chicago mission ♔ the people under your feet are shooting stars in the night

[rationalizes]

♬ Dreamworld - Rilo Kiley

WHO || Gar, Kat, Mark, Dumage, Martha, Myri, Buffy, Sven, Spike, Desmond Descant, ??, ?? [Closed]
WHAT || The Knights infiltrate Nightscape to intercept a deal for the Eternal Jade. And... so does Des. At the same time. Hilarity ensues???
WHERE || Chicago. Nightscape.
WHEN || Friday, March 9th, various tiemes.
HOW || Actionspam; Don't sweat tagging order.

It's been a busy day. Following Gar's discovery of a message that seems to imply a trade for the artifact known as the Eternal Jade will take place at a location called "Nightscape" the next evening, several of the Knights headed out to the area outlined in Hoffman Institute files, only to discover the place was an office building that sold pharmaceuticals. However, as Myrilandel stared at a strange canopied fruit stand attached to the front of the building, she began to notice something, well, quite odd about it. A long line of people waited against the edifice to enter the stand, but none of them looked as if they fit into the commercial sector whatsoever, with their leather, vinyl, spiked hair, glitter, colored hair, etc. In fact, only by staring at the image presented and concentrating could the others recognize there was something wrong with the whole picture - something that caused theirs eyes to rebound off from it and find the entire scene innocuous otherwise. The line of people disappeared into the canopy - but none of the crowd ever came out again, defying any logic about how many people could humanly fit inside the tiny stand at a time.

It was clear that it wasn't just any fruit stand.

It was an entrance. They quickly surmised just what it had to be an entrance to. Myrilandel managed to note a number of guards emerging from the club after hours, dressed in some kind of futuristic looking armor that... looks a lot like Halo armor. She spotted the symbol on the side of the van they climbed into, and the surveillance team took note of it before heading back to the hotel.

Meanwhile, the research team back home (Kat, Buffy, and Sven mostly, since Gar passed out asleep in her chair) threw themselves into finding out what they could about Nightscape: and found rumors about an invite-only underground club, whose location was protected by magic, which seemed to mesh with what the other Knights had seen. The most interesting aspect of the club, however, wasn't just the fact that invitations to it come in the form of pills that implant directions into the subject's unconscious mind, but that supposedly it played havoc with the memories of those who frequent it. Every visit fades from the patron's mind when they leave, in the same way a dream does - they could remember a vague feeling of what it was like, but not any details about what actually occurred - and the more they attempted to remember, the more the memories would elude them.

Today, they've managed to look up that symbol Myri noticed on the side of the van and identify it as belonging to a private security firm that hires out to wealthy patrons in often underhanded deals. Which has allowed a plan of action to be hatched. :O

The Knights will coordinate efforts to plant a fake detour between the security firm and the club, derailing a van full of guards to lead to a stop light that will be controlled by Kat. And allow them to come up through a conveniently placed manhole to plant a device on the underbelly of the truck that will cripple its battery temporarily. At this point, the Knights will assume control of the vehicle, and Kat, Gar, Buffy, and Spike will don the armor of the guards and take their weapons, proceeding to the club as security personnel. Mark and Myrilandel will transport the captured guards to somewhere safe to keep them out of the way and possibly interrogate them. Dumage and Martha will drop off Sven at the club - he'll be attempting to bluff his way through the front door as a patron so that they can have an eye in the crowd as well, and then the ladies will park on the street to sit and wait as a getaway car / backup if necessary.

Obviously, nothing could possibly go wrong. :)

[ooc; subthreads to come!]

Comments

[rationalizes]

♬ Disturbia - Rihanna

[There seems to be a little breathing room between the entrance to the rooms here, and the crowd, which is a definite relief at this point. A few patrons break off here and there to head towards the doors. Buffy would notice many of them slip a card out of their pockets, and slide it through a keycard reader next to the doors, which open momentarily, only exposing a flash of matching color as the person slips inside.

Each door also has a numerical keypad beside it.]

[slays]

[ Buffy pushes past Spike to get closer to the doors to get a better look once she catches a glimpse of the cards, then looks back at him, grabbing his arm. ]

Security. Looks like they've got some kind of cards. We're gonna need to get a couple before we can get anywhere. [ As in ... get via knocking out patrons and taking their cards. She looks back at the rooms, then back at Spike. ] That ... and pick a rabbit hole to go down.

[bigbad]

[Spike nods, watching the patrons go in and out.] Let's start by getting a card. Chances are, it won't even work with all the doors.

[He starts striding towards the doors.] Here, I'll distract, you knock 'em over the head. [He's not sure if he could hit them without getting a migraine or not. But it's not really the time to start experimenting, he thinks. Better to just let Buffy do the hitting.]

[behindcloseddoors]

[A young guy in his twenties with a splattering of piercings all over his face and hair sculpted into unnatural formations that branch out from his head in a few directions moves towards the red door, a few down from them. He starts slapping the pockets of his coat as if to locate something and seems to be coming up empty. Frustrated, he reaches into the inside pocket of his coat.

His long, leather, black coat that looks about 30 years old or so. And more badass than any other article of clothing.

Unfortunately, he looks ... less than badass himself, which seems like a waste of a really good coat. How unfortunate.

Now would be a good time for a Wisdom check for pangs of familiarity, perhaps...]

[bigbad]

[...that coat.

Spike does a double-take (aka action point. WORTH IT.) but his wisdom check of 18 means he has absolutely no doubt he recognises that coat. He can't place the where or the why, but he knows that somehow, it's related to him. He needs to take it from the boy. See if he can understand the feeling. Maybe it's some sort of clue to his past.

Plus, it would look ten times better on him than on the boy.

He walks over to the kid and taps his shoulder.]

Security check. Gonna need to see your card.

[behindcloseddoors]

[The kid turns around to eye him up and down, gaze landing on that gun. He holds up both hands in a gesture of innocence.] I-I was just lookin' for it! Hold on. [His hand scrabbles back into his pocket, and comes out shaking, the card fluttering out of his hand and onto the floor, where he bends over to pick it up] Sorry...

[slays]

[ Buffy takes this opportunity to step up to his side and knock him in the back of the head with the butt of her gun. Atk 34 dmg 14. As he falls to the ground, she crouches and picks up the card from where he was going to get it, then turns it over in her hands and glances back at the door. ] I think there are keypads, too. Any thoughts on how to handle those?

[bigbad]

[Spike's already pulling the guy's coat off of him, but oh, hey, that's a good point.]

Maybe he's got something in his pockets. [He starts digging around. Search check 12.] Or I suppose we could try shooting the control panels. Works in films.

[slays]

We are not shooting the contro-- [ She looks up at him, spotting him ... mugging this guy and taking his coat what the actual fuck, Spike. ] What are you doing? [ The voice modifier doesn't do jack to hide the harsh, shrewish tone of her voice. ]

[bigbad]

[He looks up at her, not really looking guilty through the big mask that hides his face.] Uh. Thought it might help me blend in.

[slays]

[ She's still judging, but she does consider this. Behind the face-hiding helmet, her extended stare just seems like more judgment, though. But, really, she's thinking about it. She glances to the doors. The only people going in are patrons, which means chances are, they should look like patrons if they want to get inside. Buffy pulls off her helmet decisively. ]

Just hurry up.

[behindcloseddoors]

[Lucky for them, the people in the crowd are too caught up in their own little world out there to notice all this going on. A search of the boy's pockets yields a scrap of paper that says: BLOOD ROOM 4-5-1-7. Another clubgoer walks beyond them to the yellow door, but barely spares them a glance, apparently figuring the guy just passed out from having Too Much Fun. The big tough guard taking off his helmet and ... being a tiny blonde girl, however, earns a stare, but then his door opens and after only a moment of hesitation, he slips inside.]

[bigbad]

[Spike smirks.] Aha! Here we are. [He hands the paper to Buffy, then starts undoing his armour.] Reckon that's the red door.

[slays]

Gee, you think? Doesn't take a vampire. [ She rolls her eyes a little at that, then shrugs out of her armor, stepping out. Her clothes aren't exactly clubby (she was dressed for beating up guards and stealing their clothes, after all) but they look a hell of a lot more inconspicuous than bulky armor. She steps out of it and then turns the card over in her hand. ] That's probably what we enter on the keypad. [ She shows him the number. ] Come on. We can both go in; we shouldn't split up.

[bigbad]

[Spike slips the coat on and it fits... like a lady's coat on a slim, relatively short man. Which is to say well. It feel's right. Yeah, the kid sure isn't getting this back. Ever.]

Yeah, obviously. To both of those. [He stands up and nods towards the door.] Well? Try it.

[slays]

[ She hesitates, giving him a look once he's got the jacket all slipped on. Ugh. She just shakes her head and then gets to her feet as well, heading to the door and waiting for Spike to follow before she slips the card in. She punches the numbers into the keypad: 4-5-1-7. ]

[behindcloseddoors]

♬ Toxic (fEAR remix) - Britney Spears

[The red light flashes twice, and then blinks green, and there's a barely audible click as the lock depresses.

When opened, the overall effect is just as overwhelming as walking into the club in the first place: the entire room is awash in a garish red glow that colors everyone and everything inside. Considering that all the walls, floors, and furniture themselves are shades of red, it takes the eyes a moment to adjust to what the hell is actually going on in here. Cages with crimson bars in the middle of the room contain barely clothed dancers, alternating between gyrations and reaching out through the bars towards patrons who walk too close, grasping at the bars and hissing and snapping like rabid beast women. A spot check of 12 can notice the incredibly sharp fangs, since they're openly baring them at all too appreciative onlookers.

The things going on in the various booths and corners of the room scream every shade of sinful: men and women of a number of largely humanoid species, er, consorting, some with knives or claws or fangs or--

Well, you get the idea. It's easy to figure out at a glance why the hell they call it the "Blood Room". The music pulses loudly enough to cover most of the sounds and screams, but it seems clear that everything in here is consensual, even if it's all incredibly fucked up. Maybe Riley's here somewhere. There's no other visible exits.]

[bigbad]

[The smell hits Spike before anything else. He has to brace himself, but with a will save of 23, the urge to vamp out and bite into the nearest neck passes pretty quickly. His spot check of 14 reveals that that's not the case for the ladies in the cages. Or the various patrons around the room. He looks around, swallowing a little.]

I don't think it's going down here. Let's leave. Now.

[slays]

[ Buffy's motions are slow and stiff as she enters the room. It all feels surreal, from the way the noise drowns Spike out, to the way it's hard to distinguish the furniture and the people from the walls and the room itself, to what these people -- if you can call them that -- are doing. Her stomach turns as she notices, with a spot check of 17, that people is a really loose term. Fangs. Big, scary, vicious, people-eating fangs.

She doesn't budge at Spike's words, because she's too frozen in place, staring. Horrified. All of these people, just ... offering themselves up. It was disgusting. They were gonna get themselves killed. ]

[bigbad]

[Buffy's being quiet. He turns towards her and grabs her shoulders, shaking her hard.] Come on, pet. Now's an awful time to go catatonic on me.

[firstslayer]

[But it isn't so easy for her to wake up.

For a moment, Spike's words, the mission, everything else that is falls away, and there is nothing but the beat of the music that seems to merge with the rising sound of her own blood pulsing in her ears,

and her

and them.

a sequence of nightmare images seem to jump out of her unconscious, merging with reality in flashes

brutal and unforgiving

and there's a voice: a raspy, ancient voice that seems to whisper one word, just one word, over and over behind her, even if it's unclear what that word is, as the scene spins in her mind...]

[slays]

[ Her heart paces faster with the rhythm of the music, and then faster, and then it feels like it might just explode. And then it feels like it's all piling up, the images, the violence, stopping her from breathing. ] Can't breathe. [ She staggers. ] Feel like I can't -- [ And then the nightmares feel real. Coming back to haunt her, grabbing her, shaking her. She winds up and punches what she perceives as the source of the indiscernible voice -- hard, knocking Spike back (atk 26 dmg 12). ]

[bigbad]

[It hits, easily, unless his new coat suddenly gives him a +8 bonus to AC, which it... really doesn't. His head snaps back with the force of the blow. He grabs his nose, eyes watering, and glares at her.]

Now is not the time for your little nervous breakdown! Snap out of it already! And don't hit me! [Because he will hit her back and that would hurt him as well.]

[firstslayer]

[But it feels right, feels like the only thing that is right, the only thing that is

the whisper doesn't leave her, is still all around her, behind her, inside her.

For a moment, Spike's face is replaced by another, grotesque image of something primitive and powerful, starkly colored, eyes bulging with intensity and single-minded focus. And her voice whispers again, more insistently, the word drilling into Buffy's skull:]

DEATH.

[The red seems to be a filter over everything now, not just her vision. She sees, hears, tastes, feels the red. Screams echo out from behind her, inside the room, breaking out through gaps in the beat.

*Will save of 16 or higher will break her out of ... all this.]

[slays]

[ Death. It sparks something inside her, something familiar. Some sense of understanding. Death. She should -- She is. It comes to her like truth, and drives her forward to curl her hands around the spectre's neck, squeezing. (25 atk 12 dmg) Choking the life out of it. Suffocating it the way she's suffocating, fighting her off --

And then it lapses. (22 will save) The vision blurs and she glimpses through it, sees Spike there. Smells the sweat and the blood of the red room. Hears the pulse of the music thrumming through her bones instead of the hiss of the macabre, creaking whisper. She drops her hands, surprised at herself. It tries to grab onto her and suck her back down, but she fights to pull herself out of it, blinking and looking around wildly. ]

There's something wrong with this place. With this -- [ She squeezes her eyes shut briefly, shaking it off. ] Spike, we need to find where this deal's going down. [ Why, no, she's not apologizing for beating him up. ]