He moves to a car, getting into it, it's a simple, inauspicious black hulled Ford sedan, four doors and looking exactly like what someone would buy as their second car. The engine starts as he says, "Need to stop by the doctors before we complete the flight, facility isn't small."

She still feels off as she gets into the car. Not entirely sure what it could be. "Do you know if we get… Screwed around with by fixed points in time? The vampires move fast because time around them bends. I just feel… Nothing can shake what I'm feeling right now."

"Fixed points have the worst backlashes. They're not meant to change." Belltower explains as he drives into a chunk of wall that is sliding away. Driving into an underground chamber and further past a series of doors, nearly half a mile of distance coated in thick concrete and marked with Americana fifty years out of date.

Her eyes widen as he says that, and then squeaks just before the wall drops. When the drive finally settles out, she says "So I should stop using time procedures on them for extremely… For fun I mean. For practice I mean."

"I'd….recommend you don't use procedures for…fun practice. Yeah." Belltower slowly answers with a bemused tone, turning the car into a garage that's lit up by harsh hospital lighting, white tile and glass intermixing to provide a very sterile appearance.

He gets out and walks up a short stairwell, followed by Katherine as they both make it to a door marked 'Operating Theatre'. "Can I walk in with my gun in my hand?" Katherine asks looking at Belltower. "Still feel… Weird."

"They're civilians. Breathe, you're safe here." He says confidently, trying to calm Katherine as a small hint of worry worms its way into him. "Just a doctors visit."

She nods, quietly, but the hairs on her neck prickle when the door sticks the first time he tries to open it, she notices him having to pull harder to get it unstuck. That doesn't happen. It was very quiet in Katherine's head. She kept looking for things and finding nothing.

The theatre is two chairs with some sort of…face device on it rolled to the side. "All Agents, please, sit down at the automated facial reconstruction chairs." A synthetic voice drones from speakers, making Belltower blink. "Huh, automated now. Cool." He moves to the further one, eyes clearing the room twice before sitting down.

She keeps wanting to take deep breaths to calm herself, but she is calm. Her heart isn't tearing out of her chest. Yet something is clearly wrong. Still she trusts Belltower, though she does a circle around the room, rubbing her hand against the entirety of the perimeter before finally sitting down.

"Try focusing on something that is in your control." Jacob says as the devices shift, moving in front of both people's faces. "Like this fancy touch screen." He comments whilst an image of Katherine's face is shown to her. Options on one side for hair, skin, nose, ears, chin and everything else on a scrollable menu.

Her mouth puckers a little at the options, so many to choose from, but she liked everything about herself. Mostly. Not anything she'd want to change at least. The hair options were thrilling and she spent quite a few minutes watching her own hair on a generated 3D image twist curl, bounce, flair, and do whatever else. Then noted that freckles were an option and dotted her nose and cheeks with them. Finally, adding an L and and S behind her ears, typing in a description, excited by the myriad of generated choices from the text. Each had fangs underneath, and on one side, a foil, the other, a shillelagh.

Playing with the touch screen did make Katherine feel a lot better. A heat builds in her face as something shifts, freckles pulsing onto it with sizzles of a beam, stress melting off, wrinkles falling away. Its painless but unceasingly odd. A feeling the human body has no real context for. The cover moves off her face, revealing Belltower looking very…boyish.

He wasn't kidding about being baby faced, with a smooth shave, no deep sinking of his eyes over decades of stress. And his eyes are somehow brighter, more focused, or at least look better on him. Belltower wasn't being adventurous, so otherwise he looks normal, if a little more…young.

"You look like a highschooler," Katherine crooned with delight, "You're going to get carded everywhere we go you realize."

"I got carded till I was twenty eight." He grimaces, voice pitched up, not as degraded by years of smoking.

She squeals, "You sound like a baaaabyyy." Pure delight on her face.

He glowers at her, frowning, "I sound normal." Belltower complains, trying to give a grain to his voice, failing immediately.

"I'm trying to imagine you fighting in a war, and it's like…" Her eyes light up as she pulls out her phone, "Seen any of the Monty Hall movies? The rabbit that goes nuts on people?" Showing him a youtube video of the scene.

"My god." He grumbles lightly, standing up, looking very grown up in his suit, "Knew I should have stopped at thirty."

"Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't go with the sugar daddy cover. You'd be able to have basically BS your way out of stuff by just trying to seem impressive." Katherine says quickly putting the phone away, "Though now, everyone's just going to assume you have a fake ID." She was definitely laying it on thick, the back and forth between her and Estelle now leaking into her personality.

"They can squeeze me for a hundred to get in the club." He waves off the concern, before pausing, "They still just shake you down for money, right? The bouncer doesn't actually stop anyone?"

She shakes her head sadly, "LAPD and the… One of the alphabet agencies, send in narcs regularly and fine everyone involved. If your paperwork checks out it's fine, but money doesn't spend like it used too."

"I've got an ID marked at twenty three." He gets out the door, making it to the car and slipping behind the wheel again.

Katherine nods, "You'll be fine then," the feeling was now getting very normal, just being a part of her background. Easy to ignore at least. It was just an emptiness. A stillness she supposed, as they drove she looks at him, "Do you think you can pull off a fishnet top?" Deeply enjoying the new look purely in how it made Belltower cranky.

"I did." He frowns, driving up the entrance way. "If you can believe it, they were popular in the nineties and two-thousands." There's a grumble of self-justification in him, trying to make something embarrassing better.

"So like that limited edition Ken barbie everyone had in your millenia." Lighting up a cigarillo as a timer beeped, feeling pleasant warmth passing through her as something chilled her neuroses. Maybe she'd skip the casual check for once.

The drive up is easy, and then back into the helicopter for the last short leg of the journey. Belltower's missing a few scars, including the one around his neck that's so distinctive. Looking untouched by the world as of yet. "You had freckles?" He asks.

"No, never. I just think they look cute." She laughs, "I always have, it kind of felt right. I almost added a scar over my eye? Like one of those claw swipes you see in shows to prove a character is grizzled but I had to stop and think of the mission."

"Yeah, odds are the therianthropes will oblige you anyways." It sounds so fun when he uses big words.

Looking over her glasses at the Director, "I'm to be obliged? Jesus, I'm going to ask for a raise."

"What?" Belltower asks confused, trying to catch up with the joke. "I-what-huh?" The little sputter of words is very adorable.

Looking at him with a laugh, she says, "Just… You're a hundred so I guess you'd call it… Horndoggery?"

"I'm forty!" Jacob complains loudly.

"Wow, so it really is the cigarettes that took the grit out. You emote way clearer now. I feel like I can read you now." She says giggling.

He lights up and puffs one with a frown, "Yeah don't get used to it, back to old and busted right after this." Belltower sucks down the cigarette, external changes not translate to internal.

"I'm honestly fine with that." Katherine says with a wild grin. Her face now almost elastic and vibrant looking into her phone's front facing camera suddenly wanting to cry. "Oh… Fuck."

"You alright?" Belltower questions, face showing a hard read of Katherine's emotions in a second.

She looks back from the phone with a smile, "Uh… One of the side effects of Lurasidone… It's face tremors? Your face kind of… Numbs." She says looking into the camera. "It's the first time I've seen my real smile since I was… Sixteen."

He nods, "Yeah, that I get." He glances at a reflective surface nearby him. "Shrapnel and, more importantly, shockwaves fuck up your surface nerves." Belltower's face shifts as if he is going to smirk, except a smile cracks open instead, bright and young and full of life.

"Still can't put light in my eyes though," She says morosely as she leans in, "Such an odd thing… They had a specularity slider… I maxed it."

Tilting his mirrorshades down, he smiles darkly, looking through with dead eyes. "I don't think it's all biology, really."

"More… Ma— Procedural." She shifts the word suddenly, "Christ… I can't believe it…" Quietly whispering to herself, "I… Think that time loop might have been the single greatest thing to ever happen to me at this point…"

"It's…yeah, I get that." He looks up at the roof of the helicopter, "I got a hell of a training session at least, bright side." The Director smiles darkly at that, face immediately expressive in every respect. "And always had a way to unload stress."

She snaps her head to him, now aware that she probably can't hide the overwhelming guilt and concern at all. Instead, trying to keep her voice level. "Oh, god right. I keep forgetting."

"Shrinks keep wanting to have me open up about it." He doesn't lose his voice, but there's a hair of something to it, "No idea how to even start. Woulda talked to them even without the…repetition." He lights another cigarette, quickly returning to his old pace.

Looking to him as she lights a second Cigarillo, quickly becoming unaware at how quick she was consuming them, "I think that makes them shitty therapists to be honest. If they're walking in saying 'Hey, trauma dump now so we can fix it!' Though, I guess the good ones, the really good ones work out of shitty strip malls at extremely low rates trying to help as many people as they can."

"Yeah," He repeats a vocal tick, now becoming a pattern, "These ones just want to get me back to work and not have me, I dunno, take a helicopter and ventilate an office building with the miniguns." It's an annoyed admission, "So I just told them it felt like there were mind procedures involved. They smiled, said there's no sign, and chalked it up to stress." Belltower grimaces, his whole demeanor shifting with it.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You have enough…" Then she thought about it, it wasn't a money problem. Who do you talk about these things with? A trauma counselor could work through the… Stuff, but they're not magic inclined. Kathrine might actually be the only person who could possibly have the experience and knowledge to help at all. "Christ. Yeah, so they don't want you to ventilate an office building with miniguns?"

"Not a random building full of Sleepers." He measures the statement, grimace fading to a smirk that feels cocky. "Specific buildings that need minigunning are my speciality." It's a definite deflection, he tried a tinge of vulnerability and then recoiled from it. So much easier to read.

"There actually was a bad part of the loop for me, probably in a different way." Katherine said quietly, " Eleanora the french vampire? She bit me, killed me every morning just at Sunrise, but you survive a bit past that. The blood gets sucked out but the brain still still has to die. So… I did. Sixty five thousand times. Each time, I'd watch her heart break in different ways." A deep breath as she sucked on the psych and mild, "I never ever understood why she had to do it, why if it hurt her so much she went through with it. There's a tiny question, because the thing that breaks the loop, is me telling her that I'm in a loop." Another big puff.

Belltower stays quiet, face darkening as Katherine talks, "I didn't make it that far the first…couple thousand times. Hostile space, corners leading into dead drops. Left is right, up is down." He's putting a chill to his voice, like a briefing, something safe. "EDE, the target, was cracking reality a new one after the cult brought it here. And radio couldn't get out of the bent space. The other five never make it past seventeen minutes, you can't. Not without knowing everything that's coming, knowing to take a left instead of right step so you don't step on mud that'll have you merged into a fucking tree." The briefing voice fades as a hiss of anger gets him.

Katherine simply gives him space to talk, watching quietly, with her homemade psych and mild. "I hate that time magic taught us that some things are impossible."

"Not…impossible. Just improbable." He's staring off into a corner, looking much too young to have that look about him. "Made it to the compound attempt eleven thousand, sixty three. Didn't get too deep into that until the twenty thousands. Reality was in a real bad shape here, walls breaking down, it was trying to let more of its kind through. Could taste fucking hashbrowns." Jacob hisses, "Made it through that, stumbled into a room. EDE was possessing the cult leader. Figured out how to fight him exactly halfway through the loop."

Oh holy shit, he wasn't being sarcastic about the hashbrowns. Katherine thinks, trying not to break the calm look she imagines comrades in arms give.

With a dark, vile smile, the bloody and dangerous and vicious sort that only murder with a rage behind it can give, Jacob continues "I got really good at killing him, at the end there, could do it with just a knife and five hours."

"Sometimes, I tried to take my anger out on Eleanora." She said having the dark parts dragged out. "I couldn't even get close. She's five hundred moving at inhuman speeds, a hunter with centuries of experiencing toying with prey. So… I said mean things, things I only knew because of other loops, or I'd shoot myself in front of her." These parts didn't come out ever, "I was trapped, so I… Just fucked with the only person there."

"I kinda cracked too. Only had seventeen minutes of friendly faces, but I had…a lot of unfriendly ones." Belltower scowls. "I lost it, strung them up on trees, killed my way across the compound with a pistol, a knife, sometimes my hands. Just…a game after a while, six hours of game where the only play was bloody."

"Do you ever get scared? That people are going to see the cracks?" Katherine doesn't know if she's asking for his benefit or hers now.

"Aren't you?" Jacob asks, a dull spark of amusement at the question.

"Constantly. I love Eleanora, but if she knew what I did to her in the loops…" Her eyes go a bit more vacant, "That'd be it I think… There's more ways to kill then one. You can talk someone into doing it themselves."

Belltower smiles cruelly, "Yeah, I got good at that too." Its a soft, violent affirmation, "It's not something you should get good at. But here we are." He looks up at Katherine finally, blue and green meeting hers with the dull gleam of too much life lived.

"You get… bored." She admits, softly. "I'm sorry for the loops that lasted longer, but only two or three days. I… When I did that to Eleanora, I had to go back, then a thousand days later I'd get mad again because nothing worked. I had to try over and over and over because if I killed her, I couldn't live with myself. If she killed me I didn't get to leave."

"Those were bad. It took six days for pickup. So I just got to stand in the bodies. Drink water out of their well. Eat their food." He's grimacing uncomfortably again. "Just…rough." He sighs, the depth of the noise at odds with his appearance.

"If it happens again… Can I do anything to help? I get to roam free after an hour." She says, looking at him.

"Stay alive for seven days. I get some really fun drugs in seven days. It's pretty worth it." He chuckles to himself.

Katherine nods, quietly, "Well, you can call me. My number never changes. It might be easier with conversation."

"I'm not gonna be real interesting with two bullets and probably a claw in me." Belltower deprecates himself with a smile.

"I'm interesting enough for both of us, that's half the reason you took me on." The smile is soft, letting the moment sit. Even pass, if it needs. Sometimes you can't help, sometimes the biggest help you can be is just staying alive so you're on the other side.

"What's a decent cover?" He shifts topics, "I was thinking brother and sister but we look nothing alike."

She looks at him with an arched eyebrow, "You're… Joking. Brother and sister. You realize we might be the only two people there hot enough to actually be with each other right?"

He twitches at that, "Feels unprofessional." A curt admission.

"Just keep your hands above my clothes, and careful with the piercings. We'll be fine." Then she thinks a bit more, "Maybe no tongue if we have to kiss. We both smoke like chimneys and you're not going to be vampire cold."

"Hmm." Belltower grumbles in a light voice, "Still feels odd, don't normally do this sort of thing." He starts tapping a foot.

"I think my sense of what's normal has been completely twisted by the vampire polycule." Then it hit her, like a freight train. He did not have Eleanora in the loop, or a polycule outside of the loop. This might be the closest thing he's gotten to a date after hundreds of years of bloodshed. "Things are a bit more casual now, then they were twenty years ago." Katherine wasn't entirely sure that was true, but it was definitely the right thing to say, "Couple means no-one approaches you, but couple looking for a third lets you still follow your own path. Brother and sister can definitely work as well. Cousins. Girl who's taken a guy out to get a free dinner and drinks. You look young enough to be a tech bro, so if we dress up professionally this could actually be a business call even in a crowded club."

He shakes his head, pulling his sleeve up to show a patchwork of scars. "Tech bro's don't look like this past the wrist." The sleeve is released as he annoyedly frowns.

"Put a semi colon on the wrist and people will just think you had some mental health issues growing up." Katherine said as she looked, "It looks like it hurt though, but if you want to keep things suit and tie, then yeah. Even a henna semi-colon to say you're 'testing it out' first."

"On the other hand, we need a cover that lets me booze around probably criminals." Belltower's thinking, pushing through any nerves with a trained drive, "So, couple or, executive protection? Keep you at a slight distance, glare at people that come near, you tell me off, I lurk around, making conversation? Still, might scare someone off." He's thinking out loud.

"I think executive protection is easier because it won't seem odd if you get sketchy and want to sneak off. Let's me make a big fuss by picking a random fight if you need cover. Let's you handle the people since I'm not…" Her mind going back to a memory with a smile, "Socialized."

"I'm not exactly socialized either." He grumbles, "Last time someone touched me, I nearly broke their jaw in six places." But he's not disagreeing.

"We could also switch, because women and men are probably going to fawn. You look… This is going to sound bad, but you look very pretty and haunted. It's a look." Katherine says bluntly, trying to get the point about touching across.

"Hmm." Belltower makes a noise. "We can lean into that. Make me eye bait, you work the crowd." He's considering something, "Suppose at that point I lean into it, how's your eye shadow?"

"Very practiced in application." Katherine says with a smile, pulling out a phone and very carefully sending him the right picture. "Here's a picture of my pre-shower makeup that I took when it went really well." Then looking at him squinting. "It's basically practice make-up you do before you shower."

"I'm aware. I wore fishnets in two-thousand." He jokes, a dry and sarcastic tone that's familiar. Looking at the photograph and nodding, "Probably better than I can do, two decades out of practice." Jacob sighs. "Alright, next step, you just want to stick to real names? First names to be specific."

"I want to be… Shark." She says thinking of a cool nickname, "No. Wait, Deadeye. Or… Just a number, like Seven."

"That's taken." He chuckles, "So is Six and Nine. It's the aesthetic."

She'd let that one slide for his sake. "I'll be Moxxi with an I, and you'll be… Ivan." She says staring at him.

"Ivan." He states, staring back. "That's what you're going with."

"What's wrong with Ivan!" Katherine says, "It's like… Russian? Oh. Wait." Looking at him suddenly as she thought. "What do you think of Eight?"

"Nostalgic." Belltower smiles. "I can work with Eight, already respond to it."