The Mystics

Austere Clements was the first to arrive. Garbed in a simple yet sophisticated traditional black suit with a white dress shirt underneath a red and black-striped tie that matched the crimson in his long, flowing (and, surprisingly, straightened) beard, he was astoundingly well-dressed by comparison to his typical island-style casual attire. His flip-flops were replaced by a pair of black leather shoes, and even his bald head seemed especially radiant underneath Castle Mystic's bright lights. Usually, he had displayed himself as nothing much more than kook in love with smoothies and playing games with the young Victoria Sinclair. Certainly, he had thought on the way past the doors leading to the President's office, she would be surprised by the sheer professionalism by which he was attempting to exude with that day, but this was out of the utmost respect for her father, whom he had known for decades, and for her in this moment of inexorable sadness and bewilderment.

Victoria's father and Austere had gone back long before even his term as President of the Mystics. They were friends at a young age, Austere having been there for him as a senior advisor during his long strides into the President's seat. With both the professional experience as a member of the Mystics for years upon years paired with his status as a friend to the family, a best friend to her father prior to his death, and her own godfather, Austere had only the utmost hopes that he could help Victoria ease into the situation at hand in as intrinsic a way as could be allowed by the universe. If it was ever hard for him to get through to her, at least he had his buddy, Rock, never far away to try and help him out here.

Of course, this went beyond just helping Victoria ease into her new position as the Mystics' commander-in-chief. Though he did recognize this as the most important detail of the situation and, having never had a child of his own, naturally held his goddaughter close to his heart, he had something to settle with whomever these unknown terrorists were who would so audaciously kill her father in cold blood. There were many questions that could be asked about why tragedy had happened in the first place, but asking them now would be to no avail. There would be a time and a place to answer each of them, and, if Austere's decades of life experience accounted for anything, he knew that at the end of it all, everything would fall into place in a way that those who commit wrong would pay for their wrongdoings.

"Karma," he murmured under his breath, before shuddering at the word himself, as if he were remembering some bad dream he had involving that cause of samsara coming upon him in one particular way or another.  

Nevertheless, he had pushed the doors open to the President's office with surprising delicacy not a beat later and found Victoria standing in place, staring at the chair which was once her father's not any more than a week before. As always, she looked beautiful, her flowing red locks coming down just past shoulder length, her autumn eyes shining as resplendently as they always would. Yet, looking into those eyes, one could feel that her composure was a mixture of nervousness, depression, confusion, and a million other unsatisfactory traits caused by the trauma of her father's passing and the anxiety that came with suddenly being thrown into his chair as President of the Mystics. He walked up to her and placed one burly hand of his on her shoulder. A moment passed of naught but silence before he had looked her in the eyes, trying to summon as solid an imperturbability as possible as his winter met her autumn, as if he were trying to tell her a thousand things at once, all lining up under the same common theme of "It's going to be okay."