Wowbagger's page

"All this for me?" Wowbagger says to the wall of clockwork robots that seem to literally spring up around him. He swung his pipe, but his muscles were sluggish and it merely knocked it off its mechanical appendages instead of crushing it. It seemed like two of them had fallen over. Wait...actually it was the same one...he was seeing double.

"Unidentified assailant. Not an employee of the theater. This is the assassin." A whirring mechanical voice stated.

"Yoush, shtupid cog brain. 'Curs ayze not an empluryee." His tongue felt thick and impossible. Shtupid cog brain? That insult was definitely not up to his normal standards. But how...?...Oh! The prick in his bum! That damned actor doctor...he would pay for this.

Wowbagger only had a brief second to register that he was being grasped roughly by what seemed a gazillion clockwork claws. Suddenly he could see the walls, floor, and ceiling all coming together into what must be a cube shape. Light vanished and all he could hear was the whirring of clockwork and hydraulics. A sudden sense of extreme motion as if the whole cube was being whisked away, placed the last little bit of stress his perfect alien body could handle while drugged, and his mind descended into the blackness of the place where cursed immortals dream.

Eyes roving the hall, the stalker assassin tried to focus on anything cat sized. His vision was blurring and there was a ringing in his ears. The colorsteam leaking throughout the area was changing colors in the swirling emergency lights.

The cacophony of sirens was amplifying the strange distortion sounds were making all of a sudden. He felt himself becoming more angry. Something was wrong.

Wowbagger snarled and swung the pipe crushing a clockwork device of some kind that was trying to detach from the wall decor. It had looked at him funny. And right now was not the time for that.

Wowbagger yells loudly as the tube strikes rear. Lifting up a hand, Wowbagger sees ball bearings in his grasp. His solid eyes snap up and he begins looking around. Suspicion seems to fill him.

He warily tries to determine the source of these items. The foolish doctor seems to be watching him intently, but is downed despite his laughter at Wowbagger's fall. He would kill him for that naturally, but now, Wowbagger knew he had to find the helmetcat. The cat he had thought was dead. A low growl rose in the alien's throat.

His vision seemed a little blurry. He shook his head to clear it and stood up and began prowling down the hall.

As he finishes his swing on the chair hoping to find the Duschess, Wowbagger feels something under feet. His footing goes out from under him, and he falls heavily to the floor. He rolls to one side quickly and starts to lift himself back to his feet.

"Wowbagger, you think that you can actually kill me? A helmetcat never dies. I'm as immortal as you are and three times as clever!"

The blue beast chuckles. "Immortal as me? Let's test that. I call your bluff!"

"You never were a very good assassin. I guess you weren't very good at not being one! I have some of my mother's memories. You turned to killing others after seeing her kill nearly every one of your friends, didn't you? Is that why you have it out for me? Some kind of twisted vengeance?"

"Vengeance!" Wowbagger spits with venom. In the smoke, his face seems to twist until it is in the wreckage of what could be called anger. "You have yet to learn what you have done to me!"

"What would Sir Jiminy think of you now...You had friends once. Allies. And now there is nothing left for you, especially if you continue to walk this path."

Laughing, Wowbagger emerges from the smoky haze with Drake forgotten and pinned a few feet away. His eyes moving across the hallway looking for the source of Kittington's mewing voice.

"This path was set when your future self decided to mettle, cat. Your future self, past self...it doesn't matter. Wherever you dwell, so shall I cometh and rip you away."

"I know, though, that once we are united that you have reason to fear us... you once did. At the party, even you weren't foolish enough to face us united. And it's all a matter of time. Ask for forgiveness or face your sins!"

If one had thought Wowbagger to be angry before, it paled in comparison to his response at this. With a roar, Wowbagger swings the piping in his clawed grasp scoring a steam pipe above which begins to gush color all over the hallway from a jagged rent.

"United! You fools do not even know the depths of your stupidity. I spit at your cleverness, your teamwork will be your own undoing! I will be there at the end, you feeble feline, just as I always am. And your true colors will show! But this time I will kill you before you betray everything, and then the universe will acknowledge that I have won, and my curse will end!!"

Wowbagger lunges forward and brings the piping around in an arc, smashing an ornate chair and samll table to kindling.

It should come as no surprise Wowbagger votes for the Duchess!

Mocking laughter rings out from the smoke covering the area Wowbagger is standing.

"Very clever. Your simple stage tricks prove you to be the charlatan you must be. I assure you that whatever temporary reprieve you seek with your toys, they are exactly that...temporary."

There are some strange sounds from within the smoke cloud. The metallic banging and tearing ends quickly. Suddenly several pieces of jagged piping, obviously from the walls of the theater, come into view.

And they are flying at the group with great speed.

The stalker assassin changes direction like a hummingbird and zips across the hall to Drake's opposite side. Grabbing the cane Drake is holding, he swings the group with force sending them staggering forward possibly into Vorian and Clousuk. The cane comes free from Drake's grasp, and Wowbagger stands still for a second tapping it lightly on his hand.

"I do not know who you are, little man, but I assure you if you seek to impede me, you will not love long enough to regret it."

Wowbagger then snaps the cane in half; whatever material it was made of wasn't a challenge for the alien creature's strength whatsoever.

"What's this? A new fashion?" comes a voice from behind Drake and Alyce.

"Wearing cats and kobolds as shoulder epaulettes? How novel!" Wowbagger chuckles. The looming blue alien is just dropping down from the vent, and there is a small thud as his weight lands on the hallway floor.

"Too bad this fad will die here before it has the chance to spread." The menacing gleam in Wowbagger's eyes glows brightly as he paces forward. "Especially since it would seem I failed to destroy you after all, dear Duchess."

For once, Wowbagger's usual amused sneer fades and a toothy snarl mars his rather striking yet blue visage. "There is no one more deserving of death than you, Kittington, and I will see it done!"

With that the monsterman leaps forward.

"'Rashida, it's Cassie,'" comes a mocking voice, Wowbagger's tone in falsetto. It seems to come from somewhere off to Rashida's right.

Returning to its normal infuriating sound, Wowbagger's voice continues. "And how do we know that for sure? Down here, here the spirits of the Clockwork Theater lie restless in wait." Something moves jerkily in the shadow, and a faint hiss of steam is heard but not seen meaning it is superheated. "Is there not another of you running wild in the world? And what of this fawning fangirl who goes to such great lengths to mimic the ever-so-adorable Cassie DuSollier? What guarantee we even know if you are the real Cassie? Perhaps the better question to ask is if it is indeed Rashida?" His voice chuckles.

Above on the stage the music swells and the performers once again sing. Their notes tinged with fear and strangely, some almost sound relieved.

Wowbagger's voice come from somewhere behind Rashida now, but on the left. Softer, a plaintive cry it seems.

"Oh dear Rashida, my dear Rashida. How it must pain you to know that your new found love, after all these years of sacrifice, knew that you were powerless to protect him. That for all your 'divine' powers, you can barely take care of yourself, and now must live the knowledge that he runs away...away from you because your love is so pathetic, there can surely be no reason to hold you close. Return to his family he does, as the Rorensons always do.

"You come here to bargain with me? You think this is about money?"

Mocking laughter bellows from all sides of the stage filling Ralph, Rashida, and Cassie's ears. The floor rumbles under their feet making standing difficult. The singing above them fades slightly as the movement catches them off guard. The table from the dinner scene abruptly slides and a leg falls into the open stagetrap and the resulting thud as the table edge catches on the sides of the opening resounds within the bowels of the understage.

"This was never about money, my dear. It is about winning. For what better insult to the galaxy than to destroy the heroes of this tale before they even have a change to win?"

Light floods the understage. Strange contraptions and clockwork machines which are clearly used for special effects seem to be filled with a roaming vapor of spirit gas, and their dials glow like malevolent rats in the darkness. They began to attempt to move or grasp or fling themselves. Amongst them are Serv-Bots. Their eyes glowing red as was seen at the end of the party...just as they were when Wowbagger escaped with his apprentice Ingilstadt. Producing small tools which they would normally use to do repairs on these machines, the small clockwork clanks appear like a tiny hostile army.

Wowbagger is nowhere to be seen, but his laughter echoes all around the room.

"So you have come to join me in the place that is beneath everyone else? I assure you, you are not prepared for what you may find of yourselves. Unless you brought your towel of course."

A disembodied voice in the darkness under the stage seems to come from everywhere. The heroes who are under the stage can make out faint outlines of columns, cables and wires and many many clockwork and spiritek contraptions in the dimly lit shadows. Given the goings on upstairs, this machinery takes on a sinister appearance, and movement at the edge of vision starts to play tricks on the mind.

From under the wreckage of the lighting fixture, Wowbagger moved somewhat weakly. A twisted smile was on his lips and his eyes were open. He whispered into the air around him. "Is that you little helmet cat, Cat Who Cried Devil? Clever Cat in Devil's Clothing? Ha ha, I had heard of the strange spirits inhabiting this place."

"Fortunately, this is the stage upon which your foolish notions of victory will be dashed," Wowbagger says loudly with an arrogant chuckle to the pair of nobles facing him. A thin trickle of greenish blood came from the corner of his mouth. He reached out an arm from where he was pinned by the stage lighting which was still venting some kind of spirit gas. The clawed hand tapped on the floor of the stage, and a panel suddenly dropped away plunging the alien into the darkness below.

When Ralph's lunge is abruptly interrupted by a winging shot from the balcony levels, the young man still manages to catch enough of Wowbagger's waist that he spins the kick aimed at Cassie.

Wowbagger spins the missed kick into a drop roll and comes up battle ready now facing both Ralph and Cassie who had released from his grasp. A hole dripping dark emerald green blood has appeared on Wowbagger's chest. It appears someone has shot him. Yet the alien creature pays the wound no mind and doesn't even seem to be aware that he has been hit.

Standing upright, Wowbagger places his hands on his hips. Addressing Ralph, he says, "You have made the wrong move joining her, little man. All the men she loves, take more than just wounds of the heart."

Laughing at his own joke, Wowbagger digs his claws into the elaborate flooring of the stage and tears a chunk up with little apparent effort. He heaves the piece at Ralph even as he lunges at Cassie with claws outstretched.

As Ralph makes his challenge, Wowbagger laughs.

"And the mute speaks! And oh so eloquently!"

Wowbagger flexes and his toned physique ripples in a fluid almost animal-like display of musculature.

"Come you sniveling might-have been. Allow me to show my friends Cassie and Vorian what happy death awaits them as I crush your bones to make my bread."

Once again Wowbagger smiles cheerfully.

"Stop what, you silly dance-obsessed cocktease? We both do what we love despite the consequences. I expected you to understand that. It's too bad you're not actually any good at the things you love," Wowbagger smiled, the pristine white of his teeth flecked with a little red from the dead actor's spray of blood.

"Or else why did he die?" Wowbagger's eyes seem to light up with glee as they bored into Cassie across the expanse of the auditorium.

The assassin's gaze flicked whip-like pinning Vorian as if to a wall.

"Ah, yes! Our Gentleman Adventurer! Don't think I have forgotten you and your pitiful and wasted attempts at intrigue." Wowbagger waggled one gore-crusted clawed finger at Vorian. "But at least you proved to be a decent red herring. I almost broke the cabal and had them convinced to kill you rather than me."

The smile slipped a tad at this, and the white eyes took on an angry slant.

"If the outcast Jin hadn't betrayed his task, you would have all died that night." Then he chuckled. "But that reckoning will come soon. He and his pet Mason will soon find themselves neck deep in retribution."

Wowbagger wiped the blood on the brief shorts he wore.

"Now, shall we make your deaths pleasant and painful?" His eyes twinkled. "Pleasant for me. Painful for you."

"...Cassandra DuSollier?" Wowbagger says with a perfectly white toothed smile that almost looks benign. The white eyes however display an arrogance, a terrifying alien disregard for life in any form.

A blue extraterrestrial last seen at Von Ryuko's party on the island, a known assassin who escaped before he could be brought to any sort of justice.

Wowbagger the Cosmic Insulter stands ready to collect the assassin's bounty.