Why else do things other than a lark?

Beta'd by Sesparra

Carlos Ramirez wasn't exactly a heavy sleeper, even before he'd signed on for the White Council's Warden Rapid Response Force (thankfully not the proper Brute Squad, since they'd been destroyed when Simon Pietrovitch died, but sometimes the Council needed swords and needed them pronto, and that he could do).

That said, it didn't make him particularly happy to be waking up after only a couple hours of sleep to his phone ringing off the hook after he'd burned a whole bunch of magic putting down a Red Court strike on a Fellowship base in Yuma.

"Go for Ramirez," he grumped, grateful his phone cord was long enough for him to reach the kitchenette in his cramped apartment and start prepping the moka pot for some actual coffee and not the kind of motor oil that they served in the Warden breakroom.

"Warden Ramirez," came a voice from the other end, a voice that sounded vaguely feminine but was otherwise obscured by static, and Carlos figuratively perked his ears up. It wasn't that no one who had his phone number knew that he was a Warden, per se, but that out of the whole group, the only one who would call his phone and call him a Warden was Yuki, and that sure as hell wasn't her voice. "I need a favor."

"Who is this?" Carlos asked, pressing the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he tossed a container of pre-ground beans into the basket, then filled the bottom and screwed the pot together.

There was an awkward pause, then, just as he set the pot on the burner, the voice spoke again. "You can call me Raggedy Ann."

"Nice to meet you, miss Ann," Ramirez said, turning up the charm as best he could manage before coffee. "What can I do ya for?"

"I know the White Council coordinates with the Vatican on some things," the voice said, as he was pulling his mug out of the cabinet.

"Sometimes," Ramirez responded. "Why?"

"I need to know if you have a list of the Blackened Denarii currently in circulation."

Ramirez' mug shattered on the floor. "Say that again."

"I need a list of every known member of the Knights of the Coin in circulation."

Ramirez ran his hand through his hair. "Right, damn, that's what I thought you said."

"So, you don't have one?"

"Call back in two hours," Ramirez said, turning off the burner and scooping up his silver Warden's sword on his way to the door. "I have to go get it."

"Understood." The line went dead, and Ramirez wasted no time, stuffing his feet into his boots and grabbing the gray cloak of his office to settle about his shoulders before sprinting out of the building and into the desert.

"Aparturum!" he shouted, tearing a rift into the Never-Never and leaping through.

Hopefully he'd be able to get to Captain Luccio quick- anyone who called the Council about the Knights of the Coin either didn't know about their opposite numbers or couldn't rely on them, and he couldn't afford to roll those dice, not with the kind of lives that were on the line if the Knights were involved. He'd been a wet-behind-the-ears apprentice for the last time they'd surfaced, but Luccio had insisted that he see the aftermath, and… well. It hadn't been pretty, but he needed to see it. If nothing else, he'd been set on being a Warden even then, and they regularly were confronted with uglier in pursuit of warlocks, but it had also helped him keep his head whenever he ran into one of the Red Court "rituals".

If he could stop that from happening again, he damn well would.

Great. What was I supposed to do for the next few hours?

I'd barely managed to sneak out of the house after clearing out the guest room and helping Daniel straighten up the shed that Mom liked to keep the armor and spare weapons in, and I knew that if I went back home I'd get sucked down into the Chore Vortex that Saturdays had a tendency to turn into, so I wouldn't be able to sneak back out to get my hands on a payphone to call Ramirez back.

I didn't want to drag Harry into this, although knowing his luck he'd end up involved anyways, so bugging him was out of the question even if I wanted to, and I didn't think anyone would take well to me going down to a pub in the middle of the day, so Mac's was out too.

The best option, at this point, was hitting up a library, seeing if I couldn't squeeze some information out of somewhere, and I stopped by an OfficeDepot on my way to grab a notebook and a pencil (one of the good ones, the solid steel mechanical ones that I'd stabbed a couple of Fomor servitors to death with over the years) to actually get my thoughts in order once I got there.

The pedestals shimmered again, just as I was handing over the cash to pay for my new pencil and notebook, but thankfully I didn't have to deal with another knowledge download this time, and I got out of the store without more than a little bit of a side-eye from an almost gaunt-looking brunette browsing an aisle of paper cutters.

I made it to the library without running into any Red Court vampires or something like that- I knew they'd be in the city sooner or later to fight Harry for something or other, but I wasn't sure when exactly, so all I could do was hope that I was fast enough to get my crucifix out to drive it off before it managed to get its fangs into me. Fortunately, that wasn't a worry that was vindicated this time, and I sat down at one of the boxy computers.

I was… very out of practice, but I'd had enough typing classes in school that I could muddle through there, and while I didn't quite remember everything about researching on the internet, I could at least go through newspapers and census reports a lot more easily now than it had been when I'd had to hunt them down in person.

From what little I could find, the Red Court was still spooling up to war footing, with disappearances in both the world in general and Latin America specifically slowly ramping up as the vamps started turning and feeding more.

I didn't really have the memories of what else was supposed to be going on around this point to know what else to look for, since I'd been, you know, fourteen the first time around, but that was fine, since I'd hopefully have a line on the Denarians in circulation once Carlos got back to me, and anything else I could… well, I could probably do something for Ivy or one of the Council Members I'd remembered being receptive once I had the chance, so that was a concern for another day.

What wasn't a concern for another day was getting my hands on some proper focuses, so I spent the next hour or so sitting down on an armchair and sketching out different rune sets that I could use to properly attune a focus to be more reliable with my own casting.

Immediately, anything too big was axed- I hadn't worked with much bigger than a wand in the past, not unless I wanted to count enchanted items like the bag of holding I'd been refining or the wholly magical toy Jeep that I'd made for little Maggie, so as I was now I couldn't use too many runes or else I wouldn't be able to properly fit them on the thing. I also wanted to put the newfound knowledge of how to use a sword to proper use, so I put together a couple of arrays to forge into the blade of a weapon.

For a moment, I wished I could have gotten some of those lessons from Captain Luccio that she'd talked about every so often- while the Silver Swords that the Wardens used weren't nearly as hefty, metaphysically speaking, as the Swords of the Cross, they'd been a big enough deal that I wished I could have cribbed her notes. As it was, I was just going to have to muddle through from first principles, assuming that whatever it was that was feeding me knowledge wouldn't just drop the key to making, say, Coinspinner out of nowhere.

I paused, but apparently feeding the universe a straight line like that wasn't good enough to turn me into Vulcan, so I'd have to figure things out the old-fashioned way.

Before sketching out another potential sword idea, I checked the dinky little plastic watch on my wrist.

"Right, okay, it's about that time anyways," I said, closing my notebook around my pencil as I stood up.

By the time I made it outside and to a payphone, it had been just a hair under two hours, but I figured that Carlos wouldn't have too much of an issue with me calling a couple of minutes early.

He picked up much quicker this time around, and he sounded… well, like I hadn't just called him in the middle of a sleep cycle. "Go for Ramirez," he said, the weight of exhaustion he'd had earlier replaced with the tension that you'd expect out of a hunter in the wild: not quite combative, but very clear that he was ready for it if push came to shove.

Belatedly, I hissed out "kakusu" to provide the static effect that would prevent him from recognizing my voice in the future. "Warden Ramirez. This is Raggedy Ann, I believe we spoke earlier today."

"That we did," he said, slightly less tense. "Gimme a sec, gotta put you on speaker."

I heard the sound of motion, then a muttered phrase from Ramirez that I couldn't make out, before someone else spoke.

"Miss Ann," the voice said, and while I didn't recognize the voice, I could tell whoever it was was used to being in charge. "This is Warden Captain Anastasia Luccio. I take it you know who I am?"

I swallowed. This was more or less exactly what I was hoping to avoid by calling Carlos- if Luccio knew what was going on and where, she'd bring down the hammer on the Denarians, which would only spook them off. "I do."

"Then I take it you know why I can't afford to disseminate this kind of sensitive information recklessly," she said, every inch the towering Italian matriarch even across the country.

I had to push down the urge to quail under her attentions, even over the phone, as well as the distraction that was the pedestals glimmering. "I feel confident in saying that I do. I have no intention of going out and executing some form of vigilante justice against them, nor of breaking any of the Laws of Magic. I don't even need to act directly- all three of the Knights of the Sword are involved in the situation at hand, I don't have to do more than put my thumb on my scales. That would be… I would appreciate it if you were willing to share information about the matter, but I understand why you wouldn't, and I will find some way to stand in the way of the Denarians even without your aid. Your information would just… make it easier."

There's a moment where I'm sure that Luccio's gonna insist that I not get involved, but then I can hear a sigh from Ramirez in the background. "That's about what I expected, Captain."

"Young lady," said Luccio, and I bristled at the condescension in her tone but managed to hold my tongue, "you must promise me that you will be careful with this information. Not just who you speak of it to, or how you act upon it, but how you think it- some of the Fallen currently at large can pluck the information from your head, and they lack the scruples and fear of the Laws to prevent them from doing so. The White Council's relationship with the Vatican is already strained enough without them hearing that we are sharing confidential information with outsiders, and we cannot afford to lose their support during this war. Am I understood?"

As much as being talked down to rankled, I understood the situation she'd been put into. "I will do my utmost to maintain information security, Captain."

"Very well, then," she said, and there was a note of melancholy in her voice that I couldn't quite explain. "As of this moment, aside from Anduriel and Imariel…"

And that's that!

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