Bright Lights, Big City (ATTN: Theo)

~~Narration~~

Ruby had seemed uninterested in pursuing the ley lines that day, but Theo had already prep'ed himself for the task with spells, and was loathe to waste the effort.

Climbing into his rental, he took his map, and began the laborious task of driving, stopping, checking lines, and marking them on his map. Rinse and repeat.

After several hours, as the sun was beginning to set, Theo had come to several conclusions.

The first, was that Tyria was still a bitch, and this was going to take more than a day or two.

Secondly, there was some damn odd graffiti around town. Some, he had no idea what to make of it, but some had almost seemed Atlantean.

Third, somebody on a red motorcyle might be following him.

The day was weighing on Theo, more than he would have liked. There had been no shortness of boredom looking alone. The stop and go traffic had almost made him want to just give up the rental and go by bike. The car's AC convinced him otherwise though. He was feeling homesick for the cloudy cool of Germany. The American sky was expansive and beautiful but damn if it wasn't hotter than Spain and Theo wasn't used to it.
He made notes of the graffit and design. He'd tell Tyria of course. He wouldn't ask questions on it though, oh no. He'd look into himself, since he was fairly sure she would give answers anyway.
Theo kept an eye out for the motorbike as he got out to follow a line that flowed oddly around a side street. His suspision had him on edge this late in the evening. He thought about carrying along his spear. Why bring it if your not going to use it after all? It would look odd though, carrying a stick with a point on the top around the city. He wished he'd read American law to know if it was even legal.
"Oooa!" was his voiced frustration.
Theo opened the trunk, got out the weapon, locked up the car again and started walking along the line.

Theo walks down the alley, and notices some more off the almost familiar grafitti. Odd thing is, as the ley line he's walking strengthens and weakens, the sigla on the walls get larger and smaller.

He's tempted to take a closer look.

As he pauses to debate, out of the corner of his eye he almost sees something. As if, for a second, he could see a ripple of wind blowing.

Theo turned out of instinct. There was nothing there, but being on edge Theo wasn't about to just go back about work. He knew the higher laws of Forces could bend, twist and negate light and sound. At higher levels of understanding they could render someone invisible. Was that what he had seen? A small flaw in an invisiblity spell?
Of course by looking, he might have alerted them, if they were there at all. Lord, he was getting paranoid. Still it couldn't hurt.
Theo looked past the mundane world, seeing the magic the flowed and permeated everything, even with the Lie. He gazed for several seconds at the arcane energy, searching for spells, auras, and resonance.

Spoiler:

Theo's exceptional Scrutiny of the area reveals a very hard to see distortion against a wall, almost like an Aura. Another slight ripple, akin to a heat wave rising off of a desert road, occurs in the midsection.

As Theo continues to stare, suddenly there is a man standing there. He's your average Asian guy, dressed in jeans and a red leather jacket.

"You're pretty observant," he comments, leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

Within his mind, Theo ran through dozens upon dozens of faces before deciding he had not ever seen this mans. The part of his mind that was on auto pilot during the search of his memories said "Thank you," to the man.
Theo did his best to hide his nerveousness. The man was at least disciple level in one arcana and Theo didn't know what other talents. On some level though he was glad to have been right about being followed. It made him feel justified in a way. Of course now he was in a conforntational situation. But at least he had been right for all the good it did.
"May I know who you are?" Theo asked. A little voice in his head started talking about curiosity and cats, but Theo didn't listen to closely.

"You can call me Wallflower," he said with a slight shrug. "So what are you doing?" His eyes glance at the graffiti, then focus back on Theo.

Even with a sense of humor the man felt dangerous. Theo wondered if Tyria might have set this up as some sort of test.
"Getting to know the city better. Truth be told, I wouldn't think it enthralling enough to warrant such interest as you've shown." To say spying seemed accusatory and Theo didn't want to be that just right now.
Still he almost couldn't help himself following up with a "Was there something you wanted?"

"I was just trying to figure out if you were following ley lines, or the weird-ass runes," he replied with a frank tone.

And very suddenly Theo found he liked this man much more. Frankness was so refreshing after all the "subtle answers" he had been getting since Awakening. That wasn't to say he trusted the guy, but he did make him smile and Theo's tone was more polite.
"It's been slowly turning from one to both. I'm sure you've noticed a corresponce between the two while following me. Can't really make out the markings though. But then, I can't read normal graffiti without effort, no matter the language. Too much elongation, twisting, and overlapping of characters." He glanced at the warped script before going on.
"Did you make these runes, that you're so interested in who's following them?"

"You have to lean in close, maybe distort Space a bit," Vector shrugged.

Obviously this pencil pusher drew the short straw on mapping the city.

"I didn't make them, I'm trying to figure out what they do. I don't really want to find out the city is cursed or some shit like that after we go to the trouble of getting rid of all you Pentacles," he explained.

Despite a stated intent of what was most likely harm, Theo still felt unreasonably glad to have a plain speaking person to talk to.
"Well like I said, there's a correlation in line location and power. Haven't noticed much beyond that. Of course, I noticed you before I had a chance to study them in depth. I'd offer to ask my Order about them, but I have a hard enough time getting the time of day out of them.
Theo really wanted to ask who "we" was but he swallowed down the question and instead said. "If any were trying to get rid of me, I would guess have them first in fact. I hadn't thought I'd made a nuscance of myself to any outside my Order more severely than them." Theo gave a short laugh.
Was he insane? Hysteric? A prick of disconnected panic was running up his spine. This guy could kill him and he was making jokes. Theo kept breathing, trying to remain calm. He should be looking for escape routes and cover but he didn't want to take his eyes off the asian man again. Instead he conjured up in his mind the city map he had been using to map the lines. He found the street he was on in the mental image and began look for paths he could take if he needed to run.

Wallflower looked at the man babbling in front of him. No wonder he was out tracking ley lines. Couldn't be the sigils, he hadn't looked at them closely yet.

"Ask your Order, then, Atlantean," he said. "Do you always walk around the city with a spear?" he asked.

"It's getting to that point. I've insulted the head of my order to their face, there are people out there looking to "get rid" of Pentacles, and on top of that I've recently found out the city might be cursed by strange runes. I'm starting to feel just as justified in carrying a weapon as keeping a mage sight spell active."
Theo kept talking as he looked for a good way to escape and familiarizing himself with which turns went into deadends. Of course, when looking to keep a conversation going Theo often slipped into his habit of asking questions. "I'm curious, who is your group and why are they after members of the Pentacle?"

Wallflower looked at The as if he had just asked why the sky was blue.

"What's been happening to the Awakened?" he asked, changing the subject. "Calligan Wellmer, specifically."

Theo was pretty sure he had a good route he could take with plenty of options for change. Even so, out running a motorcycle wouldn't be easy. The path he’d figured went through several narrow streets before connecting to a more populated road. Maybe if he couldn’t lose him, threat paradox would prevent some of the more deadly spells within the Forces arcana. That of course depended on traffic at this hour. Theo would have to hope and wait for an opening.
The man was starting to ask questions Theo was pretty sure he didn’t want to answer. It would only go downhill from here.
“I don’t recognize the name off hand. Can you describe him?”

Wallflower cocked his head and looked at Theo. "I can't tell if you're the world's best liar, or the most ignorant bookkeeper Tyria could get her hands on." He looked at the alley exits. "Do you have anything to say before I have to find out which it is?"

The tension in Theo’s body snapped. He didn’t reply, he just suddenly found himself sprinting as fast as he could. Somewhere in the back of his mind something seemed off, but Theo didn't have time to think what it was.

Vector laughed to himself. It was oh so tempting to give the rabbit a little nudge to throw him out into the street at the end of the alley, but he just wouldn't have that good of a view if a car hit him.

Turning back to the wall, he studied the sigla a bit more before leaving.

Theo sprinted for near a minute it seemed. He reached the main street without sign of pursuit. He was shaky from the encounter and the hard running but he had to tell Tyria about it still. Should he call and risk a tune in or go to the museum and risk being followed?
He weighed the options for a second and then got out his handy to call.