Hello there, Ome.
Thank you for listening to the Hard Knocks sorority podcast.
In this episode, which is the first half of our eighth session in the campaign,
there is a good bit of planning both in the kitchen at Salmavar and at Olka's Tea House in Tacoma.
One could almost say that it is all that the team does as they consider how to solve the problem of how to get paid for their first job with the creep while also capturing George Van Housen.
At first, the two seem incompatible with each other, and the team really wants to get paid.
Procop scrambles eggs.
Ollie drinks coffee plus.
Deander eats celery.
Grace munches on a bowl of cereal.
And Cecile is grumpy.
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Stay safe.
Conserve your ammo.
Scrub that data trail.
And need I really say it?
Don't make deals with dragons.
So we're trying to kidnap the funny police guy, right?
That's the summary.
Funny police guy.
We need to find a good place to do it.
Does he like dogs?
Well, I guess it depends on what you guys want to do, right?
So if you want to complete the job for the Mr. Johnson, you need to get the recording of Kimmy telling him to back off.
So you need to get that from George VanHousen.
Or you could say we're going to kidnap George VanHousen.
We're going to snatch George VanHousen off the streets and then find another way to complete the job for Mr. Johnson.
I say we let him do it.
Okay.
This isn't a character thing.
Are you guys ready?
I'm ready.
I've never been readier.
Oh my god.
More ready.
All right.
So it's the next morning at Samovar.
And you guys are all very early risers.
Apparently.
So.
Do they each have their own rooms?
I believe Grace and Boxter were rooming together.
Yeah, that figures.
Everybody else was individually.
Cal Fowls and roommates.
Yeah.
Cecile wakes up after a sort of a restless night filled with odd dreams that she can't quite remember.
And sort of remembering an odd conversation that she had with the woman, Talia, right before she went to sleep.
And the rest of you guys had your own thoughts about your situations.
But other than that, you wake up and Samovar is quiet all around you.
There's no movement, no sound of movement or hustle and bustling.
As you get up and go out and try to find, you know, a kitchen or a place to eat, you find you find ice is.
Sitting in the in the kitchen with with Procop and it seems like they might have worked out the differences.
Now, time, time, time.
Yeah, they greet you and Procop, you know, shows you the coffee maker and all that kind of good stuff.
Yeah.
Coffee maker of actual coffee.
Yes.
I shall consume the morning potion.
Is there anything to put in the coffee?
Any fun substances for Boxer's taste?
Like fish cakes?
No, definitely not.
Don't ever watch her fish.
Watches Boxer put stuff in her coffee and like slowly shakes her head.
If she finds alcohol, she's putting that in coffee.
That's all I was trying to be coy about it.
Oh, actual coffee.
Procop asks you if you would like the omelet and anybody who takes him up on it,
he scrambles up some eggs and throws a ton of black Russian caviar into it.
Oh my fucking God.
He's putting caviar in his eggs.
Yeah, eggs in his eggs.
Fish eggs in his.
That's horrifying.
The wings are fertilized, right?
Right?
Horrifying.
Deandre digs around in the in the refrigerator until she finds celery and then she's just like eating celery.
I imagine while he's mixing those eggs, my angel is asking like, yeah, no, no, those are fertilized, right?
And then she goes, right?
I don't care.
That's delicious.
Let me have my eggs.
Fish spawn differently.
So even better.
Get free food.
In character, he says, you know, fish spawn differently.
So the beluga will and he explains how the beluga will eject the eggs and the sperm into the water so that they can basically freely mix.
So the beluga caviar is harvested directly from the fish.
No, they're not fertilized.
Neither are the eggs.
OK, I can eat.
I want to eat pretty please.
OK, he looks like he might have looks like he might have thought you were vegetarian or something.
He just smiles.
She smiles so wide that you can see the gap in her teeth.
And she proceeds to squirrel off at that.
Seel has not left her room yet.
What's the seal doing?
Stressing.
She has not had the materials to do her morning routine in like a week.
She's very stressed.
She's very upset.
Oh yeah, no makeup.
She barges out like 30 minutes after she's up and just goes and gets some fancy tea and goes back to her room.
You can only assume she's furiously reading books.
That is most certainly sincere.
Is she always like this?
She has been an interesting guest in my safe house.
She shut herself in the bathroom.
Didn't you say that your safe house was destroyed?
It was.
Two different factions in fact.
Very interesting.
Not for now though.
That does sound very interesting.
Fill me in later.
And then she climbs up into a chair while they're talking and begins to like gently shift back and forth on the chair.
She's very almost impatient but just excited.
Yeah, Procop sort of toasts you guys with his coffee and then he says,
Well, I'm going to leave you to your planning and I will be steaming the cockatoo like I'm doing.
So just ice sitting there eating his scrambled eggs and his black coffee with you guys.
So it's really...
She accepted some of the eggs, the weird double eggs and she added any alcohol she could find, honestly, to her coffee.
She seems to be enjoying it quite a lot.
Ah, having an Irish.
You know, it occurs to me that the both of you drink copiously.
Does that ever affect you while you're on the job?
No. I'm a functioning alcoholic. Be thankful.
Who did you mean when you said both of you?
Nightingale was also adding alcohol to her double eggs, right?
No, she didn't do that.
He said something about morning potion.
Oh, that's coffee.
She's gone through maybe like two heads of celery at this point.
Oh, God.
No, I want celery.
Just like greens and all. It's just gone.
I want to fill a bowl of carrots and eat it.
Nightingale would have gotten coffee but mixed in a copious amount of creamer, like an unreasonable amount of creamer.
It looks white. Why did you mix that much creamer into it?
And she also gets a bowl for the eggs.
And without silverware, she feeds herself by grabbing clumps of anerycyclocinesis and very neatly popping into her mouth.
Can Cecile, before she leaves her room, could she just like a sense and see if she can find any astral signatures that aren't hers in her room?
Yeah.
Anything? Sensing test? I think so.
You didn't need one to see if anything existed. Just the nature of the thing.
That would be perception to notice. Sensing would be to understand it.
Astral perception.
Depending on how complex what you're noticing is, like if it's a pattern, it may be a sensing.
Yeah, and astral traces fade too.
The higher your roll would be, potentially the fainter the astral signature you would find.
I can't remember. Astral perception?
It's labeled as a sensing.
Oh, it's just a sensing?
Yeah, not astral perception. You can also use perception on the astral though, as in the skill.
Yeah.
Do you go into astral and take a quick look around the room, right?
She's just opening her third eye.
Yep. Everything looks pretty mundane. You see the traces of the warding, the astral shielding that seems to encompass the entire building.
And it looks like there may have been a Watcher Spirit passing through here at some point in the night.
But otherwise, it doesn't look like anything's been in the room astrally specifically.
So no spells have gone off? Nothing?
What you get is mostly your own signature, which seems to have been fairly tumultuous during the night.
You know, a lot of variation in emotion, a lot of spiking emotions.
You basically see the signature of what you already know the night was like.
Unfortunately, you can't remember what you were dreaming about, but you just know that it was a very unrestful sleep because your dreams were very active and alive.
And you don't feel necessarily arrested.
So you'll leave and it doesn't say anything to any of you? It takes a cab somewhere else.
Would I see her going? No.
Egg? Nope. I imagine she leaves out through the front entrance.
Samovar is pretty much abandoned this time of day.
He's going to a cafe.
You know what's the oddest sensation I've ever felt? Some planets can feel pain right after they've been picked.
And if you live in one place for long enough, and at the end of my persuasion, you get the oddest sensations.
And a couple of times I've eaten fresh vegetables and I could feel it.
That sounds uncomfortable.
Yeah, I could feel myself eating the vegetables.
Vegetables feel pain? Yes, they do.
Aren't they meant to be eaten?
Evolution is a cruel mistress.
Indeed. It's even worse when you can feel it while you're still ego.
The pain is a little different than us, I suppose. Not like cognitive, just a signal that there is something damaging it, if you can understand that.
It's like a tickling on the sides of your ears. I think that's the best way to describe it.
My son's ears really plaster his ears twitch when she hears that.
No, like less tickling, more prickling. Yeah, that's the word.
Oh, that doesn't sound good.
Or like, you know when your limb falls asleep? It feels like that.
Do you ever get that whenever you eat animals?
No.
I can't believe what he's hearing.
Oh, well, I don't actually know. I haven't ever eaten a still alive animal, have I?
Have you?
That seems like a memorable event.
Not in 55 years.
I do not like your past lurking there, menacingly.
Nightingale promptly licks the ball clean and floats it over to the sink and runs some water in it.
I do believe we have some actual work to be doing, after which I do have something we do have to do.
Where's the norm girl?
She's scared not to do whatever the hell she does. She doesn't matter. What's she going to do anyway?
Should we wait until she comes back to plan or should we plan our own and then inform her?
I thought we were going to need a college education to pull off this ice skipper.
So, teensy teensy little issue there.
Whenever you're doing something dangerous, the more eyes and hands that you have on the matter, the better, like generally speaking, is a general rule.
There's three of us. The guy could be bringing... No, there's three of us here.
He's a very prepared, trained, college guy.
I mean, he's a bit of a go-go-go, so I don't know if he really matters, but...
Wait, what did D&R just say?
I just called Isaac go-go-go.
A go-go-go?
Yeah.
Biker-ganger.
A go-go-ganger.
Yes, this is definitely D&R slang. We've heard this one before.
We have, actually. We've seen this before.
I have said go-go-go many a time.
A go-go-go-gang.
I think I've said go-go-go literally every session. No.
All right, we're going to add that somewhere in our slang terminology for the game.
No, I swear that's from the book.
It's just dumb enough to be Shadarun.
I disagree.
A gang member.
I couldn't have just been two. It would have been better if it were just two.
And I say that as someone who thinks three is suspicious.
A go-gang is a motorized gang. So a go-go-go is a go-gang-ganger.
A go-go-go.
I mean, I feel like that's a little rude to ICE. ICE has muscles, says Nightingale.
I've been very rude to ICE. This is not the start of this.
Yes, but Nightingale is now protesting. She's defending the white nationalist FIFIs.
ICE is just sort of eating breakfast listening to you guys with a face that can only be described as tolerating.
I think Dandarid shoots boxers aside. Who was it that said that?
It was Nightingale.
Okay, it suits Nightingale like a side glance. And I don't take advice from a horse. A horse that eats with its mind.
Pardon me?
That horse is one of your teammates.
That horse is someone you will be relying on with your life.
Yes.
Yet you do not trust her to speak to you.
Not trust her to speak to me. It's not like something idiotic will come out of her mouth.
Then why are you opposing what she says if she is not saying anything idiotic?
Because I really don't care.
I appreciate the comment, but it doesn't matter. The elf woman can say whatever she feels like about me. I get it.
Oh, okay.
I think Dandarid just kind of raises a hand, like, point. That's my point.
I said, look, about last night, I was feeling a little bit off after meeting George Van Housen.
It brought up a lot of things that have been suppressed for the last 20 years.
So if I was acting a little bit, no, let's rephrase that. Since I was acting a little bit churlish, I'll just tell you that I grew up in, I was born in Seattle.
And one of the problems that I had as a youth was the reaction to my parents being killed in the Night of Rage.
It's not something I've thought about for a long time, but when I was younger, it colored my worldview and my view, he looks directly at Dandar, especially of elves.
So sometimes that still comes out if I'm feeling if I'm feeling when the facades a little worn thin, if you understand what I mean.
Well, I if it makes you feel any better, I was in Sheershan Gire during the Night of Rage.
So you know that I had no hand in it.
No, I never thought that is just as a youth, I blamed anybody who looked like you being back in Seattle after so many years and seeing Procop and sort of getting a lot of events that had gotten pushed out of my mind for a long time,
stirred back up and the prospect of seeing people that I thought were dead potentially.
It's got me in a little bit of a turmoil internally.
So, yeah, I can tell you that thing, unfortunately, I can tell that took a lot of idea.
Yeah, it was a long time ago, but it's still there.
You want a hug or a pat on the back?
No, I do not want a hug or a pat on the back.
How do you give hugs?
Well, back home, the closest thing that we had is that we wouldn't wrap our, I guess, arms, so to speak, and she raises a foreleg around one another, we would just lean in and crane our necks around one another.
But, I mean, I can rear up and wrap my legs around someone.
I'm just trying to imagine you wrapping your neck around mine.
That seems less comfortable than a normal hug.
It's not just your, it's leaning into the person and just kind of embracing them, but not with your arms, with like your body.
No, that part's fine, but the like rearing up forelimbs thing, that sounds less comfortable.
Well, yeah, but it's, I feel like people wouldn't get it if I did what I normally do.
I just looked at you guys and said, have you guys ever heard of an animal called a giraffe? I believe they've been extinct for about 40 years or so.
Everyone knows that giraffes aren't real. They are myths made up by movie companies so they can sell things about exotic creatures. Honestly, people these days.
When, when, when Boxer says that, Dindri starts giggling, which you have not heard Dindri do yet.
It sounds awful, like broken car almost. It does not sound like a normal giggle.
I'm sorry, I caused you pain?
I've seen a giraffe. Actually, I might have a picture of one.
It's a giraffe. It's a fantasy creature, and she pointedly looks at Dindri with an excessively long neck, the supposedly eight leaves from trees, but I'm pretty sure don't exist.
And it has existed by somehow being an aberration so terribly against nature in a time before magic that it just existed.
Dindri pulls up her comlink and starts digging through her phones, or her pictures.
Ice looks a little bit startled at Dindri's giggle and then Boxer responds. He looks at Boxer and he says, well, that's exactly the point you see. That's how giraffes used to hug each other too.
Fantasy creatures.
Wrap their necks around each other. That's also how they used to fight.
See, this is ridiculous. Those necks with snap in a second. They're too long. They are too long.
After a few minutes, Dindri turns around a picture of a very, very young girl standing in the middle of the road with a giraffe right behind her.
Is this got this from the internet?
No, this is a picture of me.
Right, sure.
And the girl's eyes go wide and she makes a very exasperated gasp.
In, I think it was 2018? I was six. I remember this picture being taken because we spent three hours running from this giraffe.
Running from it. What does it come to do? Wrap its neck around you and choke you?
No, but they can swing their necks at a frightening speed.
I've seen those before.
We have some of those in the frontier. They're really aggressive.
You're kidding me.
No, I'm not.
So they invaded from another plane? That I can believe.
I think this one escaped from a zoo.
A zoo. Right. They would be able to fit that in a zoo.
I mean, I believe it. I also believe that metahumans are crazy enough not to recognize that thing's extraplanar origins.
Yeah, that thing is absolutely not from our plan. Fine, I can see it exists, but it came from her weird realm of things.
I think that story album has some from before the awakening.
Oh, that's the thing. They were still awakened creatures. We know there were awakened things that came in, like the early emergence of elves, dwarves.
Or that. By one of those apparitions. It makes perfect sense.
Like Polaroids from the 90s.
Yeah.
But that's in direct with the awakening, does it?
Actually, Boxer, a small correction. I'm pretty sure those things aren't native where I come from. When I say the frontier, I mean parts of Equestria that we took in from the Aether.
They probably came from the Aether. They're like the bugs.
They're dangerous.
Nightingale just smiles and nods. I guess.
So we know that Boxer doesn't believe giraffes exist now.
How long has it been?
Cecile, you are at the tea house that you were at last time here in Tacoma, enjoying a nice, very pleasant environment of a Russian tea house.
Has Cecile eaten?
Would she like to eat?
Yeah, she is having a small breakfast.
And then she will also, does she know where the meat is happening?
No, so far nobody's actually set up a meat or otherwise talked about having a meat.
Cool.
So you're at Volga's Tea Room, which is sort of a Russian tea room in a renovated townhouse that serves a variety of imported teas and coffees, especially from Russia and Eastern Europe.
They have, they're famous for their Turkish coffee and their various Russian tea blends.
And there's us, you know, there's always, at Volga's there's always a good opportunity for people watching.
Yeah, Cecile's just having breakfast.
But anyway, you know, Cecile's off doing her own thing right now.
At a certain point, Grace would probably say something about that. Like, by the way, I didn't bring it up sooner because I didn't know if it would be appropriate.
But whenever Cecile, you know, kind of ducked in and ducked out, she didn't look like she was feeling very well.
Of course not. She's a soft, courage girl. She has no idea what she's doing and I'm not surprised that she's freaked out by it.
She should be. She doesn't belong in this kind of life.
We can't have anyone going in tonight with spare mirrors.
I don't think she should go in at all. I think she has a liability. I don't care what magic she has. I don't care what other skills she has.
She is untrained, unprepared. She doesn't know the risks. She has no idea what she's getting into.
Shouldn't we like, check her?
Yeah, we should check on her.
In this situation, the safest place for her to be would be at the edge of the fight rather than out of our line of sight.
I can see it.
And she's...
Can the girl drive? says Ice.
I don't think so.
Cecile has driven you places.
Yes, she can.
In a grid guide.
Does she drive the grid guide? So that'd be kind of a departure from a grid guide.
It becomes...
Actually, Cecile has.
...a guide.
She hasn't driven us anywhere.
No, she has. The van.
Yeah, Nightingale is going to be like...
Well, actually, she does. Don't you remember when she drove us in the van?
Don't you remember?
The question is, can she drive well?
Of course.
I don't want me to flatter myself, but I can drive pretty damn well. And unless I am.
That's a fair point.
I'm sorry, I'm talking to myself here.
I may not be disposed to driving.
Maybe you shouldn't drink the head spinny juice.
I'll be fine.
I can drive. I just don't like driving large vehicles on my bike.
Yeah, don't I feel that sometimes. But it's necessary, I suppose.
Unless she can drive properly.
You know what? Does anyone have a com?
I think I have.
Yes.
And she pulls out her com and quickly texts with her mind. Or her eyes, anyway.
Cecile, how good are you at driving?
Well enough? Question mark?
If Norm Girl was being shot at, do you think she'd still drive well?
She texts her again. How would you do if you were being shot at? Smile. No.
What the heck?
The main girl interjects while she's texting and says,
I really don't think you should drink the head spinny juice, by the way, Boxer.
Because your mind is like, visibly darkened. I don't think it's good for you.
Girl, you think this is dark? I haven't even drunk a full coffee yet.
You should see me get down a whole bottle. Then you'll see dark.
Nightingale just grimaces.
Cecile responds, not very.
There we go. There's her answer. She can't drive a shit when she's being shot at.
I couldn't either, to be fair.
Yeah, well, I've been shot at and I've driven, so I think I'd be fine. If I have to be.
The van has a dog brain, right? Yes.
Can we program the dog brain to stay right behind my bike?
Are you a programmer? No. I'm not.
Can we set it to do that? I mean, I don't know. Maybe. Yes.
The answer is yes.
So I park my bike in front of the dog brain and then if I get on my bike and drive off, the dog brain follows.
We'll have to disconnect it from the grid in order for it not to adhere to silly little things like road safety laws.
For that, I expect we will need some programming expertise.
Like Cecile!
Like the dog girl.
Yes, like Cecile. This one won't get a shot if she fucks up. So yeah, let's do it.
She's useful. Yay.
Boxer does not like Cecile.
Visibly darkened.
Boxer is a little bit drunk and does not like Cecile.
If we can't, I think I could train Cecile to drive while she's being shot at.
Oh god, how are you going to do that?
I'm going to purchase some blanks and shoot her while she's driving.
That sounds like something she would hate very much.
She has magic, you know. Yes, I know.
Are you implying that she's going to like, suck magic at a...
Maybe.
So Ice says, you know, we could probably get this... we could probably get George without gunfire, right? If we do this right.
If it doesn't pay to hope to plan around the best both of us for course of events, we must prepare for the worst. And the worst has to work around her.
Give the girl a call and see if she can come in here so that we can meet somewhere so we can talk this through.
Oh, wait, hold on. I asked earlier, but no one told me.
The guy that we're going to snatch, does he like dogs?
Ice chuckles.
Oh.
Did he give us his online...
I believe he did so that we could tell him when...
He gave you a card, like an old physical card with his phone number or his com number on that Diendare picked up.
Diendare pulls out of her like trench coat, which she's still wearing even though she's inside the card. We could ask it.
Well, well. I think this is a bit suspicious. Besides, we have someone who should know something. Have you seen him with dogs? Has he done anything with dogs? Dog person?
This is to Ice.
I don't know.
Fair enough. He has to have social media of some kind. I can probably figure it out.
How many points in computers does the shooty cat have?
Enough to play video games?
Indeed. She has two.
So she's gonna look up the dude to see if he has any dog pictures on his social media.
Do I just roll computers for that? Computer?
Three.
What exactly are you looking for?
Him with dogs. She's gonna go by volume and by stated liking of the dog. But basically she's just looking for anything connecting him to dog.
Jim Ansell?
Mm-hmm. Our sergeant.
There is no social media presence for Sergeant Jim Ansell.
Well, she has pictures of him. She's going to do a search for pictures of him with dog. Reverse image search, I guess. Kind of.
This guy appears to have no internet presence that I can... no... what's it called?
Matrix.
This guy appears to have no magic presence that I can discern. And I have no info.
Oh well. Maybe he'll want to pet the doggy if it comes close. But what was your idea?
Uh... if we had to learn, I'm just thinking maybe doggy. But I realize we can do that already.
Bigger, bigger, bigger thing. I'm thinking... so, um... do you... how do I put this?
Um... I was rope. Does anyone have rope? Like a long rope? Something that could hang on, you know, something that would be over an alleyway.
Okay, time to look for rope.
I prefer really strong enough to hold up a grown metahuman.
Are you going to try to snare trap a chief or a... he's a sergeant of a police.
Are you going to try to rope trap him like a snare?
Yeah.
Don't you need, like, a flexible material for that?
I have a gun. I have shock rounds. Honestly. Also, I can probably beat the fuck out of him. Honestly. We don't need a fancy rope trap.
Wait... does the serge make you really strong?
No, I'm just that good. She like that.
Ice looks like he wants to say something and he thinks better of it.
Honestly though, we want to talk to him. We want to get lovely information out of his pretty little head.
So I'm thinking that maybe we shouldn't, you know, beat him senseless or render him unconscious.
We'll have a chance to talk to him first. And if that doesn't work, we can beat him senseless and drag him back to the salivary and interrogate him here.
Alright. I guess that means I should stay back for a life, huh?
Again, Ice sort of looks a little bit like he wants to say something and then sort of thinks better of it.
The Boxer knows this, but she too has seen some comment. Are you okay, Ice?
I'm fine. I'm just listening to you guys. I do think we need to get Cecile involved in the discussion.
I also don't think we should underestimate George. He was... he is a formidable foe.
He was even in the 2050s as a police captain and head of a high threat response team for Lone Star.
There's no man above five sticking shock rounds.
So first we summon Cecile. Second, we talk about whatever we're planning to do.
So let's do number one first. And Deandre pulls out her fucking iPhone 6s com and calls Cecile like a cell phone call.
Anyway, Cecile picks up.
Cecile, where are you?
I am at a cafe eating breakfast because work day hasn't started.
Work day?
Deandre listens for a second. Olgas?
Yes.
We'll be there in 25 minutes.
Lovely.
God, that's some stupid posh...
Isn't it?
She hangs out.
Who's been to Olgas? Was it just Cecile and Ice?
Cecile, Ice, and Deandre's been there before probably on her own.
She's probably visited every coffee shop in the city. Every place that has soy calf or coffee in the city.
They have Turkish coffee.
Ooh, probably.
Right, Paul literally said that they did.
Yep, they're known for their Turkish coffee as a matter of fact.
Do they have a portly doosing in one of the chairs by the counter?
No, but they do have... it's a good place for people watching because... well, it's a good place for people watching.
So, the second Deandre is off the phone, she stands up and goes, let's go.
Huh? Why are we coming?
We're going to meet Cecile.
In some ridiculous, stupid posh tea bar? Who drinks tea?
Their coffee's pretty good there. It's Turkish.
I can accept this.
I actually kinda like tea.
It doesn't have any alcohol in it, it's just your thinking.
I like the equivalent of tea, and I like the better teas here, but a lot of the tea is just kinda underwhelming.
It just tastes like someone put flowers in water and let it sit there for a few hours and then told you to drink it.
Metaphorically, of course, I don't know what that would taste like here.
Anyway, yeah, let's go to Cecile.
Nightingale gets up, I'm gonna go get my stuff.
And squirrels off.
You guys just don't carry everything around in a big belt?
No.
You can fit all of your equipment on a big belt? You clearly aren't prepared enough.
Not all of it. The three, like, sweeps her jacket to the side and some of the stuff is on the inside, and some of it is on the belt on several pouches.
A respectable method of carrying things around.
There's two swords on one side and a gun on the other side with, like, you can see all her, like, rounds put in separate, uh, what are they, uh, magazines.
I would love to carry everything I need, but I would end up carrying thousands of rounds of ammunition, which seems like a bad idea.
If you get in a fight and you use up more than 36 rounds of ammunition in a hand, you're... you've lost the fight.
Ice is just standing there waiting.
If I carried everything I had, I would end up carrying a lot, is my point. I would have made equipment.
Ice does not appear to be... he's still wearing his 2050s clothes that seem really tacky and out of date these days.
Boxer is just, uh, relatively casually dressed. Leather jacket, uh, sidearm. She has her fancy... well, she has a weapon that farm enthusiasts would recognize as a rather remarkable piece, especially to be seen on the street.
And, uh, yeah, just clothes otherwise. No ballistic vest or anything.
Ice says, imagine if we, once we've got this planned, we've got a couple of hours. We can always come back here and get geared up. I don't feel like walking around the city with an arsenal on my back.
Sounds reasonable.
I'd leave my gun here, but it's, like, too much of a hassle to leave it somewhere.
I don't go anywhere without this thing if I can have it.
Anyway, in a fight I'd probably pull out my sword. Deandre would probably say the name of her sword, but I can't remember her name.
Deandre remembers that Ice picked up a sword at the armory last night, too.
Ice, how trained are you at a sword?
Well, it's been a while, but I'm probably still fairly decent with a sword.
If we have some time, would you like some de-rusting?
Ooh, I would like to watch this if it is all right.
Well, that'll probably end up after our planning, but you're on, go-go-go.
Indeed. It was back in the day when I thought, uh, well, when he sort of chuckles.
I'm trained in, uh, Western swordsmanship, so that might tell you something.
What, like, HEMA?
HEMA. I don't know what that is.
Historical European Martial Arts.
Oh!
Human European Martial Arts?
Historical European Martial Arts.
Oh.
In the original sense of the word, that being old military shit.
I think your human European martial arts would have probably been more applicable to my sense of, my frame of mind back then.
Well, uh, to be a member of the Peace Force in Terturongar, you have to be trained on a blade.
I picked up rapier because it seemed like the more elegant choice.
Elegant, man. I can appreciate that sometimes.
It's brutal, I'd say, but they're about the same, I think.
As long as it works, it works.
I mean, I personally think guns, uh, well, guns, they're nicer to the person on the receiving end, but meaner to the person doing the shooting, if that makes sense.
I would disagree. Getting into it with NG Pops her claws. These would be a bit, uh, unpleasant for me, as compared to pulling a trigger.
My second partner carried a Zwei handgun.
Oh my god. So unnecessary.
It was, it was something. He was a jackass.
What are they expecting? To go up against Amma? The tradition, in a sense.
No, the sword thing for Terturongar is a tradition. They made up, just like everything else.
Um, but...
Ice just chuckles and he looks at you and he says, elves, right?
I think El actually ducks out and goes to get all of her kit together.
D'Andre is like silent on that for like a solid second and then just continues.
Yeah. You can tell Ice is sort of trying to get a rise out of you.
Alright, so, uh, Cecile, as you're sitting there, are you're probably on your second cup of tea or coffee at this point?
Correct.
And, uh, you see the gang rolling in.
She sighs and waves them forward.
And, uh, you, give me a perception test, please.
Perception? Okay. None.
Yeah. They, uh, come jandering in and you wave them over and they, uh, they walk up to your table and, uh, sit down and one of the waitstaff comes over and takes their order.
That's all you perceive. Any of the rest of you want to give us a perception test?
D'Andre is crazy enough that she'd be like, she'd stand around for a few minutes before she entered somewhere.
Boxer's not going to be standing around, but she is used to scanning her environment as though...
D'Andre, if you have any kind of police procedural stuff, you could roll that too.
I do, actually.
Would you count security? Uh, let's see. Like, we're talking knowledge skills?
Yes.
How about security tactics or combat tactics?
No. Then I would just go with perception.
Three.
D'Andre is very perceptive, I've noticed.
I think that's kind of her thing at this point.
Nightingale...
Not beating things over the head with a sword.
Nightingale, you're just curious about this place. It seems, uh, it seems pretty.
The decor is interesting and it smells good and the people, uh, seems happy and satisfied here.
D'Andre, you, uh, you pick up on something as you walk in.
It takes you only a half a second. There's pro... it looks like there's a security person or...
They're, they're, they're dressed to blend in, but somebody in the... sitting in the back is, uh, obviously security to you now that you notice it.
And, uh, you look around and you see how some of the people look at the group when they come in.
And you recognize this from your police days as this place is obviously a front for something.
Probably by the way certain people reacted to ice coming in, potentially a, uh...
Well, there's probably something upstairs that they're selling.
Well, I see you've been here before.
I think you and I have been here before.
Well, you came here with a seal, pretty sure. Well, I was running around doing stupid shit.
Ah, right. That was a seal.
Yeah. I thought you liked norms, Ice.
Uh, yeah.
Fox, you sort of pick up on the same thing that D'Andeer picked up on is that there's a security... somebody sitting in the back acting as security and, you know, you've...
There are definitely two tiers of clientele here. The clientele that's here for the tea and there's clientele that's here for something else.
Oh. She...
But nobody seems to be thinking of you guys in those terms.
She's a little more on guard now, but she's not gonna do anything. Not even twitch.
And he looks at D'Andeer and he says, well...
I do like the normies, you're correct.
Uh, which by the way, once they come in, Nightingale, uh, like, borks and she like breaks out from the group and goes and runs to get up underneath the table and sit near to, uh, Cecil.
She actually climbs up into the seat beside her. She's... she's disguised as the witchy dog.
The seal moves her tea away from the dog.
Uh, I'm sorry, is anyone else imagining like a corgi as the dog instead of like a normal dog?
What does he even establish the dog as looking like?
German Shepherd.
I thought it was German Shepherd.
I think I knew that, but I don't know, my imagination just can't put the corgi down.
So, are we discussing our work this early in the morning?
Well, we need to... we need a location, we need to scout it, we need to... we have a large amount of things to do. We have to prepare everyone.
Oh, Paul left.
Uh, they killed him right in front of us.
Hey, Scott, person from the dead.
So, first of all, we need a location.
I says, well, so, okay, so what are we doing? What's our plan here? Are we still going to complete the job for this streaky Mr. Johnson or...?
I see no reason to renegade... to renege on our agreement with the Johnson.
We complete the job, we use the Mr. Johnson to lure in whatever his name is, the norm.
They're all norms.
Whatever location we choose, we need to make sure that they both agree to it first, which, considering we have to get two disagreeable people to do so, might take a little while.
Well, we know that the sergeant wants to take care of his people, especially since said person appears to be one of the people who are going on the up and up, whether by them being favored or them simply being that good.
Either way, they are valued, which is to say that he's willing to take action to protect her from this creep, and said creep seems to be pretty intent on creeping.
What I'm saying is they both have incentive to encounter each other.
We tell our original Mr. Johnson that our sergeant would be conveying the information to him as we have arranged.
He pays us and we let them meet.
We interrupt their meeting once whatever they do has been done, or after our original Mr. Johnson leaves, and we can ambush the sergeant in whatever manner we find appropriate.
That being said, I do believe we should secure the area around it because if I were him, I would not come alone.
There's one problem. Prokof wants us to keep the Mr. Johnson alive.
Yeah.
Will be a problem?
If we let him leave, he can go and the sergeant can be finished with him.
The Mr. Johnson is our bait.
So if we let the Mr. Johnson go, the cop will chase the Mr. Johnson and take us.
The Mr. Johnson doesn't have to be there when the cop comes.
That's right.
Or we can have him in a building or other secured place that we wanted to keep him there because he's too stupid to take care of himself in the open and he doesn't have to come out before we take out that Mr. Johnson.
So our target.
And to complete the job for the Mr. Johnson, we need what George Van Housen has.
George is going to get us the recording of this Kimmy person, which is going to satisfy our job, our contract with Mr. Johnson.
So we need to get that from George Van Housen.
Use that to get to the mission.
How do we know that he's going to do it at all?
Because he has.
And not just bring his Scotties in and grab the person and leave.
Please be.
Because he's not good to it.
There's no solution to this.
We just ask Mr. Housen that he please not arrest our Mr. Johnson, who will be at the scene, until after we've been paid for our work.
Then we allow him to be arrested and then we attack.
George is not is not going to be there to arrest this guy.
Exactly.
Also, we can't trust George because he's shadow racist.
He doesn't like us.
He thinks we're a bunch of scumbags.
Yes, George Van Housen in the twenty fifties led a group of vigilantes known as the Shadow Riders, whose old job was exterminating shadow runners.
And that is I want to a little area of operation to be secured.
I'm willing to sweep this area.
And in fact, I'm also willing to have this individual is within my parents, whom I know to ensure that any outgoing members are duly known of.
It would be a favor, certainly.
But well, we have two options.
You can either sweep it manually and establish a sort of perimeter, the old fashioned way, or we can do this with a little more Kyle.
I do believe you are connected to lovely lawmaking corporations.
I don't have any friends in that area.
I don't suppose you could get them to keep you in the loop as to any outgoing members, especially with an hour of operation, which is is it set?
If it's not set, I want to tell them to come to us in a position that is we're going to have to balance two things.
We're going to have to meet in Auburn then.
As long as it's not near my there's an area that's off limits because they all lives in Auburn and is because I'm being there.
That's because that's where Boxer's contact works, too.
Yes. So we asked our context to keep us in the loop on.
No, that was out of character. Sorry.
Just not a box is going to keep that to her chest for now.
So how's it isn't going to just show up if we tell them to show up right?
Like we need to give him a compelling reason.
And our compelling reason is Mr. Johnson being a creep.
Well, the first thing, the first reason he's going to show up is to give us the recording of this Kimmy person.
He doesn't have to.
And the second reason is to get rid of Mr. J, which we are.
Unfortunately, meet us in person to give us the recording.
You seem to be pretty intent on dealing with Mr. Johnson.
He could now to give us the recording, you could just send it over them or he could drop it off somewhere and get up later.
Well, we have his number.
He doesn't want to incriminate himself.
As much as we want to incriminate him.
So that's incrimination.
We are getting him.
That's correct.
Sorry.
Habit of my previous line of work.
Indeed.
And this is my caution.
Well, so we get the recording from Mr. Johnson.
I think we should ask him for it.
Ask him to send it to us over the major.
We need to see Johnson somewhere and play him a record and play him the recording and send it to him via the major.
Then we will when we have previously notified the Van Housen of the meeting location, we he shows up.
We kind of OK, OK, we need to protect those Mr. Van Housen.
Then what we should do is we should ask for an in-person exchange with Van Housen for the recording.
And we don't have our Johnson anywhere in the area.
And then we say we're going to bring you in when we give this to the Johnson.
That way he doesn't know where the Johnson is.
And if he's going to kill us, he would kill us right there.
Just go get the Johnson on his own.
Take care of things one at a time.
All right.
And if he isn't just going to go spend his precious time looking for this Johnson, then we have incentive for him to not immediately shoot at us.
Right.
Aren't our plans the same?
Just mine doesn't require us to meet twice in person.
Well, if we get the recording via the matrix, then obviously he's going to want us to point out where the Johnson is so he can shoot both of us at the same time.
Well, we just tell him where the meeting spot is and give him either a wrong time so he shows up after the Johnson left or tell him to show up after the Johnson left.
If I were him, I would just.
He's so confident he's not going to check the meet before he shows up.
If I were him, I would have cameras on that before I got in and I would want to confirm that this person is here.
Exactly.
And you think he won't?
We could send him the meet time and place and time.
I think we have better idea to, what you call it.
We should probably, well, the Johnson doesn't actually have to be there for the second meet.
We can meet with the Johnson somewhere else.
And whenever we bring the quote unquote Johnson, it can be, as I had suggested, a reasonable looking decoy that they would be able to see something that looks like a man, perhaps sitting on something or sitting in a car.
And if they have a mage with them to a sense it.
They wouldn't be able to if it was in a car because of glass.
That's I don't I don't see the need to invoke illusions.
We can just set up a circumstance where Mr. Hawson would not expect our Johnson to be there for our initial meet.
And we take care of that.
And then we tell our Johnson, we took care of everything.
Don't worry about it.
Here's your recording.
Here's your closing ice chimes.
And I think that's the plan.
We meet with Van Housen to get the recording.
We get the recording.
We take Van Housen, and then we can meet with the Johnson at a later time.
Give him the recording.
Finish out that deal.
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