Drune blinks
"I don't know how high up the bribes go. That's the catch. Drugs can bring in a lot of money. That money buys influence. Find out what's happening and report back to me, and only me."
"But yes. It is a lot of money. I've heard very impressive things about your group. I expect..."
The sound from the rest of the patrons flood back, and Drune recovers quickly
"...these fines to go away. Now, I need a 'yes' or 'no'. Get an answer to me by tomorrow. Good day."
With the incriminating buns in a bag, the vendor in shackles, and the chastened rich kids being prodded along Isama barely slows down and continues towards the Guard House as she flashes a grin at the Guards
Junior Guard Zenj at yer service. Was just out enjoying my day off, decided to get a bun, and knock me down if it wasn't full of Shiver. Just had to do my duty. Caused a bit of a scene though so everyone in the ward knows that this... Isama gives the bun seller a shake fool is selling poison from his cart. These fine folk on the other hand are just volunteering to help clear this whole misunderstanding up. I'm sure they only had spiked buns on 'em because they picked 'em up by mistake. Right kids?
Turning back to the newcomer she says
But oh look at me causing a huge scene again. Ah'm sure it's best that we discuss alla this at the Guard House and not in the Open right? You guys from the Ward?
Having laid a cluster of eggs, Daria smiles at Ophelia from the ceiling:"More tea? Tic-Tac, Tic-tac, time is running, my dear."
"Hmm." Ophelia looked up, somewhat disappointed by her lack of flight. Oh well. With her head slightly tilted to the side Ophelia looked up and started serving another cup of tea. "Have you ever had a lucid dream Daria? I am having some trouble with the concept."
There is of course the off chance that Daria indeed have spontaneously morphed into a spider-hybrid. But I am guessing someone would have noticed. Or reacted. Perhaps she has always been this way? Hmm. Ophelia went back into thinking for a bit. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't really sure how the halfling life-cycle worked. She had always sorta assumed it was similar to the humans - only smaller - but she wasn't *sure*. Hopefully I am not being rude to her. This may be perfectly normal after all!
"Woah!" Ophelia exclaimed in a moment of utter awe as she realized that flying was *so simple*! Why have I never done this before?
Diene is whistling conspicuously.
Ophelia blinks and shakes her head. Strange. Very strange. She got up and headed for the door to let her comrades in - suppressing the urge to ask 'Have you ever had a lucid dream Daria? I am having some trouble with the concept' seeing as it would feel *very* odd. I have to rephrase that somehow ...
Yeah this guy's prolly the ringleader and everything Isama says with a grin and a small shove of the bunseller towards the other guards. Tell you what let's split the difference. You take this guy and I'll escort these fine kids back to their homes. Gotta put all this in my squad paperwork of course I'll just say I helped you guys arrest chummy here in my writeup so it all squares. Will take a few buns for my own squad's evidence lockup and you guys take the rest of the sack.
Assuming they agree to this Isama escorts the kids back to Spooky's squad offices along with a few of the Shiver buns. In there she puts each kid in a different room and goes in to each with the same spiel. Starting with dropping the buns on the table in front of them.
Right, dropping that little song and dance out there. I don't give a squashed jungle bug about that low level stooge baker. I don't give a damn about you throwing your life away to become a Shiv Head. I want the name of the people who told you about the busker and baker setup. Give me that and I'll let you go with a thanks in helping the Guard clear up this unfortunate mistake. Heck I won't even bother digging much into you and your families. Otherwise I'm going to sing another loud song and dance, this time about how all of you were caught with Shiver and knowingly paid for it.
At Ophelia's place Isama looks around and says Nice place Ophelia. Bit bigger than I thought it'd be
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"Why thank you!" Ophelia chimed brightly and let her guests in then herds them to the table. Which of course contained a sampling of Ophelia's wondrous* baking. "The business used to be quite successful and a few choice clients as well as the guard paycheck is enough to keep it up and running."
*A wonder - not in a good way :P
"So, I have awesome news, good news, meh news, and iffy news. Which one do you want to guys want to hear first?" Diene has a radiant smile and seems super proud of something.
"Meh first I think. Then downwards and up like a crescendo as every piece is overshadowed by something better. Cookie?" Ophelia offers, happy that Diene seemed to be enjoying herself.
Diene is totally seeming like she's enjoying herself, but her face freezes a little as Ophelia talks. Her head lowers and tilts slight ever so slightly as her eyes shift in that traditional "thinking really hard" direction.
~What?~
She takes the cookie and slots it into her mouth, chewing as absolutely slowly as she can to give herself more time to process what the requested order was from that sentence.
Well she's being completely honest. If the bent guards take her words to mean something else then that's their prerogative:). Still if you think it's needed.
"Starting softly and then growing louder. Wait a moment ..." Ophelia replies and heads away up the stairs. Soon she comes back with a violin in hand and actually plays a quick tune with a crescendo. "Start with the uninteresting and bad things then work your way up!"
"Hej, Ophelia, I didn't know you prepared something, so I fetched some cookies at the nearby bakery!", Daria smiles, presenting a cookie Jar looking exactly like the one you dreamed about.
"Thanks for the invite! I always found the place fascinating", she states before starting to stare at various of the clockwork automatons with intense curiosity. "Oh, I have news, too...work-related...but that can wait until after tea-time", she adds absent-mindedly, while chewing one of YOUR cookies "Oh..those...those are good! I don't know HOW you do it, but damn, I need the recipe!"
Ophelia puts down her instrument and, if she actually could, blushed. "Oh I just followed the recipe I found!" She heads over to a drawer and starts going trough it. It rattles a bit much for something that supposedly should contain tableware but eventually she manages to find a faded cooking book. She flips trough the book for the right page and almost hands it to Isama. With a small jerk she freezes then shakes her head and hands it to Daria. The recipe is quite mundane but contains the lines 'add filling to taste'. "I just asked the shopkeeper what foodstuffs that tasted nice!" Ophelia beamed and pointed to an empty jar of honey and nuts as well as some discarded chocolate wrappers.
It's the perfect kind of crumbly in here Isama says as she takes a second. You could give up your life of crime and become a baker Ophelia!
Ophelia's second explanation seems to click with Diene, and she gulps downt the cookie, having not paid a ton of attention to it, "Aright, so, iffy news first right? I get the feeling that Spooks' got a feeling that something's squirrelly with the good news, but nothing detailed enough to act on. So, tea party, time."
"The meh news is the ghoul we met is applying to kinda be a contractor for the force, do what he did for us in a kinda more official manner. So, good for him." Diene shrugs.
"Then good news, we're on paid vacation for two weeks, and Castor's making a new squad so that we've got actual special squad back up if we need it."
"And the awesome news, I made sergeant, whoo!" Diene pulls out her shiny new badge.
"R-really? Oh stop it you...!" Ophelia stammers in response to the praise, making a mental note of writing down *exactly* how she made the cookies this time. They were usually not this popular!
"Congratulations sergeant!" the clockwork salutes. "And paid vacation sounds nice. But did you learn what is keeping Castor?" Her tone grew more somber as she recalled one of the conversation topics in her dream hoping she would not have another name to add to that list.
"He's making a new squad?"
Spooky calls Isama out into the offices.
"Zenj? You're on holiday, for two weeks. As of three hours ago. Turn over your notes and I'll have Osric take over."
Junior Guard Osric, inducted last week, looks up in surprise when he hears his name. Impressive considering the distance, but not a ringing endorsement of his investigative skills.
"Now. Two weeks. Go. Have fun. Now."
Congrats boss! Isama says And we're all on paid leave? I thought I did something wrong when I dragged in some shiv heads to Spooky. BridgeFront is totally paid off by Shiv dealers by the by. Obvious as all heck
"Yeah, well, since you bring up paid vacation, Diene...there's someone had a hand in this...a city councillor..."
"...and he's offering 10/16 grand, in gold, for our help...private money we would own!"
"That's a fair bit a money. And it doesn't sound sneaky. I'm in, let's bust some crime."
Isama nods slowly. Fits with what I ran across, better lead than what I got which is a scared rich kid name Joran. Lieutenant Spooky is cut out off this?
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"I'm not sure how often a squad like our's gets paid leave without standby duty. I imagine Spooky may know somethings up, also because those orders must have reached him from up top...with or without an explanation, in both cases he'll figure out somethings going on. But yeah, that one is outside of regular guard duty...just vigilant citizens doing what's best for this wonderful cesspit of a city...that will also make it difficult to call for backup...", Daria responds, fetching another cookie, and sipping the tea, then turning to Ophelia:"I know the instructions are probably simple, but how come you actually do get tea right, Ophelia? - I mean, sorry if that question is forward, but do you have a working sense of smell?"
Ophelia shifts a bit in her chair, uneasy about this entire thing. "No, I have some trouble with scents..." she starts then abruptly stops. She fetches the clockwork timer and hands it to Daria without any more explanations; just a brief question. "Have you ever experienced life looping around? Hmm. Very odd."
"'Shiver' is a hallucinogenic substance is it not?" Ophelia asks. Focusing on the task at hand seemed more productive. And minimized the risk of any other weird situations. But the coincidence is weird ... "Starting with the conditions required for its creation may hint as to what to look for. Now lets see ..."
Well... we're wokin' off the clock to see what's going on with those bribes right? Well the guards we know are crooked for sure are the Bridgefront ones. They think I'm on the take too but maybe it'd be better if someone better at lyin' goes and chats 'em up? Isama says giving Mia a nudge and a grin. We could stake 'em out otherwise, I'm pretty good at hiding in plain sight, buuut.. they might be good at figurin' out if they're being watched.
"Hmm." Ophelia notes. The symptoms and the spiders are an eerie coincidence indeed... She recites what she remembers from her brief studies of alchemy, intending to add more options to the group. "The refinement of Shiver is typically a pricy project; a dose would really have to by sold for ten times as much as the latest incident to generate a profit. That means it is either diluted - in which case analysing a sample may provide some leads - or manufactured in a new way which would take considerable magical or alchemical expertise. And we have already learned the price of cost-cutting methods in other fields ..."
"Isama - do you think it would be possible to acquire one of the laced pastries for analysis? Otherwise I have to agree that covert survey of the bribed guards may be our easiest lead."
"Huh, I'm really not sure how to lead this operation from the opposite side I'm usually on. Usually we'd watch a buyer or two until they ran into the distributor, then jump the distributor and make him tell us where he's getting his from and then just follow that far back as you need to. Yada yada."
Got a few on me right now. Couldn't put 'em into evidence before Spooky pushed me out the door with two weeks pay. Could be a new player is undercutting every one else to push 'em out before jacking up the price. They got the scratch to pay off plenty of folk seems like
"Do they know you're from Spooky's Ward? We could try and push them...demand they cut us into the deal, extend their business into our territory, so to say-...that could put us in contact with someone a bit higher up- they probably won't be stupid enough to reveal their hand, but we have little to go by, so may be worth a shot..."
"Doesn't Spooky have a bit of a incorruptible reputation? You think they'd buy it?"
"Spooky may have such a reputation. Our new Sergeant however, not so much...I think she actually has a bit of a history...and unlike Spooky, she does not spend most of her time in a office in HQ...", Daria winks at Diene-
"Interesting." Ophelia's gaze shifts back and forth between Diene and Mia. "The fact that Spooky is not included in this scheme may work in our favour then. Give me a moment to test Isama's sample and we'll see if we learn anything from that!"
The clockwork then fetches a small chemistry and sets it up on the table, right next to the foodstuff. With a concentrating hum she starts to think about how to test shiver-buns for purity.
Yeah, I think they'd buy some of us running a side game under Spooky's nose pretty easily. I might be made as a straight arrow though if that Joran kid blabbed to his supplier. You two could make a go of it that way. Let me see that spider webbing Ophelia.
"Hmm. It is odd, this doesn't seem quite right ... Not sure what though." Ophelia comments as pieces of the laced bun disintegrates and bubbles in various bottles and cups. Absent mindedly she puts a steel pan over one of the mixtures and extinguishes the fire, letting it last only long enough to produce a wiff of purple smoke. Then she fishes out a small particle of webbing for Isama. "There!"
"Hmm. You earlier run-in *could* serve as an excuse. 'Our comrade is on your tracks. If you cut us a deal and let us in, we'll make sure she doesn't bother you ... Tick-tac!'. Thoughts - plausible?" Ophelia suggests.
Good guard-Bad guard t'other way round? Isama grins as she carefully teases the webbing apart to see if she can identify the type of spider that it came from I like it.
"Sounds like we've got a plan. First, do all the investigatey stuff we can with the samples, we've got. Then attempt to get cut in."