Dark_RP

The fog was as thick as hash-house oatmeal and twice as cold as her hips said goodbye. Maybe she was too much moonlight and orchids for me but I couldn't help thinking that my crazy powers and hers would be soon fighting against the same malign forces. Natalya was going to meet 'Kole Sorensen' a mole at the Chrysalis Corp. but I could tell that her mind was on GIA manpower...

She made contact, and learned some useful intel, including two possible locations for Alicia McGregor: Mercury Communications and Agrarian Foods which were Chrysalis Corp. subsidiaries.

The team decided split up. Dara and Etsuo staying at HQ to try hacking into the systems of the locations, Agrarian Foods was not on the grid. Smith and Natalya went to Mercury Communications. Marika and I went to Agrarian Foods. Natalya decided unilaterally to sneak around Mercury. The place looked secure, but nothing interesting appeared to be going on there.

At Agrarian Foods, things seemed to be lower on the security end initially. But watching for a while it became clear that the guards outside were pros, with high-end automatic weapons. I called it in - and the rest of the team began to take up positions as a plan had been formulated.

Natalya shifted for easy entry while I followed in a stealth-suit. Using powers of hyper-agility we hyper-sneaked our way into the hyper-basement into a room with old hyper-machinery. A dead end? No, Natalya's keen eyesight saved us from a failed mission as she saw that there were false walls. Naturally the walls were electrified, but a bit of clever physics and some determination saw us through.

We followed some stairs leading down and soon found a suspicious looking covert interrogation chamber. We agreed it merited further investigation and soon found what must be Alicia undergoing extralegal interrogation techniques, with two men in the room, their backs to us.

Natalya and I advanced on the men, Natalya destroying the larger man with a controlled phase shift grid network as he began his transformation. The other, shifted in a sheet of snot, that covered me and started to crush my ribs. Fortunately Natalya cut me out and started dealing with the remaining guards behind us. One of them was down due to a headshot from Smith earlier, and the remaining guards had Natalya in front and Smith, Dara and Armstrong behind. It didn't take much. The grenade might have been overkill.

Dara started vacuuming the data up, and learned a silent alarm had been tripped so we made a quick retreat. Alicia, croaked into Natalya's ear:

Ballard... Rictus knife... the 12th...

For the attention of Thomas Thomason.


The trail for Saul had seemingly come to an abrupt terminus with the Owls losing track of him somewhere in the vicinity of the Succubus Club. A variety of methods and modes were looked into, but nobody could shed light on the wherabouts of mysterious Cainite named Arthur or the hunter named Saul. Suspicions began to flare: Perhaps Arthur and Saul were in cahoots?

Fredegar decided that one way to learn more might be found by speaking with Brendon, the Succubus club manager. Brendon advised Fredegar of the reward of $5,000 for the capture or death of the transgressor and Fredegar managed to get a look at the tapes from the camera pointing at the Elysium toilets during and around the time of the slaying. They showed Arthur following Saul's son, Isaac, and they did not show Arthur leaving by the same route.

Free Fallin'

As Fredegar left Brennon's private suite and made his way out of the club, a scream was heard as a somewhat familiar sight began to unfold. Upon one of the hanging dance floors a young girl was being eviscerated and her body was dropped to the ground level dance floor. The perpetrator, Arthur Gonzales, made his escape upwards into the rafters and through a window near the roof. Not entirely certain about the particular course of action, Fredegar began a pursuit.

Cat on a hot tin roof

And so a highly improbable, but exciting Hollywood rooftop chase scene ensued, with Fredegar at last able to engage in some leaping strongly assisted with Potence. Naturally all under cover of Obfuscate. All was going well until, on one rooftop seemingly containing naught but a Rooftop Pigeon Coop stood a man with his weapon drawn.



Tossing his humanity out the back window (a cocnsience can after all simply be inconvenient and dangerous) Fredegar continued his pursuit, moving to hamstring the man who had been surprised during his rooftop self-training by a insane vampire, but instead taking off his foot and lower leg.

With that done, Fredegar managed to track Arthur to an old abandoned apartment building, filled with an overwhelming stench of decay and death. For a while, that cat on the hot tin roof became a deadly game of cat and cat as both supernatural hunters prowled the building in search of the other. Fredegar caught site of Arthur, clinging on above a door frame and opened fire. Arthur, suddenly aware of Fredegar began a viscious counter assault which was dodged by Fredegar before collapsing to the floor and slowly beginning to rot.

A surprising turn of events, and Fredegar's immediate response was to drain Arthur to his last drop of blood and carry his dessicated corpse back over the roof tops of Chicago to present evidence of his slaying and to collect his reward. After so doing, he went back and got medical help for Ghost Dog as a token gesture of kindness.

Down time

Painting the town red

Anthonio decided to make his way to the Succubus club, but was struck by an urge to enter a smaller Yuppie-ish bar with a large fireplace and open fire as its main attraction. Overcoming a sense of dread at the open flames he walked in and began to soak in the atmosphere. Unfortunately a log rolled off the open fire, landed on some magazines and before long the whole place was a hellish inferno. As Anthonio fleed he gets a sense of deja vu as the scene he leaves behind is entirely like a dream he had had as a young boy.

The strange woman

In addition to that weirdness, Anthonio received a rather strange call from a young woman who seemed overly familiar with him. This was a little disturbing and she seemed to be trying to arrange a date with him.

Later, on the same lines, he had a sort of vision of giving his telephone number to an attractive woman who grabbed his arm in the Succubus Club. The vision is disturbed by a phone call. The same woman, only this time she seems disturbed that he didn't meet her at the Club last night.

Only the Succubus Club is closed due to the high frequency of bloody murders taking place there. Very odd.



Of Dogs, Drugs, and Derring-do

The coterie decided that the Succubus Club's full security tapes held the key to all their woes. Anthonio volunteered to break in, and a few minutes later returned - telling the coterie that there was no point doing it and attempted to leave. An attempt to bribe Anthonio with Copiously Cained Cocaine filled Canine was not enough - though Anthonio did take the dying dog and put it in his glove box to give his car a certain 'dead dog' odour. Fredegar also entered the club with the intent of theft on his mind only to change his mind mid action and leave. Gideon deduced that there must be some kind of security system in place set up by Brennon, and cutting their losses they left the scene.

Annoyingly everybody felt as if they were getting up a little late. It was making them kind of grumpy.

Watch it!

While playing a gig with Baby Chorus a waitress spilled a drink on Gideon, but he was able to control his rising beast and shrug the incident off. However, while at the Purple Ocelot Tongue in Gary - the new business name for Fredegar's outfit - he was approached by two girls who offered him $10,000 cash for two litres of his vitae. Gideon refused the offer and followed the girls, who seemed to speak with their benefactor on a payphone before returning to their standard homes.

A rose by any other name

A man with almond eyes gave Fredegar a rose, before walking off muttering insanities under his breath. This infuriated him. But he kept cool

The Groom

Near to his Chicago haven, Fredegar saw a man threatening to jump off a building. A crowd had gathered and seemed to be encouraging the man to jump. Those bastards. This infuriated Fredegar, but once again he quitened his bloody beast. Instead he kept close to the man, unnoticed as is his way, ready to intervene should the wost happen. It didn't, and emergency services were able to talk the man down. He had been jilted at the old altar. Like a bastard. INFURIATING!


Violent Bloody Death

While out looking for a dog to Frankenstein, Trilobyte got more than he bargained for. A pack of seemingly stray nay wild dogs gave chase. They chased him down an alleyway, decorated with little but for a corpse, hanging by barbed wire from a fire escape. Trilobyte investigated immediately, Bio-forenso-thaumaturgy, level 9 style. The results were conclusive - the guy was dead. Gruesomely so.

Rampant Hell

A crazy old guy began to rant about damnation and hell and souls and demons and the like at Trilobyte. It was kind of annoying but after a while the old man went away.

The Doctor

Thomas Thomson, PI, newly embraced Toreador, found himself the recipient of an invite to meet The Doctor at Chicago University. This he did, where he met Critias who grilled him on his stance on ethics and morality as well as law and virtue. He didn't seem overly appeased and warned him that he will be SCRUTIN EYE SED!

Cheese!

Infuriatingly Thomas woke up late again. Worse, someone had just taken a photograph of him!? By the time full consciousness had asserted itself Thomas was too late to give meaningful chase.

Children in Need

While out on convoy one fateful night they did happen to see a certain Scottie Cartwright interviewing a four year old girl. A modicum of investigation revealed the girl to be a vampire and she was quite terrified of "Scary Mr. Edwards", and was in need of a "drinkie". Playing on his paranoia and trust(!) Gideon managed to rid themselves of the Scottie problem and went, along with Trilobyte, to take to young girl to the Prince.

The rest of the coterie investigated the Orphange from which the young girl had claimed she had walked. Within its confines none other than Neally sat, weeping blood tears as fearful children huddled in one corner of that terrible cold dormitory. With a wink and whistle and he-haw-ho, the mighty coterie...no I can't keep it up. They briefly probed Neally who seemed to express regret, but upon learning that Gideon was going to tattle tale on him, he fled. Pursued in perhaps the most farcical chase scene I've ever been involved in, Neally was shot at, jogged next to and he eventually jumped into Anthonio's car who was kerb crawling next to him.

Thomas Thomson began calling in favours to have the police redirect Anthonio's car now containing Fredegar and Neally to Lodin's place. Furiously they began to plot.

Lodin, upon learning of the accusation demanded immediate proof and called for DuSable to test Becky, the child they had taken to him. The results confirmed, Becky was Lodin's own Grandchilde and Lodin called an immediate, but regrettable Bloodhunt on his former chief aide.

Eventually, Anthonio, Fredegar and Neally made it back to his place - Gideon had arranged to meet there. Neally was getting itchy. Gideon and Thomas burst into Anthonio's apartment side by side, Gideon pointing a weapon at Neally - Thomas began to light a Molotov Cocktail of some kind and the fur really started flying. In due course, to add to the confusion as friend and foe alternately pointed guns at one another, Trilobyte arrived and Neally was head shrunk and staked while Thomas was also staked.

They looked around, restraining Anthonio from attempting to indiscriminately torture their captives, and wondered. "How the fuck do we deal with this shit?"