Cephalopod Lothario
Alexander slowed down a moment, thinking about Ms Wagner question. He wasn’t hurt. The night had taken a bunch of unexpected-as-hell turns; somehow, a straightforward robbery against Samson had turned into flat-out magical brawl with two people he definitely hadn’t been planning on running into. And of course, there was the matter of his fucking cat. And whatever reinforcements Samson had waiting when they hit short.
But honestly? He felt good. No one had died. He’d sent some of Samson’s guys to the hospital, and when he finished with the guns, Samson’s pocketbooks were going to be smarting. No one liked criminals who couldn’t carry through deals. And if he managed to grab a few for himself, then more the better.
It definitely beat last time he’d worked with Jarl and Tim.
Alexander grinned at Ms Wagner, the entire expression full of swagger.
“Not right now. Thank you, however.” He replied. He followed Leon to the engine room, glancing behind him at the downed thugs just to make sure no one was going to do something stupid. Getting shot in the back would be really embarrassing right now. “I don’t suppose you ever worked on cars?”
It looked like Leon had some sort of idea what to do with it. Alexander could probably figure it out himself, if he gave it a shot—but it was pretty cramped already, and Leon was a little touchy about his personal space. Then again, after being turned into a prepubescent child at the ripe age of…twenty-something....who could blame him?
....Though that didn’t leave much for Alexander to actually do.
He started to look around the engine room, just in case there was something interesting. A working radio, or an intercom, left-over guns or drugs, incriminating documents. A map.
“So—after we shut this thing down, we try to get the information you need out of their boss.” Alexander mused, raising an eyebrow at Tim. “And if he’s not talkative….?”
Edited by DrTentacles on Oct 15th 2018 at 12:27:02 PM
Okay. Good. Nobody was in immediate need of the healing soup, and none of the mooks laying about were in...traumatizing shape. For a moment it didn't look like Annette had anything to do. Which. Wasn't actually a good thing. As Leon and Alexander went off to do something to the engine she started to breath a bit harder, her adrenaline crashing in the moment of quiet.
Pet the kitty and hold tight. There's only a little more to go.
Breathe, Annie.
Annette lifted Freeloader from off her shoulder and held him, cradled like an infant, in her arms while she tried to even her breathing. Alexander threw a dumb question at her, and at least that helped. "C-Cars? Me? Please. I used t-to bike everywhere. I don't even own a c-car."
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Tim gave Alex a stare, as much as he was able to. He really needed either a very strong coffee or a bed. The latter preferably as far away from the walking sexual harrassment suit as possible.
"Then we will be more convincing. This is not America, Alexander. Enhanced Interrogation is actually a crime here."
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Jarl
Jarl raised a finger, then briefly had a thought of 'maybe you shouldn't say this' before the part of his brain that was trying to argue with his no doubt extremely poor decision making decided to just...sit down again.
"Actually, I can summarize that in four words: It's all Loki's fault."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Errybody Else
While there was a control panel with loads of glowing emergency buttons, there were two very pressing problems.
The first of the presented problems was the fact that everything was in French. Alright, that wasn't too bad, glowing red buttons speak a language all to themselves, especially ones linked to just killing an engine.
The second problem is that this yacht was clearly designed to be 'Dumb, Rich Idiot'-proof, which meant that the control panel with all the shiny buttons that a drunken partygoer with more money than braincells might decide to smash for a lark was currently locked behind a sheet of what looked like plexiglass. There was a keyhole on the side of it, though. Always nice to see old, reliable forms of technology.
Jacqueline was leaning against one of the interior walls of the engine room, seemingly trying to concentrate on something.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Tim, as tired as he was, still noticed Jaqueline's look and squinted his own eyes as he reached out with his own magic senses to gain a feeling for what she was going for.
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The Wildest of Ronins
Leon eyed the plexiglass if it was thin enough he could probably just smash through it, but from what little he knew of the stuff that would have to be an awfully thin sheet of it for him to just be able to punch through it. He also certainly wasn't going to be able to pick the lock. It was not a skill he had ever learned and he didn't have the tools, but maybe it was something he should look into at a later date if he was ever this close to running water but not already incapacitated in the future.
He went back to his original back up plan of looking for a tool kit. Either it would have something that would let him break through the plexiglass or he could start pulling panels off of things and just cause general mayhem with the innards. He spared Tim and Jacqueline a questioning glance briefly wondering what they were up to.
Click Click Boom Boom
Tim
Seemed like Jacqueline was just setting up a Hail Mary. Faerie magic was just as impeded by running water as theirs, and he didn't get the feeling like the young woman had all that much in the tank to begin with, but it seemed like she was getting ready to set up an illusion, just in case.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Annette peered around Alexander and Leon, looking at the case of buttons covered in a sheet of thick glass. Hm. In movies that always needed a pick or something equally sharp to break it. Would a bullet work? Or...vampiric strength?
"Mr. Thorne, if you sh-shoot a few holes in the s-side, can you tug it off?"
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Tim's head whipped around. "I would rather end this day without ricochets." He commented but then laid his head a bit to the side. "We could use the firing caps of a few bullets for a similar purpose without that risk, though."
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Cephalopod Lothario
Alexander
Alexander frowned, wrinkling his nose in annoyance at the elaborate security around the engine. He’d been expecting an easy-to-access emergency shut-down, like most buildings had on their furnaces. Instead, everything useful except the engine itself was locked up. Was it even legal to lock off the emergency shutdown on an engine like this? And what sort of stupid shit had made them decide to lock it off?
Murphy’s law was really being a bitch today.
Leon hadn’t said anything—just started looking around, so Alexander assumed the Warden wasn’t brimming with ideas. And...as for Ms Wagner and Tim…
Alexander turned toward the two of them, popping open the clip of his gun.
“Three shots left. I didn’t pick up ammo from the last group. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not my first choice.” He said, a little amusement in his tone. The speed of Tim’s reaction had said a little more than the wizard probably wanted to.
Now, what was his first choice? He was rusty at lock-picking, didn’t have a kit—though if anyone had something he could turn into a pick, his knife would work, and that would take a bit.
Well. No point being clever until he’d tried caveman tactics.
“First—” He reached into his belt, holster the gun, and pulling out the brass knuckles. “Impact.”
He reached for his vampiric strength, and threw a punch. He’d tried to avoid getting involved in smash-and-grabs when he was running heists or assassinations, but there were three-or-four things the cover could be made of: regular plexiglass, which would break, tempered glass, which would shatter, and he could maybe peel apart, and security glass, which he could hammer on for hours, and not make a dent in.
It would be really nice if the cover was the first material.
“If this doesn’t work, I’m going to try to pry the cover off, or unscrew it. But let’s not be too clever for our own good.”
Edited by DrTentacles on Oct 31st 2018 at 9:46:53 AM
Cephalopod Lothario
Jarl and Terry
The ghost crossed its arms, grinning a too-wide, toothy smile at Terry, wisps of ectoplasm continuing to bubble off of its body. He could see the back of the tunnel through it by now. It didn’t even have enough substance to seem real anymore.
“You as well.” It replied, tone full of mockery and threat.
Brother Angles took another breath, as though he were bracing himself.
The ghost’s smile broke, confidence shattering again, see-through eyes going wide.
“Wait!” It said, voice no long smug, suddenly pleading.
Brother Angles’s reply was a only muttered, but somehow, it drowned out whatever the necromancer planned to say next.
“In nomine Patris et Sancti Jesum Christum, ad quos eieci te.”
Any further sound from the necromancer stopped, though his lips continued to move. Brother Angles drew in another rattling breath. He sounded exhausted.
“Vade. Requiescet in pace. Amen.”
The shade vanished. There wasn’t a light-show, or heavenly trumpets. It was simply as though the universe remembered that ghosts weren’t supposed to be real. Like it had been edited out of the picture.
Terry felt his ears pop, like there had been a sudden shift in pressure. The last of the miasma that had filled the basement since they’d arrived vanished. The air felt...well, still damp, musty, and blood-tinged, but just a little fresher.
“Terry?”
Liliane's voice came from the entrance to the sub-basement. Her footsteps slapped against the stone floor as she walked over to the flashlight, stopping in front of the necromancer’s body.
“You alright? He looks pretty dead, so nice work.”
Brother Angles sucked in a wheezing breath.
“...Is that...a friend?” She asked, looking down at the head and shoulders of the priest sticking out of the rubble dubiously.
Sofie stared at Jarl for a moment, looking confused, then, erupted in a fit of laughter.
“...Oh.” She panted. “Well. That explains everything.”
She continued to laugh after that, really longer than the comment deserved. It sounded like as much of a release of stress as anything else, but it was good to hear.
“I—I’m starting to think...that this isn’t really my thing.” She said, a little breathless as she tried to talk between fits of remaining laughter. “But I’m glad I was here. I hope you haven’t been doing this solo. Not with your luck.”
Before Jarl could reply, he felt a sudden shift in the air. A lifting of pressure. The sensation of loss and decay letting up. The magic in the air...fading.
When he looked, all of the ghosts, and tables, and the entire phantom courtroom was gone.
As was the door blocking the way upstairs.
And the two priests that had been on the other side.
They were alone, in the dark, ruined basement, with the bodies and the broken well.
A few moments later, Terry and Lilaine returned. They were carrying a man—dark skinned, dressed in the same semi-formal black attire the other priests had been wearing. He was unconscious, and badly injured, but alive.
Edited by DrTentacles on Oct 31st 2018 at 10:15:29 AM
Jarl
"For a little while, I was. Then I lucked into finding a few good people. And some tolerable ones."
He looked quizzically at Sofie for a moment, not really registering the cause for laughter.
Then he realized he was standing in the murder-basement of a bunch of long-dead revolutionaries, having just fought a ghost wizard who wanted to make a simulacrum of Mimir's Well. All while suffering the consequences of a pretty bad concussion. And that all of that was his day job. And then he couldn't help but laugh himself, even if every bark brought a fresh surge of hurt to his noggin.
He gently squeezed Sofie's shoulder. "I'm glad you're here too. Could have been a meeting under better circumstances, I guess..."
He waved a tired hand at Lilaine, Terry and the third arrival, guessing that even if he had been a problem, he looked far too knocked out to do much of anything about it by now.
"One down, two to go. Hopefully the others are having better luck."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Actually
...Depending on one's measure of 'better luck,' it turns out that the cover of the sensitive instrumentation was, in fact, merely plexiglass. It was meant as an idiot-deterrent, not as a top-security act, and the vampire strength-powered punch tore straight through, giving Alex unfettered access to the instrument panel. And there was still a nice, big, red, shiny button. And a blaring alarm, but really, if there was anyone on board who hadn't been roused by the gunfire, the barking of an apex predator that lurked in the engine room's shadows, or any of the other wacky hijinks they'd gotten themselves into onboard this yacht, they were probably too dim to be very helpful anyway.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
World's Cutest Direwolf
"You know, when I say things like that, people bitch about me jinxing them," Terry said tiredly. He let Lilaine handle Brother Angles for a sec while he got dressed.
"Anyway. Information of relevance. That fucked-up severed head was apparently a willing sacrifice accepting the 'essence of Mimir,' which sounds like maybe Ol' One-Eye's problem. Which he'll probably make our problem, so I guess that's a wash. Oh, and keep an eye out for a Mr. Hartmann. Ghost guy wants a message passed on to him. Dunno if I'm gonna do it, guy was a prick." While he was saying this, he was already lurching steadily to the stairs, Angles in tow. He had no earthly clue what the fuck his explanation would be for being down here with a badly injured priest, but at this point he didn't care. Just let him get out of this fucking basement of ghostly assholes.
Edited by rikalous on Nov 2nd 2018 at 11:13:57 AM
Cephalopod Lothario
Alexander
Alexander looked down at his fist, then back Tim, Ms Wagner, and Leon, then shrugged. Then he reached out, and pressed the big red button.
Well that was easier than expected. Annette looked down at the broken glass and the big, obvious red button, back at Alexander as he looked at her, and took as large a step back as she could. Nope.
The Wildest of Ronins
The odds that this big red button was a trap was incredibly low. This was a random arms smugglers boat not a Bond villian yacht. Still, Leon got a little distance from Alex when he pressed the button, and kept his eye on the door into the engine room in case any more mooks were going to appear.
Click Click Boom Boom
Cephalopod Lothario
Jazz Busters
Sofie finally managed to get her laughter under control, swiping at her her eyes, then responding to Jarl’s shoulder-squeeze with a light shove. When Lilaine, Terry, and the priest joined the two of them, she looked between the Vampire and the Werewolf speculatively, as though trying to decide where both of them fit in the category of “good or tolerable.”
“Shockingly, Terry had it under control when I arrived.” Lilaine proclaimed, a note of teasing in her voice. “Someone grab my shoes, and let’s be off? Unless anyone wants to get souvenirs.”
She sounded nearly as eager as Terry to be out of the basement, despite the attempt at levity.
The stairs out of the basement looked even steeper than they had on the way down. Brother Angles wasn’t heavy, but Lilaine and Terry had to focus on holding him steady as they climbed. There hadn’t been time to see the extent of his injuries before they moved him, which means lifting him could have made it worse. The alternative had been leaving him down there for someone to find, though.
Each step up the stairs felt like an ascent through time. The faint light of Jarl’s pentacle was their guide, a will’o’wisp in the swamp. As they climbed, the adrenaline began to fade, unveiling all the bruises underneath. Step by step, stair by stair, their legs started to burn, stiffness settling into their aching muscles. The weight of Brother Angles felt like twice what it when they began.
It felt like the steps went on forever. If anything, they felt even steeper than they had on the way down. Talking would have been an impossible effort. Time stretches, silent except for the sound of bare feet and shoes on stone, sharp, huffing breathes, and pants of effort.
Then they heard music, filtering from above, strangely distant. With each step though, it grew louder and closer, canned jazz pumping through speakers above. There was a light above—soft incandescent, reflected around corners, a sign they were almost done. Another corner.
The door above was open. They could hear muffled voices beyond.
The moment they got close, they could tell something was amiss. Cutting through the incandescent light was the steady flash of colored lights. Blue and red and white.
Police.
The voices turned into words.
“J'ai mon bloc-notes. Une fois de plus - combien de tes frères? Et pouvez-vous les décrire?” note One said. Even without seeing the speaker, Terry, and Jarl could tell it was a cop. The tone was unmistakable.
The reply was muffled and unclear, but they could recognize it as Brother Geoff.
“Et y avait-il quelqu'un d'autre?” note The cop asked after a moment.
There was a second of hesitation. Then Geoff replied “Je ne m'en souviens pas.” note
The cops weren’t visible from the top of the stairs—it looked like they were safe for the right now. If they headed back to the club floor, they’d probably be heading straight into them. One the other hand, a door on the other side of the hall was also open. It looked like it probably lead into the club’s kitchen. Maybe there was a way out through there?
World's Cutest Direwolf
"Someone who speaks the lingo wanna fill me in?" Terry murmured nervously.
Jarl
"They're looking for our dear preacher friends," Jarl muttered.
"Now, I don't have an especially good relationship with the head of the police's resident weirdo-hunter, so preferably, I'd like to not cap the night off by having to get into a fistfight with the entire Metropolitan Police."
However, that isn't to say the cops' presence was totally useless. As a rule of thumb, even the things they were facing here in Paris, those things that go bump in the night, preferred to shy away from places where a lot of heavily armed people congregate.
"Alright. Sofie, Lilaine, I'm guessing both of you have people waiting for you on the other side. Just go through, talk to the cops, give them a convincing bullshit story, walk out the door tomorrow. Right now, Paris is pretty dicey, and while the two of you can handle yourselves just fine, being in a police station to give a statement while the things that go bump in the night go a-crawling? Not necessarily the worst idea. Take the priest with you, so he can get the medical attention he needs."
"And I assume Terry doesn't want to perform a no-pants-no-underpants-dance in front of the cops, so I'm thinking the two of us sneak through the kitchen and try to get out the other side. Worst comes to worst I can pretend to be a hobo with an assistance dog. My dignity's pretty shot as it is, this wouldn't be much of a stretch."
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Motorboat Enthusiasts
The loud banging and whirring noises in the engine room ground to a sudden, screeching halt. Luckily, owing to the fact that physics will be physics, there wasn't the same kind of sudden lurching stop and complete upending of physics that would have occurred had this been a car - the yacht was still drifting along, just a little less quickly.
So, the yacht would stop eventually. Just not immediately. And there were still Lord knows how many people with guns on the other side. But at least step one was complete.
And that might just lead to an unexpected step two. Suddenly, there was a reasonably loud voice ringing out from the other side of the door to the engine room.
"Merde. Alright, you people." The person on the other side spoke English well enough, but his accent was very thick, and he spoke very slowly, as though he wasn't very familiar with the language. "I'm going to come into the engine room. I'll leave my weapon at the door. We talk. My people do not fill the whole room with lead. Deal?"
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Tim gave Alex a tired look and shrugged his shoulders. At the very least, grinding some more time might give the Cops of Paris the chance to show up and help them out.
Still, as he took that lull in, he pulled out a marker pen from his bag and drew a circle before him. He didn't really have another Evocation in him, but with some prep time he could probably still throw some few nasty Thaumaturgy at them.
Edited by 3of4 on Nov 9th 2018 at 9:03:55 PM
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World's Cutest Direwolf
Terry glanced down at his perfectly clothed body and snorted. "I think I can play clueless and American enough to be not worth arresting without needing to strip down or wolf out, thanks. Let's get to it, then."
Cephalopod Lothario
Alexander
Alexander's turned to face the door, a wide, wide grin spreading across his face.
"You want to parley? Excellent."
He clasped his hands behind his back, reaching up to brush his hair back.
"Let's discuss your surrender."
Edited by DrTentacles on Nov 9th 2018 at 8:14:53 AM
The Wildest of Ronins
Leon gave Alex a 'really?' look at the terms of surrender line, because of course he'd say that but come on. He takes a deep breath hissing at the feel of his ribs as he shifts his cloak back in front of him. If they weren't honest about the parley at least he'd have something to keep him from being perforated.
Click Click Boom Boom
"I th-think you tried that line with them earlier, Mr. Thorne..." Annette spoke very quietly, holding Freeloader in her arms now like a fluffy shield. Of course she would never actually use a cat as a shield. They could get hurt. But Freeloader was apparently a magically teleporting cat. They would be fine.
"I'll remember it," Terry promised the ghost. Whether he actually passed on the message or told this Hartmann character to shove it, that he'd have to play by ear. But the dead should be remembered, even if they were dicks. "Good luck with what comes next."
He glanced nervously at the injured priest, wishing he knew a damn thing about medicine. Being a werewolf beat being a wizard in many ways, e.g. video games, but there was something to be said for just busting out a healing spell when you needed one.