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]

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

[weird_cop]

Kevin sighs. He feels useless, like the only way he can figure things out would be to just sit and read. He doesn't even know how to track people.

Tony is pushing his work away annoyed, when Lisa speaks up.

"They were fishing," she says. "Look, there've been a few reports of robberies where witnesses have sworn blind they were real guns, but cctv shows toys of varying ridiculousness. Look how terrified this man looks at a cork gun."

[xie_er]

Xie knows how to track people - how to hunt people - but he's not sure how many of his methods would even be allowed, how many of his contacts have gone to ground or been arrested or who know too much to talk to him now. He doesn't know what he can offer, or what he needs to wait to be told to do.

He isn't sure if it's reassuring that everybody else appears just as frustrated or just really annoying - surely one of them had to find something...

"Could they have been looking for any one of you?" He asks, glancing around the room "Could it be they were after something you all might know, not Kevin specifically?"

[weird_cop]

"Could be either," Lisa agrees. "We know a lot of stuff the community in general haven't codified. Newcomers and the traditional types could benefit from our research. But I'm not a cop, and Jimmy and Rebecca don't do that much community policing, so if they know much about us, they'd probably be targeting Kevin or Tony."

"Profiling," Tony adds.

Lisa shrugs helplessly with an agreeing nod.

"Let's follow both leads for now," she suggests.

Tony hands her his sheaf of papers. "You take over the auction lists, I'm drawing a blank. I'm going to hit the usual community spots, find out what people have heard."

He glances at Kevin and Xie. "Kev, probably best if you don't come, I don't want anyone to know anything's different. Keep working on that brain. Xie..." he exhales out a breath. "Your call."

[xie_er]

Xie doesn't think it's likely to be a newcomer, at least, not a very newcomer, not with the skill they already exhibited.

He also suggests the possibility of revenge as a motive, too, given that their entire job is kind of... ruining bad people's plans. Admittedly it seems like quite a few of those bad people are now dead, but surely some of them aren't?

Xie considers the options for a moment and then nods.

"I might be able to suggest some other people to talk to, or I can watch people without them realising it if you want, I used to do that a lot..." If Tony is happy to carry around a scorpion that is.

"Or I can just come with you normally, I don't think that will be too suspicious." It's unclear how much word has spread about him being Kevin's Familiar, and even if it has it's not unreasonable for him to be working with any of them.

[weird_cop]

Tony considers his options,

"You wouldn't be able to talk to me in stealth mode, but if you're okay with that we can make it work. Kev, you're going to be okay with Lisa?"

Kevin reluctantly agrees trying to understand his notes is the best option, and Tony grabs his car keys.

"You got everything?" He asks Xie.

[xie_er]

Xie nods - he can live with not communicating easily, he has options in case there's any issue.

(Not least just shifting in an emergency, which would probably be a suitable distraction if there's any danger to Tony)

"I can still talk to you though, if you need anything" He adds to Kevin, glancing briefly over at him with a reassuring smile.

He shrugs on his jacket more out of habit than any real need if he's shifting forms, and nods to Tony.

"Yes, let's go"