Return of the Emblem Chapter Nine: Consolidating Forces

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

"I don't know," Gar said. "What archer-girl's trying to do looks like the life of the party to me." Gar watched as she struggled to carry some other guy over to the spot where everyone was starting to congregate. Zachary still hadn't returned, so Gar had some free time before the next round of annoying the thunder sage.

So the Ascendant dug into one of his pouches and pulled out a belt and a stitching awl. He extended the belt, which was nearly filled with holes, and starting punching some new ones in near the end.

[roymbrog]

Synthia couldn't help but groan as she saw Robin carrying Bert, strung up like a deer. Under ordinary circumstances it may have been funny, but now she wasn't in the mood. “Maybe you should let someone else carry him...” she said. “I'm sure knife guy here would love to help, wouldn't you?”

She then looked around, taking note of the condition of the remaining team members. A few were still out cold or looking to be that way soon. She was exhausted herself. “Any chance this place has stables nearby? We could borrow a couple horses or a cart or something.”

[Phoenix]

Cloak and Dagger

The rest of dagger was coming, and Gabbie came over to investigate the scene with Raquel. She was still out cold from the looks of it, and Reign was even more disturbed by John's explanation. "How do you know she'll die without it? Did she come close once, or is this just a theory you're going off of?"

The dying without the emblem thing, again? It didn't interest Gabbie much, but she listened in anyway for the moment.

Shadow

"She's doing better than most of you people, apparently." Talitha replied. "It seems like a good time to call for some help. With the cult wiped out, there's no bribe money in it for the guardsmen, so they should be willing to help us."

"Better go fetch Brayden first just so they know exactly what's going on. Not sure they'll take just our word for it; Tali and I aren't even supposed to be here, heheh." Mandy added.

[Eail]

"At any right we should probably all get inside, that Grant guy can handle things when the guards come." Said Zach. Picking up the girl he walked back inside of the manse, noticing that Robin was doing something similar. Though the load she was carrying wasn't nearly as light.

"I miss anything important while I was outside?" He questioned

[Acacia Sgt]

''Well, it was Lilith who said that but,'' John began. ''Raquel herself has also admitted to not feel fine if separated from the emblem, which did happen when she got kidnapped. And both Lilith and Professor Weyland have said that the emblem does emanate some kind of unique, if unknown, energy. Lilith even said that it was the energy seeping into Raquel and left unattended for long to be the cause of her current predicament.'' He explained.

By the time Sophia had made it inside she had also walked over to the gathered group. Hopefully she would have no need to heal somebody else for the rest of the night.

[Mercakete]

"Aye, we shouldn't have t' be haulin' everyone back t' th' ship ourselves," Gytha added to Synthia's suggestion with a nod. There were a lot of people around who weren't being carried, either. Just laying about... They'd certainly had it rough this fight.

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

Mage girl volunteered Gar for assistant guy-carrying duty to relieve the burden of archer-girl. Which really wasn't something Gar wanted to do at all. So, as he thought about how to weasel out of it while punching in the fifth new hole, Zachary came walking back into the manse with some newer girl in his arms. Guess that's our princess target then? Gar thought. What was really important was that it was a perfect way to get out of helping by doing more important things. "I wouldn't love to help and all," Gar said to mage-girl, sort of. "But I have some other business to attend to."

The Ascendant jogged over to Zachary real quick. "Time for the next barrage of questions my good man," Gar smirked at Zachary. "One: is that our rescue target carried like a princess in your arms? Two: where's the office of whoever was in charge here, I want to start going over their documents immediately. And three: did that miraculous medical journal teach you how to deal with bullet wounds?"

[Snowy_One]

"That will go well? Can you imagine it? As we walk to the ship with a load of unconscious bodies in the cart the local guard stopping us and asking why we happen to have a cart full of bodies covered in blood and clearly not moving heading away from the mansion of the local powerhouse."

[Eail]

So Gar decided it was time to ask more questions, probably best to answer them just to get the man out of his hair "One: yeah this is her. Two: Go up the stairs and take a right, don't know what you want with that stuff though. Knock yourself out though, I've already got what I came here for. Three: I can remove a bullet if need be, it won't be pretty though. I don't have a surgery kit on me so I'm gonna have to use a knife, anybody have one that's fairly slim and not coated in blood?" Zach asked the group

[Snowy_One]

As carefully as she could, Robin put Bert down on the ground, his maces resting on his backside as he lay on his belly, before she drew her stone knife and offered it to Zach. "Here, Zach, best knife I have. Should do the job perfectly fine."

[Acacia Sgt]

<Documents huh...> John thought. <Well, the cultists had ties with the organization. Then maybe...> ''Checking up their archives may not be a bad idea.'' He said. ''They were involved with the organization after all. Anything we could find might prove useful.'' He noted.

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

"Let's consider my second question relevant to archer-girl's statement or whatever," Gar kinda side-stepped why he was looking. Though armor-guy seemed to realize what Gar was aiming for with the documents at least. Archer-girl pulled out a knife, rendering Gar's trip to the kitchen slightly pointless. But her knife was also made out of stone for some reason. Which meant his trip was still useful. He shrugged, and held the belt and tool in his right hand while grabbing the liquor bottle and kitchen knife with his other. "Better to use something we can throw out afterwards."

[Eail]

Giving a nod to his friend Zach took the knife and handed her the girl "Hold onto her while I do this okay?" He said as he also grabbed the knife from Gar and made his way over to the cleric that had been shot. "Take a seat and find something to bite down on, because this is gonna hurt."

[Ether]

Making her way inside a too Sharif, it seems that the damage really was quite severe.

"Is there anyone we need moved out of here quickly?"

[Acacia Sgt]

The mention about the bullet and knife made Sophia remember Chelsea still had the bullet lodged. I guess I was wrong. She thought before heading over as well. Removing the bullet was one thing, but taking care of the actual wound was another after all.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Acacia Sgt

[Phoenix]

Emblem

That name came up again, and Reign was becoming wary of it. He didn't feel comfortable asking his next question, but he still didn't have enough context to form any theories of his own. "What else did she say about this? Did anyone ask that Lilith woman why this is happening to her in the first place?"

[Acacia Sgt]

Now back with Reign...

''Actually, she went to explain it all herself.'' John answered. ''She said it was that energy going into Raquel that caused that dependency. She also said that if she didn't come to learn to control it, she'd die anyway. And she also said she'd take the emblem away from Raquel if she made little to no progress about controlling it's power.'' Well, hopefully that was all. It was still quite something that not even a week had passed since they stumbled across Lilith, and yet so many things had happened in-between then and now.

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

"Well, guess I'll be heading up then," Gar noted to Zachary's instructions and quickly set about to following them, putting away his belt and tool as he did so. Upon reaching the overlooking balcony Gar looked down upon everyone scurrying around. It was kinda funny. What wasn't funny was the legless body of some guy and a series of broken doors and another set of stairs. That moved things quite quickly into the worrying state of mind. Gar drew his knife and cautiously advanced up the stairs and into the boss's office. Which had really become the office of blood.

"Geez, now what the hell happened here?" Gar looked around the study that was more blood than not. The lack of actual definition to the color made Gar hesitant to step inside until he figured out where things were settled. There being scattered guts helped keep him rooted as well. Once he figured out where it looked like things were, he checked off the interesting spots and plotted a course.

First up, was that bed in the corner. Taking a few quick hops over to it, Gar noticed that some of the bulges around the area were chains. Busted chains. Something busted the hell out of here. The princess package? That sure was a dangerous possibility. There were only one set of footprints in the blood, small ones. So she got out on her own. He'd talk it over with Zachary later. In private. Dragging the slaughter-spree into everyone's faces right now would be a bad idea.

Second was the desk. It only took two hops to get over this time. The desk itself might have been worth a pretty fortune at one point, but right now it was a grime reminder of terrible things. Some scattered papers around the area had been damaged, rendering them too much of a pain in the ass to use.

Third stop was a bookshelf, within a single hop. Here was finally jackpot as the angle had allowed the books to get by with far less damage than the open pieces on the desk. Gar scanned what he could. Most being useless or irrelevant, but he managed to get a few useful ones. There were a few detailing bribe logs--which was the big victory here--and some notes on "Lia" and "experiments". Which probably meant the girlie draped in Zachary-boy's arms. More things to deal with later.

And last up was a fabulous collection of winery and alcohol. Including quite a damn few premium brands that could sell for quite the pile of coin. Good thing he got up here before the healer-thief, she might have picked it dry.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Script

[Phoenix]

Manse

With Zachary dealing with the girl and Faatina up and moving about on her own again, Mandy and Talitha decided to head on inside to see how the recovery effort was going. They both stood there in shock at the massacre they found inside, though Talitha seemed to handle the scene far better than her partner, her face only reacting with slight surprise as she said "I'm sure this violent exchange seemed very important at the time, but in hindsight, I think both sides were just a little too stubborn for their own good."

"I'll say. We should have gotten some damn reinforcements here ..." Mandy added, swearing for the first time onscreen.

Meanwhile Reign donned a very hostile expression as he looked down at Raquel's unconscious form. It wasn't her he was upset with now, and not even himself despite how things turned out. "Sounds to me like she's just being used." he muttered as he clinched his fist.

[GoD]

Once she was done healing Raquel, Chelsea decided to lean against the wall and put her arm over the wound, just content to listen to the conversation. However then the newcomer and Zach were talking about someone taking a bullet wound, and then Robin offered a knife to him.. and now he was aproaching the main party. "Wait, am I missing something here? Someone got hit by a bullet.?"

[Acacia Sgt]

''Could be. But it's not like we can actually do much regarding Lilith.'' John said with a shrug. ''After we've seen what all she could do, I don't think we'd have much of a chance going against her, at least not now.'' Indeed. Having seen her create and turn weapons to dust, transport them from Purgatory back to Sardius, flying to Ursium and back in just hours, fragmenting that Rexian and then put back together. Well, certainly stuff out of their league at least.

Well, there was nothing much to do right now, except wait for Gar to come back with his findings. John just gazed idly, across the corpse-filled room, the fallen chandelier, their still unconscious comrades, and one of the reasons they were here in the first place: Lia.

... wait a minute...

<Oh yeah, that girl...> She lied there, peacefully in Robin's arms. If not knowing better, hardly anyone would believe she had just come crashing down with a chandelier and wielding a huge axe. And yet... well, now that the cult was dealt with, might as well confront the issue.

''Say guys,'' he spoke up. Well, not everybody would know considering how many newcomers they had ever since that night was over, but the ones who did would easily get it... hopefully. ''Don't you see something... familiar, with the girl?''

-----

Chelsea's reaction puzzled Sophia a little. What, she didn't realized she got shot?

Well, she had to know.

''Uh, yes. It was you.'' She told her.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Acacia Sgt

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

Gar carefully placed the most valuable wines into his free pouches. He couldn't afford to throw anything out in such an obvious crime scene, so he only managed the four most expensive bottles before having to leave with the information papers in his hands. Once outside the blood room, Gar cleaned the hell out of his feet as he walked back to the balcony, his larger blood-steps mirroring the smaller ones he hadn't noticed earlier. Once back and looking down on everyone from an elevation stand-point and not an ego one, Gar noticed that Zachary hadn't begun digging out the bullet from troubadour-girl, and that the Dark Avian had returned.

Damnation it was difficult to focus on the sexy on a battlefield, but oh did Gar try as he descended back to the ground floor. "Not much up above, just a couple bribe logs and something I think you wanna see Zachary," Gar said quickly and efficiently.

[Eail]

Actually managing to remove the bullet while the healer girl was distracted (thankfully due to it actually not penetrating that far at all) Zach was just finishing up when Garfield called him. Wiping the blood from the knives on a dead guy's robes he asked. "Oh? So what did you find out?" As he helped Chelsea up before moving back over near Robin, who was still holding the girl

Edited July 6, 2012 by Eail

[Snowy_One]

Robin looked down at the unconscious Lia as Zach handed her to Robin, the weight of the girl coming into her arms much less than what Bert had weighed and much easier. Robin wasn't really sure what to do. There had been children back in Ohka, sure, but she had never spent much time with them. Plus, though she was certain the girl was younger than her, there was no denying that she was not a child either. She was a teenager, albet a young one. A quick pang of worry shot through Robin. What would she do if this new girl awoke before Zach returned? Would she have to try to be a mother to her? An explaner? A meal? Just put her down? What? Could she do any of those things at all in the first place?

[Script]

A Man Called Gar

"Let's just say it relates to your princess so we can all keep things simple," Gar said while handing the files pertaining to Lia off. Though those notes again made it hard to get into an effective state of mind.