Shady Place for Shady Business

Siri understood 'weird' conversation, but it primarily occurred whilst everyone involved was stoney baloney. But, she was the only one under any sort of influence here for all she knew, and every sentence that Sasha spoke was more disturbing than the last.

"Yeah well, this is my going out look." She battered her eyelashes, "That's probably why I look different. Guys have called my face more insulting things than a 'formless mass', so I'll take it." Propping one fist on her hip, she dropped whatever easy-going demeanor she'd been channeling and frowned. "You're great at gathering information and all, but you're even better at dodging questions about yourself. S'fine - you don't have to tell me what the fuck you actually do." After popping another pill into her mouth, and between crunching it up, she'd continued, "But, you're acting like a cop. Asking weird ass questions, like about my paranoia and if I'm gonna do anything illegal. You've got enough on me to take me, so unless you're trying to rack up charges or toss me in a looney bin, cut the shit. If you're not a cop, then you have a lot of information about me for apparently no reason."

"...Unless you're a serial killer and this is your jam before you hunt me down and put me in ten different dumpsters. You're not a serial killer, right?" Dark eyes squinted at him as if in serious consideration, and in part she was, but the second pill was already pulling a loopy smile across her face.

She pushed off the wall now, and smoothed her hands down the front of her coat. "Hate to disappoint you, Sasha- " emphasized in a Russian accent- "but I'm your run-of-the-mill druggie with not too much else to offer. So, unless you've got seven hundred bucks you're looking to burn..."

His bluntness in response about being a serial killer, in the very matter-of-fact way he'd said it, had Siri slapping her hand over her mouth, cackling into a birdcage of fingers.

"Alright, alright, pokedex man. But, my illusion would have been flawless if tapping into your mind didn't feel like trying to push myself through a cheese grater." She made sure to illustrate this by pushing one hand through the other, and threading her five fingers straight out on the other side, wriggling them for emphasis. "It's never felt like that before. Gave me a raging headache; like your perception isn't this one place, it's a bunch of shit all over. So, I guess putting an illusion on you is pretty expert mode, as much as that" -fingerquotes- " 'pleases you'."

One brow lofted sky high, the girl gave Sasha a slow once over, remarking, "If you have $700 bucks on you right now, I might have to beat you up and take it." She'd let that one linger in the air for the moment, the sheer ridiculousness of her even trying to settling in, "Or," Big sigh, "I could work for it. Clean your house, walk your dog, do your tax filings, pretend to be your girlfriend in front of your mother..." She'd rattled off the options, shrugging emptily.

"-Not a mind reader-" She interjected hastily, shaking her headful of white curls, "I'm way less useful than a mind reader." But she was quieted quickly, and sucked in a fluttering breath at the sight of his cash. Her hands flexed anxiously at her sides. "Shit, don't count that out in the open here." She hissed, twisting about on her heel with the sudden fear that she'd be shanked in the back for even being associated with that much hard cash in this section of the Underground. After all, they weren't massive naga or some sort of vampire breed (she thought he wasn't, anyways). They were just two normal humans within a sea of magical diversity bearing shit wa-hay higher up on the food chain than them.

Siri nodded slowly at his request, peering up at him with wary eyes. She was meant to perform then, like a street entertainer, and it had to be a $700 performance. The pain would be monumental, for the simple illusion she'd attempted on him at the library had left her cradling her head all night.

The girl centered, her features settling as if she'd come to some terrible peace within herself. And, just as it started, the man would start to feel a chilled breeze push and fan against his skin, tousling Siri's hair before him. It smelt of freshly fallen snow, of the dead of winter, and had a bite to it unnatural for the spring season. It only effected squares of him, however, quadrants - as if the effect had failed to tap into every part of him, and only managed to experience his face and down the left half of his body. Siri's face remained unchanged, her expression carefully collected and eye contact never faltering as flakes of snow began to fall from the clear blue sky above. They fluttered to the ground and wisped with the wind like small sprites, and those that landed against his skin melted, formed tiny rivulets that dripped down with wet coldness.

She'd furrowed her brows now, uttering a groan under her breath as some of the flakes began to fall... unnaturally - drifting against gravity, lifting back up from the earth to spiral endlessly into the sky. Her hands seemed to tremble in her coat pockets as the patterns in the brickwork he leaned against began to move, shift, roll against the building as if the stones themselves were crawling along the concrete. Some began to blur though, fogged up like condensation on the inside of glass, and the colors of red and black smeared like wet paint. She'd opened her hand, presented it to him with one eye clenching shut as if in great pain, and procured a flame from seemingly nothing. It cradled in her palm, licking up the edge of her fingers, but it seemed glitched - as if in a video game, half of it was missing, an unnatural void in the natural body of the flame blank. Smoke hung heavily on the air anyways, but it didn't seem right mingled with the crisp winter air - it had the undertone of copper, or... blood. It was Siri's blood, actual blood, dribbling from her nose and pooling in the hollow of her lip.

The girl's face had taken on a rather dangerous pallor. The blood smeared against her skin as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand, the red hue stark against her ghostly white. "...Ugh... Wait..." She'd slurred, staggering down to one knee before retching violently against the side of the building.

While Siri vomited against the side of the building, her illusion came to a very sudden halt. One blink from Sasha would be enough time for it all to fall away - the cold, the wind, the snow, and the brickwork magic tricks simply ceased to be. She grit her fingers against the wall to steady herself as she spat with some finality, pushing herself to her feet to snag the three hundred and pocket it greedily. "Thanks." She rasped, blotting her nose with the back of her sleeve. Her illusion was intended to be full, to be vibrant, but it seemed only parts of her magic penetrated his present conscious. The rest wandered into the dark his mental labyrinth, stretching out painfully to areas of his mind unknown and diluting to nothing.

"This was the easiest, and simultaneously the hardest cash I've ever earned. Your mind fucking blows. Ugh~" She whined, one hand cradling the side of her head, "And thanks for the heads up that you know how to disappear. Here I am, doing tricks for cash, while you're keeping your own secrets up your sleeve."