The Story so Far:

Wednesday: Fe woke up and came upstairs, looking for food. Instead, she found her father, Dr. Black, dead, lying in a pool of his own blood. She wandered outside, wearing her human holographic collar. Ran into Harry on the street. Harry was intrigued, because Fe appeared to be a 16-year-old girl in a pinafore, eating a raw steak.

The went off to the Bar (P.J. Sketching ton’s - the lower class bar for sketchy folk). There they met Hasib, who was one of the more lousy gangsters in town. (Conspicuous enough that Harry noticed him.) Hasib took the job - killing Penelope’s father.

Fe and Harry tried asking Purple some questions, in the bar. No luck. As a result, his minions [aka “Hack” and “Slash”] attacked them in the alley. Fe, being strong, overcame them, breaking one of their arms. Them took off on the aero velocipede.

Terrence (at work) meets up with the goons and sets the broken arm.

Wednesday: In the meantime, Penelope, Ivy, Emma and Margaret were at Lady Chloe’s party. Claudius was there: son of Lord Dmitri Czernov. Attempted to get overly friendly with Ivy while dancing. Tried to maneuver her down a dark hallway, also without luck.

Lady Chloe Williams - older society woman.

Nseric Dane - tall, good looking, long straight black hair. Arrogant ass. Danced with Emma. Annoyed Emma enough that she sent someone to eavesdrop on him talking to “Sharon” a tall blonde woman in a long black dress. The servant overheard them talking about the doctor “being taken care of”.

Marjorie Lesterwald came and talked to Ivy.

Lawrence Adderly, an aging rake and a bit of a jerk, was there with Margaret. Kept bragging about his original art collection. Was snarky and nasty enough that he annoyed Ivy. (Subsequently Ivy and Margaret met and conspired.)

Thursday: Fe wandered around on her own, hungry. Tried to buy food, but had no money. (“Bits”) Vendor told her that as a child with no parents, she could make money at the orphanage. They tried to lock her up. As a result, Fe led an uprising of the orphans, who escaped (with a sandwich). Fe beat up two orderlies, stole their keys, scared the Matron (Matron Abernathy). The kids mugged the orderlies and stole their money. (This is how Fe subsequently learned to mug people.)

Friday

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (1) Margaret was entertaining Lawrence, (2) Ivy was in his living room, six feet away, stealing his art (replaced it with naked pictures of Burt Reynolds), (3) Hasib was on the roof attempting to shoot George Smith-Smythe. In sequence: Hasib shoots; Betsy shoots his bullet; Betsy looks up at Heavily Armed Invisible Hasib and tipped her hat at him; the police rush out loudly from all over the place, Hasib rapels down the side of the building (invisible); Ivy rapels down the side of the building camouflaged. Hasib saw Ivy, chased her all over. Caught her, questioned her at gunpoint. Asked her if she was working with Betsy. (Ivy wondered if this meant Margaret). Hasib decided she was irrelevant and let her go; Ivy gave him her card.

Meanwhile, the police have broken in on Lawrence and Margaret. They have to bribe them to smooth things over.

Penelope rushed to the hospital to see her Dad and sedate her Mom (Petunia).

And the day begins: Sunday Morning: Emma, Elizabeth and Ivy go to church. Petunia drags Penelope to church. They‘re all high class enough that they go to the Church of Christ Triumphant.

The pastor is giving a law and order fire and brimstone sermon based on the Unfortunate Events of Friday. Low classes and women need to know their place. Moral breakdown of society dammit! [Rumours are circulating about Lawrence, but the pastor doesn’t deign to speak of that, particularly in front of the ladies. But he talks around it a bit.]

Penelope and Petunia are sitting in a pew in the second row, so no one can see Penelope’s glazed eyes. (She’s working on a paper with part of her brain.)

The sermon is getting dangerously close to the limits of propriety. He’s speaking about scientific degeneracy, the things people are doing to their bodies with genetic modification, etc. [Victoria’s cautiously in favour of that, unlike her father. That’s why he was poisoned. The illness kept him from further procreating, and eventually killed him.] Victoria is not present, but there’s a hologram of the Queen in the Queen’s box. Someone may or may not be actively working the hologram as an avatar.

We all go up for the blessing, smiling and trying to look attentive and respectful. We mill about in the garden eating cucumber sandwiches. Everyone comes up to P&P, giving their condolences, etc. Ivy tries to eavesdrop on Penelope and Petunia. Penelope is now quite intrigued, trying to figure out who the heck could possibly want to shoot her father. She’s watching everyone during the socializing to see who approaches her family and show doesn’t.

There’s a lot of gossip about Lawrence A. who isn’t here. He normally attends, but today he’s hiding. He’s not in jail either, despite the fact that it IS sort of illegal to get caught with a prostitute. He had just enough power and money to be mocked and shunned instead of arrested. Some folks are gossiping about the art found on his walls. Ivy tries hard not to snicker.

Petunia’s still completely out of it. Her older brother, Percival Wakely, Duke of Vermont is not as with it as he used to be. Spending most of his energy keeping Petunia upright. Not really noticing any of the social undercurrents.

Claudius comes over. Penelope is surprised. Why is he giving his condolences? He’s got Marjorie Lester Wald (a young society woman) with him. (I’d been thinking of trying to hook her up with my brother, but decided she wasn’t quite important enough for him.)

Nseric Dane wanders by, ignores Penelope, tells Petunia and the Duke how sorry he was to hear of this disgraceful incident. Lady Chloe wanders by and is effusive and appropriate and flustered. She and Petunia make plans for tea and brandy later. Ivy and Emma give their condolences as well to all.

Margaret did not attend this church today.

Ivy is busy blackening Lawrence’s name. (“Shocked I tell you! Shocked and appalled!”) Intriguingly, there’s no hint that he was robbed during the incident.

Both Ivy and Emma’s psy ring hear a lot of grumbling about The State of Things These Days. They’re grumbling about the overly permissive liberal government. They want a clamp down on Those People. There is a noticeable presence of local police and military intelligence, in uniform, as security. Not so subtle as usual.

Penelope notices that there’s a fair number of very well disguised soldiers in among the parishioners. They’re either military intelligence or someone’s private security staff. As people start to wander away, the Queen’s avatar exits the box and one of the seraphim accompanies her out of the church. The seraphim has its halo on (combination force field and anti-gravity device). Looks quite showy and protective. The crowd parts to let them through. The Queen’s avatar enters the waiting coach. Zooms off toward the main palace with the seraphim flying above.

More grumbling ensues, only barely contained within the realm of “not getting locked up by the secret police”.

Meanwhile, Hasib is talking to his contacts, trying to track down BKYF, discreetly. Did not tell them to keep it secret that he was looking for her. But Betsy hasn’t taken many jobs recently. Actually, she’s been noticeably absent, almost as if she’s got another source of income. Hasib concludes that she’s probably been put on retainer by someone who has a lot of money. He decides he needs a spy who spends his time among the upper classes. He decides to set up a meeting with the Magpie. Sends her an email saying, “We need to have a meeting. Signed: Invisible Heavily Armed Man”.

Ivy emails back a brief, professional, relatively unsnarky letter. “Ah, my old friend Mr. Invisible. So lovely to hear from you. Perhaps the Shady Arms later this evening?”

Hasib also send a message to Betsy suggesting a casual meeting. No response.

[Sketchington’s in an Irish/ Canadian anarchist bar.]

Harry’s off mooching pie from the poor church. Shows up near the end of mass and sneaks in. Steals some money from the collection plate. Eats the overly sweet punch and pie from the middle-class church ladies who come down to be benevolent before their own service. Fe hasn’t gone back to her father’s place so she can’t go to virtual church and happens to find this one, but the smell of the meat pies. Fe spots Harry and runs across the room and puts her arms around Harry in the middle of the service. The church ladies tsk, and the pastor speaks louder. Harry tells her to be quiet and listen to the word of god so they can have pie. Terrence Cavendish wonders what’s up with the squealing. Sermon: god has a place for everyone and you’ll have a place in heaven in return for your life sucking right now. Fe stuffs all of his money into the collection plate; Harry skims a bit off the top, stealthily.

After the pie, Harry and Fe hang out labour propaganda. A few people actually put them in their pockets. Fe does not have pie on her face! Nice. The men folk go off to the pub. The women and children go off home to start the roast vat-grown protein substitute. Harry suggests they go somewhere a bit less churchy. Talks about proletariat. Fe nods and smiles.

[Note: Harry has reported back to her Canadian anarcho-syndicalist nano-tech wizards. She told them all about Fe and the orphanage and so on. They told Harry to keep an eye on Fe and try to keep Fe out of the view of the science police. She might be useful.]

Harry asks Fe what she’s been up to. Fe tells her that she’s been making money by taking it from bad men who come up and try to do bad thins to her. Harry suggests this is not a great long-term plan if she doesn’t want to get caught.

[Media has reported that there was a riot among the poor, lower class youth. Police know Fe is a teenage girl with superhuman strength. Harry found out about the orphanage by listening to police band. Harry figured out that Fe was not human by asking while they were on the velocipede. That‘s when she kicked her off the v.]

Fe apologizes for lying about being a cat person. Harry apologizes for kicking her off the velocipede, and tells Fe what she‘s been up to.

Harry tells Fe what she heard over the police band: she had seen a picture of police fighting with Fe.

[Fe accidentally tased Matron]

Hasib spends his afternoon searching for info about the Magpie. Finds out the Magpie is a thief, active for the past several years. Probably thinks she’s a reasonably young man. Has a reputation for decent levels of skill, following through with jobs he’s hired for, etc.

[Margaret does not know Ivy and the Magpie are the same person or even that the Magpie is female. They met up in the Shady arms, while Magpie was in full male gear.]

Harry is interested in the recent assassination attempt. George S-S is a Whig; Harry wants to know why someone’s bothering to try to assassinate him. She realizes it was none of her local anarchist contacts. This was both too successful and too well-organized to have been the anarchists, even though they’re getting a lot of blame in the press for it.

Harry and Fe head off to the velocipede. They go off to parliament to try to check out the scene of the crime. They go directly overhead, way high up. Fe can see the ground, a bit better than Harry. There are lots of military, soldiers in the street. Parliament’s still there. Harry tries listening to the police band; can’t crack the military encoding. On the regular police band, lots of chatter about scheduling overtime over the next week. “We’ll show them.”

There are police zeppelins below them. The police haven’t noticed them yet, since it’s a slightly overcast day and they have a fairly well-camouflaged v. The Seraphim spots them, though. It watches.

Seven feet tall. Blond. Sides of the head shaved. A wide Mohawk, loose in the shifting wind. Dressed in white. Big white wings. Halo. Circling, gradually closer and closer in.

Fe whispers, “We should go.”

Harry backs off. The Seraphim keeps watching them. Harry backs off further.

But he thinks to himself, “If all of the police are off protecting parliament, this will be a great time to do something else!”

Emma spends Sunday afternoon at home. Her brother does not come home from church. I ask my network where he is. They cannot immediately find him .. Or the people who were watching him. He left church and went off in a hired carriage toward one of his clubs. I ask my watchers if anyone approached him at church; just his regular group of cronies, plus Marjorie Lesterwald. He didn’t seem perturbed or upset.

After half an hour, we still can’t get in touch with him or his watchers. This is beyond strange. I put all resources on searching for him.

Penelope went home from church with Petunia and uncle Duke. Had lunch. Penelope probed, gently, for information. What has father been doing recently in the House? [They shot him on the way in to Parliamanet.] Turns out, they had been planning to vote on a bill that afternoon with respect to medical research funding, budget administration, military spending, territory reclamation project (i.e. cleaning up mess from nano-wars and messes from the 20th and 21st centuries, such as overarching project for things like the infestation in Boston Harbour that turned it blood red for twenty years.

Penelope asks whether her father was a sponsor of any of these bills; he wasn’t. [The prime minister is currently a Whig. George S-S was an MP, not a minister.]

After luncheon, she speaks to her father’s personal secretary. What has father been up to? Just standard stuff. Business as usual. Personal secretary has access to George’s calendar, and typically accompanies him (and waits outside for confidential meetings).

Penelope goes to visit father in the hospital. He’s doing okay, awake now, though he’s got a fairly large chunk out of his arm. They’re growing vat protein to repair it

Penelope asks him the same question.

“Ah, Pumpkin, I can’t think why anyone would possibly want to shoot me. Bloody anarchists! They were probably shooting at someone else. I’m sure the police have it well in hand. Capital chaps!”

He brushes her off completely.

Penelope goes back to her flat and digs in to what’s been happening politically recently.

Some of the older guard are starting to die or retire. Their children are beginning to become more politically active, or replacing them in the House of Lords. The kids are beginning to get a bit belligerent. There’s more shouting from the right wing re law & order, pacifying the border lands (Florida‘s a bit sketchy, everything west of the Mississippi is out of control, New York city is a reclamation project, Chicago is a functioning reclaimed city, but smaller than before the crash). The last election was about two years ago. They’re held roughly every four or five years (or less if the government doesn’t stand). The Whigs have a small majority, plus there are a few independents, plus the conservatives. The Whigs haven’t been doing anything dramatic. The Torys have been getting “shouty”.

Militarily, there’s the ongoing pacification and settlement to the west. The northern border is currently pretty quiet, since the Empire is focused on the west. They even sort of have diplomatic relations with the Candians (even though they have no head of state and don’t always send the same ambassador, etc.). No major wars going on. Europe is incommunicado. The Empire occasionally sends “suitably prepared” troops off to investigate; about half of the troops come back.

My network tells me that they’ve traced my brother a bit further. He got to his club. Did not stay long. No intelligence from inside the club. He left, went to a “more bohemian” part of town. (He’s not really part of that crowd. A bit out of character.) Went into a hipster coffee shop type place. Never seen again.

I go and tell father what’s happening. He tries to make an outgoing call. Scowls. Tries again, more vigorously.

[Add stuff re my discussion with my father]

Ivy heads off to the Shady Arms and finds a nice corner. Hasib materializes. Very non-descript.

Hasib tells Ivy that there are three or four people who are near the top of his line of work. One is BKYF. He wants to find her. He believes her services are long-term contracted to someone in a place of money and authority. He’s looking for someone with connections who might be able to track her down.

The negotiate terms. Option 1: a reasonable amount of money. Option 2: the hard way. Let’s keep it a cordial and professional relationship. “You know, you could have just named a figure.” “This is just awkward and embarrassing. I kill people; I don’t talk to people.”

Ivy names him a reasonable-ish price, expecting him to haggle. He pauses.

He offers 75%, and points out the secondary market.

Done.

Hasib even give Magpie an address that’ll work for a few days.

Goal: Who is Betsy working for? What is her job? Where is she?

Ivy attempts to shake gloved hands; Hasib vanishes and leaves. Ivy fades into the darkness.

Fe and Harry are still trying to escape from the Seraphim.

Harry’s off to rile up the masses. “Cops are gonna crack down. Let’s be ready and get them back.”

Fe was very freaked out by the Seraphim, so she’s just watching and listening and being bodyguardish. Smiles her special smile at the guy with the beer bottle who looks like he might try something. He looks queasy and backs off.

There are a couple of cats following her.

Ivy is researching BKYF. Quietly.

She learns that Betsy is one of the best. Hasn’t been visibly working lately. Ivy wonders if she’s on retainer for someone. There is absolutely NO buzz about the assassination attempt. Normal channels are suspiciously silent. Everyone’s assuming the assassin wasn’t THAT good, since no one knows about the second shot.

Ivy heads off to Sketchingtons, looking for anarchists, to ask about the attempt to blame them for the assassination. Still looks Magpie-esque, wearing her hood well forward, looking vaguely masculine in her men’s clothing.

Miraculously, Harry and Fe walk in.

Fe says she’s hungry. No one sits near her (can’t imagine why), so Ivy ends up sitting nearby, just by default. Ivy hears Harry say, “Seraphim!” Overhears about the Seraphim staring at them, near Parliament. Fe says that her father told her never to go near those things.

Harry wants to know how they’re going to find out more about what happened.

Fe suggests walking over and smelling the steps. Harry approves.

Ivy gets a drink, asks the bartender about “those two”. Bartender looks nervous. “Kid’s stronger than she looks.” Ivy gives him a decent-ish tip.

Ivy recalls the strange little girl, stronger than she looks, on the news, messing with the police. Ivy sends drinks over to Fe and Harry. Bartender glares, and hands Ivy a couple of beers. And a milk. Ivy presents them. “Afternoon, ladies. Couldn’t help but noticing you were in on your own. Would you care for a drink?”

Fe hugs and thanks Ivy. Wow. She really is much stronger than she looks!

Fe takes a sip of the beer, winces, replaces her expression with a neutral one and then puts it down.

Harry asks Ivy her name.

“Malcolm, miss. And you are?” Ivy bows. This goes poorly.

“Harry Callahan.”

“And you?”

“I’m Fe.” Fe holds out her hand. Ivy takes it, but only feels Fe’s glove. Tries to give the impression of a working class youth mimicking the upper class.

Fe pushes her beer away, and Harry downs it.

“Cheers, fellow worker,” snarks Harry, at the “bourgeois” “Malcolm”.

Harry hands Ivy a pamphlet, which explains that the assassination couldn’t possibly be by an anarchist, since no one published a manifesto or claimed responsibility.

Ivy says, “So, you really don’t think it was an anarchist?” Blames the government for always lying to The People.

Harry launches into a political diatribe. Fe keeps staring at Harry’s cyborg rat.

Ivy notices it, and they chat about Rattigan for a while. “I made him myself!”

The rat is staring at Fe. Fe is sniffing the rat. Harry is explaining how you make a mechanical rat. Ivy asks about buying one. Harry names an appropriate figure. They exchange contact info (on Ivy’s part, a neutral set of info, not Ivy nor Magpie).

They start talking about the assassination again. Harry thinks it’s the bourgeois scum who did it. “One of their own.”

There’ve been quite a few murders recently. Fe mentions her father’s murder. Ivy asks how it happened. Fe says her father was shot, she thinks by the same people. Her father was a scientist. Ivy muses, “Wow. Perhaps there was someone who didn’t want him studying what he was studying.” Then pauses, realizes this is maybe not a safe topic, and starts talking revolution again.

Fe goes off to the bar to get some food.

Harry says that Fe’s possibly a bit confused; maybe it’s really not the same people.

Ivy tells Harry, “I’ve been hearing some interesting gossip about the assassination. I’ve been picking up some work for the nobs, as a messenger. Hear people talk. I heard someone sayin’, at this one place, there were a few things that were kinda odd, that didn’t get reported in the press. Said they’d heard that someone had said that people were shooting from two different places! Though the nob didn’t seem to believe it. Weird.” Harry files this away for future conspiracy theories.

Ivy continues, “Seemed like the coppers showed up way quicker than you’d expect at the building where one of the shooters was. Still didn’t catch anyone, though.”

Harry invites Ivy to a rally about the police overreaction and unfair blaming of the anarchists. They’re gathering in the slums, and then going to march to confront the police at Parliament. Fe and Harry will be there.

Ivy agrees to meet up with them.

[my scene]

Ivy decides to break into Dr. Black’s home, since that’s where the papers say he was murdered. She checks carefully to make sure no one’s watching her first. Miraculously, I’m at Dr. Black’s, watching her (having already checked another scientist’s houses, having found no sign of my brother).

As I come up to Dr. Black’s, I smell Ivy. Ivy? Yes, really, Ivy. What the heck is she doing here? That’s odd. That’s doesn’t LOOK like Ivy. She skulks around the building. Finds the window that Fe left open the first time.

Ivy sees the holographic outline where Dr. Black was murdered. I sneak in after her in the shape of a cat. (I’m not the only cat in the building.) Ivy feeds us. I follow her around. She finds the concealed doorway. She opens it. The wall slides out of the way, revealing an elevator to the basement. I sneak into the elevator. Ivy picks me up and pets me.

We go down until we find a big huge lab. Corridors go off to the sides, way bigger than the house above us. I smell some weird smells, but no gorilla, no Andrew.

Ivy looks around, very cautiously. Curiously. For anything that reveals any connections to BKYF, etc. Finds lots of crazy research, diagrams, charts. She takes pictures of everything. Finds a very odd little school house with only one dress, and then another room with a bunch of little girl’s dresses, and books. There’s another section locked off with a fairly complicated lock.

Ivy’s beginning to get a bit suspicious of the cat that keeps following here everywhere. There’s no litterbox down here.

Ivy manages to pick the very well-secured door. Psttt. Pressure change. Cold. It’s a morgue. Ivy blocks the door. I stay outside and meow pitifully. Ivy investigates the morgue. Opens a door, very carefully. It’s very horrible. These are the failed human-cat hybrids, four of them. Ivy takes pictures, files them away. Wow! This looks way too much like a person to be legal.

Ivy closes things up very carefully, makes sure she hasn’t disturbed anything. I mew pitifully and scratch at the elevator. Ivy brings me back upstairs.

I smell the murdered man, the blood, the cat-girl smell, a dozen people, including the inspector (heavily modified person), plus something … odd. Not quite like a person. The smell was there when we went down. Came in through the front door, didn’t seem to have touched anything much, then went back out.

Ivy asks me if I want to go with her. I curl up and pretend I’m asleep.

Ivy leaves me. Leaves everything exactly the way it was, including leaving the window open. I wait just long enough for her to get away, then switch to being a short-haired black cat, and then follow her, changing appearance as I go.

Ivy heads toward the rally. Begins to look like a scruffy young man. I follow her to Harry and Fe; I realize that Fe is the cat-girl from the basement. Fe moves toward me. I run. Fe follows. Rapidly. I duck around a corner, change to a bird and fly away. Harry sends Rattigan after us. Fe notices that the cat-scent ends, becomes a bird scent and then the bird flies away.

Ivy races around the corner and finds Fe staring up into the sky.

“What was that?”

“I saw something.”

“What?”

“A cat.”

“What kind of cat?”

“A strange cat.”

“Did the cat go up in the air?”

“I think so.”

“Did it fly?”

“I think so.”

Harry races around the corner, and sees through Rattigan, that the cat went in the alley, then there was a weird thermal signature and then no cat.

Fe: “I think it flew away.”

Fe starts sniffing. Ivy asks Fe to sniff her, to see whether he smells the cat on her. Fe takes a big ole whiff. Fe says, no, smells a little different. Ivy decides she was just being paranoid.

Plus, there are still a lot of cats around.

Of course, Fe realizes that Ivy was just at her house. Fe doesn’t say anything, but looks suspicious. Ivy regrets asking Fe to sniff her. Ivy says, “Er. There are maybe some things we should talk about.”

(I hide up in a tree and change to a squirrel. I follow them.)

[Note: No one can smell any flying monkeys at this time.]

Ivy begins to explain, “This messenger job doesn’t make you a lot of money, but it gets you a lot of information. So I’m always on the lookout for things that are interesting, and maybe valuable. And I was interested about all of this, about your father, so I did a little bit of poking around. I went and checked out where it happened. It looks like he was doing some interesting, something that would have maybe made him some enemies. And, y’know, you’re probably in some danger. If you’re going to be out in public, you may want to change your appearance a little. You don’t want the science police to find you.”

“Science police?”

“There’s special branch of the police, called the science police. They look for stuff they don’t approve us. The stuff your father did. The stuff that was on TV about you. You might be in danger. I think you need a disguise.”

Fe says, “I don’t know how to change how I look.” Ivy suggests changing her clothes, putting a scarf on her head. Fe changes her nano-clothes to boys’ clothes.

The rally starts, and people start yelling.

I overhear Fe saying that she doesn’t know who killed her dad, but she knows what he smells like.

Someone yells that the crowd show go to Parliament, and show them that we’re serious. In addition to the normal shouting, Harry has picked out some unexpected potential for violence, people carrying bricks, and (Ivy thinks) they smell like cop. Short hair, tall, in good shape. Harry thinks they don’t sound quite right. They both start thinking about escape routes. Harry goes to warn the organizers, just as we go around the corner and walk into a police blockade.

Harry sends a message, “Ringers! Shit‘s going down!”

The organizers try to slow people down. The rabble-rousers, keep pushing people forward. Ivy tries to pull Harry and Fe away. They refuse to go. Fe’s danger sense goes off. Ivy warns Fe not to let the science police catch her. Ivy makes her excuses and fades off onto the sidelines.

The crowd hits the riot police. The clubs come out, the tear gas, the stun grenades. Ivy takes some video, switches into camo mode long enough to clear the area, switches over to another appearance and takes herself off home.

When stuff falls apart, I run. Harry preps her bomber jacket (in case), watching the agitators. They come after her. A concerted bunch (5?) who clearly fight well together come at her. She knocks three out with a stun bomb. Two look as if they’re in communication. When they try to grab Harry, Fe pushes them back. Fe grabs Harry and runs toward the velocipede.

Harry yells, “Grab him, grab him, grab him!” Fe sighs. Grabs him and starts dragging him around behind them. They’re on the velocipede. They’re getting away.

Say. That’s NOT a police airship that’s moving in. It’s barely showing up on the system. Unmarked stealth airship. Doesn’t look military either. Harry focuses on getting away.

Pedal! Pedal. Pedal.

Hasib:

While he was searching for BKYF, began hearing rumours that crack-shot Wolf is back in town from someplace dangerous like Canada.

Ivy has been looking for Betsy by monitoring various underworld chat rooms. Found complete lack of discussion about them. Highly suspicious.

Due to rumours, checked out anarchists. Nothing that directly linked up to anything but lots of suspicions.

Suspicious that Fe’s father had just been killed too.

Planned to visit Penelope, but Penelope is too busy at the hospital.

Magpie and Hasib get an anonymous message telling them to watch a particular location at a particular time at night if they want to know what’s going on.

Ivy/Magpie figures out where the location actually is: the roof of a church. Looks for a safe vantage point on another building overlooking the spot. Upgrades system.

Hasib can easily see from half a kilometer away. That’s how far away he goes.

The two of them check out the area in advance. Hasib spots Ivy. Ivy does not spot Hasib.

It’s a dark and stormy night A horseless coach pulls up in front the church. No butterflies. BKYF gets out! Goes inside the church. After a couple of minutes, the roof access door pops open. Betsy climbs out, carrying a couple of guns (pistols in each hand, big gun over her shoulder). She’s waiting.

After a few minutes, someone else vaults up through the hole. Very athletic. Tall and blonde. Mohawky sort of hair, but had tiny dreads on the sides. Does not appear to have wings. Wears a loose rag skirt, black bodice with coppery gauzy stuff draped around the shoulders. Big complicated bronze bracelets. Striped tights and very practical shoes.

Ivy begins taping the whole thing. Looks vaguely familiar to Ivy. Looks as if she could have been a seraphim if she’s had wings. Can’t see whether there’s a place where wings used to be.

They chat.

Ivy is fairly close, trying to eavesdrop. She’s across the street, well camouflaged. Recognizes Betsy.

They start out talking calmly, and Ivy can’t quite hear, but it seems like meaningless pleasantries. Betsy asks SOMETHING. (Ivy makes a note to enhance her system further.)

Postures change. They look angry Ivy looks around for cover. Hasib notices that they’re both quite good, and are shifting infinitesimally for better position against one another. The tall woman leaps at Betsy. Betsy fires a couple of rounds. They bounce off the coppery stuff (which moves to block them).

And there’s something else going out. Flickering of dark light around the blonde woman. Ivy’s never seen anything like it before. (Not the same colour as the haloes the seraphim usually have.) The blonde woman is trying to close the distance. Betsy is retreating and shooting.

The blonde woman pulls a big chunk of stone off the church and throws it at Betsy. Betsy leaps off the church.

Hasib is watching, trying to figure out which way Betsy is going. The blonde’s face looks as if she’s having a conversation with someone. Hasib sends Ivy a message: you follow the blonde.

The blonde saunters back into the church. Betsy is running for it. NOT using a cloaking device. Hasib calls a cab and tries to catch up with her. Pulls up beside her, pops the door, yells, “Get in”.

Ivy decides to get a bit closer to the church. Aims her grappling hook at a bit of the church that’s still there, and zips across, still camouflaged. Checks the roof area. Finds nothing but shell casings. Betsy’s, of course.

Ivy decides to try going down the wall to see if she can look through a window. See the empty inside of a church. Goes back up to the roof, checks the door, listen carefully, looks for traps, etc. and opens door carefully. Dries off her feet, etc. Looks for wet footprints. Looks around and up. Footprints go down into administrative parts of the church, and then down into the dark dark basement. *crack of lightning and thunder*

Ivy shakes her head, and goes onto the basement ceiling very very very carefully. Continues tracking the footsteps. They go to a door which Matt says is clearly a closet. She very very very carefully checks and then opens the damned door. It’s a closet. There’s no big blond woman in there.

Ivy is now in a closet. She checks for secret doors, Shockingly, she finds one. Listens carefully for breathing, searches for traps, etc. Opens the door. Waits for any response. “None that you notice.”

Tosses a small object down the stairway. No one shoots back. Doesn’t notice anything menacing. Walks down the ceiling. At the bottom, finds one fairly small room, with a hallway going off at an angle. This is not the church anymore. Looks all institutional and shiny.

She hears a sound like a boot scraping on the floor. Flattens self on ceiling of stairway, pulls back and stay very very still.

Hears a sound like a gun being loaded. Begins to quietly retreat back up the ceiling of the stairs. (She’s only so curious and reckless.)

Footsteps come toward her. She starts retreating more quickly and a little less stealthily. As she comes out of the closet (doesn’t bother to take time to get a weapon at the ready). The blonde woman comes out holding a cheap handgun. She takes a shot at Ivy.

Ivy dodges like crazy and YAY! for agility. Escape, escape, escape!

The blonde calmly quickly walks after her, shooting with this anonymous weapon (and missing). Ivy keeps dodging. Nimbly escapes off into the night! Stops, catches her breath and had a mini-meltdown.

Fe and Harry

They’ve got an unconscious agent provocateur hanging from Fe’s hand, as they’re on their velocipede. They head off to an anonymous random abandoned warehouse, not connected to anyone. Checks for raves. Brings the aero velocipede down.

Very securely ties him to a water pipe.

Harry tells Fe to look intimidating. She picks up a water heater and holds it over her head. *looks confused and vaguely intimidated*

“You won’t get anything out of me! You guys are in so much trouble. They’ll come for me!”

Fe rips his pockets off. Doesn’t find anything. They’re all empty.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?”

Harry sets Rattigan on his head, making really disturbing noises. He looks resolved, then starts to make a phone call. Fe knocks him unconscious again. *clong* Rattigan goes flying.

They can’t figure out how to block his system. They call Malcolm, and ask for help. He’s busy and doesn’t answer.

Wolf

Wandering about town, looking for gossip, work, etc. He’s heard about the assassination attempt and can’t figure out why no one’s talking about it. Looks for unusual rivalries heating up. Hears that people have been looking for Betsy but can’t find her. This seems a bit suspicious.

Calls up a couple of buddies and goes drinking at the Cloak and Dagger.

Hasib

Betsy: “So, how’s things?”

What the heck was that? Who was that woman?

Deal went bad. You know how it is.

Do I ever know. You’d think there would be a bit of professional courtesy!

Well yeah, but it was a REALLY good shot. I had to know if I could do that.

Who the hell hired you to do that?

Some crazy lady who throws rocks. That was a big rock!

Yeah. I was curious to see what you’d do with that. And you cost me a lot of money!

Er. Thanks for not shooting me when I got in the cab.

*driver looks over his shoulder nervously*

So what’s the deal with that blonde chick?

Well, she hired me to take the shot, but since then things have gotten a little uncomfortable. The reason I tipped you off is that I got the feeling this wasn’t the type of job they were going to let me walk away from.

So what are you planning on doing now?

Have fewer rocks thrown at me.

Seems reasonable.

Looks like we’re in a similar situation here. Hired and betrayed. I don’t know who hired you, but the fact that someone hired me suggest that someone set you up.

Good thing I’m invisible and slippery.

It seems to me that two dangerous hired violent killers have a better chance of figuring out this conspiracy before it gets us all killed.

Perhaps we should retire to the Cloak and Dagger and stop giving this poor cabby heart attacks.

*Betsy tranquilizes the cabby while driving. They roll out the door and roll to lose speed, and the cab continues to drive off. Eventually the poor cabby will wake up with a hole in his memory*

*Off to the C&D*

*Every seat has its back to the wall and a view of the door*

Wolf see them. They see him. They all nod.

H: Well, look who’s back in town W: Boston seems to be the place to be right now. H: Not so much. I got this job to cap this MP. I wanted to do it nice, quiet. They wanted it public, opening of parliament. And then big tall blonde lady hires B. to knock my shot out of the air. And then doesn’t seem happy when things don’t go her way.

B goes to get drinks, comes back juggling beer.

H: Clearly I need to have a word with that guy who hired me, the man with the purple flower. I think he was an intermediary for someone more important. Let’s give him a call.

W: Sounds fun.

H. checks his messages. Nothing from MWTPF. Even though H already had a large chunk of money up front and “failed” at the job.

H calls the man. He does not answer. He decides to locate him. Decides to go back to the guy who refered him. The referrer says, the guy came in, did a background check, lots of money. H. pays him for the guy’s name: Gerald Norrington.

H: That sounds blandly upper class, but he didn’t act it.

Referrer says: He had some thugs with them. One of them had his arm broken, got taken to some sawbones at the free clinic.

Fe and Harry

Harry has manufactured a bomb and put it in the bad guy’s crotch.

*Fe: “My plans involve breaking peoples’ bones and threatening to eat them, not blowing up their crotches*

When he regains consciousness, the explain that if he tries to make another phone call, then the bomb will go off. *Fe stands outside of the blast radius*

H: Tell us what you know!

I’mnot talking!

F: She’ll blow up your crotch! And probably other parts too!

I’m with the police! Do you know how much trouble you’re going to get into? *looks dubious*

H: Well, yeah.

You bloody anarchists! You tried to kill Smith-Smythe!

I’m pretty sure we didn’t.

The military police are going to crack down and come after you! Soon

Fe smells and looks ‘round. Just smells urine.

Fe whispers to Harry: I think he peed himself. Will that affect the bomb?

H: Not if he talks quickly.

Gives you his badge number. Harry tries to run a search on it. No luck.

But who told him to infiltrate the demo?

My boss.

Is this normal?

Well, we don’t NORMALLY turn it into a bloody shooting match.

What were your orders exactly?

Make sure there was trouble. So there could be a show of force. Remind the people who’s in charge.

Ivy/Magpie/Malcolm send a message that he’ll be there shortly. Harry and Fe stand awkwardly in front of their hostage. Text Malcolm to bring pants. Embarrassing ones.

H: So which force are you with?

You’re not authorized for that information, citizen! (So clearly either the military police or the science police)

Malcolm arrives and finds them torturing someone, who sounds like a policeman.

M: Who’s your friend?

H: We think he’s from the science police. He’s definitely not fro the local p.d. F: He tried to make it so Harry and her friends got beat up! M: That sounds more like the military police to me. H: Well, we’re not sure.

M: So what have you tried so far? And here’s the embarrassing trousers.

*Fe presents them to the officer* *the officer is unimpressed*

M: He doesn’t seem to have so many injuries yet. You can’t have been trying to hard. But look, mate, you’ve got a bomb strapped to your crotch. Wouldn’t that motivate you to tell these nice young ladies what they want to know?

Malcolm looks at the prisoner. He’s well-built. Doesn’t seem to be focused on Fe the way a science police officer likely would be. Takes Harry aside.

M: He seems like a low-level military police officer. I don’t have the ability hack into his system. Not sure it would be worth it anyway; I suspect he’s pretty far down the food chain. I’ve got some leads that might help. I’ve been checking into this whole assassination thing. Eavesdropped on an interesting meeting between a hired assassin and someone who hired her, this interesting looking lady. The meeting went poorly, they tried to kill each other. I tried following the one who hired her, but didn’t get very far, because she realized I was following her and came after me.

Want to help me investigate it? It’ll be good for the anarchists if you can prove that you didn’t shoot the MP. H agrees.

H goes over to the prisoner. Starts taping him. Asks what the military police’s involvement was in the riot.

P: Look, we just went in there to make sure things went right.

P: Those scum needed to be taught a lesson! Damned anarchists are ruining this great empire. God save the Queen!

H: Last I heard, WE weren’t the ones hiring at our friend, Smith-Smythe.

P: What are you talking about? The anarchists tried to kill a member of parliament!

I: You didn’t really believe that did you? Where was the manifesto?

*P looks confused*

I: And really, anarchists don’t usually have those sorts of weapons.

P: Well, anarchists have poor discipline.

*Malcolm/Ivy stops fishing*

*Harry sets off an EMP bomb that knocks out all of the recordings the prisoner has of the proceedings. They fry his system and flee, leaving him wearing the bloomers. They go to get some food at PJ Sketchingtons.*

Hasib

Calls the Magpie.

H: So what did you find out?

M: Oh, hello, Mr. Invisible. *goes out of earshot* She went back inside the church. Followed her in. Secret passage through a closet. Tried to investigate, but she noticed I was following her. Ducked some bullets. Need some muscle if we want to try this again.

H: Let’s trade focuses. I’ll go back to the church. Why don’t you try to track down this Norrington fellow? *gives details*

M: *gives directions down to the secret door*

H goes back to his friends.

H: Betsy, what exactly were you arguing about?

b: they paid me off. I wanted to go, lay low, vanish for a while then get back to work. But they wanted me to go to THEIR safe house instead of mine. Odd. It looked like maybe they were gonna vanish me. So I decided to tip you off to see if I could get a little back up on this.

*they decide to storm the castle and look for information*

*Hasib, Betsy and Wolf arrive at the church during the day. They find scaffolding up.*

*Hasib turns invisible. The three of them walk in and Betsy does the sign of the cross. They get sprinkled with holy water. Hasib dodges. Betsy and Wolf are visibly carrying guns. They get the evil eye. They ask for directions to the office. The brother refuses, and tries to save them. Wolf walks right on past, while insulting Jesus. The flunky gets the phone call face. Betsy stuns him. They start wandering back past cleaning staff who carefully ignore them.*

*They find a door labelled “Closet”. Open the door. Open the secret. Usual-ish precautions. Close the closet and secret doors behind them. Get to the bottom of the stairs. Down the hallway. Find a smaller room with a big steel door. Palm scanner, eye scanner, lots of flashing lights and beeping things.

Hasib suggests they call a thief. Betsy nods, but also suggests you could just shoot it. Wolf starts looking for a weak point. Hasib is already calling. Asks Ivy to wait until night and then show up. She agrees but warns them that she may bring some friends.

The other three wait and play cards.

Ivy calls Harry to set up an exploration of the church after all. Can you and Fe be subtle? Discreet, you know.

H: I can be subtle! I: We probably don’t want to blow anything up unless we have to, since we’re below ground. H: So just little bombs! I: Well, there is a big heavily secured door… Now, can you impress on Fe that we need to be quite careful? She seems a bit … impulsive. H: *aside: Fe, follow the lead of the invisible guy* I: *sighs* And you both may want to disguise yourselves just a bit.

Eventually, Ivy and co. show up. Ivy has met up with Harry and Fe in advance, to make sure they’re in disguise. Explains that these people may call him the Magpie.

Ivy and Harry and Fe try to sneak in the back. They climb in through the window. Remove all traces. Proceeding with all due caution, the begin to make their way toward the closet. Fe sniffs around. She smells the person who killed her father! Walked through here. In the closet. And down those stairs.

Fe tells the others.

Ivy asks her to think about waiting a bit for revenge, until they’re not in a small heavily confined area if it turns out that it’s one of those people who they’re going to meet.

They go into the closet. Fe smells Hasib. Remembers him. NOT his father‘s killer. Tells Harry that he smells that guy, the one who was with the guy with the purple flower!

They go down the stairway, through the hallway. They reach Hasib, Betsy and Wolf. *Fe sniffs everyone* *Wolf sees that Fe is a cat woman, does a double-take but doesn‘t say anything*

Ivy walks up and checks the lock. Very complicated, but she succeeds. The door opens, everyone gets a shocked look on their face, and the credits roll.

Emma has been wandering around searching for the flying gorilla. Her head spy calls and tells me there’s been a disturbance at the church. I get some upload of grainy video of someone with wings throwing some big chunk of concrete at someone. I think, “Well, a large bipedal humanoid with wings is SORT OF like a flying gorilla.” So I head to the church.

I arrive at the church. Smell people. Turn into a puppy. Walk downstairs. There I see: The Magpie and Harry and Fe (all of whom I recognize), and Hasib and Wolf (not seen before) and Betsy (who resembles someone in a grainy video). The Magpie is trying to pick the lock.

Fe sniffs it. Wolf tries to shoo me. I lick his hand. He throws me away. I slobber and look cute. Ivy shrugs and continues picks the lock. The door opens.

Everyone looks shocked and gasps. They see a long shiny tunnel and a bunch of armed guards with guns pointed at us.

Wolf pulls out a gun and fires - kills one of the guards. (There are at least ten guards.) Hasib shoots one toward the back (so they all turn their heads) and turns on his cloaking device. Loud rail gun noise and much death. Betsy pulls out Captain Doom, shoots, does a ricochet. We have now killed 6. Fe pounces. Grabs two of them and bonks their heads together. They fall to the ground limp.

I spit venom across the hallway. One of the guards has paralytic venom dripping down his faceplate, looking confused. It’s green and obscures his vision.

The guards open fire. Some are shooting shotgun taser shells. Oddly Harry gets taken out. Ivy dodges. A guard in the back throws a concussion grenade, which knocks Ivy unconscious. Hasib, Wolf and Betsy’s outfits repel bullets.

Flash forward: a bunch of dead guards, one unconscious one and one paralyzed one. Wolf searches for cool weapons. I sniff the air. Nothing exciting. I smells “hermetically sealed” (like canned air). Fe smells whoever killed his father - it’s getting stronger. Fortunately, it wasn’t any of us.

Fe picks up Harry and Ivy, puts one on either shoulder. Hasib looks down the hallway. It goes down a ways and then there’s another door. I examine the hallway: nothing exciting except the door. Wolf grabs and guard and starts dragging him , because he looks like he’s got a funky implant on his hand, places hand on plate next to door. Red light turns green. Wolf drops the guard and has a gun out when the door opens.

Basketball court sized big well-lit concrete and steel room. Very empty. Three doors. I can’t hear anything behind any of the three doors. Fe follows to the smell of the murderer - near door #2. Puts Harry and Ivy into a corner near the entry door. Wolf drags a guard over. We put one dead guard in the doorway. We all end up in the room, and the damned door immediately shuts quickly with enough force to cut the guard in half.

All of the other three doors open and there are all sorts of guards behind them. Behind door #2, there is also a tall woman, blond with black dress (I.e. the one who threw large blocks of stone at Betsy). Fe hisses (she killed his father ) and throws half a guard at her. I am now the colour of the room.

Wolf starts fighting. There is carnage and death on the left. Hasib shoots to the right. Carnage that way too. Betsy fires Captain Boom directly at evil angel woman. (Who currently shows no sign of wings.) The woman in black does not smell like a gorilla. I recognize her from when she was talking to Enseric Dane at the party. She now has a flesh wound over the ribs.

Suddenly a dark halo pops up around her head. Four coppery wings pop up from her back (like a metal feathery butterfly). Note: Seraphim don’t usually have dark halos and metal wings.

Betsy yells out: “I’ll see you dead, Sheiren.”

Sheiren launches herself at Betsy, pulls her gun away and starts grappling. Fe tackles Sheiren, goes for her wings, pulls her off Betsy. (Wolf’s the only one who can see anything but a little red-headed girl jumping on the angel.) The camo puppy keeps hiding. The lights go out. We can still all see in the dark. Wolf keeps massacring guards.

Hasib tries to line up a shot on Sheiren. Bang. Still another non-fatal wound. Betsy pulls out yet another gun. She shoots at Sheiren - the bullet bounces off her dark halo. Sheiren grabs Fe and tries to throw her off. Surprised when it doesn’t work. Sheiren’s wings flare out - she clips Betsy and knocks her back to where some of the guards are running into the room from dooor #2. They grab her.

I scamper up and leap on her leg and lick her with my paralytic venomous tongue. Sheiren does not seem inconvenienced. Wolf keeps shooting guards. Fe keeps tugging on the wings, which do not come off. Fe grips and bites. Sheiren begins to bleed. She looks as if she’s screaming, but no one hears it except for Fe (very high frequency). Ow. She tastes terrible.

The guards have given up shooting at Wolf, since that doesn’t seem to be working. They try to pile on top of him. He manages to beat off about 2 out of 5, but they keep coming. His death count slows down. (Switches to handguns instead of long guns.) Guards stop coming from the left (I.e. door #1) - maybe they’ve run out? Guards slow down from doors 2 and 3. They’re getting more careful about gunfire, switching to electrified batons.

Hasib shoots Sheiren again, trying to avoid hitting Fe and the puppy. Hits one of the wings. She’s got a hole in it now. She looks even less pleased. Betsy disappears under a pile of guards.

Sheiren is wearring bronze bracelets. She crosses them in front of her head, and then pulls the arms wide, and they turn into a long bronze spear. Swings it around and stabs Fe in the shoulder. Fe screams through her mouthful. Yuck. Fe reaches up and grabs the spear, yanks it out and keeps biting. Tightens other claws. All of a sudden the part Fe is holding is sharp! Ow. Fe wants to keep her hand, so she lets go. I leap up to her side and lick her side with my venom. I taste Sheiren’s nanites. I spit the blood out and my nanites make sure all of hers are out of my body.

Wolf is slowly swimming through guards. Door #1 (on the left) closes. It makes a clunking sound as if it’s locking. The guards retreat through door #2 (straight ahead). Two guards come down the hallway on the other side of that door, toward us. They are carrying something that looks like a rocket launcher. Through the door on the right, there’s a gorilla. It is not flying, but it had Betsy. Her hat falls off. Several guns fall out of it. The gorilla picks up Betsy, smashes her against the wall, and there’s a cracking sound. Several vital things seem to have broken (bleeding both internally and externally). The gorilla claps its hands, nods at the angel and points its thumb toward door #3. Walks out, leaving Betsy’s cooling body on the ground outside it.

Wolf is still fighting with guards, but is now prepared to let them run away. Shoots them as they run. Hasib goes to check Betsy / Betsy’s body. Her neck and most of her ribs are broken, punctured lung, lots of internal bleeding. Unconscious. The retreating gorilla gives Hasib the finger (even though Hasib is still cloaked). He picks up Captain Boom and tries to shoot the gorilla. Gorilla falls over, gets up and starts running. Wolf notices the gorilla had cybernetic implants, mostly around the brain and brainstem.

Sherein leaps and does a short fly up against the ceiling (leaving me on the floor, smacking Fe against the ceiling). Fe lets go and falls to the ground (landing on her feet, of course). She flies out over the two guys with the rocket launcher. The door is still open.

The rocker-launcheresque thing launches something big and non-rockety into the middle of the room. It goes “pooompf”. All of the doors close. I put filters in my nose. Wolf looks at the big heavy cynlinder that looks like it might explode. He ducks under the corpses. Hasib hides behind Betsy. (Everyone who can’t see hasib suddenly sees Betsy’s lifeless body hovering and waving.)

Fe examines the bomb. Picks it up and lobs it toward door #2 (where the angel retreated too). Carries the puppy under her arm and runs away from the bomb, toward Harry and Ivy (in the corner near door #4 - the entry door). Shock of the blast knocks all of us unconscious. I fall under a cat.

Time passes. Fe wakes up.

Everything door near #2 has blown up. Lots of pink mist from dead guards. The door is ajar. (Big enough gap that any of us could squeeze through.)

Fe licks her wounds and check on Harry, then Ivy, then the puppy. Hasib is visible (previously Fe could just tell where he was by sound and smell). Everyone is alive, not TOO badly wounded. Fe thinks the air tastes delicious.

The rest of us wake up. All of our sensors got knocked offline, but we’ve got them back in more or less working order. Hasib takes Betsy’s hat and gun. Wolf does a systems check to see how long we were out - checks whether we’re still being monitored. Looks like there were probably cameras in this room. He can see where they used to be. We’ve been out for about fifteen minutes, and they probably can’t actively monitor us.

Wolf goes over to door #2 and looks past it - five feet of hallway then a ‘very new wall’ made out of metal. The door we came in is still closed behind us. It has the same access plate beside it. He tries one of the dead guards’ hands. Just swiping has no result - no green light, but also no “chirp, reject”.

I am now a somewhat smaller and completely healed puppy.

Fe tries to open door #4 - grabs and pulls. It wiggles a bit on its track. Fe pulls harder. The door very slowly opening.

Everyone is stunned.

Wolf, Emma and Fe hear something click near door #2, followed by a wet splat sound. Wolf helps Fe haul on the door. The puppy scampers out.

Hasib can see a nozzle behind door #2 extruding concrete. He yells, “Hey guys, there’s this nozzle pumping concrete over here. Let’s get out of here.” Hasib takes part of Betsy’s body with him. Fe picks up Harry and Ivy. Everyone squishes out the door after the puppy. Then Fe tries to close the door behind us.

The door at the bottom of the stairs is still open. There is no sign of the puppy.

Everyone goes up the stairs. They’re in the church with two unconscious people, one dead body and no sign of a puppy. Wolf asks, “Hey, where’d that puppy come from?”

(In the meantime I’ve shape shifted into a bird and am watching the crowd from just outside a window.)

Hasib: “Well that didn’t work at all. We don’t know any more than we did before, except that our big adversary is some sort of strange seraphim, plus there’s a weird biotech gorilla. So as a fact-finding mission, that was a bit of a failure, plus Betsy‘s dead. Now what?”

No one is badly enough injured to need a hospital.

Hasib puts Betsy in a crypt. Wolf cleans up in the font of holy water. Fe licks her butt, and cleans Harry.

–

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Margaret is aware of the political unrest in the streets, an attempted assassination in parliament, news of a small girl flinging policemen around, and the streets are generally unsafe. Margaret has been a bit more cautious than usual, though busy comforting the political and upper classes. Has been hearing lots of muttering about that female on the throne, etc. from the more conservative clients.

During that week, Claudius Chernoff approaches her for business purposes; he has money but no manners. She declines … so sad her schedule just doesn’t work. He replies back with a very surly letter: he’ll take it out of her hide next time.

Penelope’s dad is still in the hospital. [Hasib says, “You’re welcome!”]

When Ivy comes to, she calls Margaret and asks her to bring a coach to the church to pick up the gang. Margaret arranges that: a coach with a pretty lady in it drives up to the church. Everybody piles into coach. Margaret asks what the hell happened. Sadly, Ivy is unconscious again. Hasib shuts up. Wolf says, “We got into a bit of a firefight.”

Fe says, “We were following the woman who killed my father and she was a big scary lady and I bit her, and then there was a bomb that blew up and now we’re here.”

Margaret: “Right then.” Margaret brings them all to a fancy extremely discreet hotel and brings them all upstairs via a freight elevator. I follow them, and hang out on the balcony, behind a plant. They call a doctor. Terrence Cavendish (Dr. McGyver) shows up, clearly a former soldier with lots of after-market add-ons (combat medic). Fe, Wolf and Hasib point him toward the unconscious people.

Margaret asks the human adults to confirm Fe’s story. Hasib says it’s substantially correct: We all went into the basement of the church to chase the angel, and then we all got our asses kicked.

Nobody mentions the puppy.

Or the gorilla.

Margaret: “Why were you in this church in the first place, and why are you enemies of an angel?”

Hasib: “That’s why we went there - to find out.”

Fe says that Malcolm brought us - points to the Magpie, which surprises Margaret a bit.

Hasib: “I was observing my associate BKYF. The angel attacked her. We went down to the basement of the church after the angel, to make sure she didn’t bother us. I put several holes in her, but I don’t think that’s going to deter her in the long run.”

M: Who are you people?

Fe: I’m Fe! [curtsies]

Hasib: I help people go from one place to another.

M orders sandwiches, tea and hot chocolate all around.

Fe eats a lot of sandwiches. We are all refreshed except for me, since I’m off on the balcony. Everyone showers and bathes.

W: I’m Wolf by the way; thanks for the lift.

M: Margaret Salisbury. Pleased to meet you.

W: How do you know these crazies?

M: I’m not entirely sure. I got a call from an acquaintance, someone with whom I’ve done business. I was told to bring help, so I did.

M asks if everyone’s sure they weren’t followed. Fe tries to smell a tracking device - she doesn’t smell anything.

Hasib decides to leave to get Captain Boom fixed. He does not give out his contact info to the rest of the group. First, Ivy wakes up briefly. Asks Fe about the crazy angel - Fe says she killed his father. Ivy asks about the gorilla. Fe says he didn’t know the gorilla - he didn’t smell familiar.

Ivy: So we’ve got an evil angel, a robot gorilla, and a bunch of evil thugs living under a church. And an assassination attempt.

H: And I was the one who was hired by the man in the purple flower to do the assassination. And Betsy was hired to foil me, by shooting my bullet out of the air.

Fe: I know the man with the purple flower! I broke his thug, when they followed me.

M: I’ve seen him around.

H: I want to find him. A chat could be productive.

M decides to make inquiries. H gives her his contact information. H disappears - goes invisible, and takes Captain Boom to his gunsmith.

Fe: If you tell me other places where the man with the purple flower is, I can try to track him down. [Fe gives Margaret a detailed description of the man, starting with how he smells]

She promises to try to discreetly track him down. Sends some queries out to friends.

We wait.

–

Meanwhile, back in the underground tunnels, the gorilla is carrying Shereniel. Her wings are mostly folded back, except for the injured one, which won’t fold back properly.

Gorilla says, “Well, you made a mess of that. The boss is gonna be pissed.”

And the credits roll.

Harry wakes up. She’s in the hotel room Fe, Wolf and Margaret, with Magpie is sleeping it off in the other room. The bird is hanging around on balcony.

Harry: “Who are you people?”

“Fe.”

H: What happened?

F: Um. We went down into the church basement and there were some guys there and they tried to kill us but we killed them and there was a puppy and I saw the girl who killed my dad, and we attacked her, me and the puppy. And there was a bomb and you weren’t there to fix it so I threw it away and then it blew up. And there was a gorilla.

Harry checks Rattigan’s video recording and gets a better idea of what actually happened.

H: So did we figure anything else out?

F: There was something about the guy with the purple flower.

M: Yes, I’m looking into that.

Margaret politely does not mention that Fe is a cat

Waits for her contacts to get back to her

Emma flies away, hides, calls her spy network, describes all of these crazy characters, gets them to find out whatever they can about them. Also, get them to send an anonymous message to the hotel room saying: “Sharron is working with Enseric Dane”. Then I switch back into another bird and go back to watch what happens.

The Magpie wakes up and walks into main room of the suite.

Magpie: Where the hell are we?

Marg: Someplace discreet, waiting for information. (I.e. The Hotel Discretion.) But we just got this message: Sharron is working with Enserric Dane. Does this mean anything to you?

Magpie: Enserric Dane is a bit of a dick. He’s the son of Lord Dane.

Wolf: And Sharron was the angel we were fighting in the basement.

Harry: How high up is Enserric Dane?

Magpie: Enserric Dane is pretty high up.

Harry: So if he was implicated in a murder, that might take down the government??

*Sounds of doom*

*follow-up message arrives: And by the way, Sharron and Enseric Dane were talking about “having the doctor taken care of”.*

Wolf: This doctor sounds like Fe’s father??

Fe bristles! And hisses.

Harry: We should go after this Dane guy!

Fe: Maybe would could ask Margaret about this Dane guy?

Wolf: Or we could try to go down in the tunnels again.

Margaret: Or we could just go to Dane’s house.

Magpie: He’s smart and nasty. We’ll have to be careful.

*Hasib calls: That guy with the purple flower? His name is Gerald Norrington. Anyone know him?*

*Nope*

*Magpie get a message back that Gerald Norrington has gone to ground. Has been sighted in one of the wealthier areas of town.*

*Emma asks her spy network about him. They’ve never heard of him, but start investigating.*

*We both hear back from our contacts: He’s been seen in a wealthy neighbour, sometimes in the grounds of a manor house. (Not huge, but large. Seems a bit out of his price range, given that he has pretty cheap clothing.) Owned by a subsidiary corp eventually owned by the Dane family.*

Fe: We should go find him!

Harry: Well, I have a sneaky cybernetic rat. The manor house must have sewers. Why don’t we send him in to spy for us.

Sounds good!

Margaret calls Hasib. Fills him in. He agrees to meet them there.

Margaret summons a taxi. Harry calls her aero velocipede. It nearly lands on Emma.

Fe is hungry. Emma circles a little further away. Good hearing, though.

*There are no specific records of who’s living in the house.*

Harry and Fe get in the aero velocipede. They head toward the mansion (not Dane Manor; the one where the man with the purple flower is staying). The others get in the taxi and head over there. Emma flies after them.

We all arrive at the manor.

Hasib and Magpie and Rattigan start investigating. Everyone else but Emma hides away from the manor. Emma follows, on the manor cautiously.

H, M and R find a mid-chest height hedge surrounding the manor. You can see the house from the street. Reasonably large, but not huge. Magpie looks for witnesses, security cameras, etc. Harry, Margaret and Wolf can tell that there’s a suspicious gap in the normal public surveillance network around this entire location. Oddly, they just don’t point toward it. Convenient. (Everyone is communicating back and forth, except Emma. She’s eavesdropping.)

Magpie circles the grounds looking for the best entrance to the house. Harry tells the rat to do the same. There’s the big front door, and entrance in through the back garden and the servant’s entrance at the side. They send the rat ahead of them in through the servant’s entrance.

There is a sensor grid around the lawn. Seems reasonably obvious to Magpie, and not too bad to disable. Magpie attempts to convince the systems in the sensor that all is clear. They get up to the servant’s entrance. Pick lock (i.e. trick computer door into opening). Rattigan is already inside.

Inside the servants entrance, no one is there. There are steps down to the basement, a hall back to the back area, and steps up to the kitchen. Rattigan goes downstairs, finds a small rec room with a finished bar and a small entertaining room. Beyond that there is storage, a walk-in refrigerator, no people. Magpie slips downstairs looks for clues and/or small valuables. Rattigan steals a gold cigarette lighter. The only clue is the keg, which implies someone is actively using the space. There’s also a mechanical dumb-waiter next to the freezer.

Hasib opens the walk-in fridge. Invisibly. It’s full of meat. And one cake. Perhaps a discarded wedding cake, partially eaten. Harry restrains Fe from going down and eating the meat.

In sum, nothing suspicious.

First floor: they find the kitchen. Nice. There’s the dumbwaiter. Hasib goes to the garage. There’s a private coach. It’s slightly warm (i.e. driven within last 3-4 hours).

Rattigan goes up the dumbwaiter. Ivy walks around, carefully, quietly. She finds the dining room. At the end of the table, with a plate of stale wedding cake, is the Man With the Purple Flower. And a beer. The beer is not eating the wedding cake.

Ivy does not alert him to her presence. Tiptoes away. VERY quietly tells the others that Gerry is here.

Rattigan hops out of the dumbwaiter. Long hallway with bedrooms off it. Bedroom closest to the dumbwaiter: there’s a large, suspiciously thuggish looking butler taking a nap. (We can tell he’s a butler because he looks like Tim Curie in Clue.) He’s snoring.

Rattigan alerts the others, keeps scouting.

There’s another small servant-ish room with women’s clothing in it. Most of the other rooms look unused. The master bedroom is unused. Near is another really messy bedroom, with a droopy purple flower in it. Rattigan searches it. He finds a suitcase, toiletries, a change of clothes, dirty dishes, etc. No notebook that says, “Secret Plan”.

Hasib decides it’s time to have a chat with Mr. Norrington. He enters the dining room, invisibly. Magpie wanders around looking for small things to steal. Goes upstairs to make sure the sleeping butler stays sleeping.

Hasib walks up behind Norrington, decloaks and puts a gun to his head. *The drama button does not go off.*

Mr. Norrington drops his cake.

N: Who are you? What do you want?

H: Stand up! Slowly.

N stands and turns: You!

N gets the look of someone trying to make a phone call.

H: Enough of that! Answers, now, or I shoot you in the knee cap.

N: So there was this guy in a dark alley with a hat and he gave me money to give you money to do that thing.

H: Some guy with a hat, hunh?

*pistol whip* *lightly* Norrington falls over.

Harry and Margaret attempt to jam N’s signal.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Magpie is trying to incapacitate the sleeping butler. She tasers him.

Downstairs, Norrington looks dazed.

H: Try again.

N: He’ll kill me.

H: So will I, and I’m right here.

N: Uh. It was some rich guy’s butler who hired me to do the thing and then he let me stay at his house.

H: You mean the guy sleeping upstairs?

N: Yeah.

*looks despondent. Gazes longingly at cake*

*They start negotiating about cake*

H: Tell me something else about this rich guy, or do I need to hit you some more?

N: *stammers a lot* Crap. Okay, look. The butler guy gave me the money and told me to hire you. Gave me your contact info. Told me to set it up, and then they took me to the safe house here. And then some weird little girl beat up my guards.

H: And you didn’t think it was a little surprising when the job went wrong?

N: Did it? I’ve been sitting here eating cake ever since, except that time I went for pizza. Mostly the butler and the maid take care of everything.

Magpie (to Wolf): Do you feel like abducting a butler?

Wolf: Sure. I’ll come in slowly and carefully.

*begins to do so. Sneaks upstairs. Hauls the butler to the coach.*

H (out loud and over the com): Who votes we keep Gerald alive?

Magpie is neutral. So is Harry. Margaret thinks he may be useful.

H: Gerald, you’re coming with us. Let’s go get some cake, shall we?

N: This is the worst job ever.

*Off they go, with N’s and B’s eyes covered. The coach takes off with the entire crew, including Rattigan, except H & F follow in the aero velocipede, and Emma just follows*

*They go to an abandoned warehouse. Emma becomes a rat. A very large rat with paralytic venom, in case a cat comes after her.*

*They restrain their hostages, separately. Attempt to block their systems*

*They stop tasering the butler and wait for him to come to*

H: Wake up butler.

Butler: What is this?

H: What does it look like?

*Butler attempts to make phone call and/or access private system*

B: YOU! You’re the guy who screwed up that job!

H: Me? Funny, it sounds to me as if I was set up to fail.

b: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

H: The other assassin who interrupted the job was hired to screw it up. Tell me about Norrington.

B: The stooge?

H: Yeah. And you work for Enseric Dane.

B: Who?

*pistol whipped*

H: Oh, really. So who do you work for?

B: An unknown consortium of interests.

H: *shoots him in the ankle*

H: So who is it you work for?

B: Your mom

H: *other ankle*

Magpie to Harry: Can you rip his system out and get access to the information that way, so we can stop wasting our time?

Harry: Huh. Maaaaybe.

*looks threateningly at the butler*

*butler looks pained but concentrating*

Magpie: Knock him out!

Fe knocks him out. Norrington is sobbing. Wolf keeps an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t do any harm.

Margaret: So, N, you see what we can do. Are we going to have to do this to you?

Norrington: What do we want from me?

Harry: What do you know about Enseric Dane?

Margaret describes him.

N: What? Uh. He’s some rich guy.

Wolf: What do you know about a gorilla?

N: What?

Meanwhile, Emma gets an update from her spy network.

Fe was the crazy girl who went nuts on the cops. Harry is an anarchist / aero velocipede mechanic. Margaret I know already. Ivy I know, because I smelled her. Hasib, nothing on file that my spies could find, or Wolf.

Enseric Dane, I have only public info. Norrington: nothing much. I have his tax records. Not wealthy. Never done anything notable before in his life, except taking some hired goons to Dr. Macgyver’s.

Margaret: Have you ever seen Enseric Dane at the house?

N: Well, he was in that picture that they took down the day after I got there.

H: What did the maid look like?

N: Pretty cute. Er. Brunette. Maid’s uniform. Scary. I’m pretty sure she had orders to kill me if I left the house. The butler too.

They give Norrington some gin to keep him busy.

The crowd focuses on the butler. They stick some wires into his head. Relying on Wikipedia, they try to hack his system. They gain access to his calendar and address book. They copy everything but his music library.

They start reading the info.

He’d clearly been in the process of trying to delete things. But there’s some useful stuff left. He has contact info for Sherrin. None of the entries are for Colonel Bananapants or anything similarly simian. There IS a Marjorie Lesterwald (who attempted to maneuver a date with Emma’s brother back at the party).

The butler’s name is “Jocko” Barnes (per emails to him, etc.).

Everybody talks about what to do with their captives. They want to kill the butler. Wolf kills him in a very boring way.

Now, what to do with Norrington: kill him, release him or put him back in the house? Note: he’s blindfolded, he can’t really identify anyone but Hasib and they can wipe his system so there’s no photo of any of them.

Decision: put him back in the house with gin. And some cake. And a wiped system.

They all head back to the mansion, and send Rattigan in to scout. The maid has come back.

H: Here’s what’s gonna happen. The maid’s gonna ask you where you were. You’re gonna say you went to get back. She’s going to ask what happened to the butler and you’ll say you don’t know.

N: And when she asks me how I got this bruise?

H: You’ll say you fell down.

N: That happens a lot. I’m gonna go change my pants now.

H: And I’ll be right there with you.

N: I’m never going to the bathroom again.

And the credits roll.

Emma is still a bird, still eavesdropping.

Harry is poking the Magpie, who seems to have fallen asleep.

Hasib is invisibly watching Gerald eat cake, inside the mansion. Gerald eats cake with furious, intense despair.

Fe is looking for something to eat, outside the mansion. Emma hovers.

Harry is looking at Fe a bit nervously.

While Gerald sits eating cake, the maid comes in and says, “You! Where were you?”

N: I went out! To get cake! Mmm! Delicious cake!” Looks like he’s going to cry. Eats more cake.

M: Where did you get that bruise!

N: I fell down. It happens a lot.

M: You’re useless. *Takes his cake.*

H [silently over the com]: Wow! That maid is a jerk. *brief argument about whether to kill her right away*

Wolf: Well, maybe the maid knows something, and is working with the butler.

*Hasib can tell that the maid is carrying a weapon*

M: Where’s Jocko anyways?

*We all just sit around and listen*

N: Uh. Maybe he went out. Wanted cake that was not this cake. Can I have my cake back?

M: *looks increasingly irate* Look, just stay here and don’t do anything stupid. *leaves and locks the door on the way out*

*goes upstairs*

Harry sends the Rat after her. Maid’s walking around upstairs. She stops and gets that faraway look on her face.

Harry tries to hack into her signal. Sadly, no luck. Tells us all over com that the maid is making a call. The maid goes into her room and slides away a panel under the bed, and pulls out a big gun.

Fe: I don’t think she’s going to let N eat cake.

She goes back downstairs, into the basement.

W: I wonder if there’s a secret passage under the basement?

Rattigan follows.

The maid checking through the basement (looking for the butler) with a big gun. Goes back into the dining room, tosses the doors open.

M: Norrington, you’re coming with me.

*grabs him by the shirt collar and drags him down to the basement*

Hasib follows.

*Maid throws Norrington into the freezer. The freezer with cake in it*

*maid goes up to the cake and puts a bunch of candles on it and lights them. Now he has his choice about whether he wants to blow them out (getting colder) or let them burn and use up the oxygen. Locks him in the freezer. Goes upstairs to make tea.*

*Hasib calls Mapie who sneaks in and unlocks the freezer, because Hasib likes fishing with live bait*

Three black coaches pull up and a bunch of slightly higher class thugs get out. They look over and see Margaret and Wolf in the coach and an aero velocipede taking off with little girl clinging to the edge.

The thugs look confused.

The thugs appear to be sub-vocalizing. Wolf picks up something small and airborne heading this way (kind of person-sized). Wolf decides to start driving away. He messages Hasib and magpie that there are a bunch of thugs arriving and apparently air support coming in.

Harry and Fe see a woman in black with wings coming toward the mansion.

Harry: Oh. Fuck.

Wolf drives the coach off a few blocks and hopes none of the thugs will chase him. One coach of thugs follows him: about five guys.

Wolf drives until it’s far enough away that the other thugs are unlikely to interfere. Tries to make it look like he’s getting away. *Sees the angel dot heading toward the mansion.*

Harry gets Fe to start peddling like a bat out of hell. Even with Fe peddling, Sharron is still gaining on them, and they’re still pretty much over the house. Sharron has four big bronze wings. Her dark halo flickers. She whaps her arms out and her bronze bracers turn into a sort of spear.

Harry flings a bomb at sharron. S bats it with her spear and sends it back toward them. They attempt to take evasive measures. The bomb explodes very close to them. The av is very much off kilter. They decide to try to land. On a roof maybe, away from the thugs.

The av touches down in a back yard, near a swimming pool. Harry goes into the poolhouse to rig up some bombs. Fe is looking angry with claws out. Sharron swoops down and stabs Fe, who tries to dodge. No luck. She’s bleeding. A lot. Fairly impaled. Tries to grab Sharron, and gets a grip. Fe goes for S‘s eyes.

S grabs the spear, and twists. It pops in half. Half is stuck in Fe, the other half has a blade and stabs at Fe again. *Fe’s danger sense has been going off for a while now*

Fe lets go and pushes away. S gestures and the half of the spear in Fe whips out and reconnects with the spear in S’s hand. Harry tosses a bomb in her general direction. S bats it away, toward the middle of the pool. *geyser*

Fe’s looking for something to throw. There’s statuary. Fe grabs a statue of a naked man and throws it at Sharron, who again spins in responses and slices it in half. She’s knocked back a bit. Harry throws another bomb. This keeps on for a while, just distracting Sharron long enough that she can’t kill them.

The bounced-off bombs are getting closer and closer to Harry before they explode.

Sharron is actually in the air again, since Harry is making the fuse time shorter and shorter. Now she’s lobbing bombs that explode on impact. Sharron has her force field on, so no visible damage yet, except the scratch wounds on her face.

She flies up higher than Harry or Fe can throw the bombs or statues

Fe starts throwing rubble at her. She dodges.

Meanwhile, back at the mansion:

Hasib is invisibly in the mansion. Hears over the comms that there are thugs inbound. Magpie hides. About ten well-dressed armed thugs pile into the house. The maid motions to them and says, “Grab the schmuck, he’s in the freezer. It’s time to clean this place and get out.” *Hasib overhears and warns Magpie. She and Rattigan get out*

Thug: Hey! I thought you were supposed to be in the freezer!

Thug grabs N, puts him in the coach. Maid walks out, makes a hand gesture and the house begins to burn. Hasib tries to hitch a ride on the back of the coach. Invisibly. Betsy’s hat is also invisible.

Meanwhile, Wolf steps away from his coach, so that the hail of bullets, when it comes, won’t hit Margaret.

The coach full of thugs drives toward him. He leaps out the way. The drive past, come to a squealing halt Thugs pile out.

Thugs: Get in the coach, you’re coming with us.

Wolf: Where?

Thugs: Just get in the coach.

Wolf: I don’t like your coach. It’s not pretty enough.

*thugs shrug and start shooting at him. Wolf pulls guns and starts shooting back*

*thugs are all quickly dead. Wolf just has a couple of flesh wounds.*

*Wolf searches them and their coach. Finds five nice suits, no ID. Searches their systems. Manages to get their ID - basically gets five generic sounding Ids. Not much else. Sends a message to the rest of the group explaining what’s happened and asking if they want him to do anything.*

*Fe and Harry are too busy to answer, except “Could use some help!” Harry broadcasts their location*

Wolf grabs the thugs guns. Margaret takes her coach and leaves. Wolf takes the thugs’ coach and heads toward Harry and Fe. Hasib says he’s busy going somewhere.

Back to the angel fight.

Still tossing bombs and statuary bits. Sharron keeps dodging. Fe says some unladylike things. Sharron pauses, and then just flies off.

The back door of the house of the exploded backyard and a man in a cravat comes out and starts yelling! “I’m calling the constabulary”

Harry warns him not to go near the pool house. Fe yells out “Sorry!” as they fly away on the aero velocipede. Harry calls Wolf and lets him know that Sharron has taken off and that they’re in the aero velocipede.

Harry asks Hasib where he is. He tells them he’s on a coach and doesn’t know where he’s going, but gives them his location and general direction.

Harry and Fe start surreptitiously heading in Hasib’s general direction. Margaret picks up the Magpie and they start following too.

The thugs take Norrington and Hasib toward the outside edges of town, to the west, away from the ocean, where it’s a sort of wilderness.

The coach drives into what appears to be the side of a hill and the tracking device on Norrington blinks off and we can no longer hear Hasib.

Wolf is recommending approaching the area carefully on foot. Abandons his stolen coach a little ways away. Fe and Harry are hiding the aero velocipede. Emma is following, changing shape from time to time.

Wolf and Harry can tell, on their systems, that there’s a lot of tiny hidden cameras, vibration sensors, etc. in the area. They would be detected if they just walked up. The rat would register, but who knows what might happen?

Harry sends in the rat.

Rattigan goes up. The side of the hill is indeed a hologram. On the other side is a 20 foot closed metal door in the side of the hill. Fe and Harry want to take the coach Wolf stole, fill it with explosives and drive it at the door.

Done. The coach full of explosives is now driving itself toward the door. Everyone is hiding a good 15 or 20 minutes walk away from the door (due to sensor range). The coach hurtles toward the wall. There is an earth-shattering boom. The hologram projector goes down. The door goes down. We don’t immediately pick up Norrington.

Meanwhile, Hasib was clinging invisibly to the back of a coach. Through the hill. Loses his connection to the outside world. Down a big hallway type thing to a hangar type thing which contains a handful of coaches, a collapsed zeppelin and, at the end, a couple of office and a big elevator.

Thugs pile out, Hasib leaps off the trunk, they grab N from the trunk and drag him away. H follows. The elevator goes down, door opens and they’re in a big cavernous laboratory type place with lots of white coats and cages / prison doors with numbers on them.

N is unconscious. The thugs appears to be talking on their comms with someone. Throw N in a cell. Thugs walk back toward the elevator. H follows them onto the elevator. They go back up to the main floor where the garage is. Sit down in an office and start playing laser poker.

Shattering boom. The door goes down. The thugs look mildly perturbed. A siren goes off and a flashing light.

“Do not be alarmed. This facility is under attack. We will be locking down shortly. Please pick up a weapon and prepare to defend this facility.”

Hasib readies his gun and gets ready to fight.

The elevator is humming again. A tank arrives. About 20 minutes pass.

Meanwhile, Fe takes off toward the door. Magpie tries to do so stealthily, watching for signs that anyone has detected her.

Harry says, “Aw hell.” Follows somewhat more cautiously. Wolf shakes his head. “Stupid, stupid people.” Follows still more cautiously.

Once they reach the hill, the guards start firing at them. Fe dodges, fairly successfully. Wolf hears fire. He starts firing back. Thugs start to die. Hasib occasionally picks one off here and there.

Fe heads for the tank, through the guards. Harry and Magpie approach, trying not to get shot. Still not quite in bomb-lobbing range. The Magpie has a cross-bow in hand. Wolf continues shooting people. Hasib shoots at the spider-tank. Aims at the pilot. *Foom* The tank stops moving forward. The gun turret rotates toward Hasib’s location. The tank gun fires. Hasib dodges.

There is a smoking hole in the wall above one of the offices. The thugs seem confused, and a bit perturbed. Fe charges over guards, leaps for the tank. He tries to open it up like a tin can. He cannot quite rip the thing open like a tin can, but he does pop open the access hatch. He kills the gunner. A lot. Fe now has control of the tank gun.

Harry contemplates trying to take out the surveillance with an electro-magnetic pule; decides against; keeps running toward the action. Starts lobbing bombs.

Magpie is watching for friendly fire. Continues to try to sneak in toward the thugs, who are distracted by catgirl in a tank, bomb-throwing anarchist, the invisible shooter and the extremely visible, extremely menacing shooter.

Magpie is looking for locks to pick, etc. She makes for the offices, looking for records. There are a couple of people in there, hiding under desks. She tranquilizes them. Sends info to the others, telling them what she’s found (i.e. nothing).

She then wanders over to the elevator. It’s a big platform with a railing around it, and it has a big button pointing up and another pointing down. There does not appear to be any further up than this level.

Fine. The guards are subdued.

Harry gets in the pilot seat of the tank. Wolf gets in the gunner’s seat. They put the tank on the elevator. The invisibly Hasib is going to work the elevator controls. Magpie and Fe are on the platform, planning to leap to the sides of the elevator shaft when it starts to descend, so they can descend more slowly and not be visibly on the platform when it reaches the basement.

Emma stays the hell out of the garage.

The elevator starts moving down. Doors close overhead. Fe and Magpie hop off and cling to the walls and start slowly climbing down.

The elevator reaches the bottom. The doors do not open. The little monitor on the elevator control panel flashes on. And there is Enseric Dane!

ED: So nice of you to drop in. Is there anything I can do for you?

Hasib: [inaudibly] You can’t seee meee.

Wolf: *says nothing*

Fe rapels down.: I’m looking for that angel. I want to kill her. So if you would just send her over here, that would be great. Thanks.

ED: Oh, don’t worry, Miss Black. You’ll be seeing Sharreniel soon.

Fe: Will she be in pieces?

ED: There will be pieces involved.

Fe attempts to open the door. She’s not that strong.

Magpie gets well out of the way of the doors. Climbs a bit further up the shaft. As far as she can reasonably get and still hear what’s going on.

Fe hides behind the tank.

ED: You do realize this is my tank, right?

*the gun goes offline*

Wolf: Oh. Ooops. Uh, guys, the gun just went offline.

Harry: Open the doors you bourgeois bastard and fight me like a man!

*there is a loud clanking noise about one story up the elevator shaft (below the Magpie)*

The Magpie sees another set of metal doors, sealing off the shaft just like the top.

Harry tries to blast the doors, then ducks back inside the tank.

Hasib drops his cloak: Mr. Dane, I believe you owe me a fee.

ED: Yes, we can talk about that after you wake up.

*there is a hissing sound* *all of the ventilation shafts on the tank pop open*

Harry runs around setting up shaped charges, trying to get the door open without killing everyone on the platform.

*everyone begins to feel sleepy*

Harry sets the charges off, then falls asleep. Fe fights it. Wolf does too, but pretends to fall asleep. Everyone else falls asleep.

There is a clank and a whir and a thud as the door explodes and falls backwards in toward the tank and falls on it. The air starts to clear a bit.

On the other side of the door, there are four guys in exoskeleton loaders, dragging the door out of the way. The tank is extremely unusable, either as a mobile device or even as cover.

*Magpie hears a boom, but has no idea what it means. She tries to call the others*

Fe: everyone’s asleep but me. I’m going to go kill some people.

The door has been dragged away. There’s a handful of guards, plus Colonel Bananapants. And Sherreniel.

Enseric Dane is not visible.

So it’s Fe against five cybernetic men, a huge gorilla and the angel. An electrified net drops from the ceiling. Fe tries to dodge, manages to ensnare one of the exoskeleton men, who is electrified.

Colonel Bananapants grabs Fe and puts big heavy metal restraints on her.

Sadly, the Magpie is still stuck in the elevator shaft.

Thugs come in and put restraints on everyone else. They start going through Wolf and trying to take his guns away. Once they’ve removed 20, they give up.

They take away Harry’s jacket!!!

They take Hasib’s gun and all the other weapons they noticed, and Betsy’s hat.

The Magpie gets back up to the top of the shaft. There’s a manual override to open the door. She opens it. Carefully. A very little bit. Nobody shoots her. She peeks out some more. Keeps camouflage engaged and crawls out of the elevator shaft.

*Emma sends her another one of those indirect messages: What’s going on ? I’m the friend who warned you that Enseric Dane was involved in all of this.*

Magpie: There was a big boom. My friend indicated that everyone had fallen asleep except her and now she was ready to kill some people.

Emma: Was there a gorilla?

Magpie: they didn’t say, but…

Emma: Maybe we should talk. I’ll be there in about 15 minutes.

*Emma goes to the cafeteria and eats until she’s a nine foot long highly armoured dragon with claws, teeth and spitting venom*

*Emma tells Magpie she’s on a missing person’s hunt. Describes her brother: six foot tall, dark curly hair, mutton chops, etc.*

They discuss their plan of attack. They head down the shaft. The dragon and the magpie descend to the depths. When we get down there, the second set of the doors has been retracted.

Emma smells a faint whiff of intoxicant gas, and gorilla. I tell the Magpie that I smell the gorilla, and indicate that I believe it smells like the one that was involved in my missing person case.

M: Is it possible that the gorilla IS the missing person?

E: It really does not smell like him.

Magpie looks down and sees Rattigan.

E: So what’s this then?

M: A cybernetic ally enhanced pet of one of my allies.

*We see two guys in an exoskeleton, coming to take the bits of the tank away. We can hear that the room on the other side of the door is big. There are plenty of people in the larger area. We can hear muttering. Sounds like bad guys.*

*We confer about how to take out the people between us and the other group*

Meanwhile, everybody else is dragged off and each put into one of the cells that are up against the walls. They are featureless metal walls inside. There is a panel in one corner of each, that is moisture-sensitive (i.e. a super-gross toilet, now with nano-technology).

Wolf does not try anything stupid, at least not yet. Continues to try to play possum.

Fe pretends to be weaker than she is.

Sharron pokes Wolf: Look, just walk. I know you’re awake.

Wolf just walks.

Everybody ends up in their cells and wakes up. There’s a bit of a window in each one. They see the big giant Evil Lab that they’re in.

Walkways, cells, a big open lab area with miscellaneous experiments, bubbling vats, vivisection tables, etc. Off to the far edge, there’s a big boxing / wrestling ring. And on the opposite wall from the cages, there is an office or something on rails up against the wall, about three stories off the ground. There are scientists in white coats, and Sharron, and Colonel Bananapants.

Fe keeps his eyes on Sharron.

As the cell doors close, we get a view of the panorama of the Evil Lair.

Cut scene to command center. From behind, in silhouette, we see Enseric Dane. Sharron walks in. There’s someone else in a chair, with wires.

*Drama button*

Credits roll.