The following morning I woke up to the sound of people up and about and the smell of bacon. I stumbled out of the back room, bumping into a chair that was not quite in front of me. Damn it! Paradox still hasn't released its claws. After a frustrating breakfast, ( it's difficult to eat scrambled eggs, when your mouth isn't where you last left it. ) we sat down and discussed our tentative plans for the day. We decided that it was time to return to the "high and mighty" Forteau's house. Great, just when I thought my morning was getting better.
After breakfast, Renae got a knock on her door and one of the ditziest girls I've ever seen gave Renae an invitation to some Halloween party to bless something called a weather machine. I found out later that the ditz, named Stephanie, is one of the local Verbena. I bet she wants to get T-shirts made to commemorate the event. Talk about sorority girl from hell...
Apparently Nathaniel and Eric finally found their way back, because Nathaniel had come home and slept on the couch. Eric was at a hotel. True to form, Nathaniel had completely forgotten which hotel Eric was staying in. Someone made Nathaniel empty his pockets ( you wouldn't imagine the amount of stuff that man carries around with him. I'm surprised we didn't find a bird nest, rubber chicken, and a kitchen sink in his coat. ) Anyway, he eventually produced a slip of paper that had the name of Eric's hotel. After a quick search through the hotel's helpful computer, I gave Eric's room a call, but there was no answer.
Renae drove us over to the hotel ( I sure wasn't going to attempt to drive my bike in the condition I was in. ) and we tromped up to Eric's room. He was there, and he even managed a reluctant answer this time. We drug him out bed and went to Forteau's.
At the house, Forteau's strange little stone servant answered the door and led us into the old man's study. That's when the bastard informed us that he expected a year's service out of us and that it was our friggin duty to obey. Screw that! The rest of the group seemed willing to accept it and believe that just because their mentors told them to jump, they should. If Ralph tried to pull that one on me you'd better believe that I'd tell him to go to hell. Forteau went on to tell us our 'quest'. Apparently that weather machine that Stephanie mentioned is actually something important. According to Forteau, it is a magical artifact created by the New World Order. Supposedly the NWO used this thing to bring about Hurricane Fran in a ploy to wipe out one of the local Verbena Covens. From what Forteau said, the ploy worked, but in the process, one of the other covens managed to steal the machine. I guess Renae isn't the only Verbena worth the space she takes up. With Stephanie, I'm not so sure. Forteau said that this thing has been controlling the weather for so long, that to simply destroy it would cause all hell to break loose. So in his infinite wisdom, he will take it off our hands (once we get it ) and "keep it safe". I agree that the NWO definitely should not have it ( we Adepts had enough trouble getting the Net back up after Fran, that we don't need the Technocracy screwing things up that bad on a regular basis ), but I don't trust Forteau much more than I do the NWO. So I will play the game for now, at least until we get the weather machine, and figure out what to do with the damn thing when the time comes.
Before we were 'dismissed', Forteau informed us that there was a place downtown that had been prepared for us while we "did his work". In addition, we added another member to our group. Her name is Cab. Other than that, I don't know much about her. Apparently she to is buying the year of service bit too.
We left Forteau's and split up. Renae, John, Kasee and I headed back to Renae's place. My paradox had finally faded, and I wanted my bike back. Kasee insisted on stopping by her house, so after getting to Renae's, we drove over there. John and Renae took her car and waited unobtrusively nearby. I took Kasee on my bike and we went inside her house. On the way in, I reached out with my senses to check the house for occupants, but all I could find were cats. Once inside, the place seemed deserted. There were cats all over the place, but that was it. Kasee seemed very disturbed that none of the numerous litter boxes were dirty and all the cats seemed happily fed. It seemed a little odd to me, but why complain. Personally I'd be happy if all cats worked that way. Eventually Renae and John joined us and the two females discussed the strange cat phenomena. After satisfying themselves that the house was truly abandoned, we went to this new place Forteau had described. Kasee insisted on bringing one of the cats. She had already picked up Eclipse, her own pet cat, but she demanded that we take one of the ones from the house with us. I'd be happy to just forget the cat thing, but Kasee would never let me hear the end of it if I tried to leave the cat there.
We headed over to the new place and took a look around. It was a brick building with lots of rooms, similar to a dorm. In addition, it had a kitchen, living room, basement, and an incredible library. Nathaniel had already moved into the basement and filled it with mountains of bizarre junk. Apparently he had also pirated cable. Reuben had move in and brought a large black dog, that oddly enough, seemed infatuated with the TV. I don't think I've ever seen a dog actually watch TV like that before. After taking a good look at the library, I decided that picking a room, just in case, wouldn't hurt. As it turns out, the library is full of all sorts of wonderful arcane and magical knowledge. I spent most of the month completely absorbed, reading about magic in general, and correspondence in particular.
Near the end of the month we found out that John had spoken to someone he knew, who mentioned some mages that hung around the mall. Supposedly they knew about the weather machine. They were described as "the ones in black and chains". Upon hearing this, Kasee perked up and volunteered that she thought she knew who they were talking about. She said that there are a group of teenagers that hang around the mall. Wonderful, now we have Awakened mall rats.
Kasee had been pulling some stuff relating to the spirit world and was currently suffering the consequences. Paradox had snuck up on her and slapped her in the face. Her vision was stuck in the spirit world. This made navigation extremely difficult for her. Since she was the one that knew who we were looking for, we brought her along anyway. Thankfully her paradox wore off about the time we got there.
At the mall we spread out and began looking for the mall rats. I linked into the mall security system and did a quick search for them through the network of cameras. I found them up in the food court. We all eventually wandered up there, looking as subtle as a heard of rhinoceroses. There were four or five of them in the food court and the video arcade. We sat around for a while trying to figure out some subtle approach when I got fed up with it and decided to embarrass myself and resorted to blatancy. One of the teenagers was a huge guy named Ogre. He was playing a game of Mortal Kombat. I threw in a quarter and played him a couple rounds. He was not too bad, but there are not many in my league when it comes to computers. I'm a Virtual Adept after all. I broke out with something stupid like "So, do you know any pagans?" real slick, yeah right. I mumbled something about a sister getting involved and being worried about her. It was about as subtle as a load of bricks, but it got me what I wanted. Ogre mumbled back that I should talk to his sister, Betsy, she was the one that knew that stuff. Then Ogre really surprised me. He dragged me into the digital web, through the arcade screen. Okay so this guy isn't so clueless. We were in a special sector of the web that had been formatted like the Mortal Kombat game. It was pretty cool. I still beat the pants off him, but I tried not to be as obvious about it. After the game, we shifted back to 3space and I thanked him for the game. It was about closing time and one of the guards told us it was time to leave.
We turned around to talk to Ogre and his friends, but they had vanished, quite literally. We decided to leave when Nathaniel started insisting that they were still here, but they were nowhere to be seen. We headed on out to the parking lot, and waited for Nathaniel to join us. Eventually he did, with Ogre and friends in tow.
After some deliberation and a nosy cop checking up on us, we agreed to meet at one of the local parks. The meeting was less than useful, we all met up there and everyone reverted to children arguing and dancing around the issues, venturing very little and trying to pry any available knowledge from other side. We agreed to meet just before Halloween and possibly join forces to get the weather machine. I admit I had to fight the temptation to show off as we left.
The next morning, Nathaniel was fooling with the cable, when a news report came on claiming that there had been a massive explosion in one of the residential neighborhoods and one woman had been killed. I wasn't really paying attention till I caught a picture of Kasee's Aunt on the screen. This was a very nasty joke, but no one was laughing. Kasee was understandably very upset. The news cast also said that Kasee was missing and the authorities were looking for her. Damn it! I guess things had been quiet for a little too long. Through a combination of Kasee's pleading and my own curiosity, I cranked up my mirrorshades and took a closer look. What I saw was frightening. The whole house was gone. I looked closer and realized just how wrong things were. From a distance it looked like the house had blown up, but taking a real look showed that things were scrambled at the molecular level. The amount of chaos involved was absolutely staggering, I almost fell over in shock. Everything was leveled.
Later that day, John came back to the building, that I've begun referring to as the Chantry, and told us that one of his contacts knew of the weather machine and that it was being sent in for the party. Apparently whoever sent it is at least comfortable with the modern world, because it was being sent FedEx. This was the information that I needed. FedEx has been advertising how easy it is to track your packages on route, so I decided to test their claims. I tapped into their database and found a fair amount of information on the thing. OK, so I'm impressed. FedEx is actually useful. The package was shipped in from the northwest and then the records claim the package was lost in DC. I did some more checking and found out that a similar package was shipped from the same place and sent to a Post Office box here in the Triangle. I think it's worth checking out. Maybe this is the break we needed.