This choice: Turn Ursula into Gillian • Go Back... As Ursula lays there in the back seat of Braydon's car you can't help but to examine her. As they're open the first thing you're drawn to are her eyes, dark and foggy gray ones that seem to peer intently and seriously at you... or beyond you. Does she see those auras, as she called them, with those eyes? How does something like that even work if she is indeed telling the truth? Well once you or Caleb are inside her mask you'll figure it out you suppose.
So you put it out of your mind and move to the rest of her. Ursula's face isn't what you would call beautiful or cute but neither is she ugly or plain. Her nose is a little prominent, her jaw a little wide. It's a face that's both vaguely handsome and pretty, framed by dirty blonde hair in a pageboy that, though it's not the case due to her position, hangs just below her jaw. She looks to be a little on the skinnier side as well though through the dark, almost foggy (there's that word again) purple polo you can certainly make out the curvature of her breasts, right where the Besandwitched logo is embroidered on the left side. And those breasts look surprisingly not that bad given her frame. Certainly nothing compared to Gillian's but...
You stop yourself. Gillian... so cute and vivacious but also a distraction. A distraction that you might not mind but Braydon certainly does at times. If she was going to be around so much though then why not have it work to your advantage? Because as you think and wait for the mask the idea of bringing Ursula in as a partner by having her wear a mask of Gillian starts to sound more appealing and more rational.
It certainly carries with it risks, namely that you don't know if Ursula would go for it or what her intentions might be. But for as much as Braydon might look down on her there's nothing in his own thoughts of her to make you think she's untrustworthy either which isn't quite the same as trustworthy admittedly. So you continue to wait and when you see a glow on her face, you snatch up the mask. However you don't just push her out of the car and take off either. You instead watch as she stirs, shakes out the cobwebs, looks at you with surprise and then narrows those gray eyes and now you know she's looking right at you.
"What did you do? How long was I--" She stops herself as she notices the mask in your hands. "You didn't... you used that on me?" she asks incredulously.
"Not for anything weird, well perverted, I promise!" you exclaim defensively. "I freaked out because you, uh, saw through me. Saw through this," you gesture towards yourself. "I don't know if you were just bullshitting and got a lucky guess but I was surprised and... intrigued I guess."
"Uh huh..."
"Look, I want your help," you tell her. "You saw the book and I just... the mask, right? So you know it's real. That stuff about auras too, I want to talk to you about it. About all of this."
Ursula merely eyes you skeptically and is quiet for what feels like an eternity before she takes her phone out. She grumbles as she looks at it and shoves it back into her pocket. "I'm already late coming back from break," she mutters. "I get off at eight."
"Alright, well I promised Gillian I'd meet up with her here at six-thirty so maybe we can..."
"I get off at eight," Ursula simply reiterates. "Come by my place afterwards and we can talk. You're, whoever you are, Braydon right now right? He knows where I live. Also, that mask. I don't want you running around with all of my stuff until we're on the same page so I want to keep it with me for right now."
You look at the mask and the name that's emblazoned now on the inside -- URSULA INGRID JENSEN -- and with a sigh hand it over to her. If nothing else it'll be a sign of good faith on your part.
"I'll put it in my car," she says as she examines it. "Remember, my place after eight. And I want to see you as yourself, if we're going to work together I want to know who I'm really dealing with."
* * * * *
Getting everything ready and pulling it off turns out to be both a bigger hassle than you'd have liked and easier than you expected. You have to call Caleb up and tell him you'll need to access the basement and when he shows up it's you getting grilled on who you picked and all the usual stuff and he complains when you grab a blank mask, graveyard dirt and matches. You lie and tell him you left the other at home and because you're on a tight schedule with Gillian you don't have time to go back to Braydon's.
That done you call your doppelganger and have him come by Braydon's to drop off a pair of your own clothes.
Once it gets close to six-thirty you head out to Besandwitched to meet up with Gillian. Conversation is light as you eat and you try to keep up Braydon's normal attitude towards Ursula. After paying, you tell Gillian to wait as you have a surprise for her and you'll text her when it's ready. Once in the backseat of Braydon's care you remove his mask, golemize it and get dressed in your clothes... a tall order in the backseat. You then grab Braydon's phone and text Gillian that you got something for her. Once she comes she has no time to react before you slap the blank mask onto her.
Once the mask has finished copying you quickly throw Braydon's onto her, have the new Braydon switch into his clothes, gather up all of Gillian's things -- mask included -- and send him on his way. Taking Gillian's keys, you get in her car and drive around with no particular destination for the next forty-five minutes or so until it finally hits eight.
* * * * *
"So this is a mask of..."
"Gillian," you say as you watch Ursula look at the mask. The pair of you are in her room. "I figured that if we were going to work together it would be easiest if we were in a position where we'd be around each other a lot. That and Braydon's always worried about," you sigh, "not that he's bored of Gillian or anything but he thinks of her as a distraction some times."
Ursula can only shake her head. "He's such an arrogant dick," she states. "So where's the real Gillian?"
"Under his mask. There's a process you can do to a mask where it puts the person wearing it under your control," you explain. "I didn't want to do it to Gillian's mask since, you know, you'd be wearing it. But once you're in there I'll switch back to being him."
"So what about the real Gillian after that?"
"I figured we could use your hair to treat that mask of you and put it on her," you tell her. "That spell I mentioned is based on whoever's hair is used so if it's your mask I figured you'd want control of it."
"I see," she says and though she looks at the mask she puts it down.
After arriving you'd explained everything to Ursula: who you were, what was going on with your dad and just now everything about the book. She'd listened quietly but, as her face gave away, intently as she took in everything you said. "Alright so since I've told you everything I think it's your turn," you tell her. "What's all of this stuff about auras?"
She's silent for a moment before speaking. "It's hard to explain," she states. "I only understand a little bit and only because of stuff Priscilla's told me or what I find in books. But everyone has an aura and everybody's is unique, like fingerprints. When I'm divining I'll latch onto it. It's like a road the tarot is sort of like a navigation system, I guess. I don't really know how else to describe it."
"So, what, you look at me and you see, like, glowy stuff?"
"Nothing like that," she shakes her head, "well not exactly. It's not something you sense like you would when, say, seeing a bird or smelling food. I do see something but that's probably just some trick my brain's doing so I can comprehend it I think."
"Can everyone do it? See these auras?" you ask.
"I don't know. I don't think so," she says. "Priscilla told me it's a rare thing, at least. She likened it to oracles from ancient Greece and how there wasn't, you know, thousands of them."
You're still not sure how much of this you're buying but if it gets her to ease up, come more onto your side then you're willing to press on. "Okay, so does everything have an aura? Like if you looked at some gun used in a murder could you use the aura to find the killer?" you ask.
"Nothing like that; psychometry's garbage and I've never seen verified accounts of it in the books I've read," she says with more than a bit of a sneer. "Only living things have auras, not inanimate objects." She's been staring more or less at nothing this whole time but now her gray eyes are turned once more on you and there's an unease in them. "That's what threw me for a loop when you came into the cafe. That's why I was so quick to talk to you and agree to hear you out now."
"What, because of my aura?"
"Only a little bit because when I saw your aura didn't match with Braydon's I was curious," she admits. "But I just told you that inanimate objects don't have them, right?" she replies. "Because that's what bugged me more. Why does a book have an aura?" You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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