[Avon] 
Ali is likely to be fairly quiet for the first day, mainly cause she is in
shock, but after that, particuraly if she gets drunk, she's likely to open
up a good deal.  It'd be good for the story if this lead to some trust
building, I expect.
 
[Megan]
Leigh is likely to be similar.  She spends the first day wandering
aimlessly around the woods nearby... never going far, not saying anything.
She occasionally curls up with her head on Ryan's lap and stares into the
fire silently for hours.  She drinks and smokes a lot.
   
By the second day, drunk, Leigh looks at Ali and asks, quietly.  "So...
how did you end up part of the organization you are part of?"
 
[Avon]
Ali has ditched the rumpled suit she wore up here and is just wearing
jeans and a turtleneck.  She has a sweatshirt that says FBI on the back.  
She doesn't smoke and she tries to sit upwind of you all if you do smoke,
but she has no compunctions of about drinking.  
  
She leans back against the log she is sitting against and looks back at
Leigh.  It takes her a minute to process the question.  "Oranization?" she
asks.  "Which organization?"  
  
[megan]
Leigh cocks an eyebrow at Ali.  *wry grin*  *snort*  "You know, the one
that seems to favor dark suits and sunglasses, tinted window cars, and
investigating weird happenings. Certainly I am not asking that you pass on
classified information, but I guess I am curious... I have not dealt with
too many of your agents but you really seem a lot more human than the ones
I have dealt with, so I am curious as to how you ended up part of it in
the first place."
 
[Avon] 
It had been a genuine question on Ali's part, not simply her being obtuse. 
But now that you have clarified, she says "Ah."  She fingers her drink for
a moment, a half sad smile on her face.  "I was recruited." she says. 
"When I was in college.  The Order had already passed me over for clinical
work.  I thought I'd go into research, cognitive antropology. I had a good
lab I was working in... I never thought the enforcement division would
notice me but they did.  I did an internship with them and loved it. They
offered me a position and I accepted.  Agent Smith took over from Dr.
Salzer as my supervisor." 
 
She pauses, "I'm natural born, not a synth, you understand?  Not many
synths live long enough to develop a sense of individualty."  She looks
away, into the woods.  "You've probably dealt mostly with them."
    
[Megan] 
Leigh nods thoughtfully... looks as though she wants to say something,
then grabs the bottle of whiskey and takes a slug.  She stares
thoughtfully off into the woods, not saying anything else for a while.
Her hand reaches up absently and begins to toy with the silver
dragonpendant around her neck... (she doesn't know she's doing it)
   
[Sean]
Ryan rouses himself from the couch and props himself up on one elbow,
looking at the two women talking.
"Synth...like the guy who's running the show in Boston now right?"
He stands and walks over to the fireplace tossing another log onto it,
then sits back down ont he couch, pulling a blanket around his shirtless
body and lighting a ciggerette.
"Hey is Smith a synth? or is that why he got demoted?"
 
[Avon]
Ali watches Leigh caress the pendant, curious as to what the gesture means
or why Leigh does it so often.  When Ryan gets up, her eyes shift to
follow him.  Another mystery - the blind man who sees clearly, apparently
oblivious to pain and cold.  
 
"Smith wasn't demoted." she says, defensively.  "He stepped down.  He
likes to be in the field.  You all should be glad of it.  If it weren't
for him, the new C.A. woulda had your collective ass, months ago." She
stares into the fire, falling silent for a moment.  The thumb of her right  
hand absently traces the callous from the ring she no longer wears.  Then
she continues, "Special Agent Doctrinaire is a bottle baby.  Smith is not. 
He's just been at it for longer than I've been alive.  He's a good man
and a better agent than I'll ever be."

[Sean]
"I know." Ryan's voice is quiet.
"Hell, Smith saved our asses at Trinity Church, First by coming in with
the brute squad, then by looking the other way. He's a good man..."
"I wonder though...what's it like working with someone who you know was
Created, rather than someone who was born."
Ryan let's the smoke drift up past his unseeing eyes, then takes a drag.

[Avon] 
Ali thinks about that for a while.  "It's the way they are raised that
makes a difference.  Synths never have an oldlife.  They have never had an
identity apart from the Order and only some of them ever learn to think
in the first person singular."  She shrugs and takes a slug from the
bottle she is holding.  "You just gotta remember how they think, when
dealing with them."
  
She holds out the ringless hand and looks at it, mimicing the posture
that a newly engaged girl uses to show off her diamond.  Then she says
softly, "We all make sacrifices. Their's are just a little different." 
 
[Sean]
Ryan falls silent and lights another ciggerette. He reaches for something
and you see him unsure and stumbling with his hands until they close
around the bottle of whiskey.
He spins the cap off with a practiced ease and raises the bottle slightly
towards Ali. 
"To our sacrifices." And he takes a sip from it.
He pauses breifly, replacing the cap and setting the bottle back on the
floor. 
"So Alison...what do you do for fun?"
 
[Avon]
Ali puts her hand back on her lap and raises her bottle back to Ryan, even
if he can't see it.  She corrects, "Ali...please call me Ali."  but she
doesn't answer the question right away.  
 
She sits in silence, staring into space.  After a while she speaks, barely
above a whisper, "There hasn't been a lot of time for fun, recently. 
Before that, Karen and I'd..." and then she she fades off.  When she
speaks again her voice is harder. "I am going to have to find some new
hobbies, I guess.  What about you Mist..er...Ryan?  Are you still a
musician?" 

[Sean]
"That's the rumour..I haven't actually played in a few
weeks...since...well since before Cambridgeport."
Ryan falls silent and unerringly picks up the bottle and take s LONG pull
from it.
"Since everything got Fucked up..."
"Since I should have killed her."

[Avon] 
Ali watches Ryan.  Her head is leaned back against the wall and her
eyes are half closed. 

She smiles wryly.   "Looks like we both missed the obvious for far too
long." 

The smile fades and she nods torwards Leigh.  "Dat's the bad side of being
more...human.  You loose your objectivity. You make mistakes.  The people
you are sworn to protect suffer."

[megan]
Leigh sighs and her eyes are filled with sorrow.  "I know...."  She sits
with her head bowed for a minute, playing with the dragon pendant, before
lighting another cigarette and taking a pull off of the whiskey, handing
the bottle back to Ryan when she's done and the words spill out her.  "For
so many years, I just ran away, while Lyle corrupted and destroyed
innocents.  I never knew what he was doing, but that's because I fled and
didn't want to know.  I knew when I ran from him that he was dangerous..."
She sighs.  "But we did kill him, even if Rachel fucked it all up royally
and almost made it not seem worth it in the end..."  She meets Ali's eyes
squarely, holding up the pendant.  "That's why I wear this - so I will
never forget my responsibilities again."  Seeing Ali's querying look, she
smiles quietly.  "It's just a symbol for me, a metaphor."

[Avon]
Ali nods, understanding.  She closes her eyes and leans her head back.
She asks softly, "How is it you all become de..." she stops that word
right there, "become what you are?" She opens her eyes and leans forward,
looking at each of you for a moment.  "Why is it that the voices did not
drive you mad?"   
[megan]
Leigh snags the bottle of whiskey and stares at it... she sips, lifts her
gaze to Ali's.  "What makes you think we aren't mad?  Do you think anyone
can play a part in the deaths of that many people and not be at least a
little mad?  I guess Ryan and I try to take it to different places... to
heal, to help people around us.  But I fear that madness... I have a flask
of poison I keep with me-" she fumbles in her shirt, holds up a small
bottle of some liquid and then replaces it "-just in case.  If I ever feel
that sort of insanity take me, I'll kill myself before I'll let myself be
the instrument of that kind of destruction."

[Avon] 
Ali looks at Leigh and listens.  Her dark eyes are penetrating and
disturbing in the dim light.  "Mad is such an imprecise word." she says
softly.  "I would say you are delusional, but there is a pattern to your
mind, both of you.  If you were...mad...the pattern would be fractured and
broken.  There are weak points where the pattern might yet break, but
overall, it is strong."  She runs her thumb over the ring callous again,
"That is a good thing.  As far as I can tell, you are people who create; 
you are not destroyers.  So, in my opinion, you are not mad.  That is why
Smith, and now I, have been sheilding you." 

She leans her head back and some of the intensity goes out of her gaze. 
"That wasn't quite what I meant though, when I asked, though.  How was it
that you survived the early days, back when you first learned you could,"
she pauses, searching for the phrase.  When she finds it she wrinkles her
nose in distaste as she says it, "bend reality? How did you learn to
handle the APD?"

[megan]
Leigh lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, leans back.  Her gaze flicks to
Ryan and then she exhales, thoughtfully watching the smoke drift upwards.
She snags the bottle of whiskey and takes a long pull at it.  When her
gaze comes back to rest on Ali's face, several warring emotions show in
her eyes... deep, deep sorrow, but also awe and an almost childlike
wonder.  She smiles, the gesture somehow hearbreakingly bittersweet.

"I am not sure what you mean by APD, but this is my story ... once
upon a time there was a little girl named Leigh.  Her mother was a
japanese acupuncturist & herbalist, her father was an irish american fire
fighter... how her parents, from such different backgrounds, met and fell
deeply enough in love to build a life together is another story.  Leigh
was a very bright and creative child - both of her parents loved her and
were proud of her.  Her main interest seemed to be in her mother's office
- the herbs, the acupuncture equipment, and her proud mother trained her
in the arts of oriental medicine."

Leigh pauses, looks downward to where her hands are beginning to twist
around each other in her lap.  She picks up the thread of the story - her
tone becoming emotionless.  "When Leigh was 18, just graduated from high
school and beginning her studies at the massage therapy institute of San
Francisco, her mother introduced her to one of her colleagues Lyle
Wyvern."  Seemingly of their own volition, Ryan's hands move forward,
stroking Leigh's shoulders and neck comfortingly as she continues,
unconsciously switching from third person to first.  "He seemed so
genuinely in love with life, with humanity, and so sympathetic to me... it
was Lyle that awakened my gift, that showed me how to let the energy flow,
how to let it help me in healing people.  Over time, I fell in love with
him - he seemed to me everything that a true healer should be.  What I did
not see was the arrogance, with perfect hindsight I can now see how all of
his humanitarian works were just an opportunity for him and the world to
bask in his greatness."  Leigh sighs.  "He seduced me gently and we became
lovers... if everything had gone according to plan, we would have told my
parents and asked their blessing on our marriage."  

Her lips twist bitterly.  "He began to change, gradually.  It took me a
long time to notice... but there was a thread of growing cruelty and
callousness in him.  I began to withdraw from him, frightened of what I
was starting to see in his eyes, to sense emanating from him.  One day,
sensing that I was pulling away from him, he cornered me.  He was talking
crazy, about the Nephandi, about how serving the dark ones was the best
thing for us, the power, how only they truly understood him and his
needs... I pretended to listen and then gave him tea with a sedative in it
that put him to sleep.  I packed a bag of clothes and other essentials and
fled to my parents' house, planning to stay there a few days while I
figured out what to do."  A single tear trickles down Leigh's cheek.  "It
was a mistake.  I was out gathering herbs and other items my mother
wanted... when I came home, he had already been there.  The house was in
chaos, broken furniture, mom's herbs and equipment destroyed, scattered on
the floor.  I found my parents in the kitchen, mutilated, tortured
to death.  While I was kneeling there, crying, he stepped out of the
shadows of the dining room."

"We fought.  I thought he was going to kill me, but he still wanted me for
his own, for their own - killing my parents was his way of making a point,
he thought fear of him would make me acquiesce, and that by removing my
parents he took away the strongest tie to my old life.  I got away...
somehow... I don't even know how.  And I ran.  I called in the murders to
the police, sobbing, hysterical, they wanted me to come in but I told them
I was terrified, that no witness protection could protect me from the
psycho that had done that.  They cajoled, they threatened, I ran away.  I
was 22 at this point... I spent the next 3 years running from city to
city until I finally settled in Boston.  It seemed far enough away that I
might be safe and I had not actually seen Lyle since I fled him that
night."

"You know most of the rest... I set up a massage therapy/acunpuncture/
herbal medicine clinic, eventually met Ryan and the rest and here we are."
She clasps Ryan's hand.  "I'm glad we killed him.  It's something I should
have done years ago.  In ancient china, the dragon was a symbol of great
power.  In some myths, the dragon was the great earth spirit, a fierce
foe if you angered him, but also a loyal protector of his people.  I want 
to be the protector, not the destroyer."  Her lips quirk slightly.  "And I
don't have enough hubris to pretend to be the great spirit.  But I will do
my best to stand between humanity and those that would destroy or enslave
it.  I may not agree with all that you techno-types are about, but you do
seem to want to help humanity and protect it from our wars."

[Sean]
Ryan listens quietly and lets Leigh's words dafe off a bit, a sparks the
lighter and lits a cigerette.
"When I was 18 my parents through me out of their house...They had a
variety of reasons...drugs, sex, questioning the Mother church....the end
result was me gettin booted with $500 in my pocket and what I could carry,
namely one duffle sack of cloths, my bike and a drum."
"I crashed with some friends who set me up with a gig as a currier, and
kept the pot burning. Used to spend hours drumming and dancing and
fucking...it's was great. One of my buddies turned me onto the writing of
Spare and Ostman, a girlfriend intorduced me to tantric sex."
"Eventually I felt this power building within me, and one of the women
from a drumming circle I played with took me to meet some others like us.
That night when I slept I met it for the first time. It called
itself-herself Khaziel, and it was to be the beginging."
"Now, it's been a year. I have met Fate, and she has opened my eyes. I
weave the Tapestry, I hold the shears and the rod, the Skein is there for
my using....."
"Do you still think I'm not mad? I've cut the threads of two people
because I deamed them evil. I killed Lyle, and I killed your lover..."
"I still hear their screams you know, and I see them. The Dead. The one's
who had their lives ended because I was too naive and foolish to act. I
will not let that evil live..."
Ryan stands up and walks towards the door without the pretnese of the
cane.
"Gods I need to piss..." 
And he steps out of the cabin heading towards the outhouse.

[Avon]
Ali listens, leaning forward, clearly giving each of you her full
attention, or at least as much as she can muster in her current state.  
Her eyes show a fair bit of humanity, of empathy, of "humanness" as each
of you tell your tales.  At the end of Leigh's bit, when she acknowleges
the Technocrasy, she smiles - a brittle, fragile smile, and slightly
inclines her head.  Then, Ryan starts to speak and she turns her attention
to the man.  

When he is done, she leans her head back and half closes her eyes. She
comments softly, "So, you had teachers, both of you.  That explains a
lot."