Ivan had only a few spare hours before he had to make his way to the Party meeting. Forseeing that it may well look suspicious that many humans were simultaneously leaving the city, Ivan had prepared a suitable Alibi. He had some house calls lined up for that afternoon, and, to account for the later hours, a few fake house calls too. A couple of low-level Party member acquaintances had agreed to corroborate these, should the need arise. These would all of course go into Ivan's records, which were as meticulous as they were false.
Though his contribution to the resistance was significant, his direct involvement was slight, yet he planned always for the event that he might be captured.

Before the house calls were to be attended, Ivan opened shop for appointments and drop-ins, from morning through to mid afternoon. While waiting for the first patients to arrive, he considered the potential security threats to his most recently developed codec.

(( any players or NPCs that admins wanna play in here for a bit are welcome! ))

Fion walked into Ivan's shop grumbling a little under her breath. Just because she wasn't at the top of the rung didn't mean she could be ordered around like the maid.

Wait... It did actually.

Fion let the grumpiness slide away, it wasn't as though it was the Doctor's fault and she did want someone to take a look at her neck. She walked up to his front desk, shaking her hands out a little to remove any lingering stresses she had about the Rally tonight.

"Hello, I'm here to make an appointment." Fion said, making the human symbol for solidarity against her brow.

Ivan returned the sign politely, though blended into the motion was a little of the old Medical Corps. salute, the habit acting like an accent on the gesture. This habit irritated him - he had left that life behind, and now he wanted it to finally leave him. To avoid showing his irritance or to give opportunity for the woman to comment on his curious habit, he quickly spoke up.

"Good morning! How may I help you? As you can see the surgery is empty right now, and I haven't any confirmed appointments for an hour, so if you would like I can attend to you now, or would you rather make an appointment for later?"

It sounded a little chatty for Ivan, particularly this early in the morning. Already he was off balance, and all for a little mistake. Ivan quietened his mind and focussed on the medical.
What was wrong with this woman?

"That would be very convenient, thank you." Fion said with a polite bow. "I have some private issues I need to discuss."

Well, the resistance was pretty private. It wasn't a complete lie.

Ivan nodded slightly, eyes shutting briefly in synch with it.

"Certainly. Shall we move into the exam room?"

Ivan motioned towards the room at the back. As he had no assistants his surgery consisted of a waiting area and front desk (around which they currently stood), a small bathroom, and the examination room. The front door was fitted with a shopkeeper's bell so that he knew when patients arrived even when he was examining someone, and all around were polite signs instructing people to wait if he was busy, as well as helpful diagrams for the hard of reading. One such sign was on the exam room door, and he flipped it from "knock and enter" to "examining, please wait".

He held the door open, which by itself tended to accelerate and slam in the most unsettling way.

"Please, do come in."

Fion smiled a little and nodded. Truth be told she was a little nervous, she didn't know this Doctor at all and being in a room alone with a man tended to remind her of the day she'd met Dom Leon. Only this time she couldn't slip him a mickey. She cast the nerves off as soon as they appeared, she knew full well that even if she couldn't fight as such, she could end a fight. It was practically a job requirement in her field, Shin Kicking 1A.

Fion waited for him to shut the door behind them. Noticed he seemed to be doing it rather gingerly. The door made a kind of loud cracking sound and Fion startled a little in spite of herself.

"Ack!" She cried out, roughly at her normal speaking level, "You should really get that door fixed!"

Fion leant against the examining room table.

"Hi, I'm Gamze. I'm here to help be your alibi for today." Fion said, ducking her head slightly, "Nice to meet you."

Ivan winced when even his careful effort to pacify the anthropomorphic rage his door possesed fell flat.



"Quite so! I have been meaning to repair it for some time, it causes my waiting patients much distress, not to mention myself."

It was a tired line, and much of the conversation of a Doctor was doomed to repetition, though this vexed him and when he could he tried not to fall into familiar patterns, usually in vain.



Dr Mottoni was in the middle of putting on his freshly disinfected gloves when Gamze introduced herself. The sink was to the side, so that he had to turn his neck entirely to the left to look at her, a pose which he noted often exposed his unusually pointy adam's apple.

"Oh!"

He momentarily flipped back and forth between resolving to finish putting the gloves on and taking them off, and finally settled on leaving one on. He awkwardly offered her his gloved hand.

"Doctor Mottoni, but, as there's no doctoring to be done I suppose you should call me Ivan. A pleasure."

I was expecting a visit to be sure, but this early on..?

"I am grateful for your coming, I am sure it is a terrible inconvenience, but of course you realise the importance of taking proper care."

Fion laughed pleasantly, extending her hand to grasp his gloved one.

"Pleased to meet you, Ivan." She said, cheeks dimpling a little as she smiled, "It's no trouble. It's just best that we meet now so you have some locals to rely on should you need some back up, sources, people to relay information... That kind of thing."

Fion hopped up onto the examination table so she could rest her feet.

"It's been a while since we had a good cryptographer, after what happened to the... well... best not thought about really." Fion had just started talking shop without thinking that what had happened to old daft Wully might bother Ivan, "I work down in Painted Ladies as a seamstress, stop by if you ever need any shirts. The Gamze thing is for party business, outside I'm Fion Smith."

Fion kicked her heels slightly, leaning back on her hands and taking a moment to look at Ivan's tailoring, as was her professional wont.

"So, how often do you think you'll be needing me? So long as you do housecalls I'm fairly available for padding the books." Fion said, shifting back to business.

Ivan had to admit he was suprised - this was a woman with a good head on her shoulders, and he liked that. The world needed more people like that, and the resistance doubly so.

"That is most considerate, and I shall not forget it. May I ask who sent you?"



Ivan's expression darkened slightly. He hadn't heard exactly what had happened to the poor fool, but he could guess well enough. Ivan recalled first meeting Serro, who at the time had a great sense of urgency. After having analysed the Party's emergency protocol, he could easily see why. The resistance had been one slip, one burtal interrogation or even simply one talented counter intelligence officer away from a total breach for several weeks. It would not be a great leap to think the seventen already had cracked the code or learned of it's use through other means, but that they had yet to react to it directly made this unlikely. Even then, they may be biding their time. These were troubling but necesary avenues of thought for those involved in intelligence, but it made Ivan stare just a moment too long blankly past Fion.

Ivan quickly snapped out of it, and instead humored her ovbious intention to change the subject.

"You don't say! As it happens, miss Smith, I do. The great majority of my current wardrobe is not particularly suited to the work of a doctor.
I was robbed on the way from Brunhold recently, you see, and my cousin lent me some clothes in the meantime. While I am greatful to him, he lives by the Old Rose harbour, and needless to say, there is a great deal of difference in dress."

He didn't enjoy lying, but neither did it bother him, particularly if it was for his advantage, but at the same time he did not like to spend his first meeting with someone making use of falsehoods. The fact was that Ivan had invested most of his money in the surgery and the rest was spoken for, set aside for the new office at the Stacks. He simply hadn't the means nor the time to replace the clothes that he bought and sold opium in.





"I may require your assistance somewhat often in the next few weeks, then hopefully less after that. My priority is to implement new security measures - the emergency protocol has been in place far too long, I fear.
I hope this does not inconvenience you too much, and I would be happy to do house calls if that suits you. You are often at home?"

"That would be telling." Fion said, a line of warning under a playful tone.




Fion nodded, not quite believing Ivan simply because he was alive. Most bandits between Vienda and the rest of the word didn't let you go if they found you. There was always the chance that some kid had just slipped off with his suitcase though. She was sure he had his reasons. So long as he had an excuse to become a customer, that was more than good enough. Nannis had said he was trustworthy.

Well, those hadn't been her exact words, her exact words had been... Slightly more colourful.




"House calls are probably best, I'm afraid." Fion said after a pause for thought, voice apologetic. "If I keep going to a Doctor's surgery people might start to think I'm dying and the neighbours would just assume that I'm cheating on my... Boyfriend."

Boyfriend... Hee.

"If you do housecalls I'll have the excuse of getting you to see my son and we can spend a few days with me getting shirts fitted properly." Fion thought she could spread it out enough to avoid suspicion. "I'm home during the day, unless I have to duck out for groceries. I work nights but that's a poor time to contact me, I work at a bar for gollies."

Good.

There were obvious advantages to the compartmentalisation of knowledge. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him; in an interrogation scenario, a complete knowledge of the network would be a great disadvantage. He was confident Fion knew this too, and wasn't just playing. This was a serious business.



Ivan almost blushed at the unspoken suggestion. He did not know a great deal of civilian human doctors in the area, but perhaps it was a common occurence.
Still, he thought, this woman is not displeasing to the eye.

"It isn't a problem I assure you. A change of scene I find is often a positive thing."

Ivan was addicted to "changes of scene".



He nodded. So this was her value to the resistance; an informant. Dangerous work, particularly for a mother. He wondered if it was bravery or recklessness.

"That sounds fine to me. What is the boy's name? And does he have any pre-existing medical conditions?"

Fion's back straightened. She leapt at any chance to talk about her son and here Ivan had just given her an invitation. That was about all it took these days.

"His name is Piran. He's a little small for his age but other than that he's healthy." She smiled to herself at the thought of him. "He had a bad sickness when he was younger though, so I'm not sure whether his growth was stunted or if it's just because he's a wick."

Fion shrugged her shoulders.

"It worries me a little, do you think you'd be able to tell?" She asked, a modicum of maternal worry entering her voice and making her forget that she was here on business.

((EDIT: Whoops, I assumed the father was galdori, which was meant to be a secret.
EDIT EDIT: Fixed. Sorry!))



Ivan was not expecting that. A wick could mean one of two things of course. Ivan was curious to find out what generation of wick the boy was, but he had the presence of mind not to comment, however, and instead addressed the medical issue.



Wicks, medically speaking, were something of an oddity. They had the advantage of the immune experience of two different species, though the strength of their lasting resistance depended on which parent was the galdor; the breast milk of a mother strong with the mona fought off certain infections for much longer, giving the immune system a chance to develop until the child was strong; this of course was not the case at present however.
On the other hand, there were a few documented complications in the joining of a galdor and a human - a sort of misalignment of the two gene types, Yura Itoh had said. He lamented that he could not learn more about the cutting edge research being performed at Brunhold, and that it sometimes took decades for proven theories to filter to the helpless human doctors.

There were a few wasting diseases he knew that affected Wicks, boys in particular. Many were relatively harmless, and from the sounds of it, the damage had been done.

"I shall have to see young Piran for myself! If there haven't been any symptoms for over a year he will most likely be completely healthy, but I should like to see him in any case."

(((No worries! Thank you for doing that, sorry for being a pain. Love the reference to out-breeding depressions!)))



Fion sighed in relief.

"Oh, that is a relief." She said, slumping forward a little. "I was so worried when it happened, there wasn't a thing I could do, we were bare bones at the time. It was during that bad winter two years ago, probably made things tricky for you too, everyone was sick."

Fion hopped off the examination table, stretching a little as she did so. She yawned, trying to shrug off the fatigue that was always in her these days. She wasn't going to be able to keep working nights forever, hopefully she could keep it up a few more years until Piran got a job and could look after himself a bit more.

"Well, feel free to drop by any time today if you want to be seen about doing some housecalls. So long as a few people see you they'll presume you've been about all day. I do it sometimes when duty calls, not that it often does in my line of work." Fion smiled wryly, "My son will be home at around midday, he spends the mornings helping out at the Potter's. Is there anything else we need to go over, do you think?"

Fion clasped her hands loosely in front of her, posture far more open and friendly than it was when she was tending bar.

(( thanks, I er, totally made it up ))



Two years ago was a bad winter, and it was a tricky time for Ivan to be sure, but he wasn't practicing medicine at the time.

"I daresay I had my hands full from Vortas through to late Ophus! This year, thankfully has been fairly mild compared."

In a way, it wasn't enitrely untrue.



"I shall endeavour to visit around the 6th house, depending on how busy the surgery gets this morning."



"One last thing, miss Smith. Please, unless you must, do not send any messages, to anyone. That is, not until I have replaced the emergency protocol. It is not safe for the two of you. I will personally explain the details once it is ready."

Fion nodded politely.

"That's convenient for me, thank you."



Fion frowned at that.

"I had... suspected. Thank you for telling me. I'm careful not to write much down but I'll do even less now." Fion walked towards the examination room door, eyeing it sceptically, "I'll see you soon, I live on the outskirts of Painted Ladies, little purple house, can't miss it."

Fion made the sign of human solidarity again and then made her leave.

Once Fion had departed, Ivan quickly scrawled a note on a small scrap of prescription paper:

"Gamze, Fion Smith, Piran Smith, Painted Ladies, little purple house"

Immediately afterwards he grabbed another sheet, and with more thought and care wrote:

"Htuex, Cdcu Krggi, Dkdbr Xfbbq, Huccljs Rggxri, xnnyxd xdicgx kazll"

He then whipped out a fresh match from the already propped open box next to his antique tray, took the first paper in one hand, and struck the match across the edge of the reception desk. It fizzed to life immediately, and he brought the match to the script. As it began to catch, then writhe and brown, Ivan shook the match out and grabbed his pipe. He waited for the thin blue wisp of smoke which the ink made to dissipate a little, then dropped the rest into the end of his pipe before it burned his fingers. Ivan sprinkled a little powder into the mixture, reclined thoughtfully, and considered their meeting. Periodically he looked at his second note, then, when the tar had been spent, filed it into the sleeve of a medical book on the comparative study of first and second generation wicks.