Stormrunners [IC]

[Nefarion Xid]

Lavender

With his boss shot full of arrows and partially melted, the new capo by battlefield promotion rushed to the open window where he searched for the vanished assailant with his wand extended. Since Constantine had already scrambled over the edge of the roof, he found only Lavender fresh from her attempt to scale the facade. Proximity made her guilty enough, so he jerked his weapon in her direction and let off a burst of cold.

Spoiler: Pew

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(1d20+3)[5]
(1d8+1)[4] cold damage

About the time the bolt hit the sidewalk near her, Lavender caught sight of the approaching headlamp of a vehicle moving north on Spencer street. It would be driving past her in 1 round.

Warehouse Floor

The blinded man who was not yet dead continued to swipe his short sword around, yelling invectives in his mother tongue. The one buy the door controls put his hands in the air and spat out a lie, "I don't even work here!" The one with the wand out was a bit braver, pointing his wand defiantly in Gabriel's face and pulling the trigger.

Meanwhile, the fellow who had been napping in the shelves was now awake enough to regret his situation. With no obvious weapons on or near him, he put his hands up and pleaded with Rachel in rapid Lucerian.

Spoiler: Disadvantaged Pew

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(1d20+3)[20]
(1d20+3)[7]
(1d8+1)[4] cold damage

[TheDarkDM]

Retrieving a piton from his belt, Constantine quickly hammered home an anchor for his rope and sent it hurling down the side of the building towards Lavender. Her ascent secured, his baleful eye turned towards the hapless gangster shooting from the window.

[Jade_Tarem]

With the capo down, the Alchemist turned her attention to the recently roused tough between the stacks of crates. An attempt to get the girls' location from him yielded only a lie so bad that even Rachel could see through it. Out of patience and out of time when wands were still out, she grinned behind her cloth covering and goggles and cheerfully chirped, "Cinnamon: Kill!" The tiny homunculus drifted out from behind her, gave her a thumbs-up with his socializing hand, turned his circular eyes to cross-hairs, and two of the four arms came together to release a tiny dart of force.

All of that served as cover for the alchemist closing in, drawing a tiny satchel and activating it with more arcane speech. She threw it on the ground at the thug's feet while holding up an arm over her face, despite the mask she wore. You couldn't be too careful with this stuff. A cloud of noxious and strangely glittery blue-black smoke erupted and engulfed the goon, and as it drifted ever upward it eventually morphed into a skull-and-crossbones shape before dissipating.

Spoiler: OOC

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Cinnamon attempts to Kill (Bonus Action):
Attack: (1d20+8)[10]
Damage: (1d4+3)[4] Force damage on hit.

Rachel is using the Poison Spray cantrip. The thug must succeed on a Constitution Save (DC 16) or take (2d12+4)[10] Poison damage.

[Othniel]

Abigail hadn't ever shot fish in a barrel, but she imagined that this was somewhat how it felt as she sent two more eldritch blasts down to her foe.

Spoiler: OOC

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Eldritch BLAAAAAYST against Thug With Wand.
Attack: (1d20+6)[20]
Damage: (1d10+3)[10]
Attack: (1d20+6)[17]
Damage: (1d10+3)[13]

[PepperP.]

Lavender shot Connie a look of narrow-eyed bemusement as he tossed the rope down to her, certain she had missed another chance to even up her tally. She grabbed the rope and shouted up at the man who had waved his wand at her.

"You call that a wand? Was that supposed to be cold? You're going to have to do better than that if you are trying to impress me, Monsieur." Lavender sniffed haughtily as she attempted the climb a second time, with assistance.

Athletics
(1d20-1)[10]
Bless
(1d4)[3]

[Lleban]

Reaching for the now deceased wand thug Giovani mused to himself

"Lets see what they equip the boys with these days. Felix can you confiscate any errant Atma crystals in that big doll over there."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Okay. Let's try this again, shall we?

Hearing Abigail let loose another couple of blasts, and trusting that the rest of the party had things under control, Zeb made another attempt to get the door open.

Spoiler: OOC

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I roll a 17 this time to get the door open.

[Nefarion Xid]

With the Fontana muscle dispatched in a matter of seconds, the man in the tweed suit pocked his wand, slid down the rails of the ladder from the catwalk to the ground, threw open the door to the leather goods store and vanished inside.

Meanwhile, the man in the tank top kept his hands as high and visible as possible and stammered, "Hey hey hey I just unload the trucks! That's all, I swear! You let me go and I'm a ghost. I'll get out of town tonight!"

On Spencer street, the light of the vespa approached ... and then kept going north.

[TheDarkDM]

Intent on the man in the window, Constantine slithered down the wall alongside the rope, only for the tweed suit to have vanished. However, the gesticulations of the other contractors and the fading shudders of a slammed door left little doubt as to the direction of his prey's flight. Slipping back into the night, Constantine crawled with incredible speed towards the building's southern facade, down to the edge of the display windows. Sighting the terrified mafioso, his eyes flashed with sinister light as, beneath the tweed suit, a dryad death rune etched itself upon his flesh.

Spoiler: OOC

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Constantine moves, dashes, and casts Hunter's Mark as a bonus action.

[Jade_Tarem]

Rachel bypassed the man choking on her vapors and finally pulled the massive omni-tool from her body, aiming the business end of it at the catwalk and flicking a little trigger. With a chuff of compressed air, the head of the massive spanner sailed across the warehouse and onto the catwalk, and a second trigger pull caused it to reel the attached cable in. A moment later, the alchemist was on the level with the dead capo and considering which door to search first, even as Cinnamon did his best to keep up.

[PepperP.]

"You're all trying to hog the fun for yourselves! I hate that!" Lavender huffed as she followed the others into the rooftop door and made her way down to the catwalk. She paused momentarily as she found Rachel dithering.

"Oh, just choose one!" She strode forward decisively and knocked on the air in front of the door closest to the stairwell door. A loud booming sound emanated from her fist as she cast Knock on the door.

[Nefarion Xid]

The man in tweed man a last ditch effort to crouch behind a rack of jackets, but only needed a seconds to reconsider that the baleful dryad had an eye on him. He retreated back to the warehouse, knocking a mannequin aside in his mad dash, and reaching for his chest holster as a last hope. Surrounded on all sides by ranged and competent assailants, he didn't get to squeeze off another shot before he was dispatched.

The singular remaining Fontana thug kept his hands extremely visible and pleaded in silence at the shattered skylight where Abigail had him dead to rights.

A dog in the adjacent apartment building continued to bark as it had since the first disturbance, but that seemed to be the only sign that anyone or anything had taken notice of the noise from the battle. Frost wands were comparatively quiet, and the sound of skylight breaking had likely been lost in the ambience of a city of millions.

A room by room search of the third floor revealed the missing women in the middle office, barren . A long steel bar was bolted to the left and right wall and the three women were each handcuffed to the one on the left. The unused bar seemed to indicate that the Fontana family often had need to stash kidnapping victims. The windows had frosted glass and was reinforced with a steel grate. The women were down to their chemises, except one who still had a powder white wig pinned on in the style of the Dauphine Véronique. The swollen-shut black eye was not an emulation Roannese royalty.

The three tensed when the door was opened, but visibly relaxed when they saw Lavender and Rachel.

"Sacré Dieu! Monsieur Leblanc sent you, hein? I never doubted him!" The one in the wig removed her slender hand from the shackle, having evidently picked the lock a long time ago with a hairpin and put it back on loose for appearances. Clever, but with the window barred and door under constant guard, she hadn't managed to get farther than that.

Giovani

Popping open the industrial doll's access panel is easy, as is prying out the interchangeable spell module.

Spoiler: Loot

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Being well acquainted with such things, you (Giovani) accurately price the atma crystal at 200 dollars, and the rest of the module at 250. Though you will need to find some way to fence the module -- pawn shops know better than to buy what was obviously stolen from industrial equipment! The module is 20 pounds and the size of a football.

Between the dead thugs, the party finds:

A gold and sapphire ring of the Fotana family
A counterfeit Kaufmann & Berger gold wristwatch worth $20 ... or $200 if you convince someone it's a genuine K&B.
An alligator leather wallet worth $10
A nice pair of black derby shoes worth $25. Size 12.
3x Frost Wands, worth $200 each at a pawn shop.
A pocket sized mid-range communicator, capable of pairing to any similar device within the city. The Capo died before he could reach for this instead of his wand.

[TheDarkDM]

Leaving the kidnapping victims to his more sociable better half, Constantine moved through the scene of carnage with a practiced eye. He systematically enlarged the arrow wounds in the Fontana capo by stabbing home with one of the knives given them by Leblanc, before ramming it into the man's back and rolling him over to give the impression it had been forgotten in the confusion. Taking the stiffening hand of one of the swordsmen in his own gloved digits, he tore a strip from the blue sash with dead fingernails, before driving a Dacien knife through the man's gut for good measure. Another corpse's head was beaten to a bloody pulp against one of the metal shelves and flung to collapse into a crate of pasta sauce. Everywhere their combat had surgically excised one of the Fontanas, Constantine roved through and transformed into a scene of messy slaughter. Finally, blood-stained and impassive, he raised his eyes to find Lavender.

<"Vivi, I could use a cleanup before we leave.">

[Jade_Tarem]

Rachel hustled inside to the women and removed her hood and goggles. "Aye, we're on his dollar. Are any of you hurt? Besides the eye, I mean. I have magic to patch people up." Not waiting on their answer, Rachel got to work picking the locks on the other manacles. The capo probably had the key, but he also might not and time was at a premium. The locks didn't look that hard, anyway. "And can any of you identify the vehicle that brought you here if we find it parked outside? That'd be the one to swipe for getting you out of here."

[Othniel]

Abigail leapt lightly through the broken window and drifted gracefully down to the where the surrendered thug stood, flashing him a smile. "Try something and you're mincemeat." Guiding him closer to where the others were looting, rescuing, and setting the scene to make it look less professional, she called out, "What do you wanna do with this'n?" She had a feeling she already knew the answer.

[TheDarkDM]

Glancing back to the warlock, Constantine seemed to finally notice the still-living guard.

"Why is that one still breathing?"

[PepperP.]

<"Of course you could use a clean up, you got all the action, and here I am, Hammer dry and unsatisfied. Hmph!"> She waved her hand in his direction and cleaned the blood and sweat from his clothes. Her attention turned to Rachel.

"Fabulous cloaks and healing magic, that's two things we have in common." Lavender cleaned the women up with magic as she had Connie. Her ears perked up as she heard Connie's low growl.

"How's it going? Do you need help over there?" She shouted over to Abigail and Connie.

[Othniel]

"Sorry," Abigail apologized to the captive. "Can't take a chance you'll wind your sauce-box about us being here," she explained.

Two quick blasts of eldritch energy were followed by a dull thud onto the ground. "We're fine," she answered Lavender back.

[Nefarion Xid]

"And can any of you identify the vehicle that brought you here if we find it parked outside? That'd be the one to swipe for getting you out of here."

"Bien sur. It was a dark green delivery caravan with a bouquet of roses painted on the side."

No such luck. There was a red utility truck in the parking lot across the alley.

The woman in the white wig sighed, evidently reading the situation correctly. "Isaac didn't loan you a van for this job? Merde. Just point us towards the least soiled trousers. Maybe a jacket. We can walk."

Meanwhile, Gabriel, curiously rather practiced in ransacking bureaucratic spaces for items of interest, came out of the offices with the following:

The key to a Fairway light utility truck, left atop one of the desks.
240 dollars in various loose bills.
Women's costume jewelry in a drawer.
Real pearl earrings worth $20 as a pair.
A 3x2 oil portrait of a woman with a pet ermine signed by Michelle Ledet. Worth at least $400 if it's a real Ledet painting.
A lease agreement for an expensive apartment, too far north in town to be Fontana territory.

[Jade_Tarem]

"We're only supposed to make this look amateurish. We're not actually going to make our rescuees walk. Besides, he did give us money and instructions to put you up somewhere nice, so that's what we're going to do." Rachel straightened and led them out to the catwalk. Her jaw worked a bit at seeing Constantine's handiwork, but she understood. Too much magic, not enough brutality for thugs. He was cleaning up. "Ah, the truck will work. Ladies up front, gents in the back. We'll be on our way to the 'hoedown' in no time."

[Lord Of Mantas]

On the one hand, the adventurer in him was slightly disappointed that the action had resolved by the time he'd gotten down the stairs.

On the other hand, the pragmatist in him was quite satisfied that the fight had been a short one.

Just the way things ought to be. Quick, relatively quiet.

Looking around, Zeb quickly took stock of what was happening. Constantine, it seemed, had taken care of leaving the knives and sash, Rachel had freed the hostages, Abigail the final loose end, and Gabriel the looting.

Nothing left to do but sit and look pretty.

"Aye-aye," he said in response to Rachel's order, leaping into the back of the truck. Putting his sword away, he kept his fire wand at the ready, just in case there were any car chases - although, hopefully, they wouldn't be so unlucky.

[Othniel]

"Pack everyone in and let's get going," Abigail urges the others. "We've lingered long enough. I don't want to answer any difficult questions should the authorities stumble upon us here, and I'd rather not eliminate those kind of witnesses."

[TheDarkDM]

Their objectives complete, Constantine returned to the catwalk and looked down on the assembled hostages and their rescuers.

"Get them out of here then. I'll make sure you aren't followed."

Without waiting for a reply, he slipped back out the window and into the night. As he left, he smashed in the glass as though it had been jumped through, and retrieved both rope and piton from the roof.

[Nefarion Xid]

The Fairway truck seats a driver and three other petite women in the cab with a bit of squeezing and sitting on laps. The bed could reasonably fit ten if necessary. With few vehicle safety laws on the books, a packed truck making its way uptown after 10 on a Friday night draws little attention and no intervention from the authorities. By car, it takes only two minutes to drive far enough uptown to clear 34th street, but in a city measured in blocks by the mobs, it's practically a world away.

Guessing that 17th and Grenelle is plenty safe from the Fontana family's influence, the party arrives at the reassuringly named Chateau Bellevue hotel. A quick word with the concierge and the sight of Leblanc's cash is all it takes to have a bellhop sent out with complimentary robes to escort the ladies to their room discretely by way of the service elevator.

With the girls rescued, now enjoying room service and the lobster bisque, you are free to disperse and enjoy the nightlife of the city, or return to Mise en Place for celebratory drinks. The bar is open until 3, which is the earliest time Leblanc said he'd be done with his engagement. Though, it will suffice to let Lenny know that the job is complete and to meet with Leblanc again tomorrow evening.

[Jade_Tarem]

With the hostages rescued, Rachel drove anyone who wanted a lift to a point just outside of Leblanc's territory to drop them off. She then drove a bit farther and parked in a blatantly illegal manner. She trusted Constantine's skills to cover their exit from the warehouse, and having someone else be the last person to move the getaway vehicle - the tow truck driver, in this case - would ensure that no one among the rescue party would be sighted anywhere near where it ended up, which should be far away from the hotel the girls were staying at, as well.

The last of her chores done for the evening, she flagged down the nearest cab and checked herself over for any bloodstains she might have picked up from all the killing at the warehouse. No way was she walking through the city this late. There were some crazy people out there.

[Lord Of Mantas]

Zeb breathed a sigh of relief after the crew arrived at the hotel with no sign of pursuit. Once the women were checked in safely, he opted to accept Rachel's ride offer, then took a detour into a side alley to scrap his disguise. This done, he made his way home, and after a relaxing shower took a cab back to Mise en Place.

"Tonight has been a good night," he said to Lenny, upon entering. "I feel something off the top shelf is in order. What have you got that's old enough to drive?"

[Lleban]

Following Zeb was Giovani, responding while silent guiding Feliz to a nearby barstool. From his many bags, he withdrew a wide assortment and began to dutifully check Felix for damage, repairing whatever he could find. Shaking any detritus from the evening off his mustache, Giovani lazily remarked.

"Excellent job Zeb, and Lenny I think it's time for that whiskey and ham sandwich!"

[Othniel]

Abigail came along as well, having been intrigued by the establishment earlier and wondering what other goings-on might be seen or joined in. She didn't order anything just yet, however, preferring merely to sit and wait. And watch.

[Nefarion Xid]

The night before

Letting Lenny know slyly that the job was done, everyone who had returned to Mise en Place was treated to as many gratis drinks as they could stomach. Lenny couldn't possibly have known if the warehouse had been left in a satisfactory way, but one could surmise that no amount of alcohol was worth the fallout of lying to M. Leblanc.

Ham sandwiches, alas, had to be acquired from the cart at the street corner. While the Mise en Place had no kitchen and didn't serve food, there were a number of vendors in the area eager to sell to the famished patrons coming and going from bars.

Saturday Evening

Rejoining their host in the penthouse's great room the following evening, the party found Leblanc and Miss Strife -- the former quite chipper and the latter her usual dour self. Audrey was in attendance too, if not exactly present. The wiry woman was clearly wearing the same clothes as the night before with the additions of wrinkles and a lipstick smudge (not her shade) on her limp shirt collar. She seemed to have been propped up in some way as to bare a resemblance to a bodyguard, but her mouth was slightly open and there seemed be no activity behind her rose glasses.

Leblanc clapped his hands, then gestured to a weighty crystal decanter where a magnum of something assuredly Roannese had been left to breathe. There were glasses enough for everyone and he meant to serve yourself if you were interested. The vampire seemed too spirited to be bothered with the tradition that the host should pour for his guests.

"Oh, you lot really left quite the body count. I mean, you all came recommended, but it's impossible to overstate my satisfaction with your thoroughness. If there's someone who saw what happened at the warehouse, and I don't doubt there isn't, no one's talking. Too early to say if I've escaped suspicion entirely, or who will be the first to get a stubby fat finger pointed at them, but I think I've come out of this rather well! I was swilling bloody Zibibbo and laughing at Enrico Fontana's jokes half the night. He thinks I'm too stupid to know what his boys did to my girls."

The humor drained from his face and Leblanc went still for a moment as he seemed to ponder the sliver of dusk light shooting between the heavy velvet curtains. His jawline dropped by half an inch and the bulge in his upper lip was surely his tongue slathering across his fangs.

"Well, let me thank you sincerely for the rescue. Meline, Fosette, Trixie: they're all safe now and recovering from their ordeal. I'm, of course, rather invested in the health and well-being of everyone in my employ."

Elizabeth smirked very slightly, but said nothing.

"Ah. You have Madame Maxence's appreciation as well. If you're inclined, you should be most warmly received at the Jealous Wolf. On the house, as they say. But now is the time for show-and-tell. Tell me how it went and show me what you've procured. Did you get the capo's ring?"

[PepperP.]

Lavender noticed the smirk Elizabeth had given Leblanc as the vampire's moods drifted through several extremes. Regardless, he was pleased with their work, and she was pleased that he was pleased, even if the job had left her personally unsatisfied. She had worn what she considered her "work" outfit this evening, though it was far more practical that the evening wear she had donned for the interview, the outfit was still far from utilitarian, insisting that deadly and cute were not opposing diametrics, an argument that Connie was all too familiar with by now.

"Rachel, wasn't it you who took out the Capo?" She arched a querying eyebrow at Rachel as lavender strode across the room to pour two glasses of wine from the heavy decanter.

"Forgive me if I am mistaken, but the last I saw of him, half of his face was melted away and I associated that with you for some reason." She gave the other woman a cheeky smile and returned to Constantine's side and handed her companion the glass without a word.