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When Journalists Attack: Electioneering (Day 1)

"Hmmm - I suppose you have a point about my getting on scene. I can be there before the rest of you make it six blocks, if I leave now."

Elias gathers the rest of his gear and adds, "I'll look the situation over and see if I can find any access points. The rest of you, travel inobtrusively to avoid notice. Go ahead and discuss the situation en route; I'll fill you in on what I can when you get there."
 
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Bambi looks around the room and at her friends. I'll get the interview. Hopefuly they will need a nurse there to help her stay calm. Bambi clicks her heals together and suddenly she looks like a 50 year old oriental woman in a nurses uniform with a symbol of the healing god on her chest. Well Justin? Will this do?
 

"Don't you think that perhaps..." She brushes a hand over one of her many rings, "A guard captain would be a little more persuasive?" All of a sudden, Selprin appears to be dressed in the helmet and breastplate of the guards, with the appropriate decoration one would expect of a captain. As Elias turns to leave, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek. "Come back safe, love."
 
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"Safe, and with some excellent pictures." He honestly smiles for the first time this morning, and shakes his head slightly - still somewhat disbelieving that such a talented and beautiful woman could possibly be attracted to him - and, with a targeted thought, brings his Skin to the surface. As it boils over him, he blurs into the background, nearly disappearing entirely. "Don't take any chances, you all - I do not want to have to finish this assignment solo. Which is exactly what Hymie will expect me to do if you all pull a fade on me." Sel feels a gentle kiss brush her cheek and a whispered "Don't be too long; I'll miss you."

Then Elias is gone.
 

"Much as I like the rig-out," Justin grins at Bambi. "It might make more sense for me disguise myself as the healer, just in case they ask for magical aid." He looks at the changed Bambi appraisingly. "You could be my glamorous assistant though."
 


You head out into the street. This is a mostly residential area, and you see a lot of kids playing in the street, a blue glowing chalk circle of about twenty feet denoting a humorously small mage ball field. A boy and a girl play inside, while the other four, already eliminated, cheer on from the corner. You see a bright flash, as the ball bounces off the force field created by the chalk circle, rebounds back and hits the boy in the head. A cheer goes up, but by then, you're already long gone, off and running. The street, the people, the vendors, the houses, bob up and down in your field of view.

You tap into the recesses of your memory, drawing on your power to make your body speed up, every step you take being made with the optimal amount of force at the optimal time. Your vision blurs slightly around the edges: drawing power from those recesses of your brain means less attention to everything else.

Holding onto the power you're drawing, you add another effect: to make your body slip and slide. You spent an amusing month under Archiel doing nothing but falling awkwardly on various parts of your body: even when you mastered both holding your concentration and not falling, there was still the issue, which gave Archiel no lack of joy, of sliding into walls, chairs, tables, and people.

That, like Archiel, is in the past. You turn your body sideways, put one foot in front of the other, and start sliding down the street even faster, your feet barely touching the ground. You turn your lead heel slightly to the left, and effortlessly swerve around a pair of men arguing.


but I thought you had the monkey!


After Archiel passed on, it took you a long time to figure out how he used the boots and skate at the same time, as whenever you jumped, you weren't skating, and whenever you skated, you weren't jumping, but all jumps have directions right? Straight up, backwards and up...so why not jump horizontally. To anybody who could watch you blur by, they'd think you were still skating, but now you're jumping just a mere inch off the ground, repeatedly.

You're going so fast that getting from one end of the City to the other only takes a few minutes: the real problem with going that fast is all the obstacles, but you're used it: you jump straight over a man riding along slowly on his magic carpet with his retinue of four bodyguards, you hear a faint curse behind you, but you're too busy concentrating on the figures in front of you to dodge: you're going so fast now, and so much magic is tied up, that everything appears blurry, streaked, but you dodge everything, your body's movements at one with the environment.

Turns at this speed at extremely hard to do, so you've learned to cheat. You run up a few feet on a wall, and flip off of it, pushing off with your feet. It hurt the first few times you've landed on your head, but now, it almost never goes wrong.

As you flip over, you catch a view of the rooftops of the 19th district, very nice, stately residential homes, far fewer apartment buildings, and even those look extremely high quality, made of metal, not wood. There are all sorts of weird devices on the rooftops to collect energy from the sun, and signs of warning to anybody who would mess with the sources of a wizard's power.

But that's not what you're paying attention: on the edge of a row of houses, there's just a blank spot. Vaguely person-sized, but it's not like it's a person in a black cloak, or even with magical darkness, you just can't perceive anything there.

Your concentration breaks.

The world goes black.


"Well, I'm pretty sure the court will see in your favor ma'am. They tend to give fines to those aggrieved. You should get a cleric to look at that for evidence for the court. Ah, he seems to be awake."


Your senses come back, starting with your sense of pain: your arm feels like it's on fire. You're lying on the ground, same street, it feels like your face and left arm took the brunt of the fall, and your elbow is where you apparently landed: you don't know if it's broken, or anything, but you just don't want to move it right now, although the pain is already starting to subside.

You open your eyes, the bright light streaming in, and tilt your head slightly to look up into whoever is speaking to you.

It's a City Guard.

He's standing in front of you, frowning at you intensely. "I hereby charge you with reckless walking, and assault by falling. You have a court date at the Circle of Law at the 17th hour of today. Failure to show is considered admission of guilt." He rips off a small sheet of paper and leaves it on the ground, by your head.

The woman hisses. "Bastard! I think I sprained my ankle running away from you. I'm hoping you get drawn and quartered , although I'll settle for all of your money." She spits on you, then walks away, favoring her one leg ever so slightly. The crowd that had gathered starts to disperse.
 
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"Stupid scrim; I don't have any money..." Elias mutters as he tries to get to his feet. "Great... 17th hour... Shards, what time is it?" He looks around, hoping that he hasn't lost too much time. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs, he suddenly freezes dead in his tracks as he remembers what happened:

...a blank spot. Vaguely person-sized, but it's not like it's a person in a black cloak, or even with magical darkness...

"What in the shattered hells was that!?!" Flexing his arm to test if it's in one piece, he looks back towards the skyline where he saw the emptiness, knowing somehow that it won't be there.
 

Justin's shape again shifts, this time forming into that of a priest of the god of healing. Dressed in sober white robes, Justin now appears as a forty year old man with a shock near-white shoulder length hair. In common with most clerics of this deity, his skin is blemish free, and fewer wrinkles that you would expect on a man his age.

"Right, I think we've given Elias enough of a start. Knowing the speed that man runs, he'll be there before we leave." Justin picks up his briefcase, which morphs in a medic's bag as he touches it, and heads out the door.
 
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Your right arm: it's still numb. Every time you try to bend it at the elbow, a sharp surge of pain goes through your body, but if you just hold it straight, by your side, there's nothing more than a twinge. To keep the pain down, you go a bit slower, putting a little less jump into your stride. The streets you walk past are filled with people wearing red shirts, red buttons, pendants, shoes, everything red. Your lack of redness draws a few stares, but not much else.

You arrive within a few blocks and slow down to a walk. There's no real stealthy way to approach the house, this not being a particularly alley-ridden way, and given the power of the average occupant, the rooftops are likely to be more trapped than it's worth.

A few streets more of walking and you see the house, easily finding someplace shadowed to stand from across the street and observe, taking pictures. It's on the north-eastern corner of the intersection, and surrounded by tall apartment buildings, but it has a very wide lawn protected by a stone fence and gate, giving it a clear view of the sun. Some sort of shiny red surface covers the top of a very plain, subdued house of two stories, a very traditional triangle-ontop-of-rectangle house, with plenty of windows, and as far as you can see, only one door in.

The new addition, you would guess, is one city guardsman, a regular guard, posted at the front gate, who appears to just be looking around at random passerby, with a bored look on his expression.

Bambi, Justin, and Selprin, you arrive about three minutes later from the west. Your walk was uneventful, as people generally give the City Guard a wide berth.
 

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