[Day: Saturday, Oct. 27th. Time: 11:00 a.m.] [After arriving at the Byzantine Empire and stopping the Lucifer summoning (that would have been bad), you finally had an opportunity to rest (though most of you probably got drunk and now have hangovers).] [Since then, you were put up in a nice hotel (for no charge!) and have since been doing whatever until now, when you've been asked to come to the diner in the hotel for brunch.] [There'll probably be more to it than just brunch. But yeah.] [Anyhow, session start!] * Ashley is alive! Barely. He is, however, hugging a large coffee carafe and drinking out of a mug. Of tea! No, coffee. [The diner is fancy, by the way, as hotel diners tend to be. It's got a large window with a nice view of the Mediterranean Sea. It's mostly empty, but at one long table are some familiar faces: Jacqueline, Lazar, Mariah, Sarah, Liadan, Justinius, and Claire, who apparently made it in last night at some point.] * Herman heads down, somehow looking both tired and well rested. This may have to do with the likely hangover he has. But his hair is freshly spiked, and he's in an equally fresh change of punkish clothes. How did he get them? Do you have to ask? (It was magic!) * Togo would probably be fairly bleary-eyed, considering how much vodka he downed last night, except... well, you know. If he's got a hangover, though, he's hiding it pretty well. High pain tolerance and such. * Ashley is, for the record, in an entirely #0000FF colored tracksuit. It almost glows. * Herman flinches upon seeing Ashley. "Jesus Christ," he mutters before taking a seat at the table. * Khalil wanders in a bit unsteadily, looking around. His eyes still look half- closed and his robe is open. Unfortunately for Ashley and Herman, he's still clothed normally underneath. [Jacqueline waves. "Morning!" She's got a big stack of waffles AND a big stack of pancakes.] (Ah, but does she have Pancles?) * Mechalink is all leathery, as per normal. He looks tired, but not hung over. Gasp. (HOORAY.) * Mechalink is now known as Lukas * Lukas is all leathery, as per normal. He looks tired, but not hung over. Gasp. (I didn't know you had so much leather, Mecha.) (It's his skin. He's slowly becoming a lizard.) (You'd be surprised. My house was very cleaned for you all.) (You never looked in my closet. ^_~) [The brunch is a buffet, so grab whatever.] * Khalil gives Jacqueline a look, then glances at Herman and puts his head back down as he sits, muttering in Arabic. Probably something about morning people. Even if it *is* brunch time. * Ten is riding on Lukas's shoulder, and unlike Ashley, isn't trying to blind people with her outfit. Long back dress with green highlights. Also green hair and striped green-feathered wings. [Sarah yawns. She looks tired. Seems she's eating a salad and some non-fatty foods.] * Togo has grabbed an plate full of waffles, sausages, and biscuits. Yup, he's American. * Ashley gets up, still cuddling his coffee. He loads up on hash, eggs, and blood sausage. ( What about bacon? ) * Alys is sitting with a large cup of coffee. Her eyes are closed and she has an annoyed expression, but she does squint occasionally in order to stab her fork into some eggs and eat them. ( Second course. =P ) (Pfft. No American has biscuits.) ( Buttermilk biscuits. ) (Country Gravy?) * Lukas pours himself some coffee and grabs a muffin. Hand food! "Ah, its a great fuckin' day." * Herman stands and grabs coffee for himself, along with a bit of cream and half a pinch of sugar. This is followed by grabbing hash, scrambled eggs, and a muffin before he sits down again. (Dude, biscuits and fried steak. :9) * Lazar has an empty plate in front of him, for obvious reasons. He's also standing, as an act of mercy towards the chairs. [Claire has a sandwich and milk. How boring. "I've heard what happened."] * Herman grunts and has a sip of his coffee before he starts to mix eggs and hash. * Alys mutters, "Oh caffeine, why must my body keep adjusting to you? Will I need to acquire a more concentrated form? Do you have a ruling god? Should I sacrifice people to him, her, or it, would that help?" Good. Saves us a lot of unnecessary exposition that none of us are in any sorta mood for. * Ashley plucks a blood sausage with his hands and stuffs it into his gob. "Bloody cockup, is what happened," he says with a full mouth. * Lukas glances around, then replies to Ashley with, "You wish." He takes a sip. "Where's Mitsuji?" * Khalil goes to get some tea and fresh fruit on a plate and sits back down to listen in on the conversation. [Sarah frowns. "In the hospital. He hasn't moved since..."] ( Not my fault! I barely mussed his hair! ) * Lukas says, after a moment, "Yeah." Beat. "Rough stuff." Another coffee sip. [Sarah nods. Nod.] * Lukas looks almost human for a moment! Gasp. Take a picture. [Justinius growls. "Damn it, if I could get my hands on that guy, I'd make him pay for what he did to Xuan."] s'gonna be a problem, since he *is* Xuan at the moment. *pauses* Which severely limits my ability to repeatedly shoot him. [Claire nods, "Although he can be exorcised, if I understand the situation correctly." She looks at Herman.] * Khalil closes his eyes. "We have been trying to get our hands on him for a while. It has not been that effective." * Lukas shrugs a little. "Sorry, I got nothin'. Asahara's got security through obfuscation on the data I've got. I've got searches going but it's stupid." Yeah. If he couldn't, Dante wouldn't have reacted like he did. * Herman gulps down more coffee, then digs into his meal. [Claire nods.] But if we exorcise him, we are going to have to finish it before he has another chance, yesno? [Liadan frowns. "Dante..."] I killed him once. I'll kill him again. I still have one of those bullets left. Are we certain it was not just an empty shell that was shot? [Sarah shakes her head. "No, we're not."] It was him. He just jumped his mind or soul or whatever the fuck it was into Xuan before he died. [Jacqueline nods. "Maybe he never fully showed up, too. I mean, when he died, his body turned into that other man."] * Khalil takes a long deep breath. "I would like to believe that, Togo..." [Claire folds her hands in thought.] * Ashley takes a chug out of the carafe. "Maybe he doesn't have a real self." Be that as it may, he can still affect *our* selves. So there must be ways of dealing with him. I miss the days when we just killed things. And they stayed dead. And then we killed more things. (Just out of curiosity, does Lazar look like a man or a rock right now?) ( Man. ) ( One would assume a man, since you're out in public ) (Just checking) * Lukas glances at Khalil for a moment, then snorts to himself and says, "Yeah. I'm not hungry. I'll be off. You can get 'hold of me if you need me." He puts Ten off his shoulder and walks over near Alys. "Mind watching Greensleeves here?" * Khalil looks at Alys. "Then why make friends with an undead sorceress?" ( My memory failed me. Did Dante go along with !Xuan willingly? ) Good. Morning. Alys. ( Seemed so. Then again, Xuan can control minds, so who knows? ) * Alys holds out her hands for Ten. "I don't feel the need to kill undead cats. Or house servents. Zombie house servents. 'Morning, Ten." It somewhat goes against the purpose, yes. * Phantasm flees * Phantasm has quit IRC (Quit: Learning that we're only immortal for a limited time. ) (Who was that masked man?) * Lukas nods slightly and heads out of the room. No, he is not Phantasm, but he is fleeing! [Mariah continues. "I think this was planned for a while."] * Ten looks at Mariah. [Or rather, speaks for the first time.] What was the target? The artifacts? ["The stone."] [Mariah continues (now she can!) "The black stone. The Rosetta stone, too, but luckily you saved that one."] * Herman rubs at his eyes and then picks up his fork again. "Right. what about that stone?" Would have had the other if people were paying attention. * Ashley shovels food into his mouth. ["It's got something to do with demon summoning. I don't know much about it."] [Sarah: "There's another problem. That Rosetta stone is the most famous one, but it's not the only one."] Has that one gone missing too? It will. Rosetta Stone always stolen. Not where I've got it hidden. ["There's the one from the British Museum. That's the one we have here. There's another in Interpol's custody since it was used for a similar affair twenty years ago."] ["Then there's one in Cairo, Egypt."] * Khalil looks at Lazar. "She just said there was another one. That is to which I was inquiring." [Justinius speaks: "I've already contacted them, though. It should be fairly well guarded."] [Claire frowns, "And then there's the fourth: The Vatican."] Against Xuan and Dante and whoever has possessed her? I know. But from experience, if there Rosetta stone, it will be stolen. Entire purpose of Rosetta stone is to be stolen. ... Vatican. Considering the number of evil or possessed church officials we've run into, that's not comforting. 2d8-2 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Lukas (2d8-2) and gets a natural 7 for a result of 5. That's actually sort of cool, in a very annoying way. * Ten nods stiffly. * Alys looks down at Ten. "You okay?" [Claire nods. "That's what I'm worried about. The man you killed last night was Cardinal Andrew Clemens."] * Ten looks up. "Yes. All. Systems. Are. Green." * Khalil takes in a deep breath. "Something is wrong with your religion." ... another reason not to go to confession. Who the crap needs four Rosetta stones? Is your, um, speech program or whatever messed up? You're talking weird again. [Justinius: "And before that it was that other guy, Antonio Lancione, right?"] (People who want to learn Hieroglyphics!) * Ashley elbows Alys in the shoulder. "Ixnay..." * Ten blinks. "My. Speech. Program. Is. Functioning. As. Intended." * Alys looks at Ashley, then over to Claire. "After you kill one religious authority figure, does another really matter?" Yeah. Something's up there, and it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. [Claire nods. "Think about it. Two Cardinals. I think if we're going to find Valmont, we should check the Vatican."] * Herman asks around his food, "So you're saying make strike against the Roman Catholic Church?" [Jacqueline: "It's probably not the entire Church."] Huzzah! Can we get the Church of England to pay? * Alys finishes off her coffee and looks fairly awake by now. * Khalil takes a deep breath. "That seems to be the gist of it." He folds his hands. "With this Valmont attacking Saudi Arabia, if he looked as a cardinal, someone might still spark jihad." [Claire nods, "But more than likely, Valmont has a connection in the Church, too. And if he needs the Rosetta Stone for whatever purpose..."] Sounds like a plan. Ish. Justinius, you've got friends in the Vatican. Can you get them to put extra security around that one too? * Lazar sings-songs. "Will no matter. Will get stolen. Always gets stolen." [Justinius nods. "I'll see what I can do."] [Liadan waves her arms. "But we've gotta try! Dante and Xuan are in serious danger!"] * Khalil sits quietly in his chair, utterly still, head slightly bowed. We. Should. Acquire. The. Stone. Before. It. Is. Stolen. * Ashley heads up for seconds. No, no, we need to steal it! If we acquire it, we won't get it, but stealing gives us a chance, because it has to be stolen... um, right? [Liadan tilts her head. "I think it's the same thing."] Yes. * Ashley sits back down with a heaping plate, still cuddling his carafe of coffee. * Alys blinks. "I may need more caffeine." But if there are so many options... [Togo's PDA beeps.] * Herman presses a finger against his forehead, then downs the rest of his coffee. Upon doing so, he puts the mug hard on the table. "If we've got friends in the Vatican, I bet he does, too." They may even coincide. * Togo pulls out his PDA and checks it. [Claire nods. "That's not all. You encountered Lancione at the Covenant Headquarters, right? But Valmont is associated with Asahara."] I believe that Valmont is most concerned with himself. [Jacqueline looks at Togo. "Is that Dante?"] ... ah, vague directions. How I've missed you. Ten, what's at 55 north, 27 east? [Claire nods to Khalil. "Be that as it may, he has connections to both Covenant and Asahara."] (I'll tell you as soon as Brett tells me!) * Herman looks at Togo. "What's this about?" And the Vatican. He seems to, as you say, "get around" quite nicely. I have no goddamn idea. I got coordinates. Processing. Sure. Didn't Dante say he was the one giving us instructions, or some shit? * Herman gets up to get more coffee. Blessed coffee. [Jacqueline nods. "Yeah."] [Liadan nods too, "Yeah..."] Lithuania. [Sarah blinks. "Lithuania? What's in Lithuania?"] * Togo shakes his head. "Man, just *once* I'd like for some evil plan to unfold in Cancun." (o/~ Welcome to Lithuania o/~) ( Hurry to Cancun! Asahara is going to BLOW UP THE OCEAN!! ) ( If I was gonna take over the world, I'd wanna run my plan from somewhere I could get drinks with little umbrellas in them ) ( You could be a Cuban drug dealer :P ) [Claire frowns. "Dante? But if he's with Valmont..."] * Lukas has quit IRC (Read error: Connection reset by peer ) Then it is possibly a trap? [Claire nods.] It always trap. ALWAYS. * Herman returns. With coffee. "I vote for Milan. Ashley's always going on about it." [Mariah leans forward. "I'll check it out. The rest of you should head to the Vatican."] Not true. Sometimes it is a ... mislead? Bloody GOLDEN. Can we? * Mechalink is now known as Lukas [Claire: "You can if you want."] What, Mariah? By yourself? [Mariah nods, but Justinius says, "No way! If Valmont is there, you'll need backup. I'll go too."] * Khalil rolls his eyes. "Wonderful. So then he will have your *whole* team." (... Togo needs one of these: http://www.maj.com/gallery/Edwurdo/FunnyStuff/chainsawlauncherae2.jpeg ) ( *_* ) (....yeeees.) (Oh god, I just about died laughing.) ... if we're gonna split up, I want your entire team at the Vatican guarding that thing. And I want Jackie, Claire, and Lazar with you, if they don't mind. * Herman looks at Sarah. "I forget. Can any of you perform an exorcism?" * Herman drinks coffee, leaving his meal half finished. [Sarah nods. "Of course, Xuan's an expert in...." She pauses. ".... Oh."] It's the goddamn Vatican. They damn well better have a few in-house exorcists. ...yes. That is very helpful. [Jacqueline turns her attention to Togo. "What about Lithuania?"] Helps to have one closer to home, Togo. 'S all. [Justinius nods. "I think I can arrange for an exorcist or two."] * Herman has another mouthful of coffee. * Herman swallows. "Great." And so you know, it's really fucking hard to tell if he possessed somebody or not. So you might have to make some guesses. I want more coffee. Yet, I don't want to get up. Now would be a great time to instantly learn telekinesis. * Alys stares at Herman's coffee. * Togo nods at Herman, then turns to Jacky. "Message was sent to us. We'll deal with it." * Ashley pours Alys some out of his carafe. Jesus, love, you just had to bloody ask. [Jacqueline looks confused. "But, by yourselves?"] * Herman 's coffee did not move towards Alys. Instead, he drinks it. [Claire: "Actually, that's probably a good idea. It could be that the situation in Lithuania is nothing."] I will love you forever and ever! When I pledge myself to the god of caffeine, I will make sure you aren't sacrificed. * Alys drinks coffee. Thanks for the thought. (Now that I think about it, Rei didn't drink much caffeine. I'd be worried if she did.) (Not even from soda?) (She had TANG WAFFLES) (Oh, she drank soda.) (And had inordinate amounts of sugar, yes.) (But it wasn't a lot of soda. She just had it once in a while.) The stone needs to be protected, and we damn well can't rely on the Vatican to do it. And with all due respect to Mariah and Justinius, if Valmont comes hard for that stone, he'll go through them like a buzz saw. ( I've managed to go the whole day without drinking any soda. Go me!] ) [Claire nods. "Right, we'll take over guarding it, then. You take your team and see if there's anything to be found. But be careful, it could be a trap."] It's always a trap. It's always a trap. * Lazar eyes Togo. * Togo !eyes Lazar. * Khalil just leans back in his chair. Believe he already discussed that. But we're used to that at this point, frankly. * Herman mutters, "Unfortunately," and finishes his second cup of coffee. Now much more awake, he has another bite of eggs, makes a face, and puts his fork down. [Jacqueline: "If you're sure..."] * Khalil takes a deep breath. "Well. At least I spent a good part of the morning as human." Is. The. Egyptian. Stone. Guarded. [Justinius nods. "Like I said, I took care of that this morning."] Vatican is the most vulnerable, I think, 'cause we know Valmont has some sort of inside help there. s'why we need as much power as possible guarding that. And if things in Lithuania turn out to be ugly, you guys'll only be a few hours away by plane if we need backup. [Claire nods. "My thoughts exactly. Plus taking your entire group is a lot safer than just sending Mariah and Justinius."] * Khalil looks up for a moment. "But if we visit all three, could we not have Herman get us to any of the locations at a moment's notice?" Sarah, too. That as well. I dunno if we have the time. ["If they're willing to wait long enough for us to tour the world, sure."] (I think I need to go to bed soon! Hooray for being old and dead.) * Togo nods. "It's a good idea, Khalil. But the time issue is the problem." Mmm. True. Egypt and the Vatican are the closest together, but still possibly out of reach. If nobody has any objections, we'll take a few more hours to let the various hangovers fade, and then we'll get going to Lithuania. [Claire nods.] Sounds good. Good as anything. Better tell Lukas. * Ashley nods and stands up. He takes the carafe with him! * Alys stands up as well, but she looks like she's just following the coffee. * Ashley waves the carafe in front of Alys. "Follooooow the caffeeeeeine...." * Ten gets carried along by Alys. Follow that caffeine. * Alys 's eyes follow it. "Yes, holder of the caffeine. Whatever you want." * Herman watches this. "Man, that's a little creepy." * Khalil watches the scene. "Only a little?" It's just as creepy without eyes, so don't pull an Oedipus to try and salvage your sanity. Be glad that there was no coffee when we went to that realm. * Khalil then stares at Togo, wide-eyed. * Herman snorts. "Y'don't have to pull an Oedipus to stab your eyes out." * Khalil shudders. "I just recently had to read that." [Session End!]