The Clutch (A bar for airship pirates, ragamuffins and other law breakers)

[The Corsair]

Arthur closed his eyes for a moment and appeared to somewhat vanish then reappeared beside Gerald with a wrist-mounted knife protrtuding from his sleeve across Gerald's throat.
His Irish pluckiness was undetectable in the next few words he spoke.
"the stuff they made me capable of always puts the feat in them!" he hissed in Gerald's face
"you want the honour Alegrah?"

He would deal with the inevitable questions later he figured. Perhaps on the Wyvern, whenever that would be.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Her chin lifting, she strode to the two, having not been too surprised by Arthur's actions. She frowned, tapping her pistol against Gerald's chest. "Dead or alive, hm? I'm sorry, old chap. But you never were anyone's favorite, were you?" Gerald watched with anger-filled but resigned eyes, knowing better than to fight. He figured it would get back home and someone stronger and smarter would go after the dame.

She nodded slightly to Arthur, signaling him to step to the side. She then curved a wad of cloth around the sides of her pistol butt, placed it square upon his chest. She calmly looked into the taller man's eyes, pulling the trigger with a muffled click-bang. She frowned distastefully at the blood now discoloring her handkerchief. She dropped it atop the young man's chest as he fell back, immediately stone dead.

She tucked her pistol away in a pocket, dusting off her gloves before looking calmly up at the others. "Well, bit of fun that was. It's over now; sorry for prolonging our stay." She gave a serene, out-of-character smile.

[The Corsair]

all the psychokinetics for nothing he thought as he stood aside and watched the man fall to the ground.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Alegrah's nose wrinkled at the corpse, as if resisting an urge. She quickly knelt and rifled through his pockets once more, taking everything of value, and some things that were not, tucking them into her valise. She found another hand-pistol this time, her search more thorough now that the man was deceased. She happily pocketed this, along with contact cards and anything with his name upon it, figuring it'd be best that his death stayed private for a bit. She stood after a moment, blinking primly at the others, who all seemed to be silent and watching her. "Well? You've all seen a dead man before, I know that. Why are you watching me so?" A touch of hysteria seemed at the edge of her quiet tone, though her expression was calm. Yet another "friend" dead.. how many will I have to kill before Mother realizes I'm not the infirm little girl she thought I was?

[MWBailey]

"Right out here in Broad Daylight," Brantley said, shaking his head as  he moved close to Alegrah and stooped to check the man's pulse. "Play along, Miss Alegrah, and the rest of you as well, if you want those gendarmes* approaching us from the south to leave us in peace. He glanced around at each person in turn, keeping his voice low, and continued, "Do not kill the policemen, please, it's most definitely not a good idea." The French policemen in their showy Plaza Patrol uniforms were walking toward them, having noticed that a man was laying on the ground. Brantley pulled the fellow upright and said," C'mon, er, Gerald, did you say his name was, Miss Alegrah? C'mon Gerald, wake up,  Lad, this is no time to be passin' out. Oh very well, then, you young sot! Take this drunkard's other shoulder, Arthur, and let's take him down under the bridge** yonder; if we get 'im cooled off maybe he'll come around sooner...
Come along, Miss Alegrah, Horatio, Cornelia, no need for us to hang about...

The Gendarmes, mollified for at least a while, walked back away toward a prostitute who was being all too obvious with her sales technique, and began to berate and cajole her from the Cathedral Plaza...

"While we move Mr. Gerald out of plain sight, Miss Alegrah, why don't you explain to us why this young man needed to be...hm... heh heh, silenced, let us say, and why your Mother thinks you're an 'infirm girl,' as you muttered it a moment ago -- and how the two things are connected?" He took a breath as they eased the body down onto the cobbles beneath the bridge. "And no, we cannot simply pick up and run just at the moment..."

-------------------------
*Gendarmes: 'Gendarme' is an old French word that means the equivalent of a patrolling police officer; it refers to the time when they were actual soldiers serving watch duty.
**Bridge: I did say that Flying Paris has a reflection pool and plaza in front of Notre Dame Cathedral; that is in replacemembt of the Original Paris' Seine canal that runs alongside Notre Dame Cathedral, which itself is built on what was originally an island far back in the city's pre-medieval history. Teh bridge is built over the pool to simulate the bridge that crosses the Seine/canal in the same general relevant area(A ways from the cathedral).

[The Corsair]

He helped Brantley shift the body, keeping his composure around the Gendarmes

"Here I was expecting a peaceful tour of Paris..."
his mind heckled him as he said it...
With this lot. During the Great War...
Peaceful...

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Alegrah wrinkled her nose, but nodded. She played the silly girl, patting at the now dead man's cheeks and grumbling loudly about how it was so rude to be drunk this early in the day. Once they had gotten him out of sight, she stepped away, hands on her hips. She spoke quietly, chin lifting once again. "He only needed to be silenced because it's exactly what he was sent here to do to me. He's been preceded by two others. I let one of the three go."

She bites her lip, figuring it best to divulge now. She blinks, adding an apology first. "I'm sorry. It's been ages since I've been in a proper part of town where they actually care if a man dies or not." She nodded curtly, then continued. "Well. Let's start to say that I'm not all I appear, mm? I think I can trust you lot. If you haven't heard already, m'surname's Eredschtdadt. We're not poor people back in England; that made Mother think that meant that I had to be perfect. I don't like oppression. I want to be my own woman; do as I wanted, now what men did. I believe it started round when I drew the fireplace sword on my suitor when he tried to kiss me goodnight, I believe. Mother wanted to send me to the sanitarium, saying I was infirm and had a weak mind and that's why I was ill so often -- her words, not mine. So. I escaped. Mother didn't like that, you see. Didn't like the way I love death and those in his grip, either. She found it unholy. But anyway. So I escaped and made my way to London; lived in the slums, made a name for myself. Killed a few people that tried the same for me. Then she started sending people off after me. You see, she told everyone I had died a few weeks into being in the sanitarium, that I had a fit of hysteria that stopped my heart right cold. But people started doubt that. She thought it best for me to be out of the way entirely, and so sent a real friend after me, the fool. I let him go with a sever warning and missing a right bit of blood, for looks, mostly. I disliked hurting him, though I did kill a friend of mine who was robbing the graves with me; tried to usurp me, the harlot." Her nose wrinkles again, seeming to not realize she's rambling. "Not too long after, they sent someone else. He I did kill. He's not important, though. Just a clerk. Then I found you all and figured I'd be free for a bit; lot a rubbish that was." She jerks her chin to Gerald. She nods once, foot tapping to signal that she's done.

[MWBailey]

Brantley chuckled wryly, "Well, believe me, Miss Alegrah, I can sympathize with the relentless-hunter problems. Though being basically an operative of both the US Government and an intenational, pan-dimensional regulatory organization has quashed most of the former prices on my head, there're still a few Pinks* out and about who think their vendetta outweighs both the greater good and their company's orders; I've spilled a good bit if their blood myself."

He considered for a moment, thinking about the mission, his side mission and the way it would alleviate the on-the-way Mission re the Great War on this plane, and the way that the Eredschadt's temporal excursions were beginning to affect their relevant 'home' dimensions, and finally spoke up again, saying, "Now, if you get accosted by any more of these folks, Miss Alegrah, and if its possible to do so without causing a mass parade of pursuer and pursued,  bring' em around and let me have a gander at least (otherwise just kill 'em as quietly and privately as you can; AUNTSALLY's been ... 'interested,' let us say ... in the Eredschtadt family and associates for a few standard decades now. They've mostly stayed under the radar, but this latest search-and-destroy foray borders on the causally dangerous, and I'd like a chance to at least look at 'em. maybe even interrogate one or two. In fact, if I may examine his watch?" He perused the embossing on the cover and opened the case, and muttered under his breath.

"Hmpf. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so they say... Hello, what's this?" The tiny chrononautical device thus revealed was a not-very-well disguised chronojammer, almost an exact copy of his original mechanism, but with an apparently-original-design back-acting reverse underjammer temporal finetuning thrust arm attached to the field projector half-wheel. This was revealed when he flipped up the freely-hinged chronojammer movement. He pulled out the cigarette case, opened it, flipped a tiny toggle and pushed a tiny slider, and the case emitted a PIIINNGGG that was echoed by the watch, pitch-perfect and harmonious, but then their mutual vibrations began to cause the bridge and surroundings to vibrate, so Brantley shut both the cigarette case and the watch, thus cancelling both sets of vibrations.

"These two could work in concert,' he said, "which is slightly scary. Looks like we might be on the verge of another 'jammer craze. well, just be sure you don't operate that while mine are operating, or only do so when I ask you to, or it may completely mess us up. I'd hate for you to have to endure my Cthulid relatives, for example...

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*Pinks: old (rather hackneyed) slang for 'Pinkerton Agents, or rather operatives of teh Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was famaous for being the force that hounded train robbers and the like in the RL American West (besides whatever else he may be, Brantley started out as a train robber, after all!)

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Alegrah arched a slim brow, "Well, then. Good to see the family's good for something, hm?" Her voice was dry. She then nodded. "Will do. I'll do my best not to be so overt about murder next time, hm?" Her aristocratic mouth twitched a bit in a slight smile. She blinked faintly at the following words. "Well.. might I ask, why, exactly, are you so interesting in the lot of them? As far as I've known we've been generally respectable until this great charade of "let's kill Alegrah!".

[The Corsair]

He only half-listened. He had never come across the name before but did somewhat enjoy hearing a little of Alegrah's past. It made trusting her easier...

He was jolted to a point of memory b when the mention of Brantley having a few people still after him hit his ears. He had plenty of people after him. Nobody makes it out of the slums of Ireland without making enemies. Even the slum mob bosses weren't 'safe' in their position. There was always turmoil. Bosses were being killed by rivals or detsabilised from below. It was like gambling really. As soon as one mob seemed to be on the decline, half the members would pull out and find some other gang. The rest were generally the overly loyal sort that get smoked in what they probably think is a glorious last-stand.

He'd been one of them once, the loyal sort. The gang-jumpers were always loyal once. He'd still be one of them if he hadn't been a part of the dock clash...
It was his own damn fault too. He wasn't paying attention. The docks always made him reminiscent of Harold, who'd escaped the slums by stowing on a ship to America.
That was when he got involved in the experimental science. He'd never seen them before, but they'd all heard of those men that took those on the brink of death from the gang fights. He remembered being dragged away...
They gave him his life again, but in such a way that he spent years among various scientists bluffing and bribing to cure the horrible side-effects. In the end, he got in touch with a man of legend. Now, he had himself back with a little extra icing on the cake...

Psycho-science was far from exact, but the things that man was capable of made him second only to Gods...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio watched the policemen depart nervously, trying not to look too guilty or suspicious as he did so. He walked along behind the others, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder to see if anyone was following them. The last thing they needed was someone becoming suspicious of them again...

He breathed a sigh of relief once they were under the cover of the bridge and out of sight, and listened quietly to Alegrah's story, not wanting to interrupt. He also kept watch on their surroundings, leaning back against the framework of the bridge with his hands in his pockets.

"Huh, been called 'unholy' myself a few times." he muttered with a touch of a smile, remembering a few of his adventures gunrunning in South America. It was one of the reasons he wore his goggle all the time, people seemed to be generally more comfortable (and less likely to try to kill him for being 'possessed') thinking that his ability to see odd things was just because of some sort of mechanical device.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She nodded quietly, seeming to not want to speak much now that she'd divulged a large part of her life.

[MWBailey]

"I'd wager that all of us have people either following us or thinking about us less-than-kindly," Brantley said, almost to himself, rubbing his mustache with his right forefinger as he often did when deep in thought. Then, as they walked in the general wandering direction of the cathedral, he dropped back by Alegrah and spoke up slightly, saying "You're wondering why do 'we,' meaning AUNTSALLY and the Committee (and thus myself by extension) have such an interest in your family, Miss Alegrah? Well, to say it shortly, its to do with the ripples they've started to make.

You see, Yes, this may be their first or one of their first forays into time and the dimensions, but a good thing to keep in mind is that the moment in which we are all gathered here on this plaza is but one of uncountable billions all occurring simultaneously, pan-universally, like droplets of water in a heavy fog. You do something to move around, about, and through the fog's droplets, you tend to affect the whole fog, or at least the whole of the part that surrounds you. They have thus affected the fog in their way. They have used a chronojammer; Thats what thet watch is, with a few modifications and design features I never thought of -- but still, a chronojammer. It grabs a thread of causality (call it 'happenstance' if that's easier to understand),  and hangs on while it swirls around teh other dropletes and through the fog. but then its also dragging its user, and teh machine that has grabbed it, which affects the whole of teh fog, causing it to swirl around teh disturbance.

Thus, present, past, future, and neighboring dimensions are all affected, and in some cases the other droplets burst, which is usually cancelled out by other vibrations, but occasionally a larger unfogged space results. Your family has, through both present and future time excursions, caused a fair number of gaps, Miss Alegrah, and such gaps are damned hard to fix. That's why the intense interest.

One of the fixes, by the way, is what we, or I at least, are trying to do by finding the other statues that bind my relative to this plane. The resulting shifty in causality should (if my calculations are correct), fill in the causal gap caused by the pilot that crashed into the shield when we arrived this morning -- incidentally, wouldn't it be interesting if that man was a distant relative of yours, in this dimension, or would be, if you were from this dimension...

"Ah! Here we are," he said, as they stopped at the cathedral's steps. "Now, what I need from you folks is the use of your various talents." He took out a pencil and small pad of paper from his inside coat pocket, and sketched a picture of the seal from the room in Troyes and showed it to them. "I need for you to find something like this; Arthur, you're better able to fade through a crowd and hide in the midst of one than I, why don't you take a gander about and stand guard? Whistle really loudly, or yell something llike 'WHeeeooo, what a beaut!' if you see somebody about to catch us, or a threat of some kind." Several tourists and other people stopped and stared when Brantley yelled, but most ignored him.

"Alegrah, Horatio, Cornelia, Lets us go in and have a look around on the floor inside and see if we can find at least two seals like this one...

[The Corsair]

He'd already used his 'talents' on previous occasions with them and had few reservations about using them again.

"wait."
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"there and there" he said as he pointed to their respective locations
It was when he moved his finger to the second location that he realised it was in a cordoned off area with gendarmes close by to prevent people from entering.

"ah. This might be a little tricky..." he observed drily
"ideas anyone?"

[MWBailey]

"Well, the first is relatively easy; the second is not too hard, but it will take time, Brantley said. For now, let's concentrate on the easy one."

He had them cluster around the seal out on the main floor, and instructed Alegrah to point upwards and 'squeal as if with delight, and tell anyone who asks to look up 'there,' at the 'Blessed Virgin wreathed in light!'" Before long a huge throng had gathered and was utterly oblivious to anything going on around their feet as several hundred gawping bystanders simultaneously turned the non-appearance of a Holy Personage into a major religious event... only to have the first person to see the Visitation get lost in the shuffle as the crowd grew.

It was still growing and turning into a bit of a media and security circus as Brantley drew over closer to the exit, pulled the second statue from his coat and handed it to Horatio. "Put that in your coat pocket, Horatio," he said, "or some other piece of clothing with a big pocket. Don't ask how I got it yet." He then said, "Now, make sure the guards are looking over at the crowd, and I'll be back in a trice."

While an argument broke out among the Newly Converted and the Seasoned Believers as to whether the vision was a hoax or or someone had to be a Special Mendicant to see it, Brantley slowly insinuated himself along the lower wall, over the cordon, past the iron fence-thing and into the secured area and next to the third seal, the same way that he had traversed the Nadir of Flying Paris. He used the strength of two tentacles to press down on and turn and unscrew the seal and thus open the vault beneath it, extracting the statuette and replacing the seal as the cordon gendarmes began to leave the cordon to help their fellows in quelling the crowd.

The gendarmes had finally got the crowd separated into several smaller groups, arranged against the walls, which actually helped the Wyvern's crew, when Nayland Smythe, Grand Wizard of the Cult of Tothuga,  and the Abbot came out of the Cathedral Office to see about this 'Miracle' transpiring in the Vestibule of the Nave of the Cathedral, and Smythe turned toward Brantley, recognized him, and said, Brantley!? YOU OLD VILLAIN! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL, HERE!? [size=114pt]GUARDS!!! Protect the sealed relics![/size]

Brantley grinned, Said "Tothuga says, 'hello, Smythe!" pulled out and flipped open his cigarette case, and flipped the emergency toggle, wide field, and teleported out to the plaza the Wyvern's crew, three bystanders, a slice of the marble wall, and...unfortunately, Nayland Smythe as well...

"Er...OoPs!" Brantley said, somewhat insufficiently. "People, NOW would be a good time to be murderous..." the others looked at him in shock but failed to move, So Brantley said, "No takers? Oh, alright, I'll do it." and pulled his Arkansas toothpick from his left boot, slashed Smythe in the jugular and then opened the cigarette case again, adjusted a few levers as Gendarmes and enraged former religious mendicants swarmed out of the Cathedral, and again teleported the group, this time to the Wyvern.  "May I suggest we all get aboard, now? there's a portal just now opening up three miles to the south at approximately one thousand feet above sea level, and I doubt that the police will just stand by for much longer..."

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She did as told, actually quite close to laughter as she did, but managing to make it seem as if she were in religious rapture.

After the death of the man, she grumbled quietly, "Bloody police. I've got to leave a perfectly good lot of things to take off'a the body!" She said this quietly, albeit in frustration. Nose wrinkled, she marched off to the Wyvern.

[The Corsair]

He allows himself a smile when he realized what Brantley's plan was
It turned into a grin as the chaos hit the cathedral

He moved subtly, using his psycholocation to see who had concealed weapons and the like in case they came under threat from the civilians...


By the time he was back aboard the Wyvern the sun had begun to meet the western horizon
He sat in the vessel and prepared himself for the explanation he felt he would probably be forced to give...
He didn't understand all the science behind it and was under a bizarre sleeping drug for the therapies and procedures but he knew what it damn well did to him...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio tucked the statue into an inner coat pocket for safekeeping, keeping watch on the guards while acting as if he was trying to find a place in the gathering crowd to get a glimpse if whatever it was that was happening. He couldn't help grinning slightly at Brantley's solution to get past the guarded locations as he watched the crowd grow larger.  

He quickly got on board and behind the wheel, starting up the boiler and waiting for the pressure to build, keeping an eye on the docks around them. The boiler didn't take long to get up to working pressure, and he folded out the props and slowly steered the Wyvern out into the wide passageway. It was early evening by now, and the docks were crowded with ships moving in and out. He kept as steady and as close to a normal speed as he could as he steered toward the exit.

No one noticed the small shape of the Wyvern as it sped out of the archway just behind a large cargo airship, or if they did, assumed it was an escort of some kind. Soon they left the city behind, and he steered a course in the direction Brantley had given for the next portal, setting the speed and angle of the props so that the ship slowly rose above the level of the city, nearing a thousand feet.

He took the statue out of his coat pocket and placed it on the dash. "Who was that anyway?" He asked Brantley after a moment. "Whoever it was that got transported with us, I mean."

[MWBailey]

"A fellow named Smythe, " Brantley answered after a few moments consideration. Should I bore them with the whole scenario?he wondered.

He continued after a few more such thoughts. "He was the Grand Wizard of the cult that enslaved my relative Tothuga (a cthulid demigod, one of the more powerful ones, in fact) and chained him in the chamber in Troyes; he's been providing the occult power and prestige to run a cult concerned with the balance of Power on that plane; the War was mainly their idea, as a way to send idealistic young people away to die in battle so that the old men could run the world for profit without the interference of altruism or ideals of behavior. "

"Tothuga allowed them to enslave him (you don't just chain up a Chthuloid, they're too panuniversal for it to take; we/they just allow you to chain them/us, for their/our own ends)so that they could be drawn into the Chthugan web -- but it backfired on him and his kin. They're not quite omnipotent, very far-fallen from the example of their great ancestor, so sometimes their dark designs fall through; not often, of course, but sometimes. Ultimately, however, they are so long-lived and so nearly invulnerable, that in the end everything has massive potential to work out in their favor anyway."

He sighed and decided to tell them as much as he dared of the overall scheme. "When I killed Smythe, that - plus the removal of the statuettes from their sealed vaults - broke the Geas that held Tothuga in thrall to the cult. That plane is thus now free to determine its own destiny... for good or ill. Sally might not be forced to fry me (figuratively) in front of the committee because of what we did at the cathedral, the 'holy visitation' included. I thank you all for that; it will make setting the multiverse to rights that much easier, in the end."

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio listened thoughtfully to Brantley's explanation, looking as though he was considering some possibility that hadn't occurred to him before, but he gave no comment as to what he was thinking about.

He looked to Arthur, thinking about not saying anything, but curiosity got the better of him. "Those are some interesting talents you've got... Never really seen anything like that. Mind if I ask how you learned to do that?"

[The Corsair]

"Well I-"
He was unsure as to how much of his past he should truly share...
"I was dead once..."
He supressed a chuckle at the bizarre opening line
"And there's some people in places back home that take advantage of Ireland's lawlessness. They perform... experiments... I was brought 'back to life' in a disastrously crude sense of the word. I could live and breath and do all those things I used to but the pain from how I died never left me. I spent years trying to get rid of it. I found some of the most elusive scientists, who all performed their little experiments on me in exchange for some procedure they were sure would fix me. Over time, I began to notice I could see in a different way. Like I was looking through some immaterial medium to the things around me. I could see things no eyes could, in light far beyond the visible spectrum. i never learned it, nor did I try to enhance it but it sort of... grew on me. I think it's stopped now...
The last thing ever done to me was done by a man most people agree is purely of mythical construction. He fixed me at last and without the same price as the others. He even made me more. I couldn't just see those things around me in that unknowable way, I could move through it too, almost instantaneously...
I have no idea what it is, how it works, what was done to me or any of that science, but I have some enemies, as do we all, and had I not been given these... abilities... I would have been found by now..."
The silence hung for a moment...
"And been killed again, no doubt..."
Might as well finish with an odd phrase... he mused

"Anyway, we must be close to our next portal."

[MWBailey]

They passed through the next portal smoothly and without any appreciable difficulty -- at least, until they had completely entered the next plane, at which point the ship became extremely hot and uncomfortable. Teh reason was immediately apparent: the terrain below was molten; no single shred of cool, dry land was visible below, and the smell of sulfide gases was strong. Brantley said, "Ah, here's a good place to get rid of a couple of things!" and before anyone could protest,  grabbed two of the statuettes and flung them out of the cabin and over the side. If anyone had rushed to the side, they would have seen the two artifacts impact and sink into the molten lava below.

Brantley then turned to the leads, attached them to the blackbox, then set the case on top again, and opened it. He made a couple of adjustments to each, then yelled, "hold on!" and forcibly tapped a button; the Sphere then appeared, just as the wood on the hull had begun to smoke ominously, then two more spheres appeared, and it became apparent that all three were revolving in opposition to one another. Then, suddenly, the Wyvern lurched, and the scenery outside changed to a nice, cool northern locale, as evidenced by the much-colder air. The surface of the sea below was dotted with whitecapped waves, and the segoing junks in the distance gave a clue as to where they were -- But when, exactly, were they this time...

[CorneliaCarton]

((O.O.C- As I don't have time to come on here and reply. So for the time being, I give permission for my character to become a playable character for everyone. Please keep her similar to my previous posts, however. If she becomes O.O.C, I'll have the post deleted.
Cornelia))

[MWBailey]

Landmarks soon appeared off in the distance, and it became evident that they were approximately ten miles out from the port Macau. The foggyness of the sea at present kept them from being really distinct, but at least one on-the ball lookout on one of the junks about a hundred feet below noticed them and pointed skyward. Soon, rifle and musket fire erupted from that junk, its crew apparently having decided they were some kind of flying devil or fell beast, and shouts of the Indochinese equivalent of warding charms and epithets could be vaguely heard from below.

A few bullets spanged and splattered off of the Wyvern's plated hull, and Brantley said, "Might be a good idea to Take 'er up a couple more fathoms, Cap'n,"  as he once again activated the first-level travelling field...

[The Corsair]

"I see steam..." he blandly stated as a naval steam vessel came into view
"Portuguese navy no doubt..."