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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 2848443" data-attributes="member: 63"><p><em>November 1, 2005</em></p><p><em>7:35 am</em></p><p></p><p>The Starbucks is empty except for Belladonna, her father, the bomb disarmer, and a dying barrista, shot by her father. Now Belladonna struggles, feeling the telepath’s will pressing down upon her again. The barrista is bleeding on the floor, and she can hear a back door of the shop being broken in as what she guesses are Bureau agents storm the coffee shop from the alley.</p><p></p><p>She knows that the telepath wants her and her father to die to cover his tracks, and already she can see her father raising his gun to point at the door the Bureau will enter from. With the telepath forcing her body under his control, she feels like she has too much time to watch what is happening, too much time to see her father being driven to a suicidal attack, and too much time for her to sit and be powerless.</p><p></p><p>She refuses to be powerless, to be the defenseless little girl her father always saw her as.</p><p></p><p>For just a moment, her will surges, and she finds the strength to move. The door to the back entrance is kicked open as she yanks a stiletto out of her hair. Her father aims for the Bureau agents as she opens her only vial of rare tetrodotoxin and coats her blade. And the Bureau agents shout for him to drop his gun as Belladonna stands up between the gunmen and drives the stilleto blade into her father’s forearm, straight into the vein.</p><p></p><p>“Don’t shoot!” she shouts.</p><p></p><p>Her father glares at her with an anger that is not his own, and his body siezes up as the poison paralyzes his nerves. His gun clatters to the ground, and she catches him as he begins to fall. The agents surround her, black suits pressing in and sweeping across the room, securing the building. One agent stoops next to the bleeding barrista, puts a hand on the man’s chest, and concentrates. The barrista begins to cough as he comes back from the brink of death.</p><p></p><p>“Where’s the bomb?” one demands, pointing a gun at Belladonna.</p><p></p><p>Belladonna points outside, where Nathan ran. </p><p></p><p>“The bomb’s disarmed,” says the man who just disarmed the bomb, cowering on the floor. “My name is Jobe Bundholm, NOPD.”</p><p></p><p>While the agents are distracted, Belladonna conceals the dagger in her hair again. Then she yells at one the agents. “My father was mind-controlled. He’s been poisoned. You have magic, don’t you?”</p><p></p><p>The agent who healed the barrista is about to stop and help when the agent interrogating Jobe curses.</p><p></p><p>“Sh*t,” he says. “He’s a cop. Wipe him.”</p><p></p><p>The spellcasting agent goes over to Jobe, puts a hand over his eyes, and concentrates. Jobe looks dazed.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, the lead agent reports into a shoulder radio, “A witness says there’s a teep nearby. Raine, Balthazaar, be on watch. The Lees are not the primary suspect. I repeat there is a teep nearby.”</p><p></p><p>“Dammit,” Belladonna says. “My father is going to die.”</p><p></p><p>The magic-using agent turns around, touches her father on his chest, and whispers a Creole prayer. Her father begins to breathe again. The agent nods to Belladonna, but looks displeased.</p><p></p><p>“More cops coming,” says the lead agent. “The situation is over for now. Withdraw, everyone.”</p><p></p><p>“What about these two?” says the agent who just saved Belladonna’s father.</p><p></p><p>The lead agent shakes his head. “No time. We’re out.”</p><p></p><p>And almost as quickly as they came in, the Bureau agents are gone, leaving no trace they were there.</p><p></p><p>Jobe Bundholm blinks, then staggers to his feet and runs for the door.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Struggling with the pain of a bullet wound in his shoulder, Nathan takes a best guess of the direction the sniper shot came from – down the street to the west – and he takes cover in front of the eastern entrance of the Starbucks. The Starbucks is probably nearly empty by now, and Nathan hopes the sniper won’t get trigger happy and start firing at pedestrians.</p><p></p><p>Jobe runs out the front door, and Nathan stops him from running out into the sniper’s view.</p><p></p><p>“What’s going on in there?” he asks.</p><p></p><p>Jobe opens his mouth as if to explain, but words fail him. Just then, Nathan notices a police car pulling up from the south. The car stops nearly in front of the Starbucks, and a cop kicks open the door. At the same time, John comes running over from the bus stop across the street.</p><p></p><p>“Ah, John,” Nathan says, “good to see you. Here, come help me.”</p><p></p><p>Nathan then turns to the cop. “Officer!”</p><p></p><p>He starts toward the police officer, holding Jobe by his arm, with John following angrily. As he passes back in front of the Starbucks, he looks inside, but sees that it is completely empty.</p><p></p><p>The police officer comes up, hand on his holster, and he orders them to stop.</p><p></p><p>“Yes, officer,” Nathan says, “but here in the suitcase is the bomb that just scared everyone out of here.”</p><p></p><p>“Nathan,” John says, “let’s get the hell out of here. There’s still a sniper around.”</p><p></p><p>The cop hesitates, then holds out a hand and asks for the suitcase. Nathan hands it over. In the distance he can hear the intermittent retorts of a sniper rifle firing, but he’s confident he’s safe. The cop takes the briefcase and says into his radio that he has the bomb. He puts the bomb in his car, and then stops behind the car door, his body partially concealed by the door.</p><p></p><p>Nathan senses that something is wrong, and he pushes Jobe to the ground just in time as the cop turns and fires.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Scarpedin says nothing as he scans for the sniper, using his own sniper rifle. Robert watches from over his shoulder, dispassionate at the sight of Nathan being struck by a sniper bullet. He watches Nathan duck for cover, and sees faintly in the corners and shadows of the intersection, a dozen or more Bureau agents moving through alleys, trying to cover the scene without being seen.</p><p></p><p>The panic is just dying down in the street, and the sniper has not fired a second shot in half a minute, when Robert gets impatient and leans out the window, trying to get a view of what’s going on. Then for a moment he is completely dazed as his head is whipped sideways. When he gets his bearings again, he has fallen over, knocking Scarpedin to the floor of their motel room.</p><p></p><p>“What the hell?” Robert says, feeling a horrible welt on the side of his face.</p><p></p><p>“You were shot,” Scarpedin says. “In the head.”</p><p></p><p>Unfazed, Scarpedin gets back to the window and goes back to searching for the sniper, careful not to expose any of his body, just the sniper scope.</p><p></p><p>Robert blinks, then remembers the necklace he took off the Canadian woman. Now that he thinks of it, she wasn’t <em>nearly</em> as torn to bits by the mini-gun as he would have expected.</p><p></p><p>“Y’know,” Robert says, “any other day I would need a while to get over not just dying, but I think I’m good. Hey, Scarpedin, give me that bracelet Terry’s on.”</p><p></p><p>The window Scarpedin is aiming out of shatters as a bullet strikes it and flies into the room. Scarpedin stands up angrily and reaches for his sword, but Robert stops him.</p><p></p><p>“I’d say don’t be stupid,” Robert says, “but that’d be pointless. How about, ‘you be the diversion’?”</p><p></p><p>Scarpedin grimaces, then hands Robert the Terry bracelet. Robert goes over his plan with Terry’s ghost as he gathers up two pocketfuls of smoke grenades, the mini-gun, and a bit of ammo.</p><p></p><p>“Make sure you don’t leave any of this here,” Robert says as he tosses a smoke grenade out the door onto the balcony. “This cost a lot of money. Especially that sniper rifle which did us exactly zero good.”</p><p></p><p>“Whoa, wait,” Scarpedin says. “I’m supposed to run out there and let the guy shoot at me?”</p><p></p><p>Robert nods, grinning. “I gotta find out where he is. Don’t worry. Apparently John, the <em>angel</em>, can heal you if you get shot. Now you flank left, and I’ll stick to the cover of-”</p><p></p><p>Scarpedin interrupts. “Alright, time’s up, let’s do this!” </p><p></p><p>Scarpedin springs out of the motel room and sprints for the staircase to the ground floor, screaming something that sounds like, <em>“Leeroy JENKINS!”</em></p><p></p><p>Robert sighs.</p><p></p><p>“He ran off without the necklace?” Terry says.</p><p></p><p>Robert nods. “Alright, let’s go save his ass.”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Nathan tries to avoid getting shot as John steps inside the cop’s reach and elbow’s the man in the bottom of his chin, dazing him. John is busy disarming him and shooting out his kneecap when Nathan notices another car approaching. It looks just like the one that dropped off Adrien Lee and Belladonna earlier.</p><p></p><p>John says, “He must’ve been working for Mr. Lee.”</p><p></p><p>Before Nathan can explain the situation, the second car screeches to a stop in the middle of the street near the cop car. A back seat door opens, and Nathan and John both aim guns and take cover behind the hood of the cop car. But no one emerges. The driver window is black, impenetrably tinted.</p><p></p><p>Strangely, the passenger seat of the cop car opens, and then the briefcase holding the bomb begins to move as if pulled by an invisible hand. Nathan gasps and fires, and he hears a man grunt. The briefcase falls back into the passenger seat, and Nathan leaps through the open driver’s door of the cop car to grab it.</p><p></p><p>“Someone’s invisible,” Nathan tells John.</p><p></p><p>John fires off two errant shots at the space between the cop car and the second car.</p><p></p><p>“Bugger,” shouts a disembodied voice in the street. “Let’s go!”</p><p></p><p>The back door of the getaway car starts to swing, but before Nathan or John can react, Balthazaar and two other agents appear from the nearby alley beside the Starbucks. One agent snaps a finger, and the getaway car suddenly goes dead as its engine shuts off. Balthazaar throws what looks like a small grenade in the street, and when it goes off it bursts with a spray of fluorescent red paint. The paint coats the invisible telepath, and though he leaps clear of the paint cloud, he’s still faintly visible.</p><p></p><p>“After him,” Balthazaar shouts.</p><p></p><p>John, Balthazaar, and the spellcasting agent follow the fleeing telepath down the street and then down an alley, while the second agent moves in to arrest the driver of the getaway car.</p><p></p><p>Nathan, already shot and a little nervous about someone else getting the bomb, looks over at Jobe, who is pressed against the side of the cop car, breathing heavily.</p><p></p><p>“Relax,” Nathan says. “I’ll be right back. I just need to dispose of this. Good show back there, by the way. Most impressive.”</p><p></p><p>He smiles, then stands up and looks for a dumpster he can ditch the bomb in. Instead he sees Scarpedin scampering down the street to the west, cursing as sniper shots ring out. In the distance, he can hear police sirens approaching.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>John, Balthazaar, and a Bureau agent give chase down alleys, through kitchens, past abandoned flood cars. John has always been fast, but he feels something old in him, something forgotten, the thrill of the hunt and the take-down. He has pulled ahead of Balthazaar and is nearly to the paint-covered invisible telepath when the man pulls something off his body and drops it in the middle of the alley.</p><p></p><p>John hears the click of metal on the ground, and he leaps for cover, jumping behind a pile of trash. The Bureau agent is closest, Balthazaar a bit further behind, so when the grenade goes off, the fragmented shards of steel that cut through the air kill the agent, stagger Balthazaar, and nearly hobble John.</p><p></p><p>Cursing, John spits out his cigarette and puts his hands on the vicious gash on his leg, hoping he can still heal. He doesn’t know quite how he does it, and he feels almost dirty doing so, but his wounds close, and he can walk again.</p><p></p><p>Balthazaar, temporarily slowed, runs up and helps John to his feet. The man is bleeding from shrapnel, but he looks undeterred. John takes a moment to make sure there’s nothing he can do for the agent who ran straight into the blast, and then they return to the chase, but now he’s not sure which way their quarry has gone.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Robert tosses a second smoke grenade at the base of the stairs to give himself some more cover. The sniper, whoever he is, isn’t stupid. After he took two shots at Scarpedin, he noticed Robert and fired at him, catching him in the belly. The necklace did done its job again, but a faint crack crossed it. Robert doesn’t want to risk being hit again.</p><p></p><p>He thinks he has it pinned down where the sniper is – hiding in fourth story motel room a half block away – but Robert isn’t confident enough in his aim to risk plowing a thousand bullets from this heavy-ass gun into a honeymoon suite accidentally. He waits for the latest shot to miss frenetic Scarpedin, and then he breaks from the cover of the smoke, hustling down the street, grunting under the weight of the gun and ammo.</p><p></p><p>He spies a rifle barrel sticking out of a window just before a bullet catches him square in the chest. He tastes blood in his mouth, but he still doesn’t have any holes.</p><p></p><p>“Robert, be careful,” Terry says.</p><p></p><p>Robert laughs weakly, really not sure why he’s risking his life like this. He drops to his knee, braces the mini-gun, aims, and fires. As he guessed, the first twenty or so bullets chew into the third floor and the balcony, but the next eighty or so tear the sniper’s room to pieces. Robert struggles against the kick of the gun, and finally releases the trigger five seconds later as his hit shots begin to stray off target.</p><p></p><p>In the distance he can hear Scarpedin cheering him.</p><p></p><p>The cop cars are approaching from down the street, and normally Robert would have nowhere to run, and no easy way to explain what he’s doing.</p><p></p><p>“Terry,” he says, “now.”</p><p></p><p>He feels the world around him lurch, and just as the lead cop car skids and presents its side to him, cutting off his escape, the whole street vanishes. Banyan and cyprus trees surround him, and his feet sink into a marsh. The spectral figure of Terry’s ghost is visible beside him, and there is no city in sight.</p><p></p><p>He’s once again on Gaia.</p><p></p><p>“That was awesome,” Terry says. “You got him.”</p><p></p><p>Robert suppresses his pleasure at having killed the *sshole sniper, and he shrugs for Terry’s benefit. “I’m not really much for killing, y’know?”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>Belladonna helps her father hurry down the alley, heading in the direction she guesses the Bureau did not go. She supports her father, his arm over her shoulder, since even with the curative magic he’s still a bit groggy from the poison.</p><p></p><p>She’s never been in this part of the city before, and has no idea where the alleys are taking them. Her father points in a direction, and she goes. She knows she has to get her father to safety, but she also has to know the truth of what happened.</p><p></p><p>“How much of it were you controlled for?” she asks.</p><p></p><p>“Not now,” her father says. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know who we can trust.”</p><p></p><p>Sirens sound in the distance, and Belladonna keeps running. Finally she slows, her voice ragged with anger.</p><p></p><p>“Tell me, dada. Did you kill Terry, or was it him? I’m not going anywhere until you answer me.”</p><p></p><p>Her father shakes free of her support and throws out a hand flamboyantly. “What do you want me to say? Yes, I did! I did because everything I had been told showed that he was a danger to you, to our home. This is what we <em>do!</em> And I asked you! A father should never need his daughter’s permission, but I asked you, I made sure.”</p><p></p><p>“You can’t kill an innocent man, dada!”</p><p></p><p>Her father shakes his head. “You will not tell your father what to do. I know there is far more to this city than you suspect, and I will do whatever I have to to keep you safe from-”</p><p></p><p>The sound of footsteps approaching silence Belladonna and her father, and they slip into the shadows that fill the alley. Belladonna can hear a man shouting, Balthazaar’s voice, the noises of pursuit, of radios calling out in an effort to stop someone. For a moment she thinks she and her father are in danger, but then she feels the faintest sensation, the tactile presence of a desperate, powerful mind looking for help. She knows it is the telepath, and she knows that he is aware of her.</p><p></p><p>The footsteps are growing close, but they falter, and she can feel the man again trying to take control of her. She cries out for help, the rest of the world a blur as she struggles to resist the compulsion. She hates this man, and is terrified of being under his control again.</p><p></p><p>Then she hears a gunshot, and she comes to. At first all she can see is a smear of red paint in the air, but then her mind cuts through what her eye is seeing, and she recognizes the telepath, dressed in body armor and adorned with countless weapons and devices. He is standing next to her father, she realizes, and they are grappling, the man trying to keep her father’s gun away.</p><p></p><p>The two men trade vicious kicks, elbow slams, and powerful short punches, and she sees a side of her father she long suspected, but had never believed. If he had not recently been poisoned, she knows her father would have killed the telepath already, even with just one arm. But he is slow and weakened.</p><p></p><p>The footsteps of the pursuers are close, but not close enough. For a moment she is gripped with her fear of the telepath and her anger at her father. But she sees the man has nearly turned the gun back at her father, and she cannot wait.</p><p></p><p>Belladonna steps in, draws her stiletto, and slams the needle-like blade down through the neck of the telepath’s armor. The man cries out and tries to shake free, but he loses his grip on Belladonna’s father. Caught between foes, the man tries to concentrate, to reach into their minds, but he never gets the chance.</p><p></p><p>Adrien Lee grabs the telepath’s face in his left hand, plants the gun to the man’s temple, and fires three times. The alley rings with the sound of the shots, and only after they fade away does he let go of the man and let his body fall. Belladonna blinks, but feels nothing at the sight of the dead man at her feet.</p><p></p><p>And then the Belladonna and her father are gone. When the wounded John and Balthazaar reach the body, there is no sign they were ever there.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>The gunshots have stopped. The sirens are no long swinging through the streets, but have parked and are setting up a perimeter around the crime scene. The smoke is clearing, and ambulances and news crews are on the way.</p><p></p><p>Nathan shuts the cover of the dumpster, pulls out his cell phone, and dials 911.</p><p></p><p>“Oh hello. No, I’m not in any danger. I just wanted to report that I just saw someone suspicious depositing a suitcase in a dumpster on St. Louis street, in an alley near the Starbucks. There was talk of a bomb, so I thought you might like to know. . . . Oh, it’s my pleasure. You sound very stressed, but don’t worry. Things should be under control. Well, have a nice day, and don’t forget to send some cops to look into that dumpster. Cheerio.”</p><p></p><p>He hangs up and turns off his phone. Down the street, he sees a black van open its doors, and Balthazaar, John, Scarpedin, and a few men in black suits scramble in. Nathan makes a mental note to tell the Bureau that there was a telepath, but now he has to go find Jobe Bundholm, give the man a thousand dollars, and tell the news crews what a hero he was. With luck, Mrs. Bundholm will see him on the news at noon.</p><p></p><p><strong><em>End of Ninth Session</em></strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 2848443, member: 63"] [i]November 1, 2005 7:35 am[/i] The Starbucks is empty except for Belladonna, her father, the bomb disarmer, and a dying barrista, shot by her father. Now Belladonna struggles, feeling the telepath’s will pressing down upon her again. The barrista is bleeding on the floor, and she can hear a back door of the shop being broken in as what she guesses are Bureau agents storm the coffee shop from the alley. She knows that the telepath wants her and her father to die to cover his tracks, and already she can see her father raising his gun to point at the door the Bureau will enter from. With the telepath forcing her body under his control, she feels like she has too much time to watch what is happening, too much time to see her father being driven to a suicidal attack, and too much time for her to sit and be powerless. She refuses to be powerless, to be the defenseless little girl her father always saw her as. For just a moment, her will surges, and she finds the strength to move. The door to the back entrance is kicked open as she yanks a stiletto out of her hair. Her father aims for the Bureau agents as she opens her only vial of rare tetrodotoxin and coats her blade. And the Bureau agents shout for him to drop his gun as Belladonna stands up between the gunmen and drives the stilleto blade into her father’s forearm, straight into the vein. “Don’t shoot!” she shouts. Her father glares at her with an anger that is not his own, and his body siezes up as the poison paralyzes his nerves. His gun clatters to the ground, and she catches him as he begins to fall. The agents surround her, black suits pressing in and sweeping across the room, securing the building. One agent stoops next to the bleeding barrista, puts a hand on the man’s chest, and concentrates. The barrista begins to cough as he comes back from the brink of death. “Where’s the bomb?” one demands, pointing a gun at Belladonna. Belladonna points outside, where Nathan ran. “The bomb’s disarmed,” says the man who just disarmed the bomb, cowering on the floor. “My name is Jobe Bundholm, NOPD.” While the agents are distracted, Belladonna conceals the dagger in her hair again. Then she yells at one the agents. “My father was mind-controlled. He’s been poisoned. You have magic, don’t you?” The agent who healed the barrista is about to stop and help when the agent interrogating Jobe curses. “Sh*t,” he says. “He’s a cop. Wipe him.” The spellcasting agent goes over to Jobe, puts a hand over his eyes, and concentrates. Jobe looks dazed. Meanwhile, the lead agent reports into a shoulder radio, “A witness says there’s a teep nearby. Raine, Balthazaar, be on watch. The Lees are not the primary suspect. I repeat there is a teep nearby.” “Dammit,” Belladonna says. “My father is going to die.” The magic-using agent turns around, touches her father on his chest, and whispers a Creole prayer. Her father begins to breathe again. The agent nods to Belladonna, but looks displeased. “More cops coming,” says the lead agent. “The situation is over for now. Withdraw, everyone.” “What about these two?” says the agent who just saved Belladonna’s father. The lead agent shakes his head. “No time. We’re out.” And almost as quickly as they came in, the Bureau agents are gone, leaving no trace they were there. Jobe Bundholm blinks, then staggers to his feet and runs for the door. [center]* * *[/center] Struggling with the pain of a bullet wound in his shoulder, Nathan takes a best guess of the direction the sniper shot came from – down the street to the west – and he takes cover in front of the eastern entrance of the Starbucks. The Starbucks is probably nearly empty by now, and Nathan hopes the sniper won’t get trigger happy and start firing at pedestrians. Jobe runs out the front door, and Nathan stops him from running out into the sniper’s view. “What’s going on in there?” he asks. Jobe opens his mouth as if to explain, but words fail him. Just then, Nathan notices a police car pulling up from the south. The car stops nearly in front of the Starbucks, and a cop kicks open the door. At the same time, John comes running over from the bus stop across the street. “Ah, John,” Nathan says, “good to see you. Here, come help me.” Nathan then turns to the cop. “Officer!” He starts toward the police officer, holding Jobe by his arm, with John following angrily. As he passes back in front of the Starbucks, he looks inside, but sees that it is completely empty. The police officer comes up, hand on his holster, and he orders them to stop. “Yes, officer,” Nathan says, “but here in the suitcase is the bomb that just scared everyone out of here.” “Nathan,” John says, “let’s get the hell out of here. There’s still a sniper around.” The cop hesitates, then holds out a hand and asks for the suitcase. Nathan hands it over. In the distance he can hear the intermittent retorts of a sniper rifle firing, but he’s confident he’s safe. The cop takes the briefcase and says into his radio that he has the bomb. He puts the bomb in his car, and then stops behind the car door, his body partially concealed by the door. Nathan senses that something is wrong, and he pushes Jobe to the ground just in time as the cop turns and fires. [center]* * *[/center] Scarpedin says nothing as he scans for the sniper, using his own sniper rifle. Robert watches from over his shoulder, dispassionate at the sight of Nathan being struck by a sniper bullet. He watches Nathan duck for cover, and sees faintly in the corners and shadows of the intersection, a dozen or more Bureau agents moving through alleys, trying to cover the scene without being seen. The panic is just dying down in the street, and the sniper has not fired a second shot in half a minute, when Robert gets impatient and leans out the window, trying to get a view of what’s going on. Then for a moment he is completely dazed as his head is whipped sideways. When he gets his bearings again, he has fallen over, knocking Scarpedin to the floor of their motel room. “What the hell?” Robert says, feeling a horrible welt on the side of his face. “You were shot,” Scarpedin says. “In the head.” Unfazed, Scarpedin gets back to the window and goes back to searching for the sniper, careful not to expose any of his body, just the sniper scope. Robert blinks, then remembers the necklace he took off the Canadian woman. Now that he thinks of it, she wasn’t [i]nearly[/i] as torn to bits by the mini-gun as he would have expected. “Y’know,” Robert says, “any other day I would need a while to get over not just dying, but I think I’m good. Hey, Scarpedin, give me that bracelet Terry’s on.” The window Scarpedin is aiming out of shatters as a bullet strikes it and flies into the room. Scarpedin stands up angrily and reaches for his sword, but Robert stops him. “I’d say don’t be stupid,” Robert says, “but that’d be pointless. How about, ‘you be the diversion’?” Scarpedin grimaces, then hands Robert the Terry bracelet. Robert goes over his plan with Terry’s ghost as he gathers up two pocketfuls of smoke grenades, the mini-gun, and a bit of ammo. “Make sure you don’t leave any of this here,” Robert says as he tosses a smoke grenade out the door onto the balcony. “This cost a lot of money. Especially that sniper rifle which did us exactly zero good.” “Whoa, wait,” Scarpedin says. “I’m supposed to run out there and let the guy shoot at me?” Robert nods, grinning. “I gotta find out where he is. Don’t worry. Apparently John, the [i]angel[/i], can heal you if you get shot. Now you flank left, and I’ll stick to the cover of-” Scarpedin interrupts. “Alright, time’s up, let’s do this!” Scarpedin springs out of the motel room and sprints for the staircase to the ground floor, screaming something that sounds like, [i]“Leeroy JENKINS!”[/i] Robert sighs. “He ran off without the necklace?” Terry says. Robert nods. “Alright, let’s go save his ass.” [center]* * *[/center] Nathan tries to avoid getting shot as John steps inside the cop’s reach and elbow’s the man in the bottom of his chin, dazing him. John is busy disarming him and shooting out his kneecap when Nathan notices another car approaching. It looks just like the one that dropped off Adrien Lee and Belladonna earlier. John says, “He must’ve been working for Mr. Lee.” Before Nathan can explain the situation, the second car screeches to a stop in the middle of the street near the cop car. A back seat door opens, and Nathan and John both aim guns and take cover behind the hood of the cop car. But no one emerges. The driver window is black, impenetrably tinted. Strangely, the passenger seat of the cop car opens, and then the briefcase holding the bomb begins to move as if pulled by an invisible hand. Nathan gasps and fires, and he hears a man grunt. The briefcase falls back into the passenger seat, and Nathan leaps through the open driver’s door of the cop car to grab it. “Someone’s invisible,” Nathan tells John. John fires off two errant shots at the space between the cop car and the second car. “Bugger,” shouts a disembodied voice in the street. “Let’s go!” The back door of the getaway car starts to swing, but before Nathan or John can react, Balthazaar and two other agents appear from the nearby alley beside the Starbucks. One agent snaps a finger, and the getaway car suddenly goes dead as its engine shuts off. Balthazaar throws what looks like a small grenade in the street, and when it goes off it bursts with a spray of fluorescent red paint. The paint coats the invisible telepath, and though he leaps clear of the paint cloud, he’s still faintly visible. “After him,” Balthazaar shouts. John, Balthazaar, and the spellcasting agent follow the fleeing telepath down the street and then down an alley, while the second agent moves in to arrest the driver of the getaway car. Nathan, already shot and a little nervous about someone else getting the bomb, looks over at Jobe, who is pressed against the side of the cop car, breathing heavily. “Relax,” Nathan says. “I’ll be right back. I just need to dispose of this. Good show back there, by the way. Most impressive.” He smiles, then stands up and looks for a dumpster he can ditch the bomb in. Instead he sees Scarpedin scampering down the street to the west, cursing as sniper shots ring out. In the distance, he can hear police sirens approaching. [center]* * *[/center] John, Balthazaar, and a Bureau agent give chase down alleys, through kitchens, past abandoned flood cars. John has always been fast, but he feels something old in him, something forgotten, the thrill of the hunt and the take-down. He has pulled ahead of Balthazaar and is nearly to the paint-covered invisible telepath when the man pulls something off his body and drops it in the middle of the alley. John hears the click of metal on the ground, and he leaps for cover, jumping behind a pile of trash. The Bureau agent is closest, Balthazaar a bit further behind, so when the grenade goes off, the fragmented shards of steel that cut through the air kill the agent, stagger Balthazaar, and nearly hobble John. Cursing, John spits out his cigarette and puts his hands on the vicious gash on his leg, hoping he can still heal. He doesn’t know quite how he does it, and he feels almost dirty doing so, but his wounds close, and he can walk again. Balthazaar, temporarily slowed, runs up and helps John to his feet. The man is bleeding from shrapnel, but he looks undeterred. John takes a moment to make sure there’s nothing he can do for the agent who ran straight into the blast, and then they return to the chase, but now he’s not sure which way their quarry has gone. [center]* * *[/center] Robert tosses a second smoke grenade at the base of the stairs to give himself some more cover. The sniper, whoever he is, isn’t stupid. After he took two shots at Scarpedin, he noticed Robert and fired at him, catching him in the belly. The necklace did done its job again, but a faint crack crossed it. Robert doesn’t want to risk being hit again. He thinks he has it pinned down where the sniper is – hiding in fourth story motel room a half block away – but Robert isn’t confident enough in his aim to risk plowing a thousand bullets from this heavy-ass gun into a honeymoon suite accidentally. He waits for the latest shot to miss frenetic Scarpedin, and then he breaks from the cover of the smoke, hustling down the street, grunting under the weight of the gun and ammo. He spies a rifle barrel sticking out of a window just before a bullet catches him square in the chest. He tastes blood in his mouth, but he still doesn’t have any holes. “Robert, be careful,” Terry says. Robert laughs weakly, really not sure why he’s risking his life like this. He drops to his knee, braces the mini-gun, aims, and fires. As he guessed, the first twenty or so bullets chew into the third floor and the balcony, but the next eighty or so tear the sniper’s room to pieces. Robert struggles against the kick of the gun, and finally releases the trigger five seconds later as his hit shots begin to stray off target. In the distance he can hear Scarpedin cheering him. The cop cars are approaching from down the street, and normally Robert would have nowhere to run, and no easy way to explain what he’s doing. “Terry,” he says, “now.” He feels the world around him lurch, and just as the lead cop car skids and presents its side to him, cutting off his escape, the whole street vanishes. Banyan and cyprus trees surround him, and his feet sink into a marsh. The spectral figure of Terry’s ghost is visible beside him, and there is no city in sight. He’s once again on Gaia. “That was awesome,” Terry says. “You got him.” Robert suppresses his pleasure at having killed the *sshole sniper, and he shrugs for Terry’s benefit. “I’m not really much for killing, y’know?” [center]* * *[/center] Belladonna helps her father hurry down the alley, heading in the direction she guesses the Bureau did not go. She supports her father, his arm over her shoulder, since even with the curative magic he’s still a bit groggy from the poison. She’s never been in this part of the city before, and has no idea where the alleys are taking them. Her father points in a direction, and she goes. She knows she has to get her father to safety, but she also has to know the truth of what happened. “How much of it were you controlled for?” she asks. “Not now,” her father says. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know who we can trust.” Sirens sound in the distance, and Belladonna keeps running. Finally she slows, her voice ragged with anger. “Tell me, dada. Did you kill Terry, or was it him? I’m not going anywhere until you answer me.” Her father shakes free of her support and throws out a hand flamboyantly. “What do you want me to say? Yes, I did! I did because everything I had been told showed that he was a danger to you, to our home. This is what we [i]do![/i] And I asked you! A father should never need his daughter’s permission, but I asked you, I made sure.” “You can’t kill an innocent man, dada!” Her father shakes his head. “You will not tell your father what to do. I know there is far more to this city than you suspect, and I will do whatever I have to to keep you safe from-” The sound of footsteps approaching silence Belladonna and her father, and they slip into the shadows that fill the alley. Belladonna can hear a man shouting, Balthazaar’s voice, the noises of pursuit, of radios calling out in an effort to stop someone. For a moment she thinks she and her father are in danger, but then she feels the faintest sensation, the tactile presence of a desperate, powerful mind looking for help. She knows it is the telepath, and she knows that he is aware of her. The footsteps are growing close, but they falter, and she can feel the man again trying to take control of her. She cries out for help, the rest of the world a blur as she struggles to resist the compulsion. She hates this man, and is terrified of being under his control again. Then she hears a gunshot, and she comes to. At first all she can see is a smear of red paint in the air, but then her mind cuts through what her eye is seeing, and she recognizes the telepath, dressed in body armor and adorned with countless weapons and devices. He is standing next to her father, she realizes, and they are grappling, the man trying to keep her father’s gun away. The two men trade vicious kicks, elbow slams, and powerful short punches, and she sees a side of her father she long suspected, but had never believed. If he had not recently been poisoned, she knows her father would have killed the telepath already, even with just one arm. But he is slow and weakened. The footsteps of the pursuers are close, but not close enough. For a moment she is gripped with her fear of the telepath and her anger at her father. But she sees the man has nearly turned the gun back at her father, and she cannot wait. Belladonna steps in, draws her stiletto, and slams the needle-like blade down through the neck of the telepath’s armor. The man cries out and tries to shake free, but he loses his grip on Belladonna’s father. Caught between foes, the man tries to concentrate, to reach into their minds, but he never gets the chance. Adrien Lee grabs the telepath’s face in his left hand, plants the gun to the man’s temple, and fires three times. The alley rings with the sound of the shots, and only after they fade away does he let go of the man and let his body fall. Belladonna blinks, but feels nothing at the sight of the dead man at her feet. And then the Belladonna and her father are gone. When the wounded John and Balthazaar reach the body, there is no sign they were ever there. [center]* * *[/center] The gunshots have stopped. The sirens are no long swinging through the streets, but have parked and are setting up a perimeter around the crime scene. The smoke is clearing, and ambulances and news crews are on the way. Nathan shuts the cover of the dumpster, pulls out his cell phone, and dials 911. “Oh hello. No, I’m not in any danger. I just wanted to report that I just saw someone suspicious depositing a suitcase in a dumpster on St. Louis street, in an alley near the Starbucks. There was talk of a bomb, so I thought you might like to know. . . . Oh, it’s my pleasure. You sound very stressed, but don’t worry. Things should be under control. Well, have a nice day, and don’t forget to send some cops to look into that dumpster. Cheerio.” He hangs up and turns off his phone. Down the street, he sees a black van open its doors, and Balthazaar, John, Scarpedin, and a few men in black suits scramble in. Nathan makes a mental note to tell the Bureau that there was a telepath, but now he has to go find Jobe Bundholm, give the man a thousand dollars, and tell the news crews what a hero he was. With luck, Mrs. Bundholm will see him on the news at noon. [b][i]End of Ninth Session[/i][/b][i][/i] [/QUOTE]
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High Fantasy Modern Storyhour - The Long Road (updated December 7)
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