#ruby's the bartender probably

"I'm Nic," says the man with the messy hair and bright green eyes, swivelling around to give Richard a genuine, beaming smile reminiscent of a golden retriever. "I, uh, sometimes partner up with Alex."

"But usually he teams up with us!" calls a man from across the room, who's cradling a beer in one hand and he claps the shoulder of a woman whose fingers are dancing across thin air- and blue light- in front of her. She pursues her lips, and shoves him away from her with a movement that's both playful and forceful at the same time.

"Move the hand if you don't want to lose it, Geoff," she says lightly, and quickly turns her attention back to whatever she's doing.

Richard nods at this, eyeing the two of them for a moment, and then looking back at Nic. "If you don't mind me asking… what sort of magic do you three have?"

Alex raises an eyebrow at this- and judging by her expression, asking about somebody's magic so suddenly is borderline taboo. It looks like he's made a mistake, and he doesn't feel much like apologizing.

Thankfully, Nic doesn't seem to mind. "I'm a Celestial Spirit Mage," he says, and reaches into a pouch at his belt, pulling out a ring of keys. "I'm- well, I'm pretty much useless in hand-to-hand combat, but-"

"Too damn right you are!" comes another yell from the man across the room.

Nic grimaces. "Okay, there's no need to rub it in."

"There's plenty of need to rub it in!" continues the man, who Richard has now surmised is 'Geoff'. He seems just on the sober side of drunk, but not in a disruptive sort of way. Just kind of. Loud. "Remember the cultists?"

Nic groans, drops his head to the table where it lands with a clunk. "Yes. Yes, Geoff, I remember the cultists."

"And the tea?" Geoff is now leaning accusingly across his table, folding his arms. "We can't forget about the tea."

"We don't talk about the tea incident," interjects the woman, who's doing a very good job of looking as if she's not paying any attention whilst simultaneously maintaining deep engagement in the conversation.

"If we don't talk about the tea incident, it's going to happen again!" argues Geoff loudly. "History repeats itself!"

Nic just groans and flaps a hand vaguely in their direction. "Oh my god, shut up, you guys." He turns back to Richard. "Celestial Spirits can be summoned to this dimension if I have a contract and the corresponding key." He flips up a key with an indent shaped a bit like a bird's foot on it. It's bright, shiny silver, like it's been polished many times. "This is Corvus!" He beams down at it for a second, and then frowns. "I can't summon them today- it's not on the contract. But when I do, they can come and help me with… things."

"Things," says Richard.

"Yeah, they're a flock of birds." Nic tilts his head slightly, and then shrugs. "Crows, or ravens, I guess. They can lift me up a fair way, scout out places from above. Sometimes they even fight, if they feel like it. It's hard to tell with birds, you know?"

Richard eyes the rest of the keys. There's five in total, with only one being a bright gold and the rest being silver, like the Corvus key. "And the rest?"

"Ah, well…" Nic reaches out a finger, and taps on each of them in turn. "Cetus, Pegasus, Ara, and this one," his smile turns fonder, "that's Pisces. They're my only Golden Gate key."

"A Zodiac constellation?" Richard asks, having noticed a pattern with the other keys. "Does that make it special?"

"I guess?" Nic shrugs again. "I mean, maybe it makes them a bit more powerful, but really- who knows?"

Richard nods, satisfied. "And I suppose you can gather more keys, through various means."

"I buy mine, mostly," Nic replies, "but Pisces was a gift. Um." He turns to Geoff, and flaps a hand vaguely in his direction. "Care to explain yours?"

"Sure," Geoff shrugs, and rises easily from his seat. He's a lot taller than he looks- easily tall enough to rival Richard himself in height. He blinks a couple times, and then inclines his head at Richard. "Okay, try to fight me."

Richard just blinks. "I'm sorry?"

Geoff's smile grows wider. "Fight me. Try to land a punch or something, I don't mind."

Alex's laughing softly in the background, not really making any sort of sound, but her body is shaking in mirth. "Go on, Dr Strand."

He glances between Alex and Geoff, who are both clearly finding something extremely funny, then over to Nic, who's folded his arms and laid his head on them with a smile that clearly says he knows something. His keys have been inexplicably packed away when Richard wasn't watching, but he dismisses that as unimportant for the moment. It's when he glances at the woman still working at her screen of magic on the table that's been abandoned by Geoff, and he notices that even she is smiling with barely-concealed mirth that he folds his arms across his chest and gives an answer.

"No," he says.

The side of Geoff's mouth twitches downwards. "Aw, really?"

"Evidently it's funny enough that you're challenging me to a fight." He gestures around himself. "There's got to be a reason why there's no way I can win. It's likely that the result, had I decided to fight you, would have been quite embarrassing or amusing."

"Spoilsport," Alex says teasingly. "Okay, Nic, show him."

Nic sighs, and gets up, facing Geoff. He sways back and forth for a second, before suddenly ploughing straight forwards and directly into Geoff, who stumbles back a step as the full weight of an awkwardly-proportioned Celestial Spirit Mage . Going off the look of surprise on both their faces as Nic sprawled to the ground in a tangle of legs and arms, Richard surmised, this was not the thing that was meant to happen.

"You gotta come at me with ill intent, dude," Geoff says with a frown as Nic gets up, brushing himself off.

Nic screws up his face. "Okay, okay, um… you're a jerk for calling me weak! Rrgh!" He makes feeble fists with his hands, and everyone in the vicinity promptly laughs at him. Even Richard cracks a smile.

"Pathetic," calls the woman across the room. "You need to do it like this." She snatches up an empty beer mug with one hand, weighing it, and turns around for the first time. She glances at Geoff over the top of her sunglasses, smiles sweetly, and pitches it, hard, in his direction.

About half a metre from Geoff's head, where it was aimed, the mug seems to bounce straight off an invisible forcefield. It changes directions rapidly, and collides with the ground at high velocity, shattering into millions of pieces.

There's scattered applause and a few groans, and somebody exclaims indignantly; "I've got to clean that up!" but Richard is impressed despite himself. "Some sort of shield?"

"Pretty much," agrees Geoff, sitting down again. "It's always active, even when I'm sleeping, and pretty much impenetrable if you're trying to hurt or kill me. I mean, there's some ways of getting around it, but-"

Nic slides up next to him easily, and grins evilly before going straight for his stomach with outstretched hands. Geoff's sentence is broken off as they both collapse into giggles.

"Not in front of the new guy!" Geoff protests, but Nic is relentless.

"Yeah," concludes Alex after it becomes apparent that they're not going to stop. "And then there's MK."

'MK' waves from her table. "Hello, yes. That's me. Who wants to know?"

"I've heard of Archive magic before," Richard says. "I don't need it explained to me."

MK presses her lips together again, like she's trying to stop herself from smirking widely. "Oh, is that so?"

Alex is grinning again, and she nudges Richard with the back of her wrist. "You might want to rethink that. MK is, not to put too fine a point on it, a genius."

"First off, I prefer the term 'Information Specialist. Second of all, well…" MK holds her hands up to the interface she's been working at, actually grasping it like it's a solid object, and flipping it around to face Richard and Alex. "Archive magic is all well and good, but I felt like it could be improved." She taps at the screen, and blue-green symbols go flying across it. "I've created my own O.S. to work from, and I've developed a couple of new apps that can improve its use."

"'Oh Es'?" Richard's brow furrows. "'Apps'?"

"Operating system,  applications," MK explains. "General terms used by those in the Archive community. Don't worry about it too much, you'll probably never hear those abbreviations again. But hey, want a demonstration?"

Richard glances dubiously over at the participants in the last magic 'demonstration', who are still tickling the hell out of each other. MK quirks an eyebrow, and pushes her sunglasses up her nose. "I don't bite, Strand. Here, catch."

He only has time to give her a quick nod of assent before a blue disc comes sailing in his direction, and only barely manages to catch it. He holds it up, and examines it. "What is it?"

"Portable manifestation of my magic." MK's holding up an identical disc, and she taps at it for a second. "Okay, we got a connection. Say hello to the other side of the room, Strand!"

He frowns in confusion, but looks down at the disc. He's surprised to see an exact projection of MK's sardonic features, displayed in minute detail.

"I call it 'Skype'," she says.

When she talks, he can simultaneously hear her voice coming from across the room, where she's present physically, and from the disc. There's only a very slight delay between them. The effect, overall, is astounding.

"It tends to work especially well when some moron in our teams says something like, 'hey, we should split up!'," she continues. "Keeps us in touch, you know?"

"That was literally once!" Nic complains.

"You could have died, Nic," Geoff shoots back.

MK looks at Richard through the interface, and gives him an unreadable look. "After the incident that Nic here probably doesn't want to talk about, I developed this. So now if one of us is going to die, the rest of us can now see the gory details in real-time, and they don't have to die alone."

Richard isn't quite sure if this is a joke or not, so he just nods. MK's sense of humor- if you can even call it that- is a bit hard for him to get a hold of. "If you don't mind me asking," he starts, and then trails off.

"Go on," Alex prompts.

"Well, you stated before that the three of you," he indicates MK, Geoff and Nic with a hand, "work together frequently. And judging by the sorts of things that this guild has a reputation for, I assume that 'working together' often involves fighting people and things."

"That's right," Alex says with a nod.

Richard frowns. "It seems to me that the three of you aren't quite… shall we say, compatible?"

Geoff stiffens, and maybe Alex does too, but it's hard to tell. Nic, however, sits up, and places his hands, outstretched on the table. "Okay, I'm trying my best not to be offended here, but- um, maybe explain?"

Richard sighs. "I meant  no insult, and I do apologize. I simply meant that your particular skillset is… well." He nods at Nic. "Although you do have some offensive capabilities, they seem to be constrained by your 'contracts', which limit you to certain days of the week, and in the short time I've known you, you and your friends have reiterated several times that you're not a fighter. Although, er, you," he nods at Geoff, "seem to have quite a powerful means of defence, you have no visible attack to speak of. And the interesting use of Archive magic is certainly useful, but I don't see how it would do much good in a combat situation."

The three of them exchange glances for a second.

"I mean, he does have a point," Geoff says after a moment. "He could have worded it better, but…"

"Oh good, the jerkass has a point," MK says, rolling her eyes. "Everything is all right now, obviously." She stands up, dispelling all of her screens with a casual flick of her wrists. "Listen up, Strand. Magic isn't the only way of winning a fight." She reaches underneath the table, and pulls out a thin leather sheath, throwing it roughly onto the table between her and Richard. It thumps as it hits "Know what this is?"

He eyes it. It looks like a sword. "It's a sword."

"Wrong," she snaps. "It's a modified Épée." She pulls it out of its sheath with a satisfying-sounding grind of metal, and holds it in one hand with the blade pointing to the ground. "Normal Épées bend easily, and mainly get used when rich fuckers want to show off. This," she holds it up, as if to prove a point, "has been strengthened, sharpened and could probably cut your head off in one slice. I carry this around because it's lighter than most other swords, and people tend to estimate a girl with a weapon that's usually used for mock duels."

"This is a backsword," Geoff adds, unsheathing his own from a large bag that must be bigger on the inside, if it's able to contain a sword that large. "I have no idea what people usually use it for, but it can do a lot of damage."

"And the entire guild has agreed that we shouldn't, under any circumstances trust Nic with any sort of short-range, non-magical weapon," MK concludes. "At least, not until he apologizes to Carly about nearly taking her head off."

"She's avoiding me," Nic complains.

"We can take care of ourselves," Geoff says, turning to Richard. "Other members of the guild sometimes join us if the job  looks difficult, but that doesn't happen often."

"Usually the sight of MK is enough to scare any attacker away," Nic says with a sudden grin.

MK doesn't even glance over at him as she almost casually holds a middle finger up in Nic's direction. "Fuck you, Silver. You'd be dead a million times over if I wasn't around to save your sorry ass."

Nic laughs, crossing his legs as he turns again. Sometime during the last couple of minutes, they've all arranged themselves so they're congregated around one small table. "You wouldn't have to save my 'sorry rear end' as much if you'd actually teach me how to fight."

A slow, terrifying smile curves across MK's face. "Are you asking me to fight you, Nic? Because I can and will fight you, given half the chance."

Nic suddenly looks intensely worried. "...please don't hurt me."

"Geoff," says MK. "Go find a job for us while Nic and I discuss just how much he'd have to pay me to not kick his ass."

Geoff snaps off a quick salute in her direction and makes a hasty retreat towards the request board. "Gotcha!"

Richard watches them for a second- bickering, laughing, happy, then turns back to Alex, who's doing the same. "Miss Reagan-"

"Alex," she says, "please."

"Alex," he says cautiously. "I'd like to apologize. That was... rude of me."

"It was," she agrees with a small laugh, "and you should honestly be apologizing to them. But yeah. I get what you mean. They don't look like they could take on anybody more powerful and survive, do they?"

Richard frowns, tilts his head. "But can they?"

"Who knows?" Alex shrugs, as Geoff returns to the table, a scrap of paper torn off the board in hand. He begins to speak to MK and Nic in a low voice, and they both lean in, visibly interested. Alex scratches her arm absently for a second, looking thoughtful. "Hey- want to see how the request process works?"

"I-" Richard begins. "-yes. That would be… good."

"Come on, then." Alex stands up, and they join MK, Nic, and Geoff at their table. Alex takes a seat, looking comfortable in their presence, but Richard hovers awkwardly a few feet away.

"What's up?" Nic asks with a small smile.

"Dr Strand was wondering how the request process works, and we were hoping you guys could walk him through it," Alex explains, with a small flap of her hand in Richard's direction. "Hey- come on over. They don't bite."

"Speak for yourself," MK says with a small snort, but lays the paper scrap on the table in front of Richard as he cautiously approaches. "Okay, so this is basically how it works. Anybody with a certain amount of money can pay to have a request put in the guild of their choice. Sort of like Craigslist."

"'Craigslist'?" Nic asks, looking confused.

"Archive magician thing, don't worry about it," MK sighs. "Anyone who's in the guild can take a request, but they have to consult with either the guild master or somebody acting in place of them first. You can't just go running off on a job with no warning. For example," she taps the request in front of her, "this."

"'Seeking Tanis, runner available'," Richard reads, peering over his glasses. "Two million jewels." He frowns. "That's very vague."

"Yup." Geoff pops the 'p', and grins. "Which is kinda unusual, usually they're a lot more detailed than that. But hey- two million jewels! Money is money!"

"So how do you know where to go?" Richard asks, eyeing the sparse sheet of paper. It doesn't look like it contains any further information.

"Well, we talk to one of the guild masters," Nic says, and gestures towards the bar counter, where a girl with glasses and her hair pulled into a high ponytail is reading a book, frowning slightly. "Or Carly, who's in place of them at the moment. She'll probably say yes, if she's not annoyed at whoever asks, and then she'll give us more details."

"I'll do it," Geoff volunteers. "She's not annoyed at me."

Nic sighs. "Look-"

"Yeah, yeah, dude, we know, you didn't mean to swing that sword at her head." Geoff crosses his arms. "However, the fact still stands that she'll probably smite you if you try to file that request."

MK rolls her eyes. "Just get on with it. And maybe don't try to flirt with her this time, or you'll be the one on the receiving end of that smiting."

Geoff leaves with a huffy sort of flounce that's entirely unsuited to somebody that's as physically imposing as he is. It looks like it'd be more suited to a teenage girl.

"Carly's girlfriend is missing," Alex says to Richard. "Geoff didn't know when he first met her, and Carly forgave him, but nobody will let it drop."

Richard frowns again. "I see."

She grins, and he sees that she realizes that he really doesn't. He thinks it's nice of her to explain everything to him, even while he's being his normal self- distant and almost cold.

"Guild masters?" he says instead of voicing this thought, putting emphasis on the plural. Alex nods, crossing her arms.

"There's two of them- Terry and Paul," she explains. "They share the responsibility, I guess? Except Paul is pretty much invisible all the time." She frowns. "And I mean that literally. I don't think I've actually seen him for about a month. Oh, and Terry does Transformation Magic," she adds. "Specifically, Nic."

This is a complete non-sequitur, and Richard is completely baffled. "Nic?"

"He can transform into literally anything," Alex says with a frown, "and I mean literally anything. He's insanely powerful. He could probably rule the country if he wanted to." She pauses and sighs. "But guess what he does instead? He turns himself into a mirror image of Nic Silver, and walks around the guild, messing with us. It's completely impossible to tell them apart, they even sound alike. And what's worse, I'm pretty sure Nic's in on it as well."

"I see," says Richard again. He doesn't, and Alex recognizes this once more, smiling at him.

"Yeah, we're a pretty eclectic guild."

Geoff returns, looking triumphant. Richard risks a glance back at Carly, and, true to form, she doesn't look like she wants to smite anybody in particular at the moment. "We got the job!" Geoff announces, exchanging a slightly awkward fistbump with Nic, who looks like he's not quite sure what he's meant to be doing.

"And now," MK says to Richard, looking utterly deadpan. "We go off on yet another suicide mission, with absolutely no regard for our personal health and safety. Hooray."

Geoff grins and claps MK on the back, opening his mouth, but before he even begins to speak, she grabs his wrist, and twists him easily into a headlock. He blinks from the hold, looking slightly bemused. "I was going to say; how about we meet at the train station at noon today? But if you want to kill me first, I'm fine with that too."

"Any reason for your collective morbid sense of humour?" Richard asks, echoing Geoff's bemused expression. MK laughs sourly.

"We're all depressed pieces of shit, and this is our coping mechanism," she says flatly, letting Geoff of her grip, and nods in his direction. "Midday sounds good. I'll go get packed." She stands, gathering her blue magic in front of her. "See you around, Strand. Alex looks like she likes you- maybe she can keep you."

He blinks, and she's gone, the hem of her loose shirt whipping around the doorframe.

"I guess I'll go pack, too," Geoff says, stretching. "Nice to meet you, Dr Strand."

Richard inclines his head, not sure how to respond, and watches as he leaves too, leaving just him, Nic and Alex behind.

Alex pats Nic's arm across the table, and meets his gaze in a oddly serious manner. "Be careful."

"I will be," he laughs, and pats her hand in return, standing up. "Don't worry about me. MK'll beat the shit of anyone who looks threatening."

"Cultists," she calls after his retreating figure. "Don't forget the cultists, Nicodemus!"

"I wish everyone would!" comes his returning cry, and then he's gone, and it's like the world is just Richard and Alex once more. Alex smiles at the doorway briefly, and then returns her attention back to Richard. 

"So," she says. "What do you think?"

Richard takes a moment to think about this, staring around at the guild, with all the people gathered into groups, and the bright atmosphere. He doesn't believe in auras, but if he did, he would think that the entire area glows with welcoming energy, and Alex Reagan most of all.

"I think," he says, "that this is the perfect guild to take a request from me."

"Oh?"  She looks confused, but mildly pleased as well.

"Miss Reagan," he says, and allows a genuine smile to crack across his face. "I would very much like it if you would help me track down somebody very close to me."

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