"Damn.  I have what one of my friends has charmingly called 'an overinflated sense of responsibility', and here I am, having meddled.  I'll go keep an eye out, shall I.  Thank you, ladies.  Luck be with you."

She vanishes into the crowd, Vigor thumping in her veins, and spins minor illusions around herself to look just less obvious enough as she catches up to whoever this guy is.  (And if she can't find him direct, well, she can tail Mateo too.)

He ducked into an alley; The alley has a bunch of doors, none obviously having just been opened, and splits into two directions, one of which turns another corner and one that lets out into a street. The footprints lead to the corner-cutting one, and that leads to a little courtyard with lots of doors where a couple of kids are being hurried inside by a man who's glancing at the other entrance at the far end, and then that lets out back into the dusty open areas.

The middle-aged man has put on a baseball cap and shucked his tan jacket, but might still be recognizable from behind.

And from his tracks, if the sand's still around.  And the purpose in his core; that's really hard to hide.  (She manages.)  And his beard.  Really, that wasn't a fake?  Amateurs.

She walks very quietly, as illusions continue to be thumbed into being - when she has eyes on him again, she's practically unrecognizable, though no-one who saw her at any one step of the way would notice anything off.

It's the little details, really.

Now what is this gentleman up to?

Tailing Mateo as he attracts plenty of wary looks in that Tower uniform heading back towards the gate, apparently. While casually strolling along and telling a long-winded story into a handheld phone about his kid's friends. If he's speaking in code it's not an obvious one.

There's codes, and then there's codes; what sort of story is he telling?  Other than 'long-winded and rambling', of course.

(It is a good tactic, she'll admit.)

Oh, you know, they had this stupid bar crawl, and didn't realize what assholes they were being. But you're still an asshole whether or not you know you're one, right? And then they got jumped by some punks to prove that same point, near this one burger stand. (He has just passed a burger stand). They were alright, even the punks know not to bring down too much heat. Stole his wallet, but that's all. They were doing it just to prove a point, you know? Not out for blood. He was an asshole, but makin' bodies brings down way too much heat if they're connected.

Aaaand she's going to intervene.  "I think," she says directly into the phone, hand on the man's shoulder so he doesn't run, "that you may have forgotten the important detail where some preppy chica managed to send your kid spinning 'round to go home and think about his life, and she'd be rather upset to see her hard work wasted by some punks, you know?  If your kid gets the message that they really are out to get him right now...Well, that seems like the sort of thing that makes someone double down on their allegiance to power.  And if you want to turn somebody 'round from the enemy...You can't send them running into its arms.

"Just a thought."

"-Hold on, I gotta take care'a this."

He beeps the phone closed and shrugs the hand off his shoulder with a shove and turns to face her.

"'Kay. One, fuck you for interrupting my conversation. Who does that shit? Dos, don't fucking touch me, crazy lady, what the fuck's your problem? C, I have no idea what the hell you're on about."

"If I believed point C, I would be much more likely to apologize for the presumption.  As it is, my 'problem', as you so eloquently put it, is that I do not believe point C.  That little story you were telling to your friends sounded rather too relevant.  So I corrected a necessary detail, and offered some advice.  Assuming you don't want to drive folk into Tower's arms, hm?"

"I don't fucking care about Tower. Buzz off, tourist."

"Tower cares about you; seems a bit boneheaded to not care about it.  But have it your way."

Off she looks like she's going.

(She is not going.  It's harder to send a mirror image meandering off stage left while she's also blurring herself into the walls...but she's good at this.)

"Bitch."

He glares after her, texts `ag ttyl` to someone, and goes and gets a burger. And then eats it and doesn't obviously plot anything.

Well, she'll go follow Matteo around a bit, then.  Make sure those punks don't do the stupid thing anyway.

She knows Choristers all too well, they will absolutely do the violent and stupid thing given half a chance and boy do they.

Nah, something's fishy with this mark. Not worth the risk.

Mateo gets back to the checkpoint area without issue, sticks his helmet back on, and starts gabbing with the guards there, looking guilty and frustrated in body language.

Hmm.

Anything in particular coming up in that conversation?

He winces every time one of the others jokes about bribes, 'muties', or casual violence.

Saaaaaay. Do her illusions happen to also cover millimeter wave RADAR, infrared, and UV scans? Plus some similarly exotic stuff? Because she's either hanging around in eavesdropping range, or being illusioned near a lot of Tower's sensors.

Why shouldn't they?  It's not like they don't know Beastfolk see strange colors.  If anything, it seems like their radar coverage just kind of petered out for a bit right here.

Still, she's heard all she needs to hear.  She'll wander back to the bar, she thinks.  Let them know Mateo's off safe, and he seems to be genuinely thinking.

The console is flagging an anomaly, but it's probably just some sort of weird glitch? Still, better safe than sorry. After a while, several Tower guards look over in her general direction. One of the drones flies down to almost exactly where she is standing to check things out.

It's interesting, that they noticed her.  She wonders how.  Well, she's not going to overhear anything useful, she thinks - so they can have an inconveniently conveniently disappearing anomaly perhaps a bit sooner than she'd otherwise like.

Back to the bar, she thinks.

The anomaly retreated when investigated. An infiltration attempt! This definitely seems like something to pass up the chain!!

The second woman is gone, and Val is sitting inside. Behind the bar, actually. There's salsa music playing from a boom-box bracketed to the ceiling.

"Hey, no trouble in here," Val comments. "I don't want to hear it, no. And you gotta buy drinks if you want to hang, or have a good story to tell."

Other figures in the bar include:

Two white-and-black face guys like the ones who threw booze at her earlier, though not members of that specific group. Drinking and complaining about fuel prices.

One woman smoking a joint with a single spike slotted in her head, looking rather out of it and just chilling. She has a metal hand.

Two different tables of ragged guys and gals playing cards and shooting the breeze; The current scuttlebutt is that Tower kid (fuck Tower, seriously), and how it's actually pleasantly cool today, for summer, and did you hear that one guy cooking up meth blew himself up, that's what you get for sampling your own product.

There wasn't anything there, is the thing, which investigation revealed.  So it probably is just a weird glitch.

(Is what she'd say, if she were hovering over their shoulders and knew more about the system.)

"Nah, no trouble, just thought you might want to know Mateo got where he was going safe enough.  Some punks were dissuaded from giving him a bit of trouble; he's already gotten the memo, y'know?  Can practically smell the smoke comin' out of his ears from thinkin' so hard about it.  Sendin' it again so soon 'll just piss whoever gets the duplicate off, and I've never been a fan of using fists where words'll do, anyway.  Don't reckon he'll darken your door like that again, 'less it's desperate.

"A-ny-way.  Have I got a story...

"...Damn, my life really doesn't do a lot of featuring me as the protagonist.  Much prefer a good mentorship role, honestly.  Or haranguing someone who's being a proper idiot.  Suppose I could talk about the dumbasses who thought they could dissect someone to get the secrets out, but a lot of that shit's just too distant from to hit home right even then.  How much indulging my people-watching habit can I get for..." She consults the folded-up dollar bills, "three bucks, then?"

The inside of the bar is fairly nice, all told. It's reasonably quiet in here, aside from the music. The furnishings are hardly dusty at all. And cool- A nice spring day rather than a searing summer one.

Val takes the three dollars and fixes her a glass of ice water from under the bar.

"I think the memos get caught by his spam filter, hon. You can stay a while, I'll let you know if your welcome's wearing thin, and it goes a bit faster if you're not actually drinking."

The bloodshot-eyes lady Ophelia encountered earlier comes into the bar, wearing a T-shirt in addition to her mesh thing now, and rather filthy on closer inspection, and slaps four dollars down on the counter. "Washroom?"

Val frowns and pockets the cash quickly, replacing it with a cold beer bottle. "This a bar, not a street stall. I saw you stumbling around earlier. The showers are down by the market, head."

"...Got a nanite shot. I'm good now."

"And you immediately came to get drunk again, huh?"

"No, I'll save it, I'm - Just - the toilet and to wash my face."

"...Door on the left. I'll remember you if my bathroom's fucked up later."

"Thank you."

Off she goes. Val sighs.

"Tough job, carin' 'bout people," she murmurs.  "Feels like it never ends, huh?  'specially with the big men in their towers, trampling over the little people."

She sips her water, slowly.  Watches where the lady in the mesh shirt went.  "On the other hand, the opportunities to make miracles happen...Sometimes they're worth the effort.

"...Wonder what could've happened with her, if she's feeling like she needs the privacy."

"You ain't fooling me with that stupid accent. You have to watch your own back, not someone else's. Not that I want to talk about it or anything."

"Bad trip, I think," one of the card-players comments as he walks up. "Another round for the table, please."

Val starts fetching bottles.

"Meth addict. I've seen her around. Name of Reilly. I don't know the full story, but any of us could be her, honestly. And it's worse out here than in the slums- I mean, I've got a steady line of work at the fuel plant, but plenty don't. I don't know if Tower has her blacklisted or she's avoiding someone or what. That's bordertown life."