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Infinite Consortium, Tuesday

Quinn was not covered in any sort of goo when she got to the shop for her first shift! She was, however, kinda sweaty and looking faintly pissed (which for her meant she was obnoxiously angry), holding what she was sure had to be the world's ugliest t-shirt.

"Does that Skywalker guy shop here?" she asked . . . the universe, probably, since she hadn't spotted Liliana yet. "Because this shirt is definitely cursed."

Welcome to Fandom proper, hon. You'll get used to it. Or you won't, but it'll at least drag you kicking and screaming out of your shell.

[open!]

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"Ahh," Liliana said, coming out from the back room. "I see you were voluntold this week."

She arched an eyebrow at the monstrosity that Quinn was holding. "I'm offended you think I'd sell something like that."

"Or that it exists at all?" Quinn guessed dryly. "Think we can feed it to the chair?"

"It's an ambush predator, not a garbage disposal," Liliana said. She eyed the shirt and stepped into one of the aisles, peering through the shelves. "How do you feel about playing with magic?" she called.

"How likely am I to lose a limb or die doing it?" Quinn asked in return.

"How likely are you to do something stupid like looking pointing the dangerous end at yourself or me?" was Liliana's reply.

"Trigger discipline," Quinn said, nodding faintly. "Necessary for both guns and magic. Got it."

Liliana came back out, holding a weird talisman in one hand. "Bring the shirt," she said, heading for the door. This was definitely a 'do it on the beach' thing; she had no interest in cleaning up the remains from the floor.

Quinn gave the talisman a little side-eye, but followed after Liliana, shirt in hand.

She had no idea where they were going. She was pretty sure the shirt was going to die now, though, and she wasn't about to complain about that.

Imagine, Liliana deigning to explain. Hilarious.

But then, it wouldn't take long for Quinn to figure things out, at least if she were as clever as Liliana assumed. They walked out the door, crossed the road, and were on the beach. "Set it down wherever you'd like," she instructed, "and here. Take this when you're ready." She held out the talisman. "When you've got it in a good grip, pick the shirt back up. Don't touch anything else with that hand, just the shirt. Any questions?"

Several, but Quinn hadn't exactly been the sort to always ask the questions in her head even before all the massacres and things, so she just followed the instructions and hoped vaguely that if this was going to go wrong she'd be able to drop the talisman and run before anything hit her.

She dropped the shirt to the sand, took the talisman with another bit of side-eye, and holding it out at arms length (skull pointed firmly away from both herself and Liliana, yes), crouched to carefully pick the shirt back up. Also at arms length. And not in Liliana's direction.

Liliana added the necessary mana to equip the talisman to Quinn. Immediately, purple smoke began to rise from it, curling in the air and writhing around her arm. It curled up one arm, around her shoulders, and sank into her other hand, fingers glowing with an eerie purple light for a moment--

And suddenly the shirt in her hand began to smoke. Then curl up and twist on itself. It was like watching a stop motion video of the shirt decomposing, even though there was nothing natural or organic in that shirt at all. It took seconds, if that: one moment Quinn was holding a shirt, the next, there was simply some wet gunk where she'd been holding it. The purple smoke vanished and so did the glow to Quinn's fingers.

"Well done," Liliana said, nodding in approval. "You can flick the rest of that off your hand, darling, it's inert." The talisman turned intangible in Quinn's grip and dropped to the sand.

It was a good thing it was that fast, or Quinn would have dropped everything and run the moment the shirt started smoking.

Instead she . . . flicked the goop off her fingers as instructed.

"Right," she said simply. "Thanks."

"Of course," Liliana said, bending down to scoop the talisman back up. "Questions?" she asked, heading back towards the store.

"That's a real human skull?"

Quinn was pretty sure it was.

"No," Liliana said. "It's an elf's. Or, at least, that's what the bone structure around the cheeks and jaw suggests."

. . . Okay, Quinn wouldn't have guessed that.

"How'd you get it?"

"This is just one branch of the Infinite Consortium, a mercantile organization that spans - or, well, spanned - multiple planes. It specialized in procuring all possible items clients could ask for, and every week, we get a shipment of something truly ridiculous or other," Liliana explained. "The rest of the Infinite Consortium no longer really exists - my ex crushed the mind of the miserable sonuvbitch that ran it which destroyed all the information needed to run the Consortium - just this kind of...offshoot outlet store." The relish with which she said this suggested that she really didn't like said miserable sonuvabitch.

For good reason. Fuck you, Tezzeret.

Quinn listened and quietly processed all that. She still had questions, though.

"Planes?"

She hadn't been a great geometry student, but she was pretty sure that just referred to, like. A flat surface.

"Planes of existence," Liliana said, being very used to this question by now. "Perhaps easier explained as dimensions, or realities. Different worlds, but not those separated by mere space, but the walls of reality. Everything you know of this world - your planet, your moon, your solar system, your universe, is all one plane. Ravnica, where the aforementioned mind crushing happened, is another, with it's own moon, and stars, and sun."

Quinn nodded. So a different word from what everyone else around here used, but a pretty standard concept by now.

“Do you know how the elf died?”

"No, why would I?" Liliana asked, looking at Quinn in surprise. "I certainly didn't kill them - I don't make artifacts. Nor do they have a lingering ghost for me to ask."

Quinn was pretty sure she should have a stronger reaction to all this.

She shrugged. “Just wondering.”

Death was cheap. This elf wasn't anyone Quinn had cared about or even known. Why should she care?

...Alternately, she should really work on reconnecting herself to other emotions than anger, but Liliana's not a therapist.

"Are you curious about what you did?" Liliana asked, tucking the talisman back on the shelf where she'd taken it from.

“Sure,” Quinn said. “It was like . . . speed-run decay, right?”

"Precisely," Liliana said with a smile, pleased Quinn had realized on her own. "When I used the mana to link the talisman to you, it gave you deathtouch. Almost anything you touched would have died. For the record, not yourself, that's not how it works, but better you be fully on guard. You killed the shirt, then I used mana to unlink the talisman, which is when it dropped off of you and you no longer had deathtouch."

“Deathtouch,” Quinn echoed, something dark in her tone. “Good to know.”

Was she thinking that she was maybe already prone to a form of that? Could be!

"It's very convenient," Liliana said. "Or, at least, I've always found it so. Anyway, questions? About magic, your position here, the island in general?"

Quinn thought for a long moment.

Her primary question today was “what the fuck is wrong with Anakin Skywalker?” So she just shrugged.

“Customers some in, buy something, I take their money and hand them a receipt. Right? Other than making sure nothing blows up or tries to eat me, this seems like pretty standard retail.”

"Basically," Liliana said. "If they have questions on how something works, tell them 'mana.' If they have more questions, they can return on Monday. If, for some reason, it seems dire--" Her expression suggested she couldn't foresee a time when that could possibly be true "--you can contact me on my cell."

She gave Quinn her number, and added, "You're free to help yourself to anything you find in the backroom, just leave a message if you use the last of something so I can replace it. And stay away from the lockboxes."

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Infinite Consortium, Tuesday

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