Oh, oh, oh it's magic (Xie and Kevin)

[xie_er]

Zhao Jing used to be a nobody, born into influence and wealth but always in the shadow of those around him. In magical circles he was even worse, a barely-remembered witch that didn't have enough power for any familiar to even consider looking twice at him.

Somehow, though, after many years (and a few suspicious deaths), he's managed to climb his way to the CEO of Five Lakes, his power - of both kinds - growing exponentially.

The previous CEO was surrounded by some unfortunate rumorus before his death, so Zhao Jing has been focused on repairing the reputation of he company and solidifying his support, mundane and magical, which means it is far too delicate a moment for Xie to be in the spotlight, even if he was promised he'd be allowed to stop hiding when the position was in Zhao Jing's hands.

He just has to wait a little longer, that's all, and it's not like it's difficult to only appear in his animal form whenever Zhao Jing is in public, just uncomfortable, and the last thing they need is for somebody to recognise Xie for any of the things he's done to help his witch get where he is today, when his position is still so precarious...

He tells himself all the excuses he's heard from Yifu, repeats them in his head like a mantra as he sits through all the meetings and negotiations, a little black cat and Zhao Jing's feet, watching the men and women he's speaking to for anything Yifu can use. He hangs around when Zhao Jing steps out the room, listens to what they say behind his back - that's his job with normal people, to be a pair of ears they don't realise are there. Even paranoid types who scan for bugs would miss him, which he finds funny, privately, because he is a bug of a sort.

Not that he's allowed to take his original animal form - a scorpion would be out of place if anybody caught sight of him, and Yifu doesn't like the idea of him hiding in pockets or anything like that. He says it's dangerous, that something could happen to him, but Xie privately thinks he just finds the form creepy. Even around other magical people, the cat is preferred - his job with them is to be a reminder that Zhao Jing has a familiar, and a relatively powerful one at that.

It's hard for familiars to change the form they can take, but he did it, for Yifu.

He tells people the cat is called Scorpion, and that somebody else named him - which is technically true, Xie does mean scorpion, and his parents named him - and that he's vaguely embarrassed to have such a fiercely named cat.

(He doesn't tell magical people anything at all, they know Xie isn't a pet so they're less likely to ask, at most they will wonder why his familiar always stays in animal form. Zhao Jing just tells them he's shy. He isn't, he doesn't care about people seeing him, but it's easier to do the things Yifu wants him to do when nobody knows what he looks like)

Xie hadn't always known he was powerful - when Yifu had taken him in he'd been told he wasn't much, but that maybe he could be useful. Later, when some witch had made an offhand comment about it, the story had become that Yifu recognised his power and took him in before anybody else could steal him away, that he just wanted to protect Xie from the people who would use him for his power. Xie was already so far gone by that point that he accepted it, that he told himself he was lucky he had Yifu to protect him, to guide him.

It's funny how easy it is to lie to yourself.

When the meetings are over for the day he finally shifts back to human form, spending a few minutes stretching out the kinks that come from forcing himself into a form that isn't quite his, especially with how much he's had to do it over the last few weeks, and then going in search of something to eat. He could probably just head back to his own apartment since he doesn't think Yifu needs anything else from him, not today, but the outsiders have all left and everybody in Yifu's manor at least knows Xie, even if they don't know that Xie and Scorpion are one and the same, so it's safe to be around them.

He likes to spend as much time here as he can get away with, likes to remind Yifu he can be useful in other ways... and maybe he likes to keep an eye on this new apprentice Yifu has taken on. He doesn't understand why he needs anybody else when he has Xie, but the last time he'd questioned somebody new in the house Yifu hadn't spoken to him for a week, so he doesn't voice that thought out loud - he just watches the guy suspiciously every chance he gets, and wonders how easy he would be to get rid of.

He's halfway to the kitchen when something makes him stop. A tug of power, the vague echo of chanting, there's a ritual happening and something about it is drawing him close. He frowns, confused, and follows the pull...

Comments

[xie_er]

"Isn't it all mine, now?" He asks rhetorically.

"There's some things that will come in useful, alchemical equipment mostly, things I'll need to work on the potential antidote if this does turn out to be some variation of the Soup of Oblivion, I'm assuming Tony filled you in on that theory?"

[weird_cop]

"Some of it's illegal to actually own, and some of the art is under dispute as stolen property," she says lightly.

"But yes, Tony said. We've started looking out for some of the ingredients he mentioned."

She stops in the middle of the conversation though, raising a finger as she listens to see if Kevin's listening.

"Theres another question i wanted to ask. You have an empathic connection, right? Has anything felt... wrong or unexpected?"

[xie_er]

Well, okay, fair point. He doesn't really want to keep most of it anyway, so he doesn't really care about the things the police won't give back.

"That's good. The daylily is the big one, but that might be hard to come by, I have some sources though."

He considers the question, reaches out to check Kevin is still upstairs before he answers, shaking his head slightly.

"Wrong yes, unexpected no. The kind of wrong I'd expect under the circumstances, nothing concerning."

[weird_cop]

Lisa nods.

"Good, I just wanted to check. We know it's really him because of the link but I hoped you'd be able to tell if it was just him."

She shakes her head. "I had to be sure. Thanks."

Instantly she switches subjects back again.

"Good. We'll check all sources. When we get in, Jimmy will give us a full plan, based on everything we got yesterday."

This is when Kevin starts coming downstairs, and Lisa finally gives up on propriety, offers and gives him a tight hug.

"Let's get going."

[xie_er]

Xie nods - he understands the desire to check, but he's pretty sure he would know if there was anything, between the link and the empathy he'd pick up on something like pretty fast. He hopes.

"Sounds good." He agrees when she explains the plan - he sort of hopes he can just get on with his own thing, but he does have to get used to working as part of a team and he is, at least, glad of the help. More people means it's much easier to cover all the bases.

He follows her out once Kevin gets back, locking the door behind them and feeling cautiously hopeful that they're going to figure this out.

[weird_cop]

In the car over, Lisa puts the radio on, mostly so that the talk segments can give Kevin something to listen to.

She also explains some things as they pass - things that Xie can't see, but Kevin is reacting to. That's a haunted house, she says. No, those hooded figures can't be made to go away. That's a ghost ship but it didn't even sink in the Thames.

Right up until.they pull into the lot at Gipsy Hill.

[xie_er]

He's grateful that Lisa is there to explain it to him - to both of them, really, because by explaining it she's sort of including Xie in the conversation, letting him know what's going on around them - but it's also a little bittersweet. It makes him think about that first night in the current house, standing on the balcony and looking out across the view, Kevin sharing what he could see...

He thinks about saying something about it, but decides it might just be one more bit of pressure, one more little nudge of 'this is what we used to be'. If it will come in useful, he'll bring it up, but otherwise he doesn't want to spend all his time talking about them.

[weird_cop]

Kevin sits back, looks out of the window and listens, his brow furrowed as he takes in everything he can see, trying to get his head around the fact that Xie can't.

When they get to the Potakabin, he glances back at Xie again for reassurance, and heads in.

The other three are sitting at a table, but stand as Kevin comes in, Tony coming forward to clap his hand on a shoulder and say how nice it is to see them.

"Good to see you looking healthy, Kev" Quill says. "Right, let's get down to what I'm calling Operation Blue Tang."

[xie_er]

Xie, of course, wonders what fish have to do with anything, but he doesn't ask.

(Maybe Operation Goldfish was too on the nose?)

He slides into his seat - next to the space they've left for Kevin, the seat that wasn't quite as evenly spaced as the others. Normally he enjoys the closeness, but there's that hint of awkwardness to it now. They're supposed to be one person, as far as the magic is concerned, but the synchronicity feels like it's missing.

He's itching to get started, but he knows the briefing is important for that whole teamwork thing...

[weird_cop]

"Here's what we know..."

Quill starts, and the others fill in. CCTV footage shows Kevin changing direction in the way to the car park and heading off, on a journey they're then able to track. A familar compelling spell they've seen before, but Kevin's defences would usually have no problem resisting it. They recovered his abandonned shopping bags...

"But not your holdall," Lisa says. "That's important, that bag has a whole lot of your magical items in it. They made you hold on to it and then removed it from the scene."

[xie_er]

"So do you think they wanted something that was in the bag?" Xie asks, frowning thoughtfully. There would surely be better ways to get it that didn't require taking all his memories, so maybe it wasn't just something from the holdall...

"It could be that the memory loss was just... an overzealous way of removing the evidence of what they did, or that they were after something specific there, too."

Either way, it must have been targeted, which might help them figure out who was behind it...

[weird_cop]

Lisa points at him, agreeing.

"But there's much more common and easier ways of erasing memories. They could have removed that specific incident, or removed themselves. But most memory loss spells -" she glances at Quill and Lofthouse "- look a certain way, focus on the thing being forgotten, not the rememberer. At the very least, as you were in contact when it happened, I'd expect you to be affected."

"Assumption," points out Costain and she acknowledges it, and lets him continue.

"I reckon," he says, "its that second one; that they were looking for something and took Kevin's memories to find it. Which would mean that his memories are out in the world. Bottled, like..." he looks at Lisa... "like your happiness."

[xie_er]

"If it's that..." Xie says slowly, feeling the frustration creep over him "it won't be the soup, that's... that locks somebody's memories away, you couldn't use it to remove them."

It also means no potion is ever going to bring them back, not if they're somewhere else.

"If they took all his memories to look for one specific thing, they were probably in a rush."

[weird_cop]

Kevin has been looking at Lisa since Tony mentioned her happiness, but now he comes back to look at Xie, feeling bad about his frustration, and frustrated himself that he can't help.

"Same with the holdall," Quill is agreeing. Taking the whole thing instead of searching."

"Or," Lisa is saying, "maybe it's not one specific thing. Maybe they just wanted all the memories because of who he is and there's all sorts of knowledge in there. Either way, I think Kevin was targeted. Tony?"

"I leant on those kids Kev and I picked up," The DS now offers. "They were clearly expecting to get off, with no weapon. Shouldn't have stabbed me, but now I'm clearly not injured that's not going to stick either. When the possibility was raised that they might be working for someone else, they clammed up. I reckon, they were bait, so whoever it was paid them could flush out a copper with the Sight. Kev had the gun in his holdall; maybe they used that to track him."

Kevin looks down at his hands, feeling useless as they describe events that happened to him that he just doesn't remember.

[xie_er]

It's clear Kevin was targeted, that those kids were put deliberately in their path. It could have been him, or it could have been either of them and it was just Kevin's bad luck to be the one left on his own, but either way it seemed well planned.

Apart from the possible rush job.

Which... oh.

"If they were after something specific, I think I know why they might have been rushing." He says quietly "Me. They knew I'd be able to find him."

[weird_cop]

"Which means," Quill says, sounding annoyed at that fact, "that we're looking for someone who knows that Kev's police and that he's got a familiar.

"Right. I want to know what we know of that could remove memories like that. Our specialist on that subject..." here he looks at Kevin, "... has to do some catching up, but fortunately, we broke into your lock up last night - sorry Kev - and pulled all your notebooks."

He gestures at a pile of full document boxes at the side of the room.

"I want you to go through these, catch up. Work with Tony on that list.

"Lisa, get in the data. I want to know how targeted that robbery attempt was. Did they know Kev and Tony were in the area or was this a fishing attempt that got lucky. How many armed robberies have been reported?

"Ma'am, if you can get any data released for that we'd appreciate it. And Xie has asked if you can get a set of items from Zhao's operation released from evidence.

"Me, I'm going to play good cop on our friends, now Tony's put the fear of Costain into them. Find out if serious assault on a police officer isn't something they'd like to wrangle out of. And then I'm going to find out who could link Kevin's two identities. Maybe they're just worried about the Shadow Police - I fucking hope we have them worried - but Xie's got a point. Let's go."

[xie_er]

"I'll give you a list." Xie adds to Quill's comment about the things he wants released. Not that it will do them much good, if they're right that they took Kevin's memories then coming up with an antidote is just busy work at best.

Busy work he'll probably be stuck doing, since he's noticed he hasn't been given anything else to do. He's not surprised, really, they're a well-oiled team and he's still new to it, the whole magically-speaking-one-person has sort of ended up spilling over into the work, with him generally helping with whatever Kevin is doing. He probably will still do that, help him go over the notebooks, but he can't help but chafe at the inactivity of it.

He'd much rather track down somebody to stab until the information they needed fell out, but unfortunately that sort of thing is frowned upon when you work for the police.

[weird_cop]

"Thank you," Lofthouse says genuinely, as everyone stands to get on with their tasks.

Kevin takes one look at the size of the pile of notebooks, each bursting at the seams with postit tabs and inserts, and glances at Xie helplessly.

"How am I going to get through all this?"

[xie_er]

"By going back in time and telling yourself computers exist?" He comments before he can remind himself that his usual level of snark probably isn't fair on Kevin right now - especially because he doesn't necessarily know that he doesn't mean it. Kevin has been observant enough to pick up on his dry humour in the past, so hopefully that's still the case.

"Let me write up this list and then I can help you." He adds, to soften it slightly.

At least the helpless look has made him feel slightly more needed, so that's something.

[weird_cop]

Tony, already pulling out a different document file, shakes his head at them.

"The notebooks were Kev's idea at the start," he says. "Blame him and refusal of the Met to enter the Twenty First century."

Tony's own task is a bunch of different sized, ragged pieces of paper from a bunch of different sources.

"Take your time on that, see if that makes sense. I've got a orders of sale of the last few community auctions, I'm going to see if anything jumps out, or looks like it might be relevant."

Kevin starts at what feels like the beginning, leafing through the books, but instantly struggling.

"It feels like these are just reminders," he complains through the link. "Like there's no way I thought I'd forget what they mean."

[xie_er]

Xie writes out a list of items fairly quickly and passes it over to Lofthouse so he can join Kevin to look at the notebooks.

(Despite not having any formal schooling until he was a teenager, his handwriting is beautiful - product of a very strict tutor)

"Maybe you just didn't want anybody else to be able to read them," Xie suggests, picking up a notebook and looking through it himself. "mission accomplished, I suppose."

He manages to find some things that seem to be related to stories he's heard, but that doesn't help him any more than it helps Kevin. He wonders how useful it will be to keep looking.

[weird_cop]

"It's background stuff though, right? Like... look at this. More questions than answers, I clearly don't know what I'm doing. Maybe... maybe reading this will help, make me useful. I just don't know how I can get all of this knowledge in quick enough..."

He trails off, and then looks up at Xie, not sure how whether to ask the question.

"Is there a way?"

[xie_er]

Xie shrugs a little helplessly.

"Maybe?" He admits "A lot of witches use shortcuts like that for various reasons, so I know they exist... some of them have drawbacks, though. I don't really know a lot about spells, I never needed to since I can't do them anyway"

It's not like Yifu was the type to explain what he was doing - Xie managed to pick up a few things, but there's a lot more that he has no idea about. He was present when it was useful, but the rest of the time? He was used to just going about his day and occasionally feeling the drain on his power from whatever Yifu was doing.

[weird_cop]

Kevin thinks that he should share with Xie more. It seems like he's hogged all the cooking, not told him anything about magic, kept a lot to himself.

But it gives him something else to look for - memory and obtaining knowledge.

"I think I've found some of the memory charms Lisa was talking about," he says. "About as unhelpful as she thought it would be."

[xie_er]

Xie, of course, is happy for Kevin to cook for him all the time, and Kevin is the last person he'd accuse of keeping things to himself - he's already learned more about the magic Kevin does than he ever learned from Yifu.

He pulls a face at Kevin's findings.

"It's looking increasingly like our best resolution is going to be tracking down the people who took them in the first place" doable, probably, but definitely more time consuming than any of their other options