Backdated to Wednesday. Magic Time!

[faustianism]

Who: Mr. Gold (faustianism) and Prue Halliwell (astralling)
When: Wednesday, October 3rd, afternoon.
Where: Prue's apartment.
Summary: Mr. Gold is now a woman, and someone is to blame. He's following the magic to it's source.
Warnings: Possible language? Nothing worse then that.

It felt like it was a game of hide and seek. The person who had done this (and it could only be a person; the Core didn't have the same feel that magic did, though Mr. Gold would never say that out loud) was hiding, and everyone who was fairly upset about the fact that they were now the opposite gender was the one doing the seeking.

Mr. Gold was doing the seeking. It was like a scent, a light trail, something he couldn't explain that just let him know when he was closer to powerful magic. How he always knew when the Evil Queen was in a room, before she'd said anything or he'd turned around.

He doesn't look like a threat, though. A stately, handsome woman, walking around with a cane and decked out with gold jewelry. Hey, if he could get away with wearing this much bling, why not do it? The person was around here somewhere, he knew it. He needed to talk to them; he wanted someone like this on his side. And he'd do whatever it would take. Looking up at the building, he went to the buzzer. There were a few names there, so he started at random; it seemed like no one else was home. Lucky him.

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[astralling]

Prue wasn't hiding on purpose. Okay, maybe she was a little, but not for this reason- she actually desperately wanted to solve this as soon as possible, because accidentally affecting the entire city was not okay. But things were the way they were, and the way things were involved bad health insurance and her burned eyes still leaving her mostly blind, until her nephew could figure out how to use his healing power. As it was, it was all she could do to use magic to be able to read the Book of Shadows- for some way, any way, to try to fix this that she hadn't tried before.

The doorbell caught her off-guard, in the middle of perusing the Book. It took her a minute to astral project to the middle of the living room, leaving her real body slumped on the couch, and go to check the peep hole, healthy-looking and able to see fine in her astral form. It was nobody she knew but the woman looked fairly harmless, so Prue answered the door curiously.

"Hello?" She leaned out the door, intentionally keeping it as closed as possible to keep the woman from seeing... her in the living room. "Can I help you?"

[faustianism]

"Hello," Mr. Gold said pleasantly enough. He wasn't even trying to see into the room, though he desperately wanted to. Presenting himself as a harmless old woman was hard work, he was learning, and he wasn't very happy with it.

Still, he was smiling. She was smiling.

"I'm looking for some help. This might be an inconvenience, but you see, I'm trying to find something important to me that's been lost. I've tried tracking it, and it's led me straight to this apartment... perhaps I shouldn't be telling you all this through the door. Could I possibly come in?"

[astralling]

"Ah, I'm sorry," Prue demurred with a smile, sliding out a little more and closing the door that much behind her. "It's really messy in there, my cats got into everything-"

Wait. Tracking? She paused in the middle of her sentence with a frown. "What did you say it was you were looking for, again?"

[faustianism]

He couldn't even get into the whole 'oh, cats! I love cats, they're darling, can I see them?' which he could have gone into if he needed it. Instead, he kept on the smile.

"Yes, tracking. Something has been taken from me, and I tracked it to this house. Something that my life is not without."

On a more hilarious side, he could mean his balls. Or he could just mean his state of being.

[astralling]

Prue stepped into the hallway completely and shut the door behind her, unmoved by the nice-old-lady act.

"And what is that, exactly?"

[faustianism]

"In an unfortunate turn of events, I've been turned into a woman," Time to get that one out in the air. "Something that can only be done by magic. It has the taste of magic, in any case, and while some of the people here might blame it on the Core, I think we both know there's something a bit more to it."

He paused, giving another smile. "Maybe it's best if we continue this discussion inside. We wouldn't want to give the neighbors and earful, would we?"

[astralling]

Oh. Oh, shit. Not that Prue didn't expect people to come looking, or hadn't had anyone figure it out yet, but this person- for a complete stranger to come to herhouse giving creepy smiles- something told her she (he?) wasn't here to laugh about the whole thing.

Her smile froze on her face for a second. "Of course, I couldn't agree more. If you'll just give me a second, I'll be right out."

Slam when the door in Gold's face while Prue ducked back into her apartment to move her body into the bedroom. In a couple minutes she opened the door properly, letting the woman inside. "Hi. Sorry. Come on in."

[faustianism]

"Thank you," Mr. Gold said, a slight bow of the head as he came into the apartment. "Truly, I am sorry for the intrusion, but considering the circumstances, I felt like I needed to find you."

He'll just go over to the couch and take a seat. He's still trying to figure out how to sit properly as a woman; he's getting the hang of that, though.

"So. Magic, is it?"

[astralling]

Prue was on high alert watching the w- person sit in her living room, so it was something she noticed. The awkwardness. The comment about finding her got only a terse "Right."

Needed to find her, what bull. The annoyance (much of it self-inflicted, anger at herself for screwing up and generalized frustration at being inarguably wrong and a screw-up for one of the first times in her life) showed through in only very small ways, the tension at the corner of her mouth and brittle movements as she crossed her arms and faced the intruder, not sitting down. Towering, instead. "Yeah. That it is."

Beat.

"How could you tell? Most people are still calling this a fluctuation of the Core."

[faustianism]

And here he didn't even need to give his name. Not really, not just yet. So maybe this whole being a woman thing could work in his favor. But he understood Prue's tactics, as well. He was a small man, usually, and standing always made you much, much taller then your foe.

Having a good back up in the form of ultimate power also worked. Rumpelstiltskin was a coward, truly, through and through, but when it came to magic? He felt pretty good about it.

"I've always had an affinity towards magic. It's only expanded, since coming to this city. Turning a soldier into a rose is easy enough; changing their gender, however, takes some skill. Skill I haven't seen in a very long time, and never in this city."