Claire rolls her eyes and runs to try to get ahead of the dark man.
"Indeed! Punchy Number One at your service!" Biff calls, and sprints along behind her. And then in front of her. Biff is no follower.
Almost as soon as Sam begins shouting to his companions, the strange thin man increases his speed. No longer content to just brush through the crowd, he begins shoving and slipping through the bodies at a more rapid pace, and within moments he's slipped into the stairwell. But can our posse keep up? Stranger things have happened.
Biff gets a running start, jumps, and attempts to surf down the banister of the staircase!
Claire elects to avoid Biff's more... eccentric way of getting downstairs and simply forcibly shoves her way down the steps, shouldering her way through the crowd.
Sam also engages in running after the man. Although the first to see him, Sam gets caught up in the crowd while trying to follow, and isn't able to do more than push his way through.
The posse gives chase, and for the moment at least, they find themselves catching up to the strange man now making haste from them. Eddy, however, finds himself still somewhat blinded from the snuff, and as he wipes his eyes, he finds himself nearly toppling full-force into--and over--the stairwell banister!
Claire draws her gun, but isn't about to take a shot at the man while both he and she are surrounded by panicking guests.
Biff elects not to attack this time, trying to capitalize on his lead.
But the crowd slows him down.
Biff grabs a handful of poker chips and flicks them at the man rapid-fire.
And so the chase begins, with the suspicious figure bolting back out through the crowded hall. The posse gives chase with varying success: Sam has trouble doing much more than starting to push through the crowd, Claire moves forward without much trouble, and Biff leaps onto the staircase banister as he enters the stairwell, sliding down after their prey. Eddy, unfortunately, has less luck with the stairs, and tumbles over the banister to land with a thud at the bottom.
The party's quarry himself moves with quite some agility as he presses down the stairs, and he casts only a brief glance Eddy's way as the Brit nearly catches up to him. As he enters the crowded lobby, the tall man makes a subtle gesture with his fingers, and then begins to move with even more fluidity and speed.
As the posse hits the lobby floor and begins to break free from the crowd, luck does not seem to turn in their favor. The thin man is the first out of the doors, and he begins to bound out across the street, dashing with incredible speed. Biff and Sam push through the crowd as best they can, but can't do more than make it out of the Grand, while Eddy pushes free despite his tumble--although he has no hope of hitting the Thin Man just yet. Claire catches the worst luck of the pack, though: an overzealous pair of guards spot her running and decide to tackle the wrong party, moving forward to stop her from continuing the race.
Claire calmly twists as the first guard attempts to tackle her, causing him to miss her entirely and fall face first on the ground. She steps the other direction, sending the second guard toppling down on top of the other idiot. Both of them are promptly trampled, rather painfully, by the crowd.
As the posse's chase spills fully into the streets of Tombstone, our heroes catch a lucky break. The tall, thin man, although far ahead of them at the moment, is cut off by the sudden crossing of several riders on the street. One horse rears up while the others dash by, and he twists over backwards--again pressing beyond the normal capabilities of the human body--to avoid the great beasts. Although still on his feet, the delay does hold him up long enough to give some of the party the chance to attack!
Finally clear of the crowd, Claire levels her gun directly at the man's back. "Tombstone deputy!" she shouts. "Get on the f*cking ground and get your hands behind your head." Knowing full well that he's not going to stop, she fires off a round straight at his back.
Biff feels it would be a waste to just toss aside the chips without using them, and blasts the man from just outside point blank range.
It only occurs to him after the fact that it might have been a good idea to merely RESTRAIN the man.
As Claire and Biff close in on the man, each lets out their own attack. Claire brings up her pistol and fires a round, and while it catches the man's coat, it passes through harmlessly as he swirls to avoid the horses. Biff brings up his hands and begins blasting poker chips forward, having fortuitously grabbed them as he passed through the Grand's lobby. He's certain they're bound to hit, but the thin man once again displays uncanny agility, contorting his body and bending it at impossible angles while staying afoot. The majority of the chips miss him, but some connect; the thin man stays on his feet, however, and even looks relatively unhurt, just annoyed.
Despite the attacks against him, and the horses in his way, the thin man seems unharmed. He casts an angry glare toward the posse, but doesn't react against them, only continuing to run.
The posse has to contend with the rider cursing and shifting from the street, and by the time they've gotten around him, their target is a ways up the street once more, and he ducks down a side alley before they have a chance to shoot. Left with no choice but to barrel on, they keep up the speedy footwork.
Claire and Eddy decide not to follow the thin man directly, and instead head up a couple more blocks before heading over . Their hunch and agility pay off, as they head off their quarry as he pauses, apparently trying to decide where to go. Sam also has a shot at him, from a distance, although Biff has fallen a bit too far behind to act just yet.
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As the chase goes on and the posse & stranger gets to less walked streets, Eddy knows he has to do something.
Surely, finesse is their enemy's weapon and as such only pure power can defeat it.
The brit, with a calculated self punch to a certain point in his body, breaks the First Seal:The Charging Albino Rhino.
His muscles oferdriven with energy (), Eddy adopts a running stance akin to that found in rugby, and therefore faster and better than any football one.
Eddy, who ran after Claire trusting her sense of direction, felt a distirbance in the Punch.
A tingling sensation that alerted him... following his guts, the shining muscled man turned abruptly and entered a door with a tackle only to crash through the building wall seconds after, appearing in a burst of testosterone and wooden shards in front of the stranger.
Oh, how much would he pay to see the bum's expression... if he only cared, because guided by the Chi his punch was already flying to meet a new face.
Claire curses at the man's supernatural agility and spins her revolver's chamber, green light flickering along the barrel and around the bullets as she charges her shoots with energy.
Seeing Eddy smashing straight through a wall stuns her momentarily, then she rushes after him, using the convenient new short-cut to cut off the thin man. As the party finally manages to trap him between them, she opens fire again.
The stranger turns in time to see Eddy's incoming punch, we'll give him that much. But he isn't quite quick enough to dodge out of the way, and the British kung fu man's supercharged fist catches him directly in the chest.
There's a loud cracking noise as several of the thin man's ribs cave in and shatter from the force of the blow. Pain and rage are etched on the man's face, and he staggers back, turns to run... and promptly arcs back in more pain still when Claire shoots him in the spine. He twitches once on the ground, then lies still, apart from shallow breathing. It appears the man is still alive, although unconscious or otherwise unable to rise.
Claire walks over to the man, keeping her gun trained on him. "So, I'm guessing tall, dark, and creepy is one of those f*cking black magic arseh*les who's trying to rule the world with f*cking playing cards. Anyone think we can hold him long enough to ask questions or should we just finish this before he gets around to waking up?"
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"Mademoiselle, if you allow me I could give a non-lethal solution: We could simply break both pairs of appendages so the fellow can't escape nor use said black arts..." the brit closes to the near-dead man and continues "...which seem to be less effective than plain old fisticuffing, if you don't mind."
The thin figure lies on the ground, and there's no real movement beyond his shuddering breath. As Eddy and Claire move in to the sprawled body, they can see the coat is soaked with blood throughout the back. And as Eddy finishes his sentence, the man's body heaves once more, and then lies completely still. It seems the final shot has drawn too much blood for the man to live without.
There's still a brief moment of quiet and calm here in the streets of Tombstone as the posse gathers around the corpse, but it's sure to be broken soon. There's some shouting from the Grand, and sooner or later people are going to come to investigate the gunshot. The only question is, what exactly will they find and be told when they arrive?
Samuel finally catches up with everyone else, panting up a storm as he reaches those near the man. "Have we... caught him? What... happened, did you shoot him?" Samuel asks, eyeing the now-still body as the body still lies on the ground bleeding. "There are likely... to be others here soon," he continues, before taking a moment and finally catching his breath. "We ought to tell them about how he tried to break into Lady Boyle's room."
"Good idea!" Biff agrees.
"Though it's taking them a while to show up...awed by Eddy's excellent fisticuffs, no doubt!"
"The way I see it," Claire says, calmly holstering her revolver and pulling out her lighter and a cigarette. "Is that we were asked to protect a defenseless woman from a man out to kill her. And when we caught him in the act, he refused to come quietly and we had no choice but to use force. That sound right to everyone?"
"I reckon it sounds right to me," comes a deep, stern voice from the street behind the posse. Turning, they see Virgil Earp striding up to the scene, some other townsfolk coming a ways behind. "So long as I can get a name for your defenseless woman and a statement from her. But seeing as you folks are deputized, and serving as guards for the Bonanza, and have my good name staked behind trust for you... well, I'm thinking there's some papers to sign, but I doubt we'll have to take this to court."
The lawman steps up to the body and shoves it face-up with one booted foot, and he gazes down at the face. "Huh. Now I look at him, I feel like I've seen this fella before. Not sure just where, though. Maybe going into the Grand earlier...?" He eyes the body for a few moments, then spits next to it and shrugs. "I'll have some boys take him out to Boot Hill and get him six feet down. Good shooting, folks." He tips his hat to you and waves over some men. "Grand looks like it'll be okay, too. Fire started in the basement and died pretty quick, all told. I'll look into the cause."
It seems the excitement for the night is dying down. The apparent assassin has been caught and put down, our heroes are clear of trouble for the crime, and the Grand Hotel will be okay. The question remains what they'll do now, but there likely isn't any more important to do tonight.
"Of course," Claire says without missing a beat. "You'll want to speak ta Lady Boyet over at the Grand. After she was knocked out a' the games earlier today, she approached us sayin' that she was worried that another competitor with a personal grudge might try to remove her from the big game, if you get my meaning. We were keeping an eye on her room tonight and this chancer tried to break in and kill the poor woman. Right as the fire started too. Quite a coincidence, somethin' like that clearing a building just as an assassin was about to make his move. We ran after him when he bolted and I told him that we were deputized and authorized to take him in. And that we'd use force if he resisted arrest. Well, he decided to resist arrest. What can ya' do? Sometimes blokes like this don't know when to give up." She shrugs and lights up her cigarette. "If that'll be all, I'd like ta get some f*cking sleep tonight. I've had enough excitement today already."
"Slippery as he was, you might want to dig a little deeper!" Biff calls.
"I spotted him, actually" Samuel says, a bit startled as Wyatt makes his presence known. "He was trying to pick the lock to Lady Boyle's room; he wasn't really hiding, but he was... hard to see. I don't know how else to explain it. We saw each other at the same time, and he made a break for it. I tried to catch up to him, but the others had some better luck getting through the crowd."
"Quite a coincidence, yes," Virgil replies, his voice thick with his typical dry humor. "It is a damn shame when they resist arrest, now, isn't it? But it sounds like you all did the best you could. Yeah, this should be a clear-cut..."
The lawman trails off and frowns at Biff and Sam's words, however. "Slippery? Hard to see without hiding?" He thinks for a few moments, then nods--more to himself than to the posse. "Well, if he's all that trouble, maybe it's best we make sure it's done, and I'll put my official stamp on it too." And with that, Virgil Earp draws his pistol, points it directly at the corpse's skull, and pulls the trigger. Several of the townsfolk start at the sudden crack and burst of blood and gore, but Virgil just sighs and slides his revolver back into its holster.
"Well, I think you said it, Miss Callahan. That's enough excitement for today. How about y'all go home and get some sleep?" So saying, Virgil Earp strides off as quickly as he appeared at the scene.
"Damn shame," Claire repeats dutifully, silently glad that Virgil's happy to go along with her. "You know, it's an awful convenient thing you came along when you did. If you hadn't, someone might have come along and taken this the wrong way. And that would have been mighty unfortunate."
"Some things are coincidences, Claire," Virgil says, still walking away. "Just be glad it wasn't Behan."
Biff may not be smart, or observant, or good at much besides punching people, but damn if he isn't intuitive.
"So, why'd you shoot the corpse? If I didn't know better, I'd say you expected it to get up and fight back again!"
To Biff's question, Virgil Earp gives no response. He simply walks down the street a ways and turns a corner, disappearing from view. The townsfolk who came with him mutter amongst themselves briefly, mostly similar questions to Biff's, but soon enough a few of them lift the body and take it over toward Boot Hill cemetery. The others return to the Grand.
The excitement finished for the night, the posse may have gone any number of ways in town. Maybe they simply returned to their own lodgings; maybe they checked back in at the Grand, where surely they found Lady Boyet in safe and fine, albeit flustered, condition. Perhaps Eddy worked more of his charms on the woman, and spent the night with her--only they themselves could truly say for sure.
The next day our heroes return to the Grand's lobby, which is really none the worse for wear besides some surface damage to tables that were knocked over in the panic. After breakfast is served and everyone's ready, the second day of the Bonanza begins, with the final players taking up their hands for the stakes.
Claire leaves as soon as the body is taken away, heading back to bed so she can get some rest before the next day. Once morning comes, she checks in with her temporary employer before going to look for Doc or maybe Wyatt himself. Virgil's behavior last night left her a bit... concerned. Perhaps someone closer to him would know if something's going on that she doesn't know about.
Samuel, still in the tournament, continues to impress. In the first several rounds of the day he does reasonably well, knocking two competitors out in a single play; after managing only just hang on for a few hours, he knocks several competitors out after managing to draw all four Aces. Around midday he hits a streak of bad luck, and folds for several rounds before coming back with a vengeance. In the last two rounds of the day, he manages to win a hand with his best play being a pair of fours, and follows it up by convincing the others he was bluffing before revealing he'd managed a Royal Flush in the next round, busting them all after they went all-in.
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Eddy could be found glowing from pride after such magnificent punch. Having no words to offer at the task of explaining the corpse issue -mostly because he was proud of his work and against covering it-, he simply watched the situation unfold.
The next day at the Grand, the brit would keep watch again... His third eye opened to any and all possibilities.
In between tantric watches, pur most particular fisticuffer would engage in small-talk with passers-by... which mostly consisted on intimidating them by accident with flexes, squats and manly stories from the army. Everything coupled obviously with booming laughs and claps in the back that would break a tree in half.