Distinct Lack of Shiny

Who: Kaysen and Thom
Where: Thom's basement
When: Around lunchtime

They'd been at this for hours now, sitting down in Thom's basement, surrounded by books, looking for a spell that would work for what she wanted to do. Thom had taken what could loosely have been called a 'break', but was in reality going upstairs to make a plate of sandwiches and grab a couple of drinks. Isaac was around somewhere, he knew, but everyone seemed to have their own shit to do today, which was understandable. There wasn't the frantic preparation feel of the day before, at least. Food in one hand and drinks in the other, Thom headed back down to the basement.

Kaysen had three different books out, all bookmarked, and when Thom came into range, she held one up. "What about this one?" she asked, in lieu of greeting, or thank you for food. "This one sounds really cool."

Putting his load down on the floor between them, Thom sat, leaning against the back of the sofa as he reached for the book. He scanned his eyes down the page, then pulled a slight face. "Shit no - way outta my league. Ask me again in, like, a couple of years? Maybe I'd be able to pull it off." He paused a moment. "Though, yeah - it looks pretty cool."

Kaysen made a face, then grabbed the second book, showing him her next choice. "Well what about this one? This one has little like, energy balls that go along a set perimeter and zap things!" she said. She sounded pretty excited about that one. It sounded like it would just be damn shiny.

He knew without looking that there was no way in hell that he'd actually be able to do that. "Sq - Kaysen... Remember how we had this talk about the fact that I'm not great at this? That'd be like me asking you if you could create a dancing fire monster to go out and take each vamp down personally." He paused. "You can't do that, right?"

She made another face at him and sighed heavily, rolling her eyes. "No." she answered. "Not yet. Or like...ever." she finished. "Well what about this one then? This one seems like...simpler or something." she said. Though really that assessment was taken entirely out of her ass, considering she didn't actually know the first thing about any of this shit.

Wondering if this was going to be a total waste, Thom took the book. It wasn't like he'd been able to find that much himself - though they still had a few books to go through, so hope wasn't entirely lost. He looked interested though as he scanned his eye down the page, turning it over, since it ran to two pages. "Okay, yeah - this I could probably manage," he mused. It'd be tough, but he could make it work, he thought. Then paused and scowled. "Damn - except we can't get this ingredient here," he sighed. "Given time... maybe, but I'd have to order it in and you know what? I'll be betting our postal service isn't gonna be very speedy right now."

"Ingredient?" Kaysen asked. "What the fuck are we doing, baking cookies?" she asked, sulking. "This stuff is way more complicated than it looks." she added. "This sucks." she tacked onto the end there as she picked up another book, sighing heavily as she started to open it. "What can you do anyways? What good is this stuff if it's all too complicated or you need like...obscure eye of random reptile n shit?"

"Yes Kaysen, we're baking cookies," Thom deadpanned. "No, we're not - but spells have ingredients. Or, white magic does anyway - they're really big on ingredients. But never eye of anything - white magic's like the vegetarian of the magic world. Nothing that does any harm to anything. So all roots and herbs and fungi and things like that. And I can do small spells, or medium spells if I can follow them to the letter. Small stuff I'm getting better at improvising on. But we're looking bigger for this - if it's going to have a good enough effect, it's gonna have to be something that's at the top end of my ability. But, basically, anything you can go 'woah cool' at? Is probably out of my league. We're more looking for 'yeah, that'd get the job done'."

Kaysen rolled her eyes. "...you realize that's like...absolutely no fun, don't you?" she asked rhetorically. "Get better at this so there can be shiny things happening. Then there'll be cool factors involved, and like...I dunno. It'd be way more bad ass than 'let's see what meets the bare minimum'." She also was thinking to herself that it was weird. They'd been sitting there all day with these massively stupid books, and there was like...nothing in there he could totally do no problem. Which was just crazy and weird and yeah. He should know all this stuff off the top of his head, right?

She got a Look at that. "I'm wounded - obviously I have failed at my purpose in life to be 'bad ass'," he told her, dryly, sounding the quotes in his tone as he reached for another book. He'd never been overly bothered about that before, he wasn't going to start now. He was quite happy in himself to be able to do whatever needed to be done - he'd never been a guy that was overly concerned about shinies or appearances. Though, if he was honest, he would like to be better right now - because some of the spells he'd looked at earlier would be damn useful. But, he was getting there - he knew he was getting better at this.

"Well, you should get on that." Kaysen said firmly. "If you're going to be like...magic witch guy, then you should totally be able to do cooler things." Yep. That was her story and she was sticking to it. She paused as she found another spell. "What about this one?" she asked, in a bored sort of tone, figuring she'd get shot down again as she handed it over.

He rolled his eyes and took the book from her, only half looking at it. "You make it sound like this shit is easy, but it's... Hey, wait a minute," he said, sitting up a little and running a finger down the page, checking the spell. "Oh - okay, I think we might have something here," he said, grinning. "I mean, it's specific, sure, but we don't need it to be anything else - vampires, great, lasts til dawn, should..." his voice steadily dropped until he was muttering to himself under his breath, checking and double checking, head down, hair falling into his face that he just didn't notice. This could be it.

"Seriously?" Kaysen asked, sounding vastly shocked. She'd found something? Well holy shit. She moved over to sit next to him so she could see it again--not that it was going to make any sense to her, but she felt the need to look again anyways. Then she eyed him and poked his shoulder. "Yo. Mumble-boy. Wanna share with the rest of the class?" she asked.

He looked up at that, his finger hovering over the spot on the page he'd been at. "Well - you read it, didn't you?" he pointed out.

"Define 'read'." Kaysen said. "I kinda sorta skimmed it and it sounded vaguely like what we wanted?" she suggested. "You don't think I get any of this stuff, do you?"

"You might do," Thom protested, but only half-heartedly. "Okay - so what this seems to do is extend the threshold rule. You know we went over that whole 'vamps can't come in unless you invite them' thing? Well, this basically does that - except it pushes the threshold out so that rather than it being at the house walls, it's on the property boundary. Which means that the vampires wouldn't be able to come any closer than that street." And considering the size of the land around Thom's house, that meant that they couldn't even stand outside and lob fire bombs at them - not unless they had some kind of cannon or something. He considered there could still be a problem if they decided to start carrying guns, but honestly? The moment he saw that, Kaysen would be down in the basement so fast her feet wouldn't touch the floor anyhow.

"Y'know, if it's like that, we could totally call up people and like...have a bunch of us on the lawn playing 'let's pick off the vampire'." Kaysen said. Not that she knew who could do what, or even if they could get away with that. Though...really. Come on now. If kids couldn't band together an play super crazy death squad vampire killyguys on a judge's lawn, where could they?

That earned her another Look. "Like who?" he asked her. "I mean - who do you actually know who'd be able to pick vampires off? And don't forget that just because they can't pass the threshold doesn't mean they can't throw things across it. So, further back would probably be better than standing out on the lawn like a huge target..."

"I dunno." Kaysen sighed. "It was just an idea." Which sadly, apparently wasn't gonna work. Even if in her brain, it was all cinematic, and there was a big group of them, and vampires trying to close in and just being pegged off and set on fire and then other vampires would be set on fire from the first ones, and it would all be awesome. But noooooo. Thom had to go and be rational about it all. "You have no sense of artistic battle choreography." she accused sullenly a moment later. The only thing that clued into the fact that she was kidding was the little half smile she couldn't quite hide.

"I must have missed that class in school," he said, but his mind was very obviously back on the spell as he read it over again and then stood, crossing to grab a pen and one of his notepads that littered the shelves lining one wall of the basement. He flipped through pages of half written lyrics and musical scrawl to find a blank page and then started making notes.

Kaysen watched, not feeling the need to go through more spell shit, because it was all crazy weirdness to her anyways and she didn't understand the half of it. "Anything I can get?" she asked, half wondering if he was going to send her out of the room now, to stop annoying him while he did...whatever it was he was gonna do. Though she was kind of curious how it was done, even if she wouldn't say so.

"No, no - it's fine," Thom said, frowning and leaning forward, cross checking one part of the page against another, before going back ot making his list of what he'd need - he was sure that he had this all upstairs, but... There was no way in hell he was letting Kaysen into his room.

"Oh." Kaysen said with a heavy sigh, then she started picking at the food he'd brought down. "Kay then. I'll just...practice lighting things on fire." Because that was productive. Sorta. Maybe. In any other sense it totally wouldn't be but in her case it was! "I'll try not to burn the house down." she added.

He looked up at her, having to peer through a curtain of hair from his head-down position, not moving any more than a slight lift of the head, his concentration still very firmly on the book. "See you don't," he told her, with an edge of humour, then he dropped his eyes back down. There was a lot to do - to last until sunrise, the spell would have to be cast before sunset, and outside - which would be interesting. He'd have to find a place outside public view. And out of the rain - damn. This was going to take some doing.

And there was Thom, in totally absorbed into his...whatever the hell. "Okay! You go do whatever it is you're gonna be doing, and I'll go do whatever." she said, dismissing herself because he was obviously not paying attention anymore. But hey. They'd found something!! So, awesome, if it worked. "Um...lemme know if I can help or something." she added a little hesitantly. She didn't think she could...or that he'd even say if she could, but she wanted to offer anyways.

"Uhhuh," Thom muttered, but she'd lost him totally now, he was gone - and as long as she didn't do anything like try and wander off or suggest anything dangerous at all, she wouldn't get his attention back.

Rolling her eyes, she started to walk out. "Later." she said, before disappearing. Off to go find candles. She had her lighter! She just needed candles. And she was going to be making the flame jump between the two of them today if it killed her! Only not, because it totally wouldn't. But she was gonna try really hard, so that if Thom didn't fuck up his end--she wouldn't fuck up hers.