Tsuiraku-town, part 3

As we play, occasionally we'll close a thread and open a new one to keep the size of threads (and relative complexity) down to a dull roar. Here's where we store the closed posts from the history of Errant Road.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Graybeard »

[OOC:
Jack Rothwell wrote:OOC Is there a description for Seishi floating around anywhere?/OOC

He's just been described as "scruffy looking." Since he's showing signs of being around for a while, it might not be a bad idea to write him up in the NPC Gallery. (Come to think of it, I should probably do the same for Kitaura, who btw is NOT one of the two cops on scene at the bath house.) Hours, can you take care of it? Thanks. /OOC:]


The two Homeland Security men arrived at the bath house short moments after Martin, looked at each other. "Go watch the back," the more senior one commanded.

The other man blanched. "Sir, that's a powerful magic user and he uses magic to kill people. Are you sure we want to engage him?"

The senior man started to growl, let me do the thinking here, Shenichi, and you do what I tell you, but it just took him a moment to realize the other man was right. "No, but we want to make sure he stays put. You watch the back, I watch the front. Permission to use lethal force granted, but have a Barrier ready and don't do anything stupid." He extracted a crystal ball from his pocket, spoke into it.

"Request backup."

-----------

The clinic run by the Temple of the Divine Dwarf wasn't in Tsuiraku-town, but it wasn't that far away. It only took a few minutes for Joe to hail a hack and send it on its way, bearing the damaged Gault, Stevo and Oskar, as he stayed behind to observe the fire fighting team that had arrived (too little, too late) ... and, of course, "question" the surviving hood, who, to put it mildly, had not earned the right to have his injuries treated at the Gewehr's expense. Quite the contrary, Joe was planning on adding a few injuries of his own ... eventually.

A similarly few minutes later, the three victims were at the clinic. [OOC: Note that this is somewhere between Tsuiraku-town and the vineyard, say half way between the two. We could use a map ... /OOC:] The woman out front, in her ... dwarven ... getup, greeted the three just as she had Layla, Ace and Faye a few days earlier. "Good Morning, the Dwarves Love You. How can we help heal your infirm?"

----------

Completely oblivious to what was going on elsewhere, Layla and Galina strolled toward the Temple, chattering happily as they went ... although they were not so oblivious as to lower the guard that they both wore as though part of their stylish-but-not-pretentious outfits.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Jack Rothwell »

OOC For some reason, all i could think of when I was writing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esRrxRRTdjY /OOC

"Eeeeekkkk!"

"Sorry. Thought it was empty." Martin said with an unabashed grin, and drew back the curtain he pulled open to see if his target had been hiding in the steamed up alcove. He'd been searching for less than a minute and he was already thinking he was on a hiding to nothing. There were dozens of nooks and crannies for a non-magic user to hide in a place like this and only a short period of time the conman could go on violating people's privacy before one of the beefy-looking men near the reception desk forcefully ejected him from the establishment. He moved onto the next stall.

"Hey!"

"Sorry. Thought it was empty." The faux fop said to the couple with his eyebrows climbing up his head. "And I think there's designated places in town if you want to do stuff like THAT."

He continued his search.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Hours »

Seishi in the Bath:

Seishi sat on a bench and took a few breaths. He was in some sort of changing room where he wouldn't be so obvious. Maybe if the men in pursuit had brought along the right equipment they would detect some sort of active magic going on in the bath house, nothing really major, in fact in any proper part of Tsuiraku town it would probably fade into the background emission of all the magical lightbulbs and plumbing in this place. Still, Seishi looked on as this Farellian was poking around in the private baths and saunas.

Farellians... He thought, Idiots...

At least that was what he thought when Martin stuck his head in to where Sieshi was hiding... To see an angry looking morbidly obese Tsuirakuan rocking a wispy fu manchu and wearing nothing but an unfortunately all-too-small towel sitting on a bench by the lockers. If there was one thing Seishi knew about how to hide, it was good to not be seen, even better to make whoever's looking for you see something that they thoroughly don't want to see ever again.

Illusions were handy.

Gault and the dwarves:

Gault helped the others off the hack on arrival, at least he was one of the ones who could stand. Patting himself down he took out his wallet and made sure he had the cash he needed for whatever fees they were charging, in his experience there was very little charity in Farrel. Even religious missions needed food and shelter. He just hoped to whatever god would listen that they were right when they said this place wasn't as stupid as it looked.

'We had an architectural accident. I think... uhm... Stevo here has it worst.'
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Graybeard »

"Detection magic up, people," the commanding Tsuirakuan said as more uniformed forces arrived at the bath house. "He's a strong mage, so he'll have some defenses, probably an Illusion at the minimum, plus who knows what as wards. But we'll winkle him out."

The commander was feeling good about his plan to detect and defeat the fugitive ... until he turned on his own detection capability and realized there was a problem.

In a place like this, everybody who had any aptitude for magic would be trying to use it to disguise themselves. Naturally.

Including a certain very highly placed figure [OOC: NOT Kitaura ... /OOC:] from the consulate who was visible in the window in a rather ... transsexual ... disguise.

I'm going to pay for this, the honcho realized, but he kept his magic up; it might cost him his career, but there was a job to do.

----------

The improbable healer smiled at Gault. "Why, surely we can help." She put a dish on the ground in front of her -- for "donations," it was clear enough -- and removed something from the hump-pack that she wore on her back, something resembling an amphora with a hose sticking out of it, and a funnel attached to the opposite end of the hose.

"This will help with your burns," she told Stevo, "and then we'll set your broken leg." His eyes grew wide...

----------

The front door to the Temple of the Divine Dwarf was still closed and locked, but Layla and Galina were in no hurry. They amused themselves by trying to guess the function of the improbable artifact out front, and concluded that it might have been a children's toy, something to climb on, although of course both Zachary and Oxana, Galina's daughter, were too young to climb on it.

Layla was just about to suggest another possible -- and both humorous and R-rated -- interpretation of the thing, when she noticed something else. Ace was approaching in the cab, driving the horses as hard as he could in the middle of town.

This didn't look good.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

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Martin's intrusive investigation came to an abrupt halt on the first floor when he happened to pass a narrow window that overlooked the street. He stared, mutely grateful that there was something to focus on besides the eye-searing sight of the fat bastard in the tiny towel he'd been traumatized by moments before.

"Men in uniforms setting up a perimeter..." He murmured. "Something to put a dampener on a day."

He recognised the group at least; the homeland security department, certainly not an organisation to be taken lightly. And if they were here in the building that meant that his instincts about the arsonist being in the bathouse were correct. Martin mentally high-fived himself and breifly considered heading back to the entrance, but dismissed the idea. He reasoned if he stuck around he might be able to find out what this firey thread was attached to. And, besides, it was always fun watching other people's taxes hard at work.

The conman ducked into a changing room (which was mercifully empty this time around) and sat down on a bench with ears wide open.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

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"Oh, crap," Layla cursed as soon as Ace delivered his news. "I've gotta get back there, Galina. You're on your own from here." The two women regretfully parted company, and Layla prepared for a brisk trot back to the smoldering liquor store, where Joe was finding his interrogation -- cathartic, but uninformative.

[OOC: Entries for the bath house and at the Divine Dwarf clinic later today, but it's not really my "turn" yet there -- not that we exactly take turns in Errant Road, we don't, but still.]
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Hours »

[OOC: You'll have to excuse me, there was a combination of tiny flying mice nesting in the street's phone terminal, rusting connection in my house's wiring and a faulty modem for a trifecta of things preventing me from posting. I'll edit in my post here in a little while.]
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

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[OOC: No prob, reality interferes with all of us sometimes ... so let me move Layla a little closer to the action.]

Ace was amazed, in an unsettling sort of way: before his eyes, his girlfriend was undergoing a transformation from beautiful and successful young business woman, magic student and loving mother ... to Gewehr Wraith. Her facial expression changed dramatically, getting that lifeless look he'd seen in Wraiths he'd transported in the now-defunct airship on the way to jobs. It was one of the most frightening things he'd seen in years.

Layla didn't even curse as the hack arrived at the burned-out liquor store. A Farrelian fire-fighting unit was on hand, but it was much too late. Over in a corner, Joe was standing over the semi-conscious form of the surviving hood. Evidently he'd tried to interrogate the man, and had pushed it a little too far. Well, no matter, to put it mildly. "That's the guy," Ace pointed out.

Layla nodded. "Throw his ass on the wagon. We're heading back out to the vineyard ... and there I'll do a real interrogation." The men complied, and Layla's smile was even more chilling now than the blank stare Ace had seen on the way to the store.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

Post by Hours »

Gault at the Clinic:

Gault took out a small wad of banknotes and dropped it in the donations bowl, carefully working it out beforehand to be just enough for it to be worth healing him, but just a small enough sum to make him non-generous with his funding. Some of this stuff was getting expensive and really it wasn't as if they had asked him for money upfront, there was no set cost beyond what your guilt was worth.

'Uh... At least give the poor guy a drink before you start with... Whatever that is. Or maybe a whack over the head.'

Seishi in the bath:

Seishi was very calmly trying to think his way around this. He was in a tough situation, he'd been in tougher situations, but he was definitely in a bind. He kept up his most unpleasant illusion for simplicity of it as he rummaged through his belongings, he checked his notes to little avail, hoping for a slim possibility that the precise instructions for his contract would let him slip out with some slick words, but no. It was too vague.

This left him with few options... Negotiate, Slip away like a slimy eel, or go with brute force... Backup was slowly arriving and he figured if he could take them by surprise with a wide enough spell he could sneak out in all the chaos so there was hope there. For now he tried to keep a low key, giving the people outside a view of exactly what they would expect to see, both on remote view scrying and on magical detection spells, he'd recieved the same training as many of the men outside after all. A large man in a changing room tidying himself up. Casting a few hygeine spells, a few minor alteration spells to trim those eyebrows and cut that hair, they were looking for an escaping arsonist, what they were seeing for now was an ugly guy doing a bit of manscaping.

I guess I'll have to use that... He thought, and waited for their next move.
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Re: Tsuiraku-town, part 3

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"Oh, this won't hurt at all," the pseudo-dwarven woman said. "Anything but. The burns will feel better right away, and then we can treat yours, or start on his leg." She stood erect, causing the hump-pack on her back to slump in a way that would have been amusing under other circumstances.

"Behold, the Healing Power of the Dwarves!"

She aimed the large end of the funnel at Stevo's exposed back, where the burns looked worst, and fingered a button on the amphora. There was a loud FOOOSSSHHH, and a white powder gushed from the funnel, covering the burns... and suddenly Stevo didn't hurt nearly as much.

"So which one of you wants to be next to feel the Dwarves' Healing Touch?" the woman asked the other two, as an amazed smile spread across the Gewehr man's face.

----------

Two of the Homeland Security people dived into the bath house, while the others kept guard outside, and it was bare seconds later that they found what they were looking for -- or so they thought.

"Come out with your hands up!" one of them screeched, pointing his Yuuki staff through the door to the room ...

... At Martin.

----------

"Don't take us to the house," Layla told Ace as they pulled up in front of the vineyard. "Down that way." She motioned to a side path leading behind the main equipment shed.

"Now, we're going to have a little conversation," she smiled to the man (Ace's blood ran cold as he watched, and even Joe winced, knowing what was coming next) ... and pulled down his pants as she pulled a knife out of a compartment on the baby carrier, of all things.

"And if I don't like what you're telling me, we're going to perform a sex-change operation, right here and now ... one inch at a time."
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