beccasavage

[beccasavage]

ransomhazard​:

This whole thing is already ideal just from the reaction he gets from Becca when she hears his unless. The grin on her face like he’s doing something big for her, when this is just a no brainer, and of course, he would do anything he could to make this party exactly as perfect as she imagines it could be, and more, if he can. In another life, he probably could’ve been a party planner; hell, doesn’t sound like a half bad retirement plan, really, since he really has no intention of ending up one of those aurors who sticks around until he’s old and grey and can hardly even handle fieldwork anymore.

It’s easy to grin back at her, put a hand over his heart as she calls him the literal worse person. “Thank you, I try very, very hard for that title, I appreciate the recognition,” he says.

And now comes the real fun, the planning the perfect night, finding all the right ways to make her dreams for a twenty-first birthday party to come true. It’ll be nice, having a distraction from everything that’s been going on around them all lately, the very real danger they’re all facing, worrying that he could wake up missing someone else. Ransom is more than ready to throw all his focus into this right now, even better if it makes Becca happy.

“Of course, it does, it’d be stupid not to take advantage of the timing. No costume, no entrance; none of that half-assed bullshit people try to pull. I love glitzy, I love glam, it’s fucking Vegas, it has to be glitzy. You have your costume picked out? The atmosphere should follow your lead, not the other way around.”

.

Ransom gets this look in his eye when he’s focused on something. She’s seen it like dozens of times, when he’s working on a case, when Mal’s said something spicy and he’s trying to come up with a good comeback. A certain determination that lights up his whole face. He’s got that now, and she’s thrilled about it: all the better for her if a rich, flashy former club owner decides to make her party his project, especially because she knows Ransom won’t be the type to take too much control and end up doing something she totally fucking hates. Especially when it sounds like they’re already on the same page.

     “Of course I have a costume picked out, Hazard. It’s October already. I’m not an amateur,” she jokes, nudging his shin with the toe of her boot again, rolling her eyes. She’s actually really excited about her costume, has it all put together and hanging in her closet already, has tested the makeup, like, six different times. “There’s this super old no-maj movie, Romeo + Juliet? Anyway, there’s a big costume party in it, and Juliet wears this amazing white dress and angel wings? So, that’s what I’m going for.” 

     “I have a guest list and everything too. Some of my Ilvermorny friends, some people from the Academy...” she glances around the bullpen for a second, eyes landing on a few particular coworkers. “Some people from here, but I swear to god if Eris Hattori shows up I want to watch him get denied at the door.” 

[beccasavage]

crowfq​:

He lets himself feel light, feel amused for the most part. It would be nice to just settle in to this, a day with Becca beside him if nothing else, even if the case clearly wasn’t anything too exciting for them. He’s sure that Becca would have iked something more, something that would have set her apart from the rest of the pack as a lead. But she would do well, and this would be another tick mark next to her name. It would take her far, he was sure of that much. 

He slips his own telekit into his back pocket, badge in the inside one of his denim jacket. Pretty much everything he needs in life, with his wand in its holster and his wards in perfect order. 

He looks around the neighborhood when they arrive. It seems so utterly normal. It seems like one of those perfect places that No-Maj people like to live in. He follows slightly behind Becca as he looks, finds the address of the man whose home had been broken in to. The hair at the back of his neck stands up just slightly, the result of a passing breeze, and he nudges Becca back when she bumps into him. He shoots her a smile, folds his hands behind his back and gives her a wink, as if to tell her in silence that she’s going to do amazing here. 

The woman who answers the door smiles at him. She looks like a kind sort, with a softness around the eyes. She looks like she’s thinking for a second about how young they are, as well. And they are, kind of, the kids that get sent out to mop up the easy stuff. “Of course, honey. Come right inside. I wasn’t sure anyone was gonna be wanting to follow up any further on all of that, but I’m glad you’re here. Could be messy stuff, you know?” She says, as she leads them inside and toward the kitchen. “Can I get you anything to drink while you ask your questions? I just made some lemonaide, if you’re interested.” 

“Oh, I’ll take some.” Crow says, letting himself be young, letting himself give the woman one of his most charming smiles. Her eyes crinkle when she smiles back, getting a glass for the both of them.

“It’s really a little scary, you know? The idea of someone prowling around there and using magic to break in to people’s houses. I can’t believe that I even spotted it. Makes you worry that some poor no-maj might have seen it happen.” 

On a worse day, she might take the lemonade offer as a slight—some old lady being dismissive about how young she and Crow are. But not today. Their witness doesn’t say anything about how young they are, when she answers the door, or when she shows them the kitchen table and slides two glasses of lemonade across the table to them and sits down across from them. She doesn’t take a sip, instead taking a second to look out the window next to the table—almost certainly the window from which Mrs. Papadopolous witnessed the crime, if this view is anything to go off of: she can see the backyard, and then behind it, through a loose chainlink fence, another backyard and the back of a house that must be the one that was broken into, its second-floor window. There’s no broken glass or anything, but their perp had used magic, so of course there wasn’t. 

     “It sounds really concerning,” she replies, nodding in sympathy. It is: it’s a huge breach of the Statue of Secrecy. On top of that, it seems... wrong, somehow. What would someone with magic want, breaking into a no-maj’s house. There were easier ways to use magic to get money, so it couldn’t have been to steal something of value. Which, thankfully, makes it unlikely that whoever it was might show up to try to break into someone else’s house, since they were almost certainly targeting a specific house rather than a random one. “Would you mind showing us exactly where you were, and what you saw?”

      “Of course,” she responds, and turns her chair a little so they’re all facing the door. “I was sitting in the chair you’re in now, having a cup of tea before bed. It must have been around a little past midnight. I work the night shift, so I never get home before eleven. And I saw a dark, indistinct figure come around from the front of the house, from the street, just there. It was pretty dark. Most of the houses on the street have automatic lights, on motion sensors? But that one doesn’t; I remember the dog there used to set it off all the time, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night when it came on, but he must have disabled it a few months ago, because it hasn’t come on since.”

      “Anyway, I thought maybe it was just the owner of the house, so I turned back to my tea, and the ebook I was reading, and then I saw it out of the corner of my eye—something levitating. Whoever it was had gotten in through the window before I made out any real details, but I immediately put my shoes on and rushed out the front door. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to go through the backyard, except that I don’t think I could get over that fence if I tried. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t wake the whole neighborhood, just in case someone else saw anything magic.”

[beccasavage]

She's ethereal

[beccasavage]

ransomhazard​:

He can see her perk up at the mention of her birthday present, because of course she does, he knows what his daughters are like, what she’s like, and half the fun of anything like this is all the teasing that comes before agreeing. Hell, that’s half the fun of most anything for him. And he can already imagine what she’ll probably do to try to bribe him into telling her what he’s gotten her already over the next few weeks, but presents are one of the few times he’s actually good at keeping quiet. The payoff is too good, the satisfaction of watching someone open a surprise that he’s picked out specifically for them, he’s always loved that sort of thing. One of the many reasons he’s grateful for the financial side of his well being, the ability to give anyone he cares about whatever they could want for birthdays, parties, no occasion at all but he saw something that reminded him of someone. Birthdays are his favorite.

To her credit, though, she doesn’t get sidetracked by that temptation offered, instead very clearly filing that away for later. There’s still the party to deal with, after all, and the grand favor she’s asking.

Ransom looks at her thoughtfully, as if considering the unless. Not that he actually had something specific in mind when he said it, anyway, but there are plenty of options here to just contribute to the night, help make it even better.

“Unless you let us help you do some planning,” he says finally, leaning forward, too. “I’m sure Clem would love to DJ for you, Sage could get some of her Cirque du Soleil friends to entertain, set the mood. I’d be happy to play your…master of ceremonies, of sorts, make sure things stay on track while you kids have a grand ol’ time. Of course, the vibe of it all, the aesthetic, anything you want for the party, that’s up to you, guest of honor, but closing the club down on one of the busiest weekends of the year, well, I still want to have my fun, too.”

.

The anticipation is literally going to kill her if Ransom draws it out any longer, the dickhead. She’s half ready to pull out the big guns and go find Mal to help her convince him, when he finally gives in and answers—god, she’s torn between kicking him in the shin underneath their shared desk for making her think he was actually going to make her do something and springing up from her seat and hugging him until he can’t breathe anymore.

She settles for somewhere in the middle, breaking into a wide grin and replying, “Oh my god, Ransom, you’re literally the worst person I’ve ever met.” 

It’s honestly a hundred times better than she’d expected. Of course she would have wanted Clementine to DJ anyway, because Clementine was the best, and of course it wouldn’t have felt like a party without the rest of the Hazards there—Piper and Paige were pretty close to the top of any guest list she made anyway—but there’s something grandiose about the whole thing, as Ransom frames it, that feels like so much more than she would have aimed for. It sounds... fucking perfect, honestly. It sounds incredible. 

     “I mean, it has to be a costume party. That’s just tradition. When your birthday’s basically Halloween, you have to embrace that immediately. But—okay, what do you think about something really glitzy?” 

[beccasavage]

auroraprilmonday​:

She’s a bit relieved when Becca comes up empty handed, simply because she’s not sure just how much more of this she can process. She’d always had the suspicion that Hattori had been part of this mysterious group she’d so often heard Marleigh go on about, but suspecting it and having fairly decent hard proof of it were two very different things. 

As Becca heads to the conference room she takes the extra moment to calm herself. She was the oldest here, the more level-headed, she needed to be the stronger of the two of them for now. Once Becca shuts the door, she stands, slipping back into a role that makes her chest ache a little- the role of the big sister. Now more than ever she’s grateful that Max didn’t follow the others and find a way onto the squad. She’s not sure if she could cope as well with one more person to look after, especially when that other person was someone who occupied such a large part of her heart. 

“I know,” she breathes, nodding as she clicks the door shut behind her, already assuming Becca had protected the room against outside listeners. She still needs to think for a moment longer, to get a better idea of just what all this could mean. Resting her hands on her hips, she paces back and forth briefly, chewing on her bottom lip as she works out the details in her head. 

“Langer is part of Appius- that we know for a fact,” she says out loud, figuring it’d be better to voice her thoughts, “Hattori- is looking like a strong candidate at this point. But-” she pauses as she stresses the word, and looks over to Becca, “if they’re both loyal to Appius then why look into all those old cases of Langer’s. When Marleigh and your mom were looking into all of this, Appius was investigating other people, not their own members. I mean, they usually trust one another to the point they frequently use multiple members to work towards the same goal- like the Scotland mission or Martin Hattori’s election.” 

She wasn’t trying to suggest one of them wasn’t Appius here, the fact that so much cloak and dagger was going on, was enough evidence to show they both were. It was the loyalty that she was putting into question. 

“Hattori doesn’t trust Langer- but why?” 

.

She tries her best to focus on what April’s saying, tries her best to shut out the angry, jealous part of her mind telling her to go back there and take the file with her dad’s name on it away, so Hattori can’t have it. It’s a childish instinct, and if she knows anything about Appius from everything her mom’s told her, it’s that childish is the one thing she can’t afford to be, here. This many-headed monster would be quick to outsmart her the second she let her guard down, and she wouldn’t be the only one who ended up hurt if she did. 

     “Emmy talked to Langer, a few weeks back, when they were working on the Squib Relations case together. She said Langer asked to speak with him alone, at the end of it, and by the time he caught up with Emmy he looked... bad. I don’t know. I wish I’d been there, I feel like I only know, like, five percent of what’s going on and I hate that. But whatever happened, he was pretty shaken up by it.”

She shakes her head, takes a second to pace around the perimeter of the conference room, trying to pull her thoughts together. 

     “Whatever it was, though, she didn’t seem susper subtle about him being a part of it. I just can’t figure out whether she was trying to warn Emmy about him or if she was trying to warn him about us.” 

Because, looking back at all of that—what was more dangerous to Appius than them? The angry, bitter kids of a whole Squad of aurors that Appius had fucked over. She’d learned it all from her mom, Emmy had inheritted her dad’s pain, and she knows that Marleigh never would have let April become an auror if they didn’t think she was informed enough not to get fucked over by Appius the way they had. Even Aster, as much as Becca doesn’t want to think of them being on the same side. Maybe Langer thinks that them, this squad, is a legitimate threat to Appius, and wanted Hattori to be warned what he was getting into. And maybe, if that’s what Langer things, they are.

[beccasavage]

crowfq​:

Becca’s energy is an infectious thing. It always has been. If anyone could ramp him up and get his energy flowing, it was Becca Savage. They were made of the same stuff, the same interests and the same same thought process. Thrilled by the same things, saddened by simmilar situations. Kes said they were some kind of big positive energy feedback loop, and that it wasn’t always a good thing. But Crow didn’t see how it could be bad, when it meant that they had found some kind of home inside each other, when they were as close to soulmates as anybody could truly get. It had been so strange and so wrong to be without her, unable to follow her lead or bounce ideas off of her. Some stupid, selfish part of Crow had been so hurt and so angry that they were placed on different squads in the first place, and now that part of him wondered if everything would have been better – brighter, less traumatic – if Becca had been with him the whole time. The universe must have been punishing him, somehow, for thinking that he could make it through the world without her.

He finds himself grinning, lets out a laugh. “Please, don’t. You’ll give Officer Handsome the wrong idea.” With a wink and a small shake of his head. He leans over as it all comes out, and watches as Becca writes, reads the words that are scribbled down on her page. It all makes sense, all seems like a good thing to watch out for. He ends up nodding his head. 

“Nosy neighbor first for sure. No one has more interesting information at their disposal than a gossipy neighborhood busybody. That’s what dad always says, about Old Lady Irene across the street.” It was why Hades brought her freshly baked cookies every week, and sat with her to drink tea. Because she told him everything that was going on with everbody else, because it meant that he was her favourite and she would gossip less about him and his hoard of eccentric children. 

He pushes his seat back, holds out a hand for her. “Seems like one of those cases we just need to jump into, Beck. No more notes, lets go investigate.” 

Officer Handsome. Ugh. She loves Crow and supports him and respects his terrible taste and his terrible choices, but he really deserves better than that guy.  She almost says something, but it doesn’t feel like the time: they’ve got a case to solve, after all, the bitching about Dante Vitale can wait for after work, when they inevitably go have celebratory drinks to reward themselves for a case well done.

     “Yeah, yeah, don’t be so impatient,” she says, rolling her eyes, scooping the file and her pink pen and everything else she needs into a bag and grabbing her coat off the back of her chair. She picks her telekit up last, putting it in her jacket pocket where she can get to it easily, and then puts a hand on her hip, turning back to Crow. “You ready?”

They apparate to San Bernardino, to a park near the neighborhood in question, and take a few minutes to walk over to their nosy neighbor’s house, getting a feel for the layout of the neighborhood. It’s a pretty standard no-maj suburb, a bunch of similar looking houses, a bunch of winding streets that wrap back around one another so every backyard faces up against someone else’s backyard. One of those vaguely claustrophobic places in its repetitive sameness. 

She steps up to the right door, when they get there, and knocks, bumping Crow’s shoulder with her own as they wait for someone to come to the door and answer it. There’s a bubbling kind of excitement in her stomach, butterflies. Excitement and determination, to do as good a job as she can, to prove she’s earned this. 

     “Ms. Papadopolous?” she says, when the door opens and a woman in her late 40s looks out, expectantly. “I’m Becca Savage, and this is Crow Falconer-Quinn, from the Pacific Squad. We’re here about the break in you witnessed. Would you mind if we came in?” 

[beccasavage]

ransomhazard​:

When she had started on the squad, he had made a big deal about mourning the loss of his solo desk situation, any previous deskmates he’s had moving of their own accord out of sheer annoyance, but he really couldn’t ask for someone better sitting across from him. He’d been vaguely aware of her already, just like he tries his best to be vaguely aware of all of his daughters’ friends, but it’s easier said than done, when there’s so many of them, and friend groups seem to change with the girls so often. Becca Savage, though, has always been a name that stuck out, of course, just like Savage sticks out pretty much anywhere it crops up. He had assumed she’d be just like what he saw of her parents years ago, and what he knows about her mother now, and she is clearly her parents’ daughter, but she’s also a twenty year old in 2021, so, you know, very much not the same.

Just as intelligent, but much more entertaining. 

So he makes a big show of listening closely, sipping on his coffee as he regards her, as she mentions her birthday. And then he makes a big show of surprise, as if he didn’t know her twenty-first approacheth. Ransom keeps his mouth shut for once, though, letting her get through her request. A request that isn’t actually a surprise, all things considered, but is still flattering, that she would want to have her party at the Dark & Stormy when he’s well aware Vegas isn’t exactly most people’s taste in the office.

Ransom is sure she probably realizes he’s not going to say no. He probably couldn’t say no to her if he tried, in the same way he’s never been very good at saying no to his daughters. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to have fun, though.

“Hold on, back track for a second,” he says with a frown, holding his free hand up. “You’re not twenty-one? What the fuck? I’ve seen you in the club before with the Blondies, I cannot believe it, my own deskmate, pulling the wool over my eyes.” Mock incredulity, and then a slow exaggerated realization.“Wait, does this mean Paige and Piper aren’t twenty-one either? Wow, no wonder they’re always so happy when I buy them drinks…”

He shakes his head, takes another sip of his coffee, before sitting up straight finally. “Kidding. Already have part of your birthday present, actually,” he admits. “The night before Halloween, though, that’s a tough one, kid. You know Halloweekend is big. Don’t know if even I could convince the girls to close it for a private event, unless…”

.

She rolls her eyes at his joke. Of course he knows she’s not twenty one, because she’s three months older than Paige and Piper are, and he’s seen her fake ID, the one Marleigh got her for her sixteenth birthday. It’s a terrible ID, it looks nothing like her, but it’s charmed so that no-majs don’t question it, which works well enough until you go to a wix bar or club, and then you have to hope no one’s paying too close attention, which, once you turn eighteen, almost no one ever is. She can tell Ransom’s saying it to fuck with her, taking his time getting to the point, drawing it out excruciatingly to get back at her for... something, probably. Or just because he thinks its funny, which, yeah, he thinks everything he says is funny.

But then he mentions her birthday present and she can’t help but light up a bit, excited. She wonders, briefly, if she can swindle him into telling her what it is early—not because she wants to know that much, she loves a surprise, but just to see if she could.

But first things first. A party to plan. She needs to persuade him to agree to this before she starts figuring out how to sneak anything else out of him with her powers of super persuasion. And she’s still got two weeks until her birthday, and Ransom is stuck with her basically every single day at this desk, couldn’t escape her if he tried. 

So she leans forward a bit, on her elbows, across the desk towards him, waiting for him to go on with whatever he’s decided it’s going to cost her for him to give her this.

     “Unless...”

[beccasavage]

astermontero​:

She has to take a second to reign herself in from the flare up. The annoying burst of feelings in her chest, when she realises that Becca ditched her on her own case. It was so fucking infuriating, and childish, and rude, and unprofessional, and of course Becca would do this. Of course she would take something Aster was excited about, leading a cae, and twist it in to something else. Make it something bad, make her feel like shit for it. It wasn’t her fault they had picked her for it over Becca –– who had already gotten to lead one anyway. Ugh. She sits at her desk and she breathes for a few moments. Deep inhales and exhales, the negatives locked away in a little box. A leaf on a fucking stream, and she lets it drift off. 

Aster flips her hair over her shoulder, smooths out her face, and packs up her stuff. All of the things Cass told her were important to bring on cases, just to be sure. Her wand, her telekit, paper and pens and a voice recorder, pepper spray and spearmint gum. The repetitive motion of going through it all in her mind helps calm her down. When she’s ready, she lets out a final huff.

Becca might be a bitch, but she wouldn’t ruin Aster’s first case as a lead. 

And Aster wouldn’t stoop to her level. 

So she’s the picture of calm when she gets to the maze. When she sees Becca. Perfectly refined, perfectly in check, not a hair out of place. “Born ready,” She says, breezily. “Glad you’re as enthusiastic as I am to get working.” 

“I think we’ll talk to Hopscotch first, since we’re here. Get her account of things. And then head over and have a little talk with Voss.” She says, already tracking her eyes around the place, finding the girl who must be Eliza by the ticket stand. She barely waits before she’s moving in that direction, expecting Becca to follow her without question. It’s easy to get her attention, as she stands there, and she greets them with a warm smile. 

“Eliza Hopscotch?” Aster asks, confirming it when she nods. “Cadet Aster Montero, Pacific Squad. We’re looking to ask you a few questions about what’s been going on in the maze here.” 

She’s about to jump in, suggest that they check out the maze themselves to get an idea of what’s going on inside, when Aster steamrolls right over her and starts walking away, and now Becca’s the one rushing to catch up. Which, okay, maybe she deserves that, but it doesn’t stop her from waiting a second before she does, clenching her jaw in frustration, rolling her eyes. A three second silent temper tantrum before composing herself and moving on, because they’re not going to solve anything if they’re both pissed off the entire time.

Aster’s already talking to the girl by the time Becca catches up, and she only catches the tail end of the question, doesn’t even get a chance to introduce herself before Hopscotch starts answering.

      “Yeah, wow, I’m so glad y’all are here. It’s been the strangest thing,” she says, as she reaches down to a shelf in the ticket stand and pulls out a pink polkadotted notebook, well worn, its pages full of her loopy handwriting. “I’ve been writing down everything strange that happens that any tells me when they come out of the maze, since about the third or fourth report.”

She glances at them, and then at the notebook, suddenly looking a little embarrassed. “This was the only notebook I could find; I would’ve used my telekit but Brent and Nathaniel won’t let me keep it on me while I’m working, and I can’t always remember all the details by the time I get to my break and can go check it inside. Um... here—” she says, handing the notebook out to Aster, and Becca presses her lips together for a moment, pushing down the spark of further frustration that she’s pretty sure Aster won’t even let her see the notebook. “You can read through ‘em all if you want, to get an idea of what’s been going on.” 

[beccasavage]

auroraprilmonday​:

The files feel heavy as they sit in her lap, far heavier than they likely really were. She almost wants to take them all somehow, get the records of her loved one’s past out of Hattori’s grasp and whatever intentions he had with them. Looking down to her dad’s and Marleigh’s case files, she can feel her chest ache, thinking that somehow they were both pulled back into this shit without even knowing it. 

Looking back up to Becca, she accepts her phone with a nod, knowing what had to be done here. They were going to have to leave the files where they found them, so as not to risk Eris or someone even worse finding out they were snooping around. From everything Marleigh had told her though, she knows it will always be a risk they’ll get discovered, no matter how careful they are. 

After taking pictures of everything she could, she hands Becca’s telekit back to her, before returning each file to its original spot, hoping her kneejerk reaction of pulling out the few she did wouldn’t be what may get them caught in the end. 

“Do any of the other drawers have triggers too?” She asks, as her eyes dart around the room, looking to make sure the coast was still clear for the two of them. Lin makes eye contact with her from out her office door, but she doesn’t seem to think twice at the sight of April at Eris’s desk, as she soon enough returns her gaze to her own paperwork. 

“We can go to one of the conference rooms after we’re done here,” she offers, as she looks back down to Becca. She’s sure she has just as many- if not more questions she did, and even though she was unlikely to have the answers to any of them, she feels like it’ll help just getting it all out in the air and out of her own head. 

She scans every fucking inch of the underside of the desk, the wall along the drawers, but there’s nothing else, no other switches or latches. It’s possible there’s something more well-hidden than the latch she already found, but if he was confident enough that no one would find this switch, she can’t imagine him going out of his way to hide another one better. It’s possible, she thinks, that this one’s charmed, that there’s some spell that he uses to make the single switch change multiple drawers, but if there is, she doesn’t have time to figure it out safely, even with April as a lookout.

So, April looks back down at her, she nods and extracts herself from under the desk, looking around first to make sure no one will see her emerge, and takes her telekit back from April, quickly scrolling through the pictures April got to make sure they look good, seeing as this is the only chance they’re ever going to get to do this without some much more major risk. 

     “That’s all of them, I think,” she says, reaching back under to switch the bottom drawer back to its usual contents, and then dusts her skirt off, picks a stray spiderweb out of her hair, making a face as she does it. That’s enough sitting under desks for a while, anyway, because apparently spying is way less cool and glamorous than it sounds. 

She nods, and then looks over at the conference rooms—both empty, right now—before heading that way, casting every silencing charm she can think of while she waits for April to join her.

     “What the fuck,” she says, once April’s inside and the door is shut and locked. And then, “What the fuck. What the fuck.”

[beccasavage]

I didn’t call him dad

[beccasavage]

ransomhazard​:

Even he has to admit that everything’s been a little trying lately, no need for any of the big, bad news to hit personally with family to make even him worry, but that was without everything else, with it suddenly turning very personal, for different reasons. But there’s no sense in lingering on it, when he’s done all that could be done to keep his family safe, and plans to continue to do what he can in the office, too, keeping a watchful eye on the others, especially the younger aurors, even if that doesn’t really feel like enough.

All in all, a strange fucking autumn it’s been all around, which means he’s dragging a little, not as sharp around the edges as he usually is in the morning, as much an early bird as he is a night owl. What he needs is a distraction, or maybe ten, to feel like things are how they’re supposed to be. (Or maybe what he wants is the weekend to hurry up and get here so he can have an excuse to sit on Mal’s boat for a few hours.)

So Ransom’s not as early as he usually is, he’s just on time, even stopping to grab breakfast and coffee, but the moment he steps in, he’s hit with his name called by Becca, the sort of smile on her lips that he’s very familiar with, from having seven daughters of his own who are nearly as spoiled as her, too. And that makes him grin, because she really is a little bright spot in the office, a surprisingly entertaining deskmate, considering her age, her ambition, and most importantly, her parents, who nearly arrested him twenty-some years ago.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re about to ask me for something I shouldn’t give you?” he rolls his eyes fondly, as he puts one of the coffees and the pastry bag on Mal’s currently empty desk, before sitting down at his own, getting himself situated. 

He makes a big show of taking his time unwrapping his breakfast croissant, keeping his eyes on Becca, narrowed slightly, as if considering her words with grave seriousness. “Alright, I’ll hear you out, but just remember that officially I haven’t committed a crime in like a decade, okay? Not my scene anymore, so I reserve the right to pull a no comment on this one, and refer you to a different alleged criminal, depending on said crime. So deal, hit me, little Savage.”

.

She lets out a bright little laugh at his answer, because thankfully she doesn’t actually need anything illegal or criminal from him. She thinks Ransom’s whole long-suffering dad schtick is hilarious—and, okay, she is not going to psychoanalyze herself over the fact that the person she spends the most time with in the office who isn’t a) basically her age or b) basically related to her is old enough to be her father, she really isn’t. He’s just funny, and useful, and anyway he’s her desk mate and she has to look at his face all day either way, so they might as well get along. 

     “So,” she starts. “My birthday’s in two weeks. My twenty first birthday. Which, obviously, is a huge deal and, obviously, deserves a huge celebration. Like, you know, bigger than just having a bunch of people over to my apartment.”

She takes a second to watch his facial expression, making sure he’s not going to jump in and cut her off before she can finish, but true to his word, he is hearing her out all the way to the end, so she keeps going.

   “And you happen to own, like, pretty much the coolest club I’ve ever been to,” she says, and that part is a little bit of an exaggeration, but she’s not going to tell him that while she’s trying to ask him for a huge favor. And anyway, Paige says it’s way cooler now than it was when Ransom was in charge, especially when Clementine’s there. 

This is where the ask gets risky; if she just wanted to have her birthday party at Ransom’s club she wouldn’t even ask. If she just wanted to have her birthday party at a club, she wouldn’t have picked the Dark & Stormy. But... it’s an inconvenient night to want to throw a huge party, because everyone wants to throw a huge party. Which means she needs to pull some strings, and Ransom’s strings are the ones she’s got right now. 

     “So what would it take for me to persuade you to let me rent the place out on... the night before Halloween?” 

[beccasavage]

Pacific Squad office, Becca’s desk, mid-October, @ransomhazard​

October is probably her favorite time of year. Because October 1st, she gets to start looking forward to the end of the month, the suspense and build up, the month-long anticipation to the best day of the entire year: her birthday. At Ilvermorny, and then at the Academy, her birthday parties had been legendary, the kind of thing people talked about for literally months after. The fact that it happened to coincide neatly with Halloween was just a perk.

But this is her first year having a birthday when she isn’t in school since she was a little kid and her mom planned her birthday parties. Which means she hasn’t exactly figured out what to do, because she could just have people over to her fancy new apartment, but... well, she’s turning twenty-one, and it feels like it deserves a little something more special. 

Which is how she starts to formulate a plan, a plan that begins with her getting to work a few minutes early, making sure she’s all settled in at her desk when Ransom gets in for the day, sos he can smile her thousand-watt smile at him the second he comes in.

       “Ransom!” she says, bright—brighter than usual, both colored by her own excitement and by her attempt to play the whole thing up to make sure she got Ransom to say yes to what she’s planning on asking. “Just the man I was looking for.”

After four months sharing a desk, talking basically every day, she likes to think she knows a thing or two about Ransom Hazard. She did go to Ilvermorny with, like, four of his daughters, two of them in her own year. And now that they were deskmates, she spent nearly as much time talking to him as she did to Emmy, even if half of that talking was him trying to comprehend half the things she and Emmy talked about.  

      “So, okay, I have a question for you, but before I ask you have to promise you’ll hear me out on this. Like, no matter what. Deal?”

[beccasavage]

crowfq​:

Crow shifts, settling in to the moment. He’s glad, above all else, that he gets to exist in the same space as Becca. She’s always been a rock, after all. She’s always been someone he could lean on, someone who could keep him afloat when the waves of his little sea were choppy. She was dependable, and strong, and far better than he ever would be. Crow always felt like he was at his best when he could play to his strengths –– and his strengths were pretty much reduced down to following Becca around and getting in to trouble with her, for the most part. But they worked well together, and everyone knew it. They might not have been paired up as some kind of grand plan, but Crow was sure that they could do this and do it well.

The thing was, that it was like Kes. Him and Becca just got each other. They just understood. There was no risk of them getting caught up in some kind of silly disagreement, a differing of opinions. Becca would come up with the plan, and Crow would help, and they would listen to each other well. They had practically been training for it all their lives. 

And they could both think outside the box, which was always so much more fun than being stuck with a stuffy old grown up.

He watches with a soft kind of amusement as she picks out a pen –– of course, the fluffy one, he isn’t surprised. That has Marleigh written all over it. Crow’s favourite goddamn godparent, gives the best damn gifts. He hums out a soft sound, thoughtful, screws up his face with a show of it all. “Well, we could try talking to the witnesses. Checking out the neighborhood.”

“Seems like they’ll be able to tell us more than looking at any files with. And if its super illusive, maybe we can like, stake the place out. See if any creepers come by.” 

It’s so familiar, sitting with Crow like this. She thinks, sometimes, she does her best work like this. After all, this is what the Academy had been like, the two of them working through problems together in their cute little apartment in New Orleans. This is what Ilvermorny had been like, too, with Kes at their side, studying endlessly for tests and assessments in her dorm room or his, or out on the grass outside, or wherever they wanted to lay around and quiz each other. There’s been a Crow-shaped hole in the Squad since she started on it, and it’s only him being there that makes it apparent how weird that’s been, how much better things are with him here. 

      “Oh my god, a stakeout,” she says, feeling a little delighted by the prospect. “Yes, you’re one hundred percent right, babe. See what we can get from the nosy neighbor, the weirdo loner victim, then hunker down and wait for some weird shit to happen, jump out and get our guy. You’re a genius, Crow, I could kiss you.” 

She starts scribbling down notes as she talks, questions they could ask each of the witnesses they had in their file, other things they might want to look for around the neighborhood. Signs of magic, on the window, if the guy would let them into the house, this cool spell she learned from de la Cruz on a case a few weeks ago that would show any traces of magic from the incident to give them an idea of what might have been done. 

     “What do you think, nosy neighbor first and then this guy? I feel like we’ll be able to get more out of her easily, he sounds like he’s gonna be a strug, honestly.” 

[beccasavage]

Muller Family Farm Corn Maze, Idaho, a day or two after promotions, @astermontero​

She can’t believe it. Can’t believe that the world has decided to personally victimize her like this. It’s been four months and so far she’s managed to avoid having to work directly with Aster Montero, has felt blessed by the universe for it, and now some force of fate must be laughing at her, because not only does she have to work with Aster on a case, but Aster is her lead. She’d been feeling so good, news of her promotion—finally!—from recruit to cadet, hadn’t even been mad that Aster had been promoted the very same day.

But this. This feels like a practical joke or something. It’s so unfair. 

So, okay, maybe she’s feeling passive aggressive, when she sees the case file, sees that Aster isn’t at their desk, and instead of waiting around for them or checking the break room, just sends them a telekit message, picks up her stuff, and apparates ahead to get a look at the corn maze they were supposed to be investigating.

     Headed to the corn maze to scope things out. Meet you there, it says, terse and overly punctuated compared to her usual messages, boring and professional-sounding. But she needs a minute to collect herself so Aster won’t be able to tell she’s upset about this. Needs, at least, to not feel like she’s one step behind already, on top of her already wounded pride and all of that. 

She’s not there for very long, when she hears the pop of Aster apparating behind her. She’s basically walked a circuit around the place once, waiting for Aster before actually talking to anyone because she might be a bitch but she’s still an auror, professional to the end. She’s just getting a feel for it, the vibe of the place, has just finished her little circle and gotten back to the beginning.

      “Hey,” she says, as Aster steps forward, getting their bearings, and holds up her case file. “You ready to get started, now?”

[beccasavage]

auroraprilmonday​:

“You can thank me once we get through this without getting pulled into Lin’s office, or getting caught by Hattori,” she says with a small smirk, already having far too much fun than she should in doing this. She’s not certain just what they’ll find in his desk if anything- after all if she was in some top secret group of corrupt government officials and employees she wouldn’t go hiding her most dirty of laundry in a desk in a very public work space. Then again, maybe that was the whole idea. 

She can feel her heartbeat pick up once Becca manages to find the small switch, all but confirming her earlier suspicion had been true. As Becca opens the drawer, she holds her breath, her mind racing through a whole matter of possibilities of just what Hattori could be hiding in there. Once the desk does open though, she can’t help but feel slightly disappointed when she sees just a collection of case files- that is until she spots the names on the case files. 

“It’s….” she trails off as she leans in closer to leaf through the files to confirm her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, “it’s a bunch of case files- but old ones. Langer is listed on all of them- and her leads and assistings… they’re all people we know….” 

Checking around her to make sure the coast was clear, she starts pulling a few out, reading off the aurors on the file as she goes, “here’s one where she’s an officer with your brother Jim as her lead, another where she’s a lieutenant and my dad was her assisting, lieutenant again with Aster’s mom as assisting, captain now with Emerson’s dad as assisting, and…” she pauses to hold up the next one, “captain with your dad as her assisting.” There was more, plenty more, but she stops there, having gotten an idea of just what the pattern was. 

“I…” she trails off as she looks over them all, “what would Hattori want with a bunch of Langer’s old case files where she worked with our parents and relatives?” 

She scrambles out from under the desk and April describes the files to her, so she can get a look at them herself. And sure enough, it feels like every adult in her life is listed on there somehow as she runs through the list of names. Jack Monday, Ignatius Yaxley, Cassandra Astor-Reyes, Jim Norwood, Marleigh McMahon, Hades Falconer-Quinn...

Becker Savage. 

It’s so strange, to see his name written there—to see his handwriting peeking through on the corner of a piece of paper that’s come slightly loose from its paperclip as April’s pulled it out of the drawer, an actual, real, physical piece of paper that her father had touched, at one point, had written on, and she feels a sudden flare of jealousy at the idea that Eris has been reading something her father wrote, that he has some piece of Becker Savage that Becca doesn’t have, even something as small as this. 

     “That’s a great fucking question,” she says, voice quiet, a little cold. 

But that’s not what she’s here for. She shakes herself out of it, passes April her telekit, unlocking it as she does so that April can have full access to take pictures while it keeps recording.

      “Here, get some pictures of them, I’m going to see if there’s another compartment or if this is everything,” she says, as she does. But her mind’s still focused on the case files. On what Emmy had said, about how Hattori had looked after he’d had his private little chat with Langer—bad, she’d said. Rattled. Langer had said something to him that had fucked him up, and now he was digging up shit on Langer’s past as an auror, stuff linked to them. Which only supports her theory that Langer had wanted Emmy to know something, doesn’t it? 

She wants to talk it all through. Wants to rattle out all the contradictory thoughts bouncing around in her head, to Emmy, and to April, but she can’t do it here. They’ll need to find somewhere private, at some point, to talk about all of this without the chance of anyone walking in. And right now, she really wants to talk to April, because April’s the other person who will feel as weirdly about the thing she’s thinking right now, given how close April is with Marleigh.

Because what she can’t help wondering, for a moment, imagining Eris rushing from his conversation with Langer to dig up her past connections with all of their parents, the whole Central Squad from twenty years ago when all of that shit went down, is: was Langer warning him about them? Or was it something more unthinkable, something she can barely make herself wonder—was Langer, somehow, on their side? 

[beccasavage]

– The Puzzling Corn Maze in Idaho 

CASE LEVEL: One

POINTS REQUIRED: Fifty

OVERVIEW:

As autumn and the coming harvest season begins to settle in across the country, numerous autumnal festivities have begun to pop up alongside nearly every rural American stretch of roadway. One of these such festivities is the infamous corn maze, where farmers can bring in additional revenue for the season by transforming their fields of corn into intricate mazes all for the cost of a few dollars. These corn mazes can range from family friendly affairs to horror shows, only recommended for the brave at heart. Just this past weekend local wixen farmers, Brent and Nathaniel Muller of Cocolalla, Idaho, opened up their yearly corn maze which had been a local favorite for the last thirty years. 

Guests of the Muller Family Farm’s Corn Maze, can usually expect a fun filled afternoon, where they’ll be treated to a free cup of mulled cider or hot cocoa, a free miniature pumpkin, and a wixen maze like no other. The maze itself generally takes about 20-30 minutes to complete, and is well known for its dead ends that house dazzling Halloween displays crafted by magic. This year, was expected to go like any other, however that quickly changed after the first guests of the maze returned with varying tales ranging from the strange and bizarre to the absolutely horrifying. One of these tales included a family of three being chased through the corn maze by some horrific creature they can only describe as “goat-looking”, to tales of “corn children” running about wildly and stealing guests pocketbooks. Some guests even complained the maze took them up to two hours to complete, not because of its difficulty, but rather because something kept transporting them back to various and random points in the maze. 

The Idaho Auror Division, along with the Muller family, have made countless sweeps of the maze but so far have found little luck finding what precisely is causing these strange events. With another busy weekend ahead, the Pacific Squad has been called in to help solve the mystery inside the corn maze, before any further harm can be done to visitors or the family’s business. 

PERSONS OF INTEREST:

Brent and Nathaniel Muller: Brent Muller, and his husband Nathaniel, have been running the corn maze out of Brent’s ancestral family farm for the last thirty years. Both men are wizards, and have become well known in the area for their festive Halloween themed corn maze, as well as the barn dance they throw on Halloween night. It is the two men’s belief that a neighbor is behind the strange events occurring in their maze, as they’ve outcompeted them for decades. 

Shiloh Voss: The owner of the neighboring farm, and a rival of Muller’s business for decades. Voss operates a pumpkin patch and has been witnessed on several occasions complaining about the Mullers, mentioning that their habit of giving away free pumpkins has hurt their business. Voss also lost their entire field of pumpkins last year to a mysterious blight which they’ve since blamed on the Mullers, believing the men purposefully infected their yield with it. 

Eliza Hopscotch: A teenager who works for the Mullers as their cashier during the busy autumn season. Eliza is the one who many guests have gone to complain to, as she’s often found working the front booth where so many visitors frequent. As more complaints came in, Eliza began keeping a log of every incident that occurred in the maze. Eliza considers herself a bit of an amateur sleuth, and has been conducting her own investigation ever since the first incident was reported to her. 

CHIEF’S NOTES:

Because this is a wixen run farm, there’s no risk to the Statute of Secrecy, but we really must be diligent in finding out the cause of this matter. As of now, no one has been injured during these bizarre occurrences, but with it being so early in the season that could soon change. 

- Chief Lin

I’d use this Hopscotch kid to your advantage. She’s the first person every visitor has gone to so far for their complaints so she’ll be a good source of information. 

Oh and by the way, you mind grabbing me a mulled cider while you’re out there? Love me a good mulled cider. 

- Deputy Chief Harbird

CASE STATUS: TAKEN

| RPG HOME | PLOT | WANTED CONNECTIONS | OPEN CASES |

[beccasavage]

When Becca imagined her first case as a lead, it had always been something grand: taking down a smuggling ring, infiltrating a secret group performing dark rituals by moonlight, capturing a murderer on the lam. It hadn’t been, well, a break-in where nothing important enough to notice had been stolen. This was hardly even a break-in, just a dumb statute of secrecy case where they had to find whatever wix was taking advantage of no-majs by using magic to steal from them. Needless to say, she’s a little disappointed when she reads the file, her heart sinking from the elated feeling she’d had when Lin handed her the file and told her she was going to be the lead.

But Crow’s name stamped on the front next to hers is a balm, and she can tell she’s lucked out on that one, pure chance, just the way Harbird likes it. It may not be the fame and glory she’d imagined for herself, but okay, one, at least she’s leading a case before Aster is, and two, at least she gets to spend all day with Crow. The dream team. The dynamic duo. If everything they’d done at the academy is anything to go off of, they’ll have this wrapped up with a neat little bow before lunch time.

     “Pretty cool,” she responds, with a grin, nudging his leg with her foot, swiveling her chair around so she can face him too. “It’s the best thing to happen to me all week. Lin must be testing me for big, seeing if I can handle leading the most outrageous recruit on the Squad,” she jokes.

Enough joking around, though, she thinks, time to get down to business. She takes a second, hand hovering over the cup of pens on her desk, trying to decide which one to use to scribble down notes on her case file: the fancy fountain pen Camden had given her for her eighteenth birthday? The pack of pens her mom had bought her on her first day of work? The chewed up bic she’d stolen from Liv’s desk? Or—okay, it’s not that hard a choice, because her hand immediately gravitates to the pink sparkly pom-pom topped pen Marleigh had given her.

      “Okay,” she starts, because she and Crow have done this a dozen times at the academy, partnered up in every class. “Where should we start? What are you thinking?”

( becca’s desk, the office, in the week after the party i guess! @beccasavage​ ) 

Crow thinks that Harbird is definitely way more fun than most deputy chiefs are. It’s instinct to shift and catch the paper ball they throw out of their office, to throw his hands up in trimuph, as if anybody cared. He doesn’t really need the audience to be thrilled with his own reflexes, with the way that he moved to snatch it. 

He doesn’t need any help to be thrilled that it earns him a case, either. And better yet, a case where he gets to hang out with Becca all day. What could be better than that? They’re literally getting paid now to hang out with each other, to be the super cool best friends they always have been. He grins when he gets handed the case file, and grins when he opens it. A breaking an entering, where nothing was even stolen. It wasn’t the most exciting case in the world, but he was sure that getting to follow Becca around while they worked it would be fun. They were always fun, when they were together. And it would be another case under both of their belts, establishing them more around the office. He reads over it, gets the jist, and then does what he’s been wanting to do and gets up to bother Becca about.

“Okay, Becks.” He greets, the nickname rolling off his tongue without him even really trying for it, as it always does. He’s walking to lean on her desk, grin on his face. “Oh great and mighty lead auror, please instruct me. I live to serve, yadda yadda.” 

He pulls over a chair, uncaring of who have belonged to, and sits in it, body sideways to look at Becca. “Pretty cool that they paired us up, huh?”