The Barker Street Irregulars case 2 A vision in pink

[Stella Gaslight]

"Be calm miss." Celia said in a conversational tone.  "This is a bit of a muddle but you will be just fine."  There was a flicker of something large and golden looking out from Celia's eyes.  Then she could feel sort of pull that made the guards move past them and on to the boys  that were getting a bit too close to one of the nude statues.  The gold was gone when Celia looked back and smiled.  "That is a bit better. I think it is time for us to move into the next gallery." Those green eyes were not fooled and now locked on to her and the half real realms of the paintings were starting to waver oddly.  Celia suspected that green eyes was getting something ready for them.

[walking stick]

Verity could see pictures becoming more real than they should be. Perspective distorted in the room A pair of green eyes stared past Tobias at his mother.  Their greedy look was more frightening than hatred.

[Stella Gaslight]

Oh This was not good at all. Cracks were starting to form in her vision and the colors were seeping in. If that dam broke it would sweep over all of them like a flood.  Celia could feel the pressure build in her chest forcing the air out until her head was swimming.  "All right they know we are here. We have to get out of this room.  If we can make it to the Egyptian suit there are some protections I can call on to even the score."  She paused to catch her breath.  They went going to take her down like that.  Celia pushed back on the tightening rings of force buying herself a bit of breathing room and exhaustion. "Every one hold hands and don't let go.  They want to pick us off one by one."

[Steampunk Away]

Abraham walked into the museum, and immediately his necklace started glowing.

"Dark Magic is at play here."

He walked silently through the crowd until he noticed -uneasily- a group of men following him.

Taking a sharp corner, he nearly collided with his friends, cleverly disguised as tourists.

"Move quicker, we are being followed."

[Stella Gaslight]

"Trying to." she said breathlessly. " Egypt if we can get there... the Pharaoh...owes me."  Her feet fumbled as blackness started creeping up on her.  No! she was not going to pass out now in this den of lions.  She tugged at her collar and pushed out against the force trying to choke her in to submission again.  Her son and her friends needed her.  Celia knew she had to get them to safety fast.  Time and her air was running out.  They were only steeps away from their goal when their bath was barred by suits of armor and painted knights that seamed to be lead by a rather dour looking stone bishop who was taking a swing as anyone that got close.  Celia heard slow and deliberate steps following them.  Green eyes was coming this way and that meant nothing good.

[MWBailey]

Marley was goos at attracting attention to himself; it was an unfortunate fact that had nevertheless turned out well several times in the past, though it had also turned out badly just as many times.

"Badly" was probably what fit his flight to the museum; he had managed to rematerialize with a passable Knights Temporal dress uniform (it looked reasonably similar to Tower stuff), and had exited the Commandant's office. He had managed to switch back to raven form just inside the west gate, just in time for "Dad" to catch him at it, and to explain his destination and intentions.  Marley thanked the old bird and assured him he would be back as per orders, and flew away - a bit erratically, a condition which became worse as his raven's body all too slowly regained its command of flying in straight lines, Marley's feathers having reformed all in good order. It was after smacking into the tenth business establishment sign on the way that he decided to fly a bit higher.

He knew about the whole raven-to-raven connection thing, but he wasn't sure how to make it work; he decided to just bludgeon his way through, and thought as hard as he could, Miss Beety, Bill, Celia, I'm on my way, be there a couple of minutes... he concentrated so hard that one one moment he was fifty feet above the tallest roofs of the district, and the next, he found himself plowing through the alder trees beside a faux georgian townhouse, disturbing and scattering the grackles and finches that had roosted there. He fled, their attempts to catch and peck him, their curses and epithets in his ears, as he flew on and thanked providence that this body was able to far outpace his pursuers.

A sense of urgency came to him just as he was descending toward the museum; he couldn't get to the ground fast enough. There was what looked like smashed crockery all over the street in front of the front steps of the place, and it seemed to his eye that it was shifting around of its own accord, and chuckling to itself. The Daimler autocarriage in the midst of it all was still ticking over to itself, as it's owner animatedly explained to the the dubiously skeptical bobby who'd shown up, about the big ceramic statue that had jumped in front of his vehicle. Marley became so intent on getting to human form again that he quite forgot where he was, and transformed a good six feet above the sidewalk. Physics of course took over, as his ravenish forward momentum translated itself in exponential proportion to his human frame, and he sailed (perhaps "bombed" would be a more descriptive term) in through the front door, to land in a stumbling heap a ways behind Green Eyes, attracting also the attention of the guards and darned near everyone else in the gallery as he managed to pull hjimself to his feet and snapped to attention with something resembling dignity (he had managed more or less unintentionally to change over such that he was clad in his usual work duds, the vest and broadcloth shirt, trousers and flat cap with sturdy broughams on his feet, bulges in his pockets reassuring him that at least a few of his usual gadgets were there, or seemed to be) and announced himself.

"Lieutenant Sir Marley Whippet, Knights Temporal, I believe you've had a, AWK! Er, beg pardon, a disturbance here?"

[Stella Gaslight]

The man with the green eyes looked away from his pray with a frown.  He had the ballast's group pined down and almost forced in to his trap and this knight temporal was going to cause compilations.  Ah but maybe it wasn't a problem after all if he could get the man lost in the paintings.  He poured some more of his own power in to the artist's spell flooding the room with painting worlds then pushed hard at the ballast.  He had to take her down fast before she could find her way to a level playing ground.

[walking stick]

Verity was really annoyed now. Somehow Green Eyes was able to remake reality using paintings and sculptures.  This madman was cheating and destroying good art to do it!   

Captain Wolf's mother was fainting, people were barely keeping their grip on each others hands. She didn't know who they were but they had helped her and they were fighting this ruddy philistine.  There had to be something she could do.

Verity had studied art all her life, she knew about perspective, how to give depth, details of realism, renaissance drawings, how to measure.  She concentrated on her sight lines.  Things that flat and went down and up in mutually exclusive images, it was just mathematics...THERE!   He was using a three point perspective. Rotate one hundred and twenty degrees and... It was dizzying but she could see a way.  She grabbed the captains hand a set off determinedly across the ceiling.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias stopped, bringing everyone to a halt, he swapped the hand that verity was holding in order to draw his sword. His form became in-caporal for a moment before resolidifying in a suit of golden armour. The surface rippled in front of Verity's eyes and a dragon logo stood back to back with a wolf materialised on the armours left breast. He drew his sword and pointed it toward the green eyes, "You picked the wrong people to attack sir, leave now or I will be forced to re establish some old habits!"
Green eyes turned to look at him with both surprise and a realisation that he may have over stepped his bounds. "Who are you?"
"I am the king of London and you will obey me!" Tobias ordered putting all the force of his remembered former life.

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia tumbled to the floor as the pressure in her lungs snapped away like a broken rubber band and so did her wards against the push of the panted world.  Colors erupted dazzling anyone with the tiniest bit of ability to do magic but there was a change in them.  A figure was standing there that was in none of the paintings A golden woman who held a sword aloft so the tip reached Tobias and they mirrored each other like an image in a pond.  Celia was shocked. She had never been called to manifest by an outside force before. Answering a king's call had not happened since the time of castle building.

Mr green eyes did his best to act unimpressed but already he was filing away information.  If he made it out of here alive he already had a very good idea how to strike at the young king.  If you could bind the image of the thing tight enough the real deal would feel it.  It was old magic based in belief from before the island could have even properly be called England and it had worked much like the painter had guessed.  That was why he had several of the paper lady London punch cartoon originals hidden away.  If one bound with a tight string could cause her to almost fall more would compound the effect until she was brought to heel but the boy was still a problem.  He looked up at the King and smiled tossing a piece of paper on to the floor. "Ah but your majesty there were things even kings fear.  And I shall introduce one of them to you."  From the card same a thick black mist cold as the grave and smelling of earth and out of it was formed blacked robed death.  Green eyes steeped back half in the world of a peaceful country landscape to make sure the monster he summoned could not round back at him and watched with a smile as a scythe rose out of the floor in to bone-y hands. 

[CPT_J_Percell]

Death walked towards Tobias and reached out a bony hand. Less then an inch from his throat, the image of death stopped, it's hood cocked to the side before he turned away surprising green eyes.
"You work for me, take the kings life!" Green eyes shouted.
Air hissed from under the hood like wind through a dead tree, "I have no power of this one for he has no life to take!"
Green eyes took a step back and watched and the image of death turned into smoke and drifted back into the floor."
The golden woman walked around to stand Beside Tobias and for a moment he wasn't sure what to do. feeling Verety still holding his hand, he stepped towards Green eyes and watched as the golden woman walked beside him copying him.

[Stella Gaslight]

Damn and blast! That had never failed to work.  What the hell was that boy? They had told him that trapping the woman and her little band would be easy and when she was forced in to a painted prison a considerable chunk of England would have been his. Damn these complications! Now he was backed into a corner but not down for the count yet.  If he could trick the king in to fighting him on ground that was not England than he would have less power to call on.  The Americas would be best but of course there were no American paintings in the collection. He settled for a German landscape that would at least be neutral.  A strange horse call left his throat and suddenly figures from every painting in the museum swarmed them Some aggressive some lost and confused but all were crowding in and making it nearly imposable for them to move or avoid being trampled.  In the chaos Green eyes ran and hid waiting to strike once he knew more of the strange king's power.

[walking stick]

The Golden king lost Verity's hand when Green Eyes escaped.  There was no way through the crowd of painted fighters.  She would help stop that cheat and find whoever sent him.  Whatever he'd done it was hurting the art.  Any of her family would hate that, even the forgers.

There on the right, a group of knights with heavy broadswords, she remembered studying the brush strokes.
Flat back in their frame. 
That picture with the lurid purple sky should have ten brigands with cudgels and knives.
Flat back in their frame. 
The dancers from that overdone ballroom scene.
Flat back in their frame.
Again and again and again.  Was it thinning the crowd?  She thought so but there were still so many.

[Steampunk Away]

Abraham pushed forward, dragging everyone into the Egyptian exhibit with the last of his strength before violently collapsing to the floor, his veins almost completely black now.

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia's heart was racing.  She ran from corner to corner speaking in a strange guttural tones.  There was a pull like they were weightless and a smell like hot dust.  The sounds of the world outside were muffled and the golden lady flickered out.  She turned to Tobias.  "Don't worry she can't really exist here but nothing is wrong. A living city does not do well in the land of the dead."  She sat beside Abraham doing what little she could to ease the burden of the black  vanes.  "We have a deal, Ramses and I.  He allows me sanctuary and I keep him amused in the afterlife with new devices and books. My magic is not as effective here but we should be safe here for the time being.  So perhaps it is time for introductions. I am Celia and that is my son.  Well one of them I suppose."

[MWBailey]

Marley smiled to himself; the fellow with the preternaturally emerald eyeballs was a formidable sorcerer, and the creation of multiple worlds in the relatively tiny space of the museum hall was challenging to those unused to tripping through the dimensions where time seemed to turn on it's head - but Marley was most decidedly not unversed in traversing multiple dimensions in rapid course, and Time was a part of his profession, after all. That was not to say that it was easy following Green Peepers through his multiple worlds and myriad crowds that spawned and then disappeared with dizzying rapidity (Marley finally realized that their disappearance was due not to the sorcerer, but rather to someone - it felt like the mind of a young woman - in Celia's party, or standing close by it. The throng was thinning, and the worlds were collapsing, and that made it easier to follow Green Eyes. He saw Celia's group passing by close at hand, it seemed, though he only saw it because he knew subconsciously what to look for; they were actually several new dimensions away from the one in which he currently stood. For a moment, he lost the way when the ballroom dancers were pressed back into their painting, but he sidestepped into an edition of the London Times, specifically into a lithograph of three ravens on a branch beneath a pale grey moon, and quorked a query to them in passing. They pointed with their beaks just as Green eyes disappeared around a corner of the page.

"Aha!" Marley murmured under his breath, "I know just where he's going, I read this edition last year!" and he turned slightly to the west of an homage to Benjamin Disraeli, entered a page of an excerpt from a Shakespearean play that had been on at the Albert, took a left at Dramatis Personae into the line drawing of the first act of Henry V, and came up behind the miscreant, tapped him on the shoulder, and gave the bastard a good right hook to his jaw as he turned round in surprise... unfortunately, Marley's punch knocked the fellow out of the excerpt and into a plot-hole in what Marley remembered had been a truly abysmal serial novel, and he disappeared. "BLAST IT!" Marley swore...

[Stella Gaslight]

Luis Rushton was beginning to see that perhaps his benefactors had dropped him in to the pot blind.  The Ballast was meant to be the tough one not this knight that his sources told him was on probation and not a problem. And now the Ballast had moved somewhere he could not see even with the emerald amulet boosting his supernatural sight.  He almost had her!  With a little more time she would have been trapped in a painting with him free to make a more pliable copy to suit his needs and now all he could hope for is that she did not yet understand the way he was able to hold her.  Belief magic was strong but if she could rally the city fully his influence over her would be vastly diminished.  There was always the son as a last ditch way to keep control but the boy himself had his own ways and could be tricky.  Well, he thought rubbing his sore jaw, at least she seamed to be stationary for the moment which at least let him focus on the knight.  He sprung at Marley hands flashing with lighting hoping to trap him inside the nearest watercolor until he had a better way of taking him on.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias and the gold woman had fought of the attacking images, but as he entered the Egyptian exhibition, she bowed and walked away. He turned back to the group and his image changed back, his golden armour vanishing.

[walking stick]

"My name is Verity Descry-Marvel, I am an artist." said the girl "Who are those vandals and how did they do that?" 

"We don't know yet ." said Beety  handing out sandwiches and elderflower cordial as if it was a summer picnic. Tobias took his and sank to the floor far too close to exhaustion. 

Everyone looked battered, Abraham's neck was black and his breathing was irregular.  Celia went to open his collar and Verity shrieked as she saw the cause of the marking. "They're painting him out!" she took a rag and a bottle out of her bag and began swiping at the darkness "Vandals, Visigoths, Philistines.  They're not even bad copyists. They're cheats.  You don't do that with people." 

A small clear area began to appear in the tight black vines.  Celia and Beety shared a brief smile at the improvisation.  Brush cleaning solution to remove image magic, young miss Descry-Marvel's chosen symbolism was appropriate enough to be making a difference.  Not enough to free Abraham on it's own but definitely something.

[Stella Gaslight]

"London provides for it's people." Celia muttered to herself grinning.  'Miss thank you.  I feel as if I should explain a little more about the situation.  I am London's ballast and it is my duty to see the city remains on an even keel.  That golden woman you saw was a manifestation of London herself I call on to help to channel the cities magic.  Most of the time the job is more like running a brokerage house with contracts and such but you managed to find me on one of the rare days where I am more the cities champion than it's secretary.  It may be dangerous but will you come to the aid of your city to find whoever is doing this and stop them?"

[walking stick]

"I am helping" said Verity as she rose from Abraham's side.  She set up her stool and her sketch book feeling frightened and sick but her hands were steady as she began to draw.

[Stella Gaslight]

"You may feel a bit of fizzing. That is just some of my protection spreading over you. Some of the older wards required formal statements of intent."  Something was happening as Verity drew. To Celia it was like catching a whiff of a long forgotten perfume. It was the same feeling she got from the first affected picture she had seen.  "I don't think the spell animating the paintings is from mr green eyes.  When he called death there was a sort of musty ham fisted push.  It was brute power being shoved in to things but the first spell was more delicately spread like the lines in a lithograph.  Maybe I was right and amateur started things and then that brute  latched on.  But that would be hard to do if the original caster opposed it.  So how did the caster fall in with greeny?"  Celia was nodding her head and trying to think.  The picture Verity was drawing shifted to look up at it's creator.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias finished his sandwich and drink and handed the empty glass back to beety before leaning against a wall. He hadn't expected the change to use up so much energy, but what ever had called forth the buried image of the former king that he kept buried, tired him.
He closed his eyes and listened to the other talk. When Veraty started to paint, he opened his eyes, there was a strange energy gathering around her that felt unusual, his hand drifted back to his swords hilt as he watched.

[walking stick]

The drawing seemed to be shouting frantically so Verity painted a modern fountain pen and an exercise book into his hands. He wrote "HELP THEY LIED TO ME I'LL NEVER SEE HER AGAIN"

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia could see tremors in girl's hands and stood beside her.  She did her best to exude calm and and sureness.  "Don't panic. It can't hurt you.  In fact I think whom ever that is needs our help.  Have you ever seen them before?"