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High Fantasy Modern Storyhour - The Long Road (updated December 7)
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2695970" data-attributes="member: 63"><p><em>October 30, 2005</em></p><p><em>10:00 am</em></p><p></p><p>John walks alongside Balthazaar, smoking a cigarette as the two men hustle to the hotel. It's Sunday morning, and the stench of last night's beer and vomit mingles with the sweet smell of Creole cooking and fresh bignets, with just a hint of old rot that sometimes sweeps across the city after the hurricane.</p><p></p><p>"How do you keep spellcasters under control?" John asks.</p><p></p><p>Balthazaar frowns. "I don't. The Bureau does."</p><p></p><p>"You just tossed a witch into a holding cell. The bars are big enough for a raven to crawl out. What keeps him in."</p><p></p><p>"Morgan's ghost was bonded to a creature, his familiar. When not in the presence of his familiar, he cannot use his magic."</p><p></p><p>John looks off in dismay, then turns back to the knight. "That's it? What are you going to do with him?"</p><p></p><p>"You need to learn that, as a <em>secret</em> organization, the Bureau is not going to offer you all the answers you want. Normally this would have been handled much more smoothly, but as I said, the Bureau is not at its best now."</p><p></p><p>John laughs once. "Yeah, I couldn't tell."</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Nathan took Scarpedin, Terry, and Belladonna in his car, but traffic is such that they arrive at the hotel at about the same time as Balthazaar and John. Together they all head up to the hotel room Robert is in, and they enter cautiously, Balthazaar taking the lead.</p><p></p><p>"Are you alright?" Balthazaar asks.</p><p></p><p>"Sh*t!" Robert says. "Another assassin."</p><p></p><p>It takes a moment to calm him down to the point that he can explain that the man who attacked him was British, and that Balthazaar's accent spooked him. Robert is a bloody mess, with a gunshot wound near his collar bone, and splatters of blood all across his face, chest, and hand. He's half-shaven, with some shaving cream still on his face.</p><p></p><p>On the floor, slumped against the wall, is the dead assassin, two gunshot wounds in his face.</p><p></p><p>Robert explains that man came upon him while he was shaving in the bathroom, and had started asking questions about 'the kid,' like he was looking for Terry but didn't know who Terry was. Robert says that he answered the guy's questions as best he could without giving too much away, but the British assassin had gotten impatient and tried to shoot him.</p><p></p><p>At this point in his story, Robert shudders at the memory, and he has a hard time remembering how things happened. He just remembers being shot, grappling with the man, and cutting the man's throat with his razor. He seems particularly revolted by that. Belladonna wonders why he shot the man in his face, but no one there really holds it against him.</p><p></p><p>Robert's wounds are thankfully non-fatal, and Terry slowly casts a healing spell on Robert, to help him recover. Balthazaar checks the body, finding a fake ID. John takes the assassin's pistol. Scarpedin and Belladonna go to the other rooms and find two others had been ransacked. As to the matter of the dead body in the hotel room and the copious blood on the carpet and bullet holes in the walls, Robert says that it shouldn't be a problem, since that's what the Bureau is supposed to handle, covering things up.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah," John says. "That's not gonna happen. They've only got two people in the city."</p><p></p><p>Robert stares. "What?"</p><p></p><p>"Apparently," John says, looking pained from even having to say it, "all their agents are on Gaia, and since Terry's the only person who can planeshift, we have to help them."</p><p></p><p>"Slow down," Robert says. "I-"</p><p></p><p>Balthazaar interrupts. "Two weeks ago there was an attack on the main Bureau headquarters in the United States, and most agents used magic to go to the headquarters' defense. Almost immediately thereafter the connection between the two worlds was severed, and until your group walked into our office, we had no way to get between the worlds. The best course of action is for you to assist us in retrieving our agents, both here and in Savannah, so that we'll have the necessary manpower to protect you and fix this problem."</p><p></p><p>Robert blinks, then turns to Terry. "You said that these guys were going to <em>help</em>. Dammit, I would have been better off hitch-hiking."</p><p></p><p>John shrugs. "I can't believe they need <em>our</em> help, but it's just Balthazaar the vampire hunter here, and a redheaded chick."</p><p></p><p>"<em>Vampire hunter?</em>" Robert says.</p><p></p><p>"By the way," Nathan says, "the woman, Raine, said that you were a former agent. What do you do for a living now?"</p><p></p><p>Balthazaar ignores the question. "We have to dispose of this body. Tomorrow evening, after we get back from Gaia, we should be able to send agents over to discreetly remove it, but we need to make sure a maid won't stumble across it and raise too many questions."</p><p></p><p>Belladonna says, "Why not stick it in the closet?"</p><p></p><p>"Okay," Robert says, holding up a hand, "morbid a little. Why can't we just go to the police, tell them these guys were the ones who blew up the bus, and do this legally?"</p><p></p><p>"Do we want to attract police attention?" Terry says. "Sure, we can explain this away, but what happens when a cop puts together that we were at the Ren Fest where there were mysterious shootings, and on the bus that blew up, and now here? They're going to start asking a lot of questions."</p><p></p><p>The group unhappily agrees. Belladonna provides yet another morbid suggestion: that they use healing magic to make the body look unharmed, so a coroner could not determine the cause of death. Their other option, dumping the body onto Gaia, will have to wait until tomorrow at least, and even then Terry is squeamish at dumping a body into what is an inhabited area on the other plane.</p><p></p><p>They clean the room as best they can, heal the body, and stick it in a closet. Belladonna pays to cover the cost of the rooms for another two days, then recommends they come to her own personal villa, on the east side of the French Quarter, since, if there are more assassins, they already know to look for them at this hotel.</p><p></p><p>Robert and John are disapproving of the Bureau, not trusting a group that appears so incompetent at its job, but they and the others agree to cooperate for now, since if nothing else they need the Bureau to clear them of suspicions of being terrorists. They relocate to Belladonna's villa, where they meet her Nana, a sweet black lady in her eighties who makes them delicious shrimp salad sandwiches before performing a voodoo ritual to protect the house from those who mean them ill.</p><p></p><p>John finds a pay phone and calls his father in New York, and Belladonna calls her father to make sure it'll be alright for her to bring additional guests to the Halloween party. She wants to go out costume shopping, but the rest of the group vetoes that, not wanting to go out until they know more about who they're after.</p><p></p><p>Nathan has actual business, however. He has had a vision, and he talks with Balthazaar about what it might mean. Nathan tries to concentrate to gain more information, and from the various images and flashes he gets, Balthazaar determines that something is going to happen in the Audobon Zoo that evening, something involving a gun fight and a key to a crypt. From the description of the tomb, both Balthazaar and Belladonna easily recognize it as the famous crypt of Marie LaVeau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.</p><p></p><p>Back at the Renaissance festival, when Robert had played 'Scrabble' with the strange Japanese man, Wiji-wiji, the pieces he had received had spelled Marie LaVeau. The coincidence is too unusual, but though the group wants to look into it, they're hesitant about going into danger. Plus, because part of Nathan's vision was of Terry being shot by a French man, they want to keep away from French people.</p><p></p><p>So while Balthazaar takes the exuberant Scarpedin to the zoo for what will likely devolve into a gun fight, the rest of the group decides they're going to discreetly stake out the tomb of Marie LaVeau, hoping they can get some more information about the people who are after them.</p><p></p><p>Marie LaVeau's tomb is quite the tourist attraction, especially around Halloween, and there will be cops and tons of civilians around, so the group feels safe. Balthazaar takes Scarpedin away to give him a crash course on how to comport himself if he's going to work with the Bureau, a lesson the rest of the group is certain is doomed to failure. They're all still a little nervous around Scarpedin, though, so they're happy Balthazaar is taking him.</p><p></p><p>After Balthazaar leaves, Nathan gets the attention of the rest of the group.</p><p></p><p>"I don't think he was aware I was doing this," Nathan says, "but I read him, to see his past and see if we could trust him."</p><p></p><p>"And?" John says.</p><p></p><p>"And, until two weeks ago, Balthazaar was in prison. Raine, who is an <em>ex-girlfriend</em> of his, took it upon herself to get him out of the prison."</p><p></p><p>"I hate the Bureau," Robert says. "I've only met two of them, and I already hate them. We're working with a <em>criminal</em>?"</p><p></p><p>Belladonna says, "Hold on. Let's not be too judgmental boys. What did he do?"</p><p></p><p>"Officially, I have no idea," Nathan says. "But the reason the Bureau arrested him and put him away was because he murdered someone."</p><p></p><p>"Oh," Robert says, laughing mockingly, "is that all?"</p><p></p><p>"Well, to be fair," Terry says, "it's not like no one here has done that."</p><p></p><p>Robert frowns. "I did mention I was having a bad day, right? I'm sorry, but I'm a little uncomfortable with this whole 'killing people' thing. Now Belladonna, do you have some guns? We should probably be armed when we go to this graveyard tonight."</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 2695970, member: 63"] [i]October 30, 2005 10:00 am[/i] John walks alongside Balthazaar, smoking a cigarette as the two men hustle to the hotel. It's Sunday morning, and the stench of last night's beer and vomit mingles with the sweet smell of Creole cooking and fresh bignets, with just a hint of old rot that sometimes sweeps across the city after the hurricane. "How do you keep spellcasters under control?" John asks. Balthazaar frowns. "I don't. The Bureau does." "You just tossed a witch into a holding cell. The bars are big enough for a raven to crawl out. What keeps him in." "Morgan's ghost was bonded to a creature, his familiar. When not in the presence of his familiar, he cannot use his magic." John looks off in dismay, then turns back to the knight. "That's it? What are you going to do with him?" "You need to learn that, as a [i]secret[/i] organization, the Bureau is not going to offer you all the answers you want. Normally this would have been handled much more smoothly, but as I said, the Bureau is not at its best now." John laughs once. "Yeah, I couldn't tell." [center]* * *[/center] Nathan took Scarpedin, Terry, and Belladonna in his car, but traffic is such that they arrive at the hotel at about the same time as Balthazaar and John. Together they all head up to the hotel room Robert is in, and they enter cautiously, Balthazaar taking the lead. "Are you alright?" Balthazaar asks. "Sh*t!" Robert says. "Another assassin." It takes a moment to calm him down to the point that he can explain that the man who attacked him was British, and that Balthazaar's accent spooked him. Robert is a bloody mess, with a gunshot wound near his collar bone, and splatters of blood all across his face, chest, and hand. He's half-shaven, with some shaving cream still on his face. On the floor, slumped against the wall, is the dead assassin, two gunshot wounds in his face. Robert explains that man came upon him while he was shaving in the bathroom, and had started asking questions about 'the kid,' like he was looking for Terry but didn't know who Terry was. Robert says that he answered the guy's questions as best he could without giving too much away, but the British assassin had gotten impatient and tried to shoot him. At this point in his story, Robert shudders at the memory, and he has a hard time remembering how things happened. He just remembers being shot, grappling with the man, and cutting the man's throat with his razor. He seems particularly revolted by that. Belladonna wonders why he shot the man in his face, but no one there really holds it against him. Robert's wounds are thankfully non-fatal, and Terry slowly casts a healing spell on Robert, to help him recover. Balthazaar checks the body, finding a fake ID. John takes the assassin's pistol. Scarpedin and Belladonna go to the other rooms and find two others had been ransacked. As to the matter of the dead body in the hotel room and the copious blood on the carpet and bullet holes in the walls, Robert says that it shouldn't be a problem, since that's what the Bureau is supposed to handle, covering things up. "Yeah," John says. "That's not gonna happen. They've only got two people in the city." Robert stares. "What?" "Apparently," John says, looking pained from even having to say it, "all their agents are on Gaia, and since Terry's the only person who can planeshift, we have to help them." "Slow down," Robert says. "I-" Balthazaar interrupts. "Two weeks ago there was an attack on the main Bureau headquarters in the United States, and most agents used magic to go to the headquarters' defense. Almost immediately thereafter the connection between the two worlds was severed, and until your group walked into our office, we had no way to get between the worlds. The best course of action is for you to assist us in retrieving our agents, both here and in Savannah, so that we'll have the necessary manpower to protect you and fix this problem." Robert blinks, then turns to Terry. "You said that these guys were going to [i]help[/i]. Dammit, I would have been better off hitch-hiking." John shrugs. "I can't believe they need [i]our[/i] help, but it's just Balthazaar the vampire hunter here, and a redheaded chick." "[i]Vampire hunter?[/i]" Robert says. "By the way," Nathan says, "the woman, Raine, said that you were a former agent. What do you do for a living now?" Balthazaar ignores the question. "We have to dispose of this body. Tomorrow evening, after we get back from Gaia, we should be able to send agents over to discreetly remove it, but we need to make sure a maid won't stumble across it and raise too many questions." Belladonna says, "Why not stick it in the closet?" "Okay," Robert says, holding up a hand, "morbid a little. Why can't we just go to the police, tell them these guys were the ones who blew up the bus, and do this legally?" "Do we want to attract police attention?" Terry says. "Sure, we can explain this away, but what happens when a cop puts together that we were at the Ren Fest where there were mysterious shootings, and on the bus that blew up, and now here? They're going to start asking a lot of questions." The group unhappily agrees. Belladonna provides yet another morbid suggestion: that they use healing magic to make the body look unharmed, so a coroner could not determine the cause of death. Their other option, dumping the body onto Gaia, will have to wait until tomorrow at least, and even then Terry is squeamish at dumping a body into what is an inhabited area on the other plane. They clean the room as best they can, heal the body, and stick it in a closet. Belladonna pays to cover the cost of the rooms for another two days, then recommends they come to her own personal villa, on the east side of the French Quarter, since, if there are more assassins, they already know to look for them at this hotel. Robert and John are disapproving of the Bureau, not trusting a group that appears so incompetent at its job, but they and the others agree to cooperate for now, since if nothing else they need the Bureau to clear them of suspicions of being terrorists. They relocate to Belladonna's villa, where they meet her Nana, a sweet black lady in her eighties who makes them delicious shrimp salad sandwiches before performing a voodoo ritual to protect the house from those who mean them ill. John finds a pay phone and calls his father in New York, and Belladonna calls her father to make sure it'll be alright for her to bring additional guests to the Halloween party. She wants to go out costume shopping, but the rest of the group vetoes that, not wanting to go out until they know more about who they're after. Nathan has actual business, however. He has had a vision, and he talks with Balthazaar about what it might mean. Nathan tries to concentrate to gain more information, and from the various images and flashes he gets, Balthazaar determines that something is going to happen in the Audobon Zoo that evening, something involving a gun fight and a key to a crypt. From the description of the tomb, both Balthazaar and Belladonna easily recognize it as the famous crypt of Marie LaVeau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Back at the Renaissance festival, when Robert had played 'Scrabble' with the strange Japanese man, Wiji-wiji, the pieces he had received had spelled Marie LaVeau. The coincidence is too unusual, but though the group wants to look into it, they're hesitant about going into danger. Plus, because part of Nathan's vision was of Terry being shot by a French man, they want to keep away from French people. So while Balthazaar takes the exuberant Scarpedin to the zoo for what will likely devolve into a gun fight, the rest of the group decides they're going to discreetly stake out the tomb of Marie LaVeau, hoping they can get some more information about the people who are after them. Marie LaVeau's tomb is quite the tourist attraction, especially around Halloween, and there will be cops and tons of civilians around, so the group feels safe. Balthazaar takes Scarpedin away to give him a crash course on how to comport himself if he's going to work with the Bureau, a lesson the rest of the group is certain is doomed to failure. They're all still a little nervous around Scarpedin, though, so they're happy Balthazaar is taking him. After Balthazaar leaves, Nathan gets the attention of the rest of the group. "I don't think he was aware I was doing this," Nathan says, "but I read him, to see his past and see if we could trust him." "And?" John says. "And, until two weeks ago, Balthazaar was in prison. Raine, who is an [i]ex-girlfriend[/i] of his, took it upon herself to get him out of the prison." "I hate the Bureau," Robert says. "I've only met two of them, and I already hate them. We're working with a [i]criminal[/i]?" Belladonna says, "Hold on. Let's not be too judgmental boys. What did he do?" "Officially, I have no idea," Nathan says. "But the reason the Bureau arrested him and put him away was because he murdered someone." "Oh," Robert says, laughing mockingly, "is that all?" "Well, to be fair," Terry says, "it's not like no one here has done that." Robert frowns. "I did mention I was having a bad day, right? I'm sorry, but I'm a little uncomfortable with this whole 'killing people' thing. Now Belladonna, do you have some guns? We should probably be armed when we go to this graveyard tonight." [/QUOTE]
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