January 22

Who: Evelyn and Jesse
Where: Jesse's apartment
When: Late Afternoon

Evelyn was worried. She had knocked on her brother's door and there hadn't been an answer. Which meant Jesse was out. Normally, this wasn't cause for worry. It was cause for merely a sigh and a note left under a door because Jesse's neighbors weren't always the most dependable message-takers. But it was a Saturday -- not that Jesse worked -- and there was no good reason to be outside in such weather!

...except for Jesse there probably was, wasn't there? Despite futile hopes, she couldn't honestly see her brother letting things go. She could see him going into shady neighborhoods and talking to shady people and probably coming home with another gunshot wound if he came home at all. So, yeah. She was worried.

The lights in the hallway flickered, which disconcerted Evelyn more than she cared to admit to herself. She knocked on Jesse's door for a fourth time, even though she knew that was pointless. Both Jess and Baby J tended to answer after the first knock. Evelyn sighed, admitting defeat. She took a step back, casting one last look at the closed door, and started to walk away. And it was when she was mid-way through the stairwell that lights went out. Completely.

And Evelyn screamed.

Who: Marian and Roy
Where: Roy's Vault
When: early afternoon

For once the smile that lit up Marian's face wasn't just her act, it was really truly how she was feeling. The morning with Zhen had been so wonderful, such a dream come true. She'd come home with all her new things and spent a good amount of time putting them away with the utmost care, hanging things neatly, folding other things properly. It was unreal to think so many lovely things were hers.

Who: Jessie and Lily
When: Jan 22, afternoon
Where: Lily's apartment/Around Town

Who: Jessie and Jesse
When: Jan. 22, morning
Where: Their apartment

Who: Maddy
Where: Petit Ange (Little Angels Parlor)
When: late afternoon

After almost sleeping the day away again, this time on Alyson's couch, Maddy bid her friend farewell and headed out into the icy weather. She felt a little better after being 'taken care of', but she was still tired. Still frustrated.

She walked through the near empty streets with a single-minded focus, not paying mind to anyone who said hi to her. She pushed thoughts of Dodge away, the thoughts of guilt, and focused on one thing.

The money for her house.

who: roy and dutch
where: the garage
when: late

Despite knowing better, sometimes it never seemed like Dutch could run out of work. On any given day, he would be at the garage from open to close, committing hour after hour to both the hands-on work and the ordering that kept the place running. He, along with the boys on his crew that he trusted, would crack open cars' panels and dashes, check tire wells, and find false trunk spaces, then catalog whatever dirty little secrets were inside.

Who: Hero and Jenny
Where: The Echo building
When: Late Afternoon

With one hand still flying across her typewriter, Hero reached out with her other to grasp the mug of cheap Echo office coffee and bring it to her lips, eyes still focused on the paper before her. Hero was the kind of person who, after doing an interview, had to write down the article immediately. Because despite her best note-taking and memorization efforts -- and they were pretty damn fine -- some details always got lost the longer she waited to write an article. And Hero hated losing details, even if many would be cut out in later edits to fit her allotted word count. For that reason she had trekked the shorter distance to the Echo's building instead of heading back home.

Somewhere, amidst the typing and reading of the words before her, she realized that the cup she was holding to her lips? Had nothing in it. At all. And, despite being in Workaholic Mode, Hero was still running on on entirely no sleep last night and still needed her coffee! Cheap office brand though it may be.

So, finally finding a good place to stop about a good ten minutes later, she pushed her chair away from the desk and stood up, picking up the still-fresh looking pack of cigarettes off her desk -- it had probably been a good hour or so since her last, after all. She went ahead and pulled one out, lighting it up right there at her desk -- nothing new, half the desks in the office building had ashtrays. She pocketed the pack and her box of matches, then picked up her mug and headed towards the nearest break room.

Who: Marian and Zhen
Where: The boarding house
When: midday

Who: Alyson and Zhen
Where: Fontaine Park
When: Early evening

Who: Angelo and Shoshannah
Where: One More Round
When: Past closing time

Who: Eris and Jakob
Where: One More Round
When: after hours

Who: Hero and Sam
Where: Sam's Place
When: Early afternoon

Despite no sleep last night, Hero was practically bounding up the street. She had coffee in one arm and Nighthawks' cheese fries in the other: She never walked into an interview without doing her homework first, not even when it was a semi-spontaneous one.

The interview had been originally scheduled for earlier in the week, at the police station. A sort of 'Day in the Life of ECPD's First Female Detective' human interest piece. It had actually been an interest piece that Hero, always one for a bit of 'Girl Power!', had been genuinely looking forward to -- especially since ECPD's lady cop had some very uncop-like family connections. Which either meant she wasn't so shiny herself, or she probably had some issues to reconcile if she was. Or it could have meant something Hero hadn't thought of yet. Either way, she had been interested.

who: arden and jesse
where: the park
when: mid day

For a girl who had spent her morning with only herself to occupy it, Arden had certainly put it to eventful use. Other kids might be sleeping in their Saturday safe and warm in their homes, but she couldn't get out of hers quick enough. She had spent the early hours lying still beneath her covers, not daring to go the bathroom, trying not to breath unless she had to. Once her dad's footsteps had disappeared with the sound of the front door Arden got up, ran to the bathroom, got dressed, and headed out the door.

Who: Pepper
Where: Under sixth street bridge
When: Morning

Pepper's eye still throbbed, but she ignored it as she watched him, watched the man who'd given it to her. Watched him placing things, making himself at home - in her patch. That was her patch. He might be bigger, and stronger, older - but it was still her patch. But he'd thrown her out on her ear like a street rt and now here she was, cowering behind some garbage cans like one, unable to face him alone.

Who: Dodge and Evelyn
Where: On the streets
When: afternoon

Dodge was holding court in the afternoon light, despite the lousy weather. Lounging on a railing of a high stoop he was dolling out order to his subordinates, updating on them on Maddy's return, changing out the newest set of orders and interrogating those who weren't able to find out that someone had grabbed her from the church. His enforcers had already wandered off with some of the boys, doling out physical punishment where it was deserved. Those used to him in leader mode might have noticed him being a little tougher than usual, holding people more accountable for mistakes.

The morning's haunting still sat uncomfortably with him, and he continued to turn it over in his head this way and that, but he wasn't going to let it be true. No, today he was completely Dodge, maybe even a little over the top but that wasn't going to stop him.

Below him a group of boys not involved in court were playing a make shift game of hockey on the frozen sidewalk, trying to push a tin can into two turned over trash cans with whatever they could get their hands on. Occasionally their cheers would erupt which made him smile. They were happy, his boys. Patrick had been wrong, Dodge was doing just fine.

Who: Benny
Where: Chinatown
When: Very late

For all intents and purposes, it was a laundromat. And most of the day? It actually was one; a huge and sprawling launderer's facility that oversaw countless jobs pressing linens, cleaning bedsheets for the hotels in town, freshening server's uniforms, and more. It could have been a lucrative business in and of itself for the owner, but when the owner was an affiliate of the Jade Lotus? Legitimate business was never enough. Benny had known that would be the case, and after long weeks of waiting, he finally had his proof.

Who: Hero
Where: Her apartment
When: Sometime between dawn and late morning

 
Hero blinked.

It was morning.

...

...When the hell had that happened?!

A bit disoriented at the fact, she glanced about her living room where she had spread out her papers for the night. The gray light of dawn (or, considering the weather, maybe even late morning?) had crept into the deepest corners of the room, competing with the glow from the table lamps behind her. Her fireplace housed only a few embers now and, feeling the goosebumps brush against the cloth of her shirt, she realized she was pretty fucking cold. She shook her head a bit, casting off some of the disorientation, and took a long and final drag off the cigarette dangling from her mouth. She held the smoke in for an equally long moment, before exhaling out and crushing the remains into the ashtray beside her -- which, she noticed, was filled with far more butts than she remembered smoking.

Who: Maddy and Alyson
Where: Around Town
When: Early morning

Maddy woke up alone, sprawled across her bed with hair in her mouth. It wasn't dark outside anymore. Morning had come, but the pinging against the window let her know that the freezing rain was continuing. Wonderful.

Maddy couldn't remember a winter when they had such a terrible storm on the horizon. Not any time outside of the depths of summer. The clouds are dark, purple and black swirls behind the skyline of Eidolon, clouds illuminating with the flashes of lightening.

She stands on the seemingly weak railing of the bridge while the thunder crashes and she can feel the electricity in the air. The electricity is thick in the air, dancing across her skin like an itch she can't scratch. A mosquito she can't find.

I stopped by the orphanage today. It’s been years. There aren’t nearly as many children there as there used to be, and that breaks my heart, because I know so many of the ones who could be there are out in the streets instead.

Today, I went to see my father with Ian. I hadn't really thought it through at first, but it was a good thing Ian was there. I think he's the only reason my father didn't drag me home right away. I tried to tell him that I wasn't coming back, that I needed to be at the Drake, that I needed to be anywhere but that house, but at first he wasn't listening. It took Ian's assurance that I was perfectly safe there in order to persuade my father to let me stay. I told him I was going right out after this talk with him to start searching for jobs again and he seemed pleased, but still worried.

Who: Evelyn, Shoshannah, and Ian.
When: Jan. 22, morning.
Where: The Drake

who: roy and lily
where: the library
when: mid morning

Roy had just got done with running numbers, and had stopped on the way back to the vault at the library. He wanted to get a typewriter for his sister, but had absolutely no idea whatsoever what one might cost, where he could get a used one, or even if he should or...basically he was clueless. The only people he could think of that might be able to help him, were at the library.

"...hello?" he called, leaning a little over the desk to see if he could see behind it, wincing faintly as his voice echoed. He'd not even been trying to be loud, but the place had acoustics like you wouldn't believe.

Who: Angelo and OPEN TO ALL!
Where: One More Round
When: late-ish

Who: Andrei and Ava
When: Early Evening
Where: The Green Fairy

Who: Dodge
Where: The streets
When:: Just after dawn

He woke with dawn. Maddy wasn't awake yet, and he took it as a chance to sneak out from the bed, hesitating only briefly before leaving her tower room.

At first glance he was a mess. His face was bruised across one whole side, his clothes were dirty and rumpled in from being slept in for two days, and given the dull pain in his ribs he lacked the normal litheness of his gait. Besides the fedora perched on his head, he looked far more like just any old street kid rather than the Prince of Thieves.

Glittering points that downward thrust,
Sparkling spears that never rust.
What is it?

Who: Andrei
Where: His living room
When: Sometime after midnight

Andrei was restless, dangerously so. He was literally pacing around his living room even. And he had been at it for, oh, maybe an hour? Even a man as apathetic to politics as him couldn't help feelings the effects of their surrounding stress. The Syndicate was on edge. The O'Malleys were a has-been name now, to both the delight and ire of Andrei's 'superiors'. He personally had spent quality time with the last of that dying breed, extracting any and all information that could be extracted from an unwilling party: which, it turns out, could be a hell of a lot. And then he had spent other parts of his time creatively disposing of said informats before, in their panic, they did something to weaken the Syndicate further. And any normal day that would've been enough to send him on his happy little way.

But the days had been getting less and less normal. They had been pulling at him: the people who like to be addressed by 'sirs'. The people who fancied there was some chain around his neck they could tug any which way they pleased... And if there was one idea that could really bug him? one thing that made his perpetual smile twitch the way very very little could? it was being bound. restrained. chained. He was a man who loved to use his hands, and even the concept of them being metaphorically tied didn't sit well.