Soulriders 5.0: Legend of the Unending Games

The first thing you hear, upon opening the front door, is a casual "Hey". Underneath it, you hear the muted, staticy voice of a local TV news announcer breathlessly recounting the latest crisis, but through the fuzzy waves of static you cannot really make out what she says.

On the couch, in freont of the TV is a man, lanky and scraggly, with a faded Army Reserve jacket and a pair of carpenter's jeans that look to be about on their last legs. He's hunched over, elbows on his thighs, watching the happenings on the TV. His hands are reddish and bony, and his face is a candle-tallow pale. In his hand, he holds an opened can of ICB root beer, with brownish foam collected around the lip. If not for his hair -- black, an unkempt, whirling jungle of follicles that grows from his scalp as far outward as it is long, with an intangible aggressiveness that one usually doesn't find in a standard head of hair -- you wouldn't be able to recognize him, but as it is you make the connection. It's Paul Durant, aka Unseen, then known as Huitzil, then known as Atropos, then known as someone who just vanished with no warning and no forwarding address six months ago.

"They just broke in to Home Improvement," he says without looking up, "They say that San Francisco is in ruins. Well, more so than it was already. They think it might be the Home Guard again." He pauses and runs his fingers through his hair, though it doesn't have any visible effect. "Crazy shit, huh?"

Bjorn, who had been following Rez and Dracos into the place, hears the voice, and tenses.  Dropping once again into mugamae, Shinmyouken at the ready, he looks at the other two for a sign or signal.

Rez just looks at the interloper tiredly.

"Who're you, why're you here, what's going on, yadda yadda yadda.  I'm too tired for this."

Dracos silently draws his katana and shakes his head, lifting it as well.

"I don't recognize ye...  Now who da bloody hell are ye?"

Dracos

He takes a too-long, slurping drink of the root beer and turns to face you, his look of casual calm vanishing when he sees the drawn katana. He stutters a moment, throwing a planned speech out, then looks a bit cooler as he puts the can down on the arm of the couch and speaks.

"Well, I thought I knew what my name was, but apparently I was wrong; it's Timmothy Renard. After all, that's what it says on the driver's license you had on the kitchen table, and it has my picture and everything on it. Even got the birthday right. Why I'm here... well, I was hoping that you guys would have an explanation as to why my name is now Tim, and why you have a driver's license for me at all."

"He's Unseen, guys.  Paul Durant.  And I don't know -why- the fuck we have a driver's license for you, but we got it along with our own.  Apparently someone thought you'd show up."

Rez wanders over and slumps down on the other couch rather ungracefully.

"This has been a bad fucking day.  So what brings you to the house of McGrail, Mr Renard?"

Bjorn straightens, and enters the house, quietly.  Without saying anything, he squats down by the wall near the door, where he can watch both Paul and Rez, because any answers he can get will be all to welcome at this point.

But mostly he watches Paul, with hard eyes, because over the past week or so, trust has become a rare commodity.

Dracos frowns and sheaths his blade, heads over to a nearby wall and just slumps against it.

"You know, I'm fuckin' sick of this shit already."

Dracos

He stands up, looks startled. "Why would you call me that, I ... well, son of a bitch. I must have met you guys over IRC!" He looks to his side, and starts smiling in suprise. "Well, things are already wierd as shit already, why the hell shouldn't I meet up with my old e-pals? How the hell are you guys -- WHO the hell are you guys? Forgive me, but I can't recognize you unless you're wearing a name tag with angle brackets on it. IRC... holy shit man, what are the odds, huh?"

He grabs the can up again and takes another drink. "You know," he adds, "The reason I changed my screen name is because I thought 'Unseen' looked dumb, and it defeats the purpose when you still call me that."

"Dracos.  And you best have brought extra of that shit."  Dracos kicks off the wall heading over and sitting near Rez, putting down the katana by his legs, hand steadying it easily enough.

Dracos

"I'm Rez, and I can't pronounce Huitzil,"  Rez sighs, "so what are you doing here?"

He points to the kitchen area. "I got a six-pack in the fridge, help yourself. It's your house, ain't it?"

"And how I got here... Man, it's a long fuckin' story. And about as believable as two guys who ran a forum I posted failed RPGs on would meet up from, like, halfway across the damn world and run into me in the ass-end of Nowhere, California. Why're you up here, anyway? Soulriders goon housing development?"

Bjorn says nothing, partly because he's far more interested in having Paul actually answer the question on the table, and partly because he finds that he's really goddamn tired.

Tired, and sore, and confused, and angry, and sad, and really fucking proud of myself that I haven't tried to gut anyone for stress relief.

Dracos heads over to the fridge, grabs three cold ones, hands one to rez and stumbles over to Bjorn and hands him another, "Ye look like ya need it."

Kneeling down there, he snaps off the cap on his own and takes a drink.

Dracos

"Well, hey.  You obviously got sent here by someone, because dumb luck doesn't bring one here on their own.  And, well, we sorta figured it was time for a change in scenery."

Bjorn sets the beer down, unopened.  "Can it," he interrupts roughly.  "The question is why the fuck you're here."  He stares Paul in the eyes, his face expressionless, though his voice does not soften.  "Answer it."

"Well... I'm here because I walked here, I guess. I've been walking for a while. I picked this house 'cause it looked abandoned, and I was tired and didn't have money for a motel. Jimmied the lock in the back, made sure nobody was around -- didn't look like anyone lived here, judging by the lack of stuff and all the dust. Crashed on the couch. Took a shower in the morning, a long and hot one, they feel better the longer you've gone without one. Almost walked out afterwards when I saw that box on the dinner table, looked inside and found my driver's license. Except, I never had a driver's license, and my ID card I left somewhere in Nebraska. Figured I'd stick around for a while, rest up, see if anyone came by.

"Didn't really know who you were until you called me 'Unseen', then I knew that as goddamn crazy as it was, you guys had to be from the Internet. Nobody calls people by their screen names in real life, not unless that's the only way they ever met someone, and if it was someone trying to pose as an e-buddy, he would have called me 'Ulayoth'. No, only you yoinks are that stubborn.

"As for why did I make my way up here? Don't know, really. I set out walking and this is just where I ended up. Dumb luck. Why this house? Dumb luck. Saw it once, thought it felt right, like it felt like a good place, went over to check it out. Sounds crazy, but that's par for the course about now.

"So, Rez, who's your friend? And what have you been up to? You guys look like Hell."

Rez just closes his eyes.

"Bullshit.  Someone had to have directed you.  Get out of my house."

He shrugs, not one to say that he doesn't care, but that hey, whaddaya gonna do? "I don't know what to tell you, man. Yeah, it all sounds pretty unbelievable. You just don't realize how unbelievable until you try to explain it to something else.

"But nothing sent me here, unless you count State Road 99. I've been following it for a few days, passed right on through Modesto by it, was ready to pass here too. Then I took a right to get out of the way of a car, was getting tired, I saw the house, and, well, here I am.

"And who'd send someone like me, out to meet someone like you? Trading mp3s, or something?"

"Uns, look at us.  Look at the fact that we had your fake ID in a fed-ex box, and -" Rez breaks off suddenly, "Drac, you're cleaning that up later."

Rez shakes his head.

"You hung a right to get out of the way of a car?"

"Thought they might be watching me, so I went off 99 just like I was walking back to my house, and they drove by. You're not the only one allowed to be paranoid, you know."

"Uh-huh.  So, Uns, what are you doing so far from Nebraska that people might be following you?"

Rez has a rather flat tone, and he doesn't look that impressed.  Or, he could be just fucking exhausted.  It's hard to tell.

"What Rez said.  Try starting at the beginning of the fucking story," Bjorn suggests, a little less than pleasantly.

He's still squatting by the wall, seemingly relaxed, with his sword across his knees -- but at the same time, there is a definite air of an end of patience.

"Walkin'. Getting my shit together. After... after the Moffet explosion, I realized my best friend was dead. My best friend, dead, and I had never met him in person, wouldn't even get to go to his funeral. Try as hard as I could, he would be a name in angle brackets to me, defined solely by text. That... well, it messed me up. It broke my heart.

"Had to go back to the hospital. Never went back to college. Didn't really try to makesomething of myself. Then, after Ayer's Rock, I made a decision. I had to get over it, I had to get in touch with myself. Brian was dead, but I had to move on, you know? I was letting grief and guilt control me. So, I shut down my computer and told myself I wouldn't turn it back on again until I was ready for it. Then, I started hiking, just picked a direction and went. It was like those trials of manhood the Indians had to endure in the desert or something. Really, it doesn't seem all that smart now that I try to explain it to someone else, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and now here I am. And I'm pretty surprised that after leaving the Internet, the Internet came to me."

The snort that Bjorn produces is best characterized as "indelicate."  "That," he pronounces, "is just about the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard.  Of course, it's also perfectly consistent with you, and too idiotic to be a cover story."

He rises to his feet as he speaks, shifting Shinmyouken to his right hand, and staring at Paul.  "But there's a difference between 'probably' and 'definitely,' and I'm not really up for taking chances.  So, if you don't want to leave right now, then you're going to have to do us a favour."

Turning his head just enough to catch Dracos' eye, Bjorn cautiously pulls in his mindboard the barest amount necessary to turn it out, and then scrawls, in the biggest, most readable hand that he can imagine, Dracos?  Can you read this?

To himself, Christ, I hope this works.  I've never had to try to get a telepath's attention before.

"You wouldn't be named Gary Kleppe, would you? I mean, I'm just curious."

Rez looks at Bjorn with more than a slight amount surprise.  He actually sits up a bit.

"Er, what the hell?"

Dracos blinks, eying Bjorn back and trying to figure out what he wanted.  Pondering a second, his tired mind grasped upon the lazy solution.  He lifted his hand slightly at his waist, trying to imitate what he'd done before and sending out a What's the plan? in Bjorn's general direction.  Dracos blinked, hearing Bjorn's question back at him as he tried.

Dracos

Bjorn:  You've been around telepaths to know that most of them (in your memory) are pretty subtle.  Dracos is not, in fact, subtle at all.  It's like he's trying to read the mindboard by braille.  He does seem to pick up on your message, though.

Bjorn winces slightly -- not because it hurts, but out of surprise.  Wiping the mindboard clean of both his message and the dirty fingerprints left behind by Dracos' touch, he writes, in a very pointed script, You need practice.

Another pass with the mental eraser, and then, written in gothic, solemn letters, You need to read Paul's mind.  It's the only way we can be sure he's not lying.  If we can't trust him, then we'll have to take him out right away and evacuate this house.

Just... try and be a little more gentle?

No kidding...sorry.  Just got this weird shit...today anyhow.  I'll try my best.

Dracos calmed his mind focusing on Huitzil and listening, picturing a calm wind, the sound of Huitzil's thoughts flowing towards him, trying to sense out the veracity or more importantly the feeling of integrity behind what Huitzil was saying.

Dracos

Roll telepathy (6d6):
<Setzer> Dracos rolled 28 to read Huitzil's mind and my name is not Chibi-suu!

Your roll allows you to read past the target's surface thoughts and into his memories.

What did happen to Gary, anyway? Even if he did move to California, he wouldn't hang out with Dracos and Rez. Maybe it's Ladegard or someone. Shit, who all did we have over the years? Could be a lot of guys. Probably not from IRC at all, they probably know him in real life. Why would he think I was working for someone?

I wonder if they know if there's a comic shop around? I haven't had a good game in a while, and Great Eye should be out about now. They have to still game, Drac wouldn't be able to swear off RPGs after just six months. Rez probably still plays LOTR, unless the last set fucked the game.

Shit, who is that guy? I never saw a picture of him before, if he's from IRC too. Unless he's one of the guys after me and they just got Dracos and Rez along to lull me. Shit. Too big to outfight him, shit. Keep it cool. Act natural. I've shaken off these guys before, and I can do it again. Just got to talk to him, get him talking, and get him to keep talking. Unless they brought backup this time. I can't talk my way through a SWAT team. Is he just wearing a police shirt, or is that actual fucking SWAT armor? Shit. Is that why Dracos is looking at me funny, he trying to warn me? Dammit. He knows. I don't know how but he knows, he's probably working for them, and that guy is probably gonna take me to the doctor in an armored van. Goddamnit, goddamnit, fuck! It's like he can see it on me. No, he smells it, or something. Fuck, keep it together! Stay cool, he's just a friend I haven't seen for a while, he's not a Big Coffin Hunter. Probably. And if he is, how can he know I know? The only sure way to let him know is to panic.

He drinks from the can of ICB again, looking at Bjorn with a vacantly pleasant expression, then puts the can back down. This stuff really does taste like valentine's day hearts. I should have got some orange juice or something.

"How'd you get here Huitz?  Why'd you vanish six months ago?  What are you running from.  Be on the level with us.  We're not out to get ya.  We're tired, paranoid, and just been through hell.  We want to make sure you aren't here to trap us."

Dracos listens, to both his words and thoughts, calm and focusing.

Dracos

"I told you, man. I was walkin'. Self-discovery and all that. Just like in the movies."

Fuck. He knows. They probably hired him to get me. Fuck. Okay, keep denying it, see if the absurdity gets too much for him. Maybe he'll decide whoever it was that's looking for me is just fucking wacko and call off. If they brought cops, that won't help, but if they brought cops I'm fucked anyway.

"So, anyway, who's your pal? He never told me his name."

Keep it casual. Don't bolt unless it's the only thing left. And if he still doesn't buy, say I ran away from home and that it's my parents that want me back. Goddamnt, that's fucking stupid, that doesn't even make sense! I could say... damn it!

Dracos sits down tiredly, still listening, "Ye ain't a wanderer Huitz.  Not yer nature.  Anyhow, you too into the game to just vanish.  You're afraid, I can see that.  But look at us man.  We really look like we're out to get ya?  You think if this was a trap we'd just be strolling in here to catch you off guard and be all paranoid and shit?  I can see it Huitz.  Around ya.  Whatever it damn is.  We've all been through some fucked up shit.  I mean, just think, did I have green eyes last ya saw my ugly mug?  And surely, ya remember only one damn assexual from the void of existence," Dracos quirks his head over slightly at Bjorn, still droning.  "So why don't ya just come out with it?  Who's after ya?  What happened six months ago?  Why ya running around, hiding in random abandoned houses in Cali?"

Dracos

He takes a deep breath, and sits down on the couch again.

"How... did you know what I was thinking about you?"

How did he know what I was thinking about him?

Dracos closes his eyes tiredly. "I can hear what you're thinking huitz.  Why they are out to get me anyhow.  Something similar with the others."  Dracos says witha sigh, thumbing over at Rez and Bjorn.  
We're different apparently, so they want to lock us up and use us as disposable lab rats."

Dracos
EDIT: Grammar fix minor.  Major fucking should've been there.

He stops, looks down. He sighs heavily. When he replies, his tone is wholly different from before; now he just sounds weary and exhausted.

"So. After you too. I guessed I probably wasn't the only one with this X-Men shit, but I never figured that my old IRC pals would be the others.

"Someone is after me. I'm running from them. I don't know who they are, or how they found me in the first place, but I do know that they are coming for me. And I know that I don't want to go with them. So... I left home. They knew where I lived, and I couldn't let them catch me. I just started walkin', since I couldn't drive, and since they could track me by plates anyway. I hitch-hiked when I could, but usually I was afraid I'd hitch a ride with... whoever was after me. I mostly walked. Got jobs when I ran low on money, but never stayed in one place for too long.

"I didn't have any place in mind other than "away". I followed roads most of the time, and changed paths at random. Couldn't be predictable. Just had to wander. If I stopped wandering, they would catch me. And I wandered up here, and I was telling the truth, the place did seem right. It seemed safe. Then you guys came along, and I guess we came full circle."

The air of relaxation about Bjorn changes.  Before, it was a loose readiness, a lack of tension that spoke of an ability to move in any direction without warning; now it's the limpness that comes with an exhaustion more than purely physical.

"That's fair enough," he sighs, rolling his head from side to side to loosen his neck.  "Do you know who's after you, and why?  And for that matter," Bjorn frowns, "how did you find out they were coming after you before they actually caught you?  I didn't get much of a chance to bolt."

"Who are they? I don't know. I've really only seen two of them. I guess I'd better explain the whole thing, then you can ask questions."

He sighs wearily again,then speaks, long and with shallow breath, as if he was reciting a treasured Bible verse from memory.

"I left in July, but really, it all started in June. And it started in the back yard of the house. And it started for what seemed like no reason at all -- I suppose that everything does when you deal with stuff like this. In the backyard, there's a tree-fort without a tree, that my dad built for me when I was ten. It was still there, even though we'd stopped playing in it; we kept various stuff in ther that wouldn't fit in the garage. I was mowing the lawn, humming 'Honky Tonk Woman' to myself. The air smelled like grass and gasoline, and the sun was shining in spatters through the leaves. I hit a tree root, not uncommon in my backyard. We have a lot of trees.

"What was uncommon was the fact that I passed out -- I suppose I did, anyway, it's not like you remember passing out -- and when I woke up, the mower was on its side, Mom was slapping me in the face with the most worried look I had ever seen, and the top of the old fort had been obliterated. Gone. The blue tarp we kept in there and used to gather up the leaves had blown out of it, and it hung crossways on the phonelines that ran behind the house. The leaves of the trees behind it were covered in sawdust; below it were splinters like a small mulch pile. The most vivid image I remember now is that. Cheap blue canvas and light tan sawdust.

"None of us knew what happened, it was like it had spontaneously exploded. We went to the emergency room, even though I wasn't hurt at all, because it felt like we just had to do SOMETHING. They looked me over and said I was fine, but that if we wanted I could go to the normal inpatient rooms for a longer non-emergency analysis. We did, still kind of in shock, still worried, and kind of afraid of going back, to be honest. They took me up in a stretcher cart even though I could walk just fine. Room 203 at the St. Vincent's inpatient center. They sent a man in to talk to me in detail about what had happened, even though there wasn't much to say. I hit a tree root, next thing I knew the damn thing was evaporated, gone for the blue and the tan. Mom was inside; she heard a crushing, splintering noise and ran out to see me unconscious with my hand still clutching the bar on the lawnmower, its blades still spinning near my right foot.  Dad was at work at the time, and had rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard, interrupting an important experiment. They asked him what happened anyway. Then they started asking about family history, both him and my mother.

"The doctor left, and another came in, this one not in a white gown. He asked a lot of the same questions. Asked if this had happened before, if it was anything similar. If we had any schizophrenics in the family. That kind of stuff. Then he ushered Mom and Dad out of the room and asked me, again, if that had happened in the past but I had not told anyone. If I'd been afraid of telling someone because they would think I was crazy, or because I had destroyed something valuable. I didn't know what he was talking about, told him so, and he backed off. He asked a few more questions, mundane ones, and left. They kept me overnight and released me in the morning, said there was nothing wrong with me.

"We went back home. My brother was at Ball State, working there during the summer; he was doing better at college than I had. He found out three days after it happened, when he called me over something comparatively meaningless. We didn't really think to call him about it. We didn't really think it had happened, it was so damn surreal. And then, for two weeks, nothing odd happened at all. Every weekday I would bike down to the Movie Gallery and spend my day selling DVDs to people who had no idea what they wanted but were mad at me for not knowing it. The usual. It was like the whole incident had been a bad, but short, dream.

"On July 4th, we went down to the White River Canal in downtown to watch the fireworks. I sold glowsticks and flashing pins to people there for the fireworks, usually for their kids; I was always looking for a way to get some money. The show hadn't started yet, but it was close,and I was walking back to the car with three un-snapped glowsticks in my left hand and a messy wad of ones, fives, and tens in my right pocket when two people stopped me. 'Hey, Paul!' one of them says.

" 'Three dollars for the glowsticks, and I'm out of the pins right now,' I responded, an instinctual reaction to the "Hey!". Then I stopped, realising I had never seen these people before in my life and certainly wasn't wearing a name tag. The girl -- Her hair was red, or maybe brown, I couldn't tell in the twilight -- gave me five bucks for a glowstick and told me to keep the change. I took it, and walked off as fast as I could. I wasn't back in the bad-dream world, but it was close. Like I was slipping out. Like halfway between being awake and asleep.

"July 7th, back at the desk at the video store. Slow day. A girl walks in and asks if I have 'Six String Samurai' on DVD, I look it up and point her toward the back. She takes it back up front and pays the $40 without demur. Then she makes small talk. How I am, how's the family, how was my holiday. How much I like my job. If I'm satisfied with my life. If I think that my talents aren't being fully used. She leans on the counter, puts her elbow on the DVD she just bought. 'Special talents,' she whispers, even though nobody else is in the store. I shrug. She smiles at me, and her teeth are as white as a commercial. She takes the disc and walks out. She gets into a red Corolla with New York license plates in the parking lot, in the passenger's seat. I watch the car turn out onto Michigan Road, and in the driver's seat I see someone I know I have seen before. It doesn't hit me right away, though.

"I'm ringing up a fortysomething man's purchase of "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" when it does hit me who the driver was: I saw him in the hospital. He was the doctor wearing the ironed slacks and polo shirt instead of a white gown, asking me questions that he never planned to put on my patient record. I smile at the customer and hand him his disc. I bike home normally, sit on the couch and watch some TV, eat dinner in silence. I don't sleep that night. Mom comes into my room twice to tell me to go to bed and stop 'tippy-typing on the computer'. She says it will be ther tomorrow, but I have a lot of stuff to say now. I don't tell you guys what happened, just that I'm going to be gone for a while. I post what I have of Decay 6 to the FFML, even though it ends in midsentence. I say 'G'night, everyone', and log off.

"I go into the kitchen and look for a sheet of paper to write a note. There isn't any, so I use an envelope Mom got in the mail from a quilter in Missouri. I just write 'I love you' on it and leave it on the kitchen table. When I walk out, the clock on the microwave reads 3:18 AM. The car came from new York, so I figure I'll head in the opposite direction. I walk west on 79th Street until it runs out, and then, I'm a wanderer.

"I think I was lucky. I think I managed to leave before they decided to just grab me, and I've been good enough about not leaving a trail that they haven't caught me yet. They've been close a few times, but I manage to get away or to shake them. But now that I'm on the run, they won't try to be diplomatic. They will just take me. I can fool them once or twice, but they're going to wise up eventually. And then they will catch me. And then they're going to take my brain apart, or worse. Because that's what they do, and that's why they knew I was... why I was special, even before I did."

Ginrai pulls into the driveway, pleased with how everything's turned out so far.

Walking into the house, he shouts out, "Great news, guys!  I was able to get a minivan, so we should easily be able to fit all of our stuff in it!  Sure, maroon ain't the best of colors and it's not much to look at, and it is a bit beat up, but considering that I was able to rent it without a credit check and that it came with a full tank of gas, thought it was a rather sweet deal.

"And, even better, some schmuck actually stole the sedan while I was looking for a car to rent!  Would love to see the look on his face when the Pax Arcana, or whatever they were called, catches him."

It was at that point that Ginrai noticed that there was someone else along with his friends.  "Oh, who's the new guy?"

"It's huitz.  I'm tired.  And I'm going to fucking bed."

Dracos stumbles off, still grasping his sheathed blade, and heading into the room he slept in before.

Dracos

Rez is setting up the uplink and his laptop on the lounge room table, and he's not looking the least happy.  But he's at least he doesn't look exhausted, but while his face is pretty much blank his hands are shaking as he does so.

"I see... hey, Uns!"

Noticing that everyone's drinking ICB rootbear, Ginrai heads over to the fridge to get himself a can.  After opening it and taking a long swig from it, he says, "You know, before we all go to sleep, there were a few things I'd like some explanation of.  We can start off with why one of Rez's hands is gold.  I take it Uns was explaning how he got caught up in all this shit while I was away and so one of you guys can give me a shortened version of that later on."

Bjorn snorts.  "You want the shortened version?  Mine is: he blew up a shed with his mind, someone came after him, he ran.  His short version would probably take two fucking hours. "

Standing and stretching, Bjorn adds, "We're all in the same general boat.  The difference is that Paul here has had a hot shower and some sleep, and I'm covered in fucking blood and smoke.  So I'm going to shower, and then sleep, and then we can hold our reunion afterwards."

Rolling his shoulder, he looks over at Rez.  "Hey, do you mind telling me where the shower... Man, don't worry about that now.  Get sleep first, then you can get your email fix."  Frowning, he takes a closer look at Rez's face, and adds, more gently, "Hey, are you okay?"

"I'll be fine,"  he doesn't sound very sure, "I'll get a shower when you're done, then I'll sleep."

Rez drops a big-ass (and bulging) duffel on the floor and goes through for the RAID box, which he glares blackly.

"Ah, just like being home again." He leans back and stretches himself over the couch.

That's pretty obviously not true, but hell, I'm about to go throw up in the toilet, so who am I to judge?  Bjorn hesitates a second longer, but nothing meaningful or worthwhile can be said, and so he nods at Rez.  "Alright.  I'll talk to you tomorrow."

With that, he heads out of the room.  The rather mundane challenge of finding the shower is, all things told, a welcome change from the events of the day.

"Mm."

Rez connects up the RAID set to his laptop via ethernet, powers the RAID box up, fires off an email, and sets to tinkering with the box remotely.

"Oh, and you remember San Francisco, Uns?'

"I just heard on the news that it got blown up. Why, do you know something about it -- is it the Home Guard like they said?"

"No, just a pissed off pyrokinetic."

"Huh. Not what I was expecting."

"What were you expecting?"

Bjorn:  The shower is upstairs (only a bath downstairs).  Also upstairs is the unclaimed master bedroom (California king, baby!), and a futon.  Dracos claimed the NES chamber downstairs, and the only free room (Ginrai took the loft bed in the 'art' room), is the Chamber of Legos, unless you want to stick with the top floor.

The bedding is relatively dust free, though.

Rez:  This is going to take some time....

Dracos:  Ah, sleep.

Ginrai:  Ah, sleep.

Huitzil:  You know, the reception sucks, and you've seen every single Disney and James Bond movie in this place's film library at least twice.  The couch is semi-lumpy, too.

Huitzil grunts out an "I dunno" and stretches out to turn off the TV without getting off the couch, then goes to sleep. Good a time as any.

Realizing it's going to take some time, Rez . . . takes his time.

He's too wired to sleep right now.

After depositing and disposing of some extremely acidic bile in the toilet, Bjorn takes a very thorough shower.  Dressed only in his boxers, and carrying his jumpsuit and tactical armour very gingerly, he heads to the master bedroom, where he dumps the jumpsuit on the floor, and the armour on top of it, after retrieving the glass figurine, which he sets carefully in a corner of the room.  Then he curls up on the futon, with Shinmyouken on the floor above the foot of the bed, and then proceeds to be roused by a series of very unpleasant dreams.

Rez:  Morning rolls around, and people start waking up before you realize that if you don't go to sleep about ... now, you're going to pass out.  You've been trying to decrypt the RAID data by copying the entire thing to your laptop HD for a while, and interpeting the error message it's been giving you as a notice that if you try it again, maybe this time it will work.  So far, it hasn't.

Bjorn, Ginrai, Dracos, Huitzil:  You wake up, and feel ... well, if not totally refreshed, alert, and pleasantly free of armed guards attempting to remove pieces of you, or set you on fire.

Rez is tottering in place on his couch downstairs, Ginrai still seems manically cheerful about the insanity of the situation, and you all collectively have ... nothing in the fridge to eat.  That lone package of ramen has already vanished, somehow.

Dracos heads out and picks up one of his bokkens and then heads into the back yard to do some morning exercises for a half hour.  Following this, he heads in, showers, and changes into fresh clothes.

Dracos
I'm doing these series of actions.  Anyone want to do something while I'm doing them or should I volunteer to go hunt down breakfast?

By the time anyone actually gets around to looking at Rez, he's face-down unconscious between the couch and the table.

He left the bag on the floor next to the couch, though.

The first thing that Bjorn does upon waking is to pick up Shinmyouken.  This is an act he approaches very carefully, since the trick with an invisible sword is that it's hard to see, and as a result, you need to be especially careful about the sharp bits.

With sword in hand, Bjorn explores the contents of the dressers, and is pleasantly surprised to find clothing that fits him, if not flatters him.  Throwing on an overlarge pair of jeans and a loose-fitting, plain green t-shirt, he cinches on a belt.  No shoes fit him, though, so he'll have to stick to the combat boots.

And, to his irritation, the only pair of underwear that fits him is, in fact, the pair of Workshop-issue boxers.  This could become a problem.

These necessities procured, his first thought is to meditate a bit (lot), but a rumbling reminds him that it's been at least three days by his count since he had anything decent to eat at all, and there's been more than few calories burned during that time.  So he heads down to the first floor, intent on raiding the kitchen.

When he arrives there, though, Dracos is already putting around.  "Morning," Bjorn drawls amiably.  "Is there something small and fast I can grab before starting a workout?  Or, for that matter, is there anything at all?"

"No food in the fridge," Paul calls from the couch, in a voice that indicated that he is far more than half -asleep. "Go to the gas station 'n get some milk.

He pauses, then emits a freakish groaning/stretching sound. "And some Cocoa Pebbles," he says, and then you hear his head hit the lumpy couch again with some force.

"Bah.  You want to join me to get some actual edibles Bjorn?"

Dracos goes and assaults Ginrai for the keys to the minivan, waiting a moment for Bjorn's answer.

Dracos

Grimacing, Bjorn replies, "No, not really.  But on the other hand, I want to eat, too, so yeah, I'll come."

As he steps forward, though, the weight in his hand remidns him, and he frowns down at where his sword presumably is.  Shit.  Don't want to just leave this lying around.  On the other hand, lugging sharp objects that no one can see around isn't the  best idea I've ever had.

Hey, wait a minute....

"Hey, Drac," Bjorn interrupts himself.  "Yesterday, did you say that you could see my sword?"  He hefts Shinmyouken.

"Yes, and if you wish me to drool in envy over you having an incredibly cool looking magically glowing katana made out of...crystal is it?  You are doing a good job."

Dracos

Bjorn frowns at Dracos.  "That's strange.  And very interesting.  There's some things I want to try, then...."  His stomach chooses that moment to, once again, imitate a collapsing San Francisco accurately.  "But after we get food.  Gimme one sec."

Trotting back to the master bedroom, Bjorn wraps Shinmyouken in the discarded jumpsuit (bloodstains facing out), sets it beside the futon, and then thumps back downstairs.  "Okay, let's roll."

Dracos got in the car, drove Bjorn and himself over to the nearest convinence/gas store, got about four days worth of food for the hungry squad, filled up on gas, and drove back.

Following driving back, Dracos eats and then goes to watch Bjorn's practice session (Assuming Bjorn doesn't complain) out of idle curiousity at a more formally trained sword style.

Dracos

While at the store, you see a newspaper clipping of the San Jose Mercury news (they're fast, considering it's an hour or so drive away), with a picture of the explosion in San Francisco.  The image is grainy, taken by a camera set for night exposure, and not the brightness of the actual event, but from the angle, you can see the pillar of fire clearly.

From the range of the camera, a detail previously unobserved comes to light.  Within the pillar, larger than life, though only in silhouette, is Ashnod's outline.  You probably wouldn't see it if you hadn't seen the man in person, but....

The headline reads, "Terrorists Attack America Again?" and the article reads that while there are no firm leads, the Forge is strongly suspected.  The scientific explanation is that this simply isn't possible; there was no radiation at the site of the attack, and the effects are more likened to that of a volcano than a bomb.

Further down, the article goes on to suggest that even though more research is required to explain it, this blow to a one thriving metropolis will adjust its position from 'largely abandoned' to 'ghost town'.

Bjorn pestered Dracos into buying a copy of the newspaper before leaving the convenience store.  What they say, how they say it, what they mess, and who "they" are are all theoretically information-carrying things.  Even if he isn't up to figuring out, well, he'd like to try.

If Dracos is looking for deep insights into sword mastery, he's probably deeply disappointed.  Bjorn's practice seems more like an exercise routine than anything comabatively related -- a few exerices without the sword, loads and loads of vertical cuts, a peculiar looking exercise that involves cutting diagonally in eight different directions one after the other, and then a bunch of ridiculous-looking cut-and-jump combinations that do manage to get his feet an ungodly distance from the ground.

It's actually fairly everyday stuff for Bjorn, though rendered a bit surreal by the fact that he's doing it all with Shinmyouken.  It's a bit odd to feel something sharp fly by your ear without actually beign able to see it.

When he finally stops, though (a good hour or so later), he looks tired, very sweaty, and in the best mood since... well, in fact, since before this whole mess started.  "Best I can do by myself without other weapons," he remarks, picking up his shirt from beside the door.  

"Now," he said to Dracos.  "Let's double-check.  You can see my sword, right?"

"Yes, I can."

Dracos

Paul walks out onto whatever passes for a back porch, yawning and rubbing the gunk out of his eyes. "Sleep all right, guys?"

"Yar,"  Dracos calls out.

Dracos

He yawns, stretches, and scratches his back absently. "So, what're you up to?"

"I'm not sure," Bjorn says slowly.  "But it might be interesting."

Facing Drac again, he points at himself.  "What about me?  Do you see anything..." he gropes for words, "special about me?"

Dracos concentrates, looking over Bjorn carefully.

Dracos

Perception check....
<WebDiceBot> Dracos chucks them bones for {10}

Dracos: The sword is still glowy, as it was the last time you looked.  Bjorn himself looks pretty normal, except when you look closely.  He seems to have an aura that's a deep brown, nearly black in color.  Other thanthat, the funky black iron bracelet on his left wrist, and the tacky clothes he scavenged from the former owner of this house, he seems pretty normal, though.

"You have a very, very, dark brown-black aura around you.  What 'powers' have you noticed?"

Dracos

"Hm.  I do?  Interesting.  I'll answer you in a moment.  Bear with me, please."

With that, Bjorn summons the image of Ashnod's fire licking futilely at his skin (This is beginning to be second nature.).  He also turns his mindboard in, and, as he did with Lazarus, visualizes pushing it outwards, until it encompasses not only him, but Shinmyouken as well.  This time, though, he imagines Ashnod's fire dying at the mindboard, its massive granite walls forming a barrier away from his body, and protecting his sword, as well.

"What about now?  Can you still see the sword?"

The sword is now somewhat difficult to make out through the dark, yet glowing barrier that now surrounds Bjorn.  It's darker than his aura, like it's projecting from somewhere else and shielding it, though.

This barrier is visible to everyone (including Bjorn).

"Yes, though barely."  Dracos narrows his eyes, keeping focused.

Dracos

"This is... weird," Bjorn says slowly, studying the barrier.

"To answer your question... apparently, I have a... shield against telepathy.  I can project it a little, use it to protect others, even 'trap' a telepath so they can't use their power.

"I can block some other types of powers, too.  First time I met Ashnod, he tried to set me on fire, and it didn't work.  I thought that maybe it would work to block whatever 'magic sight' you seem to have, too, so I tried projecting it outwards."  Waving a hand at the glowing dark-light bubble about himself, he adds, "Apparently the projecting part worked, at least."  

He grimaces, and kills the projection, letting both wall and mindboard collapse to himself alone.  "But I still don't know exactly what I'm protected against, and I can't think of any way to find out, let alone a way that won't, you know, kill me."

"I have more than a few ideas that don't involve being fatal.  Would you mind re..well, putting it up for a few experiments?  Hmm, you can block telepathy?   Interesting.  Would you mind assisting me in training later perhaps with that?"

Dracos

Bjorn shrugs.  "I don't see how I can train you in telepathy, since I don't know anything about it, but I'll do my best.  As for the other -- yeah, I'm willing to try any experiments that I don't think will get me killed.

"In the meantime, though, I only ate enough to get my metabolism started, before working out, and now I'm really bloody hungry.  So why don't we go inside, so I can eat more, and you can explain to me, in detail, what the hell you, Rez, and Ginrai are doing, driving around the country armed with swords, pipes and bow, breaking me out of illegal secure labs?"

"Sure."  Dracos lead the way in, heading into the kitchen and getting either a grill (if they have it) or a stovetop up.  From there here prepares burgers, generally shooting for medium along the road.

Once everyone is sitting down with food, he begins, "Now first, has anyone told you about Ayame yet or not?"

Dracos

"Last I heard from any of you was that... lessee... you guys had picked up an AI from somewhere, and that Rez was running away from someone in Australia.  Oh, and Shade told Ginrai never to open any doors or a wolf would eat him, and Ginrai believed him, and flipped out, and then Shade flipped out even further, and that's about it."

Paul wanders into the kitchen, looking somewhat more alert than before. "Ginrai would be the swarthy fellow, right? I didn't get a chance to really catch up with you guys -- how did you manage to torch San Francisco?"

"We didn't, really.  Acquaintance of mine did.  Anyways, that's at the end of the story, and more my story than Drac's.  Let him go first, then I'll go."

Dracos takes a drink of his root beer.

"Anyhow, Yeah, the AI is Ayame.  Anyhow, I found myself with Rez having run from Australia over to my place and Ginrai being a bit of a paranoid psycho and fleeing over to my place.  Apparently, my house was in everyone's list as "Safehouse Number 1".  I didn't see anything wrong with a few friends bumming for a bit, letting some heat get off as we figured out what was going on.  Meanwhile, me and rez are poking around with Ayame, trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  I ended up figuring out that 'Ayame' was actually a digital spirit of the Oracle of Delphi from ancient Greece, if you'd believe that shit."  Dracos took a moment, pausing to eat a burger.

"Now, around this time we heard from Ayame that Bjorn had been captured and brought to SF I think.  Might've been afterwards.  All sort of ran together.  Ayame also had delivered those cell phones and hub you might've seen Rez hauling around.  Well, we were sitting around, pondering what the heck to do.  I mean, SF is a good ways away and I didn't exactly have strings to pull around there to try and figure out how to get you out.  We were already doing some research on the folks related to Ayame and hadn't really expected them to go kidnap one of us, you know?  About this time Gin went nuts.  Saying we should get running around.  So I took a swig of my root beer and considered how damn late it was and said we'd head out in the morning then.  Told him to get the stuff down in the car to get ready to go anyway, but you'd be surprised how damn stubborn they could be about putting stuff into the car and being ready to go given how damn itchy he'd been.  Anyhow, we stayed around, continuing to try and research.  A little later that night, we got attacked.  Smashed through my window and doors and flung flash grenades at us."

Dracos paused a moment, taking a drink, "I really hate folks who enter unannounced.  Especially when they start breaking my things.  I have quite a temper, ya know?  Keep it under wraps most the time as going around eliminating folks in well...civilized life doesn't go down well.  Anyhow, Gin tried to fight them off with with a steel bar I'd given him earlier, the same one he's been hauling around ever since.  I blinked the damn flash out of my eyes and saw a bunch of guys in swat armor attacking my friends and home.  Grabbed right to my left where I always keep my bucket o' swords at home and grabbed the first blade hilt I could with both hands and rushed them.  Lucky, they weren't wielding any pistols, I was and they weren't.  Finished all five of them off and left them in their own bloody heaps.  We grabbed some stuff, got in the car, and hightailed it out of there.  Heading south to try and throw any pursuit by losing them in the mountains."

Dracos paused for a moment, "Anything confusing before I go on?"  He grabs another burger.

Dracos

"I assume you're going to tell us why a SWAT team broke into our house," Bjorn says dryly, "and why you were sure they weren't legally authrorized officers of the law."

"Why?  Well, I seem to have two friends on the run from some secret cult organization with a hell of resources living in my house.  Seems to make more than enough reasoning.  And for why I think they weren't legit?  A) I'm not a terrorist.  B)There isn't a swat team in the world that would break into my house while we were still awake with batons and tazers.  It's not their style.  SWAT teams aren't called out for that kind of stuff.  And they'd at least go "This is the police" when breaking into a private home.  Either way, I'd likely react the same way to anyone who takes a battering ram to my door and starts beating on my friends with combat batons.  As I said, I have a temper in that regard."

Dracos

Bjorn shrugs.  "You have noticed this country has turned into a police state, right?  Anyways, moot point, as it turns out.  Keep going."

"Damn, you guys have been busy," Paul remarks dryly. "Anyway, you headed for the mountains, then what?"

"True.  Anyhow, we swung south through the mountains, tossing off some false trails with the help of Ayame and a few trackable devices.  Hoping to drop them off the trail and get headed over to SF to see what the fuck was going on over there.  Sometime during this, just after we starting swinging west, Ayame grabbed both me and Rez while we were asleep into some sort of magical dream temple.  Toga party style.  We met shade there who well...was being a complete fucknut.  Anyhow, Ayame wanted to take Rez as her guardian.  Apparently the God Apollo, for lack of really a better term, had left a flame of power in her care to be given to guardians of the Oracle in times of need.  She gave it to Rez, which well, you guys have seen his arm at all yet?.  The one he keeps gloved?  It's gold.  Solid gold.  Pretty tough too.  Can do some handy stuff as well, like hide things.  He also is now apparently a crack shot with the bow in more ways than one from what I've seen.  Anyhow, from there we picked up some equipment, non-parishable food that I wish I'd remembered before now, first aid kits, some protective jackets, stuff like that.  We kept driving over to SF and eventually got there without too much further trouble.  Ayame had setup a safehouse here but vanished a little after we got here, destroying her tracks.  Someone had leaked to the Seventh Cabal about her and she had to run from them.  How that works, I have no idea.  Either way, that was why Rez was in such a ruckus to find Manos  in there, or rather old Rasputin."

Dracos paused, "Seems like we're all caught up in a myth practically.  Oracles from Greece.  Wizards from Russia.  Pyrokinentists and mad doctors who somehow can dodge a sword by standing still by sheer luck."

"Anyhow, we sent Gin to try and scout around the building while Rez was going to figure out the hacking program Ayame had given him earlier and I was looking for a place to just be a stronghold while we were there.  Turns out I ran smack into a damn trap.  Pax Arcana had taken over the first motel I checked and blocked me in, wanting to talk.  They wanted the workshop taken out and we wanted you out of there.  They offered a temporary alliance which I accepted not really having a better plan at that point.  Shouldn't have, but even though it was obviously a trap, I figured it's a trap that we'd have more hidden cards to pull with Rez' new tricks and that we'd at least be in a good position to get you out, which worked...somewhat.  Anyhow, the woman, Pat-something or other, was a a human teleporter.  Got all of us together and flung us rather quickly into the place.  Faster than I'd expected.  I was going to be the distraction, which...worked better and worse than I'd hoped, but I've already told you that and knew my neck was on the line first anyway."

Dracos drank the rest of his root beer as he caught his breath a bit.  "I think you know how it went from there Bjorn."

Dracos

Everyone in the kitchen hears the shower turn on, promptly followed by some muffled swearing.

Bjorn contemplates this for a moment.  "None of you," he pronounces, "can tell stories worth shit.   Okay.  Let me sum up.  Tell me what I'm missing.

"Somehow, Rez gets sent an AI that he calls Ayama, but which is apparently the Delphi Oracle.  Sidenote: What the fuck?  Rez seeks refuge in your house, I presume for reasons related to the AI.  So does Ginrai, because of Shade's dreams.  A SWAT team raids your house.  Do you know who?  Then you Thelma and Louise across the country to bust me out of the Workshop.  Again, why? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it, but I don't know you from jack or shit."

Holding up a hand to forestall interruptions, he continues, "You have a dream where Rez becomes the guardian of the Oracle of Delphi, which is presumably why he can shoot fire arrows.  Okay.  Then we get into Manos, and Rasputin, and Pax Arcana, and the Seven Kobolds, and I don't follow any of it.  Who the hell are all these people?"

"Yeah, sorry.  Story telling isn't my forte.  Being violent and critical is.  One by one...  No, I have no fucking clue with the Oracle of Delphi and how the heck that happened.  It was a random guess that just happened to bear fruit.  The swat team was a collection team for the Seventh Cabal, at least according to Ayame.  I think she's fairly trustworthy on that call.  Similar to the team that probably picked you up, no?"

"Why'd we come to rescue you?  Well, quite simply I do that kinda stuff for those I count as friends.  A bit nutty that way.  But more specifically, the guys who kidnapped you were the guys who were after us.  So going and checking out their apparent stronghold and busting you out both aided the larger goal of hampering them and figuring out just who the fuck these buggers were.  Charging straight in and busting you out wasn't really the original plan but you were the only lead we had on them.  It was either go and help you out or keep checking out grimy ancient libraries.  One of those had a meriteous chance of success, and it wasn't the one with the books."

"Okay...  Manos is Rasputin and is their version of Ayame.  Another digital being.  We heard of him first when Ayame vanished following Shade being caught and leaking out everything under the sun to them including where she was.  The Seventh Cabal is the guys behind the Workshop you were in.  They ran it and control it.  It's one of two secret societies both centered around Rome currently in the middle of a power struggle.  What for?  I have no clue.  But I know they are all but openly in warfare right now and probably have been for a while.  The other group is Pax Arcana.  These guys are the ones that apparently dropped Ayame on our front door and have been trying to catch us alongside the Seventh Cabal the entire damn time.  I don't know much more about either group other than supposition."

Dracos

The shower turned off about a minute ago, and Rez appears at the door to the kitchen.

He looks clean, he looks soggy, and he looks not much happier than he did last night.

"Who the hell used all the hot water?!"

"Gin did.   Anyhow, bitch, sit down.  Think you prolly want to join in as well."

Dracos

"Eh, I have work to do.  What's going on?"

"Dracos just finished telling me what you guys have been up to.  Guess it's my turn now."

Bjorn leans against the counter, crosses his arms, and frown at the floor, considering.  "Okay.  I think I told Drac a partial version of the beginning of all this, but when I was driving back from work, I ran into -- literally -- Ashnod."  Glancing at Paul, Bjorn explains, "Ashnod is a pyrokinetic.  Really strong one.  The one who blew up San Francisco, in fact, but that's much later on."

Scratching his head in thought, he continues.  "Ashnod tried to set me on fire, then, but it didn't take, thanks to this  -- I think."  He hefts the wrist with its bracelet.  "I'm not sure, now, how much of it is me and how much of it is this thing.  Anyways, I saw Ashnod get recaptured by some secret agents.  And that would have been about the end of it, except that a couple of days later, Jessica Taylor -- the telepath I tried to capture in the Workshop, remember? -- shows up on my doorstep.  She says that she's with the Workshop, which she says is out to isolate the really dangerous metahumans from society, for the betterment of all.  She also explains that the Forge is now after me, because they picked up on my powers, and they want me.  She offers me a position with the Workshop, and protection, and I take it.  But on our way down here, we get jumped by some thugs, and captured."

Bjorn shrugs.  "And, when it comes down to it, that's pretty much it.  When I woke up, I was in the Workshop, and it wasn't half so nice as she had made it out to be."  The thought gives him a rather twisted smile.  "I learned a bit more about my powers, then, especially the anti-telepathy stuff, and fucking up a doctor's experiment got the bracelet permanently stuck on me.  Other than that, I was just gunning to get out."

"Fun, fun, fun."

Rez turns to head back into the TV room.

"Actually, Drac, you think you might be able to help me out with this?"

"Um...well, I'll give it a look.  Practice in a bit Bjorn?"  Dracos asks as he heads over to see what Rez wants.

Dracos

Rez sits back down on the couch, in front of his laptop.

"Need to crack this box, preferably before the end of the week.  You any good at encryption, or just coding?"

"If you want the theory of encryption, I can spit it out.  If you want me to hack that box, I am well, not the most skilled in such matters.  I can do some encoding, just not my area really."

Dracos

"Wait, Manos is some kind of AI? I thought Manos was the movie where Torgo takes care of things while the master is away. I need some kind of flow chart."

Bjorn sighs in exasperation, and throws his hands up.  Jesus.  I'm so glad that I'm stuck with a crew that's really intent on figuring out what the fuck is going on.  Makes me really fucking confident, it does.

"Beats the hell out of me," he tells Paul.  "Maybe you can get them to explain things.  Me, I'm giving up before I get really irritated.  I'm going up back to my bedroom to meditate."

And unless Paul interrupts him, this is exactly what he does.

"Hm.  Don't worry for now, then.  I might get you to code something later, but I'll screw around with it."

Rez settles himself down and starts tinkering.

"Mkaaay..."

Dracos heads back into the kitchen, "Eh...  This is all whack."

Dracos

Noticing the room had emptied during his checking out what rez had asked, he headed around, looking for Bjorn, eventually coming and knocking on his door, "You there, Bjorn?"

Dracos

Bjorn blinks, his semi-trance disturbed, and says, "Yeah? Door's open.  What's up?"

Dracos comes in, "Heya, wondering if you are up to well, practicing these new powers.  As I said earlier, if you want to test your shield on some other things in a non-fatalistic manner, I have at least a few ideas."

Dracos

Bjorn shrugs, and gets to his feet, grabbing (carefully!) Shinmyouken.  "Sounds like a good idea.  What's your plan?"

"Well, let's get out to the back yard and I'll explain."

Dracos turns, leading the way out there, and picking up a bokken, flashlight, some newspaper, and some matches.  He also glances out when they get back there to see if he sees a hose.  If not, oh well.

"Okay, the idea is to start off trying a few basic things in a way that wouldn't hurt you and seeing if your shield can block them.  For starters, I assume you can quite easily catch or redirect a punch from your martial arts training?"

Dracos

Bjorn eyes the supplies in Drac's hands warily.  "Well, yeah," he says cautiously.  "You want to check if I'm immune to regular fire?"

"Not you.  The shield.  I'm not testing that unless you can get the shield to cover an area far enough away from your body that I can touch it to the shield without risking hitting you.  I don't particularly like the concept of even risking accidentally setting friends on fire after all."

Dracos

Extruding his glowing aura out about arm's reach past his body, Bjorn points out, "Okay, sounds like a plan.  It's worth pointing out, though, that we don't actually know that this," he waves his hand at the funky lightshow, "is the same thing that protected me from Ashnod."

He grins, then, wide enough to expose slightly overlarge canines.  "On the other hand, it's worth trying, right?  Gimme the newspaper."

"Huh?  Eh, sorry.  Think you misunderstood.  The newspaper is to make a small torch to brush along the side of your shield and see if it stops it.  And I'm only going to test that if you can get that shield further away, well no, that should be far enough if you keep your arms in.  But why don't we check how it blocks physical blows first.  Concentrate on having it deflect a physical attack, a punch and get ready to catch my punch if it doesn't.  Tell me when you are ready."

Dracos stretches his arms slightly and pulls back, preparing a very intentionally foreshadowed punch.

Dracos

Mentally, Bjorn shrugs, and sets himself to do as Dracos suggested.

Dracos follows through with the foreshadowed punch at Bjorn's chest.

Dracos
And now we wait for BRIAN

The shield does absolutely nothing to prevent or slow the punch.  Nor the fire from the newspaper.  It does, in fact, seem to ignore everything except telepathy, which it vanishes to block.

"Hmmm...  I think that whatever protected you from Ashnod, this isn't it.  It might be another power, but I don't know."

Dracos

"Mind if I try something?" Paul says from the back deck. "I've been trying to learn all I can about... well, about my superpowers is what I guess you'd call them. It might be useful to see how Bjorn's, uh, superpower reacts with it.

"Also, I told myself I was going to practice using it every day, but lately I been forgetting and I need to catch up. You guys don't mind if I join you, do you?"

"Got no problems myself.  Bjorn?"

Dracos

"Wait a second," Bjorn protests, cocking his head dubiously.  "Didn't you say you blew a shed apart with your power?  I want to empahsize that my goal here is to learn how to use my power without dying.  How much control do you have?"

"Like I said, I've been trying to get a handle on it. When I blew up the old fort, I think that was on the highest setting I could have. If I concentrate, I can use lower power; though it still makes me really tired.

"What I was thiking, we get something that's large and bulky but not too heavy, like, say an old mattress. First, I set it up and shove it at you, and see if it blocks that. Then, I set it back up and, uh, use my 'power' to shove it at you, see if it blocks that. Then I just try to shove you with my power and see if you move. Thesting with the mattress first will see if I can do it lightly enough to not hurt you right now; some days I can do it and some days I can't.

"Oh, and sorry about the Manos thing. That was out of line."

Bjorn furrow his brow at the Manos comment, but then he waves his hand dismissively.  "Nah, 's my problem.  Been a little on edge.

"Okay, there's no real point starting with the mattress.  Between what I just did with Drac, and being shot and tazered, I'm pretty damn sure that if it doesn't involve power, I can't do anything with it.  I'm also pretty sure that I won't be able to do anything about you shoving the mattress at me, so let's skip that one for now, too.  

"So let's just skip right to the you shoving me bit, and see how it goes.  But before we do that... no offense, but I'd like to see you do a 'low-power' push.  I can't heal bones in nine days."

"Well, the reason I wanted the tests was to be all scientific and shit. Make sure that there is nothing in the mattress or whatever we use that blocks it. And if it can distinguish between "magical" fire, like that Tawnos guy put out, and "normal" fire, it might be able to distinguish between something thrown by muscle and something thrown with superpowers. Just thought it was something to try."

Paul then looks around for something suitable to exert his powers on, to show Bjorn and to make sure he really does have the "volume control" on it today. Seeing nothing better than a random chunk of cement, he starts humming "Honky Tonk Woman" to himself, imagining it on low volume, and envisions the chunk rising fromthe ground. Hopefully, he can lift the chunk without pulverising it.

(I'm using my TK at 20 STR to lift up the chunk)

The rock rises out of the ground, just the sliiiiightest bit shakily, as though some invisible guy were holding it, and at the edge of his limits in holding it aloft.

Bjorn studies the rock, trying to judge its weight, and then shrugs.  "Okay.  No pain, no gain.  I'll trust you."

He hands Shinmyouken to Dracos, muttering, "Hold this.  I don't want to fall on it."  Then he strides out to the middle of the yard.  Glancing over his shoulder to make sure any ballistic trajectory would be reasonably free of overly painful objects, he sets himself, and visualizes his shield: first as a suit of armour protecting himself, and then pushing it out into a darklight sphere surrounding his body.  "All right.  Ready?"

The rock falls back to the ground as if dropped, and Paul almost falls over himself. "No..." he starts, and then he lets out a yawn that lasts for about ten seconds and is so wide you wonder if he unhinged his jaw to do it. "No, gimme a minute to rest up. It takes a lot out of me."

He then sits down on the edge of the back deck, seated like someone who has just run twenty miles -- only he isn't panting, after all, the exertion wasn't physical.

Dracos nods and respectingly holds onto Shinmyouken and stands a fair bit back.

Dracos

"What's he supposed to be holding, anyway?"

Bjorn shrugs, lets his shield drop, and walks back to Dracos to take back Shinmyouken.  "My sword," Bjorn says, succintly.  "I'd call it a katana, but it's not, technically, since a katana must be forged in a particular method with a certain type of steel, and this was made out of glass, water, and telekinesis.  It works pretty much the same, though."

The relative peacefulness of the backyard scene was rudely interrupted by a loud spate of very, very foul language coming from inside.  Followed closely by a deafening crack that sounded rather like the front door slamming.

"Uh... okay. You might want to wrap some rubber bands around the handle or something, so we can tell where it is."

He stretches his arms, then gets up. "Okay, I think that about did it. Ready to try?"

"I was ready before," Bjorn points out drily.

He then goes through the same set-up: choosing a place, extruding the shield, setting himself.  Then he nods at Paul.  "Ready when you are."

Paul nods. He hears the lyrics in his head again, as that's the only mental bridge he knows of to manifest the power. He imagines the "volume" to be low, lower than before, so low that it seems Mick Jagger is whispering about a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis, perhaps because he was still in her room and he didn't want to wake her.

Then he imagines pushing on Bjorn's chest, imagines reaching out and giving him a shove, and even imagines the feeling of his arm rising to do it, but he doesn't actually move at all.

(I'm using my TK at 10 STR to try and push Bjorn. Not really an attack, just a push.)

Huitzil:  It's like trying to push the planet.  Nothing happens (though, this takes a bit less out of you) except for the color scheme of the shield changing to a bit more yellow than black.

Bjorn:  Your shield appears to be anchored to the ground, and anchoring you there, as well.

Dracos:  Lines of yellowish force are reaching out of Paul's aura, like he was wearing a suit of helpful Shoggoth plate.  They're pushing at the shield inneffectually,

If Paul had his arms out, he'd drop them to the ground in a show of exertion. "Well, that didn't work. Or it did work, I guess. Anyway, whatever shield you have blocks my telekinesis.

"I wonder how it differentiates? I mean, kinetic energy is kinetic energy, and I don't think the shield would block something like a really strong gust of wind. Maybe it's the same way it can tell whether something is normal fire nor not-normal fire. Whatever, I don't know shit abotu this anyway." That said, he sits back down on the deck.

"It's obvious actually.  It's magic.  It stops the weaves of magic."

Dracos

"Magic? I dunno if it's that... I mean, I don't remember really 'weaving' anything. I think if it was magic, it would be different."

He pauses.

"Then again, I also thought that if I could lift shit with my mind, I'd know, and look how that ended up. Maybe it's all caused by tiny gnomes, and the shield just blocks gnomes from getting in. We don't know, really."

"I can see it.  It extends off you, a sort of yellow wave heading towards his shield, which changed color slightly when it encountered yours and stopped it.  That's entirely the uniting effect.  It's the magic itself it stops."

Dracos

"You can see it? Weird. I can't even see it, and I'm the guy who does it. This is all really, really fucked up. But as long as you're here, I want to try using it to shove something at Bjorn, and see how it affects that."

"That likely wouldn't stop the object once in motion, but would stop the magic if you tried to hold it within the shield from without."

Dracos

"I'd tend to agree with Drac," Bjorn says, the shield still glowing about him.  "I'm willing to try, but I'll bet that if you pushed a mattress at me, you'll stop being able to push once you reach the edges of the shield, but the mattress will keep moving.  Just like how I didn't get burnt by Ashnod's fire, but I was choking on the smoke from the fire he lit in the Workshop.

"But, Drac, you said you could see something you thought was Paul's TK?  And it stopped at the shield, you say, and that makes sense, given that we all saw the shield change color.  So here's a question: how big can I make this shield?"

And that's exactly what Bjorn sets about doing.  As he pushes it out, though, he tries to imagine it growing more along the ground, and as little upwards as possible -- a disc expanding about him, rather than a sphere.  Probably don't want to freak out the neighbours.

Bjorn:  Your shield appears indifferent to your input.  You do know, from practice, that you could extend your 'mindboard' around other people, so it seems reasonable to assume you could extend your other protection as well ... but it does not appear to visibly effect the shield you're seeing now.  Also, when Paul stops pushing, you can lift your feet again, and don't feel like something's anchoring you down.

"Hmm, I have a thought."

Dracos walked around to the opposite side of the shield from Huitzil.

"Bjorn, mind testing having two different powers hitting your shield at the same time?"

Dracos

Bjorn stops trying to extend the shield, and turns his mindboard in.  "Go right ahead.  If you feel up to it, Paul, try shoving a little harder, too."

He grins, suddenly.  "If I start spitting blood, though, stop please?"

Dracos laughs and sends a very strong This message has gotten through. to Bjorn's mind.

Dracos

Paul shrugs and repeats the process again, this time with the "volume level" at about a stage whisper, rather than a normal whisper.

(Using my TK again, trying 20 STR to push him)

The shield flashes yellow when Paul pushes against it (though, more brightly this time around), and the 'anchoring' sensation is more solid.  Other than that, Dracos's message is dropped like a bad habit.

"Whenever you're ready, Drac," Bjorn says, watching the light show.

"Do it quick, I can't keep it up..."

"Already did.  Didn't get through as far as I can feel."

Dracos

Bjorn nods, and then abruptly stops imagining the shield about him, while Paul is still "pushing" at him.

Bjorn: You imagine this.  For a brief instant, only a fraction of a second, really, you feel a sensation like some giant form-fitting fist has grabbed you, and pushes you back, but before you can even think of stopping it, it stops on its own, and your bracelet flares blue.  There is no more visible shield, but the pressure is stopped regardless.  You still can't sense anything from Dracos, and you don't feel like you're rooted.  You just feel like you're standing there with a glowing blue bracelet while Paul makes faces at you (and boy does he look tired from making these faces) and Dracos thinks at you.

Huitzil:  For a single moment it feels like the shield is gone, and you're able to push at Bjorn, but that moment is quickly interrupted, and everything feels the same as it did before.  Tons of effort, no effect.

Dracos:  The glow from that iron bracelet seems to actually be repulsing the yellow lines of force....

"How are you holding up Bjorn?"

Dracos

Paul stops pushing, giving out another exhausted yawn. "I think I got you for a second, but then it just stopped working again.

"Anyway, I think that's enough for me for right now. I'm gonna go take a nap, unless you guys have something better for me to do."

"You can go ahead, if you want.  Now, this is weird," Bjorn says, slowly.  "Notice the shield is gone?" He waves his hand at the empty space around him.  "Before, I was actively trying to protect myself.  It worked, but I was," he gropes for a word, "rooted.  I couldn't move my feet while Paul was pushing at me.  But then I dropped the shield, and it's like this," he waves the bracelet, "took over.  Still couldnt feel Paul pushing at me, but I could move my feet."

He shakes his head.  "It's like the bracelet does the same things I can, but... better, really."

"That's what I saw as well.  The bracelet was protecting you.  Probably intrinsically magic.  Hmm, can you hold it up for a sec?"  Dracos heads closer, "I'd like to try seeing what I can see directly on the bracelet."

If Bjorn complies Dracos tries to focus his sight on the Bracelet, concentrating very thoroughly on it.

Dracos

Looking down at his wrist, where the bracelet is very clearly exposed, Bjorn shrugs, and then holds his arm out for closer inspection.  

For that matter, he suddenly realizes, he's never really taken a close look at it himself, not since he first got it four years ago.  He studies it closely.

Bjorn:  The bracelet has dozens of links, each composed of a small section of wire.  The wire has been twisted into two loops, though the length of the loop has the wire wrapped around itself, rather like a tiny metal noose with a loop at each end.  It's glowing blue, and made of silver.

Dracos:  The bracelet has dozens of links, each composed of a small section of wire.  The wire has been twisted into two loops, though the length of the loop has the wire wrapped around itself, rather like a tiny metal noose with a loop at each end.  It's emitting spikes of bright blue light that cut apart the incoming yellow tendrils of force from Paul (or did, before he stopped) and made of iron.

"Hmm, Hey Bjorn, how knowledgable are you on old Fae legends.  The English variety of them?"

Dracos

Bjorn looks at the sky, lips pursed in consideration.  "Vaguely, I guess.  Never made particular study of 'em, but you pick up a lot in reading.  Why?"

"Not exactly my specialty either but...  to my eyes that bracelet is made of iron.  As I recall, in the English mythology of faries and 'fae magics', cold iron was death to them.  Perhaps those tales weren't entirely fabrication.  It could be specially treated iron is capable of providing a shield against well, magic.  I'd suggest that that bracelet is made of that type of iron."

Dracos

"Well," Bjorn drawls, "the biggest problem with that is that the bracelet is made of silver, not iron.  Not to mention the fact that I'm pretty sure Paul isn't a fairy."

"To your eyes.  To mine, it appears iron.  Not to be rude or anything, but given the last few days, I think in this regard my eyes are probably more accurate.  I'd suggest it's an illusion to hide it's real purpose."

Dracos

Bjorn shrugs as if to concede the point, but it's pretty clear that he doesn't really believe Dracos.  "Anyways, silver or iron, it doesn't really get at the key questions.  Like, how much of what I can do is me, and how much is the bracelet?  And exactly how much can I do?  And if the bracelet and I do the same thing in different ways, which is the stronger?"

Shaking his head dismissively, he starts to roll his shoulders as if to work out kinks.  "Anyways, this is pretty much all I think we can do, at least without access to more people with powers.  Unless there's something else you wanted to do, I heard somebody stomping around pretty fucking unhappily.  We should go check out what's up."

"I'd suggest that the shield is you but the bracelet is something else.  It's two different visible effect.  The shield is more like...how to say, a holy circle.  Evil cannot enter there.  It's not disrupted, it just is displaced as far as I can see.  The bracelet alone is entirely different.  It actually cuts apart the magic to my eyes, destroying it.  In practice they might both work similarly, but they aren't really similar at all.  I'd suggest that while something of great power might punch through your shield, it likely would be frayed apart by the bracelet.  Anyhow, I'd like your help in practicing my own powers and their capabilities if you don't mind."

Dracos glanced back at the house, "And that's Rez.  Only one of us here swears with an australian accent.  And knowing him it's no use trying to figure out why he's angry until he gets it out of his system.  I'll see about him later when he does.  Until then he'd only get more worked up."

Dracos

Bjorn shrugs again, but keeps his opinions -- whatever they might be -- to himself, other than to offer.  "Frankly, the best I can hope for is I never have to find out.

"Anyways, if you're sure Rez is okay, then what did you want to work on?"

"You can block telepaths correct?  That naturally means there is a good possibility other people can as well.  Therefore..."

Dracos sits down crossing his legs, "I'd like you to box me off and I'd like to try and get through.  At the worst, I'll be better prepared if suddenly I can't, at the best I'll figure out a way through."

Dracos

Eyeing Dracos with amusement, Bjorn replies, "Okay, easy enough.  But you know, we can do that indoors.  Telepathy isn't likely to blow holes in walls, or set the carpet on fire.  Why don't we do this sitting at a kitchen table, so that I can watch TV and have a drink while you drive yourself crazy?"

"Mkay..."  Dracos stands up, opening the door, "After ye."

Dracos

Leading the way back into the kitchen, Bjorn grabs a root beer from the fridge and plops down in a chair, leaning back until a faint creak sounds and he drops the chair back to rest on all fours, looking slightly embarrassed.  

Leaning both arms on the table, he cocks an eyebrow at Dracos.  "Are you sure you want to start with trying to punch through my shield?  To be honest, I've seen your writing, and it looks like a sloppy first-grader's.  You might want to work on developing some skill just at the basics before you try anything more complicated."

"I thrive from pressure."  Dracos smiles, sitting down nearby on the floor and and closing his eyes slightly.  "Tell me when you are ready."

Dracos

Out of curiousity, Bjorn traps Dracos in his mindboard (casually sticking his left hand below the table, so that the glow won't tip him off) and says nothing, waiting to see if Dracos will notice.

Dracos:  You feel (strangely) as if someone has just reached out and clamped a big hand over your mind, numbing it and muffling the outside world from you.  While new to the power of telepathy, this is rather unsettling initially, as you had adjusted to the mental freedom you previously enjoyed.

It causes a somewhat claustrophobic sensation, really.

Dracos smiles, "I see you are ready.  It is an interesting sensation.  Hmm..."

Dracos begins by lightly feeling around the mental 'wall/block' around him, trying to slip around it as subtly as he's able.  When/if this fails, he attempts to penetrate it by imagining a thought as a paper thin sliver with hello on it, blasting towards the wall.  Provided that fails, Dracos rests a second and then proceeds to just try to obliterate it by sheer force of will.  If one was to take a mental picture of the event, it might look a little like this:

(http://www.pishoque.net/soulriders/1071669974761.gif)

Dracos

Dracos:  You find it's easy to actually make yourself tired by thinking too hard.

Dracos pauses, resting. "Okay....I cannot get through that.  Mind taking it down?  I'm going to rest a bit then just practice some simple stuff with you.

Dracos

The front door opens with a click and Rez walks in, shoulders slumped.  He drops his coat on the couch and walks towards the kitchen, not acknowledging the two sitting at the kitchen table as he walks in, opens the fridge, and pours himself a glass of juice.

"Rez you look like I shot your dog.  What's up?"

Dracos

"Got an email off Ayame.  A 'if you're reading this, I'm already dead' email."

Rez takes a few sips of juice, eyes it, and pours the rest of it down the sink.

"...Fun.  Maybe ya should lie down man."

Dracos

"I'm more in the 'scream and break things' mindset than 'curl up and cry'.  That comes later."

Rez drops the glass into the sink.

"Dammit.  I don't know what more I could have done.  We tried, we really did, and . . . gah!  Manos didn't look to have finished finding her when we wrecked the place . . ."

"Trails probably.  Even without finding her he could've left a huge trail leading in her direction that others followed.  Some things ya just can't stop, you know?"

Dracos

"That's not good enough.  It wasn't good enough.  Meh."

Rez walks back into the loungeroom, sitting down at his computer.

"She told me a couple of other things, but I'll talk to you about them later.  When I've calmed down."

Dracos goes back to training, doing simple read, writes, etc with Bjorn until later.

Dracos

Rez throws himself into trying to break the encryption around the HDs for a while longer, until he feels like he's calmed down a bit.

Whereupon he writes an email.

And gets back to his attempted hackery before he thinks about things too much.

It turns out that letting your brain be the chalkboard for someone trying to develop writing skills better than those of a grade schooler gets rather tedious after a while.  So, using the pretense of encouraging Drac to try "telepathy at a distance, and with someone you can't see," Bjorn wanders out to the lounge (let's be honest here, more of a slump, really) and sits himself on a chair opposite Rez.

After watching him in silence for a while, Bjorn offers, "You wanna talk about it yet?"

Rez didn't look up, although he did answer.

"How many people do you think died yesterday?"

Bjorn gives Rez a long, steady look, before closing his eyes.   With an expressionless face and voice, he says, quietly, "I'm not sure.  I never knew how many people there were in the Workshop, and as for how much damage the explosion did around that area...."  Opening his eyes, he continues, "Probably at least forty, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was as much as several hundred."

Dracos speaks up slowly from the other room, responding to the question he wasn't asked, "Maybe a hundred, maybe two, maybe a thousand.  Does it really matter?  We're only human.  We can't save everyone even if we'd want to.  How many thousand die every day from stuff that just shouldn't happen but does?  You can't keep it on your conscience Rez.  Or if you do, you can only use it to escape the fight they intend to bring to you or end the fight that'll continue killing those around.  Anything else is denial.  And since they'll follow you... or me... or Bjorn or Huitz...  wherever we go, Running isn't exactly an option, is it Rez?  We're responsible for who we do save, Rez.  What decisions we do make given poor situations.  Not for being perfect."

Dracos

"Why the fuck did Ashnod do that?  HOW the fuck did he do that?  How can any one person have that much power, it was like the wrath of God . . . and we let him, you know.  We helped him.  "But I didn't know what would happen" is a pretty pathetic excuse.  We went in there intending to kill anyone who got in our way."

Rez pauses and looks at Bjorn..

"And you know, we went in there with basically three people to try and rescue.  You, Shade, and Ayame.  One out of three is a pretty fucking shitty average, in my opinion."

"Yeah, it's a shitty average.  We'll have to do better.  How can any one person wipe out entire cities?  We've been doing that for decades Rez.   At least us Americans have.  He just happens not to need a tool.  Shade well...  he got himself killed didn't you say that?  You can't help a man trying to die."

Dracos

"People are supposed to need tools, Drac.  They're meant to be hard to get.  You aren't meant to wake up some day and . . . and . . . Ayame didn't try to die.  She sounded scared.  Holed up somewhere, waiting for the end,"  Rez's tone changes, "How the fuck can you people be so calm about this?  Seriously?!  I mean, it hardly seems to phase you, Drac, and Ginrai's been running around like nothing happened!"

Dracos gets up, leaning against the wall.  "I've told you for years Rez, nothin' phases me.  I'm already insane, so what does a few tings here and there do?  Maybe someone just needs to be calm because it's there?  Maybe it's just because if I worried about things I couldn't change I'd go nuts?  Either way, it's how I am.  Hell, feel free to get angry at me for it if you need man.  But don't keep on like this spiraling into depression.  It don't go nowhere and you know it."

Dracos

Bjorn has been silent for some time, but now he speaks up, his expression still abstracted.  "I suspect, if you asked a doctor, he'd tell you I'm not dealing with this well.  I killed people, with my own hands, and frankly, anyone who tells you he can just shrug that off is either lying, or should be put down."

But now his gaze focusses on the world again, and hardens, and he looks Rez in the eyes.  "But I killed because they trapped me, and tried to experiment on me, as if I were no more than an animal below notice.  They tortured Ashnod, drove him mad, until he wanted to destroy them, no matter the cost to him or anyone else.

"They have no right, legal or moral, to do so.  And I have to do everything I can to stop them, or I won't be any better than them.  And that means I can't stop until it's over."

Bjorn's gaze does not waver.  "People died because I failed, because I didn't figure out what Ashnod was going to do soon enough.  Now I have to make up for that.  And that's all there is to it."

Dracos glances at Bjorn, "Pardon my...bluntness.  I agree with your self analysis except for the last part, Bjorn.  Even if you had god's own sight and knew what Ashnod was going to do.  Why would it be your repsonsibility to stop him?  If you can think of a way...perhaps maybe.  But even had we beaten him unconscious and dragged him along, we would've only saved a man who's soul had taken one too many blows and then been denied his revenge."

Dracos shrugs, "Perhaps though I'm still too traditional a thinker."

Dracos

"Because there were a shitload of people both in the workshop who we didn't need to kill, and probably a fair few civilians got killed by that quake, too.  In case you forgot."

"I didn't forget.  I just don't see the reason to claim entire responsibility upon our shoulders for not forseeing the full effects of Ashnod's vengeance.  What would you have done, Rez, had you known?  Tie him up?  Beat him unconscious?  Kill him?  Would you have pulled your bow and shot him directly to stop him from doing that?"

Dracos

"You don't kill for vengeance," Bjorn says, harshly.  "You avoid killing, whenever possible.  Ashnod's 'vengenace' caused people to die who had nothing at all do with it.  Or did you think that all that flaming wreckage and earthquake just happened to miss anyone who wasn't involved in the Workshop?

"Ashnod was wrong.  He had been driven mad, but that means he needed to be cured, not indulged.  His own daughter will grow up without parents, now, and he accomplished nothing.  If the Workshop could be stopped by what he did, then it would have been shut down simply by our escaping.

"What he did had no moral superiority to what the Workshop did.  If we were willing to kill them, why not Ashnod?

Bjorn stares blackly at the floor, and then slumps.  "Yes.  I would have killed him if I'd figured it out in time, and couldn't talk him out of it, and then my nightmares would have been twice as worse.  But I didn't, and so now I need, all the more, to make sure there are no more Ashnods, and no more Workshops to make people like him."

"Fair enough, Bjorn.  But we didn't know.  And couldn't have.  It's done.  It's over with.  Now what remains is where we go from here.  Yes, it's more complicated then that perhaps, but that's what I see.  I see a lot of dead people."

Dracos sighs.  "We all think differently on these sorts of things.  If it's what you need to do, you need to do it.  I'll respect that well enough.  I do what I think's necessary to survive and to protect those I call friend.  Currently, I think we need to shape up and recover if we are going to survive.  We're being hunted by a group that is nothing short of ruthless.  Perhaps we can save everyone, and it's a worthy goal...but I'm going to be concentrating on saving us.  The Seventh Cabal must be destroyed...completely."

Dracos

"We played right into the hands of Pax Arcana, you know," Rez trails off.

"Of course we did.  They are going, too.  Preferrably at the same time.  If we eliminate Seventh Cabal alone, we'll find ourselves with sniper bullets in th back of our necks.  If we eliminate Pax Arcana, Seventh Cabal only needs one lucky shot with the amount of force it's shown idle declaration to using.  I want to find out though who runs these two groups.  And remove them.  And allow the chaos from the two headless beasts destroy them both.  Either way though, I don't think we know enough.  We know few enemies and fewer friends.  There is information that doesn't match up and is missing.  We need to find this out."

Dracos

"You seem pretty fucking eager, don't you?  I want to see what Ezmereth and Victor have to say . . . but unless it's really good, you know what?  I think I just want to go to ground.  I'm a programmer, and I'm not fucking cut out for this.  I don't want vengeance, I just want to be left the fuck alone."

Dracos shrugs, "I can't live like that.  I like setting up camp.  Staying in the same spot.  Until this shit is done, I can't go back to my own life.  If I can at all.  Eager?  Meh.  I just want it done with.  I'm violent by nature.  There's nothing I'd like more than to have every single member of both groups explode in a bloody mess and this whole thing relegated to a memory so I can go back to doing something well...fun with my life.  But I don't think wishing it is going to make them leave me alone."

Dracos

"You want to be left alone?" Bjorn asks, quietly.  "Like the people in San Francisco, yesterday?  Or Ayer's Rock?  Or the people who used to live in Moffet, back in 2004?

"If you think you can back out, Rez, look at your hand, and ask yourself why it's gold."

Rez looks at Bjorn.

"Fair call, except . . . why it's gold doesn't involve killing people unless I need to.  I'm meant to be a defender, not vengeance."

Dracos shrugs, "So we work our own ways.  I intend to go on as I think it's the safest route longterm.  Bjorn intends to protect all he can.  To stop them, if I read him right.  You intend to do what defends well...what right now Rez?"

Dracos

"You remember how Shade spilled everything.  Got a mental defence, you?"

"This isn't about vengeance," Bjorn says, evenly.  "If it had been, I would have been killing those guards we took prisoner.   Anyone who takes pleasure in killing is a murderer, and a danger.

"But at the same time, a person who refuses to kill when it's necessary is a danger, as well.  This is not about vengeance.  This is about stopping something that should never have been.

"As for mental defense... needs be, I can protect all of us, I think."

Dracos sighs, Not to the degree, Bjorn does Rez, but best I can manage. I don't spill easy.  Either way, I'm not shade.

Dracos

Rez visibly jumped and looked at Drac wide-eyed, looking utterly scared.

Dracos raises an eyebrow, "Afraid of me now man?  Sheesh."

Dracos

"Drac . . . I'd be fucking terrified of anyone who can pull stuff out of my mind at will."

"Yeah...lovely.  Well, imagine that, I don't."  Dracos shrugs, turning and heading towards the kitchen to get a drink.

Dracos

Rez just goes back to his attempted-hackery-ness.

"Insensitive prick, isn't he?" Bjorn says, almost conversationally, but sotto voce.

"Friends being scared of you doesn't do much for the cheer factor, but I'm on edge right now."

"Obviously.  He sent you a telepathic message or something?"

"Bingo.  The idea of people being able to read minds scares the crap out of me, but I hadn't made the connection yet . . ."

Rez sighs.

"I'll apologize later."

"Well, frankly, shoving your thoughts into someone's mind uninvited is a little on the rude side, really.

"Anyways.  You want to talk more about this Ayame thing?  I still don't completely understand it, I think."

"Mm."

Rez sighs.

"Alright.  Basically . . . several days ago, someone named Ceran logged on to Soulriders and left a message in a locked board.  A hack, basically.  So digging around through logs and the directory structure, we found an eggdrop bot.  We compiled it, it logged in to a server . . . somewhere, don't remember where, and started downloading stuff.  A few gigs and a lot of tinkering later, a linux box of mine has been completely reworked and starts talking to me."

Rez hums.

"Said that she wasn't really sure what her name used to be, but now it was Ayame (the name of the system she was compiled on).  So anyway, after a while of poking around and trying to figure out where she came from (Vatican, apparently), she ended up trying to access some of her old databases and realized it was a trap.  Dammit, I could have told her that."

"Anyway, being freaked out when she told me what she'd done and to run, because they were looking for me, I split the country.  Incidentally, my bank accounts had been locked up and my passport tagged . . . which she somehow managed to get me through."

"Then I ended up in Boston, and after about a day or so a swat team bursts into Drac's house trying to beat our heads in with batons and tazers, kinda implying that my paranoia was justified.  And since you were our only lead, we sorta road-tripped across the country.  Ayame gave us a bunch of gear and set up some false trails for us," Rez indicates the uplink on the table, "and we ended up rocking over to San Francisco."

"Incidentally, along the way we had a weird dream where I agreed to be her defender, which explains the hand.  It was a little more complex than that, but that's the rough overview."

"But basically, Ayame was the Oracle of Delphi, somehow made into an AI.  She ended up on my computer with about as much clue as to what was going on as I did - Pax sent her to me, apparently figuring that her trying to work out what was going on would draw the Seventh Cabal's attention to her and me, involving us in it .  She saved my ass several times, is pretty much the main reason we're here to talk to you, and . . . yeah, I couldn't return the favour when she needed it."

Bjorn frowns.  "Ceran... wait.  I got a phone call from someone named Ceran, telling me to get in touch with Pax Arcana.  That was right before the Workshop picked me up.

"And I hate to be insensitive, but how do you know the Oracle is gone?"

"I don't know.  Since there's no body to find, I'll never know.  She had a timed 'If you're reading this, I'm already dead' email that I received, though.  She was in the dream world, holed up somewhere, trying to buy herself time and waiting.  I know we got Manos, and I'd hoped we'd been in time but . . . but it's been some time, and she said there was more than one.  She could still be out there, and just sent the email off to confuse people but . . . I don't really believe that."

Rez trails off.

"Ceran's the Pax Arcana AI, just like Manos was the Seventh Cabal one.  Manos is gone, I think; from what I was told you can't just back up one of these entities."

"Well, that's not quite true, is it?" Bjorn says thoughtfully.  "After all, somebody managed to upload a copy of the Oracle onto your server, and you downloaded it.  Any number of copies could have theoretically been made along the way.

"As for the email -- how would something in a 'dream world' be able to trigger an email being sent?"

"I'd guess the same way she got herself there in the first place.  I mean, I know when I was in that dream, I was still aware of what was going on around me . . . since she managed to get herself there unaided, I'd just guess she can do stuff.  Besides, you never saw how good she was at the computer stuff, being an AI and all . . ."

"I don't know if it works like that, though.  I mean, I've got no idea how the metaphysics of something like this could even begin to be possible, but from some of the things she said when she wouldn't let me into her core directory, I'd guess that it's not.  Although . . ."

Rez brings up Ayame's last email on his laptop, and turns the screen to show Bjorn.

Bjorn reads the email, twice, and then leans back.  "Well.  Fairly clear, in most regards.  But it's worth pointing out that 'fallen' isn't dead.  A lot of people have been hunting the Oracle, it seems like, and she's got to be worth more alive and imprisoned than dead."

"Mm.  Maybe.  But I know Manos wanted to destroy her, and I also know that she'd been left in storage for some time before this incident . . . thanks, though."

Bjorn shrugs.  "Giving up on people before you've seen their body seems like a good way to make sure they become bodies.  Anyways, step one is to take care of her... daughter, right?"

"If I see anything, or hear anything, I'll jump, you have no idea . . . and yeah, pretty much.  I sent an email, now I'm just waiting, and in the meantime hacking at our wonderful stolen hard drives to see if I can dig anything useful out.  If nothing else, it should be interesting reading if I can get through."

"Well, don't drive yourself blind," Bjorn says, rising and stretching.  "I think I'm going to go meditate for a bit... unless there's any good books lying around."

And with a parting nod at Rez, Bjorn goes to explore the upstairs library.

"We've got lego, if you want."

Rez goes back to his hackery (again).

The upstairs library is actually pretty big, considering it's part of what appears all-around to be a lower-middle-class country house in California.

Most of the bookshelves contain a random assortment of sci-fi, fantasy, and a collection of fantasy art books.  There's a Boris Valejo collection book right next to the Atlas of the Land of Thomas Covenant.  Looking up, the entire Xanth series (up to date as of '95) is sharing shelf space with the Illearth War and the Mirror of Her Dreams.  To the left, hardcovers abound, center stage showing the Belgariad (two anthologies) and the Mallorean (individual hard-bound books), and beyond that, every single book ever writen by Harlan Ellison and Steven King combined.  Back against the 'shop' area of the upstairs is a reference section, filled with a sad and outdated looking Atlas of the World, a dusty but pristine Encyclopedia Britanica, and dozens of books on the occult.  And one book on oragami.

Bjorn sighs, and grabs the occult books.  After all, he thinks sourly, I'm practically living in one of these.

Going back to sit on the futon (Shinmyouken carefully placed within reach, and where he won't forget he put it), he starts to read.

Dracos, out of idle whimsy, investigates the house.  Goal being to try and figure out who's house it is.

Dracos

Bjorn:  The exercise is about as exciting as reading most text books.  It takes you a good sixteen pages of the first book you grabbed to realize it was actually thinly veiled Scientologist propganda.  The second is better, offering insight into 'dealing with the fay' (sounds a bit fanciful, still) and 'new age versus old age: Magic and Psyhic Powers'.  Some few bits resonate with what you've experienced with telepathy so far.

But nothing about beings like Ashnod....

Dracos: Investigating the house yields spooky results.  Judging by the clues lying around, a family of five people lived there.

A huge stack of paperwork next to the recliner closest to the door (labeled 'billing') seems to belong to one 'G. Morgana Llewelyn'.  This name is familiar to you, because she is the woman who sold you your claymore.  Judging by the reciepts stashed in the dusty manilla folder you're digging through, her husband (who in her story had recently passed away) was named David Randall.

Sees the names and is more intrigued.  Continues searching the house for the day.

Dracos

Judging by the homework shoved into desk drawers, the names on the artwork, and the labels on the toys, the other residents of the house were:

Chamber of Fallen Legos (TM): Rhys Randall Llewelyn.  Aside from toys (and quite a few of them) there's nothing of interest.

Chamber of Comic Book Styled Artwork:  Jason Donald Randall.  He's got tons of comics, lots of home-made artwork, original characters, and a handful of dirty magazines hidden beneath the bed (score).  Other than that, and a few models of U.S. ships (unpainted), there's not much else there.

Chamber of the NES and Faria:  Brian A. Randall.  A few empty candy wrappers are shoved between the bedframe and the floor.  The NES is there, of course, and tons of homework with less than promising scores, as well as a handfull of, 'See me after class!' notes.  Also, a 'junk drawer' full of completely random bits of ... well ... junk.  One or two pieces glow to your eyes.  (A 4 CM glass sphere with bubbles in it, and a nut of some kind on a piece of thick white string.  It's been pulled against the string a time or two, staining the string and releasing an odd scent.)  Nothing else really spectacular, other than the crawlspace access.

Master Bedroom: G. Morgana Llewelyn and David Donald Randall.  There is a twin to the blade you shattered in the Workshop here, hidden under some old clothes atop the dresser.  To your eyes, the blade is about to break, however.

Shop area:  Apparently, the guy who used the old 386 mostly used it to run some fairly complex mapping software for designing circuitry ... nearby dusty printouts from a huge plotter suggest something about microwave communications.

Music area:  A MASSIVE collection of vinyl music, covering the late sixties to the early eighties.  Also, a collection of home-made tapes that fill in most of the gaps for the record collection.

Unknown Macintosh Varient Area:  This computer is not actually Y2K compliant.  But when you change the date in the BIOS, you discover it's a IIgs.  Funky.

Library Area:  This area contains a huge collection of books.

Dracos picks up the magical items and the sword, carrying it around with him.  When he gets to the library he waves to Bjorn, first looking around for anything magical about the books.

"Bjorn, you realize who's house this is?"

Dracos

"No," says Bjorn distractedly, as he swaps one occult book for another.  "Who's?"

"This is the Randall family home.  Brian Randall's family home to be specific."

Dracos

"Brian..." Bjorn's voice trails off as his brow furrows in thought.  "Wait," he says, after a second, "you mean Brian-the-guy-who-founded-#void Brian?"

"Yes.  Brian Randall, Durandall, Founder of Void.  This is his family house."

Dracos

"Funky coincidence."  Bjorn eyes the bundle in Drac's arms.  "And you're looting the place?"

"Well, in a way yeah.  But more gathering the magic stuff.  These things are all at least minorly enchanted in some way.  Since you are already going through here, mind keeping an eye out for any book references to these claymores?  This one is very, very similar to the other one I had and they are both magical to my eyes.  It wouldn't be too much of a leap to think they might have notes on them somewhere.  Thanks."

Dracos, assuming Bjorn doesn't stop him, heads down to where Rez is.  "Any progress on those files?"

Dracos

"Aaaaabsolutely none.  Sorry about before, I'm just . . . on edge."

"No prob man.  I can deal.  Anyhow, two guesses whose house this is and the first one has dibs on being retarded."

Dracos

"Mine."

"Good retarded first guess.  Now your serious one?"

Dracos

"I dunno, it seems legitimate enough at first glance,"  Rez smirked, and keeps typing on his keyboard.

"It is.  But this place has well...Faria?  Who the fuck has Faria?  Anyhow...this is the Randall Family home.  You know, Brian Randall?"

Dracos

Rez stopped typing and just looked at Drac.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"No.  I'm not.  And hell, check this sword out.  Look familiar at all?"

Dracos

"It looks swordy, and chunky.  Why?"

"It's a claymore.  A magical claymore.  Owned by the same person who sold me the other claymore...which is almost exactly the same save for a slight difference in the hilt wrapping."

Dracos

"Wait, wait, wait.  Who sold you the other claymore, and what's their other claymore doing in Brian's old house?"

"If I read the writing on the wall right....  Brian's mother or Grandmother was the one that sold me the other sword."

Dracos

"So let me get this straight.  You bought a sword off Brian Randall's mother or grandmother.  After breaking your sword, you find a near-identical one in our safehouse, also owned by the same lady.  In a house that just so happens to be the old house of Brian Randall.  So we have a bunch of people who knew Brian Randall, including Unseen who just - completely coincidentaly - rocked up, meeting completely by accident in what none of us knew was Brian Randall's house.  We're all in trouble with organizations that, apparently, knew of Brian Randall and made files on us the day he died.  Apart from that he's listed as a suspect for the first break-in to the place we just levelled, and one of his friends, a guy called Stirling, was part of an organization that was attempting to fight the Seventh Cabal - calling themselves Big Fire, and just so happening to use one of Brian's favoured calls for it's motto.  You know the one.  Coincidence is officially out the fucking window, what did, or DOES, Brian have to do with this?"

"Ten bucks says Ceran is a code name for Brian Randall."

Dracos

"I don't buy that.  Pax said Ceran was someone else, and while I don't necessarily trust them, it doesn't seem to fit the pattern.  I concede that you might be on the right track, but it doesn't seem to fit all that well.  But if Brian was somehow affiliated with Pax Arcana, that would explain a lot, like why he was a suspect in the workshop raid.  But none of this explains why Ayame put us in Brian's old house."

"Well, perhaps he's the operator.  Only person we could ask though about your question would be Ayame herself.  And well..."

Dracos

"Yeah, well."

Rez starts typing away at his keyboard again.

"Anyhow, lemme know if you have a breakthrough.  I'm going to try and figure out just why there are several items of magic running around his house."

Dracos turns and heads into one of the empty rooms, laying out the stuff on the table and going and getting the other claymore.  To start he looks at both claymore's side to side.

Dracos

"Wait, wait," Rez calls out, "Magic?"

"Yes, Magic.  What, you didn't think I was carrying around all this junk because it looked shiny, did you?"

Dracos

"Well, I figured you were carrying around the sword because it was fairly swordy, and everyone wants oversized marbles."

"You raise an excellent point, but no, these are magic, though I have no clue what they do."

Dracos

"Interesting.  Well, Drac, you can tack another thing on to that list I mentioned earlier, and upgrade coincidence's predicament from being 'out the window' to being 'run over by a truck'."

"No kiddin'."

Dracos heads to his room and examines the magic items, getting his broken claymore hilt and putting it right next to the other claymore.

Dracos

The 'fracture' lines on the 'good' claymore line up with the existing edges of the broken one.  Looks like they were paired in some sense....

Dracos hmms and tries placing them perfectly against each other, line to line.

Dracos

*crash*

And it looks like such a sturdy blade, too....

Well, now it's broken into pieces that match the fragments used to shred Dr. Peterson.

Dracos sweatdrops.  "Magical exploding paired blades....who the hell invented something like that?"

Checks out the rest of the stuff.

Dracos

"You know, Drac," Bjorn says, sticking his head into the room, "if this house did belong to Brian, don't you think you could do him the respect of not blowing it the fuck up?"

"Well, sorry, I don't expect most blades to explode on touch."

Dracos

A nut on a string.  Which smells kinda funny.  You have no idea what this could be for.  You know it does something, and you know how to use it (rub the nut along the string), but you don't know what it actually does.  Or what kind of nut it is.

A glass marble.  With bubbles in it.  You think if you stare into a bubble hard enough you start seeing things, and, in fact, when you try to do so, about three hours pass before you remember what you were doing.  No idea what other purpose it would serve, however.

Coming back into the room some hours later (rather worried by the sudden abscence of noise), Bjorn find Dracos staring fixedly into the marble, and slaps him across the back of the head.  "Oi! Snap out of it!"

Dracos shakes his head, "Huh?"  He blinks, "Shit... that must be some kind of hypnotic trap or something."

Dracos

"What, this?"  Bjorn takes the marble from Dracos and skeptically examines it himself.

It's a glass marble.  Looks kinda ... shiny.  Neat.  You could probably look at it all day ... if you didn't have those occult books to leaf through.

Bjorn shakes his head.  "I'd give you the benefit of the doubt, and chalk this up to my apparent power immunity, if it wasn't for the fact that a couple hours ago, you were complaining about exploding swords.  As it is, Drac, take a damn nap."

Dracos shrugs, Pocketing the two small things and wrapping the mess of claymore's up in a bundle, he goes and tosses them in the back of the car.  He then goes on to get something ready for dinner.

Dracos

The day passes easily enough, everyone finding something to do in the old place, even if a run down old NES isn't that exciting.  A crate of cheaply pirated movies provides entertainment, assuming you liked early nineties and late eighties films.  The library provides an alternate escape if it doesn't, and the music room is always there, too.

   Eventually, of course, you go to sleep.

   Bjorn:  You dream of running through a three dimensional maze of glass.  You can see someone chasing you, and the glass is like your sword -- completely invisible.  But this maze has stairs, walls, doors ... even glass tables and chairs that you simply can't see.  Whoever's chasing you isn't much better off, but it's an awkward run, no matter how you look at it....

   Dracos:  You dream of a verdant forest, a lone man striding among the trees as though part of them, leaves growing from his hair, and out of his mouth.  The Green Man does not see your dream-self, but instead seems focused on reaching a destination just out of your sight ... and he vanishes behind a tree....

   Huitzil:  You dream of a tournament for Lord of the Rings.  You're doing quite well, honestly, and you've got a good hand.  Your opponent is someone you've never seen before, the pudgy, ignorable type of person who loses more often than not.  You really want to win this tournament, as the prize is your old life back.  When you look at the table, you realize you've just played the Bjorn Christianson card, and he's in moderate danger.  The only allies you can send to him are the Ginrai, Paul Durant, Philip Bloom, and Nathan Shuker cards.  Your Shade card was just killed.  Even if you manage to use all of the cards you have left, there's no guarantee that you're going to win.  Your opponent holds a mirror up, saying something you can't understand, and you wake up before seeing your own face.  You get the idea, however, that if you had seen it, you would have been someone else....

   Ginrai:  You dream of home, and your family.  You stand outside a window, looking out at a street, looking up towards another window, with your family inside.  "You can never come back to this," someone tells you.  "Not unless you resolve the contest...."

   Rez:  You dream of a plain of muted white.  Around you is a marsh, though you can't see for more than ten meters before everything is obscured by the fog.

   The wolf you saw before limps up to you, more beaten and wounded then before.  "I'm sorry," it says, before vanishing.

   Walking through the mists, you realize you're searching for Ayame, but all that's left is old memories....  You find Rasputin, though.

   He's the old wizard, beard, staff, and all.  Next to him is William Flint.  They seem not to see you, and also be much more substantial than the surroundings.  In the memory, the two of them run across the foggy marsh, reaching Ayame all too quickly.  She is as you remember her from the temple in your dream, all that time ago.  Her hair is blonde, but stuck through with twigs, and her face is smudged with dirt.  Her clothes are torn and dirty, as though she's been running for a long time.

   By contrast, both Flint and Rasputin seem as though they just stepped out of a party, clean, unmarked, and everything in place.

   Rasputin raises a staff to strike at Ayame, though you can't tell what words are passing between them.  The wolf leaps between Ayame and the wizard, teeth bared.

   The wizard's staff sends the wolf flying, blood flecking the white mist, and staining the bog with bright red patches.  A sudden fire consumes Flint, and he vanishes, causing Rasputin to flicker, as though some of his strength faded.  He looks surprised, but undeterred, sending multicolored streams of light from his staff at Ayame, which the wolf again intercepts.

   The wolf slumps, unable to move anymore, but unwilling to give up.  Rasputin raises his staff to deliver the final strike to the wolf, but his blow is stopped by a new arrival.  Clad in shimmering gold-and-silver cloth, this visitor is cloaked in a blur you can't see completely through in this dream-memory.  A flashing halberd strikes the wizard, severing his staff, and a strike with the same plunges through his heart.

   Rasputin's eyes widen, and he mouths something, but again, there is no sound.  The visitor, wearing a helm, though still shielded by the obscuring blur, says, "You should never have been involved this deeply," to you, and vanishes.

   When your dream-vision clears, you see Ayame.  She's not visibly wounded, but at the same time, you can tell she's at the limits of her life.  The wolf watches, healed very slightly from the encounter with Rasputin, but still not well....

   Ayame closes her eyes, stills, and in a cloud of light, is replaced with a small, black-haired child, looking perhaps six years old.  The wolf hangs its head, and the child cries, until she sees you, whereupon she vanishes, eyes wide in surprise....

   Everyone:  ...and then you wake up.  You have the vague idea that your dream had significance, and that the others had some part in it ... but don't know how to put that into words, and as you stay awake, the memory of the dream stays with you ... but the idea that the others are significant to it does not.

Dracos awakens and heads out back to well, meditate a bit.

Dracos

Rez drags himself off the couch, where he'd crashed AGAIN, this time surprisingly awake . . . for that time of morning.

That was . . . fuck.  Ceran?

Shaking himself awake, he goes for his laptop and checks his email.

Not too long later, Rez can be heard to smack himself in the forehead (with a solid thwack) and mumble something about forgetful morons.

Dracos follows the noise, "Somethin' up Rez?"

Dracos

"EVERQUEST?!"

"Everquest?"  Dracos raises an eyebrow.

Dracos

"Um,"  Rez is trying desperately not to burst out laughing, "You know how Ayame evidently had some money to be getting equipment and safe houses for us?"

"What she invested in Everquest and took over the companies earnings?"

Dracos

"Not quite.  You know how there's a big market on E-Bay for everquest characters and items?"

"Yeah, Korea's been mining it for a decade now... She got in on it?"

Dracos

"Seems that way, yep."

"I see.  Heh.  How'd you find this out?"

Dracos

"Ayame . . . sort of died, and created another in her place?  Kind of.  I'm not sure I understand it, exactly, but . . ."

Rez sighs.

"I had a dream, last night, and it seemed pretty real . . . I saw what happened to her.  But anyway.  She's someone else, now."

"A vision?  Odd...I had something similar.  Unless someone stuck a huge amount of alcohol in my food last night without me noticing."

Dracos

"The email, and the dream.  Then I asked."

"Works.  Anyhow, you need food man?"

Dracos

"Food sounds good . . . what've we got?"

"Burritos?  Hot pockets?  Burgers?  Cold cuts?"

Dracos

"Hot pockets.  I have no idea what they are, but hey."

Dracos goes and cooks up a half dozen hot pockets and tosses rez a plate with three, "American Calzones.  Pizza in other words."

Dracos

"Oooh, breakfast pizza!"

Rez munches.

"By the by, there are some things you should know that I found when going through old archived emails from Ayame."

"Shoot."  Dracos sits down and begins the ever impressive tasks of devouring hot pockets faster than the eye can see.

Dracos

"Caber was in the Silicon Valley area setting up a big distraction event to catch Brian.  A workshop operative named Laura died on the 30th of March, 2004, just after this report . . . but she's listed as dying in Caber's event.  Then they listed a spotting of Brian near a 'disturbance' in southern California on the 2nd of April, after which they suspect he died."

Dracos frowns, "Caber or Randall.  Whoever we get to first has a lot of explaining to do."

Dracos

"If I had a brain, I'd have remembered Caber's name while it could have done some good, but it all just moved so fast . . ."

"No fuckin' kidding."

Dracos

"So, yeah.  Brian might be dead, Seventh Cabal thinks he is.  Buuuttt . . . the other thing is that some of his non-online associates are also mixed up in it, like Sterling Dubert, and . . . I don't suppose you remember any of the names of his offline friends?  I'm -pretty sure- there was a guy named Carlos, and there was a Carlos listed in the suspects on the workshop raid . . . of course, this might be reaching too far."

"But from what we know for sure, there's a hell of a lot and he's in the middle.  So what the fuck happened on March 30?"

"Man, I'm a lazy geek.  Wayback machine it.  His archives are only a few hundred pages.  We can get all relevent names that we could possibly know that way.  My question is, where's the third?  It's possible there is no third group, but the naming schemes that have hit public eye for the 'terrorist' events seem odd without one."

Dracos

Ginrai gets up and stretches before heading to the bathroom.  'If that dream meant what I think it does... ah, well, not like I actually expected to just get out of this mess at this point.'

After brushing his teeth, he heads over to the kitchen to get something to eat before going to the NES room and catch up on some of the older games.  Seeing that Dracos and Rez are already up, he says, "Hey, guys!  What's up?"

"Zombies eating brains."

Dracos

"Heya, Ginrai.  Just trying to hammer out exactly what we know."

Rez turns back to Drac.

"What do you mean, third?  I thought there were only the Home Guard and the Forge . . . besides which there's Pax Arcana, Seventh Cabal . . . and if you believe Caber, there was a third faction who Ayame was originally the AI for - Order of Symmetry.  He said they got wiped out . . . if you believe him."

Rez smacks Drac upside the head.

"Serious!"

"Ow, Sheesh."  Dracos rubbed his head.

"Well, that's who I'm referring to.  It could be the 'homeguard and the forge'
is one or both of those groups, but unlikely, in my opinion.  So, that is possibly another group or groups out there related to this.  And I'm not liable to trust Caber's word that they don't exist anymore.  It seems unlikely.  Regardless, he knows too much."

Dracos

"Mmm.  Someone mentioned that the Forge was a front for the seventh Cabal . . . but . . . haaaaangon.  Let me check something."

Rez finishes munching down that particular pocket, then takes the plate back into the lounge.

"I see...."

Ginrai shrugs and grabs a Hot Pocket as well as some orange juice.

Rez sticks his head back in.  

"Yeah, it was Ayame.  And bring your food out here?"

Dracos walks out there, having already finished his food.

Dracos

"So, yeah.  Forge was, according to Ayame, pretty much a front for the Seventh Cabal.  Which would be -interesting- given that Caber, working for the seventh Cabal, was setting up some kind of distraction event on the March 30.  We can tentatively conclude that he's the guy who nuked Silicon Valley."

"So...Caber's playing both sides against the middle?  Or did he switch teams?"

Dracos

"Well, he claimed to work for Pax, and just backstabbed the seventh cabal pretty thoroughly."

"I think he's out for himself or working for someone completely different.  Anyhow..."

Dracos

Paul walks in, slowly dragging a hand across his face, obviously still about 7/8ths asleep. "We have any cereal?"

"Cereal is for the WEAK!...And those who look in the cupboards."

Dracos

Paul opens the cupboards and starts rummaging. He takes out the first box that feels to be about the size and shape of a ceral box, since his eyes are closed while he does this.

"Speaking of all that's been going on, anyone here have any strange dreams last night?

"Had one basically telling me that my life won't return to normal until whatever we're involved in, which they seemed to call a 'contest', is done.  Not that I actually expected to go home and return to a normal life at this point."

"That's fucking wierd... I was just thinking about the dream I had last night.

"I don't know if it means anything, though. I have dreams all the time, and usually they're just amagalms of every strange thing my subconscious can produce."

"I never dream.  At least not for many many years.  So yeah, us all having visions is a bit weird.  But par for course."

Dracos

"Looks like it was in fact all of us, then."

Paul takes a box and a bowl, and sits down at the kitchen table with the rest of you. "I had heard somewhere that dreams either mean nothing, or they mean everything. And if they mean everything, you'll know. And I suppose... we know. So, I'll just tell you what I remember."

He opens the box and pours it into the bowl, still not looking up, eyes winced shut as if light was a hateful and evil thing to him.

"I was playing Lord of the Rings. I was winning, too. It was a big tournament, at Gen Con or something, and I was playing against some intolerable fatass running some deck he downloaded off the Internet and bought with money his mother gave him. I knew I had to win, because the prize would be my old life back. It was one of those things that you just know, in a dream, with the certainty that you know that gravity exists.

"It was my turn, and I was deciding whether or not to double-move. He had just killed one of my companions, and triggered a few threats, but I figured I had apretty good hand and it was important to get ahead, so I decided to press on."

He grabs the milk from wherever it is on the table, and pours it into the bowl. "The companion he had killed, by the way, was someone called 'Shade'. The guys I still had... were 'Ginrai', 'Nathan Shuker', 'Philip Bloom', 'Paul Durant', and 'Bjorn Christianson'. I saw nothing odd at the time of playing a card of myself. Also, I think Bjorn's subtitle was 'Master of Shin--' something, I can't remember, it's hazy even though it's clear. Anyway, they -- we, I guess -- were all wounded and limping along, but I figured I could hack it.

"So I double-move,and he plays some more minions, and then I realize I'm in trouble. He manages to stack two or three guys on Bjorn, and I realize that if Bjorn dies, I'm going to lose the game. I have a card in my hand that can save him if I add a bunch of burdens, but I don't know if doing that might give me enough burdens to corrupt my ring-bearer and make me lose anyway. I'm trying to think if I can save Bjorn without playing that card, when the guy starts talking in some language I don't know. He holds up this mirror, and when I start to look in it, I wake up. And somehow, I know, just as I know now that gravity makes things fall, that if I had looked in that mirror, I would not have seen myself in it.

"It has to mean something -- my dreams are never this coherent, and I never remember so much detail. But... what?"

He then dips his spoon into the bowl, takes a bite, and makes the worst, most puckered face you've ever seen. "I just poured myself a bowl of detergent, didn't I?"

"That sounds officially freaky.  Did we tell you Shade died in the workshop, by the way?"

"Uh, no...

"Who is Shade?"

"Shade.  Death.  Guy who hung around #void . . . er . . . wrote the Private Bet fanfics?""

"Not ringing a bell... and he died? How? I mean, I don't suppose it was a Dunlending Ransacker that killed him."

"Victor the Vampire, actually."

"Oh. That explains everything.

"Wait, no it doesn't."

"OK.  Basically, Shade, or Death, was another guy from #void.  He was also mixed up in this.  He got captured by the Seventh Cabal, and he came with us when we were busting out of the place.  We freed a particularly powerful guy named Victor, who appeared really scary and fast and strong.  Shade mouthed off at Victor, Victor got annoyed and demanded apology, Shade refused, Victor bit a large chunk out of Shade's neck and that was that."

"Jesus."

Paul really doesn't have anything else to say.

Bjorn wanders into the kitchen on the tail end of the conversation.  "Victor?" he asks Rez, scrounging around in the cupboards for a piece of bread with one hand, holding Shinmyouken with the other.

"Explaining Shade's demise," Rez explains dourly, then turns back to Unseen, "and yeah, that's about right.  Apparently we're playing for keeps, something Shade did not appear to realize in the short time after I met him."

"I don't want to hear about it.  I don't even want other people thinking about it with three miles of me," Bjorn grumps.  "I slept lousy, had more than my usual share of bad dreams, and now this?  Gah.  I'm going to go exercise for a couple hours."

"Aaaapparently the rest of us had weird dreams too, actually."

"If it's that serious, maybe I shouldn't be mistaking..." Paul looks at the box, "instant mashed potatoes for cereal. And if you had a dream, I'd like to hear it; I think that it's going to be important."

"I didn't say weird, I said bad," Bjorn says darkly.  "The sort of dreams it's not weird to have at all after having cut people in half."

He raises the half-eaten slice of bread to his mouth, but pauses before biting into it.  "Though I guess I did have one weird dream," he concedes.  "Running around an invisible maze.  Bothered me a lot when I had it, but..." Bjorn shrugs.

"What do you remember about it? The details might be the most important part."

"Ah.  Fair enough.  I had an . . . interesting one.  I saw what happened to Ayame and Manos."

"I pretty much told you all the details already.  I was running around a maze, but it was all invisible -- walls, floor, furniture, everything --, just like..." he gestures with the bread down at where he knows Shinmyouken is.  "Someone was chasing me and I could sorta see him, but I don't think he could see anything other than me, either.  And that's it, really.

"You... dreamt what happened to the Oracle and, uh, the AI in the Workshop?"

"I already mentioned this to the others, Bjorn, but since you weren't here....  My dream was about being unable to go back home until this mess is sorted out.  In the dream all of this was considered to be a contest of sorts."

Ginrai considers something for a moment before adding, "You know, all of this just might be a game involving some greater beings, with us as the pawns.  Kind of like what the Trojan War was, if I recall correctly."

"Greater beings my ass.  But, yeah, we have ample evidence that someone's been doing some fine manipulation from behind the scenes," Rez hums, "At least mine made perfect sense.  Flint died when Ashnod killed him, Manos died a few seconds later to a knight - apparently Order of Morpheus, or something.  Her 'daughter' is basically . . . another incarnation of her.  Sort of.  She's not the same person, though, her dream self looks different, and, well, you just have to talk to them both to see it.  She doesn't have all of Ayame's skill yet, either."

Rez exhales wearily.

"A game, like the Trojan War... I suppose that's what my dream was, too... only, not only was I a pawn, but I was also moving the pieces. I wonder if that's significant?"

"Wait a minute," Bjorn interrupts, "I thought you destroyed Manos, Rez.  Where does this knight come into it?

"And I hate to be the skeptic, but... do you have any reason to be taking the dream seriously or literally?"

"Mine?  Confirmed via email.  And . . . apparently I -didn't- get him.  Although I'll give you three guesses what's on that server we stole, and the first two don't count."

Rez clicks his tongue.

"That reminds me.  Bjorn, have you got any idea what some of those workshop power classifications stand for?  Like, B-14, E-16, I-2, etc?"

"And from the sounds of your dream, Uns, it seems that our success is dependant on protecting Bjorn."

"Okay, wait," Bjorn protests.  "Too much at once.  Alright.  Rez?  Email?  You need to explain that.  And I'm guessing porn, warez, and I-swore-to-punch-cryptic-bastards-in-the-nose in that goddamn order.

"And yes, I know at least some of the classification scheme.  But I'm way more interested in this whole thing about needing to protect me.  Want to explain more?"

Paul outlines his dream to Bjorn, explaining how the situation in the game was set up and all that.

"Hm.  Uns, are you sure nothing prompted you to come this way, nobody knew you were coming, etc?"

Bjorn hums thoughtfully.  "Even assuming that we're supposed to be taking the dream literally -- and let's be honest, I know a lot more people who've fucked themselves up by paying attention to their dreams than the other way -- even with that, I'd say that that means I'm just going to be the first of us in danger.  Beyond that, I don't think there's anything special about that."

He frowns.  "Though the 'Master of Shin'... I don't think I told any of you this, but I named my sword," he hefts his left hand, and its invisible contents, "Shinmyouken.  And like I said, I'm pretty damn sure I didn't bring that up.  So that isn't proof, since it's not like Paul remembers the whole name, but...."

Stopping suddenly, he looks around in embarassment.  "Uh, sorry, Rez.  Got distracted.  Didn't mean to interrupt."

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by. I just wandered here, that's all. At least, I thought I was wandering. Maybe it was some higher force. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was pure, blind luck. I don't know."

"I also don't think anyone told him Shade was dead."

Rez hums.

"Well, this is all way too coincidental.  Oracularity."

Bjorn grunts, and eyes Paul thoughtfully.  "Postcognition?"

"This is beyond strange. Usually, my dreams can't even keep their own internal logic for more than thirty seconds, and now they're telling me things I can't know and giving oracle-advice? If it is postcognition, it's the first time it's ever happened."

"Most of us," Bjorn says, with a hint of bitterness, as he goes to the fridge and looks for some orange juice, "have discovered previously unknown talents in the past week."

"Of course, the other possibility is that someone gave us these dreams."

He nods toward Bjorn. "True. I mean, I figured that I'd get this, this... this telekinesis thing, and that would be the one thing. But, why should it be limited to only one 'power'? This isn't the X-Men, we don't know the rules behind the shit we're dealing with. Maybe we all have it, and a hundred other things too."

He sighs. "It's just so hard to wrap your mind around when you know so little about everything! Even if the dreams were given to us -- we still don't know from who, or why, and we're right back to square 1!"

"If someone did give us these dreams," Bjorn says wryly, "then tonight I'm going to sleep with a sign around my neck that says, 'I'm sorry, I don't understand "cryptic dream." Please rephrase your statement.'

"Anyways," he stretches, and drains his glass, "I really need the exercise now, to straighten out my mind.  I'll be back in in a couple of hours or so.  Remind me, Rez, and I'll tell you what I know about the classification scheme."

And with that and a casual wave, he heads for the backyard.

"I'm going back to bed. I am not getting up until I can tell the difference between instant potatoes and Count Chocula."

Dracos shrugs, sitting near rez and pondering and, without segue, responding,  "Mine was just of a green man in a forest really.  Anyhow, you need anything picked up before we get out of here, Rez?"

Dracos

Just as he's about to reach the door, Drac's words make Bjorn pause.  "Green man, or Green Man?" he asks, a subtle weighting in his words indicating the capitals.

"Green Man, with the Caps.  Albeit, if it had been a green man, I'd likely have taken it as a reference to the same really.  Or an indication I'd eaten too many peas."

Dracos

"Huh."  Bjorn chews on the tip of his tongue, thoughtfully, and then cocks an eyebrow.  "I don't know what it means that two of you are getting in contact with semi-divine beings, but if I were you, I'd get Rez if the Oracle ever told him anything about the Green Man, or get him to ask the daughter of the Oracle.   If he finds her."

"Huh, That's actually a good idea.  Rez, Mind trying to check that sometime?"

Dracos

"Hm?  Sure.  I'll ask her in a few hours.  By the way, I was serious about someone screwing with our dreams.  It's been done before, Drac."

Rez waves his right hand around as emphasis.

"And I believe you.  I think it was 'visions' sent by someone.  To what effect, I have no clue but last I checked only guys who got visions were prophets, holy people, and guys on drugs.  And last I checked, I wasn't a prophet."

Dracos

"And if you're holy," Bjorn says with a faint smirk, "then religion has a whole lot to answer for.

"Why Rez got his dream is fairly obvious.  The question is who sent it.  If we know that, then we can guess if the same person/thing sent the rest of us our dreams, and if so, why."

"I guess I suspect the Order of Morpheus or whatever, that knight who ended up killing Rasputin.  The Oracle said they're 'dream-cops' who slept all day."

"Hmm..  Possible.  A Greek order that controls dreams. Hmm..."

Dracos

"If they're 'dreamcops', then why bother sending us any sort of warnings?  What do they they owe to you or us?"

"I don't know, exactly.  I know that they killed Manos before he could entirely finish off Ayame, and according to the Oracle they kinda liked the Delphites, 'even though we served Apollo and they, well, slept all day'.  Direct quote.  I think he might have wanted me to see, and her certainly knew I was there, but that's just a hunch."

"It could, just simply be, that we are currently opposed to Seventh Cabal.  Which means trying to convince us to go further after them may just attain goals for the greek squadrons without them lifting a finger."

Dracos

"All he said was 'You should never have been involved this deeply.'  So . . . and, well, I don't think I really care what other factions want us to do, at this point."

"I don't either, but being aware is useful.  We knew we were acting as pawns for Pax when we went in to screw over the workshop.  Keeping an eye on who benefits and who doesn't and who may turn on us is...prudent."

Dracos

"We don't know enough," Bjorn says, simply.  "I don't think we're even sure of all the players, let alone what they want, and specifically what they want with us."  He grimaces.  "Which is why we have to meet with Ezmereth, apparently."

"The oracle told Shade to find him, although I don't know why . . . yeah, those classifications.  We ran into the classifications for a few people.  Ashnod, Megan Witherspoon, Bridgett Witherspoon, Ezmereth, and Brian Randall."

Bjorn's face falls expressionless.  "That's a bit of an interesting list.  Ashnod was Megan's husband, and Bridgett was their daughter.  I don't know what Ezmereth and Brian had to do with them, if anything, though."  Bjorn ponders.  "Actually, Megan mentioned Ezmereth a few times, and didn't say anything about any sort of connection.  But then," he shrugs, "she wasn't exactly very explicit about Ashnod, either."

"Mm.  Well, Ashnod was rated as E-16, I think.  Ezmereth, on the other hand, has a smattering.  E and B ratings around the 15 mark, and T, M and P ratings between 1 and 4.  I don't remember exact numbers . . . but I was sorta wondering if you could shed some light on just what that meant, apart from 'someone to be scared of'.  And do you know what I stands for?"

Crossing his arms, Bjorn looks at the ceiling and ponders.  "Well.  The scheme is a letter code to indicate type of power, and a number to indicate strength within that category.  I know a few of those for sure.  'T' is telepathy, 'B' is biological enhancement, 'M' is mental defense, and 'P' is precognition.  I've never heard 'E' before, but guessing from Ashnod's rating, it's either elemental or energy.  'I' is another new one on me."  Bjorn shrugs.  "Best guess that comes to mind is 'illusion'."

"That might just fit, actually."

Rez hums.

"Ezmereth is . . . probably not someone we want to be on the bad side of, off the top of my head."

"If it comes down to it, I don't really think we want to be on the bad side of anybody involved in this mess.  Wants don't enter into it."

"No jesting there."

Dracos

"Yeah, well," Rez gets up, "I'm going to go do some archery practice."

"Need help at all or just going to be shooting at unmoving targets?  And no, I'm not volunteering to dodge your arrows."

Dracos

"Awwww.  You sure?  Your dodging could probably use some work, too."

"Yes, it always can, but not with arrows of fire."

Dracos

"Pfft.  If I start practicing with fire arrows I'll run out in no time flat.  You're just a scaredy cat."

"Right, how about then we start with me throwing knives and you dodging those.  I'm damn accurate to about ten-twenty paces and it's not like they are fast like arrows."

Dracos

"Awww, but I wouldn't use pointy arrows . . . maybe with wood, but only if I got to throw them back at the same time."

Bjorn rolls his eyes, and heads out to the backyard to practice while the two stooges squabble.

"Hum, dodging practice with some wood sticks and blocks sounds intriguing.  But I was more thinking of a trip to the general store for some frizbees and seeing if you can bean them with arrows as fast as I can launch them."

Dracos

"How about a compromise: a trip to a hunting store where I can get some arrows, as well.  And . . . hm . . . I wouldn't mind trying my arm with javelins, actually."

"Sports store for that then.  But I'm not sure if we can find javalins here.  One sec..."

Dracos gets online on his own laptop, doing a hunt for all relevent information on nearby sports stores, directions to such, whatnot.  Same with hunting stores.

Dracos

Your network is strangely laggy (some massive drain on the bandwidth from samiam.org), but you manage to find a sporting goods store in Modesto that sells weapons.  Javelins are not listed on the website, but a phone call to the store verifies that they have some.

Dracos gets directions.  "Let's rock.  Come on."

Dracos scribbles a note out of for the others, then leads the way out into the car, gets in, waits for Rez to get in.  Following this, he starts roadtrippin' to the place.

Once there he leads the way in looking for:
Good throwing equipment (Preferrably rubberish)
Javilins
Arrows
Frizbees (Discus style preferrably)

Acquiring them, and food, he heads back with rez, the two enjoying food on the way back before heading in the back yard to train.

"So, target practice with frizbees first?"

Dracos

"Sounds like a plan, it does."

Rez gets his bow out and sets himself..

Dracos starts off slow, throwing one of the discus/hoop style frizbees in a random arc each time a good thirty feet away from Rez.

Dracos

Drac speeds up as Rez starts plinking frisbees with rubber practice arrows, and after the first ten Rez has managed to knock nine of them out of the sky - his tenth arrow was a narrow miss.

Annoyingly.

After retrieving the arrows and frisbees, the process gets repeated.  For quite some time.

And so passes a week in relative calm and quiet.  Without any harrasment from S.W.A.T. armored troopers, or anything more surprising than the neighbor from across the street coming by and offering a plate of cookies as a housewarming present.

Ginrai and Huitzil manage to actually get the place clean, once a vaccuum cleaner is found, and all the bedding is washed.  It's livable, if not palatial, and somewhat relaxing.

Also during the course of the week, Ryan McGrail's new credit card arrives in the mail.

But the week is now over, and it's noon on the nineteenth.  Plenty of time to get to Drake's Point, should you decide to do so.  The brief spike of warmer weather has faded, and it's once again snowing (though not very hard).

Exile on Main Street comes to an end, and we move on to: Fastbal: o/` The Way o/` (http://pishoque.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=29357#29357)