, from her feet up. She gave a thumbs up and disappeared, her body folding in on itself and disappearing entirely from visible space. Sinking through the floor, Carina had enough control to avoid landing into sewage directly, but as soon as she was bodily herself again and standing on a stone side platform, she retched. Clutching her other earring, Carina vaulted to her cheap Northside apartment.

Mission failed.

.

[Valentin]

Valentin worked on the locks as quickly as he dared, feeling the desire to shoot that damned woman ahead of him and the fear of the patient steps drawing up behind him like the heat of two separate suns. One lock... the second undone... the third!

The great door clicked open, its mechanisms producing a satisfying noise as the tumblers turned and the wards went dormant. Valentin Valentin threw open the door (taking care only to avoid striking the Inquisitor behind him) and rushed into the archives, intent on recapturing his prey. The delay had given Carina time enough to escape from sight, and Valentin had--alas--never been granted the Sembler's gift.

"Hold, a moment." The soft voice stopped Valentin in his tracks, and he turned to see the Inquisitor producing some manner of Runecrafted fabrication from none-knew-but-where. As he raised it to his eyes, Valentin realized that it was some manner of aura glass, designed not to scrutinize the sharp details and minute flows of some scrivening, but instead to allow the Inquisitor to quickly ascertain the general location of his prey, even through obstacles.

"There." The quiet man raised a finger to indicate a direction. If he'd meant to give further directions, he'd missed his opportunity; Valentin was already off like a shot, if a somewhat slow and ungainly shot.

The soft leather soles of the lawyer's shoes pounded on the hard tile of the archive floors as he ran, but Valentin gave no thought to blisters in the morning. He ran almost in time with his own beating heart, summoning up some hitherto-unknown well of determination to catch that damned thief.

(It might be observed, here, that Valentin's zeal was unusual, even given that he recognized Carina as the woman who had gotten him into passing trouble with the police at a northern club last year. There is no rebuttal. Valentin's sudden burst of rage and energy here was very much out of keeping with the man's routine, and can be explained only through some malingering vestige of his old Grandfather's spirit.)

"Halt! Halt!" Valentin yelled the useless words like an incantation. Devoid of a Cardinal Rune of Stopping, the commands died uselessly in the air. Valentin tore past cabinet after cabinet of locked returns, audit papers, investment vouchers, records from defunct businesses, banking rolls- he knew this place like he knew himself, and the economic and legal malignancy of it seemed to invigorate him. He ran faster than he'd ever run before.

...just not faster than a Kineticist. Valentin, distracted by his purpose, did not see the Inquisitor shoot by him, but it should be no surprise that it happened. By the time he rounded the last corner...

He had only an instant to watch as his quarry inverted into nothingness once more, slipping impossibly through the dense and multifaceted wards of the facility. It felt like a violation of his own soul, to see the Emperor's proud sanctum fail to contain such an odious wastrel. He screamed in frustration as she vanished, running forward and feeling the floor and walls in disbelief, as though he expected to find her still present, hidden like a chameleon.

"Calm yourself, ser, she is gone." Valentin turned, almost shocked by the quiet Inquisitor's voice, "Though I do not know how. Through the glass... it is as though she escaped within herself."

"Ridiculous, impossible." insisted the OIR agent, too distraught to fully consider his words, "It is a trick."

"Well, then it's a good trick. Come, we must check on Horace above, and he will call the guard to investigate."

Valentin nodded, breathing deeply. Yes, there would need to be an investigation. With so much power used... surely whatever she'd done to by pass the wards--twice!--it would leave a residue. They would track her. The Kathar would find her. Of course they would! That was simply how it worked, how it had to work.

"And you, just come with me, I wish for you to answer a few questions."

Valentin's face, ruddy from exertion, drained instantly of all color.

"But-"

It wasn't a request.

[Carina]

Carina - 10 EXP (can be used for magic), 8 Lores

Valentin - 10 EXP (can be used for magic), 8 Lores
Loot: the beginnings of a paranoid episode, the interrogation by a Inquisitor