Stopping the Summoner Broken Bottles, Part IV
September 28, 2010
Emitter: Lovelace
Characters: Arcane, Rat Queen, Daybreak, Proton, Spectrum, Dusk
Summary: Confrontation in the Undercity! The Summoner must be stopped!
===< ~Lost Angeles~ >---------< #216 >===
The largest habitable area in Undercity, Lost Angeles is a honeycombed maze built from the crushed remains of the old city. Pockets of relatively intact buildings are sought after for living spaces, and bases of operations. Roughly half the denizens of Undercity make their homes in Lost Angeles.
Law and order are terms that few would use here, unless you're speaking of a LAW Rocket with an order of a fries on the side. People live in tight knit groups for mutual protection, a half dozen gangs offering protection to those in the turf they've claimed and very few loners strong enough to hold their own. It hearkens back to the Wild West, or some post apocalyptic film — well named as Lost Angeles, there's no angels here.
PLAYERS
Dusk 2m OOC
Leigh 8s OOC Adorable brunette teen — Just ask her!
Linus 1m OOC
Lovelace 20s OOC
Proton 23s OOC
Rat Queen 0s IC
Spectrum 2m OOC
EXITS
China Underground…………..<CU> The Restoration…………….<TR>
The Waste………………….<TW>
===---------------===
Rat Queen placed a call to the phone she gave Dusk the other day. "Guy in black is entering the church. He's got a tied up kid with him. I'll meet you down the block, behind the burnt out gas station." She waits there for the heroes to arrive, sitting in a corner made by some fallen debris, waiting for the heroes to arrive.
Spectrum, since he could speed to the scene at the speed of light, waited back to make the calls. Once he's let everybody else know, he vanishes from his family's apartment above the restaurant and appears outside the church, staying invisible until the rest arrived.
Proton arrives with the rest, the caped man alighting on the rubble-strewn ground quietly. "We got word from Dusk and Spectrum. Black hats are in the building, huh?" he says, looking in that direction. "They're here?" he says about his companions.
Dusk appears as a formless bit of gloom with a pair of gray eyes. "What's he doing with the kid?" he rasps.
"My guess is a sacrifice," says the floating teen mystic known as Arcane. "Which means we don't have a whole lot of time." He whispers a short string of mystical syllables and fades from view. "Anyone else want some invisibility?"
Rat Queen looks more than just tired, she looks exhausted. The eyes behind the mask are like a pair of bruises. "Yeah… I haven't left the area since you guys split, in case he showed up again. Glad I didn't." She rubs the back of her neck. "Kid is trussed up like a chicken, on the altar. Right now Mister Black has changed into some robes, and is setting up a bunch of candles. He keeps measuring things and checking angles. Nothing's lit yet… none of the candles or incense."
It's been a truly busy several days, between rats and demons and zombies and so on. Daybreak is tired, but committed. "Not sure my powers would do us much good if I were invisible," she notes. "I'll let you know, though, Arcane." She listens to what Rat Queen has to say, then glances around. "Sounds like we better get in there quickly…"
Proton nods grimly at this. "Invisible would be good, I'm hardly the stealthy type and if we can get close without tripping anything, all the better." He nods to Daybreak and Arcane, and looks to the Rat Queen. "We're in your debt," the young man says. "Thank you for your help with this; what's the best way inside, do you think?"
"I'm about as invisible as I need to be," Dusk whispers, sliding down to the ground and merging with the other shadows. "Shall we all go in at once and club the guy? Or should I sneak in first and get the kid to safety before he lights any candles?"
Rat Queen sighs softly, "I… I should be going in with you, but I'm so tired I can't see straight. I'll watch your line of retreat… and if you can get the kid free, I'll get him out of here. There's only one way to walk in… the stairs to the left rear of the church, down to the basement where he is. But anyone who can go intangible, there's lots of holes towards the front of the church where things collapsed… thats where my rats go in."
Spectrum comes back visible as the others arrive, and says, "Yeah, let's do this." He looks to Dusk and says, "Good idea. But we should all go in at once. You sneak the kid out, we keep the summoner busy once he notices that the kid's gone."
"Agreed," Arcane says, speaking up though he can't be seen. He whispers a few words to give Proton the gift of invisibility. "Dusk gets the kid out pronto, and once the Summoner knows I'm magi, I'll be a possible target, and I need to have him off my back to counter his own magics." Please let this work, he thinks. This is what my family's done for generations. "And watch for the gang members. Might be cultists. Fanatics."
"Agreed," Proton says. "The kid is the priority; get him out safely. If everything else goes to hell, get out of there, but he's the main target now. The careful marks the bad guy's making? That sounds like something that needs to be disrupted." He kicks off from the ground. "Time's short; let's go," he says.
Dusk's raspy voice comes from underfoot: "I'll slink in the front way and try to get to the altar, but wait for the rest of you to get there."
Clad in glittering gold, for all that she looks slightly like a Caucasian Marilyn McCoo, Daybreak turns her brightness down as low as she's able. In a place like this, shadowy as it is, she'd stand out like a sore thumb. So she enters the church through a high window and sticks to the brighter areas — she actually stands out less there. And, while she's not attacking, she does draw a bead on the Summoner, bringing one hand to point directly at the man, closing her right eye to stare at him with only the left, waiting for the right moment to strike. She's not even chattering like a squirrel like usual.
The summoner is a man in his twenties, black hair, neat little black goatee, black robes. Ornate pendant around his neck and staff with a chain wrapped around it with small metal pendants attached to it. He stops in placing a candle, and spots Daybreak. Clutching the medallion around his throat, he calls out something, and a demon appears!
While the summoner works, and focuses on the visible members of the team… Are we a team? Linus dispells that thought for the moment, since it's Not Important Right This Second. Arcane floats in, unseen, hovering a bit above the ground so as not to make any noise. He gets closer, closer, feeling his heart pound in his ribcage as the demon manifests on this earthly plane. He speeds up, having to work faster, buy Dusk time, and make sure his friends Don't Die. He only stops when he places a hand on the Summoner's Shoulder.
"By the power of the light, of magics ancient and pure, used by those who Hunt dark sorcery, I cast your magic down!" Arcane then appears, and says a few harsh words; the spell he was taught to dispel dark magics. A small pulse of bluish light erupts from his midsection, into a circle of about fifty feet in radius. "Begone!"
The Summoner screams as Arcane cancels out all the spells in a 50 ft area. The demon he summoned laughs. "FREE! Foolish mortals, you have set me -free-." What is happening to the Summoner is even more horrible to watch as each medallion wrapped around the staff held a demon or spirit, and now they have all been turned loose. Something that looks like a blue wisp of silk with fangs wraps around the summoner's throat. Two or three creatures like firey bats take off towards the roof of the building. And there are more… many, many more…
A shapeless shadow slides along the floor, making its way to the altar. Once there, it gathers more shadows about into a large enough mass of gloom to envelop the bound kid entirely. A moment later, not even the shadow remains, as the kid vanishes from sight. Moments after that, the kid rolls out of the darkness at the Rat Queen's feet, still bound and gagged, but seemingly unharmed.
Proton blinks at the chaos Arcane's spell causes, and sets his sights on the biggest threat he can see: the recently summoned demon. As Dusk whisks the kid to safety and the summoner is distracted, the caped man turns, steps and cocks back a fist. "Guess I'll have to send you back to Hell the old-fashioned way," he says, a soft crack in the air as his fist goes supersonic for a brief second, socking the demon solidly on the jaw and sending him flying back through a wall.
The horde of angry elementals are swarming over the summoner, but to little effect. They begin to flow off of him, spreading across the room. The firebats fly out through the ceiling, setting it on fire. The wind elementals stir up a breeze and flee. Earth elementals sink into the ground, though some places in the room it actually starts to -rain-. Indoors.
The summoner starts to scream as four imps that look like bat-winged dwarves swarm over him, scratching and clawing. One lands on his face, gloating in a malicious, piping voice, "Tear out his eyes! Eat his tongue!"
Spectrum appears in the room in the middle of a ton of chaos. He blinks around, "Whoa." Then he sees the things attacking the summoner, "Hey! Can't stand trial if you eat him." He snaps his fingers and a huge, brilliant flash of light, like a flashbang without the bang goes off around the summoner, enveloping the demons, imps, and elementals around him as well. Only the summoner and one of the demons manage to close their eyes in time, the rest seem to be, temporarily at least, blinded.
The light seems to disagree with the remaining elementals, who flee, simply popping out of this reality to their home planes. The Imps are also effected, though one hangs on to the summoner, his teeth buried in the man's calf. The Summoner snarls in pain, and staggers towards the staircase up. The demon, excuse me, demoness unaffected by the light seems to be covered by blue-black scales that shimmer like oil in the light. "He's -ours- mortal. We're taking him with us!" She then grins, and flicks a forked red tongue over her lips. "Unless you want to trade us someone for him."
The big demon stands up with a grunt, and throws a massive punch in Proton's direction, which misses massively! It slams into a support pillar instead, and bits of the roof rain down from above.
Leigh's hand swings to point at the demoness, and her natural glow brightens into something brilliant and fierce. "Hey, I hate the little jerk," she says, "but there's a way we do things up here. You wanna testify against him, we can talk. 'Til you decide you're talking, though…" A searing bolt of light flies from her fingertips, impacting the demoness with a sizzle. She hisses in pain.
One of the three demons is still dazzled, the second makes a grab for the summoner, grappling him. "Oh no, you're not leaving us…. not after sticking me in that little trinket." The demoness, however, is ticked off at Daybreak. "Come back after puberty hits, princess. Then we'll talk." She sends a blast of black flames at Daybreak, which envelopes the heroine and swats her out of the sky!
Arcane says, "Oh, shit," is all Arcane cam mutter as things start to go to…hell. Except they're not in hell; the demons have broken free and are wreaking havoc. And it's his fault. So much for family tradition, and things seem to be continuing to spiral out of control. He wheels on the lead demoness. "Hey, I don't blame you, but we have rules up here. Just like you do down there." He's the mage, so. "Look, he's done horrible things here, and he needs to pay for them. In your view, his time spent here will be but an eyeblink. Then, you get him for all eternity. But for now…" Arcane lets out a mystic bolt, which pounds into one of the smaller demons focusing on the summoner, but said tiny demon shrugs it off.
Dusk reappears, a human-shaped shadow. "Hey, get your own bad guy," he growls at the demon grappling with the Summoner. "This one's ours, at least for now." He grabs the human and wrests him free, then swallows him in gloom, which drops to the floor and vanishes. In your face, demon!
The demoness hisses, "Find him! I'm not going to have him finding religion in prison and cheating me out of his soul." The Imps whimper, and spread out through the area, sniffing around like dogs searching for a trace of a scent.
Proton cocks back his fist and waits until Dusk slips the summoner to relative safety, before he unloads his piledriver-like punch directly on the big demon once more, breaking his nose and spattering ichor all over as the massive thing staggers backwards, through another wall. Another part of the ceiling creaks, moans, and falls in. "One more like that, and this place is coming down on top of you. Get ready to run like hell," the young man says, already getting ready to follow-up on the massive hellspawn.
Spectrum frowns as the demoness attacks Daybreak, "Hey!" He's a little slow on the reaction, but he steps forward, force field coming to life around him and he lashes out with a bright beam of photons, such an intense blast that it knocks the demoness flying across the room.
"Oh, you BITCH!" Daybreak yelps as she's engulfed in black flame. She hasn't been burned in her life, save for a little radiation a few months ago. It hurts. It hurts a lot. And so the teenager lashes out with her own brilliant blast of light that matches Spectrum's, smashing into the demoness and putting her down. "NEVER mess with a cheerleader!" she pronounces. She'd strut a little, but she's sort of aching.
One of the demons simply starts walking out of the place, his appearance shifting as he does so… Black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie. He's starting to look a bit like John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, in fact. The other rushes to the fallen demoness's side. She starts to bitch, "Don't you da…" And it's cut off as the demon snaps his fingers and she vanishes. The demon smiles at Arcane, "So, you look like a reasonable man… if I was willing to testify against him… would you be willing to call me up?
This causes Arcane to stop in midair. "That depends," Arcane replies, considering the option, or appearing to. "You make yourself known to the cops, cause no trouble, and no tricks? No mind control on the jury, no pushing the judge for a harsher sentence. We have rules…and while they're not perfect, they're our Law. We all…human, demon, on this plane, have to play by those rules." He pauses. "And you know you all can't stay here. We're trying to preserve this city and all. Turf things. Surely you understand."
The demon talking to Arcane smiles, "If you wish, if you wish… of course, I'd need some kind of surety on your part… a gesture of good faith, that you'd not call me up just to dump me in holy water." He spreads his hands, "Nothing in writing… I know you wouldn't trust me to /sign/ anything I gave you… but a small thing. Just a few ounces of your blood."
Dusk reappears once more, without the Summoner. Seeing the fleeing demon-in-human-form, he flies across the room at the speed of darkness! Er…Anyway, he slams into the creature with both fists, striking its back and knocking it to the floor. "Stick around, the party's just getting started."
Proton follows up on his last punch, walking over to the large demon and grabbing him by the ankle. Then instead of punching him, he swings the massive form up and then smashes the talking demon right over the head. "Man, you love to hear yourself talk, don't you. Forget it, we don't make deals with hellspawn!" There is a massive SMASH as the two connect, and the big demon disappears in a splatter of ichor and a freezing-cold rush of fog that almost seems to scream. The would-be lawyer-demon is left on the floor. "Now, I'm going to rip out your lying silver tongue and stick it where the sun doesn't shine, Daniel Webster," the young man growls.
The imps squeak with alarm! Two vanish in small puffs of stench. The remaining one looks around, sees none of the commanding demons left standing or watching, and THEN vanishes.
Spectrum looks around a moment, and then says, "Ok, time for you to go back too." He aims another blast of light at the Travolta-demon, making it vanish in a puff of smoke as well.
The smooth talking demon groans, "Ah, the honor and integrity of /heroes/. Strike a soul from behind, and threaten him while he's down…" He meets Arcane's gaze. "Just remember in the month to come, you could have had my help…" He then vanishes.
This is met with a grumbled sound by Arcane. "I think we'd have to try something else," Arcane answers. He knows what kind of power blood has. Especially mage blood. Especially young mage blood. Especially vir-ahem, anyway. Let's just say Linus knows it's a bad idea. "The testinomy would help, but not at that price." His hands glow with arcane energy. "Though, I do appreciate trying to talk things out first. It's a rarity." Then, the demon is struck from behind and disappears. "That." He pauses. "Is going to bits us in the butt some time down the road."
Dusk solidifies entirely, garbed in his usual ninja costume. "Well, that wasn't -too- terrible," he grumbles, dusting his hands. "Now all we need to do is get the creep to tell us where he hid all the bottles."
Daybreak slowly drops to the floor. "Ow," she utters. "Ow, ow. Somebody remind me next time that hellfire isn't the same as regular fire. Ow."
Proton wipes a smear of dark ichor off his chest. "Man, I don't even know if I /can/ wash this thing," he mutters, then looks to the others. "Everyone OK? Kid OK?" he says, intense gaze flicking from one of the youths to the other. He looks to Arcane. "Dude, it's a demon. It can't be trusted. Any help it would give would be tainted, and just lead to more badness." He pauses. "You're the wizard, though. That.. /is/ right, right?"
"Yeah," Arcane replies. "Stuff like that, it always has a cost. Duty, a promise, power or blood." He settles down to the ground. "And that demon's had a few millenia headstart on contract lawyering." And he almost walked right into it. "It wouldn't have ended well."
Spectrum looks up to Daybreak, "You ok? Anything I can do to help?" Then he nods quickly to Proton and Arcane, "Yeah, no way a deal'd be good with that thing." Then he looks to Dusk, "Where'd you stash the summoner?"
"Will be," replies Daybreak, rubbing at her arms — maybe trade in the glitter for sunscreen next time. Ow. "Yeah, where's that summoner guy… we should get him to the cops."
"Oh right!" Dusk says, then vanishes again. A few moments later, the Summoner falls out of the shadows, followed quickly by Dusk. "What do we do with him now? Can I kick him a few dozen times?"
Rat Queen comes in, looking tired. "Little Michael Daniels is safe… There's a police station near the service elevator… This the son of a bitch causing the problems?"
"Yes," Arcane says. "And thank you for all the help you've given us. We couldn't have done any of it without your aid." He lets out a sigh. "San Angeles Police has a mage on staff for things like this. For cases specifically like this one. And since my closet's not big enough to fit him, I think we should turn him in."
The summoner is unconscious, and has more bruises than when he went into the closet. What do you want to bet he tried to escape and knocked himself silly?
Dusk's shoulders rises in a small shrug. "Okay, but then how'll we figure out where the bottles are? I doubt the police will let us interrogate him ourselves, and they sure won't share any information with a bunch of unlicensed, underage kids like us. Although…I could sneak into his cell after lights out and have a little…chat with him…."
Proton nods agreement. "Yeah, we should hand him over. None of us are really 'legal' and they can keep him on ice until they decide what to do. Next up will be finding where he's put the bottles. Arcane, can you try to figure out what else he summoned in there, from what's left here? I'm thinking he didn't summon the God of Used Carebears or something."
Rat Queen nods, "Service elevator is down two blocks on the right… I've not slept since Saturday morning staking out this place…" And from the way her stomach is growling she probably hasn't eaten much either. "Just get your shiny happy butts topside, and take this piece of filth with you, and I'll call it even."
Dusk turns to Proton. "You -look- like a grown-up, so you should be the one to turn him over to the cops. Just don't stick around long enough for them to ask too many questions."
"I am going to have nightmares about the god of Used Carebears, Proton," Arcane drawls, and stops for a moment. "He had to have had a spellbook," he comments, as he uses his magic to move things around. "Ah-ha! Oh, nice. Old fashioned style," he adds, and magics the book close to he can get a look-cut-no-touch at it. "Even fresh leather binding and…that's not leather." Arcane flinches. "So wrong. This goes with the guy as evidence." He encases the book ina magic bubble. "No touching til it goes to the cops. Fingerprints."
Proton nods to Arcane, then to Dusk. "I might could get away with it, yes," the young adult says. "But I'm still not registered."
Dusk's mask moves in such a way that he's probably grinning behind it. "That's why you don't stick around to answer any questions. Just say this is the guy who blew up the gas station and the mall, then take off."
Later, the gold-and-white-clad hero lands in front of the police station. "Gentlemen, this man is a demon summoner and a powerful mage; I suggest your foresic sorcerer go over everything with a fine-toothed comb." He kicks off from the ground before any questions can be asked, evidently having just come from a serious fight. "That book is wrapped and you should find a huge amount of physical evidence on it; thank you," he says, then arcs up into the sky, taking off with a dull boom towards the ocean.
