Kiyoka

[Viking-Sensei]

Kureji marched right up to the small, neat house, ignoring the two or three death-dealing traps which were going off in her wake (and nearly hitting Rokku as he tried to keep up). As a slightly smoking Rokku and Locke caught up, Kureji knocked on the door. A severely distraught woman answered the door.

"Are you...?" the woman asked, hesitantly, a flurry of motion going on behind the door.

Kureji smiled. "We're here to help."

"We already know about the murder." Rokku huffed, trying to keep up. "Saw everything on the way over."

The woman turned a few shades of pale, then redoubled her resolve. "You're here already? Faye..."

"Uh... yes, Aunt Fei sent us. Have the others arrived yet? Can we come in?"


-------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, at a dinner party several miles away, a murder was being revealed.

"I suspect... the butler did it, in the library, with the force bolt spell!" Uncle Sakai stated, sipping his small brandy.

"Good show!" Aunt Fei said, standing up. The small group all applauded. "It was the butler! The butler did it."

Uncle Sakai stood too, taking a small polite bow. "It was incredibly easy, without Kureji here to constantly be harassing everyone. Where did you send her, exactly?"

Fei tittered. "The same address we have, except on the south path. It'll take her days to figure out where she's at." A rousing chorus of laughter went up from the accumulated guests. "I just feel sorry for the poor saps who live there, whoever they are."

[Graybeard]

The conversation with her mother at least had the advantage of kicking Layla into blind, automatic action for a while, as she launched into obeying Faye's command. She extracted from its hiding place a very special suitcase that had been prepared with just this kind of fast escape in mind -- well, not exactly this fast escape, because it had been presumed that three would be escaping. Completely nondescript on the outside, it contained a well-hidden interior gadget that triggered a Tsuirakuan "Pocket Dimension" spell when activated. It could hold a vast amount of material, and Layla now set about filling it with important -- and sentimental -- things from the house.

She'd been working mindlessly on filling the sort-of-suitcase for a while -- she didn't know how long, time had ceased to have meaning for her the moment Sergeant Ohta came to the door -- when there was a familiar, yet most unexpected, chiming sound from the front door. Visitors? At this hour? The functional part of her brain tried to make sense out of it, couldn't. The paranoid, unreasoningly hostile corner of the not-so-functional remainder of her mind seized the opportunity to war for control with the grieving, sobbing part, and won for the time being. She temporized with a loud "Just a moment," then threw a few switches in the master bedroom ("war room" would be a reasonable synonym) where she'd been putting Arty's memorabilia into the case. There; the firepower of a small army was now focused on the front step. She triggered the surveillance system ...

... Which showed a completely innocuous pair of young people dressed in Tsuirakuan clothes, standing nonchalantly on the porch. (Well, not completely nonchalantly; the young man was puffing, Layla noticed.) Not quite believing her eyes, she secured the bedroom door, hurried to the front hall, unlocked the inner door and opened it to peer through the glass outer door -- this "glass" could stop a round from anything less than a full-sized cannon -- at her unexpected visitors. The rational corner of her mind popped out of hiding for just long enough to hope that she didn't look too haggard after all the crying she'd been doing. "Are you...?" she half croaked, half sobbed.

"We're here to help," said the young woman, her voice full of good cheer. Was that a winged cat sitting on the young man's shoulder? The girl looked meaningfully at the boy with the cat, nudged him in the ribs with an elbow.

He finally got his one rehearsed line out, looking like he was sucking on a lemon or something equally distasteful. "We already know about the murder, saw everything on the way over."

Now how did my mother make that happen?, Layla thought with the last vestige of her sanity. "You're here already? Faye..."

The girl smiled cheerfully and continued, "Uh... yes, Aunt Fei sent us. Have the others arrived yet? Can we come in?"

Sanity simply gave up and conceded this round as lost. Layla did something she hadn't done in close to twenty years: she fainted dead away.

[Graybeard]

Layla awoke to find her face being fanned by the wings of the flying cat, and almost fainted again before her self-control took over. The young couple were looking down at her, their faces a mix of concern and admiration (she had no way of knowing that they were both thinking wow, what an acting job). She scrambled to her feet and said, "I'm sorry, I'm terribly embarrassed, please accept my apologies. I haven't done that since I was a small child, but as you can probably understand, I've had a horrible shock." The young couple made sympathetic noises, but she wasn't listening yet. "Let me pour us some wine, and we can talk about what has to be done."

She stepped into the kitchen, which fortunately hadn't yet had any of its contents stuffed into the special suitcase, and found a bottle of the vineyard's best Syrah. She poured three glasses and offered her visitors their choices -- a courtesy to make the point, no, this stuff isn't drugged or poisoned, I'm drinking it too -- as the three sat down in the still-tidy drawing room. Introductions were made (she remembered to call herself "Andrea"), and then she said, "I'm also very sorry about those traps you triggered on the way here. I'm concerned that the -- creature, I can't think of him as a man -- that killed my husband may be after me too, and so I've been behaving a bit ... defensively. The main house next door is also full of traps, and you shouldn't go inside there until we've talked." Was that a light of recognition in their eyes? Possibly they'd gone there first and tried to poke around ... in which case they were lucky to be alive. "So could you tell me a bit about your intentions?" she concluded, and waited expectantly for a response; it was one way to keep from crying again...

[Graybeard]

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Meanwhile, at a dinner party several miles away, a murder was being revealed.

"I suspect... the butler did it, in the library, with the force bolt spell!" Uncle Sakai stated, sipping his small brandy.

"Good show!" Aunt Fei said, standing up. The small group all applauded. "It was Ian, the butler! Ian did it."

Uncle Sakai stood too, taking a small polite bow. "It was incredibly easy, without Kureji here to constantly be harassing everyone. Where did you send her, exactly?"

Fei tittered. "The same address we have, except on the south path. It'll take her days to figure out where she's at." A rousing chorus of laughter went up from the accumulated guests. "I just feel sorry for the poor saps who live there, whoever they are."

Fixed.

[Sareth]

SNRK.

[Graybeard]

SNRK.

Say what?

OOC, in case it wasn't obvious...

[Viking-Sensei]

(OOC: I believe that was onomonopeia, which I don't know how to spell but can fake the sound of)

The idea that a monster, not a man, could be the culprit behind the attacks (because, in Kureji's mind, there were now murders in the multiple) had never crossed Kureji's mind. However, now that the woman had mentioned this, the pieces began clicking into place. She'd heard the rumors, seen the news reports, watched the "Mysterious Mysteries of Mystery" special on the crystal net about it... suddenly it all made sense. In one of the most amazing leaps of deductive logic, one that would leave her partner Rokku completely jealous and envious of her amazing reasoning capabilities, Kureji pronounced:

"I believe your husband was actually a victim of the notorious killer Springheel Jack."

Everyone gasped, albeit for different reasons.

"I have it on good authority* that he's been operating out of Kiyoka recently." Kureji continued. "He must have seen our recent expansion into his territory as a threat. He was here first, so the sudden appearance of rivals couldn't have been taken well. We must've pushed him too far, and he finally retalliated. I'm so sorry."

"Kureji, I think we need to talk. In private."

Kureji flashed Rokku a not now, I'm on to something look and continued. "So... Rokku and his winged menace here help you make the necessary arrangements. Rokku..." Kureji's eyes flashed momentarily, kicking in the long-dormant-but-still-functional Command spell she'd cast on him years before that he'd never quite been able to shake. "...do whatever this woman says, without asking questions."

"...yes." A slightly zombified Rokku said, as if waking unsure from a trance. "Of course I will, why would you say that?"

"Meanwhile, I'm going to go into town. I know this isn't the order things are technically supposed to go in, but I figure Jack's still got to be in the area somewhere, and I don't know about you, but I'm not keen on letting him get away with this."



*Her reliable source is "The Weekly Weird News", of course - it was the cover story two weeks ago, about a professor's recent theory about how Springheel Jack may actually be from some native species, long since thought extinct, that inhabited the island chain before Tsuiraku had arrived, and how recent logging in the forests beyond Kiyoka had infringed upon Springheel Jack's natural territory, possibly driving him into the city causing the recent outbreak of attacks, and that he views humans as a rival species attempting to oust his people.

[Graybeard]

"I believe your husband was actually a victim of the notorious killer --" the oddly-dressed girl started, then paused for effect, and for a brief moment Layla's mind breathed a prayer of thanksgiving -- there might be a God out there somewhere, she reasoned -- that her mother was going to help her gain revenge after all. But then the girl continued, with a theatrical flourish:

"Springheel Jack."

Layla couldn't help herself: she started to form a half-snort, half-laugh. However, between the mouthful of wine she had, the fact that she was still struggling to keep from bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, and the sheer ridiculousness of the idea, all that came out was a strangled gasp. Mom, where did you find these gems? she wondered. I understand, short notice and all, but still... I thought the Tsuirakushiti people were supposed to be smart ... or at least not completely whacko.

She started to say, "Um, I really think the killer was as human as--", but the girl had the oratorical bit between her teeth, and Layla subsided without finishing the sentence; why waste the wind? As the girl careened deeper into her conspiratorially weird world, Layla glanced at the young man and the cat, catching them in a simultaneous rolling of eyes that would have been hilarious under other circumstances. Apparently the two emissaries from Faye weren't equally nuts, at the very least; that might give her something to work with. And then she got an idea -- whether a good one or more lunacy induced by her half-fried mental state, she didn't know, but at this point any idea would do.

As the girl finally ran out of steam, Layla quietly cleared her throat, then said, "Yes, I think that might be productive, Karzhee -- did I get your name right? And I can possibly point you toward people in town who can help you find Springheel Jack and give him the painful death he deserves. I'm sorry that I can't go with you, but I have many things to attend to here at the vineyard, as you can imagine."

The girl was muttering something to her boyfriend(?), who suddenly went oddly glassy-eyed, but Layla decided to continue, whether "Karzhee" was listening or not. "I once heard a street musician named Toeto talking about Springheel Jack as if he knew something about the man or monster or whatever it is." This was true; one of the buskers who plied their trade in the streets had held forth on this same nutty fantasy as Karzhee, in Layla's hearing as she did some shopping (and reconnaissance) in town with her son. "And there is an itinerant street healer named Atwater who may know something too." This part was not true, to her knowledge; "the Reverend Atwater" was not only somewhat crooked, but also mad as a March hare and generally resented in town, and perhaps he and this girl might hit it off ... or not. "If you find them, they may be able to help you find Jam... Jack.

"And now, Mr. -- Rocky, is that right? -- we have much to do here. Please come with me."

[Sareth]

SNRK.

Say what?

OOC, in case it wasn't obvious...

What Viking-sensei said.

[Graybeard]

As the girl tripped down the road toward town, Layla put the strangely compliant young man to work shredding papers and loading up the special suitcase. She kept an eye on him and tried to make sense out of what had just happened, with a mind too stressed out and overwhelmed to be completely functional -- but she tried.

Karzhee, she thought. That didn't sound like any name she was familiar with. In fact, it sounded vaguely ... elven. No, that couldn't be right, the young woman really didn't look like the two elves she'd seen in the flesh. But might she be ... half elven? That might explain a few things. She'd never seen a half elf that she was aware of, but some of the reports from the Gewehr's attempt to open an operation in the Northern Confederacy (which she wasn't really supposed to have seen, but oh well...) made her wonder. Half elves were supposed to look pretty close to human, except maybe for their ears (had the odd girl had pointed ears? she wasn't sure), and by all accounts, they had a definite problem with bats in the belfry. Well, let's take this on directly, she decided, and stopped the young man, who looked at her blankly.

"Um ... Rocky ... you're from Tsuirakushiti, right?"

"Right." He wasn't giving anything away. Good; this was a profession that rewarded the tight-lipped. This one might be more competent than he looked.

"Tell me: how many half elves are there in Tsuirakushiti? I've never been there."

"Just the one." The one? And did he shudder slightly?

"Ahh... so is it fair to say that Karzhee is one of a kind?"

He reacted a little more emphatically to this question. "Yes, you'd definitely have to say that Kureji is one of a kind." And rolled his eyes; again, the flying cat's eyes also rolled, as if choreographed.

Aha. The pieces were starting to fall into place. Now, in her still-not-very-functional state, she understood why the girl's behavior had been so weird ... and she was more than happy to let Karzhee head on into town. But she still had things to do. "OK, Rocky," she said, "I can take over here, but can you go to the house next door and shred all the papers there? They're ... sensitive ... and I don't want to take anything with me. Shred them all."

"Sure," Rokku said, and turned on his heel, only to be stopped by a quick gasp from Layla as she realized she'd better fill the poor boy in on all the traps -- the oubliette under the stairwell, knives stabbing out of the wall unless you carefully used only the even-numbered stairs, garroting wires hanging from the kitchen ceiling, that sort of thing. He simply nodded (albeit with an increasingly sweaty brow) and finally headed off to the farmhouse. Layla watched him go, hoping that she hadn't forgotten anything ...

... And that was when she noticed that there was a light on in the farmhouse's second story windows that hadn't been there earlier.

[EDIT: Minor retcon for consistency with something about Layla that emerged much, much later.]