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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9642523" data-attributes="member: 7041055">Lion’s Pride, worldwide“Hey Jasper,” said Ivo, surveying last night’s damage, “I have a molotov cocktail, may I just leave it in the cloakroom?”A good kid sidekick is a dangerous thing (as you’ll see at the end of this adventure). This time, ‘Big Bucks’ Devika Velyapur was joined by her staff, detective JP Diamond, advertiser/brawler Bonnie Tuttle, and smuggler Ivan “Ivo” Kochev. The group was in the Motor City, checking in on a paramour of Bonnie’s, Jasper Crocus (last seen in Château of the Colossus). He owned a jazz club in the heavily redlined Black Bottom neighborhood, and some recent mysterious deaths were being blamed on African Americans in aggregate.In fact, the club was firebombed by the Black Legion (who in this case were an anti-black legion of white people). The ZSS, in this configuration, is a well-oiled mystery-solving machine. But as they dug up dirt on the black and white sides of town, the puzzle pieces didn't fit together. Allegedly, a one-eyed red devil called the Nain Rouge was terrorizing white transgressors. And there were a lot of transgressors; the local Klan was not hurting for membership. But was it an actual mystical devil, or a vigilante? And what did the ‘Lion Cleaning Service’ have to do with it?(Unlike the adults, Devi saw plenty of time to have fun while solving crimes. A fact-finding mission to the local roller rink was a perfect opportunity to find leads, by showing up the best skater in the place. The fact the skater was the daughter of an important local figure was part of Devi’s methodology, not just a lucky coincidence. And the trip to the newspaper to place ads and borrow fabric samples? That was… a chance to talk to the crime reporters. And of course, there’s no better place to talk to witnesses than the best soul food restaurants in town. Hurray for expense accounts!)The investigators got the better of the hooded klowns, and finally got the drop on the Nain Rouge. Bonnie, instead of chasing the fleeing figure, decided to taunt him. She wove together carney insults, case facts, and some choice swear words until he all but led the players back to Jasper‘s jazz club.Turns out Nain was Jasper's cousin, a mechanical engineer who had made a variety of powerful technological weapons. The group was willing to cover for him protecting the block, but JP saw terrible things in the Great War, and despite Devi’s protestations, smashed all the equipment. Bad news for Big Bucks. It was one thing for the group to disagree. But it made the girl furious to have an employee defy her in front of a paying client.The case continued, with the out-of-towners learning the lion kult was holed up in the world's largest Masonic Lodge. Since none of their colleagues spoke French, Devi and JP were able to argue during an elevator ride. Before the argument could go any further, the elevator opened. The heads of the konspiracy were trying to pull a lion from the Gardens of Paradise into Detroit. Bonnie took names and not prisoners, smashing through the hooded Legionaires. JP absorbed a burst of machine gun fire to little effect,  barely bleeding due to his deathless physiology. This rattled the main Heavy, especially when Ivo convinced him that magic had made everyone in the group bulletproof!Normally, kid mystic Devika would use her psychic powers and melt the brains of the conspirators. But they seemed mystically attuned and effortlessly powerful. so she looked through the dimensional portal… and mentally dominated the lion! Being a creature of paradise, it was happy to comply… But its mood turned when it went from mythology to Motown. Freed from Eden, the lion resorted to its base nature… turning the villainous racists into kuisine.Their opposition defeated, the group tabled its intrapersonal drama and came up with a childlike plan. Leave the lion in the room, lock the door, and use their press contacts to blame everything on the dead racists. Some things require an international detective agency. Some are really more a job for Animal Control.</blockquote>

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