Gio Mazziotti

As Blaine steps through… whatever it is she steps through, she finds her senses assaulted with tons of new information. The first thing she sees is the group of four that went ahead of her. The half-elf, Darjo, stands prominently with their hands on their hips, smiling widely. Next to them is the halfling, Gwen, who looks amusedly at Blaine. Then there are the two tieflings, yet to be introduced, who stand to the side still looking rather excited. Then there is, well, what Darjo referred to as Bjarga. 

Differing wildly from the abandoned building she was just in, she stands in a fairly modern looking building. There are computers and monitors everywhere with all sorts of information on them ranging from what looks like news, to spreadsheets, to body cam videos. There are people at every one of these monitors ranging vastly in races. And the sound, well considering how quiet it was in the abandoned building, she almost wants to cover her ears with the cacophony of noise she hears now. 

After making her first assessment of this Bjarga, Blaine stumbles forward another step in, asking, “What… exactly is this place? Who are all of you?”

Darjo looks like they want to speak, but Gwen places a hand on their own and gives them a small look before stepping forward, “Well, this is our home base, or one of them at least. This is where we find and assign missions. As for who we are, well…”

She’s cut off by one of the tieflings excitedly running forwards and sticking their hand out over Gwen’s head, “I’m Lados and this here is Anakis,” she points to the other tiefling who had come up beside her, “we’re twins, and super excited to have you with us! Darjo here told us all about the night you came to their rescue,” Darjo makes a sputtering noise and tries to interject, but Lados continues, “ and how you might be good material for Bjarga here. What a surprise when we ran into you, took us a second to realize that you might be you, but we were pretty sure from the description Darjo gave. And now you’re here! Oh, I’m so excited for you to get involved, you’re going to love it!” And she opens her mouth to continue on, but Anakis covers her mouth, looking down at the halfling below them. Gwen looks up at them a bit disapprovingly, but also fond. She gives Anakis an appreciative nod.

Then, she continues on as she was before, “We are a group of citizens, concerned ones about some of the things going on in our world,” she gestures all around her, “We know there are threats out there, and we work to combat those threats the best we can with the knowledge and power we have available to us. There are two main branches of our little operation and we both work in tandem to determine threats and take them out. A threat that we are currently facing is the Gindilian Gang. Not only are they a bunch of troublemakers, but there’s word going around that they have a secret operation underway to bring about some great evil in our world. We are unsure what entirely this entails, but we are trying our best to find out and put a stop to it. But there are some things that we do know,” she pauses at this as a phone starts ringing, Gwen pulls out her phone and sighs at what it displays, “Well, that would be Sindri, he is currently trying to find a way to infiltrate the Gang, I should see what he says. Darjo, could you take over?” she gestures at the half-elf next to her. 

Darjo nods, crossing their arms and watching for a moment as Gwen steps deeper into Bjarga to answer the call. Then, they begin, “Like Gwen said we do know some things, one such thing is that there have been a bunch of attacks. The people who are attacked don’t remember much besides the color purple, and the effects of magic being used on them to lure them into a dreamlike state.”

Blaine perks up at this, “Oh, I’ve heard of those attacks on the news. In fact I’ve been teaching some of my students how to be prepared for one of those same attacks. However, I’ve never heard anything about a gang being involved, how do you know for sure it’s them?”

Darjo frowns a little at that, then looks a little sheepish, “Well, we don’t for sure actually. We suspect that this is part of that whole ‘evil scheme’, " they use their fingers to make quotes, “that they got going on. Some of the Gang have bragged about it when they don’t know one of our members is around, so we have reason to believe it is them.”

Blaine nods at this, then smiles and claps her hands, startling the group of three others, “Well then, what can I do to help?”

Darjo smiles, then laughs, “I just knew you’d be up for it,” they walk forward and clap Blaine on the shoulder, “Well first things first, we have to get you all initiated, and then we can talk plans.”

The next little while is a blur to Blaine. She gets passed around between different people doing different things. She has her photo taken and put into some data archive, her phone gets taken at some point, she’s introduced to so many different people who have all types of professions and roles within the group, and she has to give her information to some of these people. At the end of all of it, she ends up in a small room that connects to the main room with the monitors and computers. This room is devoid of such electronics, and simply has a table with chairs on either side of it. Blaine sits in one of these chairs, now waiting. 

Darjo walks into the room holding several things. They sit down in the chair opposite Blaine and lay the items out on the table. The first of which they slide over to Blaine is her phone. Blaine boots it up and sees there is a new app on her homescreen, it simply reads, ‘Cornucopia of Life’.

Blaine looks up at Darjo with a raised brow, questioning. Darjo simply smiles, “We can’t just give away our positions so simply. That app gives you access to a whole slew of stuff involved with Bjarga. It’ll tell you current missions, maps and other resources, and it’s a group chat messaging system that is encrypted so others can’t access our data.”

Blaine nods along, “Sounds useful. So, do I just pick a mission that is on here, or…” she trails off looking back down to the phone and scrolling on it for a moment. 

Darjo reaches across the table and pushes the phone down a little, “No, no. Not right now at least. We want you for something special.” Blaine’s eyes light up at this, her first day, or well night, and she was already getting a special mission. “We want you, well, to continue as you normally do,” Blaine’s shoulders slump and her face falls slightly in disappointment. Darjo laughs a little, “Hey, chin up. I wasn’t done,” Blaine perks up again, “We want you to be bait. We have some others doing the same, but you already know how to handle yourself. So, for these attacks, we want you to try to be the quote unquote victim of one of them.”

Blaine nods again, “Okay… I suppose that makes sense. So, how do I go about doing this, and what happens if I do get attacked?”

Darjo smiles, “Well, we’ve built in a new system to the app. It’s a sort of deadswitch where you press it when you’re safe and the second you stop pressing it, either willingly or not, it will send us your location and we can come to help out!”

Blaine scrolls through the app a few moments humming to herself at the things she finds, before she finds what she is looking for. It's simply a screen with a cornucopia in the middle of it, but it was named, SWITCH. She holds up the phone so Darjo can see, “This then?”

Darjo nods and smiles, “Yup that’s it. So, to recap, we want you to go about your daily life, except maybe try to hang around a few more alleys, act a bit more… well, vulnerable. Have that app open,” they point to the app still on Blaine’s screen, “press it while you are safe. Make sure to disarm it once you get home or something by pressing this secondary button,” they point to a smaller x in the corner of the screen, “and if you get attacked or feel like you are about to just stop pressing the button and we will be on our way!” They lean back in their chair and spread their arms out, “So, how’s that sound?”

Blaine pulls her phone back towards herself, looking down at the app open and grins, “Sounds like we got ourselves a plan to catch some evildoers then.” She looks back up to Darjo who grins right back, then asks, “Is that it then, should I get going?”

Darjo holds up finger and moves the other things they were holding, a few manilla envelopes which seem to be pretty full. “First,” they begin, “Let’s get you up to date on some of the Gindilian Gang business as well as some of our other information so your not out there running completely blind hm?”

Both of them lean into the table as they begin to go over years of information that Bjarga has collected about different cities, different gangs, and their plans to stop all of the crimes and wrong-doings that they can. 

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a few hours later when Blaine steps out of the abandoned building. Well, what looks like an abandoned building for sure. By now, the sky is slowly lightening as the sun begins to peak barely above the horizon. Blaine covers her mouth as she yawns, not used to having such late or early hours. She checks her phone, the app for Bjarga now closed, and goes to her calendar app. There she sighs as she sees she indeed does have a class to teach today, but she needs to stop by her apartment to change first. ‘At least it is an early class’ she thinks, ‘that way I can get home and rest sooner’. And with that, she starts heading in the direction of her apartment. 

Another couple of hours later, and caffeinated tea in hand, Blaine steps into the building which houses her studio. There she sees an empty front desk, and a blue lamia unlocking the door to her own shop. Blaine flushes slightly as the lamia turns to give her a wide smile, “Good morning Blaine! You have an early class this morning?”

Blaine gives a bit of a lopsided grin back, “Yeah, yeah. Gotta get that early start y’know? Plus it’s better to have a variety of classes for different people so that they can work either before or after class. Some people have told me they prefer one over the other so I’ve been sure to do a bit of both so that everyone can end up happy! Ahaha, I’m rambling again aren’t I?” Blaine’s smile turns a bit sheepish as she looks away from Glacia. 

Glacia laughs shortly and replies, “Well, I think it’s cute. Have a good class!” Blaine’s neck almost hurts with how fast she turns to look back at the lamia, but Glacia is already headed into her shop. When the door closes behind Glacia, Blaine slumps and sighs, covering her face as a wild blush envelops it. 

Way to go Blaine, she thinks moving towards the door to her studio, fantastic job with that one. She takes the keys out of her bag and opens the studio door, flipping on the lights as she moves further into the space. Directly to the front of her and to towards her left are wall-to-wall glass windows. The wall that the door opens into is layered with bricks, and the wall to her right is wall-to-wall mirrors, so that those in the studio can see their own progress. 

Blaine moves through the process of setting up her studio for one of her sessions. Among those tasks include making sure all the mats have been wiped down and are prepared for her clients to use, checking on the level of the refillable water station, running through a list of which clients will be coming in today and how to adjust the lesson for their needs. 

She does this for about half an hour before she goes to prop open the door for her clients to start coming, and in they do come! Blaine knows most of the faces that enter her door, though a few are new to her. Those include a half-elf man who is dressed in purples and blacks who is accompanied by a large rock creature (she is glad that they adjusted the entryways a while back), and a genasi with fire-red hair… literally. 

Blaine goes through the motions of greeting everyone that she can and introducing herself to the newcomers. Though for most it is not much more than a simple hello and asking a few specific questions based on what she knows about them, she does spend some more time on the newcomers, especially since they all arrived early as she asked. She begins her introductions with the fiery genasi.

“Hello there, welcome in!” Blaine says as she walks up to the genasi who is wringing their hands together and looking around the room. They have secluded themselves into a corner of the room away from the windows, and from everyone else.  

In return to her greeting, Blaine gets a nervous smile and a little wave along with, “Ah h-hello there. Um, you are Blaine correct, I believe we… well we spoke over the phone?” Their voice goes a little higher at the end indicating their question. Blaine nods and gives a comforting smile to which the genasi sighs and drops their hands, “So, you understand then, my um.. situation?”

Blaine slowly reaches out, giving them moments to pull away, when they don’t, she lays her hand gently on their shoulder, “Yes Aldrid, I do. You went through a very traumatic experience. I just want to let you know what you learn here will not erase what you went through, but I do hope it will help prepare you in case anything like it were to happen again which I pray to the gods it won’t.” Blaine gives their shoulder a small squeeze and offers another smile. 

Aldrid gives a shaky smile in return, covering Blaine’s hand with their own, “Y-yes you are right. And, well, nothing can put this fire out!” they give a shaky laugh and their eyes sparkle with a previously lacking mirth. 

Blaine gives a bright smile and pats Aldrid’s shoulder once more, “That is right! Good spirit! Now, if you don’t mind, I have one more introduction to make before starting class.” The genasi gives a short nod and turns to their own bag, likely to prepare for the class. Blaine then turns away and heads towards her other couple of new clients.

“Ah, hello you two,  Ilifir and Igneous, correct? My name is Blaine, welcome into the studio!” She gives a bright smile as she walks up to the half-elf who was addressed as Ilifir and the rock creature addressed as Igneous.

“Yes, yes. Hello to you as well. It’s a pleasure,” Ilifir says, giving a slight nod of his head, Igneous follows suit, nodding his head, but not saying anything. “I hope to learn a lot here, maybe even a reason for my situation.”

Blaine hums, frowning slightly, “Yes, well like I mentioned over the phone, I really think you should see a cleric for that if you wish to find out anything specific, but if it is someone causing it maybe I could help a little. And, well, self defense is always a good thing to learn regardless!” She gives a smile to both of them and says, “Well, unless you have any questions, I think it’s about time to start class.” Ilifir shakes his head and motions for her to move on, Igneous simply stands there, and Blaine assumes with the lack of any words he has no qualms about her moving on either. 

With that, she claps once, and slowly the room falls silent, the regulars knowing that is Blaine’s way of calling attention, and the newcomers following the other’s guide. Blaine walks to the front of the studio as she begins talking, “Good morning everyone! I hope you all have been well. My name is Blaine and today I will be your instructor.” She reaches the front of the room and stops in front of the mirrored wall. She turns around to face the studio, looking out to the streets. 

Blaine smiles for a moment before her face falls into something more serious, “Now, I am sure you have all heard of the tragic events that have been going on lately. People have been found attacked in the city.” She pauses to gauge the effects of her words. Most people’s faces light up in recognition and many frown in empathy, Aldrid goes still and trembles slightly. Blaine chooses to move on quickly once she notices that, “Well, today I hope to teach something that will help lessen any fears you may have. This lesson will have parts which are meant to help both those magically gifted as well as those who are not. Now then,” she claps once more, a more calming smile on her face, as she sees some of the clients start to relax, “Let’s get started.”

And with that, Blaine starts her lesson. First, she teaches her spell for the day, it is a first level spell called Shield. It has both vocal and somatic requirements which she makes sure to tell her clients. She goes through making sure that everyone knows what they are doing with the spell, and even having them practice bringing it up as well as attacking her with a magic missile so they can see how it works. Once she is sure that the clients with magic have had enough practice with the spell, they move onto the non-magical portion of the class. This just teaches normal self-defense moves that anyone can do regardless of skill level. Some people practice old moves with partners they have had in class before, while others follow along with Blaine to learn new moves. It’s not too long before class ends. 

Blaine claps once more, smiling at the front of the studio, “Well done everyone! It seems you all have learned a lot today, and I hope you will go out into the world feeling a bit more confident in yourselves and your skills. With that, I hope you all have a good day, and as always if you have any questions about today’s class you can reach out to me via text or call and I will explain more as best I can. See you all next time!” With that, people start to clean up, they wipe down any equipment they may have used and mingle a little as they drink water and pack up. Blaine talks to as many people as she can, though she notices Aldrid talking adamantly with another client and it appears as if Ilifir and Igneous snuck out when she wasn’t looking. How they did that, she wonders, thinking of how big Igneous was, I am not sure. Slowly but surely, her clients wander out, giving their goodbyes and well to do’s until only Blaine is left. She closes her studio door behind the last client and goes to work cleaning up her studio in preparation for the next class. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Hours pass and Blaine finds herself again in her office as the night closes in. She had gone to a closeby market place for lunch and had snuck a quick nap in at her office before her evening class, and now she finds herself here going over some of her client’s paperwork as she waits to leave. Finally, an alarm goes off on her phone. Blaine turns it off and stretches in her chair before getting up and grabbing her bag. She makes her way into the studio which has the lights turned off for the night. She checks to make sure everything is in place for the morning before she heads to the door. Blaine closes and locks the door behind her, then heads for the main doors, the lobby is dark already and it seems everyone has gone home for the night. She wishes that were the case for her. 

Blaine steps out of the building into the night. The streetlamps are on, and few people are out and about. She takes a deep breath and pulls out her phone. She opens up the app, ‘Cornucopia of Life’, and presses down on the designated button Darjo had shown her earlier that day, and with that set up she starts to walk.

She is unsure of how long she walks for, up and down various alleyways, across streets. Then, it happens. Blaine is in an unknown alley, coming up towards the brick wall that marks the end. When all of a sudden she hears footsteps coming up behind her. They are quiet, but Blaine has been teaching self defense for a while, and she knows when an attacker is on the move. She moves a couple more steps hoping to get some type of reaction and it seems she does.