Quote from Indy on September 5, 2020, 8:57 pm

"That sounds like her. I don't know why she couldn't have sent me a treasure-map with an X-marks the spot," Jackie grumbled darkly as a sweet little old lady hobbled with her oversized and brightly colored bag, "She just loves her procedurals".

The woman exited the car, thunking the door shut with a solid thud.  She made it to the door in a few short steps, overpassing the old woman and taking the door ahead of her.

The interior of the bank was brightly lit and clean. The line wasn't long on the middle of a weekday, but what few clients were inside seemed in no rush. An elderly gentleman was telling the banker a charming story about his grandchildren- purposefully avoiding questions regarding his deposit form so he could prolong the tale - while a small child stole an armful of lollipops from the jar.  Jackie wrinkled her nose, unimpressed by the flavors of blue raspberry and pepto-bismol wafting like a bad perfume.

By a small mercy, she found one of the bank tellers unoccupied.

"I have a mysterious key," she waved somewhere behind her towards Sabrina, "And I'm guessing you have a mysterious 'safety deposit box' for me"

"Ma'am?" the bank teller blinked, confused by both her unruly appearance and brisk nature. The teller was no doubt comforted by the bullet-proof glass.

Jackie huffed, clearly annoyed, "Key. Safety deposit box"

"I'll need to see some identification, ma'am," the woman replied in a slow blink.

"Of course you do," the redhead grumbled, parcing through the contents of her bag.  There was some hesitation in extracting it, if she'd even managed to remember it at all - and that was the simple fear of what happened if a 'dead woman' presented her identification.  Would the helicopters swarm the moment it saw light? Would men with guns be waiting for her outside?

What was wrong with an old-fashioned pirate treasuremap, anyways?

She did manage to extract it, revealing a small, unflattering picture of herself from eight months ago on her driver's license.  She'd been hung over at the time. Also human.

The bank teller glanced to Sabrina, "And the key... ma'am?"

Quote from Kaqurei on September 12, 2020, 11:02 pm

Sabrina took note of the elderly woman, who seemed utterly preoccupied with navigating her way carefully down the steps... But, no, there was a furtive glance at Jackie as she passed. Sabrina didn't know why the glance struck her as anything out of the ordinary. But it did. So she took note. Then passed the woman and continued into the bank after her red-headed companion.

There was nothing at all out of the ordinary inside the bank. The floor and its contents and inhabitants were surveyed and catalogued within a few seconds, and the conclusion was satisfactory.

She kept on Jackie's heel, fearing perhaps that she might look the wrong way and lose her, perhaps... Or perhaps desiring to keep her from making too big a scene while they were there. Threatening the odd server at MacDonald's was one thing. Hungry customers did that all the time. Digging into the floorboards of a scrapyard dealer's office and rendering the man unconscious was another. At least then their victim had been alone and out of the way. This bank... Small and quiet as it was... It was more exposed, more public, than she would like. It would never do to have one of Jackie's trademark shenanigans here... If it could at all be avoided, however doubtful that was.

And so, Jackie had no sooner made her identification known than Sabrina slapped the shiny little key on the desk in front of the teller. "Box 219," she said, noting the inscription on the key.

Quote from Indy on September 17, 2020, 11:31 pm

The teller sighed, inspecting the identification with a trained eye.  She rolled it twice in hand but, finding no obvious faults, proceeded to type the information into her computer.  As her fingers clacked on the keyboard, Jackie couldn’t help but imagine it like weapon fire.

Jackie fidgeted uncomfortably while she waited.  Her attention went around the room, eyeballing the occupants of the bank with critical concern.  That old woman  - had she been stuffing hard candies into her purse for too long? Was that small child possibly a trained sniper in disguise? What if —

“Alright ma’am, I need you to sign in,” the woman passed a clipboard over and pointed to the sections of the sheet to fill out.

Jackie felt herself relax, however imperceptibly, to the lines of the document.  This was Melinda’s doing and she had faith in her sister’s ability to weave a tangled web of bureaucracy. She let the ink flow into a sloppy scrawl, which the teller inspected against her ID.

The woman eyeballed Sabrina with a frown, “Is she coming too?”

“Yes,” Jackie said a touch too quickly, surprising herself, "She's my... um.... sister"

The teller squinted at the two, not noting any particular similarities but neither dissimilarities.  After a moment she sighed, accepting the answer.

“Very well,” the woman said wearily, passing back the clipboard for Sabrina to sign as well.

Once complete, the woman curtly directed them to a door towards the wall. She pressed a buzzer on the other end, temporarily unlocking it so the two women could pass.

Quote from Kaqurei on September 28, 2020, 5:30 pm

Sabrina was surprised when Jackie quickly affirmed she would be going with her. True, she had accepted Sabrina's offer to come along and help in the first place, yet the latter had still felt somehow that her own presence was unwelcome and liable to be ditched at a moment's notice should the opportunity present itself.

Well, so opportunity came and went. Perhaps she should have waved as it passed by. Sabrina steeled herself for whatever lay ahead.

Sabrina followed after the woman and Jackie, though she gave pause before entering the room. Would the woman follow after with the safety deposit box key's twin? That would mean allowing the woman to follow behind them instead of lead them into the insulated back room... she gave the woman a cold two second appraisal. Jackie had already gone ahead. It would not look polite, but betray her unease, should she offer to go in after the woman.

So she did not. Instead, she followed after her red headed companion. Consequences be... Well, you know.

Quote from Indy on October 11, 2020, 6:48 pm

The banker lead them down a narrow hallway beyond the front desk.  Jackie found an unease crawling beneath her skin, although at first she could not pinpoint the reason. Yet at their arrival to an impressive, solid metal door, she didn’t wonder any further.

“Your safety deposit box has been unlocked with the banker’s key,” the banker said curtly, “You may use your own key to unlock the box, and inspect your items. When you are finished, please lock the box again with your key and knock on the door…”

The banker stopped speaking, although Jackie hadn’t noticed. She did notice, however, the banker’s dead-panned look and furrowing brow of confusion.  She had the look of a wayward babysitter asked to look after two unruly children who had not cooperated well at the instruction for bedtime.  The doorknob looked so far away.

“Do you have any… questions, ma’am?”

Jackie shook her head, chasing away the breathless feeling in her chest.  She shot a look to Sabrina, trying to see if the same ill fate had befallen her, but in her heart she knew it was only her. Not that’d she’d have seen an expression on the woman’s face anyways - even if the building was on fire, she suspected Sabrina would have had the same, cool exterior.

“You can enter, then," the banker said, not as a question, but as a command.

The walls were crowding in.. not for the last time she wondered if it was too late to turn back.  The door looked solid, impassable, the room inside narrow and cramped.  Her breath caught in her throat, dizzy and throbbing.

There is no fear, but the fear we make..., a distant voice rasped in her ears from the recesses of time.

“Well, burning daylight,” Jackie said finally, her tone bright and her feet antsy.  She turned the knob on the door, repressing the knee-jerk reaction to pull away like it was made of fire. She slipped inside, and before she could think better of what was done, rushed towards the box.

Quote from Kaqurei on October 11, 2020, 10:39 pm

Jackie was an interesting creature to observe. For all outside appearances and her devil-may-care attitude, every once in a while her real feelings and vulnerabilities would peek out from behind the curtain. This was one such moment, and of course it lasted only a moment. Sabrina found it... Disturbing. What had triggered that change, that cause Jackie to look, if even for a second, like a trapped wild animal who would just as soon peel backwards out of her skin as claw forward into the face of her oppressor?

Perhaps a nothing more than a phantom from her past.

Perhaps a trace, just below the surface of this situation they'd been beckoned into by this... Melinda... that Jackie was somehow keen on.

Whatever it be, answers lay only ahead. Inside that box.

Quote from Indy on October 12, 2020, 8:33 am

Jackie kept her eyes on the prize, not deviating her attention to investigate the room she was in.  She waited by the box and paced restlessly, recalling Sabrina was the one with the key.

"Hurry up," she growled, her skin itching against the very air of the room.

She couldn't look too long, or too hard at the rows of metal boxes that went up from the cement floor to the ceiling.  Had she done so, she would have felt breathless again. Yet in the moment of fixating on the one box, she could forget herself on where she was.

 

Quote from Kaqurei on October 22, 2020, 4:56 pm

Sabrina strode into the vault like an apex predator on the hunt. The wall of boxes ahead were all numbered, and the one whose number matched the key in her hand was certain prey. It may as well have been glowing for the way that it stood out under her glance, even before Jackie reached it. Yet, her own stride was slow. Once she entered the room, she stopped, putting her hands on her hips, and took a methodical appraisal of the lockboxes. A dent on the one marked 560. Chipped paint and rust on box 220. Menial details. But she took stock of everything, and with purpose.

It was not to find a hint or a clue from the room itself.

It was not even to torture Jackie's impatience, although such torture was indeed intricate to Sabrina's purposes.

It was, in fact, to observe Jackie. To see if her own demeanor would influence the itching fire in any way. Though Sabrina held no official rank in the pack, some part of Jackie was either submissive to her, or found the idea of taking responsibility for whatever was in that box abhorrent on some level. Perhaps both. This was evident by the fact that Jackie had originally given her the key and did not now seek its return.

She growled that Sabrina "hurry up". That, too, suggested seeing her as some sort of authority--to which she would rebel, but in whose presence perhaps she found security.

Sabrina took full advantage of it.

Presently she approached Jackie and the box, giving the former a look of some approval and the latter a look of some disgust. Then she opened it and retrieved its contents. The rustle of paper and cardstock dragging against metal, thogh subtle, was loud in such a small and otherwise utterly silent room. Sabrina drew a letter from the top of the stack in one hand and secured the rest in the other. The letter was carefully opened and inspected. An eyebrow was arched. And it remained arched, even as the emerald eyes below flicked to Jackie. Similarly, it was with a flick of her wrist that she presented the letter to her, and lifted her chin ever just so. The question would not be drawn from her lips, yet she expected that the answer would be drawn from Jackie's regardless. She crossed her arms and tapped the rest of the box's contents on her elbow, making it clear that these would not be surrendered until it was.

Quote from Indy on October 22, 2020, 9:46 pm

Keep the fire steady, and it grows. Hold it close, and it burns. Keep feeding it logs to burn , hold it close - and it explodes.

Jackie could not be satiated in the antsy movements of her feet and eyes, the mere moments Sabrina took to turn the lock of the key the span of centuries.  If Sabrina had intended to make Jackie uncomfortable - she’d achieved it - and yet not without mutual consequence.

As the deposit box turned ajar, Jackie’s eyes couldn’t help but look inside - as well as to shy her eyes away at the last moment. She caught the orderly stacks of manilla folders inside, followed by a single, impressive letter on top.  She balked at the invitation of Sabrina’s wrist - the gauntlet was thrown, yet for once in her life, she did not desire to pick it up.

The fire continued to burn beneath the surface of her skin, crawling and itching.  She rubbed her forearms trying to shoot away the pinpricks of nerve endings, yet to little avail.  The flavor of the room changed around her.  The metal louder, bright. The stale air holding close the perspiration and scents of those that had entered.

She snapped up the letter without thought, tearing the perfectly sealed wax-stamp and a formal looking script that addressed it to her.  Her eyes scanned the letter in a fraction of a moment before her first curled around it, crumbling it to a ball that fell out of a limp hand.

… The fire had continued to grow.  Less a suggestion, more an imperative.  She took a few retreating steps, leaning across a row of safety deposit boxes before curling up over herself. Something deep in her gut lurched, the greasy fast food sitting none too well.