Seven(?) against the Convergence

[Alberich]

Tim didn't interrupt their progress, but as they moved along Rose's way he answered the question.

"When we were back in Port Lorrel," said Tim, "they said they wanted to leave us and go to Tsuiraku. Rose was against but they insisted. I escorted them to the gate myself. The ticket clerk said they couldn't get travel runes without identification papers they didn't have. There was this very powerful, shady-looking wizard hanging around the ticket counter, apparently waiting for this kind of thing. He started offering to 'help' but insisted he must talk to the girls alone, no escorts. He also started casting spells on the ticket clerk and the battlemages. And throwing me around with his magic when I tried to block it. The guards restrained me and Tamina; the wizard walked off with the girls. We found them later in a restaurant, where they'd been hidden by a concealing cloak of sorcery. They looked very smug and pleased with themselves. They said he'd had a business offer that they weren't interested in. And they came along with us again."

Tim of course had no way of knowing that Rose had heard some kind of rumor that he'd done something wrong, or that she was ready to believe such rumors and pronounce him insane.

"Once we reached here, they said they wanted to find a Tsuirakuan inn to wait in safety while we looked for you. But every place we saw was closed. Then Anfisa started saying they should try the consulate, to see if they'd have better luck if I wasn't present" -- he left out the indelicate nature of the business he'd heard her say she hoped would get them in -- "and also had directions to an inn that was open. And they went that way.

"This isn't the first time, either. The first time we were in Port Lorrel, Desiree went off with a friend of ours, and got captured by slavers. Unfortunately, there are such villains in Port Lorrel and they are powerful there. We found her tied up naked in a bag. But I think they hadn't ravished her. The moment we rescued her, she tried to run off by herself again. Rose has made some kind of promise" -- he didn't reveal he'd heard her swear an oath -- "to take her around the world and bring her home safely. But Desiree considers herself free to run off into whatever danger she likes as long as she's with us, and bank on us pulling her out of it. And she wants to leave us to go to Tsuiraku.

"We can't control her, and that means we can't protect her all the time. So if her plan is working...why not let her go? And if it isn't, how to keep that promise?"

[Jack Rothwell]

"Well... umm... could use some Killikah magics and make her sleep. Sleepy peoples don't run away." Tamina chipped in, raising a volunteering paw.

[Drusia]

"But Desiree considers herself free to run off into whatever danger she likes as long as she's with us, and bank on us pulling her out of it."

In her room, bored and annoyed, Desiree gets a sudden and inexplicable urge to find Tim and slap him.

-- Desiree

OOC:

[Alberich]

Tim grinned at Tamina's practical suggestion. "Well, we can't do that, but our kobold friend has a point. Rights and responsibilities come together, and if we haven't the right to keep them in place, we can't have the responsibility to keep them safe. It just doesn't make sense." To Tim this was one of the central realities of life, extending to parents and children, husbands and wives, leaders and subordinates, Church and flock.

[OOC: I'm assuming that Anfisa is taking a nap, relieved that she's got her hardest points to remember down on paper, unless Desiree wakes her up for some purpose. Were she informed of it, she would be all in favor of the "slapping Tim" plan on general principles.]

[Graybeard]

Easy enough for you to say, Sister Rose thought sourly. You're not the one who has the in-law relationship with Desiree's mother.

Help was coming from an unexpected direction. "Retrieving them is good opsec," Ace said. "I don't know what you people are up against, but it sounds like something you really don't want the Tsuirakuans squeezing your friends for information on. Look -- my body is still in -- another time zone." (He wouldn't say where he'd picked up the airship.) "I can't sleep yet. Let me drop you at the consulate, then get Layla and Zacky in bed back home, and then I'll pick you up." He chuckled. "Truthfully, I'm interested in this new airship you came in on. Professionally, of course."

A few minutes later, Rose and the others were at the consulate, talking to the sleepy night security guard. It didn't take long to get the point of their visit across; there hadn't been any other visitors during the wee small hours. "One moment," the guard said, and fingered his crystal ball.

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

Moments later, the same timid knock, and shy female voice, was applied to the room where Desiree and Anfisa were -- sleeping or not. "Miss? Uh, misses? There's someone here who wants to see you," the young battlemage said through the door.

[Alberich]

"Retrieving them is good opsec. I don't know what you people are up against, but it sounds like something you really don't want the Tsuirakuans squeezing your friends for information on."

Tim didn't think much of that argument. What did those girls know about what they were up against? He himself had been given only the vaguest sketch of it. If the Tsuirakuans were going to "squeeze" them for those meager dribblings, they had them all by now. And if they kept running off whenever they felt like it? That just meant they could be squeezed again and again, when and if they ever did learn something.

But answering Ace's comment out loud would mean complaining to an outsider about Rose's tightness with information. Tim refrained. You just didn't do that. The one man he could complain to was Amalric, but since Amalric had been very explicit about Tim's role in this mission, that would be fruitless. So he'd just have to walk along with this foolishness and hope the Good Lord's hand would uphold the right in spite of it. And keep Desiree safe.

He didn't like leaving such things unresolved, though, and while Rose was full of secrets and skewed priorities, he used the Mind Speech to think it to her before they arrived at the consulate: "They don't know anything about what we're up against yet. They know less than I do and that's precious little. And if the Tsuirakuans want it from them, they've probably got it already. But if we bring them along - they'll learn more, run off again, and have a tale to tell."

Tim did not know how close they were to a final confrontation - he was used to such things being delayed far past anyone's intentions (as with Blaise and Eli). And it wasn't really his main concern anyway. Rose already knew what that was - that innocents simply did not belong on the battlefield.

He also left "unspoken" his supplemental thought, that for all their decadent, heathen ways, he didn't think the Tsuirakuans would be in favor of death-worshipping murder-cults any more than he was, and woudl be unlikely to stand in the way of such a mission. There might be a secret international issue he didn't know about, and it would be entirely in character for Rose to be keeping it from him.

* * *

"Miss? Uh, misses? There's someone here who wants to see you."

"Mmmm...?" said Anfisa as she stretched. "And who's that?"

Her mind was moving faster than it appeared. She did not trust this girly-shy battlemage guardian -- the "coincidence" that had brought her in here before didn't feel like a coincidence at all, and her personality didn't match her role. One thing was for sure: Anfisa did not want her notes left here for this girl to peruse and pinch. She took them up and folded them. And she'd make sure to conceal them on her person before that door opened. They needed to be handed over to someone trustworthy, preferably Kitaura himself, but Yoneko would do in a pinch.

[Graybeard]

"And who's that?"

"I don't know, ma'am," came the rather timid, tentative answer. "They just called from out front, said the people were here to take you traveling."

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

Meanwhile, Sister Rose was looking at the business card she'd picked up from an increasingly sleepy Layla. "Bad Ass Wines," indeed; the name resonated with the playful side of Rose's personality ... which had been on something of a hiatus lately. This is making my decision easier. She resolved to get back in touch with the young entrepreneurs as soon as --

Well, as soon as what?

[Drusia]

Moments later, the same timid knock, and shy female voice, was applied to the room where Desiree and Anfisa were -- sleeping or not. "Miss? Uh, misses? There's someone here who wants to see you," the young battlemage said through the door.

Anfisa starts grabbing the papers and folding them up. I'm... yeah, okay, sure.

"Okay," I say through the door. "Um, are we meeting in here, or out there somewhere?" It doesn't really matter either way - I'm just not sure if I'm suppose to be recieving guests or getting ready to leave.

-- Desiree

[Graybeard]

"Um, are we meeting in here, or out there somewhere?"

There was a brief pause outside the room, while the young battlemage tried to sift through the cobwebs and figure this question out. "I -- I think they want to take you to the airship terminal," she finally got out. "I don't know, Corporal Yamabe didn't tell me who they are, he just said to come get you."

[OOC: If by some weird chance anyone recognizes the juxtaposition of Kitaura and Yamabe, drop me a PM. It's literally a one in a million shot, but weirder things have happened. Meliora, I guess.]

----------

Why is this taking so long? Sister Rose and Therese both wondered. The consulate was quite obviously not open for business. They'd been expecting Anfisa and Desiree to have been sent on to an inn somewhere, or at most, to have been offered a corner of the visitor entrance in which to curl up and take a nap. Instead, it sounded like they were somewhere back in the innards of the place. Gaijin, in which category Rose knew she herself was numbered (and Therese would have concurred if she'd known the term), just didn't get into places like that ...

... Unless someone in the Tsuirakuan bureaucracy was taking an interest in them.

In which case the issue Ace raised looked disconcertingly realistic. Or...

<"Any idea what's going on here?"> Rose thought at Argus. [OOC: We miss you, D! Please come back!]

[Alberich]

"I -- I think they want to take you to the airship terminal," she finally got out. "I don't know, Corporal Yamabe didn't tell me who they are, he just said to come get you."

This was weird, thought Anfisa. First this important-looking lady had told them to wait for their passports (at which time they'd pay for them with information). And now a couple of low-ranking soldiers were telling them to hurry up and leave with what sounded like their former companions. What kind of operation were these Tsuirakuans running? She'd warned Yoneko that these people would be coming, without knowledge of their benefactor, and been promised that she would "leave word" for them. Had these guards not received her orders? Or were they subverting them on purpose?

(Of course this could be some kind of Tsuirakuan escorts to their airship but it didn't feel right. If that was the case she'd expect to hear from someone in Homeland Security first, not from these "uninformed uniforms.")

So most likely it would be up to her to craft a tale that sewed the situation up. It would be much easier, though, if they could make their exchange first or at least have a brief word with Yoneko.

"Can we talk to Yoneko on our way out? We'd need only a moment of her time I hope." If the guard tried to say "no," she'd ask whether that "no" came from Yoneko herself...and try to insist on getting it direct. For she hadn't eliminated the possibility that this low-ranking guard served a different master, or at least a different faction under the same masters, and would like to get Kitaura's agents out of here with their errand undone and their pay unpaid.