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GM: Captain Vimes
Players: Chaos, Laohu
Synopsis: In the midst of a manastorm, a strange ghost appears.
Date: 4-23-2082
It was an ordinary day in the Asian Sector, not far from the warrens - but distinctly NOT the warrens - people were going about their business. Some people were just returning home from Denver after a long absence, and were looking for a place to stay, when BOOM ! The long warned-of storm comes to life, not sweeping out of the mountains but here, in all its glory!
Laohu was three beers deep at the Cybered Arms when everything kicked off. Most of the conversation had sort of died after that, and whilst she'd considered crawling into a bottle until the whole thing blew over, she ultimately decided against it. There was something about the storm that gave her the heebie-jeebies, and she wanted to see it through in solitude. Of course, massive winds and rain make it deeply unpleasant. Even her long coat doesn't help that much, and her hair is plastered down. She's got a real wet dog look to her. Nobody had better laugh. Thankfully, most people are most likely trying to do just what she is - get to cover.
Just another day or the road… right up until everything started going weird. Awakened by the strong winds in his land rover, Chaos sits up from a bench inside of the van and glances out. Something is weird…
Looking out, he focuses as he switches to astral perception, looking to confirm his suspicions…
For anyone looking at the window, they just see a not-so-everyday beef Ork with brown hair and green eyes, checking out the storm outside
The storm is -crazy- right here. A nearby motorcycle has been flipped. Several windshields have been shattered! And walking down the street is a figure i nblack bike leathers, carrying a long bloody knife in one hand and his head tucked under the other arm. He is an ork of some mixed-asian heritage, his eyes dead and haunted as they peer out, his skin a mottled mess of blue and indigo. And he looks angry.
"Aw fuck." Laohu mutters to herself. She takes a moment to firm up her stance and then her hands drift to the inside of her jacket. She hates this. It means she has to let the rain in, and under the jacket there's only a tank top and a secure vest to keep her dry. She's soaked through in an instant, and feels the chill right down to her bones. This sucks. "Yo, big guy." She shouts, "Put the pig-sticker away before you get yourself hurt, okay? I don't need the hassle." She doesn't like anything about this, though; she's seen eyes like that before. Not exactly the same, but the dead-eyed gaze of someone who has seen Hell… that never bodes well.
Someone openly walking along with a bloody knife? Yeah, that gets some attention.
Chaos isn't here to play hero, but he /is/ looking to not have to deal with thugs today. It wouldn't be too much of a problem to just grab the knife, soChaos keeps his eyes on the walking Ork, ready to cast a spell if need be…
The decapitated ork stops as Laohu confronts it. "Stand out of my way, girl." The lips on the head move, but the voie echoes out of the neck. Weeeeird. He points to a rowhouse with the tip of his knife. "I have unfinished business here." Inside, a pair of eyes can be seen peeping out the window, but as attention swerves that way they disappear.
"Yeah. No. Call me crazy but I don't like the precedent of dead men walking around. In my line of work, you should have the decency to stop when you are killed."
In an instant, Laohu's guns are out and firing. Ivory handles clutched tight in her grip. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the rain, maybe it was both, but until the moment the thing started speaking and she saw where it was coming from, she hadn't quite realised just how fucked this situation really is. She fires, four shots. One goes wide. She's fucking rusty. Hurricane or no, Dead-Eye Zhang would never have missed a target that size at this range. But still, three bullets sunk into the centre mass with only one sparking off the pavement, and the fucking thing doesn't so much as look like it is going to stagger. Not good. Not good at all.
The ork's blood, seeping from freshly opened wounds, seems to mist away rather than drip, blending into the astral world like so much fog. It howls at her, now wordless, and bounds forward, turning around to slash at her with the back edge of the knife - its tip managing to whistle through the air despite the rain!
"Fuck, not so chatty now huh?!" Laohu shouts, jumping backwards and twisting as the dead man lunges at her. The knife comes disturbingly close, but for the moment at least she is able to stay one step ahead. Her jaw is clenched tight; teeth grinding together. If this were a living guy, this'd be fun, but she honestly has no idea if the wounds she's inflicted even mean anything to this thing. How much lead does it take to put down a corpse?
What is going on? Spirits out of nowhere going for… someone?
Doesn't matter, that looks like someone worth getting to know, and a little intervention might get some information on the town.
Stepping out of the land rover, the 6'2 tall Ork moves into a standing position, flips a coin, and puts his hands in his long coat pockets as he stares at the entity and focuses his attention on it… a battle of magic occuring on the astral plane that by some miracle of luck doesn't get manastormed and freak out on him. "Guess there's all kinds in this city now." Chaos grunts, muttering.
The spirit is about to say something more to the gun-girl, his face twisted into an angry snarl, but even as he starts to speak Chaos's magic catches him unaware. The head swivels, blinking, and the beady eyes narrow in concentration… but it's too much, and the mana storm howls, and in a twist of green light the body mists away. The head falls to the pavement with a wet, thucking sound, rolling over to stop, face up, by Laohu's feet. It glares up at her, spitting a voiceless curse… and then it, too, is gone.
Laohu lifts one boot-clad foot and slams it down hard as she can onto the spirits disincorporating head. She doesn't know what is going on here, but the sudden presence of another - thankfully more alive - ork seems to be related to getting her ass out of the fire. "You know what the fuck that was?" She demands, "Are there more of them around here? This fucking storm has already ruined my god-damn shirt, I don't need any more fucking zombies!" Okay, so, maybe she's not handling it quite as well as she was before the adrenalin started to wear off and she is made to think about what she just saw. What the hell?!
"If I had to make a wager, it was a kind of spirit some scholar call a ghost. Never thought I'd see one." Chaos brings his right hand out and flips that coin again, "pretty weak one too, a bit of focus and I banished it without much trouble." Chaos starts to walk over to the head, and stares at it, keeping the coin pockets when the winds get to be too much, "I have no idea what it was doing, but from the way it was staring…" Chaos glances in the direction the thing was actually going, his bass voice muffled lightly now.
"I didn't see any other spirits on the astral, but the mana storm is pretty absurd in there." Chaos notes as he observes where the spirit was going.
"Mana storm? Thought this weather was freaky. This is just a thing that happens now?" Laohu grouses as she fumbles with her guns. This may be more of a calming exercise for her. It's not like replacing the four bullets expended and collecting the cartridges is a particularly high priority, but doing it gives her a sense of control. Her guns she understands. Cleaning up an evidence trail she understands. Headless orks trying to skewer her, she does not. "And you're seriously telling me that was one of the weak ones? It took four shots like it was nothing."
The Ork looks back to Laohu, "Yeah, I was watching the manastorm in the astral when I saw you and the entity start going at it." Chaos explains, "Head in armpit gave it away a bit, but I'm new to the city, so I didn't want to interfere… but you're clearly invested in the area if you're popping off at spirits like you're police." His meaty right hand is offered, "Call me Chaos. I'm a Hermetic earth mage." A pause, "And yeah, it was pretty weak. Took a couple seconds to crush the essence on my end. They tend to not be effected much by the material."
"Laohu." The woman replies, "And since you saved my ass, I won't shoot you for calling me a fuckin' cop." The guns are replaced back into their holsters, at least for the moment, and she gives a nod towards the building where peeking eyes had briefly shown through, as she takes the mage's hand and gives it a vigorous clasp. Not quite a shake, more a squeezing test that one might expect from a gangbanger. "I ain't normally one to work for free, but letting shit like that walk around will bring heat down on everyone. You think it's got more to do with the people it was after or the storm? I don't know how to shoot a storm so I'm hoping the first."
Chaos looks -well, more stares- in a direction, a far away look on his eyes briefly, "The manastorm is moving away from us now. We're fine. seems like it's a fast mover. It didn't frag with my conjuring, at least." He looks back to Laohu, "Pretty trigger happy, are we?"
Laohu shrugs her shoulders, "You could say that. I know what I'm good at. You want a girl to put a bullet in someone or get your ass through the Rez, that's me. Don't know the first thing about…" She waves her hand at the ground in a general kind of way, "Ghosts and shit. What do you think we should do next, Chaos?"
Now that the apparation has passed, the normal-looking rowhouse looks… different. It looks run down, decrepit, like so much on th like so much on this street. The front door is boarded over, the yard is full of dead flowers.
Chaos sees, watching out the window, a little ork boy, no more than three years old, maybe (think closer to 8, for human to ork conversion years). He peeks, makes eye contact with Chaos, and ducks out of sight again. He, like the ghost, has skin of mottled red and blue.
"I've never seen anything like this." Chaos admits, "The manastorm seems to have manifested all kinds of weird spirit drek in the area. You saw the boy, right?" Chaos asks with a side glance to Laohu, "I could swear they were the same person, but different age, and when I banished the thing, it felt like… undeath, for lack of a better word." Green eyes squint at the abandoned house. "Do you live around here?" Chaos asks.
"I saw someone in there, yeah." Laohu confirms, glancing back at the house. "Not on this street, but in this neighborhood, yeah. There's a lot of skeletons buried in a lot of closets around here. Don't like the idea that they're going to come lurching out looking for revenge. How long does this stuff usually go on for?"
"I have no idea, but I can stick around to see if another manastorm comes by and help keep things under control." Chaos glances to the abandoned house, "Seems like a decent mage would some conjuring skill might get some goodwill, yea?" Chaos thumbs over his shoulder to the Land Rover he came out of, "I'm living out of that right now. Just be sure I'm not sleeping. I hate being woken up."
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