centurion meeting 2: the return of the briefcase

Carter walked into the 8 AM Centurion Meeting, at, of course, 7:30 AM. He was wearing his infamous suit, back to his normal self after accepting he death of Ainsley, and what the sword of Mars was doing to him. He was wearing his contacts, this time, however, not his glasses. He was freshly showered and smelled like deoderant and lavender. He just got a haircut, rocking a new hairstyle, which was basically blonde hair on the top, shaved on the sides. He walked in with his infamous briefcase, and a copy of How to Influence People and Make Friends II: Acceptable Behavior. He opend his briefcase, to find a bunch of d*ck drawings and straight up vandalism.

"WHO DID THIS?" he shouted. "NO, WHO WOULD DO THIS TO HASSELHOFF THE BRIEFCASE?" he shouted in anger. He groaned and went over to make a cup of coffee, nearly breaking the Keurig.

Christian could hear the commotion in the Senate House, which was the first sign that things might finally be light-hearted again, even if only for a moment. He'd have to drop the news while he had Carter and Rowan in the same room. The Centurion walked in, sporting jeans and a dress shirt. It would probably be a good way to score points with Carter, Christian had figured. In his arm was a dozen or so vanilla folders; he'd lost Rock, Paper, Scissors with Corinne to follow up on incident reports.

"Good to see you dropped the whole homeless thing." He jested, attempting to make small talk. The last time he'd seen Carter, he was trying to kill him with that damned sword, and Christian wasn't even good at talking to the Virgos like they were real people before all of this. Sure, there was respect grown from the quest they'd gone on, but it was too soon to act like things were entirely different. He'd barely gotten passed the Davenport stigma, and he hadn't even told Rowan he wasn't going to be here for her trial, or told Carter that he was taking his little sister. Still, a well primped Carter meant that things were back to normal. If normal was even a thing without having painkillers.

"I'm not even mad. You draw genitals with excruciating detail." Christian was fairly confident as to who was behind the briefcase heist.

When Corinne walked into the meeting she looked around to see an open briefcase with d*cks drawn on it, Carter was trying to get coffee, and Christian was already there. In jeans and a dress shirt. Corinne stopped right in her tracks and looked between the two centurions slowly. What was she supposed to say? There were so many things racing through her head at that moment. The moment the images of d*cks sunk into her head and filled her brain with those images, she to get red in the face a bit. It was wildly inappropriate to draw such intimate things. Her eyes looked over to Carter, "That's some, fairly, uh, personal parts on there. You might want to close it." She said and then went over to her regular seat and sat down.

Corinne was wearing a pair of jean shorts and a light blue tank top. Her hair fell down in loose curls and on her feet she was wearing a pair of converse that matched her tank top. She propped her feet up on the table as she leaned back in her chair and turned her face to look at Christian. "So, what's with the dress shirt?"

Sophia yawned and rubbed her eyes as she walked through the door. She had never been a morning person, and really hated when meetings were scheduled for anything earlier then 10am. Her outfit showed her dislike of the time too, she wore a light blue tank top, fuzzy purple plaid PJ bottoms, on her feet she wore fuzzy white slippers that had purple hearts on them, and she had pulled her hair up in a messy bun because she hadn't felt like brushing it out. Her eyes fell shortly on her brothers briefcase, as she walked past him. "Carter did you draw ALL of those? Seriously, I thought you were better than this. This is just childish." She says as she took a small sip of her burning hot coffee.

Sophia glanced around at the other Centurions, before going to sit down at her normal seat in between Carter and where Rowan would sit once she got here. She opened her bag, the bag itself wasn't fancy, it was an old bag she used in middle school. She took out the piles of files that held important papers for her cohort, and then she placed a couple extra files off to the side, they were the ones meant for her and Christian's upcoming quest.

Carter rolled his eyes at his sister, closing the briefcase. "It obviously wasn't me who drew them. Why do you look like you just rolled out of bed? This is professional stuff, Sophia, you can't be wearing pajamas. Especially with the chaos going on around camp lately," he said, then looked at Rowan. "Speaking of which, how's Liam?" he asked in a softer tone, trying to not sound angry after the inappropriate pictures drawn in his briefcase and Sophia showing up underdressed.

Carter looked at Christian, taking note that he looked more formal than he had in past meetings. He couldn't possibly imagine the new style of Christian was in respect to himself- but then again, Carter and Christian had been on a more respectful friendly level after destroying the Sword of Mars. "Yeah, the whole homeless emo look isn't really me, it was the Sword controlling me. That thing was dangerous, it was eating me up. It felt my grief for Ainsley and was fueled by it. It's luckily destroyed now, so we won't have to deal with such a disaster again. But, man, if that thing could drive me to the brink of insanity, imagine what it could do to an average everyday camper."

"Coffee anyone? I just bought new K-Cups."

Christian couldn't relate to the sorts of grief typically felt among Centurions at this table. His own experiences in life brought different types of grief. Corinne had lost her dad, Rowan was facing a possibility of losing her brother and her father was long gone too, and then Carter had lost his girlfriend. Christian wasn't ready to bring up his trip away with Sophia yet, even though he'd spotted the papers she was carrying, he figured it was a good idea to let the others settle in. His eyes darted to his co-centurion.

"What are you doing?" Christian asked Corinne sheepishly. Surely if anyone could appreciate the history of the table they were at, wouldn't it be the one person who'd lived through parts of that same history? He removed a small rectangular box from his back pocket, presenting it to the demigod. "Mike and Ikes, older sister of Good and Plenty. They're yours when you take your feet of the table."

"I'm good on coffee, thanks." He replied. He looks to Rowan, there were things he wanted to say, but nothing that would really suffice. All he could offer her was a solemn nod.

Corinne looked at her feet on the table and then to Christian who asked her what she was doing. She understood the significance of the table. Just for the past while she didn't seem to have much of a care. Sure it meant something to a lot of people, but at the end of the day it was a table. It'd be here for centuries. Corinne already lived life until she was sixteen years old and then her life halted for a hundred years or more. Now she was back, the world was different, and she still played by the rules. Life was too short to play them by the rules. That was one thing Corinne was beginning to learn.

From the moment she met Andrew, rules of society began to tarnish. She began to be more open to breaking rules than following them. However, when Christian mentioned the candy and it could be hers if she removed her feet from the table she continued to look at him. There was a small moment of hesitation before she removed her feet from the table and she grabbed the Mike and Ikes.

When Carter asked about coffee, Corinne wasn't sure if she wanted any or not. She didn't usually drink coffee. Her usual was just tea at most. Even then she just didn't drink many hot beverages. "I'll take a coffee, Carter. Surprise me." The demigod said. She looked over and noticed Sophia Virgo. She was wearing fuzzy slippers and overall PJ's. That looked like it was fairly comfy. Corinne had never worn such things before. Most of her night wear consisted of nightgowns and long shirts. Things that were a little modern from what she had worn, but not far off.

"Where do you get clothes like that?" Corinne asked genuinely curious.

"I can wear whatever the hell I want. Don't act like you weren't the cause of half of the chaos, or did you already forget your few weeks being mind controlled by a sword." Sophia snapped at her brother, she was tired, she had stayed up all night doing paper work for her and Christian's quest. She hadn't actually meant to be mean, but he seriously needed to not talk to her until she finished her fifth coffee.

Sophia's bad mood though, was mostly reserved for her brother at the moment. "Wanna bring it up now?" She asked, diverting her attention to Christian, she wanted to get an idea of when he thought their quest should be talked about. Sophia figured it probably be best to get it out of the way first, but then again having her brother fuming for the rest of the meeting might also be a bad idea.

She looked over at Corinne, "I think Walmart..." Sophia told her, in a much nicer tone, she even smiled as she said it.

Carter made a typical half-caff coffee with vanilla creamer, and gave it Corinne, before going back to make himself some. He liked caramel flavor in his coffee, it was his favorite since a kid. He rolled his eyes at his sister's chaos comment- while clear that he did cause some chaos while the Sword was around, it wasn't necessarily his fault, and there was more than just that. Thee was Liam in a coma, the optio from the 5th in a coma, the charges on the Davenport father, the death of Ainsley a few weeks before the sword chaos. After making his coffee, he took a seat in one of the comfy sofa chairs and took a sip. He coughed a little. "Hot," he commented, putting it down on the wooden table in front of him, of course using a coaster.

"Bring what up?" Carter asked, looking between Sophia and Christian. "You don't have any pictures of me from my Sword emo phase, do you?" he asked, half-joking. He really hoped they didn't. "Well, after your announcement, I have one of my own." He happened to have promoted Reyna to one of the optio spots, and was going to tell the others.

Carter eyed his briefcase, trying to block from his mind some scoundrel vandalized it.

"No. I don't have any pictures. But, I'm sure somebody does." Christian crossed his arms, and tugged at his rolled sleeves. At the end of the day, Sophia was right. No point in going at anything subtly with this business.

"That place I was going on about. Black Creek. I found it, on a map. A real map." The idea that this place was real was widely dismissed, let alone it's relevance. Tens of hours went into looking for it, until he eventually found it on an older map that he found in a knick knack shop. It was like having painkillers all over again when he found something to commit his time to. He'd lost sleep looking through over a dozen maps of the United States, until he found his mark in Utah.

"I'm taking your sister with some others to go and see if there's any validity. She's more than ready to be taking a lot more trips out of this place." It was, admittedly, awkward to make that call. Sophia was Carter's sister. It didn't seem like it was his place to decide to step in. But, Sophia had volunteered, and he wanted her help on this one.

He saw Rowan from the corner of his eye, and made sure to look to her to acknowledge her. What was worse? Looking at someone and telling them "I'm putting your little sister in harm's way." Or looking at someone else and saying "I know you need me right now, but I'm running off to save a bunch of strangers who might not even be real."

Upon hearing the response from Sophia, Corinne gave a nod and a smile. "Maybe sometime we should go." Rinne suggested. Besides the fifth cohort, Corinne didn't have a lot of friends. She didn't have a lot of female friends either. Perhaps she would be able to hang out with Sophia Virgo at some point. In Corinne's mind Sophia made an excellent centurion and she definitely had work to be proud of.

Carter handed her a cup of coffee and she took it and thanked him softly. She held it in her cold icy hands. The warmth that radiated off the mug felt nice. it gave her a sense of feeling human. Corinne didn't feel that a whole lot these days. Not with the emotions that she let drag her down. Which she felt like weren't even justifiable compared to what everyone else was going through. Rinne felt like in some ways she was looked at how the Virgos were sometimes looked at. Raised in riches and spoiled. Which Rinne never felt was the case and suspected it wasn't with the Virgos either.

After a few moments the daughter of Chione took a few sips of her coffee. Honestly? She didn't hate it. Corinne wasn't always a huge fan of coffee, but this wasn't so bad. She'd have to remind herself to ask Carter what it was he gave her.

"Where abouts is it? What kind of equipment do you suppose you will need to make the trip?"

Sophia gave Corinne a wide smile. She didn't have a lot of friends, if any. Carter's girlfriend killed her only one. Either way, being invited to go with someone, even if it was just to Walmart made her really happy. "Sure!"

The younger girl brought her attention back to Christian, who was explaining to Carter that she was going with him. Honestly he didn't have to, Carter couldn't say she couldn't go for the sole fact that they were related. The only one she probably felt bad for leaving was Rowan, the girl had enough crap going on with her family that she didn't need the extra load of work that was supposed to be Sophia's. Rowan had been kind enough to take some of her load while she was dealing with Carter's sword brain, so she didn't really feel fair leaving like this.

But still, Sophia couldn't shake the feeling she had gotten after finding that Black Creek was on an actual map. "We'll probably only need our own personal weapons. Maybe a few extras just in case. We're not really sure what we're going to find once we get there, it may turn out that we don't need weapons. But it's also smart to be safe and bring some anyway. We'll also need a way to get there."