Part XVIII We Left a Corpse in San Francisco, or, The Muppets Nuke Manhattan
Well, let's see, where did I leave off? It's been a while since I've written, and as usual, a lot has happened, people have died and almost died, I went crazy, thought about killing myself, and came partway back to sanity. Anyway, on with the show.
After our visit to Sabboc, in which we found out what the source of the great crisis threatening to destroy the universe was, we came back to the way station to argue for a while until our fearless leader deigned to tell us what our next task would be.
He then informed us that we were needed to assist him in a situation in which he was attacked, and would not survive without our help. He gave us the option of helping or not, since maybe some of us wouldn't mind his getting killed. We were still unclear about which side of things he was on, and that there was the distinct possibility that those who would kill him were the "good guys." Despite the pleasant ramifications of this, we decided that we would help him, since, at the moment, it was in our interests to keep him alive (he's the only one who could send us back, unless we wanted to do something really stupid and let Jeremy try his runes.) Also, I felt that I could always change my mind once I met his attackers.
At this point, elf-boy tried to cause a mutiny by telling us to come up with a plan to protect him, based on the information that he'd just given us. For those of you that missed it, the information we were given was that he would be attacked, and would not survive without our help (which actually set a record for the greatest amount of useful information he gave to us at any one time.)
After much arguing, screaming, and general civilized debate (no one was shot) we came to a few conclusions, to wit:
1) If these attackers pose a threat to him, they are severely powerful, both physically and magically.
2) In physical combat, we are mostly incompetent.
3) In magical combat, the difference between total incompetence and our level of competence cannot be measured by any existing techniques.
4) We were fucked.
At some point in this discussion, the subject of the Atlantean Mage's bracer came up, since Jeremy wanted to use it. We said hell no, that it would be a bad idea in general to use it, and an even worse idea in specific for him to use it. He and I also got into a discussion about his runes, with Jeremy claiming that he used them to call on Odin's power. I asked how that could be, since Odin was dead. We then got into an argument about whether or not he was alive or dead, with my position being that the Norse myths were the story of what had taken place already, with Ragnarok already past, with the surviving children of the gods trying to rebuild afterwards setting up the Judeo/Christian story of the garden of Eden. I also offered to make Jeremy more like Odin, but he said that if he were to lose an eye, he'd want the same thing that Odin got in exchange. I agreed, and told him that he was going to die, hand over the eye please. Anyway.
We decided that our best bet was to take along all the magic weapons, holy water, and other things of that nature, and hope we didn't die too much. As usual, elf-boy told us that we would be going to modern times, and should not look too inconspicuous, which would be kinda hard if we needed to take all our magic weapons. Oh well. We figured we could always fall back on our cover story of being SCA, or just a band of wandering lunatics (but harmless lunatics.)
So, he led us off into a passage. Oh, I should note that this time the waystation was a big room with lots of holes in it, and that when we entered, Gegi and Jeremey were still there from when it was a tree, and Jeremy was hanging upside down out of one of the holes, asleep. When we woke him, he fell out. So, anyway, we went crawling down one of the holes, and ended up in a sewer, and climbed out of a manhole (personhole, access port, maintenance hatch, sewer cover, whatever), directly under moving traffic.
We dodged the traffic, and got out, and then the Chappell form of elf-boy showed up and told us to follow him. However, it wasn't the Chappell form, it was the actual David Chappell, that only a few of us had ever met. He was in San Francisco, doing time-space research, accoring to Jay, who had for some reason visited him here earlier, and gotten a book of poetry from him. He seemed rather surprised at our general appearance, and rather flustered by the situation, and felt that we should get off the streets as soon as possible before we attracted too much attention (in San Francisco? yeah right. We looked normal.)
He took us to his house, where we dumped our stuff, and got cleaned up into normal 20th century American human mode, and went out to dinner. David Chappell was giving us the guided tour of San Fran, which I ignored, since I'd been there before, and didn't care. We went to some pizza place and talked about nothing important, since we'd made it clear to David C. that we weren't going to tell him anything about what was going on, since "he didn't need to know". (Yes, I know, childish payback on the wrong person, but it was fun.)
Anyway, as for dealing with the impending attack. Jon had had a "vision" in which he saw the attack, so he knew mostly where and when it would take place, so we figured we'd be there to deal with it, but first we had some time to kill. We went downtown looking for... supplies. David Sakell was looking for weapons, but couldn't find any reliable suppliers. I found a reputable looking tattoo parlor and got myself decorated with power symbols (I considered the old trick of tattooing on a pentagram and trapping a demon in it for later use, but I didn't have a demon handy, so I didn't). I also talked to the folks there, and got a connection to getting barbituates so that I could more easily go to sleep when I needed to.
We spent the night at David's, and had another day to kill, which we did. Sakell was still looking for weapons, which he didn't get, I got my drugs, and we got ready for the rumble by buying supersoakers and loading up with holy water.
The next day was the big day. We went down to the site that Jon thought things would happen at, and meandered around waiting for something to happen. We'd borrowed David Chappell's car, and I'd left my halberd in it, since it was kind of big and conspicuous, but we were all wearing our radios and carrying holy water and holy water supersoakers, and other people had their concealable weapons concealed.
We then saw someone who looked like elf-boy, in Martin mode, and when we casually said hi to him in passing, he mostly ignored us. There were also two suspicious characters following him, and they jumped him. First of all, they moved a lot faster than normal people, and appeared to be much stronger. Before we could do much of anything, they'd gotten a chain wrapped around Martin, and were levitating off the ground. We tried shooting them with supersoakers, but they kept dodging. People tried hitting them with the fairy swords, but they didn't do much good. When they started levitating, they couldn't dodge very well, so we were able to get hits in, and they smoked from the water, and didn't seem to like it, but it really wasn't slowing them down. Also, they were spinning, so it was hard to target anyone in particular
. Before they got too high, Jeremy jumped up onto one of them to grapple with him, and got carried away with them. We could hear him on the radio, and see what he was doing before he got too high. He seemed to be trying to pour holy water on his target, and stab him with a wooden cross. Jon threw his spear at one of them, and it stuck in him. In one last effort before they got too high, I yelled at Jon to get ready, and threw a canteen of holy water at one of them, and Jon shot through it, into the guy's head. This didn't do much either, and they continued to fly away, with the spear still stuck in one of them. I should also mention that when they started to levitate, wings broke through their clothing.
When it was obvious that they were going to get away, I ran for the car, and tried to run down everyone else, but they all got in, or on the car. I believe Jay ended up in the trunk, where we had a bunch of our other stuff for him to play with. So I was reinacting the chase scene in Bullitt, driving like a maniac through San Francisco, following the flying guys.
We're not too sure what happened up in the air, but we could still hear Jeremy on the radio, and see a little bit (the others told me, since I was watching the road, the other cars, and the flying guys at the same time, I didn't see the whole show.) We heard Jeremy call to Odin and Yahweh, and then a six-winged guy showed up and blasted him with lightning. Then the top of the Transamerica pryamid hit the flying group and knocked them down. I was driving to the site of that, when another Martin appeared flying in the sky, throwing lightning at the impact site, until a flying office building knocked him out over the bay.
We got to the scene of impact in time to see one of the bad guys going underground, hauling the chained elf-boy with him. Then the six-winged Martin showed up, and went in after them. Jon got a picture of where the spear was, in/under the building, and that we needed to recover it. We went into the upside down building, down the stairs to a higher floor, and found the spear, then got out in time to meet the rescue crew coming in.
When we came out, winged Martin came up with the chained elf, and told Jay to use his cross to loosen the chains. At this point we heard voices in our heads telling us that we were in big trouble unless we quit, but we ignored them. Except Gegi. Apparently, this was one of her demon friends, and he must have told her some other things, since she went weirder than usual, and tried to interfere with removing of the chains. They got the chains off anyway, threw them into the backpack and the winged Martin and the other Martin flew off.
While that was happening, Jon and I were running around looking for a priest, since while we were inside, the cops, a fire truck, and an ambulance had showed up, and we figured there might be a priest with the ambulance. We got one, and asked him to bless the water in the fire truck. He asked why and we pointed at the guy with the wings. This triggered his programming, and he went gaga over Martin, kneeling down and the whole bit. I told him to get up, he didn't know who he was dealing with. We got him to bless the water for us, but by that point there wasn't anyone left to blast with it, and we had wanted to flood the hole everyone went down, but it was closed up. I was about to shoot Fabio with the supersoaker, but he talked me out of it, and then the two of them flew away.
We decided it was a good time to leave, as the earthquakes were starting, so we got in the car and took off. David Chappell contacted us on the radios, and told us where to meet him, opened a "slider" type gate, and we left.
Back in the waystation, when Fabio showed up, I talked to him alone, and he talked to the group as a whole. He answered the questions that I had, confiriming that the Martin that was attacked was the "past" Martin, and he had been attacked before he'd ever met us, explaining his response, even though at that time, he knew that he would meet us. The winged Martin that showed up was the "current/future" Martin, who was several thousand years older. The two guys attacking him were our old friend Dagon, and someone else with a typical B-movie demon name that I can't remember. After we left, the four of them went at it some more, and leveled San Fran. The news reported this as massive earthquakes.
He hadn't wanted to tell us the full details of the attack, not only because he was a smug self righteous prick, but because he didn't want us assuming that since it had already happened, it would turn out OK. I went into another bout of depression, since a lot of people had been killed that I didn't know, and Jeremy had been killed. And while he had been annoying, I really didn't want a building to fall on him. If I'd been more on the ball, and had been able to get into the fight with the halberd, maybe I could have prevented some of that, I don't know.
I was ready to start drinking myself into oblivion, but Fabio gave us another job to do, so I had to wait.