Kiyoka, part 2

[Graybeard]

"Since I was young," Willy replied, with the kind of appreciation for time that only an 8-year-old can have. "He just come around one day and said hi, and I said hi, and we was friends. He's cool. He keeps the goons away, and I bring him dead rats to eat, and we's friends. Ma says he's an 'omaless,' whatever that is."

"Omaless"? "Goons"? What was going on here, Father Egbert wondered, until the "omaless" part of it sank in. "And you haven't seen your friend ... Gropey ... for a while?" he repeated.

"Naw, saw him day afore the day afore yesterday," the boy said. "But I ain't seen him since. I hope he's okay..." His voice trailed off, in a way that suggested he might have seen more not-okay things than a boy his age should have.

"Well, if we see him, we'll tell him you miss him," Egbert said soothingly, but not quite believing he was saying it. "Now tell me about -- Ayiee, is it? Is she another troll?" He wasn't sure he should have used the feminine pronoun, but for better or worse, there it was.

"You mean Uncle Lukey's blue girlfriend? Naw, she ain't a troll..."

[Drannin]

Aha! Thought Argus.

And there it was, the proof of a connection between-

Wait, what?

"Uh, did you just say girlfriend?" Argus inquired.

The man was dating a golem??

[Graybeard]

"Well, she ain't really his girlfriend," Willy allowed. "She just goes with him when he goes travelin'. She don't do any of the real gross stuff with him."

"Gross stuff?" Argus and Father Egbert echoed, as though with one voice.

"You know, like kissin'. I kist a river toad oncet. Don't see what's so great about it."

"Ah," Egbert said, not sure whether to be relieved by this declaration or not. "So Ayiee is with your Uncle Lukey, but you don't know where he is. Would your ma?"

The boy, who'd done a really admirable job of concealing the terror that he still felt, saw his chance. "Dunno, lemme go ask her..." And he tore out of the shop through the front door, not bothering to slam it in his wake.

[LordofNightmares]

To the boys misfortune he had to run in to Tsubasa on her way to see Father Egbert "Hey kid, what's the rush?" She asked as she grabed the boy,"or better to ask you, who are you running from?" looking at the kid with her trademark kistune mask.
"You know you should say excuse me when you bump in to some one."

[Drannin]

Argus watched Willy run away... actually, 'flee' was a bit more like it. Oh well. "I think we've learned all we can from him, anyhow," Argus said to Father Egbert. "Regardless, we now know that this 'Lukey Ravanel' was somehow involved in the the chaos that happened at your mission." He seemed thoughtful.

"We found troll-prints on the roof, as well... it never occurred to me before, but our deceased battlemage might have spotted it and self-destructed out of fear. It also sounds like there's some kind of connection between Ravanel and this troll, although a small boy knowing the two of them is admittedly a weak link." Argus paused in his recitation of the key points of the investigation. "It wouldn't surprise me if one or both was somehow involved in the gang violence as well. Hell, maybe they're connected with the Gewehr, I don't know."

Argus looked right at Father Egbert. "The main question at this point is: How is Tsuiraku involved?" He paused. "And how can I make them hurt?"

"Physical injury tends to cause suffering in humans," Brother Lemuel pointed out.

Argus was starting to like the golem.

[Viking-Sensei]

High on the rooftops looking over the city... her city...

Kureji looked at the magical construction and was genuinely impressed. Whoever the author was, they'd placed a great deal of detail into it, and had even gone so far as to give it weight and apply realistic physics to it, which was more than most people bothered to do.

The design was good too - frightening, especially if this thing would drop down at someone suddenly. The features and general anatomy were lifted almost verbatim from a special she'd seen weeks before on Springheel Jack, only turned up to 11 and exagerated beyond all reasonable and practical means. Whether this was a decoy to distract her, or possibly a failed attempt to lure out Springheel Jack himself, she couldn't tell... but...

Carefully, she reached out her hand and gently pressed it straight through the creature's side - as she thought, the one thing they hadn't done was set up any collision barriers, which made the creature immaterial and likely to be popped if someone wasn't incredibly careful.

She... could fix that.

It took her about five minutes to entice one of the thousands of pigeons to her side - even armed with some bread she lifted from Tsubasa's place the night before, the birds were still hesitant of the giant horned beast... but without it encountering any further external stimulus, it had become mostly dormant, and she was eventually able to lure a bird into stunning range.

She cast a quick, light sleep spell on the pigeon, stunning it in it's tracks, and moved to intercept before it slid off the sharlpy sloped roof. Holding the stunned bird in her hands, she walked back up to the semi-illusion and thrust the unconscious bird inside it. The creature's external surface rippled for a moment, then was still. Then, Kureji cast a small but horribly effective spell, and some very very odd stuff happened.

The illusion shrunk - not a lot, but it got smaller, while inside it the bird started to grow. At some point, the two met an equatorial comprimise, resulting in a new creature - not quite Springheel Jack, but certainly far more than the pigeon that it had been moments before. Somehow, it had managed to grow wings, she noted - obviously the bird's original template was stronger than she'd imagined, but other than that, good work.

Since the new beast was still stunned, Kureji took that opportunity to do her best trick - the command spell - and took control of a small part of the creature's mind, the part that made it listen to her whether it really wanted to or not.

"Come on, my noble steed, let's go hunting." She said, slipping onto it's back as it woke. The beast reared a couple of times, still not entirely sure what it was, before it took off into the air low above the city.

[Graybeard]

Willy had had enough. He didn't like the cops, but there was a time and a place for everything. He shrieked, "POLICE!! This whacko's assultin' me!" just as four or five battlemages who'd been summoned by the intrusion alarm at the travel agency converged on him and Tsubasa, Yuuki staves at the ready. One said, "I recognize that kid, he's the one who takes care of the place that had the alarm. Let's hustle ... You! Drop that boy and keep your hands in plain sight!"

-----------

"Uh, oh," Father Egbert said, as he quietly closed the front door of Heer Thar Be Draagons and headed back into the passageway, with Argus and Lemuel right behind him. "It sounds like something has happened to young Master Willy. We'd better get out of here. Can you rebuild that wall to look the way it used to, while we beat feet back to where we came from? And maybe secure the front door against intrusion while you're at it?"

Brother Lemuel wasn't waiting for an answer; with ponderous footfalls, he proceeded back to where Sister Margaret was maintaining her defensive curtain, and rumbled, "Sister Margaret! Prepare to recover away party!"

[Drannin]

"Easily done," said Argus. Wood was easy to shape. A quick twitch of his wrist warped the portal so that would be one devil of a time to get it open again. "You go first," he added, gesturing to the passageway.

Following Father Egbert into the gaping hole in the wall, Argus spun around, hands extending, mana surging. Compared to the repairs of the other day, it was nothing. Bricks and debris surged back into place, rippling as they merged back together. There. Phase one. Now for part two... Argus stepped forward and put his hand on the solid brick wall. Extending his senses through the material beyond, he got a feel for the ruined bookcase and the books scattered on the floor. Remote reassembly was always a bit more difficult, but...

With a feel for the natural state of the bookcase, Argus jerked it back into place and resealed the damage. There. Good as new. Still in his manipulation trance, Argus then stretched out and felt for the books that had dropped and scattered all over the floor when Lemuel had made his forceful entry. Telekinetically moving them all would take to long. Instead, Argus used a variant of spiritual magic to temporarily 'awaken' the inanimate spirits within the books.

An observer would have been treated to the bizarre sight of about two dozen books suddenly twitching and coming to life, bouncing across the floor to the bookcase. One by one, and in rapid succession, the books appeared to leap, flapping their covers open with enough force to land perfectly on the bookshelf. It helped that their was a clever mage guiding their actions, of course. Before long, there was no sign that the office had even been disturbed. Aside from the books being totally out of order, of course, but that was just unavoidable.

Argus staggered back, breathing heavily. Dividing his concentration between so many small objects and remotely controlling them was trying, but he had done it, and in record time, too. Taking a moment to catch his breath, Argus took a moment to catch his breath before starting down the passage after Father Egbert. Behind him, there were shouts as people arrived at the shop and tried to force the door open.

[LordofNightmares]

She Let the boy down "I was just telling the boy, that if you bump in to some one, you should say excuse me."
Tsubasa started to feel her blood lust rise with the arrival of the battlemages , her eyes started to slowly turn black, she leaned down to the kid and wispered "if you want to keep on living , RUN" the air temp started to cool down to a sharp chill emanated from Tsubasa along with the feeling of pure blood lust and the sent of blood and death.

She took the clasp that held her cloak on, it fell fast and left a deep pot hole in the street. Clicking her boots together let the leg weights fall off and took of the mass inducing spell.

[Graybeard]

"Oh, Lord, another of those crazies from the southern continent," the sergeant of the battlemages muttered to himself as the weights hit the ground with a loud clunk and penetrated. "Let's see, what worked with the last one ... right." He remembered something from his riot-control training. At least there wasn't a hostage situation this time, as Willy had disappeared into the alleys that seemed to form his natural home. They'd have to find the kid to get a statement and support for the charges they were going to file, but that could come later.

"Okay, we're going to try the nonviolent approach first. Goto and Mwaka, pacification drill on my mark. Yaguchi and Muto, stand by with lethal force just in case... mark!"

Two of the battlemages fired beams of a soothing lavender color into the air, forming a Peace and Harmony spell. Suddenly the area around Tsubasa was suffused with an intense, nay, irresistible sensation of calming, well-being, and tranquility, as Tsubasa sank into a lotus position.

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

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this," Father Egbert puffed, as he, Brother Lemuel, Sister Margaret and Argus reappeared in the mission. "I think it would be a good idea to up our security level here and button the place up, if only for a short while, Luminosita willing. What do you think, Brother Lemuel, Sister Margaret?"

Both nodded agreement, so Egbert stepped over to a fairly tacky bit of statuary depicting the Tears of Luminosita and touched one of the tears, carefully placing his index finger in an inconspicuous groove in the rock. A small panel above the statue glowed as horns sounded in the distance. Egbert spoke into the tear: "Attention in the mission. We are now at Security Level Yellow. This is not a drill; repeat, this is not a drill."

Egbert's amplified voice echoed through the halls as he turned to Argus and spoke more softly. "Dr. Cleiviein, that's still a comparatively low level of readiness, and I really don't expect it to last long, but I want to make this place hard to get into for a brief time, under the circumstances. However, that also makes it hard to get out of, except by our emergency exits, which I would prefer not to activate at the moment. Might I ask you to find a brief period of ... entertainment ... in our library? You may find interesting reading there; Sister Margaret will accompany you and activate the archives," he said, as the halls filled with the sound of running feet.