тнє ѕρєктяє

cassian doesn’t look up immediately. he lets the silence stretch, fingers idly near the planchette around his neck as if it might act as a subtle remind the other of the sheer power he had at his finger tips.

he studies them the way he studies anything unknown: not with suspicion, exactly… but with interest sharp enough to cut.

“wrong timing,” he says lightly

a faint tilt of his head.

“or very deliberate timing. which is it?”

Nero sits himself down on the sofa across from this therapist, this Cassian. He had heard from a former friend, now competitor within the merc sector. Course Nero was nothing like a merc, but it helped having friends in all spectrums of the city's social circles. Cassian was meant to be good. If the way the man was eying him like a meal, Nero hoped their exchanged could remain visual. His mind spun too much, too loud for Nero to feel comfortable anticipating cause and affect. It was something he could easily do, but with the weight of the endless night, it was a phantom limb within Nero's exhausted mind.

Nero stays silent for a while, staring at his hands as though they were meant to answer. "It might be a mix of both. Kind of wished I was able to be seen in better condition."

Now, there was one surefire way to prompt the hero back into reality to remind him exactly how skilled he was with his powers - a plume of purple and jet black smoke as he disappeared into the abyss, reappearing behind him only moments later in his spectral form - complete with ice white hair and purple runic marks across his arms.

“Not much of the talkative type, huh?” Cassian said in a tone that could easily be mistaken for mockery it it were said by anyone but him. “I do have a fix for that, it’s potentially experimental, but it’s very very fun if it works….” He begins to explain “ Teneo Imperium Anime...” he whispers “Mind Control. A classic, even if it is a little weaker these days. All you need is a quick incantation and a feeble psyche, and you're good to go… I help you work through your psychological state, and you do a little favour for me in exchange, deal?”

cassian doesn’t look up immediately. he lets the silence stretch, fingers idly near the planchette around his neck as if it might act as a subtle remind the other of the sheer power he had at his finger tips.

he studies them the way he studies anything unknown: not with suspicion, exactly… but with interest sharp enough to cut.

“wrong timing,” he says lightly

a faint tilt of his head.

“or very deliberate timing. which is it?”

A soft exhale. Then he steps fully inside. "I wasn't sure you'd still be taking walk-ins." His gaze moves around the room once before settling on Cassian, and when it does, it lingers, unblinking in a way that's either very machine or very predator. "Deliberate," he admits, wincing at something unheard. "I suppose?" His jaw tightens slightly. A small, involuntary motion as the voice inside his head growls, his eyes shifting to read for a moment before bleeding back to amber. Somewhere beneath the composure, something flickers, an aura that doesn't belong to him, a faint luminous essence around his hands that he seems entirely unaware of, like ghostly energy clinging to his fingertips.

"My name is Aether. I was told..." he bites his lip, the voice in his head making it hard to get the correct words out, his limbs start spasming slightly like a broken marionette. "Well... strongly... suggested, actually, that you were someone who deals with situations that don't fit into more conventional frameworks." His eyes drop to the planchette as he manages to stop his clawed arm from assembling into a rifle. "Sorry..." They stay there a beat too long and his ears flick back against his head. "I have a situation." And then as if to punctuate it, as if the universe itself has decided that subtlety is no longer on the table something shifts. His feet. His ankles. The clean line where shoe meets floor simply… ceases to exist. For just a moment, three seconds at most, the lower half of him loses its argument with solid matter. He sinks into the floor. Not dramatically, not like falling, but like his body has forgotten it is solid matter. Like whatever is stitching him to the physical world momentarily lost the thread. He looks down the looks back up. The ghostly wisps at his fingertips have crept to his wrists now. "…A fairly urgent situation..."

He felt sorry for the other, of course - but he also understood that this presented an incredibly valuable research opportunity - and one that he absolutely would not allow to go to waste. “So, you’re here because you believe my magic can…*fix* you, I presume?” He questioned, in tone as if he already knew what the answer is. “It seems as though my reputation is finally beginning to precede me…you definitely picked the right warlock for the job.”

And in an instant, he disappeared in a plume of purple smoke - the mist hanging in the air…

Only for a few seconds later, him into materialise once more, behind the other with a barely muted cackle “sorry, I just had to do it - never gets old!” he continued laughing, clearly cracked up by his own antics as he rested back into his own exquisite leather chair, a solitary wisp of purple magical energy hanging and swirling his finger tips.

“But, I still haven’t heard what I get out of the arrangement…” he’d continue, the wisp slowly transmuting into a full glass of exquisite vintage whiskey as he held the glass to his lips. “See, us warlocks don’t work on a gratitude system, and neither does our magic - there a give and a take. So, what exactly are you offering me?”