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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 3584868" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter One-hundred-seventy-one, “Hell Breaks Loose”, Thursday, June 15th, 6:00 P.M. As smoke seeps out from the piece of furniture Tomlinson grabs the bottle of holy water from Nakomo and splashes it onto the lock, causing the smoke to stop. He says, "I'm not sure what kind of trap that was, but it's probably better that we didn't wait for it to go off." Kate states, "Well, let's not wait any longer to put down this monster. I can't believe it hasn't wakened yet, but lets not lose the advantage." Jake entered the room as the smoke was clearing. "It's in the chest of drawers," she told him quietly with her hand still over her nose. "It flips open from the top. We were just about to get a look at him." As the smell assails his nose, Jake waves a hand in front his grimaced face and says, "Whoa." He then waves the air about him with his hat. "Someone has had more than their share of frijoles." Trying to ignore the acrid smell, he returns the hat to his head and draws his long barreled Colt. He removes the one shell he added back on the hillside and replaces it with one of Pierre’s simple enchantments. He re-holsters the weapon. Finally Jake fishes out the small vial of holy water Minerva had given him. "I am not much good at driving stakes. I will let someone else do that. Perhaps it will go well and I will not need to shoot anything." Jake shrugs and gives a half hearted smile. "I have one of those pyrotechnical rounds in this one," and gives the long barreled Colt a friendly pat. He looks about the room, making certain that as much light is coming in as possible. After that is done he stands near the window and says, "I suppose I am about as ready as I am going to be." Kate stayed back by the door with Moore's magical colt in one hand and the wand in the other. "Mr. Tomlinson, Nakomo? Best if one of you opens it, I think." Tomlinson goes to the end and braces himself to lift the entire six-and-a-half foot lid, however once he starts to slowly lift it only a six-inch part starts to go up, apparently separate from the remaining six-feet. He immediately stops and looks down the crack of the half-inch section that has started rise up. He then lowers it back down and says "It's wired and the wires were now taut. If I lifted it any higher....who knows." Kate's detect magic was still working, so she moved next to Kevin. "Lift it again, please. I need to see." He lifts it again the same half inch. Kate sees a pair of wires attached to the lid go tight. There appears to be a metal wall six inches in, dividing this front section of the dresser from the rest of it. She detects no magic, this situation apparently being mechanical rather than magical. Kate says, "It's not magical. How much will it take to wake the creature? A crowbar to the other end should open it easily enough." Tomlinson says, "Yes, that might work, but it would certainly wake the occupant. It is probably that this trap was set from the inside, so that it can only be opened when the monster wishes it to be." "We can't just wait for it to wake up, we still have to go into the party headquarters." Kate tapped her finger against her chin for a moment. "Everyone back away, I'm going to set it off." Once the others had all moved to the far end of the room where she stood, she pointed her finger at the end where the trap was and used a Mage hand spell to fling it back. As the lid rises the wires are pulled which triggers the spark attached to the two sticks of dynamite in the trap. That end of the furniture explodes, showering outward a large quantities of nails and other hardwood built into it. The overwhelming majority of the projectiles fly towards the end where Tomlinson had been standing just moments before but others do fly elsewhere in the room, connecting with the party with Nakomo, Jake, Minerva, Kate and Tomlinson all receiving minor wounds. The flying nails and hardware also rip the curtains and shatter three of the windows in the room, plus do considerable damage to Fisk's bedroom. The charred and red hot debris from the dresser is starting to smolders on his bedspread and one of the curtain which are starting to smoke but haven't burst into flame yet. Regarding the dresser itself, the wooden frame of the dresser is blasted away revealing a metal casket where most of the dresser had stood. The lid remains shut and Tomlinson comments "Crap, that would have awakened him, and half the town now knows we are here, including the folks next door." Jake pops a nail out of his leg before tearing down the smoldering curtain and shoving it out the broken window where he is standing. He tosses it a couple of feet from the house to avoid it starting the exterior on fire. Downstairs, upon further questioning Moore tells Deputy Martin "Fisk is paranoid since seven candidates got their houses or businesses blown up last Sunday morning. He didn't want his place to be next so he hired some muscle to protect it." The then hear the noises above with Chester's two prisoners showing considerable concern regarding the explosion that just transpired. Kate exclaims, “Who puts dynamite next to the place they're resting?” Jake replies, "Someone with a penchant for a rather loud alarm clock?" Kate states, “I'm sorry, I should have waited. Let's put this thing down before it can gather it's wits." While Jake is at the window he sees three armed men beginning to rush out of the back door of the Liberty Party Headquarters next door. He exclaims, "Oh. Bad news, the neighbors are restless. We will have company if a few moments from the Liberty Party gang. Chet is going to need help. Unless..." Jake glances up the hill towards Wyatt Earp. Kate says, "We can't depend on that." Kate said with her eyes fixed on the metal casket. "That thing can't still be asleep. We can't be that lucky." Once the fourth man emerges from the Liberty Party Headquarters Wyatt Earp does indeed start firing. His first shot fatally goes through the head of Liberty Party Town Marshall candidate Charlie Villars. His second shot hits the chest of former Indian Head Saloon manager and Town Council candidate Porter Norris. The other two men dive to the ground. However before he gets his third shot fired Liberty Party Town Council Candidate Bronco Madson, now at the back door of the party headquarters building, waves his hands in a flowing manner. The entire hillside where Wyatt is at then erupts in a massive fireball rivaling any explosion that Jake has ever seen before. "Hermes!" Jake exclaims, astonished. He leaps from the window towards the large metal casket. While he draws his long barreled Colt he says, "Tomlinson, open this thing two inches, fast!" He then turns the cylinder on his pistol back one and cocks the hammer, "I have work to do downstairs and no more time for playing around. Tomlinson attempts to open the casket but the lid won't budge. He exclaims, "It's locked and I don't see any locking mechanism. It must be secured from the inside." She says, "Try again after I speak." Kate was running out of magical power rapidly, but she had enough left to get the casket open. She spoke the words to complete a Knock spell, hoping it was not locked in several places. At the sound of a click Tomlinson tosses up the lid, revealing beneath a fanged version of Liberty Party Town Council candidate Denny Geurin, the body of real Geurin having been found by them earlier at the Cunningham Mine. The vampire sits up and makes a lunge at Tomlinson who moves back into the protective cover of the setting sunlight that is shining through the window which Jake pulled the curtain down from. Across the room the smoldering ashes on Fisk's bedspread cause the bed coverings to ignite in flame. Jake yells, "Damn, Tomlinson, I said two inches!" Reluctantly, Jake takes a step back and gently puts the hammer back to avoid shooting off the pyrotechnic round in the unprotected room, while keeping the pistol pointed at the vampire. He rotates the cylinder one more time, "Sorry for all the noise before you were ready to rise Steve," and then snaps off a shot at the Denny Gaurin look alike. Kate lifted the wand and fired it at the creature. Jake's shot and the wand projectile both strike the vampire but not fatally. He hisses and noticing the sunlight almost upon the casket attempts to pull the lid back down with himself inside. Jake exclaims, "Mierde, not again." He quickly moves and counts four cylinder clicks while yelling, "Duck!" If he still has time before the lid closes, he fires the pyrotechnic round into the chest of the creature. As the creature sank back down Kate fired off the wand again, hoping to hit it again before it was out of view. The creature's hand is on the inside handle of the lid pulling it shut when Kate strikes the creature's hand and it howls in pain. Her move has the effect of delaying him slightly, allowing the time for Jake Cook to get the gun barrel into the casket just as the metal lid slams shut on the barrel. The shot hits and the inside of the casket erupts into a blast which is mostly contained by the metal container. Jake's gun, however, is stuck and he is unable to pull it free as it too gets caught in the blast which has the effect of igniting the remaining rounds in the chamber Kate ran to the bed and threw the ends of the comforter over the burning spot, then pounded with her hands to try to put the fire out or at least slow it so she could toss the burning fabric out the window. "Ouch!" Jake pulls his hand from the Colt now stuck protruding from the casket. "Damn, that is not exactly what I had in mind. The last of my enchanted rounds from Pierre were in that." Jake immediately starts for the stairs pulling out rounds from a special leather pouch he keeps in an inside pocket of his duster. As he runs down the stairs three at a time he hollers back, "I would appreciate it you would finish up here and come save my sorry behind. I have to go help Chet and kill Vaughn, not necessarily in that order." Bounding into the room below he speaks quickly to Chet while he exchanges some rounds in his pistol. "Earp shot Villars and Norris before Madson-Vaughn blew up the hillside." He places a pyrotechnic round along with a round taken from the cowboy gang that prevents magic healing into the sixth and fourth chambers respectively. He is regretting having only one pistol on him, but there is no time. He walks around behind the tied Moore and says, "I am surprised the shock wave of the explosion did not know you folks unconscious." With that, he takes the butt of his pistol and strikes Mad Dog in a vulnerable spot behind the ear to knock him unconscious. He states, "There is no time, shall we go?" Before Jake and Chet can exit the room the back door busts open and an armed man charges in, his pistol pointed at Chester. Upstairs, Kate throws the burning blankets out of the window. She sees the man posing as Daniel Madson alongside another man, both carrying rifles, and charging south towards Sam Slade's house. Kate stepped back as far as she could and still see the two men. Hoping she couldn't be seen through the window she cast her last spell, a sleep spell, at the two men. Beyond Slade’s the hillside is still a churning cloud of dust and tumbling rocks. Madson's companion drops to the ground where he stands. Madson continues to run forward until he reaches the cover of Sam Slade's outhouse and then looks around, rifle in hand. The dust along the dynamited hillside begins to settle. Kate felt the heavy weight of Moore's colt in one hand and the lighter of the wand in the other. The sleep spell was invisible. Missiles flying from the window were not and she wasn't the kind of shot that could hit him from here. Finally she lifted the colt with the wand against it and waited, ready to fire if he moved. Tomlinson yells to Minerva and Nanuet, "Help me ensure that the monster is destroyed" as he slides his wooden stake in the crack held open by Jake's ruined pistol to lift the lid again. Nakomo and Minerva rush to the casket and muscle the lid open. The body inside the casket is burning and not moving. Tomlinson ignores the flames and shoves a wooden stake into the heart of the corpse. Downstairs, Jake's look changes darkly as his hand flies to his pistol thinking, “I do not have time for you fool, more the pity for you.” Standing behind Mad Dog already, Jake crouches slightly and fires two shots. Jake's first shot is completely on target right between the eyes. The second shot also hits the head of the falling man who is already dead. Nobody else enters the building. Jake and Chester hear rifle shots outside. Jake immediately moves to the side of the door frame and peeks out to see if it is safe. "I trust you will have the courtesy to say I shot him because he was about to kill you. I believe I am in some significant trouble with the law today. I am off to find Vaughn." While he is speaking Jake ejects the two spent shells, and replaces them with two fresh normal rounds. Unlike most times, he does not holster his weapon figuring he will need every fraction of second going up against a wizard. "Have a care, Chester Martin, I have a nice bottle of bourbon waiting for us if we get out of this alive and not behind bars." Not seeing any danger near the door, he taps his pistol barrel to his hat in salute to the still stunned lawman and dives out the door. He bounces across the distance to the nearby Liberty Party headquarters and pushes his back against the wall looking in all directions for danger. At this point, Madson indeed does move, but not in the direction of the building that the watching Kate is in. Rather, he pivots towards the destroyed hillside and fires two rifle bursts in that direction although from the second floor window Kate cannot see his intended target, her view possibly blocked by Sam Slade's house in between. Kate fired off the colt and the wand together, not expecting to hit with the bullet. Madson begins to cast a spell but before he manages to complete the incantation the missile from her wand strikes him, doing some damage, but the main impact is in his loosing of the spell. She then sees who he was firing at as Wyatt Earp charges into her field of vision now fifty feet from Madson and running towards him as fast as his feet will carry him. To say that Earp is unarmed would be an understatement, he is not only carrying no weapons of any kind but hasn't on a single stitch of clothing, his body covered only with a thin coating of dirt, dust and ash. "My gods, the man has completely lost his mind," Kate said with eyes the size of saucers and cheeks bright red. Out back, Madson raises his rifle once more and fires point blank at the naked madman rushing towards him. Kate watches in astonishment as the bullet travels straight at Earp and then harmlessly deflects off of his chest. She quickly turned back to the others. She states, "The guardians are cleared out of the Headquarters. I'm out of tricks, I won't be much use to you but now is the time to take out the other creature." Kate didn't look back but ran down the stairs to where Chester waited. Jake slows when he sees two armed men inside the Liberty Party Headquarters, one at the back door another at a back window, who both point rifles south and fire. The bodies of Porter Norris and Charlie Villars lie on the ground not far from the back door. Staying low against the wall between the two buildings and out of their field of vision Jake looks south to see who they are shooting at. Some sixty-five feet away he sees Madson/Vaughn cowering behind Sam Slade's six-by-ten foot storage shed situated at the base of Silverbell Hill. Slade's Hardware originally kept the store's shed behind the store on Front Street but following a dynamite explosion that damaged and destroyed several buildings last January the town had insisted that he move it further away so this structure was built, a brick windowless structure built into the hillside with a solid oak door secured by a steel padlock. Madson/Vaughn waves his hands and a trio of projectiles similar to those created by Kate's wand and Tomlinson's recent spell shoot forth from his fingertips. The target of the spell is the same individual that the two men inside the building are firing at....Wyatt Earp. Earp is now fifteen feet away from Madson/Vaughn and charging towards him. He is also completely naked and appears unarmed, although he is clinching his left fist tightly so may have something inside of it. A coating of dust, dirt and ash over his body gives evidence that he was at least near the earlier hillside explosion although as far as Jake can tell there isn't even a scratch on the man. One of the rifle shots misses, the other strikes Earp's right shoulder....and bounces off. The three magical missiles however do appear to cause injury when they strike, which temporarily slows his forward momentum towards his opponent. Vaughn/Madson begins another spell. Inside, Kate reaches the bottom of the staircase seeing that one of the prisoners is unconscious and that Chester has handcuffed the other to a large piece of furniture. Jake is no longer present. Kate ran over to the door and looked out, holding the wand at the ready. There had been rifle shots outside and she was already hurt. Running across that gap was likely a very bad idea. Jake quietly moves to the corner of the Liberty Party building, and slides along the wall so they cannot see him unless they exit the building or stick their heads out. Vaughn/Madson throws a spell and a large bright bolt of lightening flies from his fingertips piercing Earp through the chest. Earp is thrown back off of his feet and onto the ground. He lies unmoving on the ground some fifteen feet from the storage shed. Vaughn/Madson then takes the moment to reload his rifle, putting inside a pair of shells from a leather bag that had been inside of his coat pocket. Kate stepped outside the door just so she could see. Madsen was reloading his rifle from a leather bag. She edged back so she could just barely see that bag, then fired the wand at the bag and dove back inside without waiting to see the result. Jake sighs, knowing what he has to do and knowing how exposed his is. He is not sure if he is doing so to save Earp or not. It is just time. Carefully steadying his pistol with two hands, he gently rotates the cylinder to the fourth position. A slight holding of his breath and he does what he came outside to do. The calling card of the Colt 45, the loud unmistakable retort is heard three times in rapid succession. A magic round with the side effect that wounds inflicted by it cannot be healed magically, a normal round and then lastly a pyrotechnic round speed their way to the wizard reloading his gun to kill the infamous Wyatt Earp. The first bullet goes through Madson's leg and he begins to bleed but otherwise ignores it. Kate's spell then strikes, splitting the pouch and causing some of the shells to spill onto the ground while Jake's second shot then goes through Vaughn's wrist, causing him to drop the rifle. While this is going on Earp begins to move, first rolling over to his side and grabbing something on the ground with his left hand. He then begins to rise, a dark burn wound visible on his chest where the lightening bolt had struck. Earp begins to rise just as Jake's third bullet arrives, missing Madson but continuing on to strike the oak door of the storage shed. The pyrotechnic round explodes, blowing the door off of its hinges as the pieces of flaming door debris shower into the shed filled with cases of dynamite. Seeing that, Masson turns to run but only gets three steps with his wounded leg before he stumbles and falls. Earp is now on his feet and moves towards him as the two men inside the headquarters building fire at him again, both bullets bouncing off. Madson slaps something from his pocket over his wound which doesn't have the desired effect. A trail of smoke begins to pour out of the doorway of the shed. Surprised and pleased that the man in the window closest has ignored him, Jake squeezes himself to the wall and covers the last few steps to the window frame. Crouching and then coming up fast Jake pushes the rifle barrel up and away with his left hand while firing a single shot towards the man's gut with his right. He then attempts to hop back to hug the wall so he can see both the window and the doorway. Gunshots continued to ring outside but Kate ran back for the stairs and the window in Fisk’s bedroom where she could safely cover Jake's back while he was still outside. The gut shot man falls to the floor. The other man steps out of the doorway to fire at their assailant but before he can get of a shot the dynamite storage shed explodes. When Sam Slade's previous storage shed had blown up in January it had contained fewer than three cases of dynamite. Due to the increased mining activity in the region he now has in storage five times that amount. The explosion that erupts makes the fireball thrown five minutes earlier look insignificant by comparison.</blockquote>

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