Party with a Rocket Fist Man
Dan has new furniture. It's very comfortable.
Life goes back to normal, for a few days anyway.
Aaron is running the bar. It's a friday night, and things are busy.
A special news bulletin comes on, showing a clip of the mayor at a press conference from an hour ago, but halfway through his speech, he goes crazy and starts blowing raspberries in the microphones and hooting and hollering.
Apparently Mayor Stamford has had a crazy fit, and apparently he's just been the highest profile of several instances. This reporter wonders if more government officials have been afflicted and if we can trust their judgement.
Aaron texts Piper, wondering if this is something we should be looking into...
The wheels are in motion. Gemma has gotten word and agrees we should investigate this. It happened to a few celebrities before, but with it happening to the mayor, it just became a lot more important.
There's one common thread between the victims that had already been discovered. Each of them had attended a party at the Pontifica Highrise Suite not long before being affected. Those host was none other than a Thomas Relington.
In fact, Mr. Relington is hosting another party this very night, and Gemma thinks she can get us on to it. Whatever is going on we might be able to uncover.
There are a few names in common with the previous gathering and this one:
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A congressman named Peter Evert
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An Italian Senator named Macro Celonsay
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Jay-Z He'll probably take the subway, we are sure. He's a cool cat who isn't too big to do that.
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A socialite by the name of Lisa Orenski
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William Becker, who owns a line of fashion stores
Preparing? What's that. We go to the party. All of us even dress nicely.
It's a miniature Chrysler building. Fancy, but not lit up, unlike Aaron's hair. We're well recognized.
Piper is surrounded by interested socialites, including Alyssa, daughter of the Chief Safety Inspector of the city. Piper asks who her friends are, and Alyssa introduces them. Brienne wears a revealing dress. Andrea, daughter of William Becker, wears a stylish black dress, and her blonde hair has very modern highlights. They chit chat, but Piper isn't here to make friends. The mayor comes up, but nothing of interest other than obviously a chosen must be involved.
An older gentleman, Tom Ingersoll, asks Legion if he would be interested in joining him in the smoking room. Like Legion, he's an old military man. Legion does so.
A woman who calls herself Scarlet introduces herself to me. True to her name, she wears a vivid red dress. She offers to introduce me to some other people.
Andrea introduces Piper to Mr. Becker. He's glad to meet her, and Piper shows him a spell, just a bit of light. He wants to see more, and Piper teleports behind him. Alyssa asks if Piper can teleport someone with her, and she obliges her. They want to see another spell, so Piper cast truth of light just to impress them, but it reveals something.
Most of the men in the room have a ruddy brown mist flowing into their noses and mouths. It smells heavily of cinnamon, and many think it's a trick Piper did.
Scarlet seems perturbed by this, and she runs out of the room, past Aaron, who is having a drink. She seems angry, and bumps into another man, and she doesn't even seem to notice.
Aaron stops her, and introduces himself, and offers her a drink. She says she needs to freshen up. Aaron tries to stall her, but she's having none of it.
Piper excuses herself and follows Scarlet into the restroom. One of the stall doors is closes and muttering can be heard inside. By use of her telekinesis, Piper causes the door to "accidentally" open.
Inside Scarlet is surrounded by a mass of the ruddy mist, spinning in a very artistic fashion. Piper offers to "help" her with the spell. The woman starts doing something else, but Piper knocks her out.
Aaron and I hear a "wooshing" sound, like someone quick changing. I look at Aaron, but it's not him.
It's two of the staff members, who are now ready to attack.
One was a waiter, but his arm sleeves have been ripped off and are now giant blades from the elbow down. Another is in boxing shorts, a helmet, and gloves that look more like gauntlets.
The whirling blade made comes swinging at me, but I am unharmed, and he goes careening into the bathroom.
The boxing glove guy's fists shoot off like rockets, and the bartender screams at me like a banshee.
Legion is in another room, and hears the commotion so he drops his drink, leaves the smoking room, shoots darkness at the rocket fist man, and then grabs his drink before it has had a chance to hit the ground.
Piper throws her rink to Aaron and hits the whirling blade man.
I knock the bartender out flat, and with another blow, Piper takes the blade guy down.
Rocket fist man flies out of the room, and Aaron flies after him and grabs him, and the man suddenly detaches all his body parts which fly in random directions.
I climb to the roof and call my door to me.
Piper destroys one of the fists causing all the parts to collapse, and I manage to grab the head. We put the body parts into a pile of bad guy.
Marco Celonsay runs up to us and points at Scarlet, claiming her as his daughter, and demanding to know what we are doing. Thomas, the host of the party, says we can get to the bottom of us.
Marco says he can't stop us, but he will make sure we pay.
The police and swat arrives, and the party disperses. Piper explains her theory. The mist was what the mayor was inflicted with.
Silver Knight comes and touches the woman. His face is grim. "This will cause an incident." He's not happy we didn't tell him about the party, but we didn't have much to go on, did we.
He pulls out a silver business card and a code to memorize, and says if we find anything else, we should let him know.
We go to the Elephant's Nest for some drinks. Thomas Relington calls Aaron says that while he's thankful we exposing a dangerous criminal element, he doesn't want to see us at another one of his parties.
Fine by us.
At the coffee shop, Piper is visited by someone called Eagle Eye. He's curious if our group still operates out of the confines of US control, as there's a matter of a foreign chosen who has been captured by a terrorist organization called crISIS.
This chosen was a Pakistani girl who was seeking asylum. More recently, she's gone missing, and supposedly the terrorists are forcing her to use her powers.
Eagle Eye wants to know if we'll help.
We go to Foundation, to get more information about crISIS and the captured girl.
Foundation is even bigger than the last time we were there, and there seem to be people from all walks of life. The refugee camp has been replaced with a much more modern looking town surrounding Foundation's walls.
Canary escorts us to the office of Eagle Eye. Eagle Eye is a short olive colored woman, with loose shoulder length hair.
Four seats have already been arranged for us, and Canary leaves us.
Eagle Eye is glad we accepted, as otherwise should have had to go to much less reliable sources. She hands us some papers.
One is a picture of the Pakistani girl. She looks to be a teen, and is wearing a hijab, and has a neutral expression on her face. The picture is labeled with her name, Tanna Delisk.
Another paper has a description of her by the Pakistan government and a list of powers, which seems to involve producing raw materials in large quantities from nothing.
We also get a map of where she lived, and a list of locations where she might be now, most prominently the town of Multan. Legion seems to goes blank, and then he turns and says she is there.
Eagle Eye tells us there is a way for us to get in undetected. There is a chosen called Tunneler because he can create inter-dimensional tunnels. The distance is the same, but would let us pass into another area.
An older fatter man enters the room. He makes a grand gesture and a tunnel materializes on the wall.
It'd be a long walk, but we can move quickly, and after a relatively short time, we pass into Multan...
To be continued...