John was sitting at the breakfast table, Aclysia standing next to his chair. Rave had gone home during the late hours of the day and so the house was quiet, save for him munching his cornflakes while impatiently eyeing his smartphone.

The electronic wonderwork was protected by a black leathery case, the type with a lid to further protect the screen. Said lid was currently open and the reflective glass contrasted with the light brown colour of the wooden breakfast table underneath.

A buzzing noise and the screen sprang to life. John quickly grabbed the phone, checking what he had received.

SecretBlonde: Here is your file. Should contain everything you need ~

Victoria_Beloozero.pdf

Download attached file?

John accepted and the file opened on the screen. In a way it was a blessing that Rave had decided to leave for the night. He was a much faster reader than her, getting through this on his own would be faster.

The document started with things he was already roughly aware of. The way Victoria’s parents had started all the way at the heart of the Soviet Union and slowly made their way west, marking every major city they had stayed in along the way as well as marking the exact point where they slipped into the Abyss (Paris). Apparently, many a refugee that had magical potential was drawn into the Abyss during and after the world wars. Times of stress did have a habit of letting more people discover alternative lifelines. While interesting it was not what he searched for.

Victoria herself had obviously seen nothing of that journey. She had been born here and took from her parents’ stories a strong anti-communistic hardline view. More analysis of smaller habits followed, like checking her phone only when she was sure nobody was looking, giving only non-definitive answers about her location and other secrets. John read it with a bit of a bad conscience but he could either stay answerless or put up with that. Seeing how his safety was probably on the line here he chose the latter.

‘Victoria entered the city by train on the 28th of July. Two days later she joined Collide, suggesting them being the reason why she went to Springfield in the first place. Whether that is to join or watch them is not immediately apparent.

After looking deeper into the matter, I found that she was tied to the Bloodfallen. Given her political stance, this is not surprising. Her exact ties remain unknown to me at the current time, but given the information about her secretive tendencies I conclude that she is either working for them or a double agent. With her political stance, again, a double agent is very unlikely. I found no traces of manipulative magics around her, which means that either somebody so powerful I can’t track him is involved or, the much more likely answer, is that she is acting willingly.

Assuming that Bloodfallen are her actual guild and that she is a spy it seems to be that this is her initiation of sorts. In typical spy manner, the Bloodfallen cut all ties with her for the duration of this mission. For what she wants from Collide, I went and looked into other organizations under their heel. As you haven’t paid for this detail you can count this as a personal warning: You should keep an eye on Travolta.

Continuing on: Victoria was not in the Illusion Barrier when the incident with Jimmie occurred, however she had been around two hours earlier and spent those two hours in relative proximity. On the day you informed me that you were attacked, Victoria spent her day around the school perimeter eventually entering an Illusion Barrier in a black robe and with a singular sniper rifle. As I have no closer information about what transpired inside I can only guess, but this seems too convenient to be a coincidence. In the time between her leaving that Illusion Barrier and her entering the Collide Headquarters later in the day she visited the cemetery. It was a very short visit and she left the Illusion Barrier with minor cuts which had to be reinforced with some sort of magic as they didn’t heal during the trip back to the HQ.

She left the Barrier before anyone else could in a very grumpy mood and entered another Protected Space on the cemetery later, which she hasn’t left yet to the best of my knowledge.’

John put down his phone after going over the document a second time. It fit perfectly. The outfit of the sniper matched the one the informant described exactly. Not only that but Victoria was part of the Bloodfallen in some way or form. If he took any information from this, it was to stop relying on Observe that much, if all it took to empty the Guild Slot was for somebody to ‘not be affiliated’ with their guild for the period of a mission it was unreliable in situations like these. Also, Observe had presented him neither with the information that Victoria was born here nor her hardline stance regarding Communism.

While neither came as a huge surprise it nevertheless showed him clearly that one thing was true: Observe was a very shallow tool, it was still pretty good at taking a first dig at somebody but nothing to be relied upon in extended research.

Well, whatever, he had what he paid for: confirmation of Victoria as the most likely suspect and a lead on the motive. Now that he knew that their new ‘protectors’ were the ones attacking them, the logical question was ‘Why?’. From what SecretBlonde had given him it looked like Travolta either knew or was directly involved.

‘Do I trust this intel?’ John asked himself for a moment. The answer to that was a simple ‘Yes’. SecretBlonde, for as annoying as they had been to John, had been vetted enough that Romulus trusted the intel and they stood nothing to gain from lying to John. He could reasonably expect this document to contain as much of the truth as could have been unearthed by the information broker.

This meant that he now had a decision to make. He could either go and confront Victoria or Travolta about the whole thing. Eyes closed, he calmly thought about the matter for a few moments. Victoria tried to harm them, he still hoped it was not an attempt on their lives, (although the sniper rifle made that kind of hard to believe) so running face first into that was naïve. It was the better decision to just ask Travolta about this first, even if he wouldn’t be willing to tell him the truth, he might at least be willing to help snuff out Victoria. John would feel a lot safer with him around.

Hoping the Guild Leader would even pick up, John called him on his phone. “Who and What?” Came the brash voice after a few seconds of waiting.

“Hey, it's John, I found out a few things about Victoria that…” A pained groan came from the other side,

“Oh shut the fuck up. That’s not important right now…. her pain is….” He stopped for a few long seconds. “…I mean HIS, his pain. Go look after Jimmie, they told me he woke up, we can talk afterwards.” Travolta ended the call and John looked at the phone in confusion.

‘That really doesn’t sound good,’ he thought. Whatever the Blood of Thana (presumably) was doing to Travolta had him all mixed up. Confronting a mentally unstable Travolta on his own sounded like a terrible idea. Also, his pool of choices had just expanded to three. Best to call Rave in on this matter as well.

 “Whaddup, John?” His girlfriend’s cheery voice came from the other side. From the bass in the background he judged that she was in her room right now. He quickly brought her up to speed and then presented their options to her.

“We could either go and confront Travolta directly about this, going against his clear wishes, run face first into Victoria’s barrier or look after Jimmie.”

“Well, as my last idea was clearly stupid.” Rave said, “I will give you the chance to be wrong this time.”