Katherine glanced around, trying to find the source of the strange woman's anxiety.
Leo quirked an eyebrow at the lady. "You shouldn't be here," he observed, "It would be your best interest to find somewhere else to linger."
Titus slowly stepped away and out of sight, aiming to move to a protected spot... and, once out of sight from everyone, flicking his hand in a spinning motion. As he did so, a gun appeared in his hand, and he nodded in satisfaction. Better to be cautious in a place like this.
Tomasz sighed. "Finally."
The fearsome looking woman squints at Tomasz, freezes, and vanishes.
"Well, that was exciting." Katherine moved closer to the ladder again, and called up, "You're free to remain up there. I have no interest in coming up, what with the gun and the magic. But if you wish to talk we'll be down here, for now."
"Not especially, as you've been vouched for by no-one and done nothing to make me trust you. But I thank you for the offer."
"I'm afraid I have no one to vouch for me," Katherine said after a moment, "And I don't think anything I can do would make you trust me." Well...she could re-write his memories so he knew her as a good friend, but that was an awful lot of effort. "Just don't open fire if you pop down and find us still here, please."
"I shouldn't" the woman observed in faintly English accented Czech. "But I've spent rather a bit of effort calming the various forces within, and I'd really prefer not to have someone barge in and stir it up again." she takes a long drag on her cigarette. "Are you expected?"
She starts - obviously an affectation. "Oh. Pardon my rudeness. Would you care for a cigarette?"
Richard smiles at the well-dressed woman and says in his upper-crust British accent, "Can't say I've had a smoke in quite a while, but the circumstances of the day seem to be dictating I should take it up, if only briefly."
Once he gets the cigarette, he takes a long drag of it and smiles, "Ah, the forces within are certainly tumultuous to no end. The demons within us, if not properly controlled, are like the become demons without."
He pauses for a moment, as if ruminating on an unknowable thought, "As to the unexpectedness of our arrival, can we ever truly know what to expect? I wonder, how would it be if we were to expect what to know? In any case, you may leave the pondering to me, and offer the actuality of the question to my escort here." He then gestures to Leo.
The smoking woman blinks, obviously trying to parse her companion's message. 'Demons? That can't be a throwaway. I must be missing a quote, or a keyword!'
"Interesting quote." she says cautiously, and in English "I can't remember the play, but the line is Charlemagne's, is it not?"
Richard shakes his head slightly, ”Quite the reverse of Charlemagne. It was a secret disciple of his, one might even term them an underground student.”
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"Fils de pute, you two are about as subtle as a brick through a window. Inside, now," Leo ordered, no longer bothering to hide the gun in his hand.
"Where is le vieux monsieur?"
The well dressed woman visibly relaxes when Richard drops codewords, and doesn't appreciably tense up when faced with a gun.
The insult stung mostly because I knew subtlety was my weakness. Years of training had given me some ability to lie, deceive, and keep secrets - but none of it came easily. If I hadn't been able to use magic as a crutch I simply couldn't have operated in the business at all.
In french and english she answers "D'accord. There's a stand off inside. Le vieux monsieur is threatening to" she glances at the gun "equalise the local skyline."
"Sounds reasonable," Leo noted, brushing past the two and inside. Out of the view of the street, he rolled his neck and opened his jaw wide. With a shivering of his flesh, he resumed his own, horrific appearance.
Terrible scars, a missing ear, mismatched eyes, a spindly and uneven build, Leo was not pleasant to look at. The grin he fixed the two was even more horrible, though his teeth were immaculate. To be frank, he seemed like a figure that should only be half remembered after waking from a nightmare.
"Now, mes petits choux, let us go resolve things."
At Leo’s transformation, Richard raises his eyebrows, ”I would say that you have just become one of said demons without, but I believe I have seen worse, even talked to worse earlier today. In any case, I would certainly agree with resolving things. I have spent rather enough time with a gun pointed at me today.”
The well dressed woman followed Leo inside, then took a step back as he transformed. A moment later her self-defence found voice - albeit a quiet one. "Please - don't change on my account."
More loudly she called ahead "Sandbags. Plus two. Don't shoot - yet." To her new companions she added "Other side of the backstage - and the attic."
Leo groaned and stretched a bit, "You lack imagination, garcon."
Then started forward without obvious concern. He was not trying to hide his presence at all.
Richard sniffs at the air, "Interesting. Can't say I was expecting to smell this today, though it wouldn't be the first time that the day surprised me. Besides, this is by no means the first time I've smelled this particular odor."
Katherine, Titus and Tomasz: you hear steps and voices incoming.
Oh, who is it now? Tomasz thinks with no small irritation. Taking a few steps back, he puts Kleiner between himself and the trapdoor.
Titus tilted his head slightly, wondering if it was time to bug out. "Let me know if you want me to shoot someone. I still don't know what's going on here, but you two seem alright." For now, anyway.
Katherine stepped away from the trapdoor and pulled her vanishing act. Hopefully, if they were aggressive, she could get the drop on them.
Richard sniffs at the air, "Interesting. Can't say I was expecting to smell this today, though it wouldn't be the first time that the day surprised me. Besides, this is by no means the first time I've smelled this particular odor."
"Tell me if you need another cigarette." The woman replied, and gave Leo a sideways glance "It was like this when I got here - except they were still on fire. Not sure who's responsible."
"That sounds ever so much like an oblique accusation," Leo said, turning his head ever so slightly too far to look back at the other two. His grin, so horrid and lopsided, grew a touch wider.
Climbing up to the trap door, he hammered upon it.
"Monsieur! I have a truck! Interlopers as well, should I be shooting them?"
Richard takes a long drag of his cigarette and slowly blows smoke into the air. It forms a strange shape with, oddly, a few right angles in the drifting smoke. He mutters, ”Hm, I had not considered that.” He then turns to Ada, ”I cannot say I was ever properly introduced to you. I am, at least for the foreseeable future, Richard Farthington. If you are sure that you will remain as you are, then who do I have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of?”
"Call me Ada." answers Ada "Though if you're testing to see if I'm naive enough to give you my True Name, rest assured that is not going to happen 'Richard'."
It doesn't look like the three new arrivals have noticed you. The one holding the gun is covered in scars like he was too close to a grenade; the one who introduced himself as Richard is eerily pale, with slicked back hair, and the woman calling herself Ada is wearing a fur coat, on the stylish side rather than the sensible.
Katherine focused her magic, scanning the newcomers to see who and what they were. And if they were any danger to her. Or if they could be useful.
He is patiently waiting for Tomasz's input before springing into sudden, horrific, violence or relaxing. There are idle memories of picking human flesh out of inhuman teeth and the sounds joints make as implacable pressure is applied until cartilage tears and pain, so much pain.
"At the moment, I do not think that to be necessary." Tomasz calls back. "Kleiner, follow - safely." he orders. Then he shouts down the latter. "I am coming down. Please do not be shooting, or it will end poorly for us both."
Katherine feels as if she has been briefly plunged into a deep, dark pool with vast, ichthyic horrors writhing in the deep, their hideous masses briefly parting to allow beams of otherworldly light to shine through. A beam of said light hits her face and she finds herself sitting in a large, comfortable chair atop a windswept mountain peak, two reddish suns shining in the sky. At the base of the sheer walls stretch rolling dunes dotted with ruined structures, their architecture baffling to behold, barely belonging in any reality Katherine knows of. Far in the distance, dry mountain peaks scrape the skies, unfathomable heights to contrast the depths she had just seen. She blinks and in what feels like both and instant and an eternity, she sees Richard standing before her, his eyes almost as wide as his smile. He says with barely restrained laughter, "It seems you've found your way here, at least if here is any place at all. Seems it is sometimes, and other times it certainly is not. In any case madame, I believe it is time you go. You'd best not linger here too long."
The tail of a thought wriggles out of sight; 'Is he really expecting me to hand over my unique identifier? Must be checking I know how to take precautions. Well - there's a reason I'm living someone else's life'
'So; I need at least one Laundry employee - and enough competent others to pull this off. Hard to tell who's competent and who is not in this mess. We need to get out of here before hostiles arrive. Who is Kleiner? Another practitioner to add to this mess?'
Titus felt a bit of a tickle in his mind - then a presence deeper within his own stirred slightly and moved around a bit, as if interposing a hand between him and anything that might like to see him. Whatever his thoughts were, they were his own for now. He kept quiet, though he acknowledged Tomasz's words - no need to start a brawl without good reason.
Shuddering for a moment, she nodded. "I do believe you're right. Apologies for the intrusion, I found what I needed." She closed her eyes and cancelled the spell.
Blinking, Katherine dropped her spell and greeted the newcomers. "Since it seems I've been noticed, I mean no harm. Apologies for any intrusion, I was trying to make sure everyone was fully versed in underground studies, as it were." She smiled cheerfully, careful not to let the fact that some of these new people had minds that were not really pleasant and certainly no longer entirely human. She'd seen worse, sometimes in the minds of those were meant to be normal, but really wished she hadn't.
Richard nods at the Katherine, his measured British accent contrasting his odd demeanour, ”No need to apologize. Worse has certainly intruded upon the windswept and waterlogged recesses of my mind.” He pauses for a moment before gesturing to the three newcomers, ”I am Richard Farthington. If you wish to tell, who are all of you?”
Leo's gun snapped up when yet another interloper revealed herself. Showing a bit of restraint by not shooting her immediately, his face rippled and twisted, scar tissue tugging oddly as he frowned.
"Tant d'enfants perdus. Were none of you taught how to make contact with an active operation?" He asked, half rhetorically. Leo sighed to himself, "I suppose your gentil oncle Léo will need to teach you."
"I was, but wasn't given much in the way of contact information. Given the flaming undead in the building, I decided caution was the better part of valour." Katherine smiled again. "My instructions were simply a few codes and a destination, so you'll forgive a young lady being cautious."
Nodding to Richard, she replied, "Miss Katherine Anderson. A pleasure to meet you, Mr Farthington."
"Well, some of us didn't have a choice about getting involved in these things." Titus said from where he was concealed. "I'm sure it's very thrilling to have the secret words and clandestine meeting spots and the like, but let's be honest, the life's not for everyone." He was just a detective, darnit. Or at least he wanted to be one.
Tomasz descends the ladder, followed by a lumbering humanoid creature, taller than seven feet and apparently made of clay. Its eyes are alight with a yellow-greenish light. The metal creaks ominously under the creature's weight, but they both get down relatively safely.
Katherine looked at Tomasz, who she recognized, and the giant creature of clay which she didn't. She tilted her head. "Is...is that the Golem of Prague? The one that legend says was built to defend the slums of Prague and it's Jewish inhabitants from the Holy Roman Emperor in the 16th Century?" She looked around at the others.
Richard's eyes widen as he sees the golem and he smiles slightly, "That is quite something you have there. A beast from the depths of lore. I had not thought things of its sort could exist, certainly not for this long. Given life by powers beyond our ken. I must ask, how did you come to find this magnificent creature?"
Ada steps back when Kleiner appears, for the first time showing anything approaching caution. "Flaming Undead. Kleiner." Ada pauses "You have been busy. Nazis? Or has your side finally decided to really commit to this conflict?"
"I was taught to make contact from a distance, and loaded for bear. Most active operations shoot first and ask for credentials later - if ever."
She shifts slightly "I'm guessing Kleiner here is your weapon du jour - much more effective than a gun. Congratulations. I point out a loud fight, here, is going to pull the authorities down on us. I'd offer to help, but if you're still active you probably won't want it. Let's set up a channel to talk later and leave, now, before we have company."
"The Golem he is not, sadly - though a similar man created him for a similar purpose. I believe you passed his body earlier - I was able to finish his work." Tomasz explains briefly. "Friend, I trust you were able to find a truck?" He asks Leo.
"Oui," Leo said, patting the huge monstrosity affectionately on the lower back, "It will take some time to fabricate a registration with the krauts but it will serve well enough for getting Kleiner out of here and to... where we need him."
He then turned to the assembled newcomers, looking at each of them as he spoke, "And which of these shall we trust?" His face twisting to give the each of the operatives an idea of what they might look like had they experienced whatever had unmoored Leo from the continuum of common human identity.
"I mean, if I'd really wanted to hurt you, I would have just shot you before revealing myself." Titus pointed out. His oddly-elaborate gun wasn't hidden at the moment. "I suppose trust might be a bit much under the circumstances, so how about just accepting a lack of hostility?"
Katherine smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not carrying a weapon at the moment, but I'm not really the sort who needs one. As for trust, I'm afraid you'll need to decide that yourself. I suppose the idea that I was simply scanning your surface thoughts rather than deleting your minds is some evidence."
"Please, into the truck Kleiner." Tomasz says softly. "For what it is worth, they did not attempt to kill me. But I do not know that that means they should know everything."