Iron Station Savage Masks IC IV

[mmdeforrest]

November 1st
John
The angel looks at the papers in John’s hand before pulling a pair of dark brown leather gloves out of one of his pockets and sliding them on. “Wouldn’t want them to catch fire,” he mutters as he takes the papers from John and looks closely at them. After a moment, he looks back up at the magician. “You mind if I accidentally destroy them?”

At John’s go ahead, Harbinger peels off one glove and touches the one labeled with a Z. The paper smokes, but doesn’t ignite. The angel closes his eyes to focus before moving on to the paper labeled N. He’s brief with that one, then touches the one labeled L.

Harbinger grits his teeth as his fingers clamp down on the paper. John can see his eyes darting around behind his closed eyelids for several seconds before he forces himself to release the paper. At his feet, the L paper is quickly consumed by dark fire.

The angel blinks a few times and takes a deep breath, looking down at the ashy remains at the toe of his boot. Harbinger lets put a frustrated sigh, forcing his gaze up to John’s. “My visions are still… jumbled.”

He concentrates for almost a minute, trying to make sense of what he saw. Eventually, he nods. “I saw ‘Matteo’ sitting across the table from a woman. Dark hair, maybe Asian origin. She had some flower tattoos on her shoulder and up her neck. And behind her, there was a demon that looks just like our resident Greater Demon. His horns are little longer though, and his eyes are a different shade of red. They were obviously having some sort of meeting. I didn’t catch much of the conversation though. Too much… noise.”

“It’s impressive that you can access your visions as coherently as you can, given your encounter with the Stone of Vashuuna and the entities we are dealing with,” John replied before he sighed. “I’m sorry to hear they are meeting. The Asian woman, based on all the descriptions we have, is Rin Mochizuki. She has been introducing herself as the heir to the Magatsuhi Empire—which is the titular position that Keith holds. The other demon sounds like Extat Prince Jerek, formerly of Vaskiina-ros—the demon prince who Rizaska Kisharha‘s student Isla had attempted to summon.

“Mimi:” John asked quickly, “were either Isla or Mochizuki’s names among the missing or dead in those reports?”

He turned back to Seraph. “My guess is that Mochizuki has used Jerek’s blood to hybridize Laura and was the unseen figure who summoned Zylas. Given the meeting you have seen, she and the demon possessing Matteo may be trying to reach some kind of accommodation. I had hoped they were at odds with one another. That is a guess, however, based on the connection between Jerek and the Cult of the Red Dawn, which had been identified by Aimee Balinski.

“Given the start time of Vibrato’s thefts, it appears that she is working with Mochizuki rather than the demon possessing Matteo.”

He turned to face Harbinger. “I would like to tell Zylas about this and get his insight, although I will understand if you and Seraph would prefer me not to. I did want to make that explicit as my kay’al obligates me to do so unless you explicitly forbid me from doing so. I would also like to get explicit direction on whether I should reach out to Dr. Riviera, given the current…complications that exist with me regarding East Side.”

John glanced at the puzzle box. “Speaking of which, let me begin to open this while you answer. It takes a moment or two to get to the compartment I needed to access for the particular item I wanted to ask you about.”