Waking up in a hospital bed feeling sore is never fun. Belltower is already reaching for a cigarette while Katherine is blinking, the curious pharmaceutical scent filling the room as he smokes, calming down.

With a big smile, Katherine says, "I didn't know we could smoke in here!" Reaching into her slacks pocket for her Black and Milds and Zippo, lighting up the champagne flavored cigarillo, clenching the wood tip in her teeth.

Sighing under his sheets, shoulders visibly losing a steel-cord like tension as the cigarette works, "Who's gonna tell the Director where he can smoke?" He jokes dryly.

"The lady who turns his organs into a Benihana grill I'd imagine." Katherine fires back, seeing a small pile of recognizable pills on the nightstand next to the bed, shooting them with a swig of water.

"She can get in line for that." Belltower smirks, taking another puff. "You feeling alright?" He prioritizes Katherine over himself immediately, leadership instincts sharp.

"Yeah, I made you look old and myself look competent." Katherine teases before wincing as her ribs twinge, "I don't feel a thing." Not true at all, she was in immense pain, but she liked pretending that she wasn't.

"Sure, the wince was just an elaborate ruse." Belltower evidently fully supports Katherine's story. "Need more painkillers, press the button. Its the fun button." He dryly comments, pulling his own phone up.

Katherine shakes her head a little sadly, "Sorry, my blood is for three, can't come home pumped full of morphi—" Then she stopped, thinking about it. "Or… Hmmm." Looking at the button with an odd temptation

"It's ketamine." Belltower warns, "If that…changes anything." He seems unsure if it does, starting up a video on his cellphone.

She fires a group text to Estelle and Eleanora before remembering they're both asleep during the day. "Probably not worth it to be honest, I'll just ask them, for next time. Sophia's nice! Everyone is nice. It's very off-putting."

"All the assholes in black suits 'cept for me bit it, so the general niceness average is up." Belltower chuckles, dark and short as he rewatches the fight with Christos, looking for mistakes, weaknesses, anything.

"Can you send me a copy of that? I want to show Estelle and Eleanora, then write notes on what I did wrong. Besides not asking if he was a vampire." She admitted with a wince.

"Good guess, but no, he's immortal 'cause of other tricks." Belltower shoots the video over by email, having a slight realization, "I never told you my first name, huh."

"It's not Agent?" She asks as she looks at the E-mail address. Its seemingly a normal gmail, but as she reopens the email, it changes to another. Always seems to end up on a J first name, though.

"Not that predestined, thankfully." He smirks, "Its less impressive than most people hope for, I'm warning you."

"Its Jacob." She says looking at him with a grin.

"Didn't get to pick it." Jacob grumbles, "Woulda gone for something better if I did."

"I kinda lucked out, Katherine, Akaterine, Chronos and all that jazz. Like all the stars aligned and picked me for best belle at the ball of time procedures." She's back to her phone checking the video now, but still listening.

"Belltower's not my last name though, that's just an NWO thing. Means I'm a director." Jacob explains, taking another cigarette as, it seems, pain is the way to make him talk. "Don't remember it, it got caught in a wipe at some point."

She stares at him for a second, focusing wondering what the probability of picking the right name would be, wondering if she could use her powers to do it. "Jacob I think your last name is…" Strands of time and probability whip out and around the infinite probabilities of name, but of course, there aren't infinite probabilities. He's from Canada, his first name is Jacob, could narrow it down to English or North American names, or at least common ones. Trying to narrow it down further she googles a list of North American last names by census data.

"Levy?" She says suddenly.

He shrugs, "Your guess is as good as mine. Its gone."

"Is time procedure a muscle? Like could you and I train by flipping a coin and trying to get it go heads or tails?" Katherine asks, looking at him pulling out a coin.

"Until it suddenly landed on its edge and the roof collapsed, yeah." He nods, "You haven't seen a big backlash yet. You will." It's a very assured statement.

"Oh!" She gulped, looking at him, "How bad do you think all the Christos stuff was, the time bubble, and then the name thing was?"

"I'm pretty sure that karmic swords already swung. It doesn't usually wait." Belltower comforts Katherine with the absolute certainty his words have, "Might have been the hundred and fifty years of isolation, maybe."

"That was good though, uh for me I mean. Sorry." Katherine said with a wince, not because of her ribs this time, "I got to hang out with Eleanora and just… Learn, study until everything was perfect."

"I can't say it was all bad. After the sky stopped bleeding and I had the fucking Deviant." He spits that word out, "On his knees, it made a lot of the bullshit worth it. Even when it was repeating. Learned a lot about how painful I can make things."

"Huh, I've done a lot of research into that too, but I think I was coming in from a different angle then you were." Her phone was making more buzzes and chirps as she updated her journals, logs, and then accepted notifications from missed timers.

"Yeah, real practical learner." He chuckles darkly, looking at a very quiet video of something very bloody with an angry focus.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Sophia don't forget you promised me a bag of your blood to see if the marrow implants affect taste." She just kind of shouts out into the clinic, not entirely sure where the doctor was.

From an adjacent office, a shout of, "I'll get it to you this morning!" Sounds before a head hits a desk again, going back to sleep. Belltower rolls his eyes, an amount of anger drained at the absurdity. Stabilizing off his people. Then wondering if that was Katherine's plan or if she actually planned at all.

"Planned or instinct?" Jacob bluntly asks, not caring to play mind games.

"Entirely planned," Katherine admitted looking back to him, "A lot of the paranoia comes from me seeing my behaviors in other people. Then assuming that they're doing it the same reason I am, instead of that actually being their personality."

"Assuming people act as twisted as you do." He uses a general you, pointing at himself while he does, "Usually leads to bad intel. No one's exactly like you, despite what the paranoia is screaming." Belltower seems to understand it, though, "It's why I smoke."

"It's why I actually generally avoid most medications and drugs. Outside of liquor and brain meds. I want to be sharp because the paranoia gets me to keep my logs, check my timers, double check every mag, slide, and chamber. A lot of trouble is avoided by just letting it run wild…" Then she thought harder on it, "Until I guess you decide to stare a Claymore in the fa— Oh, that was probably time backlash. I was probably doing unconscious stuff to get you into the Claymore chair," She said thinking, "Because you picked the chair, you could have picked any chair. They weren't all mined."

"You've got paraphysical muscle." Jacob nods, "Use it like a drunk, but you've got a lot of muscle. Naturally gifted I guess. Usually easier to go along with or twist your procedures. Fighting them like Christos did is a chore."

She immediately takes notes on that in her phone, making sure to note down word for word, then her thoughts on what they could mean and her interpretation. Then how she could use that information to improve. She set an alarm to check it in fourteen days and update her thoughts on it.

"Fuck this." He groans, leaning up from the bed with a hiss of effort, multi-coloured eyes twitching with a sudden wave of pain at the edge of it.

"What are the odds of you getting back in bed and waiting it out I wonder." Katherine said, staring at him, though not trying to sound as threatening as she probably did.

"What are the odds of me throwing a sedative into your neck before then." Jacob smirks, standing up with an immediate grit of his teeth.

"Is it incredibly fucked up, that while not today, I do want to find out those odds." She says, as she leans back down pulling up the video of the fight studying her movements. Trying to figure out what the odds were, how to change them. Statistical analysis and data running in her mind.

Belltower leaves the room, stumbling out and vanishing.

"Sophia, Belltower left." Katherine yells, not looking up from her phone.

"That bastard!" Sophie shouts, the click of her heels sounding as she rises and chases him viciously. Nine minutes later, Belltower returns with two plates of hot pockets, freshly warmed. "You want some?"

"Ah fuck, no I snitched you out. You keep them" She admits as she looks at the hot pockets, "Feel bad now, thought I could slip out while she was chasing you."

Rolling his eyes, he places the plate on Katherine's front, moving to his bed and sitting back down with a series of pained hisses and grimaces. "Payback for breakfast, call it." He pulls his phone out and idly munches on the snacks as he scrolls.

"Deal," She says, taking the hot pocket and eating it. Then winces, again not because of the ribs. "Global panopticon huh? So…" Did you see my temper tantrum when I thought you left. The sentence wasn't finished but it hung in the air between them anyways.

"Yeah, see most everything." He answers with a shrug.

"That blows." Katherine admits as she finishes her hot pocket, the new meds finally unleashing her appetite. "Christ, I'm starving." She says suddenly, opening her phone, "Can we get doordash?"

He offers his plate, shaking his head, "I'll go make more." Gritting his teeth as he has to stand up again and make it to the kitchen.

"Like… Four." She says matter of factly as she finishes the second one.

"Yeah yeah." Belltower grumbles, returning in fifteen minutes with a pizza box and eight hot pockets. "They ordered pizza for ping pong night, its still warm." He puts the box on Katherine's bed, and the hot pockets, taking one for himself.

"I'm going to warn you," She says as she hoovers up the pizza at almost lightning speed, "I'm going to only get stronger and hotter now that I can finally hit my macros." Looking up the pizza and logging, calories, carbs, protein, sugars, and fats of each slice, then adding the hot pockets.

"My tr-"He growls out as something pops with escaping gas in his back, a deep noise that isn't often heard. Breathing in to calm down, he continues, "My trick with fist fights is to have a gun." Laying down in bed and eating his hot pocket.

"I tossed you one when yours broke, it's not my fault you didn't use it." She snickered, though the noise causing a moment of concern. "I probably should have caught you in retrospect."