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Ceramic DM Winter 07 (Final Judgment Posted)
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<blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 3356937" data-attributes="member: 13098"><p>CarpeDavid vs BSF</p><p></p><p></p><p>Vodou Justice</p><p></p><p>(Picture 2_1_5)</p><p>Dame Madelyn Roberts leaned over the sink and stared into the mirror. </p><p></p><p>“As you can see Mr. Heath, the scoundrel has cursed me! This simply will not do.”</p><p></p><p>I looked across the room, at her reflection in the mirror. The polyester sweat suit was bad. But the reflection in the mirror was worse. I shook my head slightly in distaste.</p><p></p><p>“Yes ma'am. Now you say he is trying to blackmail you?”</p><p></p><p>I had been summoned up to Dame Roberts' house to help her with a little problem. Apparently the problem was blackmail.</p><p></p><p>“He is demanding that I pay him an exorbitant sum of money to remove the curse. Look at me, I look like a shriveled, old, monster.” She was almost shrieking again, that always gets on my nerves.</p><p></p><p>I looked up from my notes and winced at the image in the mirror once again. Grayish skin, bald head, it was a doozy of a curse. I silently wished that Dame Roberts would step away from the mirror. Whatever glamour was cast on her to cover the wretched form she had become was preferable to the brutally accurate reflection from the mirror. There was no sense encouraging her indignation though. I grunted noncommittally.</p><p></p><p>“Do you mind telling me how much blackmail he requested?”</p><p></p><p>She turned from the mirror and glared at me. Her eyes flashed dangerously and her posture told me that she was annoyed.</p><p></p><p>“Is that really necessary Mr. Heath? The dollar amount isn't important to me. I will not be blackmailed.”</p><p></p><p>I avoided rolling my eyes. “Yes ma'am, it would be helpful. You see, depending on how big the sum is, he will probably have different plans for it. My job, as a private investigator is to track him down for you. So if I know how much he is looking to score, I might be able to do my job better.</p><p></p><p>She harrumphed me. “Well, he is asking for a million dollars. It's not that I can't afford it, I can. It's the principle of the matter.” Her tone had shifted to plaintive, but I wasn't buying it. Old money, like Dame Roberts' family, hated losing money in any form. She continued, “He used a camera. He was pretending to take a picture of me at the time, but the camera delivered the curse instead. I am assured that if you can recover the camera, and the film that was in it at the time, the curse can be reversed. The sooner it is recovered, the better the odds are that damage will not be done.” She had more to say, but nothing that was important. She wanted to recover the magical camera that had cursed her, and she was willing to pay well for it. I spent some time getting descriptions from the few staff that allegedly saw the blackmailer at work. </p><p></p><p>(Picture 2_1_3)</p><p>Seventy-four hours later, I was standing outside a nearby face shop. The magic to replace your face with another face is difficult to manage, but the few warlocks able to manage it often made a decent, if somewhat unscrupulous, living. The thing is, face shops weren't illegal and a warlock able to run a face shop was difficult to intimidate. Looking through the window, I could the face of my quarry sitting on display. He had apparently changed his face for somebody else's face. </p><p></p><p>I went inside with the promise of cash and a checkbook to prove it. As I said, most warlocks willing to change your face for somebody else's face are unscrupulous. It turns out that I was able to pay better than the client. I finally had a name to work with: Michael Ibaraki. It turns out he was a freelance photographer. A few hours of research didn't indicate that he had any magical skill or any predisposition to engage in blackmail. The friends I could locate had lost track of him a few weeks earlier. </p><p></p><p>Still, there was nothing saying he couldn't have had a camera enchanted to curse it's target. As well, a lack of prior history didn't mean he couldn't blackmail Dame Roberts. I would keep an open mind, but in the back of my mind, I began to feel some suspicion that Dame Roberts hadn't been entirely honest and forthcoming with me. </p><p></p><p>(Picture 2_1_1)</p><p>It turns out that Michael Ibaraki had gone back to his roots to hide out. It was Obon week and using the warlock's description, I was on the lookout for a man with a mohawk. Michael was photographing one of the bon odori, and Obon dance, for the ancestors when I found him. My first thought was that he had a really bad comb over that the wind had picked up and stood straight on end. </p><p></p><p>I followed him for the better part of an hour, watching him to discern what I could about this man that was allegedly blackmailing Dame Roberts. He seemed nervous, but not like a man that was expecting a million dollars. More like a man that felt hunted. Something was definitely up and I resolved that I would pull Mr. Ibaraki aside and see if he could shed some light on everything. I made my way through the crowd toward Michael Ibaraki.</p><p></p><p>Before I could reach him though, my suspicions were abruptly and violently confirmed. I must have seen something out of the corner of my eye, or something. In any case, I felt the hair on my neck stand up. That is always a bad sign. It means my body has senses some sort of problem before my brain has processed what it is. When that happens, I don't think, I let my body act and my brain just follows along until it can process the information. With a twist and a leap I was mostly out of the way before a bullet grazed my leg. I was still pushing off that leg and the bullet spun me around in an uncomfortable direction. Pain flooded my brain as my ears registered the sound of an M60 unleashing an entire belt of bullets into the crowd around us, and specifically into Michael Ibaraki. </p><p></p><p>A child fell on top of me, pinning me to the ground for the moment. I twisted my head to see where Michael was, only to be greeted by a harrowing sight. A skeleton, over six feet tall, carrying an M60, walked up to Michael Ibaraki as he lay there, gasping at the last moments of his life. Face changing isn't outlawed, but all forms of necromancy are. Yet here was an animated skeleton, carrying an automatic weapon, making a brazen attack in the middle of the day. The skeleton put it's bony foot to Michael's head and with unnatural force crushed his skull. It then reached down and picked up his camera bag. It appeared to scan the crowd for a moment, then it made it's way back to a pickup across the square. </p><p></p><p>(Picture 2_1_2)</p><p>I twisted and turned until I edged my way out from under the girl that had fallen on me. I limped to where I could see the walking skeleton better. I climbed into the back of a pickup truck and turned to be sure nobody in the crowd was standing. A man groaned and started to sit up. The M60 opened up again and the man fell down in a splash of blood. Reaching down to the truck bed, the skeleton picked up something and lobbed it into the middle of the square. It was another one of those situations where my body recognized the danger before my brain did. Pain streaked across my body once more as I leaped for cover. The square erupted in white light for a moment as the white phosphorus exploded. I was already rolling into a gutter and closing my eyes, my body's natural reflexes taking over despite everything that had happened. But not before my brain had memorized the license plate of the truck as it drove off, skeleton standing in the back, gun poised to destroy any pursuers. </p><p></p><p>I was awakened by water running into the sewer and on top of me. Somehow I had rolled down a storm grate and avoided the conflagration that the firefighters above were bravely fighting. Water, blood, and ash. I limped up the sewer for a few miles before I crawled out to the streets above. It took a while longer to flag down a cabbie that would help me. Paranoia got the better of me and I didn't go back to my office. </p><p></p><p>As it turns out, that was a good idea. The next day I was nursing my wounded leg and reading the paper. The attack on Michael Ibaraki had resulted in the deaths of 36 other people. Anger burned deep inside me as I remembered the little girl that had been gunned down next to me. Three pages further into the paper, I saw the article about my office burning to the ground. Arson was suspected and it was noted that the nobody had seen Peter Heath, Private Investigator since the previous day. There were vague implications that maybe I had burned my office to avoid creditors and then skipped town. I was beginning to think that maybe Dame Roberts wasn't entirely honest with me.</p><p></p><p>It took a few days to recover and backtrack everything. It was sloppy work and they couldn't have made it much easier for me. The truck was registered to a company owned by Dame Roberts. Some time looking through old newspapers pieced together a bit more of the puzzle. Nobody had ever gotten a picture of Dame Roberts. Paintings and sketches existed, but pictures were nowhere to be found. I stopped by an occult bookstore whose manager, Towanda, owed me a favor. </p><p></p><p>My office was destroyed, my bank accounts monitored, but I had a score to settle. The thought of a dead little girl pushed me on, perhaps foolishly. I snuck back onto Dame Roberts' estate in the evening. There were security cameras, but those are easy to deal with. I was more worried about guards, living and unliving. Quite frankly, I was hoping to encounter more of the living guards rather the animated dead. </p><p></p><p>(Picture 2_1_4)</p><p>I was lucky and got my wish. I had been sneaking around one of the sheds at the edge of the estate and had found an illegal crate of white phosphorus grenades. I didn't need to be a private investigator to notice that a few grenades were missing from the crate. It was then that I heard the growled challenge. There aren't many people like me. But I was relatively lucky. Most sentient animals are treated as little more than circus freaks. I had parlayed my unique advantages and curiosity into a career. The dog bearing down on me obviously worked as private security for Dame Roberts. I'll spare you the profanity laced tirade he was spewing as he offered to break my neck and torture me. I crouched in what I hoped would look like a fearful pose. Then as the dog reached me, I jumped straight up and kicked him in the head. I managed to catch him in that spot near the ear that would rattle his brain around in his skull enough to knock him out. It was a lucky shot, even for me. </p><p></p><p>It took a bit to tie some of the grenades to the unconscious dog. At the back of my mind, my conscience was beginning to nag at me. Sure, Dame Roberts needed some payback. Sure I didn't much care for dogs. But did that give me the right to use this dog to take Dame Roberts out? Fortunately I had a possible solution. Towanda had given me a magical infusion that would allow me to influence the minds of 'those whose souls are heavy in sin.' It couldn't affect the unliving since they didn't truly have souls. I don't like drugs, even magical ones. Towanda told me this one would be ill tasting and had wrapped it in catnip to make it more palatable. </p><p></p><p>With a sigh, I bit into the infusion. The euphoric smell of catnip filled my nostrils and for a moment I rolled over onto my back in bliss. Then the world swam before my eyes and I could 'sense' how despicable the dog was. He truly would have enjoyed torturing me and hearing me plead for my life. Suddenly, everything snapped into perfect clarity. </p><p></p><p>I was riding Butch the guard dog like some vodou spirit. We were rushing through the hallways of Dame Roberts' mansion, seeking her out. In some corner of my mind, I was noticing the lack of mirrors. The mirror shows the truth of the soul. Seeing Dame Roberts in a mirror just showed her true self. Cameras use mirrors. Michael Ibaraki simply had the misfortune to snap a picture of Dame Roberts. For that, he had to die. Because the unliving were outlawed, and if anybody knew what Dame Roberts was, she would be destroyed. </p><p></p><p>Butch careened around a corner and into a sitting room. Dame Roberts was sitting there, reading the paper. Her skeletal assassin was in the corner. Even as he raised his gun toward Butch, I nudged the dog's brain a bit to the left, toward the window. I was holding the pin of the grenade in my mouth. Dame Roberts' beautiful, glamoured face was twisted in anger. I jumped for the window just as Butch exploded under the hail of gunfire. I tumbled through the glass, closing my eyes as the room erupted in white light. </p><p></p><p>As I rolled on the ground, I could feel glass cut through my fur. I could see the Michael Ibaraki's face in the face changer's window and his skull beneath the heal of a skeleton. I rolled into some bushes and felt something fall atop me, pinning me to the ground. I thought of the little girl, gunned down. All of these people dead to protect the vanity of a woman that had long ago sold her soul so she could go on living. </p><p></p><p>Was it revenge, or justice? Did it matter?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSF, post: 3356937, member: 13098"] CarpeDavid vs BSF Vodou Justice (Picture 2_1_5) Dame Madelyn Roberts leaned over the sink and stared into the mirror. “As you can see Mr. Heath, the scoundrel has cursed me! This simply will not do.” I looked across the room, at her reflection in the mirror. The polyester sweat suit was bad. But the reflection in the mirror was worse. I shook my head slightly in distaste. “Yes ma'am. Now you say he is trying to blackmail you?” I had been summoned up to Dame Roberts' house to help her with a little problem. Apparently the problem was blackmail. “He is demanding that I pay him an exorbitant sum of money to remove the curse. Look at me, I look like a shriveled, old, monster.” She was almost shrieking again, that always gets on my nerves. I looked up from my notes and winced at the image in the mirror once again. Grayish skin, bald head, it was a doozy of a curse. I silently wished that Dame Roberts would step away from the mirror. Whatever glamour was cast on her to cover the wretched form she had become was preferable to the brutally accurate reflection from the mirror. There was no sense encouraging her indignation though. I grunted noncommittally. “Do you mind telling me how much blackmail he requested?” She turned from the mirror and glared at me. Her eyes flashed dangerously and her posture told me that she was annoyed. “Is that really necessary Mr. Heath? The dollar amount isn't important to me. I will not be blackmailed.” I avoided rolling my eyes. “Yes ma'am, it would be helpful. You see, depending on how big the sum is, he will probably have different plans for it. My job, as a private investigator is to track him down for you. So if I know how much he is looking to score, I might be able to do my job better. She harrumphed me. “Well, he is asking for a million dollars. It's not that I can't afford it, I can. It's the principle of the matter.” Her tone had shifted to plaintive, but I wasn't buying it. Old money, like Dame Roberts' family, hated losing money in any form. She continued, “He used a camera. He was pretending to take a picture of me at the time, but the camera delivered the curse instead. I am assured that if you can recover the camera, and the film that was in it at the time, the curse can be reversed. The sooner it is recovered, the better the odds are that damage will not be done.” She had more to say, but nothing that was important. She wanted to recover the magical camera that had cursed her, and she was willing to pay well for it. I spent some time getting descriptions from the few staff that allegedly saw the blackmailer at work. (Picture 2_1_3) Seventy-four hours later, I was standing outside a nearby face shop. The magic to replace your face with another face is difficult to manage, but the few warlocks able to manage it often made a decent, if somewhat unscrupulous, living. The thing is, face shops weren't illegal and a warlock able to run a face shop was difficult to intimidate. Looking through the window, I could the face of my quarry sitting on display. He had apparently changed his face for somebody else's face. I went inside with the promise of cash and a checkbook to prove it. As I said, most warlocks willing to change your face for somebody else's face are unscrupulous. It turns out that I was able to pay better than the client. I finally had a name to work with: Michael Ibaraki. It turns out he was a freelance photographer. A few hours of research didn't indicate that he had any magical skill or any predisposition to engage in blackmail. The friends I could locate had lost track of him a few weeks earlier. Still, there was nothing saying he couldn't have had a camera enchanted to curse it's target. As well, a lack of prior history didn't mean he couldn't blackmail Dame Roberts. I would keep an open mind, but in the back of my mind, I began to feel some suspicion that Dame Roberts hadn't been entirely honest and forthcoming with me. (Picture 2_1_1) It turns out that Michael Ibaraki had gone back to his roots to hide out. It was Obon week and using the warlock's description, I was on the lookout for a man with a mohawk. Michael was photographing one of the bon odori, and Obon dance, for the ancestors when I found him. My first thought was that he had a really bad comb over that the wind had picked up and stood straight on end. I followed him for the better part of an hour, watching him to discern what I could about this man that was allegedly blackmailing Dame Roberts. He seemed nervous, but not like a man that was expecting a million dollars. More like a man that felt hunted. Something was definitely up and I resolved that I would pull Mr. Ibaraki aside and see if he could shed some light on everything. I made my way through the crowd toward Michael Ibaraki. Before I could reach him though, my suspicions were abruptly and violently confirmed. I must have seen something out of the corner of my eye, or something. In any case, I felt the hair on my neck stand up. That is always a bad sign. It means my body has senses some sort of problem before my brain has processed what it is. When that happens, I don't think, I let my body act and my brain just follows along until it can process the information. With a twist and a leap I was mostly out of the way before a bullet grazed my leg. I was still pushing off that leg and the bullet spun me around in an uncomfortable direction. Pain flooded my brain as my ears registered the sound of an M60 unleashing an entire belt of bullets into the crowd around us, and specifically into Michael Ibaraki. A child fell on top of me, pinning me to the ground for the moment. I twisted my head to see where Michael was, only to be greeted by a harrowing sight. A skeleton, over six feet tall, carrying an M60, walked up to Michael Ibaraki as he lay there, gasping at the last moments of his life. Face changing isn't outlawed, but all forms of necromancy are. Yet here was an animated skeleton, carrying an automatic weapon, making a brazen attack in the middle of the day. The skeleton put it's bony foot to Michael's head and with unnatural force crushed his skull. It then reached down and picked up his camera bag. It appeared to scan the crowd for a moment, then it made it's way back to a pickup across the square. (Picture 2_1_2) I twisted and turned until I edged my way out from under the girl that had fallen on me. I limped to where I could see the walking skeleton better. I climbed into the back of a pickup truck and turned to be sure nobody in the crowd was standing. A man groaned and started to sit up. The M60 opened up again and the man fell down in a splash of blood. Reaching down to the truck bed, the skeleton picked up something and lobbed it into the middle of the square. It was another one of those situations where my body recognized the danger before my brain did. Pain streaked across my body once more as I leaped for cover. The square erupted in white light for a moment as the white phosphorus exploded. I was already rolling into a gutter and closing my eyes, my body's natural reflexes taking over despite everything that had happened. But not before my brain had memorized the license plate of the truck as it drove off, skeleton standing in the back, gun poised to destroy any pursuers. I was awakened by water running into the sewer and on top of me. Somehow I had rolled down a storm grate and avoided the conflagration that the firefighters above were bravely fighting. Water, blood, and ash. I limped up the sewer for a few miles before I crawled out to the streets above. It took a while longer to flag down a cabbie that would help me. Paranoia got the better of me and I didn't go back to my office. As it turns out, that was a good idea. The next day I was nursing my wounded leg and reading the paper. The attack on Michael Ibaraki had resulted in the deaths of 36 other people. Anger burned deep inside me as I remembered the little girl that had been gunned down next to me. Three pages further into the paper, I saw the article about my office burning to the ground. Arson was suspected and it was noted that the nobody had seen Peter Heath, Private Investigator since the previous day. There were vague implications that maybe I had burned my office to avoid creditors and then skipped town. I was beginning to think that maybe Dame Roberts wasn't entirely honest with me. It took a few days to recover and backtrack everything. It was sloppy work and they couldn't have made it much easier for me. The truck was registered to a company owned by Dame Roberts. Some time looking through old newspapers pieced together a bit more of the puzzle. Nobody had ever gotten a picture of Dame Roberts. Paintings and sketches existed, but pictures were nowhere to be found. I stopped by an occult bookstore whose manager, Towanda, owed me a favor. My office was destroyed, my bank accounts monitored, but I had a score to settle. The thought of a dead little girl pushed me on, perhaps foolishly. I snuck back onto Dame Roberts' estate in the evening. There were security cameras, but those are easy to deal with. I was more worried about guards, living and unliving. Quite frankly, I was hoping to encounter more of the living guards rather the animated dead. (Picture 2_1_4) I was lucky and got my wish. I had been sneaking around one of the sheds at the edge of the estate and had found an illegal crate of white phosphorus grenades. I didn't need to be a private investigator to notice that a few grenades were missing from the crate. It was then that I heard the growled challenge. There aren't many people like me. But I was relatively lucky. Most sentient animals are treated as little more than circus freaks. I had parlayed my unique advantages and curiosity into a career. The dog bearing down on me obviously worked as private security for Dame Roberts. I'll spare you the profanity laced tirade he was spewing as he offered to break my neck and torture me. I crouched in what I hoped would look like a fearful pose. Then as the dog reached me, I jumped straight up and kicked him in the head. I managed to catch him in that spot near the ear that would rattle his brain around in his skull enough to knock him out. It was a lucky shot, even for me. It took a bit to tie some of the grenades to the unconscious dog. At the back of my mind, my conscience was beginning to nag at me. Sure, Dame Roberts needed some payback. Sure I didn't much care for dogs. But did that give me the right to use this dog to take Dame Roberts out? Fortunately I had a possible solution. Towanda had given me a magical infusion that would allow me to influence the minds of 'those whose souls are heavy in sin.' It couldn't affect the unliving since they didn't truly have souls. I don't like drugs, even magical ones. Towanda told me this one would be ill tasting and had wrapped it in catnip to make it more palatable. With a sigh, I bit into the infusion. The euphoric smell of catnip filled my nostrils and for a moment I rolled over onto my back in bliss. Then the world swam before my eyes and I could 'sense' how despicable the dog was. He truly would have enjoyed torturing me and hearing me plead for my life. Suddenly, everything snapped into perfect clarity. I was riding Butch the guard dog like some vodou spirit. We were rushing through the hallways of Dame Roberts' mansion, seeking her out. In some corner of my mind, I was noticing the lack of mirrors. The mirror shows the truth of the soul. Seeing Dame Roberts in a mirror just showed her true self. Cameras use mirrors. Michael Ibaraki simply had the misfortune to snap a picture of Dame Roberts. For that, he had to die. Because the unliving were outlawed, and if anybody knew what Dame Roberts was, she would be destroyed. Butch careened around a corner and into a sitting room. Dame Roberts was sitting there, reading the paper. Her skeletal assassin was in the corner. Even as he raised his gun toward Butch, I nudged the dog's brain a bit to the left, toward the window. I was holding the pin of the grenade in my mouth. Dame Roberts' beautiful, glamoured face was twisted in anger. I jumped for the window just as Butch exploded under the hail of gunfire. I tumbled through the glass, closing my eyes as the room erupted in white light. As I rolled on the ground, I could feel glass cut through my fur. I could see the Michael Ibaraki's face in the face changer's window and his skull beneath the heal of a skeleton. I rolled into some bushes and felt something fall atop me, pinning me to the ground. I thought of the little girl, gunned down. All of these people dead to protect the vanity of a woman that had long ago sold her soul so she could go on living. Was it revenge, or justice? Did it matter? [/QUOTE]
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