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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: 2890392" data-attributes="member: 63"><p><strong>Chapter Twelve, Part Five</strong></p><p></p><p>“Wow,” Terry says, “it’s only eleven a.m.? Ah well. Time to go back to being ignored.”</p><p></p><p>As they’re back on Terra, Robert is the only person to hear him. He smiles, and Jenny thinks it’s for her. They sure seem to be getting along well, despite Robert hating her boss.</p><p></p><p>The Chief and Jenny get the Bureau on Terra up to date on the information from Gaia, and have them start checking into both the long-term issue of fixing the separation of the two worlds, and the short-term problem of the mage who had the cop killed the night before. If their hunch is correct that he was after Terry, then he might be involved in the overall plot.</p><p></p><p>Since the rest of the group wants to get away from the Bureau for a while, they decide to follow an unrelated personal issue on John’s behalf. The Bureau has not been able to sufficiently translate the text in the Egyptian book John has, the one which Robert was tasked to give to him by a thought eater in Gaian New Orleans, so they decide to look up an Egyptian museum on the outskirts of the city, since the director, one Benjamin Durbin, has advanced degrees in Egyptology.</p><p></p><p>Jenny goes along, and she brings along Ian as back-up. Bonnie tags along because she likes the group, and Nathan vouches for her, sensing that she’ll be important some time in the future. Wiji-wiji comes because Robert’s afraid to let the fey out of his sight. To all of them, Jenny gives a reminder that Durbin is not aware of the existence of magic, and that they should not be careful to change any of that.</p><p></p><p>The museum looks like a mausoleum, its walls polished black marble, and its design wholly reminiscent of ancient Egypt. The large group – Ian, Jenny, Bonnie, John, Robert, Nathan, and Scarpedin – offers a meager donation when they enter the museum, and while the secretary contacts Dr. Durbin for them, they browse through the old artifacts.</p><p></p><p>“Keep an eye on Ian,” Jenny says with a quiet smile to Robert. They’re out of earshot of the mercenary mage.</p><p></p><p>“What for?” Robert asks. He idly looks at Arabic inscriptions on a more recent artifact.</p><p></p><p>Jenny leans in close, as if to share a secret, and perhaps something more.</p><p></p><p>“He styles himself a treasure hunter and tomb raider. He always has bad luck when he goes into tombs, though. He got bonded to his ghost in an old Catholic vault, and I arrested him for trying to explore a maze under an Indian burial mound. That’s why he works for us now. So make sure he doesn’t steal anything, okay?”</p><p></p><p>“Okay,” Robert says. “You know, that reminds me of a time I went to a convenience store, bought a candybar, and had a perfectly normal day. Weird, isn’t it? It’s like we have so much in common.”</p><p></p><p>He laughs. Jenny laughs with him.</p><p></p><p>“Shush,” hisses Ian from across the room. “You’ll wake the dead, and the dead get pissed when you bother them.”</p><p></p><p>A new voice says, “Are you an expert on the dead?”</p><p></p><p>The group looks up from their curiosity to see a tanned bald man in a dark gray suit, wearing black rubber gloves. He looks a bit like Ben Kingsley. With a smile to Ian, he walks over to the statue of Anubis Ian was so looking at, then nods to it like it’s an old friend.</p><p></p><p>“If the dead are properly put to rest,” the man says, “nothing can wake them. I am Dr. Durbin. My secretary told me you have business with me.”</p><p></p><p>John nods to get the man’s attention and pulls out the book. Durbin draws in an awed breath, then regains his composure.</p><p></p><p>“Let us go back to my private study,” he says.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p></p><p>The museum is just the front of a rather large complex, fenced in with razor wire and shaded with massive trees covered in Spanish moss. A chain-link fence walls in the walkway to a small building in back, separating the walkway from a small garden of Egyptian paraphenalia, including a few small black pyramids marked like tombstones. </p><p></p><p>Terry feels oddly subdued here, and he senses some sort of subtle magic that would make it harder for him to use spells. There are no ghosts in the garden, but Terry sees Giovanni considering the place with scorn.</p><p></p><p>A slender black dog prowls the garden, and it growls at Ian. If not for the chain-link fence, the hound, which looks almost like a black jackal, would likely attack Ian.</p><p></p><p>Scarpedin asks, “Can I buy your dog?”</p><p></p><p>Durbin, deathly serious, shakes his head. “No. I dare not risk letting him free. He’s quite savage to anyone but me. Come inside. This is my mortuary.”</p><p></p><p>The small building is indeed a strange combination of library, morgue, and embalming studio. A storage room contains all the necessary materials for mummification, a process which Durbin says he has nearly perfected. He claims that he has to make all his own material, which considerably slows the process. While Durbin heads into a kitchen to get some fig cookies, Scarpedin quietly announces that he doesn’t trust the man, and thinks they should kill him.</p><p></p><p>The group relaxes with tea and cookies in Dr. Durbin’s library, and John shows the Egyptologist the book. With little trouble, the doctor skims the text and provides a translation. He says that the book is a copy of an older text, a heretical book that claims the Egyptian gods were mere mortals, and that they stole their divinity by slaying a powerful creature of the heavens. The illustration with this passage shows something vaguely reminiscent of an angel.</p><p></p><p>“Does the angel look like someone famous?” Scarpedin asks.</p><p></p><p>“What?” John says. “Shut up. This is important.”</p><p></p><p>Bonnie leans in and looks at the illustration. She squints, then says, “I think he looks kinda like that chap from <em>Pulp Fiction</em>, Samuel L. Jackson.”</p><p></p><p>“Wow,” Ian says. “The Egyptian pantheon killed Samuel L. Jackson. They must’ve been some bad mutha-”</p><p></p><p>“Shut your mouth,” Durbin says. “Do not repeat such heresy.”</p><p></p><p>Durbin says that he’s very interested in the book, especially a section in the back that is not in any language he’s familiar with, a language John grudgingly admits looks familiar, but he can’t read it either. (The book had also resisted deciphering spells the Bureau had tried.) Durbin offers to buy the book and provide a translation if he can manage it, and John agrees. Durbin says he wants to make sure he has legal proof of this, seeing as the book is highly rare. He wants to make sure he will have credibility if he decides to present this to some scholarly journal, so he goes to draft a contract on his computer.</p><p></p><p>“So,” Ian says when Durbin leaves the room, “who else wants to find an angel and kill it to become a god? C’mon, I can’t be the only one thinking it.”</p><p></p><p>“John’s an angel,” Nathan says. “I had a vision of-”</p><p></p><p>He stops in mid-sentence, looking stricken.</p><p></p><p>“Jenny,” he says, “call the Bureau.”</p><p></p><p>Just then, Nathan’s phone rings. He pulls it out and looks at it like it’s dangerous.</p><p></p><p>Jenny flips out her phone and sends in a call with incredible speed. Nathan’s phone rings a second time, and the rest of the group watches in confusion. Jenny gets an answer on her phone.</p><p></p><p>“Tagin,” she says, “I need you to trace a call to Nathan’s phone, <em>now</em>.”</p><p></p><p>Nathan’s phone rings a third time.</p><p></p><p>“It goes to voicemail on the fifth ring,” he says with casual nervousness.</p><p></p><p>It rings again.</p><p></p><p>Jenny says, “It’s ready. Answer it.”</p><p></p><p>Nathan answers the call and puts it on his cell’s speaker-phone. “Hello. This is Nathaniel Beckford. How may I help you?”</p><p></p><p>“You got a crowd listening in?” says a deep male voice.</p><p></p><p>“I am with some friends,” Nathan says, “if that’s what you mean. Please, if you’d prefer I keep this private I can go outside. It’ll be just a minute.”</p><p></p><p>“Nah,” the man says. “I’m in kinda a rush. Look, you’ve got someone in your group who can travel to Gaia, and my employer has changed his mind. He doesn’t want you dead. He likes the way you handled yourself in New Orleans, and he’d like to hire you. Is the planeshifter there?”</p><p></p><p>Nathan looks around the group with a bit of a shrug. Terry knows he can’t talk over a phone, and every second the group tries to stall or lie, the more likely they are to get found out.</p><p></p><p>“Yeah,” Scarpedin says, “I’m here. What’s up, b*tch?”</p><p></p><p>Everyone else in the group suppresses a groan.</p><p></p><p>“Terry Abrams?” the man on the phone says.</p><p></p><p>“Yeah,” Scarpedin says. “What’s it to you? You wanna hire me? Okay, give me a number. In fact, gimme a number, then multiply it by five, because where I go, my posse goes.”</p><p></p><p>The voice laughs. “Hey, I know you’re probably nervous, seeing as we did try to kill you and all, but you kicked the asses of the guys we sent, so we decided we’d like to let you hear our side of the story.”</p><p></p><p>“I’m not hearing a number,” Scarpedin says. “And I like numbers with lots of zeroes in them. I’ve been looking to buy myself, y’know, a jet, and those cost a lot.”</p><p></p><p>John looks like he can barely restrain himself from throttling Scarpedin. He mouths out some sort of advice, but Scarpedin, grinning, doesn’t notice.</p><p></p><p>“I’ve got a suitcase with fifty thousand dollars,” the voice says, “for the trouble of you coming to a first meeting.”</p><p></p><p>Jenny, trying to divide her attention between this call and the call she placed to the Bureau, has a look on her face like something doesn’t fit.</p><p></p><p>“So,” Scarpedin says, “multiplied by five, that’s two-hundred and fifty thousand. That’s four zeroes. I can handle that.”</p><p></p><p>“Hey, one suitcase,” the voice says. “There’s a lot more available if you see things our way.”</p><p></p><p>Nathan interjects, “How do we know you won’t try to betray us?”</p><p></p><p>The man laughs. “Have we been able to beat you yet? There’s an outdoor café at the riverwalk. Meet me there at five, and bring as many of you as you want. Just leave the Bureau out of this.”</p><p></p><p>The man hangs up.</p><p></p><p>Robert asks, “Jenny?”</p><p></p><p>“We have an address,” she says. “He had some dummy transits on the call, but we back-tracked. A team is on the way. If we hurry we can get there in time.”</p><p></p><p>“No,” Robert says. “C’mon, Jenny. It’s so obvious. The guy calls us, let’s us track him? He expects us to go after him. He’s probably got an ambush planned, so he can grab ‘Terry.’ ”</p><p></p><p>Scarpedin grins proudly. “Ask Terry how I did. How’d I do, Terry? Pretty f*cking convincing, huh? Muthaf*cker should know not to mess with the <em>Abrams</em>.”</p><p></p><p>Jenny blinks. “Robert, we <em>expect</em> him to lay an ambush. The Chief himself is heading in on this one. More manpower can only help.”</p><p></p><p>“The Chief’s going?” John says. He scoffs. “Yeah, we’re staying here.”</p><p></p><p>Jenny turns to Nathan.</p><p></p><p>“I’m sorry Jenny,” Nathan says. “I’m hesitant, but I have to agree with Robert on this one. Keeping Terry’s more important.”</p><p></p><p>Ian laughs. “Why don’t we just send the vampire with a soul here?” He nods toward John. “He and Buffy,” he nods at Bonnie, “could handle it.”</p><p></p><p>Durbin comes back then, carrying a printed contract.</p><p></p><p>“Who were you talking to?” he asks.</p><p></p><p>“Our financer,” Robert lies promptly. “We were double-checking the offer you provided, and making sure John had a legal claim to sell the book. Everything sounds in order.”</p><p></p><p>“Excellent,” Durbin says. “This book looks like it will be quite important. Here’s the paperwork. Let us make a deal.”</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 2890392, member: 63"] [b]Chapter Twelve, Part Five[/b] “Wow,” Terry says, “it’s only eleven a.m.? Ah well. Time to go back to being ignored.” As they’re back on Terra, Robert is the only person to hear him. He smiles, and Jenny thinks it’s for her. They sure seem to be getting along well, despite Robert hating her boss. The Chief and Jenny get the Bureau on Terra up to date on the information from Gaia, and have them start checking into both the long-term issue of fixing the separation of the two worlds, and the short-term problem of the mage who had the cop killed the night before. If their hunch is correct that he was after Terry, then he might be involved in the overall plot. Since the rest of the group wants to get away from the Bureau for a while, they decide to follow an unrelated personal issue on John’s behalf. The Bureau has not been able to sufficiently translate the text in the Egyptian book John has, the one which Robert was tasked to give to him by a thought eater in Gaian New Orleans, so they decide to look up an Egyptian museum on the outskirts of the city, since the director, one Benjamin Durbin, has advanced degrees in Egyptology. Jenny goes along, and she brings along Ian as back-up. Bonnie tags along because she likes the group, and Nathan vouches for her, sensing that she’ll be important some time in the future. Wiji-wiji comes because Robert’s afraid to let the fey out of his sight. To all of them, Jenny gives a reminder that Durbin is not aware of the existence of magic, and that they should not be careful to change any of that. The museum looks like a mausoleum, its walls polished black marble, and its design wholly reminiscent of ancient Egypt. The large group – Ian, Jenny, Bonnie, John, Robert, Nathan, and Scarpedin – offers a meager donation when they enter the museum, and while the secretary contacts Dr. Durbin for them, they browse through the old artifacts. “Keep an eye on Ian,” Jenny says with a quiet smile to Robert. They’re out of earshot of the mercenary mage. “What for?” Robert asks. He idly looks at Arabic inscriptions on a more recent artifact. Jenny leans in close, as if to share a secret, and perhaps something more. “He styles himself a treasure hunter and tomb raider. He always has bad luck when he goes into tombs, though. He got bonded to his ghost in an old Catholic vault, and I arrested him for trying to explore a maze under an Indian burial mound. That’s why he works for us now. So make sure he doesn’t steal anything, okay?” “Okay,” Robert says. “You know, that reminds me of a time I went to a convenience store, bought a candybar, and had a perfectly normal day. Weird, isn’t it? It’s like we have so much in common.” He laughs. Jenny laughs with him. “Shush,” hisses Ian from across the room. “You’ll wake the dead, and the dead get pissed when you bother them.” A new voice says, “Are you an expert on the dead?” The group looks up from their curiosity to see a tanned bald man in a dark gray suit, wearing black rubber gloves. He looks a bit like Ben Kingsley. With a smile to Ian, he walks over to the statue of Anubis Ian was so looking at, then nods to it like it’s an old friend. “If the dead are properly put to rest,” the man says, “nothing can wake them. I am Dr. Durbin. My secretary told me you have business with me.” John nods to get the man’s attention and pulls out the book. Durbin draws in an awed breath, then regains his composure. “Let us go back to my private study,” he says. [center]* * *[/center] The museum is just the front of a rather large complex, fenced in with razor wire and shaded with massive trees covered in Spanish moss. A chain-link fence walls in the walkway to a small building in back, separating the walkway from a small garden of Egyptian paraphenalia, including a few small black pyramids marked like tombstones. Terry feels oddly subdued here, and he senses some sort of subtle magic that would make it harder for him to use spells. There are no ghosts in the garden, but Terry sees Giovanni considering the place with scorn. A slender black dog prowls the garden, and it growls at Ian. If not for the chain-link fence, the hound, which looks almost like a black jackal, would likely attack Ian. Scarpedin asks, “Can I buy your dog?” Durbin, deathly serious, shakes his head. “No. I dare not risk letting him free. He’s quite savage to anyone but me. Come inside. This is my mortuary.” The small building is indeed a strange combination of library, morgue, and embalming studio. A storage room contains all the necessary materials for mummification, a process which Durbin says he has nearly perfected. He claims that he has to make all his own material, which considerably slows the process. While Durbin heads into a kitchen to get some fig cookies, Scarpedin quietly announces that he doesn’t trust the man, and thinks they should kill him. The group relaxes with tea and cookies in Dr. Durbin’s library, and John shows the Egyptologist the book. With little trouble, the doctor skims the text and provides a translation. He says that the book is a copy of an older text, a heretical book that claims the Egyptian gods were mere mortals, and that they stole their divinity by slaying a powerful creature of the heavens. The illustration with this passage shows something vaguely reminiscent of an angel. “Does the angel look like someone famous?” Scarpedin asks. “What?” John says. “Shut up. This is important.” Bonnie leans in and looks at the illustration. She squints, then says, “I think he looks kinda like that chap from [i]Pulp Fiction[/i], Samuel L. Jackson.” “Wow,” Ian says. “The Egyptian pantheon killed Samuel L. Jackson. They must’ve been some bad mutha-” “Shut your mouth,” Durbin says. “Do not repeat such heresy.” Durbin says that he’s very interested in the book, especially a section in the back that is not in any language he’s familiar with, a language John grudgingly admits looks familiar, but he can’t read it either. (The book had also resisted deciphering spells the Bureau had tried.) Durbin offers to buy the book and provide a translation if he can manage it, and John agrees. Durbin says he wants to make sure he has legal proof of this, seeing as the book is highly rare. He wants to make sure he will have credibility if he decides to present this to some scholarly journal, so he goes to draft a contract on his computer. “So,” Ian says when Durbin leaves the room, “who else wants to find an angel and kill it to become a god? C’mon, I can’t be the only one thinking it.” “John’s an angel,” Nathan says. “I had a vision of-” He stops in mid-sentence, looking stricken. “Jenny,” he says, “call the Bureau.” Just then, Nathan’s phone rings. He pulls it out and looks at it like it’s dangerous. Jenny flips out her phone and sends in a call with incredible speed. Nathan’s phone rings a second time, and the rest of the group watches in confusion. Jenny gets an answer on her phone. “Tagin,” she says, “I need you to trace a call to Nathan’s phone, [i]now[/i].” Nathan’s phone rings a third time. “It goes to voicemail on the fifth ring,” he says with casual nervousness. It rings again. Jenny says, “It’s ready. Answer it.” Nathan answers the call and puts it on his cell’s speaker-phone. “Hello. This is Nathaniel Beckford. How may I help you?” “You got a crowd listening in?” says a deep male voice. “I am with some friends,” Nathan says, “if that’s what you mean. Please, if you’d prefer I keep this private I can go outside. It’ll be just a minute.” “Nah,” the man says. “I’m in kinda a rush. Look, you’ve got someone in your group who can travel to Gaia, and my employer has changed his mind. He doesn’t want you dead. He likes the way you handled yourself in New Orleans, and he’d like to hire you. Is the planeshifter there?” Nathan looks around the group with a bit of a shrug. Terry knows he can’t talk over a phone, and every second the group tries to stall or lie, the more likely they are to get found out. “Yeah,” Scarpedin says, “I’m here. What’s up, b*tch?” Everyone else in the group suppresses a groan. “Terry Abrams?” the man on the phone says. “Yeah,” Scarpedin says. “What’s it to you? You wanna hire me? Okay, give me a number. In fact, gimme a number, then multiply it by five, because where I go, my posse goes.” The voice laughs. “Hey, I know you’re probably nervous, seeing as we did try to kill you and all, but you kicked the asses of the guys we sent, so we decided we’d like to let you hear our side of the story.” “I’m not hearing a number,” Scarpedin says. “And I like numbers with lots of zeroes in them. I’ve been looking to buy myself, y’know, a jet, and those cost a lot.” John looks like he can barely restrain himself from throttling Scarpedin. He mouths out some sort of advice, but Scarpedin, grinning, doesn’t notice. “I’ve got a suitcase with fifty thousand dollars,” the voice says, “for the trouble of you coming to a first meeting.” Jenny, trying to divide her attention between this call and the call she placed to the Bureau, has a look on her face like something doesn’t fit. “So,” Scarpedin says, “multiplied by five, that’s two-hundred and fifty thousand. That’s four zeroes. I can handle that.” “Hey, one suitcase,” the voice says. “There’s a lot more available if you see things our way.” Nathan interjects, “How do we know you won’t try to betray us?” The man laughs. “Have we been able to beat you yet? There’s an outdoor café at the riverwalk. Meet me there at five, and bring as many of you as you want. Just leave the Bureau out of this.” The man hangs up. Robert asks, “Jenny?” “We have an address,” she says. “He had some dummy transits on the call, but we back-tracked. A team is on the way. If we hurry we can get there in time.” “No,” Robert says. “C’mon, Jenny. It’s so obvious. The guy calls us, let’s us track him? He expects us to go after him. He’s probably got an ambush planned, so he can grab ‘Terry.’ ” Scarpedin grins proudly. “Ask Terry how I did. How’d I do, Terry? Pretty f*cking convincing, huh? Muthaf*cker should know not to mess with the [i]Abrams[/i].” Jenny blinks. “Robert, we [i]expect[/i] him to lay an ambush. The Chief himself is heading in on this one. More manpower can only help.” “The Chief’s going?” John says. He scoffs. “Yeah, we’re staying here.” Jenny turns to Nathan. “I’m sorry Jenny,” Nathan says. “I’m hesitant, but I have to agree with Robert on this one. Keeping Terry’s more important.” Ian laughs. “Why don’t we just send the vampire with a soul here?” He nods toward John. “He and Buffy,” he nods at Bonnie, “could handle it.” Durbin comes back then, carrying a printed contract. “Who were you talking to?” he asks. “Our financer,” Robert lies promptly. “We were double-checking the offer you provided, and making sure John had a legal claim to sell the book. Everything sounds in order.” “Excellent,” Durbin says. “This book looks like it will be quite important. Here’s the paperwork. Let us make a deal.” [/QUOTE]
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