The Sidewinder Strikes
Jan. 30th, 2005 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalian*sigh* RIP, much-loved NPC.
Skank got introduced to his brand spanking new flaw -- Nightmares. Basically, he saw Molly -- Elder Molly, first time around, when she didn't even manage to kill Violet -- torn to pieces. Needless to say, Skank was not a happy chappie in the morning. He checked on everybody; completely failed to help Susanna in any way at all from where she was gibbering in a corner, got no response from Michelle, and checked to make sure Molly was still in her body before going off to have coffee. (It was a good thought; technically, Molly could have gone astral. She didn't, but still a good check.)
The others, meanwhile, were acting relatively normal. Jeremiah came back, suffering from acute amnesia (couldn't remember anything since his arrival at Bokugo) and so was relatively sane. There was also the paper, front page referencing the destruction of the Savoy. There was only one quote worth having -- Dr Lucille McBride, saying, "I don't know; I just happened to be passing now will you get that Dictaphone out of my face so I can actually help repair the damage?" Lucius was sort of sulking and miserable -- well, he was still having the whole "I used to be a fomor" thing, so who can blame him? There was also the fact that Michelle's stallion Madhouse (now pony-sized) was eating the garden. There was an amusing bit of stuff there when Lucius tried to explain the situation to the obviously-more-than-just-a-stallion and Chloe, chipper at the idea of having a pony, tried to hug the worst-tempered stallion in existence. Madhouse kicked her halfway across the garden. Skank then actually talked to the horse properly, after he'd had his coffee, and things wound down, basically.
Skank, at this point, asked for some help from Lucius and Kuo-Li, the predominant Mind mages. He knew Molly was still in her body, but was worried about the fact that she wasn't responding to anything so asked them to have a look. Lucius went first, and what he saw was a jumbled mish-mash of images (he can only sense) -- all from one of a number of different futures. Some of the images involved E tattooing all those marks on a fifteen-or-sixteen-year-old Molly; others involved her cabal-style dealings with, among other people, an older Emily Swift and Romulus and Remus Marwood Egan. The predominant one of those was them looking at a building Lucius couldn't quite make out, Molly in her early 20s and wearing the clothes the Elder Molly brought back in Violet's rote was wearing when she died; and Molly saying, "If I'm not back in an hour, burn it to the ground, because neither of us are getting out alive." Lucius broke off the scan, screaming, after going through the same Elder Molly death that Skank dreamed the night before. Eventually, Skank got tired of trying to pry info out of Lucius, who was far from forthcoming, and Kuo-Li gave it a go. He was more proactive, figuring he'd go in and try to help Molly sort it out. What he got was Mindscape -- Molly's room at Bokugo, the one that's now all charred from Paradox backlash, and Molly explaining as best she could that this wasn't so much mind as Avatar, and that she had to try to sort it out but that it was sending her loopy. Kuo-Li used some of his success in the rote to help her keep it together -- actually, just talking to someone helped -- but there was only so much he could do where Avatar was concerned. So he went back and reported that, essentially, Molly and her Avatar(s) were trying to work out matters, one of which was whether she was supposed to be dead or not. Kuo-Li had tried to assure her that of course she wasn't dead until Molly's mind gave him the reason why there was such confusion -- between being torn to pieces by Violet, being burned to death by Violet and being ripped apart by Paradox a couple of times, no one could blame her for not being sure. There was nothing they could do, so they left it.
Instead, they went to the person who could at least tell them what had been done to the other two mental cases in the house -- one Rodney Delevan. They dispensed with the suits and the soundtrack and went straight to the questions. Well, okay, they tried. Rodney got in his first licks with things like, "So how's your fuck-bunny, Skank? Hey, the way I look at it, I did you a favour; now she can't say no". Skank didn't hit him; E did. Hard. There were a few incredibly pointed insults, one of which involved Skank's magical abilities ("So where'd you pick up the new ability since you deserted Violet, Fetish? Cereal box, perhaps?") and there was more hitting. During this long and rather unpleasant time (at one point, Skank had a flick-knife literally touching the man's cornea), a few things came out. First of all, there was no intention of bringing Molly back; that decision had come from the Dreamspeaker (Dawn). The intention was to show power, divorce from the Order of Hermes and eventually make a bid for the Correspondence Chair as a Tradition in their own right. Obviously, plans had changed, but Rodney didn't know how; various parts of his mind had been greyed out. The other thing they found out was that the rote he'd put on Susanna and Michelle was a heavy-Mind, light-Spirit thing that would make them believe intrinsically in their own guilt in the matters of which they were accused by the Council. It had been embedded in the walls of their lock-downs and working on them for days; it would take a very powerful Mind mage to fix them both now. Cumulative power, y'know? They considered doing more to him, I think, but Skank did it best when he did exactly what he and Molly had done to him when he had the Lucille-induced "lurgy"; set Guilt Epiphlings on him, retaped his mouth and left him down in the vault to be tormented.
So there was some frustration to work off. So Lucius and E decided to spar in the garden -- katana versus axe. They kept at it until the Regulators arrived (they will insist on gaining the attentions of the "law"). So after they insisted that Lucius and E call their little match off, they went to talk to Skank about Molly. Again. And searched the house. Wherein they found the unresponsive Molly. They wanted to take Skank for questioning in the matter of abduction and, given Molly's current physiological and mental condition, child abuse. E went rather ballistic at about that point, but Skank decided it would be better if he went and tried to get it sorted out. So off he went with the Regulators and Molly, back to ChelWest. Lucius' wards, when E was intent on destroying something, just put her to sleep and the others tried to calm down. Needless to say, didn't really work.
When Skank and Molly got to ChelWest, they were going to be taken off in different directions, but Skank insisted that they stay together, so the Regulators apparently decided just to humour him. They were taken to an interview room and the usual questions were asked about things like where Molly's parents were, why she hadn't been given over to her Uncle Arthur in Aberystwyth, etc. After awhile, the Regulator doing the questioning got called away, and came back about fifteen minutes later looking rather dazed. He informed Skank that he was free to go and that if there was some kind of family relationship between him and Miss Quincannon, he should have just said so. Skank grabbed Molly and went to main reception to find an incredibly pissed off Lucille waiting there. All the way back to the Chelsea townhouse, she harangued him for not telling her sooner. Anyway, she informed the group that Violet was being ousted from House Thig and from the Order of Hermes altogether, and the Order were talking about disbanding the entire House. (They also wanted Lucille to take over as Head of the House in the interim. Lucille was reluctant; everyone else thought it was a great idea.) In any case, she offered to be of help to Susanna and anyone else she could if a) the group would speak at this new meeting and b) if Skank would come and help stop the impending riot at the Purple Turtle Thig chantry. Apparently, one of Beep Giordano's skills and all-time favourite ways to vent his spleen is to set a Mind rote to set people into rages on the Spice Girls' old hit "Wannabe", set it on the jukebox on repeat and engage in perpetual bar-brawl. The worst one, after he got dumped by some Hungarian chick, lasted three days. So the group went along to see what they could do, bringing Rodney and Susanna. (Lucille said that she couldn't fix what was done to Michelle and suggested they take her to the Verbena.)
First thing that happened upon reaching the Turtle was Skank hearing a crow, calling in the south-east. No one else would notice this, but Skank has a new merit as a result of his brush with the divine in the form of Dawn Reader -- "Oracular Ability". An Occult roll told him that a crow calling to the south-east meant inauspicious news and/or quarreling, and then just shoved it out of his mind and went in to do the job. Now, Chloe and Jeremiah, both having Iron Will, were fine. Kuo-Li made a good Mind roll and was fine. Lucius failed his Mind roll, and he and E both failed Willpower. Skank got marginal success and only failed when E and Lucius went to hit each other and elbowed him. So there was squabbling between E and Lucius and Skank beating the two of them together in a "HULK SMASH!" kind of way and incidentally blocking the entrance so that the other three unaffected mages couldn't get through. All in all, it was a mess. Eventually, Kuo-Li shoved all three of them further into the fray and Skank noticed a flash of green-orange-pink; Emily Swift, hiding under a table. That brought him back to himself a little and he chucked both E and Lucius across the room and went to blow up the jukebox. Which he duly did. Unfortunately, he didn't check to see that the jukebox was where the music was coming from. It wasn't; he and Chloe eventually located the source of the problem in a boom box on the upper loft. Skank went to blow it up, but failed ... partly because Chloe did a Time rote to freeze time around it (and stop it from playing) and trapped his lightning foom a couple of inches from the box. So that was that sorted out. Skank then went to beat the living shit out of Beep, but Beep dodged -- right into the path of Lucille, who gave him a sound telling off and sent him to his room. Then she went up with Susanna to have a look and see what could be done about the poor gibbering wreck. However, at about this time (while Jeremiah was trying to heal Lucius, who was at this point lying in the corner in an unconscious heap), Caritas leCoeur walked in, talked to Emily briefly, then went upstairs in the direction Lucille took. Skank went to ask Emily what was going on and Kuo-Li, making like ninja with stealth and Arcane, snuck into the room and listened in as Lucille and Caritas discussed the whereabouts of one Skank Fetish. The Order, bolstered by Janissary reports of Skank's abortive attempts to bleed Paradox off Molly at the Convivium, also want to rule out the possibility that Skank's hurting Molly. They're really not all that impressed, and want a word with him at this Hermetic council with a view to censuring him. Violet they just want to sanction. In any case, they were pretty much obliged to attend at this point, so Lucius, Kuo-Li, Chloe and E went off to their respective chantry houses to have a word with their respective Tradition representatives and Skank went with Jeremiah to check up on Molly and Michelle, who they left in the Chelsea townhouse. On their own.
Of course, neither Molly nor Michelle were there when Skank and Jeremiah arrived. And there was a note on the door from the Regulators, having taken the two injured females into custody and sending out a search order for one Skank Fetish on charges of abuse and abduction, blah blah blah. So off they went to ChelWest again, with Jeremiah making the most of his doctor's credentials to try to gain entry; basically he said that Miss Chatwin and Miss Quincannon were his patients and they had been moved against his express orders. However, it turned out that both women had been transferred to a secure proper hospital facility -- ironically, St Thomas'. Which, of course, is just across the river from Parliament ... and Whitehall, presumed stronghold of current Technocracy. Did not bode well.
So off Jeremiah and Skank went to get in there to get their people out. They met a nice blondish receptionist there who was quite helpful, despite the patients being "classified", and tried to call a doctor in ITU. Ten minutes, no reply. Tried again. Ten minutes, no reply. Tried the nurse's station. Ten minutes, no reply. Then out came another receptionist, this one a brunette, and there was some arguing between the two women. Skank listened in and discovered that the blonde was worried about what was going on in ITU that no one was responding and the brunette basically saying, "It's not our job". Jeremiah interrupted to say that he understood that they needed to be accompanied by staff if he was to go in and examine his patients, so suggested that one of the receptionists come with him. This instigated more conversation between the blonde and the brunette, at which point Skank noticed that the brunette brought out a syringe, apparently going to get the blonde with it. Before she could do so, Skank intervened, and wound up with a neck full of morphine. He dropped like a rock, and the brunette (Lauren) smacked the blonde's head into the desk repeatedly before pulling a gun on Jeremiah and telling him to leave. He refused; she shot; he dodged. At this point, Jeremiah's madness was showing again so he reined it in as best he could and used his Life magic to detox Skank, who grabbed the brunette by the ankles and pinned her to the floor. Jeremiah healed the blonde after Skank dragged Lauren away to somewhere where she wouldn't make noise or call attention to them, and then asked for a visitor's badge to get around the hospital with. She did one better -- a proper badge for Dr J Tomasi and one for "Mr S Brown, Orderly".
When they got to ITU, they found a very freaked-out looking nurse sitting on the floor. When they asked her what was going on, she talked about "there were cats" and something about fires in the waste bins and some other basic gibbering that, if you know this lot, means that Molly's magic works at least. So Jeremiah tried to send her off for a cup of tea or something but she took one look at Skank and passed out. (Skank looks scary; what can I say?) So they tried to question Lauren about what bed on the unit they should look in and Lauren just screamed her head off. So they searched. The first two beds were empty but the third contained a very dead ex-patient who'd apparently been gutted. Looking up, they saw an ash-blonde woman dressed in black walking on the ceiling, carrying a knife. She hissed at them, showing very sharp teeth, then vanished through the wall. Skank tracked her with Spirit sight; she'd gone Umbral and stepped to another level before he could get her. So they checked the other beds, mostly full of corpses. Michelle had been carved on a bit, but since her body had mostly shut down to keep her from harming herself out of guilt (Avatars are useful to have), she didn't seem to bleed much and Jeremiah healed her no problem. The next bed held a small blanket-clad lump that was a shivering, whimpering Molly. Her magic was a bit out of control at that point and suddenly there were cats. Unfortunately, the cats had spread far enough to intercept the oncoming security guards who'd heard Lauren's scream. Molly managed to make them vanish before the security guards got there, and Jeremiah basically told them that Lauren the brunette receptionist had done the murders and traumatised the nurse and needed to be put away in the mental health ward for her own protection. So they went, taking the receptionist with them, and Skank found a wheelchair for Michelle, and they made tracks. Instead of heading straight for the doors, however, they went for the consultants' admin offices down the corridor -- Jeremiah wanted to find transfer papers. In they went and heard "Can I help you?" and then a giggle. They turned and found themselves faced with Emily Swift, PA. (She's a Correspondence expert -- of course she can co-locate! Skank did check to be sure, though.) She provided them with the papers they needed and when Jeremiah thanked her and said how helpful she was, Emily just said, "Oh, not me; thank her", at which point she pointed at the sign near her head that said, "Dr Lucille McBride". Lucky buggers. ^_^
The others had fairly uneventful times. Lucius managed to bolster the flagging energy of one Lesley Bruce, who'd been endeavouring to restore Leanne's mind since they got back from the Convivium but needed anyone she'd ever been mentored by to do it; it has become imperative that Lucius find out where Marcus has been reincarnated so they can poke his soul for information (he's too young to remember, whatever his form). Kuo-Li got very little intel from Shu-Rong but she was grateful for the info that he gave her. Chloe and E had a few drinks courtesy Fliss the pretty barmaid and Chloe was reminded about her box that she has to plant in Farrell's auto repair. Beyond that, not much, and they all went off to the National Gallery, where the Order tends to hang out. Kuo-Li arrived first and noticed someone dressed in black break into the building, but couldn't follow because they'd somehow got through a fire door. He elected to warn the others when they got back. But despite how late Skank, Jeremiah, Michelle and Molly got there, they still somehow beat Lucille and Rodney, which struck them as rather wrong.
However, they were put slightly more at their ease when a very badly abused motor was heard in the distance -- Emily's neon orange and slowly dying Lada. Emily at the wheel, Susanna riding shotgun and looking very much her old self, and Lucille sprawled semi-conscious in the back seat because apparently fixing Susanna took a lot out of her. Jeremiah gave her a bit of a boost in that regard (she insisted she was fine while Skank was dragging her out of the car, and then promptly fell over, to which Skank replied, "No, you're not" as he picked her up off the pavement) and Skank gave them all fair warning about the fomor he'd seen in the hospital and its penchant for killing people. Whoopee, hmm? So in they went, Susanna in the lead; Susanna's gone lawyer again. Which means that she was embroiled in a passionate bitch-fight with Caritas by the time the others got there, partly about the ridiculous accusations and partly about bad mentorship and "what would you call it when you bring a pupil up to run off with ... what is it? Ah, right; masassa". At which point Caritas went bright red and broke the heels on Susanna's shoes, tipping her over. Susanna just broke the heels off the shoes, gave her a further talking to about maturity and moved on. Skank gave her a smug grin and Lucius just said something smarmy that compounded it, so (partly because of a botched Perception roll), Caritas sent an electric current through Skank -- he was holding Molly at the time, and dropped her when he fell himself. That is going to count against Caritas at some point, I'm sure of it, but part of the problem was that, while Lucius was healing Skank, he also decided to do a calming rote ... and botched. Skank went raging off after Caritas about "if you're so concerned about the well-being of the child, maybe you might not want to fill me full of electricity while I'm carrying her!" and then hit her. All told, not a great way of going about things... So then Skank got himself Forces-pinned to the floor to try to calm him down, found out Lucius was responsible for the rage thing and left the whole Caritas shock incident as "for later discussion" and let Skank give Lucius a shot in the mouth. No damage, but it managed to dispel the rote alright.
In the end, they forced Lucille into the House Thig leadership seat. The conversation predominantly involved what Violet was doing at the Convivium. Skank tried to dance around the issue of exactly who Violet brought back until Lucille pointed out that at least the knowledge would help clear up the other matter -- they would all know why Molly wound up in a screaming ball of pain on the floor of the Savoy basement if he explained that it was Elder Molly that had been brought back, simply because of the Paradox involved in such a thing. So he told them, and they all went very quiet...
And then some of them felt it -- something was coming; the fomori. They only had time to scream a warning for everyone to run before two of them appeared and started hacking at the supports for the walkway above the heads of the Heads of Houses. Skank bolstered it somewhat, and Molly, shaken into something like wakefulness by the whole mess, helped, and only half went out anyway because Kuo-Li made one of them miss (except it just tried again, and managed) and there was pandemonium. Another couple turned up, and one of them just up and swallowed the head of House Tytalus (small portly man) and the nasty assassin lady bit Lucille while Lucille was trying to usher everyone else out from under the soon-to-collapse walkway. E Forces-pushed the swallowing one, who just finished his mouthful of Tytalan, and Skank pulled Lucille out of harm's way with Lucius' Entropy rote to ensure she didn't get hit by falling debris when Molly lost hold and the whole thing collapsed. Most everyone got out safe, and Jeremiah, Kuo-Li and Lucius did a nice bit of Life magic when they realised that Lucille, going pale green, had been poisoned by the assassin-fomor's bite. Then, with the creepy, Lucius got a mind-tap from a former life -- the one who'd once been assimilated by the spiky fomor. Apparently, they hate this lot and want them all dead. (No surprises there, then.) Skank took the time to fix Emily's car, they bundled everyone into the battle bus and went home, not sure what had happened and whether it was for the best.
In the middle of the night, Skank and Lucius woke up, both knowing that one of those fomori was now in the house. They each went out searching for it, and Lucius knew enough to know that it preferred the weak, so Skank (after agonising for a minute) went to check on Molly and Lucius checked on Michelle. Molly was fine -- in fact, a fair few spirits (including a big hairy one with long arms and teeth, about which Skank said, "I used to have nightmares about you when I was little; this is very unnerving") were watching out for her. Lucius, however, went into Michelle's room and just knew it was in there; however, didn't know exactly where. Rather than turning the lights on, though, he just went for trying to sense it. Failed Perception roll meant that he only knew where it was when he heard a rush of air and a slightly squishy, fleshy *thud* from the bed. So he swung his katana, got a glancing blow in and turned on the lights. The poison assassin had stabbed Michelle right through the chest and bitten her on the neck; she walked halfway up a wall, hissed at him and vanished. Lucius tried Life magic to save Michelle ... failed that too. Skank bellowed for a doctor, but he still had Spirit sight on, so he saw Michelle's spirit look at him, wave sadly and vanish. At which point, he dropped to the floor and anyone who came near Michelle, he just told them, "Don't bother. She's dead." So long, Michelle, we barely knew ye.
Lucius went to break the news to Madhouse ... only it wasn't. It was an apparently human male named Mitch, sitting in the garden crying. He told Lucius to tell Skank that "she thought the world of him. Even used the L-word once. Very quietly, but still." Then he left. Skank's really not taking that well either, but managed to retain enough sense of self to tell Lucius to do something about the wards on the house so it can sense Spirit -- the fomori either didn't feel the pain of the wards or are capable of ignoring it, and they need advanced warning. Unfortunately, none of them has Correspondence enough to link the house to Bokugo's admittedly superior defences. When they checked up on Susanna, they found a piece of paper on her bed -- a drawing of all the townhouse's current guests, with Michelle's face clawed mostly out and Skank and Molly's faces circled. Unfortunately, they talked about this being the "who's next for the knife" list in front of Molly, who really didn't need that but everyone's upset.
After that, he and Chloe thought of the Gallery. They went in (Chloe via bracelet-door and Skank via side-step) to see if they could locate the fomori and check on them. They found it about as they left it last time, except with one of those "you are here" maps in front of the door and a letter to Chloe saying that she gave the Gallery to Chloe because she needs to see more. And that the information they needed was to the left. And "tell him not to feel bad; she's in a good place". At which point Chloe said, "Aw. She's so sweet. And all-powerful." (Mark got XP for that.) So they went to the left, and found the new wing of the Gallery -- All Things Evil and Nasty. While there, they saw Markadu the Ravager in its own special hell-pit, getting told off. Also Cerebrus Constantine getting the spirit equivalent of a brush-off and being informed that he could go back -- he'd done very well for several hundred years. And then Chloe wondered what such a nice little country pub was doing in a wing like this. Skank looked -- it was the Pirate Inn, and he remembered that Jodi Blake had some favourite forms: tiger. Beautiful woman. Seven-year-old boy. Like Simon, Molly's brief playmate at the Pirate Inn. Turns out, yes, that was Jodi Blake, and she's insisting that the Sidewinder Brigade keep up the good work, but "play with them more". She also indicated that she had been watching the group for quite some time, before the one with the roving eyes caught sight of them in the Grand Hall.
So Skank stepped back and went through Molly's luggage, finding a teddy bear he knew full well wasn't hers. He squeezed out this blue squidgy thing with very big eyes and no ability to speak English. He failed to zap it, but the boogey-man spirit thing with the fur and the long arms and teeth took it from Skank and bit its head off. Then grinned with the astral blood dripping from its teeth. Skank is going to have so many nightmares when he goes to sleep...
Poor, poor NPCs. Poor, poor PCs. Poor, poor me; I think I pulled a back muscle hauling all those sourcebooks.
Skank got introduced to his brand spanking new flaw -- Nightmares. Basically, he saw Molly -- Elder Molly, first time around, when she didn't even manage to kill Violet -- torn to pieces. Needless to say, Skank was not a happy chappie in the morning. He checked on everybody; completely failed to help Susanna in any way at all from where she was gibbering in a corner, got no response from Michelle, and checked to make sure Molly was still in her body before going off to have coffee. (It was a good thought; technically, Molly could have gone astral. She didn't, but still a good check.)
The others, meanwhile, were acting relatively normal. Jeremiah came back, suffering from acute amnesia (couldn't remember anything since his arrival at Bokugo) and so was relatively sane. There was also the paper, front page referencing the destruction of the Savoy. There was only one quote worth having -- Dr Lucille McBride, saying, "I don't know; I just happened to be passing now will you get that Dictaphone out of my face so I can actually help repair the damage?" Lucius was sort of sulking and miserable -- well, he was still having the whole "I used to be a fomor" thing, so who can blame him? There was also the fact that Michelle's stallion Madhouse (now pony-sized) was eating the garden. There was an amusing bit of stuff there when Lucius tried to explain the situation to the obviously-more-than-just-a-stallion and Chloe, chipper at the idea of having a pony, tried to hug the worst-tempered stallion in existence. Madhouse kicked her halfway across the garden. Skank then actually talked to the horse properly, after he'd had his coffee, and things wound down, basically.
Skank, at this point, asked for some help from Lucius and Kuo-Li, the predominant Mind mages. He knew Molly was still in her body, but was worried about the fact that she wasn't responding to anything so asked them to have a look. Lucius went first, and what he saw was a jumbled mish-mash of images (he can only sense) -- all from one of a number of different futures. Some of the images involved E tattooing all those marks on a fifteen-or-sixteen-year-old Molly; others involved her cabal-style dealings with, among other people, an older Emily Swift and Romulus and Remus Marwood Egan. The predominant one of those was them looking at a building Lucius couldn't quite make out, Molly in her early 20s and wearing the clothes the Elder Molly brought back in Violet's rote was wearing when she died; and Molly saying, "If I'm not back in an hour, burn it to the ground, because neither of us are getting out alive." Lucius broke off the scan, screaming, after going through the same Elder Molly death that Skank dreamed the night before. Eventually, Skank got tired of trying to pry info out of Lucius, who was far from forthcoming, and Kuo-Li gave it a go. He was more proactive, figuring he'd go in and try to help Molly sort it out. What he got was Mindscape -- Molly's room at Bokugo, the one that's now all charred from Paradox backlash, and Molly explaining as best she could that this wasn't so much mind as Avatar, and that she had to try to sort it out but that it was sending her loopy. Kuo-Li used some of his success in the rote to help her keep it together -- actually, just talking to someone helped -- but there was only so much he could do where Avatar was concerned. So he went back and reported that, essentially, Molly and her Avatar(s) were trying to work out matters, one of which was whether she was supposed to be dead or not. Kuo-Li had tried to assure her that of course she wasn't dead until Molly's mind gave him the reason why there was such confusion -- between being torn to pieces by Violet, being burned to death by Violet and being ripped apart by Paradox a couple of times, no one could blame her for not being sure. There was nothing they could do, so they left it.
Instead, they went to the person who could at least tell them what had been done to the other two mental cases in the house -- one Rodney Delevan. They dispensed with the suits and the soundtrack and went straight to the questions. Well, okay, they tried. Rodney got in his first licks with things like, "So how's your fuck-bunny, Skank? Hey, the way I look at it, I did you a favour; now she can't say no". Skank didn't hit him; E did. Hard. There were a few incredibly pointed insults, one of which involved Skank's magical abilities ("So where'd you pick up the new ability since you deserted Violet, Fetish? Cereal box, perhaps?") and there was more hitting. During this long and rather unpleasant time (at one point, Skank had a flick-knife literally touching the man's cornea), a few things came out. First of all, there was no intention of bringing Molly back; that decision had come from the Dreamspeaker (Dawn). The intention was to show power, divorce from the Order of Hermes and eventually make a bid for the Correspondence Chair as a Tradition in their own right. Obviously, plans had changed, but Rodney didn't know how; various parts of his mind had been greyed out. The other thing they found out was that the rote he'd put on Susanna and Michelle was a heavy-Mind, light-Spirit thing that would make them believe intrinsically in their own guilt in the matters of which they were accused by the Council. It had been embedded in the walls of their lock-downs and working on them for days; it would take a very powerful Mind mage to fix them both now. Cumulative power, y'know? They considered doing more to him, I think, but Skank did it best when he did exactly what he and Molly had done to him when he had the Lucille-induced "lurgy"; set Guilt Epiphlings on him, retaped his mouth and left him down in the vault to be tormented.
So there was some frustration to work off. So Lucius and E decided to spar in the garden -- katana versus axe. They kept at it until the Regulators arrived (they will insist on gaining the attentions of the "law"). So after they insisted that Lucius and E call their little match off, they went to talk to Skank about Molly. Again. And searched the house. Wherein they found the unresponsive Molly. They wanted to take Skank for questioning in the matter of abduction and, given Molly's current physiological and mental condition, child abuse. E went rather ballistic at about that point, but Skank decided it would be better if he went and tried to get it sorted out. So off he went with the Regulators and Molly, back to ChelWest. Lucius' wards, when E was intent on destroying something, just put her to sleep and the others tried to calm down. Needless to say, didn't really work.
When Skank and Molly got to ChelWest, they were going to be taken off in different directions, but Skank insisted that they stay together, so the Regulators apparently decided just to humour him. They were taken to an interview room and the usual questions were asked about things like where Molly's parents were, why she hadn't been given over to her Uncle Arthur in Aberystwyth, etc. After awhile, the Regulator doing the questioning got called away, and came back about fifteen minutes later looking rather dazed. He informed Skank that he was free to go and that if there was some kind of family relationship between him and Miss Quincannon, he should have just said so. Skank grabbed Molly and went to main reception to find an incredibly pissed off Lucille waiting there. All the way back to the Chelsea townhouse, she harangued him for not telling her sooner. Anyway, she informed the group that Violet was being ousted from House Thig and from the Order of Hermes altogether, and the Order were talking about disbanding the entire House. (They also wanted Lucille to take over as Head of the House in the interim. Lucille was reluctant; everyone else thought it was a great idea.) In any case, she offered to be of help to Susanna and anyone else she could if a) the group would speak at this new meeting and b) if Skank would come and help stop the impending riot at the Purple Turtle Thig chantry. Apparently, one of Beep Giordano's skills and all-time favourite ways to vent his spleen is to set a Mind rote to set people into rages on the Spice Girls' old hit "Wannabe", set it on the jukebox on repeat and engage in perpetual bar-brawl. The worst one, after he got dumped by some Hungarian chick, lasted three days. So the group went along to see what they could do, bringing Rodney and Susanna. (Lucille said that she couldn't fix what was done to Michelle and suggested they take her to the Verbena.)
First thing that happened upon reaching the Turtle was Skank hearing a crow, calling in the south-east. No one else would notice this, but Skank has a new merit as a result of his brush with the divine in the form of Dawn Reader -- "Oracular Ability". An Occult roll told him that a crow calling to the south-east meant inauspicious news and/or quarreling, and then just shoved it out of his mind and went in to do the job. Now, Chloe and Jeremiah, both having Iron Will, were fine. Kuo-Li made a good Mind roll and was fine. Lucius failed his Mind roll, and he and E both failed Willpower. Skank got marginal success and only failed when E and Lucius went to hit each other and elbowed him. So there was squabbling between E and Lucius and Skank beating the two of them together in a "HULK SMASH!" kind of way and incidentally blocking the entrance so that the other three unaffected mages couldn't get through. All in all, it was a mess. Eventually, Kuo-Li shoved all three of them further into the fray and Skank noticed a flash of green-orange-pink; Emily Swift, hiding under a table. That brought him back to himself a little and he chucked both E and Lucius across the room and went to blow up the jukebox. Which he duly did. Unfortunately, he didn't check to see that the jukebox was where the music was coming from. It wasn't; he and Chloe eventually located the source of the problem in a boom box on the upper loft. Skank went to blow it up, but failed ... partly because Chloe did a Time rote to freeze time around it (and stop it from playing) and trapped his lightning foom a couple of inches from the box. So that was that sorted out. Skank then went to beat the living shit out of Beep, but Beep dodged -- right into the path of Lucille, who gave him a sound telling off and sent him to his room. Then she went up with Susanna to have a look and see what could be done about the poor gibbering wreck. However, at about this time (while Jeremiah was trying to heal Lucius, who was at this point lying in the corner in an unconscious heap), Caritas leCoeur walked in, talked to Emily briefly, then went upstairs in the direction Lucille took. Skank went to ask Emily what was going on and Kuo-Li, making like ninja with stealth and Arcane, snuck into the room and listened in as Lucille and Caritas discussed the whereabouts of one Skank Fetish. The Order, bolstered by Janissary reports of Skank's abortive attempts to bleed Paradox off Molly at the Convivium, also want to rule out the possibility that Skank's hurting Molly. They're really not all that impressed, and want a word with him at this Hermetic council with a view to censuring him. Violet they just want to sanction. In any case, they were pretty much obliged to attend at this point, so Lucius, Kuo-Li, Chloe and E went off to their respective chantry houses to have a word with their respective Tradition representatives and Skank went with Jeremiah to check up on Molly and Michelle, who they left in the Chelsea townhouse. On their own.
Of course, neither Molly nor Michelle were there when Skank and Jeremiah arrived. And there was a note on the door from the Regulators, having taken the two injured females into custody and sending out a search order for one Skank Fetish on charges of abuse and abduction, blah blah blah. So off they went to ChelWest again, with Jeremiah making the most of his doctor's credentials to try to gain entry; basically he said that Miss Chatwin and Miss Quincannon were his patients and they had been moved against his express orders. However, it turned out that both women had been transferred to a secure proper hospital facility -- ironically, St Thomas'. Which, of course, is just across the river from Parliament ... and Whitehall, presumed stronghold of current Technocracy. Did not bode well.
So off Jeremiah and Skank went to get in there to get their people out. They met a nice blondish receptionist there who was quite helpful, despite the patients being "classified", and tried to call a doctor in ITU. Ten minutes, no reply. Tried again. Ten minutes, no reply. Tried the nurse's station. Ten minutes, no reply. Then out came another receptionist, this one a brunette, and there was some arguing between the two women. Skank listened in and discovered that the blonde was worried about what was going on in ITU that no one was responding and the brunette basically saying, "It's not our job". Jeremiah interrupted to say that he understood that they needed to be accompanied by staff if he was to go in and examine his patients, so suggested that one of the receptionists come with him. This instigated more conversation between the blonde and the brunette, at which point Skank noticed that the brunette brought out a syringe, apparently going to get the blonde with it. Before she could do so, Skank intervened, and wound up with a neck full of morphine. He dropped like a rock, and the brunette (Lauren) smacked the blonde's head into the desk repeatedly before pulling a gun on Jeremiah and telling him to leave. He refused; she shot; he dodged. At this point, Jeremiah's madness was showing again so he reined it in as best he could and used his Life magic to detox Skank, who grabbed the brunette by the ankles and pinned her to the floor. Jeremiah healed the blonde after Skank dragged Lauren away to somewhere where she wouldn't make noise or call attention to them, and then asked for a visitor's badge to get around the hospital with. She did one better -- a proper badge for Dr J Tomasi and one for "Mr S Brown, Orderly".
When they got to ITU, they found a very freaked-out looking nurse sitting on the floor. When they asked her what was going on, she talked about "there were cats" and something about fires in the waste bins and some other basic gibbering that, if you know this lot, means that Molly's magic works at least. So Jeremiah tried to send her off for a cup of tea or something but she took one look at Skank and passed out. (Skank looks scary; what can I say?) So they tried to question Lauren about what bed on the unit they should look in and Lauren just screamed her head off. So they searched. The first two beds were empty but the third contained a very dead ex-patient who'd apparently been gutted. Looking up, they saw an ash-blonde woman dressed in black walking on the ceiling, carrying a knife. She hissed at them, showing very sharp teeth, then vanished through the wall. Skank tracked her with Spirit sight; she'd gone Umbral and stepped to another level before he could get her. So they checked the other beds, mostly full of corpses. Michelle had been carved on a bit, but since her body had mostly shut down to keep her from harming herself out of guilt (Avatars are useful to have), she didn't seem to bleed much and Jeremiah healed her no problem. The next bed held a small blanket-clad lump that was a shivering, whimpering Molly. Her magic was a bit out of control at that point and suddenly there were cats. Unfortunately, the cats had spread far enough to intercept the oncoming security guards who'd heard Lauren's scream. Molly managed to make them vanish before the security guards got there, and Jeremiah basically told them that Lauren the brunette receptionist had done the murders and traumatised the nurse and needed to be put away in the mental health ward for her own protection. So they went, taking the receptionist with them, and Skank found a wheelchair for Michelle, and they made tracks. Instead of heading straight for the doors, however, they went for the consultants' admin offices down the corridor -- Jeremiah wanted to find transfer papers. In they went and heard "Can I help you?" and then a giggle. They turned and found themselves faced with Emily Swift, PA. (She's a Correspondence expert -- of course she can co-locate! Skank did check to be sure, though.) She provided them with the papers they needed and when Jeremiah thanked her and said how helpful she was, Emily just said, "Oh, not me; thank her", at which point she pointed at the sign near her head that said, "Dr Lucille McBride". Lucky buggers. ^_^
The others had fairly uneventful times. Lucius managed to bolster the flagging energy of one Lesley Bruce, who'd been endeavouring to restore Leanne's mind since they got back from the Convivium but needed anyone she'd ever been mentored by to do it; it has become imperative that Lucius find out where Marcus has been reincarnated so they can poke his soul for information (he's too young to remember, whatever his form). Kuo-Li got very little intel from Shu-Rong but she was grateful for the info that he gave her. Chloe and E had a few drinks courtesy Fliss the pretty barmaid and Chloe was reminded about her box that she has to plant in Farrell's auto repair. Beyond that, not much, and they all went off to the National Gallery, where the Order tends to hang out. Kuo-Li arrived first and noticed someone dressed in black break into the building, but couldn't follow because they'd somehow got through a fire door. He elected to warn the others when they got back. But despite how late Skank, Jeremiah, Michelle and Molly got there, they still somehow beat Lucille and Rodney, which struck them as rather wrong.
However, they were put slightly more at their ease when a very badly abused motor was heard in the distance -- Emily's neon orange and slowly dying Lada. Emily at the wheel, Susanna riding shotgun and looking very much her old self, and Lucille sprawled semi-conscious in the back seat because apparently fixing Susanna took a lot out of her. Jeremiah gave her a bit of a boost in that regard (she insisted she was fine while Skank was dragging her out of the car, and then promptly fell over, to which Skank replied, "No, you're not" as he picked her up off the pavement) and Skank gave them all fair warning about the fomor he'd seen in the hospital and its penchant for killing people. Whoopee, hmm? So in they went, Susanna in the lead; Susanna's gone lawyer again. Which means that she was embroiled in a passionate bitch-fight with Caritas by the time the others got there, partly about the ridiculous accusations and partly about bad mentorship and "what would you call it when you bring a pupil up to run off with ... what is it? Ah, right; masassa". At which point Caritas went bright red and broke the heels on Susanna's shoes, tipping her over. Susanna just broke the heels off the shoes, gave her a further talking to about maturity and moved on. Skank gave her a smug grin and Lucius just said something smarmy that compounded it, so (partly because of a botched Perception roll), Caritas sent an electric current through Skank -- he was holding Molly at the time, and dropped her when he fell himself. That is going to count against Caritas at some point, I'm sure of it, but part of the problem was that, while Lucius was healing Skank, he also decided to do a calming rote ... and botched. Skank went raging off after Caritas about "if you're so concerned about the well-being of the child, maybe you might not want to fill me full of electricity while I'm carrying her!" and then hit her. All told, not a great way of going about things... So then Skank got himself Forces-pinned to the floor to try to calm him down, found out Lucius was responsible for the rage thing and left the whole Caritas shock incident as "for later discussion" and let Skank give Lucius a shot in the mouth. No damage, but it managed to dispel the rote alright.
In the end, they forced Lucille into the House Thig leadership seat. The conversation predominantly involved what Violet was doing at the Convivium. Skank tried to dance around the issue of exactly who Violet brought back until Lucille pointed out that at least the knowledge would help clear up the other matter -- they would all know why Molly wound up in a screaming ball of pain on the floor of the Savoy basement if he explained that it was Elder Molly that had been brought back, simply because of the Paradox involved in such a thing. So he told them, and they all went very quiet...
And then some of them felt it -- something was coming; the fomori. They only had time to scream a warning for everyone to run before two of them appeared and started hacking at the supports for the walkway above the heads of the Heads of Houses. Skank bolstered it somewhat, and Molly, shaken into something like wakefulness by the whole mess, helped, and only half went out anyway because Kuo-Li made one of them miss (except it just tried again, and managed) and there was pandemonium. Another couple turned up, and one of them just up and swallowed the head of House Tytalus (small portly man) and the nasty assassin lady bit Lucille while Lucille was trying to usher everyone else out from under the soon-to-collapse walkway. E Forces-pushed the swallowing one, who just finished his mouthful of Tytalan, and Skank pulled Lucille out of harm's way with Lucius' Entropy rote to ensure she didn't get hit by falling debris when Molly lost hold and the whole thing collapsed. Most everyone got out safe, and Jeremiah, Kuo-Li and Lucius did a nice bit of Life magic when they realised that Lucille, going pale green, had been poisoned by the assassin-fomor's bite. Then, with the creepy, Lucius got a mind-tap from a former life -- the one who'd once been assimilated by the spiky fomor. Apparently, they hate this lot and want them all dead. (No surprises there, then.) Skank took the time to fix Emily's car, they bundled everyone into the battle bus and went home, not sure what had happened and whether it was for the best.
In the middle of the night, Skank and Lucius woke up, both knowing that one of those fomori was now in the house. They each went out searching for it, and Lucius knew enough to know that it preferred the weak, so Skank (after agonising for a minute) went to check on Molly and Lucius checked on Michelle. Molly was fine -- in fact, a fair few spirits (including a big hairy one with long arms and teeth, about which Skank said, "I used to have nightmares about you when I was little; this is very unnerving") were watching out for her. Lucius, however, went into Michelle's room and just knew it was in there; however, didn't know exactly where. Rather than turning the lights on, though, he just went for trying to sense it. Failed Perception roll meant that he only knew where it was when he heard a rush of air and a slightly squishy, fleshy *thud* from the bed. So he swung his katana, got a glancing blow in and turned on the lights. The poison assassin had stabbed Michelle right through the chest and bitten her on the neck; she walked halfway up a wall, hissed at him and vanished. Lucius tried Life magic to save Michelle ... failed that too. Skank bellowed for a doctor, but he still had Spirit sight on, so he saw Michelle's spirit look at him, wave sadly and vanish. At which point, he dropped to the floor and anyone who came near Michelle, he just told them, "Don't bother. She's dead." So long, Michelle, we barely knew ye.
Lucius went to break the news to Madhouse ... only it wasn't. It was an apparently human male named Mitch, sitting in the garden crying. He told Lucius to tell Skank that "she thought the world of him. Even used the L-word once. Very quietly, but still." Then he left. Skank's really not taking that well either, but managed to retain enough sense of self to tell Lucius to do something about the wards on the house so it can sense Spirit -- the fomori either didn't feel the pain of the wards or are capable of ignoring it, and they need advanced warning. Unfortunately, none of them has Correspondence enough to link the house to Bokugo's admittedly superior defences. When they checked up on Susanna, they found a piece of paper on her bed -- a drawing of all the townhouse's current guests, with Michelle's face clawed mostly out and Skank and Molly's faces circled. Unfortunately, they talked about this being the "who's next for the knife" list in front of Molly, who really didn't need that but everyone's upset.
After that, he and Chloe thought of the Gallery. They went in (Chloe via bracelet-door and Skank via side-step) to see if they could locate the fomori and check on them. They found it about as they left it last time, except with one of those "you are here" maps in front of the door and a letter to Chloe saying that she gave the Gallery to Chloe because she needs to see more. And that the information they needed was to the left. And "tell him not to feel bad; she's in a good place". At which point Chloe said, "Aw. She's so sweet. And all-powerful." (Mark got XP for that.) So they went to the left, and found the new wing of the Gallery -- All Things Evil and Nasty. While there, they saw Markadu the Ravager in its own special hell-pit, getting told off. Also Cerebrus Constantine getting the spirit equivalent of a brush-off and being informed that he could go back -- he'd done very well for several hundred years. And then Chloe wondered what such a nice little country pub was doing in a wing like this. Skank looked -- it was the Pirate Inn, and he remembered that Jodi Blake had some favourite forms: tiger. Beautiful woman. Seven-year-old boy. Like Simon, Molly's brief playmate at the Pirate Inn. Turns out, yes, that was Jodi Blake, and she's insisting that the Sidewinder Brigade keep up the good work, but "play with them more". She also indicated that she had been watching the group for quite some time, before the one with the roving eyes caught sight of them in the Grand Hall.
So Skank stepped back and went through Molly's luggage, finding a teddy bear he knew full well wasn't hers. He squeezed out this blue squidgy thing with very big eyes and no ability to speak English. He failed to zap it, but the boogey-man spirit thing with the fur and the long arms and teeth took it from Skank and bit its head off. Then grinned with the astral blood dripping from its teeth. Skank is going to have so many nightmares when he goes to sleep...
Poor, poor NPCs. Poor, poor PCs. Poor, poor me; I think I pulled a back muscle hauling all those sourcebooks.