Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2721559" data-attributes="member: 63">Halloween John and Scarpedin methodically stake, behead, and burn the bodies of the vampires and their spawn. Thankfully the corpses turn to ash quickly, and their stench, while intense, is not nauseating. Now that they have light to see by, the bloodstains of past fights are visible.Robert says to Balthazaar, "Looks like your friends lost the last fight."Balthazaar shakes his head. "The vampires wouldn't have stayed here if they had already killed everyone. They were waiting."Balthazaar tells Terry to finish healing Belladonna, who was actually bitten. A minute later, Belladonna is able to stand, and they regroup at the base of the stairs that lead up to the Bureau office. At the top of the stairs, through the window, they can see light.And they can hear zydeco music*.With caution, the group goes to the door, talks to the people inside, and eventually walk in. They find a half dozen injured and exhausted Bureau agents in varying states of nudity, trying to dance despite their sleepless fatigue. An empty box of donuts, an empty pizza box, and the remnants of a months-old stale king cake lie on the floor, and an old-fashioned record player pumps out the spirited music. A few ghosts, bonded with agents, hang in the corners of the room, looking dazed. Only one of the Bureau agents, an Asian woman named Yuko, is in a state coherent enough to talk. Balthazaar quickly tells her what he knows about the Terra-Gaia severance, and how Terry will be able to get them back. Then he brusquely tells her to tell her side of the story.She tells them that, two weeks ago, they realized they were trapped on Gaia. A few days passed with them working to see if they could fix things, and they sent a messenger over land to the Bureau office in Savannah, but he might not even have reached Georgia yet, since the best transportation available was a horse. Meanwhile, the rest of the Bureau agents tried to keep the peace in New Orleans, but rumors spread that their numbers were depleted, and eventually they were attacked.For nearly a decade now, a vampire crime syndicate has jockeyed for power in Gaian New Orleans, only really having gained any power in the last five years, since Balthazaar was sent to prison. It becomes clear to the group that, while Yuko resents Balthazaar, she respects his skill at dealing with the undead. When pressed, she tells them why Balthazaar went to prison: In 2000, he killed an elfwoman ("F*cking elves," Scarpedin says), a former agent who had gone rogue. The Bureau had wanted to interrogate the woman for important information, but Balthazaar defied orders and had killed the woman, even though she had surrendered. In the investigation, it came out that Balthazaar had been working in concert with Knights of the Round, helping them hunt down and kill unsavory members of the magical races, while simultaneously keeping the Bureau off the trail.The Bureau, Yuko says, has been opposed to the Knights of the Round for a century, ever since the Bureau's founding. (This particular tidbit, that the Bureau is only 100 years old, surprises John, who assumed the Bureau had been around since the dawn of time or something). Where the Bureau tries to keep the peace and deal with criminals through the rule of law, Knights of the Round are vigilantes at best, racist terrorists at worst. They hunt down non-humans and viciously murder them. Balthazaar only managed to stay with the Bureau so long because his interests and the Bureau's need to kill clearly hazardous monsters overlapped.The woman Balthazaar killed was an evil b*tch, Yuko admits, an elvish telepath named Autumn Yeiotana, who managed to dominate the Chief, head of the Bureau, and nearly destroy the Bureau from within. While Balthazaar's murdering of the woman might have been forgiven as aggravated or self defense, when the Bureau investigators unearthed Balthazaar's connections to the Knights of the Round, the various councils of the magical races had demanded the Bureau execute Balthazaar.Yuko starts to go into the politics of the debate, but Balthazaar interrupts and asks to know about the more urgent problems, like what happened to all the agents here.The first attack, Yuko says, came in the streets, when an agent was ambushed by members of the gang and slain. Those who tried to help the Bureau had been tormented and frightened magically, so Yuko, as ranking agent left in New Orleans, had ordered the remaining nineteen agents to stay in the Bureau office, only heading out in large groups, and only when necessary. After a week stuck on Gaia, though, their supplies were running low, and so she had sent out six agents to bring back food from trustworthy vendors. When the group was returning, however, they were attacked by a large force of vampires and vampire spawn. Yuko and the others went out to help, but ultimately they had to retreat into the second floor offices. They lost ten agents in the fight, and the vampires still had enough forces left to blockade them. However, since the offices are not considered a public place, the vampires could not enter without an invitation. So they had turned from violence to deception, trying to trick the Bureau agents. Finally, three days ago, after their food had run out and they were starving, an agent had cracked and let in a nymph bearing food and music. The agent's will was broken down by the magic in the food, and he had let two vampires inside before the rest of the agents could react. They lost another two agents that day, but they killed the vampires and drove off the nymph. Still, the record player had kept playing, possessing some magic that kept them from smashing it. It had worn down their will, and in a classically fey joke, eventually those who succumbed to its magic started partying, losing themselves to eating, drinking, and having sex.Yuko says, "I remained happily immune."Robert knows better, but is kind enough to spare the woman's pride.Still, Yuko says, none of them had broken down enough to let the vampires back in. They've endured a two week ordeal of hunger, combat, and waiting, and now, finally, it looks like they'll be able to go back.Despite the gravity of the situation, Scarpedin can't help but crack jokes at the agents. The rest of them try to ignore him, but he's saying pretty much what the rest of them are thinking: the Bureau is looking more and more incompetent by the minute.Terry meditates, preparing for a more powerful plane shift than usual, so he can get all of them back to Terra at once. Nathan and Belladonna treat some of the injuries as best they can, and John offers Yuko a cigarette, since she's too nervous to actually eat any of their food. It takes longer than any of them are comfortable with for Terry to prepare his spell, so when they do finally go, tensions are high.They all arrive in a similar office on Terra, where Raine is waiting anxiously. Raine, Balthazaar, and Yuko give them perfunctory thanks for their help, and start searching for supplies to help the survivors snap out of their charmed state. Raine recommends they go back to Belladonna's house and wait. She says they'll be contacted when their agents are in a state to offer actual assistance.The group departs, unhappily, everyone grumbling about the Bureau's ingratitude of them risking their lives. It's barely one o'clock now, so Scarpedin says they should get some lunch and then go to a club. Bizarrely, the group agrees with Scarpedin. At least, Robert points out, if they're in a club they can pretend they're just living normal, everyday lives, and they can forget the stupid, irritating situation they've gotten themselves into. *Zydeco is a jumpy variety of cajun/creole music, popular in and around Louisiana. If you're interested, there's some information <a href="http://www.cajunculture.com/Other/zydeco.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote>

Verification