Sacrifices in the Moonlight

In the cool of the Californian night, the NRTA tram crawled into the Temple Hill station.

Despite the modest bus stop-style pavilion serving the site, Temple Hill was nestled within one of New Rome’s oldest communities. Surrounded by the villas of the most eminent bloodlines in the hidden city, Temple Hill served as the spot for the civilians and campers who wanted to pay their godly ancestors their proper respect. From the modest shrines at the entrance to the opulent temples at the peak, all gods and goddesses known to Rome were open for offering.

Dean Basilone stepped onto the short platform with a bucket full of citrus. The platform, neighborhood and breezy bay air were all part of the centurion’s routine of providing Securitas a weekly cornucopia tribute of varied citrus.

This week, however, he decided to mix things up. Reagan Nary seemed to be having a rough day running the asylum known as the Fourth Cohort along with feeling at-fault for the missing quest team. Feeling like she could use the usual serenity of the temples, he invited her to come along and pay tribute to the team’s parents. Maybe it would help her cope with it all?

Dean scoped out a bench outside the hill’s entrance, crossing the aged cobblestone street to get there. A quick glance at the crowd showed no sign of Reagan.

“No worries,” he muttered upon sitting down. With an arm guarding his fruit, the son of Securitas pulled out his phone to pass the time. Why rush someone when they are already on edge?

Reagan was late. Again. Ugh. Today had just been a very...not-good day at all for her. Drills had been tiresome, although nowehere near as tiresome as having to deal with one Maxwell Bachman. Add that to the meeting that was just—nah, she didn't want to think about that right now. She was already flustered enough.

So, she handed—well, tossed—her denarii to the driver before rushing out of the cab she'd managed to catch. Readjusting the backpack she'd stuffed with various snack foods, Reagan scanned the hill's entrance for Dean Basilone. The third cohort centurion had invited her to visit the temples with him tonight, which everyone else seemed to be doing at the moment. While it was nice to see that the temples were being frequented, she was already almost twelve minutes late, so unless Dean was late too—

—Which he most definitely was not, Reagan noticed as she spotted him sitting on a bench by himself. Shit. "Hey!" she called out, waving her arm as she made her way over towards him. "Sorry," she said as she approached, "today's been—well, you know."

“Reagan!”

Dean and his bucket left the bench to receive the guest of honor as he slid the phone into his pocket.

While she was a bit late, it was much better than if she never could make it. And it was not like she was short of reasons to pass on passing out some food — if anyone could sympathise with a centurion’s work it was Dean himself  — so her actually taking the time to come out was really, really great. And if the backpack was any indication, she also took the time to prepare.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, eyes lighting with genuine enthusiasm. “Was the traffic bad or... like…?”

"Traffic was okay," she said, readjusting her backpack yet again, "though the driver was...chatty. Apparently I'm just terrible at punctuality today—and I really am sorry about that," she added, wincing a bit. Yeah, nice of Dean to take the time to invite her to this uber-personal ordeal only for Reagan to leave him waiting for gods knew how long. Great. Just...great. A guy tries to do something with her and she just—

Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Dangerous thought-process right there.

Leave it to Reagan to over-analyze everything.

Sighing quietly, she glanced down at the bucket Dean was holding. "Anyways, I'm assuming that's full of your mom's favorites, yes?" she asked, pointing at it.

“Oh, no, don’t worry,” Dean cut in. “You’re fine. Traffic is bad and its been a rough day. We’ve all been there.”

The third was never as rough as the forth, nor were the trams ever really delayed that badly by the traffic, but the pain of going from ungrateful legionnaires to bickering centurions was one only a select few would ever feel. At least Dean got a mission approved out of it.

But that was neither here nor there. Reagan spoke and pointed at the pail of fruit, bringing the centurions out of the first stages of small talk.

“Oh these,” he said, lifting the bucket up and taking a look. “I mean, I guess she likes these. She’s never told me anything about it, so... yeah. I guess Securitas likes fruit.

“But these aren’t just for her,” he quickly added in. “I’m thinking that, yeah, we’ll stop by Securitas and Salus, but also the parents of the questers. Maybe giving them something will bode well for Caroline and Dom?”

Reagan nodded at Dean's suggestion—which honestly seemed like the best option for them, at this point. From the senate's deliberation, she could see that there wasn't going to be any recovery group sent out any time soon, so Dom and the others weren't going to be getting any help from the Legion for the foreseeable future. While it still wasn't the same, it was very possible that the gods could somehow help them were it requested in sincerity.

Of course, her father had always said that the gods refuse to help those who cannot help themselves, but he said a lot of nonsense and now more than ever at that.

So, it was the solidest plan they had at this point, and, more importantly, she liked it. "That sounds good to me," Reagan replied. She indicated at her backpack with her thumb. "Hopefully, they like Hershey bars and cheese puffs since that's what Salus likes."

“Hershey bars and cheese puffs?” That sounds a lot better than lemons. “That sounds a lot better than lemons. They’ll probably love it— unless they’re on a health kick, but gods don’t need to exercise, right? Like, couldn’t they just will themselves into any shape possible?”

"No idea," Reagan replied. "I mean, I assume most of them can do that, but do gods even need to eat? I mean, I'm pretty sure Prometheus survived having his liver eaten by a bird and regrow for thousands of years, so what's a break from bread gonna do?" Gods are just weird. "Gods are just—well, they're a bit beyond our understanding, I guess," she said quickly. It wouldn't do well to insult the gods when she and Dean were about to try and win their favor.

She shook her head a bit before returning her attention back to Dean. "So, which one do you want to visit first?" she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, nodding along with the explanation.

“Well, what do you think is more important? Appeasing our parents or Dom’s and Carol’s?”