Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Jack Rothwell
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

Post by Jack Rothwell »

OOc Thanks, I think it shows I have way too much free time on my hands./OOC

"Hey-hey!" Jade yelled as she was half-carried, half limping through the door, and immediately winced as her head voiced it's disaproval. She could feel a touch of delirium coming on, and all evidence was pointing to her being unable to control it. "Blessed be." She half-giggled. "I'm saved."

She unslung an arm which felt like lead and seized the coat of a passing man who looked like talking to a brain-scrambled merc was the last thing he had planned that day.

"Excuse sssir. I ran 'to a doorknob... really... really...hard." She finished. "She could... could you.. point me to a head... doctor?"
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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The man Jade had latched onto looked as if he'd been accosted by a walking piece of dog excrement, and it wasn't just because he appeared to be an upper-class Tsuirakuan, although he definitely was that. It took a moment for what appeared to be a nurse (at least she was dressed like one) to intervene. "Miss, please release Doctor Takano. His practice does not include emergency medicine." (Ace started to protest that the clinic claimed to do urgent care, then thought better of it; if they didn't want to treat the woman, forcing her down their throats could have ... unfortunate repercussions.) "I suggest you visit the Clinic of the Merciful Hands instead. They have an outlet over in the harbor district. They are more equipped to deal with your ... needs." She didn't say "your inferior social status," but any Tsuirakuan would have picked up the subtext. [OOC: JR, I need to swap some info with you off line about that clinic; yes, I know the cited link takes you to an episode in the Veracian threads, but there's a reason. /OOC:]

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Faye was relieved to see that Kitaura's mole had gone back into the non-public part of the Temple of the Divine Dwarf without noticing her, at least as far as she could tell. She went back to inspecting the Sacred Artifacts ... not realizing (yet) that a furtive conversation was going on among some of the temple staff behind the recently closed door.

---------

Layla continued to pile it on thick about the resemblance between the magic teaching box and a set of recently purloined Yuuki staffs, one of the two new students seemingly disinterested and the other ... not.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

Post by Jack Rothwell »

OOC Okey doke, we'll work something out I'm sure./OOC

Jade glared at the nurse, and back at the doctor with her non-blurry eye as the meaning of the jumble of words she'd half heard formed a semblance of meaning. She wasn't crisp at that moment, but she understood snobbery when she heard it. She extricated herself from the Gewehr's and took two shaky steps towards the lady. She leaned unsteadily towards her with an expression that suggested it was probably just as well she was working at a clinic.

"My mistake." She said managing, at great personal strain, to keep her voice level. "I expected healers, but I see I've walked into a leisure club."

She turned and walked in a slow, stiff-backed fashion until she was clear of the clinic. Ace and Oskar followed the merc as she made her way into a narrow alley out of sight from the building. Jade looked back at Ace, noting the expression of concern on his face.

"Did anyone...follow us?"

Ace shook his head.

"Good." Jade replied, then vomited.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"The Merciful Hands," Ace mused as they headed for the harbor. "I've heard of them. They're another Tsuirakuan outfit, but not for Tsuirakuans. Merciful Hands clinics are all over the place, planted by the Tsuirakuan government to provide magical medical services in places that don't have any." He chuckled. "If they happen to do a little intelligence gathering for the Tsuirakuans while they're at it, well, that's just part of the price of admission. I'd suggest we not do any rumor mongering about the Yuuki staffs while we're there; the wrong people will pick up on the rumors."

Consistent with Ace's understanding of things, the Clinic of the Merciful Hands was in one of the seedier parts of town, and the people on the street as they arrived there didn't look like the most reputable of crowds. "Oskar, you stay here with the wagon," Ace said as they dismounted. "I don't think any of these good folks would try anything with it, but you never know."

Thus distracted, the men didn't notice immediately that one of the onlookers had webbed fingers, and his ears had pricked up at Ace's mention of the Yuuki staffs.

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Meanwhile, a quiet conversation was occurring back at the clinic that had felt itself too good to treat Jade.

"I recognized one of those gaijin," the nurse said to the man who ran the place, who was definitely not a lifemage.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"You're a good man." Jade murmured. "Good... urk! Man." She tried to pat Ace's shoulder with her free hand and missed. She'd been getting steadily worse since they'd left the clinic, as though the last show of defiance had been the straw that had broken the camel's back. Jade felt tired, exhausted, all she wanted was to lay down on the nearest flat surface and go to sleep. The only thing keeping her conscious was Rufus' insistent voice at the back of her mind telling her that falling asleep was the last thing she wanted to do. She listened, barely, but she listened.

"We nearly there?" She asked, unmindful of the fact that they'd already entered the building.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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The lifemage's eyes got big as soon as she saw Jade, and she started pumping healing magic into the young woman's head, giving Ace time to look around himself.

The clinic wasn't an elaborate affair, nor was it very large. It had that Tsuirakuan knack, however, for packing a great deal of functionality into a small space -- the kind of thing that living on a floating city in the sky would teach one to do. There were several arcane instruments that Ace didn't recognize. (Maybe Layla would be able to tell him something about them, he thought; it sounded like she was getting plenty of exposure to magical gadgets.) The total staff appeared to be no more than three people: the lifemage, her assistant who was also casting repeated heals on Jade, and a receptionist that they'd simply blown past en route to the treatment room, and who was now looking Ace up and down with a distinctly disapproving expression on her face. The only other patient was an elderly Farrelite woman with a sallow complexion and a bad cough.

"She'll live," the lifemage said, breaking Ace out of his reveries. "Head injuries are tricky to heal magically, but this one was pretty straightforward. Bed rest for a couple of days, I'll give you a potion to help with the headaches she's going to have. Now would you mind telling me just what was going on here?"

I'm curious about that myself, Ace thought, as he turned to where Jade was sitting on the examination table, now rubbing her head.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Blessed relief was coursing through the blacksmith's head at that moment and she could feel her consciousness finally beggining to swim back to the surface. She croaked a reply at the lifemage.

"I was a bouncer..." She managed, unable to elaborate on anything but the truth at that point. "...people sometimes hold grudges."

She looked at Ace and gave him a weak smile. "Remember our friend Gault? That was one of his boys, the last guy I 'bounced' out that pub so to speak. No great mystery... at least I don't think so."
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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[OOC: Briefly, to move things, more this weekend when I have a little more time...]

"Gault," Ace repeated, trying to remember the name and not sure whether he was succeeding. "Layla will want to know about that." That was true pretty much by default. "Let's get you back out to our place so you can recuperate in peace."

They reboarded the wagon, unaware that the man with webbed hands had heard Ace's summary ... and that the name "Gault" definitely did mean something to him. He stepped out of site of the wagon (they might have seen him, after all) and used the new-fangled Tsuirakuan gadget called a crystal ball to place a call.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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Jade made her way to the wagon with a smile on her face. She felt like she'd run a marathon but at least the pain in her head was under some semblence of control.

Her mind returned to her business earlier in the day; that being putting the golem remains she'd retrieved from the vineyard to some practical use. She thought of Jui-Lin and the golems he'd utilised the night before on their little 'tunneling operation'. If someone had the parts necessary to fill in the gaps and make the broken weapon working again it would be him. She brightened despite the fatigue she felt; the idea of providing her nearest and dearest with some customised back-up would make them a force to be reckoned with in Rinkaiel, maybe it would even help her to make her name as a craftswoman.

Well, it was certainly a more noble goal than beating up drunks in a bar for a living in any case.

The rest of the Silver Hands would be in town for the rest of the day. The blacksmith breifly considered the idea of stopping off at the Barker lane guild but dismissed the idea. She'd told Rufus she wouldn't be back until mid-afternoon and she had information to pass onto Layla besides.

The old man would be fine by himself, she was sure.
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Re: Temple of the Divine Dwarf, part 2

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"Let's go," Ace said, feeling considerably better himself now that it didn't look like Jade was going to keel over and die in front of him. "Maybe we can pick up Layla and Faye and Joe, catch lunch, then get back to work." The wagon started in motion.

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Layla, for her part, would have been entirely unaware that it was approaching lunch time already. Truthfully, she'd completely lost track of time. Working with Galina to help the trainees was turning out to be fun. She had an unexpected, natural knack for teaching, and to her surprise, she was also turning out to have an easy, intuitive feel for working with the magical concentrator boxes that she'd started her own magical education on, and that were now causing the trainees some challenges that she herself had solved almost immediately. (This fact was not lost on Galina.) After the initial exchanges, she'd all but forgotten about the hidden task of spreading rumors about the Yuuki staffs, and she would be quite surprised when her boyfriend appeared with the wagon, to the point where she was almost (although not quite) unwilling to abandon the fun she was having for lunch.

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The same, however, could not be said of Faye's morning.

She too had lost track of time, seeming to pore over the Sacred Artifacts of the Dwarves. There really hadn't been much opportunity either to spread rumors, or to snoop on what the Divine Dwarf priests were doing; none were in sight. Well, not to worry, because the artifacts were interesting in their own way. She bent to look at a cylindrical gadget with the usual Sacred Rope coming out of one end, and an oddly constructed hose at the other end, becoming fascinated as she tried to figure out what the thing did ...

... To the point that she didn't notice that the temple foyer had gone suddenly, inexplicably, magically quiet.
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