"But even if we find somebody, is that person going to know how to fix Fever's wards? Finding a new King is important, but the immediate concern is protecting Fever.
"I wish we knew more about these wards in the mean time."
Cerise looked at Remington, then shook the sword up and down a little. "Hey, do you tell your new partner how to do the King stuff?" she asked it, feeling a little silly but trying to get a response anyway. It WAS normal for princesses to talk to inanimate objects, right? If Disney, sum of all knowledge, was any guide at all...
Jim really couldn't believe what he was seeing, and he had seen some crazy things. But all the same they had work to do, and if one person might have the answers, it was Valda.
Jim whipped out his phone and placed the call. Hopefully it wouldn't just go straight to voicemail.
The knife didn't respond. It seemed limited, at least for now, to simply seeing if anyone met its needs.
Jim's phone clicked after the second ring, a cheerful voice answering, "Valda's Orderout Bordello. Hot studmuffins at your door in 30 minutes, for less than 30 minutes, or your money back."
Nurai doesn't spot anything as the group heads to the cars.
The shadows rolled back down to their summoner's feet as Nurai left the building.
Nurai was relieved for a moment as she approached the car but didn't keep her hopes up that it would remain this simple. She paused by driver's door as she unlocked it for the others and glanced around for the young fey men. "Cottin? Ymerson?" Nurai called out.
As you all approached the vehicles you heard an odd noise. Almost like...sizzling.
Cottin suddenly staggered out from behind the car, his hands cuffed behind his back. The sizzling sound was coming from the metal cuffs around his risk as he fell to his knee.
From behind the car a voice said, "I'm reasonably sure I don't need to say 'hand over the sword or we shoot your friends' but I will anyway. Brand new deal, one might say." The voice sounded very similar to the one on the phone earlier.
Cerise was okay with getting hurt. She was less okay with others getting hurt. "My friends are pretty weird, and I'm not totally convinced death would stick with them around." she observed. "I mean, it never has for me. Hey, Remy! Hold this for me." Cerise added as she tossed the blade his way, remembering the weapons she'd seen him holding. He probably knew more about how to keep such a thing secure in a tussle than she did, which to her mind automatically made him a better person to hold onto it than her. She was much better with her fists anyway - and didn't want to be distracted in a tussle.
Remington had his gun drawn even before he fully identified where the new voice was coming from. The sooner they created a Mexican standoff situation, the better. First, he'll need to--
"Hey, Remy! Hold this for me." Cerise added as she tossed the blade his way.
"Your bird sucks." Jim mutters to Aurora. He then tries to hide behind the others so he can squeeze in a magic trick.
Aurora shoots a poisonous glance to Jim. "Counteroffer! Let them go, and you won't wonder how you got a car flipped on top of you!"
She took a moment to look around for a sign of Ymerson and other people. While being so public with this was a concern to Nurai, the sight of the young man falling to his knees in pain tugged at her. The shadow rolled back up Nurai at the sound of the voice of a strange man, flexing their claws, Nurai held down a growl, her eyes glowing through her bonded shadow now acting as armour.
"I was already open to discussing this, there was no need to sneak around and harm innocent people - or do you not see us that way?" Nurai said as the pair moved quickly to be between the stranger and Cottin and she tried to get the cuffs off of him. "Do you know where Ymerson is?" she asked Cottin quietly as she did so though didn't really expect him to respond in his condition - just tried to keep his mind off of it as best she could as she shielded him with her and her shadows' forms, letting the shadows clawed hands try to tear them apart.
The wiry Fey gasped in relief as the cuffs popped, but it was the voice that answered. "Whoa, hey now. No closer or your other friends take a bullet to the skull. I have no idea how well he can heal, but that tends to be inconvenient for anyone." He paused. "As would be dropping a car on him. I'd probably live, but it would give me a headache."
"Now, give me the sword and no one gets hurt."
Jim pulled out the magic rifle from his bandolier, impossibly long for such small pouches, and leans it on the ground. "You want the 'sword', amigo? It's more of a gun now. Found this beauty in the old fire chief's safe. I got a way with locks, you know?" He said with a self-satisfied chuckle. "But Jim doesn't deal in lives. He deals in good old American greenbacks. Let these guys all have their group hug. I'm looking to get paid." He stated with a broad, dismissive gesture. "Did you bring money?"
"Lo siento familia." He added to the others with a remorseless wink.
Remington had his gun drawn even before he fully identified where the new voice was coming from. The sooner they created a Mexican standoff situation, the better. First, he'll need to--
"Hey, Remy! Hold this for me." Cerise added as she tossed the blade his way.
Remington snatches the large knife out of the air. Right away he notices how heavy the knife is. Not exactly unwieldy, but a swing or thrust will have a more power behind it than expected. Looking down from Cerise he's surprised to see that three curving thin bars of metal have stretched from where the quillons meet to the pommel, forming an elaborate knuckle guard. The quillons themselves are thicker than he's used to seeing and curve forward toward the Sword's tip. As he's noting how that will subtly affect certain maneuvers and how he'll need to compensate, a mesh of metal springs out from the blade, the criss-crossed metal flowing to form bas-relief-like images of important personages of Fever over the years, all of whom he's considered friends. The blade itself has grown long and thin, over three feet long with a fierce tip.
Finally, in the pommel, a perfect diamond rests. It has no color or luster or any distinguishing feature. It is completely empty. Just like him.
Nurai threw the cuffs as far as she could over Cottin's head while remaining kneeling, blocking as best she could Cottin from seeing what was going on behind her. She would have thrown them at where it sounded like the horrible man was but didn't want to give him an excuse to do anything further so just tried to get them as far away as possible. She rubbed the burns on Cottin's wrists, hoping the shadows were at least somewhat as soothing to the fey man as they were to her. She made no move toward the man, just glanced over her shoulder towards Ymerson for a moment and then back to Cottin
"I'm sorry...I can try to heal this up in bit...I'm so sorry Cottin...both of you..." she said, focusing on Ymerson and Cottin and the threat rather than the others in that moment.
Had that knife just... changed safe? Oh, this was probably gonna be cool. Rather than spoiling the moment, however, Cerise moved forward to cover Nurai and those she was protecting - she couldn't heal others, so the best way to protect them was to be between them and danger.
"You want cash? I don't care, you can have cash. I'll throw in this one, too." The voice behind the car muttered something, then called out. "Walk within 30 feet, don't resist the spell's effect, and call out that you have the sword of the king of Fever and you are willingly giving it to me. I'll then pay you. Electronic is fastest but if you want money or gems we can do that. Lie, and this is the third time I've asked - those stupid fey laws mean we fight. And by 'fight' I mean 'you all die by sniper fire and I take the sword off your cold dead corpses.' Much the same to me."
"To be honest, well, I sort of think that you are overestimating your chances. We're rather sturdy, you can ask your short friend. I've seen Cerise here take a blast from a grenade without breaking stride."
Aurora looked around, trying to imagine where snipers could be positioned, and getting ready to call on her spiritual ride.
"Hurt like a [bleep], though." Cerise opined. "But yeah, I've walked off bullets before. Thing is, once you no longer have a hostage to threaten us with, there's nothing stopping us from going after you... and while I hate innocent people being hurt, accepting the use of hostages just means it happens more often." She wasn't gonna pull the pin on this grenade quite yet, but she had no intention of just meekly letting jerks like this take what they wanted by force.
"Yes, I'm a terribly bad man. I'd tell you my life story - how I'm a former child soldier using the only skills he's ever known to feed both my family and starving orphans, but I'm also a consummate liar. Whose face you haven't seen. For good reason. Even if this job goes south I intend to see the new one. So...final answer is no?" A subtle click sounds from behind the car.
"Woah, wait a moment. What I'm saying is, hostage or not, you're not giving us many reasons to cooperate. Yes, Ymerson is a cool guy, but we've only known him for a day or two, and if the alternative is the Wards falling, well, I'm sorry for him but that's not too bad a death. But you, if you kill him, are here with a gang of supernatural, pissed off citizens with a noticeable disregard for their own safety, an array of weaponry, and absolutely no reason to be friendly to you. Or to Jim, since he's apparently double-crossing us and we're stuck in a sort of a Mexican standoff. As many precautions as you can have taken, the resulting scuffle would likely not turn out too well for you, especially since I can just pick up the Sword, which could be called the Gun now apparently, and fly off."
"What I'm saying is, we need some assurance that you don't want to be apocalyptically destructive to the city before we bring it any further."
"Plus, I don't think there are snipers. If there were, they'd have taken us out already." Remington stops scanning their surroundings and looks at the speaker. "Whatever your actual plan is, it's probably riskier for you than you realize. I suggest you re-think your strategy and listen to the lady before you get the Sword through your eye."
"Or a fist! ....I do the fists." Cerise said, not wanting to be left out. Her whole reason for being here was getting into baddies' faces.
"I think you all need to relax just a tiny bit, amigos. What's the big deal? If the wards fall, people find out our town is weird, the world knows, who cares? Big tourism money. And you know The Jim is all about money." Jim offered with a snicker.
"But I'm not walking into any spells. I don't know what magic you're trying to pull. You already threatened to kill us." Scrunching his nose in disgust, he leans the gun against the car. "You want it? Take it. But Jim doesn't take well to double-crossers." Shrugging at the irony, he took a step back and held up his hands non-threateningly.
By approaching the car - and entering the area of the spells effect - Jim realized that he was within the Zone of Truth the voice had cast. "You say the words, or the next sound is a gunshot." Nothing made a move to take the weapon.
The kayal woman was quiet, considering the situation and biting her tongue as she guarded Cottin - until Jim approached the car.
"Human greed and pride and ignorance...Cottin, move back when you can... she muttered as she rose from kneeling to her feet and waved him back.
"I know accurate measurements aren't a lot of guys' strong point, but the dude was pretty clear on 30 feet. Not even one of V's tanks is that wide. Also, you know wards are often weaponized, right? Kayals have done it for centuries when tiring of being fetchlings for others' wallets or being hunted & burnt, many groups weave offensive magics into them both to attack the wrong sort who cross them and as a failsafe on failure or tampering. Large explosions or worse are not out of the questions...can't make money from a crater with your corpse in it...finally..."
While she rambled on in a likely boring tone, her hand was sorting through her pocket until she found the right components to cast. Glancing to Emerson, she lifted her head and hand and just beyond where she should see the young man suddenly a two feet thick invisible curtain of roaring wind rose vertically 25 ft in the air and spread out...for about 30 feet. She didn't pause to hear if it might have knocked the stranger back - the moment the cast was done she waved the others to move in and dove to cover Ymerson in case any bullets got through her wall.
"Reason, keep out of that, don't want you hurt too." she said as she took a breath by Ymerson, prepared to help him get out of there. This stalemate had to end and while Nurai would rather wait a good few decades for Dissolution, this risk was the best she could come up to do so while lowering the risks for others.
With a curse of, "Motherfu-" a gun flew out from behind the car and the sound of the someone crashing into the vehicle as the wind blew the voice out of position. "Fine, hard way it is." There was still a distinct lack of visual on the voice's owner.
Cerise darted forward and over the car, fully intending to punch the guy if she could locate him. She wasn't so good with subtle outside of her dances - better to just move forward and pound people before they got any funny ideas.
Remington, do you have the details I keep trying to send you via PM about the King of Fever? My sent box suggests no, which us frustrating.[/ooc]
Blasted by the wind, Jim doesn't bother drawing his guns. Instead he tries to locate the source of the voice and make him more obvious.
,
His hesitation that might be taken as Remington's surprise that the Sword has bonded to him is actually Remington's body adjusting to the rapid transformations it has just undergone. His mind is trying to process everything, but all Remington wants it to focus on right now is that when the invisible assailant spoke and crashed into the car, the new King of Fever could tell exactly where he was.
When he could finally force himself to react, Remington darted around the parked car to lunge, ignoring any lingering flames from Jim's greek fire.
Something smokes briefly and yelps at Jim's fire attack, but only a little, and the sound of footsteps and a low muttering suggests attacking the same place again won't work - but does give you a chance to follow.
Aurora didn't notice Remington wielding the Sword, as she was busy bringing down Geidihr in a sweeping arc that unfortunately only cut air. "Fight properly, you coward!"
Nurai remained kneeling by Ymerson, she moved to try to remove the cuffs from the young man and check for any obvious wounds before she glanced around to see if she could stop any sign of the stranger.
Nurai doesn't spot where the invisible attacker has gone, but does break the handcuffs.
Jim attempts to track down the vanished figure.
Jim also fails to find the muttering caster.
Remington's eyes, oddly sharp now, picked up the dust from a man's feat as they moved. "There!" he called out, pointing.
Cottin got to his feet raised one hand, exposing burned red skin around his wrist, and - changed. Instead of the pretty young man you'd seen before was a Fey warrior, dressed in glorious hides or black fur and dark red dragon scales. A wand of some kind, thin but a reed but as tall as many men, appeared as well and he swished it through the air. Silver-flecked sparkles coated the invisible figure, who swore heavily and moved in another direction, muttering another spell.
A sharp crack suddenly rang out and Cottin cursed, a sprey of blood too dark to be human spraying across the car as a bullet struck him. Thankfully it only seemed to wing him.
Seeing Remington lunge with a different rapier, Aurora's brain connected the dots. As she dove in with a lateral kick to the kneecaps, followed by a savage spear thrust, her battlecry was, perhaps predictably, "Hail to the King, baby!"
Cerise was only a moment behind Aurora, sparkles glimmering brightly around her hands as she punched out at her enemy. "You're done hurting people!" she called as she felt the hum of battle surging through her.
for
Jim saw the shot hit Cottin and jumped a bit himself. "So they do have a sniper!"
He vanished from sight and prepared to track down the shooter.