Tsuiraku-town, part 2

[Kincaide]

Rhett turned around and met Jasmine's eyes, "You can either give me your weapons or get off the hack," he said calmly. The more Layla spoke the more he realized they had been about to be taken for a ride. Someone was toying with them and while Rhett was not completely ready to discard Kitaura as a candidate, in his reckoning there were at least two other shadowy organizations in play right now. Both had access to high end magic and probably gear as well, how hard would it be to synthesize a voice?

Regardless, with what Quince had told him about Kitaura's operation, having Jasmine run off with her guns blazing was a good way to get the hammer dropped on them, "I'm not getting killed because of a mistake, which is it going to be, ma'am?"

[Graybeard]

"Spoil sport," Jasmine pouted as she got down from the hack. On the other hand, this Rhett was proving to be more in command of his emotions than she'd thought he might be ... and that made him potential son-in-law material. (Of course, most anything did.)

Meanwhile, Layla was back to business. "Nera was in the back bedroom when all this happened, right? And she was floating out the window when Maya stopped her? Then that's where we should be looking for clues to what's going on here." Actually, she had a pretty good idea already what she might find ... and there was no time to be wasted in looking for it. But damn, I wish I'd had a few more lessons...

[Kincaide]

"Aye," Rhett agreed, entirely willing to listen to reason. One bomb diffused, but I'm not entirely sure I like the new look Jasmine is giving me. Somehow it was more disturbing than her ready and willing to kill. He grabbed his rifle case and slung it over his back, heading to where he suspected the mage would have likely been when he tried to steal the baby.

"Mage would've been right about here if he was trying to work with line of sight. Best view of the room and least time flying blind," crouching to check the ground, Rhett found fresh prints nearby leading away, "Someone was here, heard'em cuss when Maya saved the kid," this brought back memories of hunting with his old man back in the homeland.

[kagome_kino]

"thats not enterily true he might not have needed to see while floating her out, though I still think who ever did it was shabby at best." Maya put a finger to her temple while thinking outloud doing her best to stay focus through the haze of her own mind.

[Graybeard]

"Well, I wasn't expecting that," Layla said, looking at the tracks, which were clear enough in the slightly damp ground (it had rained overnight, she realized). It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting evidence of the approach, and retreat, of a human to/from the window; that was clear enough. Rather, her own tradecraft was sufficiently well developed that she'd have made sure not to leave anything this obvious in her wake. She'd been all set to have to rely on her nascent sensitivity to magic, to (she hoped) detect the faint magical spoor of someone passing by who'd been under an Invisibility spell. That wasn't going to be necessary, although when she stopped to concentrate for a moment, she did indeed feel -- "sense" would overstate it -- that magic had been used here.

"I think we can draw two conclusions from these tracks," she said, as she started to walk along the tracks to make sure her second conclusion was sound; indeed it was. "First, they're the mark of a tyro. Whoever left these doesn't exactly make a career out of being sneaky. That means probably not somebody in a Farrelite guild, and also not Kitaura or one of his henchmen. He'd be more careful than that, and if one of his people committed such a basic screwup, he'd skin them alive. That doesn't mean I know who's responsible for this -- but it's useful to draw some conclusions about who's not."

Faye nodded approvingly. "And what's the second thing?"

"Look where they're going," Layla pointed. "Once they dodge the stuff in the lawn, they're making a beeline south ... straight toward where that shack is."

[Kincaide]

((Reposted))

[Graybeard]

Uh, oh. OOC:

"Great, we got a base of operations for the perp. Don't know if he'll still be there though, if he was bugging out too quick to cover his tracks then he'll be long gone by now," Rhett pulled Gram from its sheath and made his way to the shack. He pressed his back against the wall of shack, which would provide precious little protection if the mage decided to blast his way out but he was not directly in line of sight from the door.

Once in place and not instantly incinerated by an irate mage, Rhett waved Layla and her posse of angry mothers over. He did not think the mage had stuck around but there was no reason to take a chance with this.

Uh, are you sure you want to do that? This is the shack in question, it's got magical wards and gross stuff out the wazoo, and positively drips with noli me tangere. Surely Rhett would have picked up on all that before getting too close. Want to retcon before it's too late?

[Kincaide]

((OOC: Ah, drat, give me a minute to make a more humorous repost))

[Kincaide]

"Great, we got a base of operations for the perp. Don't know if he'll still be there though, if he was bugging out too quick to cover his tracks then he'll be long gone by now," Rhett pulled Gram from its sheath and made his way toward the shack. He was about ten feet away when he suddenly realized he was moving backwards at a startling rate. He could smell ozone and his mouth was fully of the tang of iron.

He landed back where he had started in an uncomfortable looking heap. Gram, slid to a stop just out of reach. Rhett rolled onto his back and groaned something about mages and ducks and what they could do together in Northern, "Am I that damn rusty?" he said in a coherent language a minute later, he was making amateur mistakes, "Better question: who puts a damn ward that far out?" He sat up, spitting the odd curse as he did so, and checked himself over. There was a massive blackened patch on his customary overcoat. By the look of it the spell had not actually punched through the cloth for some reason.

It was obvious by how gingerly Rhett moved as he stood up that whatever protection the coat provided had not done much against the actual impact of the ward.

[Graybeard]

Layla and Faye looked at each other, thinking the same thing. Fools rush in...

"Maya, can you help him?" Layla called.