Ultima Ratio Regum, Scene III

Erin blew the dust off her new key, then slipped it into her pocket. She popped out into her restaurant, picking up a bloodwort from the kitchen, and slid it across the table to where Cynthia was sitting. "Come back tomorrow," she said, tilting her hips with an odd little smile. "There might be something interesting."

With that, Erin proceeded to tidy up loose ends and slip back into running her business. The bank wouldn't be open until tomorrow morning, which meant it was time to take the rest of the evening off.

Erin

Cynthia looked up at the faerie, and then she nodded, a sinuous smile upon her lips. She abandoned her bloodwort, and with a final swish of her gown of black water, she departed. She would be back.


"Yes Miss?" The clerk peered over his desk, looking down his nose at Erin. In the old days, he would have had a teller's green visored hat and would have sat behind a window. Now he wore a suit and had an office, but he was still a bank clerk, and he still wanted to know what Erin was doing here. "How may I help you?"


Lauren

"She left already." The speaker was just to the side of Lauren, and she had not been there before. Tall, willowy, her face was very pale. Huge eyes gazed out of it, the pupils engorged so as to almost swallow the iris. She wore a dress, a demure black gown that reached to her knees. She was barefoot. "Earlier this night."

Evan whirled, and Lauren's mentor nodded. For a moment his face contorted in frustration, a burning spark of temper that Lauren had only occasionally seen, but he smothered it quickly. "I see."

Erin was in fact Anna, or rather Anna was in fact Erin, as it was Anna who was greeting the helpful bank clerk. She was wearing a fashionable coat and gloves, along with a nice scarf, hat, and sunglasses combo. It looked very stylish. It also looked like a decent vampire outfit for avoiding the sun. The best part of this was that it was daytime, and Anna would have no alibi at all. Erin did not feel particularly bad about this. As the High Sheriff who investigated these anomalies, the chances of her getting blamed for this were approximately zero. Even if Erin would have liked them to be higher. But she was a semi-honest moth, so she also made certain one particular eye was glowing blue.

"Good Morning. Could you bring me bank box number 4875?" Erin asked, smiling at the man with Anna's beautiful lips, and showing her copy of the key.

Mirror (Loki's Eyes)

Lauren had jumped slightly when the woman spoke, and turned with Evan. She winced at the news. Of course. Of course.

"Where did she go? We need to speak with her as soon as possible."

"Christ on a…Thing's gonna drive you and your buddy to suicide if you don't get over here and--"

Underwood booked it. Surprisingly fast, given that he was clearly the least athletically capable person in a ten-foot radius. The reporter made it all the way to the more distant of the two streetlights in the area before he chugged to a halt, waving his two companions into the halo of light. He cast an eye towards the other streetlight, roughly between him and the (presumably rapidly encroaching) shadow demon. He held up a hand in what vaguely looked like a military call sign.

"Okay. Got about a fifty percent chance of this working…just gotta wait for the right moment…then--"

The demon passed in close to the other streetlight, Underwood closed his fist, and the other streetlight abruptly flickered out. Underwood, somehow, did not look surprised.

"…Aaaaaaand lower fifty." He spun around to address the other two, in a low whisper. "Backup plan. We should be safe-ish here in the light, but Sparky and me are going to add our own once it gets close enough. Not the way we just tried to -- that's too risky -- but something to get that circle bigger and brighter. You've got any way of helping out, get it ready, and turn it on on three."

Erin

The clerk looked down his long nose at Erin, then nodded with the air of a man for whom this was really a terrible imposition. He took Erin's key from her and examined it, then nodded before handing it back. "Very well Ma'am, if you will stay here..."

So Erin was left cooling her heels for about a half hour, all alone in the office. When the man returned, he had a little trolley with him, on a good half-dozen stainless steel boxes were arranged. Each was opened by Erin's little copied key, and each contained reams of financial documents, chronicling all of Sheridan's dealings stretching back a good thirty years -- she must have changed banks then, or simply decided that a 200-year-old active account would have attracted suspicion.

Int+Academics to go through the documents = Extended roll to only look for things relating to the blood factory, each additional subject looked for imposes a -2 penalty; one roll is a half hour.


Lauren

Soundlessly, the dark-eyed woman raised her hand and pointed down the road. "She went to Sherwood Forest. Just after dusk, but she was on foot."

Sherwood -- they'd passed Sherwood earlier, on the way here. And Lujza, on foot, couldn't have gone that far? But on the other hand, trying to find a lone vampire in a forest was going to be a challenge. Evan looked to Lauren -- this was her effort, if she wanted to go spend the night looking around Sherwood Forest, Evan would humor her.


Underwood

Cinder gave Underwood an absolutely bone-chilling look, but she listened. It grated at every instinct the woman had, but at least for the moment, she was willing to accept the possibility that Underwood knew what he was doing. She followed him, making up the lost distance in long, easy strides. Mary of course was fastest of all, though she held back, moving at speeds that were quick but not quite supernatural.

Not that it completely helped. The shadow-demon seemed to have realized that something was off about the electronic tittering, and now it was following after Underwood with a lazy, easy pace. It wasn't rushing. It had his scent now, it could follow him to the ends of the earth. He'd have to stop eventually, after all. It was a terrible thing, this miasma of despair that went before it.

What was the point? It would catch up. And if it didn't, what did Underwood have to look forward to, really? Disaster tomorrow night? The gratitude of Othello of all people? One more night of staying just ahead of the Firm, ever close and ever closing. Was there a point?

Underwood loses 4WP; Sparky loses 1WP, Mary loses none, and Cinder lose 2WP; This is a magical grief effect.

"Thanks." Lauren sighed and looked down the road, then back to Evan. "Hope you've got your hiking shoes on," she said dryly, and started trudging down the road.

Underwood noticeably sagged as the demon approached, but he tapped his breast pocket anyway. "Go on Amazon; find the best one you can. Quick!"

This request was answered by a muffled beeping -- accompanied by a less psychologically-rooted sagging as one side of his coat became abruptly heavier than the other. Underwood reached inside, and smirked. Down, but not out.

"Okay. One…two…"

Drawing on the immense and mysterious power of the Wyrd, the reporter swung out a Cyclops C18MIL Thor X Colossus 18 Million Candle Power Rechargable Halogen Spotlight with custom Seoul H4 55-watt 6000K Xenon HID bulbs: theoretically capable of turning the bottom of an abandoned well at midnight into something resembling the surface of the sun.

"…Eat science, buddy."

Underwood pulled the trigger.

Lauren

Hours passed...

Blessedly for Lauren and Evan, it was still an hour till dawn -- the sun rose, in London, right at 8 in the morning at this time of year, and just now Lauren was a little bit to the north. One of the things which every vampire learned intimately were the solar calendars, when the sun rose and when the sun set, down to the very minute. Today, the sun would rise at 8:01 AM. In Sherwood Forest, probably a minute or two later.

"I find the lack of Merry Men very disappointing in this forest." Evan drawled, after the latest attempt to get over a tangle of roots. They'd driven out to the forest, plotting on a map where Lujza Dvorzsak was likeliest to be, based on a woman's ability to walk. Of course, this meant very little -- Lauren remembered her dream (she'd probably never be able to forget it), and she knew that the Philosopher had more woodcraft than Evan and herself put together.

So it was a pleasant surprise when the two younger Dragons actually found Lujza in a clearing in the forest, not far from a rather decrepit looking hut. The old vampire was digging, having stripped down to shirt-sleeves, her neat jacket on the handles of a nearby bike -- one wondered where Dvorzsak had gotten it. Her shovel fair flew through the air, cutting through the frozen dirt. She did not notice her two visitors, so absorbed was she in her work. She was digging -- or digging up -- a grave.

Underwood

The effect was instantaneous, and Underwood would have been forced to admit, deeply gratifying. Eighteen million candles was a great deal of light, and it did not so much chew away at the encompassing darkness as punch a hole straight through it. Some slivers of shadow were caught outside the initial blast of light, but they evaporated into the night with only a distant, ethereal tittering. Silence reigned.

The mother with her children stared across the park at Underwood, trying to figure out why the man had sprinted across the field and then pulled out an industrial-duty spotlight. But this was London, and people were strange, and she just hurried her children and her dog away.

"J.T., what was that, and what was it doing in my park?" Cinder growled. While one would have expected a certain level of gratitude, she seemed more miffed that Underwood had prevented her from ripping the demon apart with her own fangs.

"...a demon?" Mary Mack suggested. Paradoxically, she was least affected by the emotional strain the demon had caused. Perhaps being only lightly moored to reality was good for something.

Erin had herself escorted to a spare office, then pulled out a notebook and sat down with the papers. Follow the money, they always said. Time to see where it led.

Erin is spending 1 glamour to drop the time increments on the extended action to 7.5 minutes with Brownie's Boon, and dropping her roll by -2 to also research Bart's Hospital.

Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)
Int+Academics (First hour)