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While sitting in a coffee shop discussing obliquely how we would attempt to determine Chester's, whereabouts, a hot, yet frosty chick walked in and came straight over to our table. She claimed to be of divine descent like us, and that she had some information for us. She said her mommy was Hel, whom I had no idea about. Was that one of the greek gods? She clarified though, upon seeing our varied confusion, that she was of Norse descent. Oh okay. The only Nord God I knew of was Morrigan, the likeness of whom I had played in some video game once.

Just to be sure she was on the up-and-up though, I called up BOOBS. He confirmed that this Gail person was supposed to be there. Alrighty then.

Gail informed us that she knew the location of Chester Knively's ex-wife, and that she may know how to get ahold of him. Well! That would work out quite well for us. Out of the coffee shop Gail led us, and we all hopped on a train, heading out into the countryside, to a small village called Crhgyailfaghyngth (I think it must've been in Wales) to a particular Bed and Breakfast that his ex-wife happened to run.

Liza was very nice, in her fifties, and didn't seem too broken up about being divorced from him. She essentially told us that Chester was a swinger, and regularly hosted parties (on the new moon) for some type of social club called a Hellfire Club. These parties had an associated door-password and party-theme to go with each particular instance. And at the parties, I guess people did all sorts of stuff at them: drugs, booze, sex, gambling, etc. Vice oriented stuff. Sounded right up my alley! Nothing's more fun than parties, and, although it would be sad to have to crash it, it would provide a good setting for getting my claws into Chester. Either he would have the document there, or I could simply extract its whereabouts from him and then we could go retrieve it later. Given the party setting, he would probably be tipsy or high or both, any of which would make him so much easier to manipulate. Jackpot! *grin*

While our new pal Gail headed upstairs into the attic of the Bed and Breakfast to sift through some of Chester's old documents, I questioned his ex-wife some more, and got the names of some people that she had known to have attended these parties in the past. Gail returned not too much later and we headed out, thanking his super nice ex-wife for all of her help. Gail said that based on her analysis, Chester was most likely the son of Lugh, an Irish God of being good at lots of random stuff. I guess he was a lot like Hermes, Jack's daddy. That being the case, there was no knowing where his talents lay. But that was okay, I could work with that I think. We knew he had a paper fetish and liked “getting around”, so it shouldn't be a problem.

In preparation, we picked one of the patrons Chester's ex-wife had mentioned, one Baron von Unterbite, as the person from whom we would go visit to extract the door-password and party-theme. We drove up to his estate house, a little run down but still large and expansive. We buzzed in at the gate saying Chester had sent us. Ahren, Niko and I were ushered into a waiting room for about 15 minutes until the Baron appeared. He was a nice, older man, perhaps in his sixties, and we met with him under the auspices of making a custom designed costume for him for the upcoming party. By interrogating what he liked, what ideas he had for his costume, we were able to get an idea that the theme was something along the line of Pan's Labyrinth. After Ahren was done measuring him, I questioned him to “make sure he had the correct password”, which he said was “Ophelia”. Splendid!

With the information we required in hand, we all headed back out to the limo, and Ahren spun him up a costume on the way back to The Dorchester in London. Upon arriving at the hotel, we shipped out the Baron's costume and then we all had a week to do whatever we pleased.

What I pleased, was calling up my contacts in the cartel and inquiring as to a local London affiliate who might be able to direct me to a chop-shop for the Citroen I had recently acquired. My contact gave me the name of a man named Arthur Hughes. I called up Arthur and arranged to meet with him for a spot of tea in an hour at a shop local to his part of town. I wrote down some directions from him and drove over there in my Citroen for the meeting.

Arthur was in his fourties, a bit of a bean-pole, and of typical polite and sunny british bearing despite such a shady profession. He had brown hair streaked with grey, striking blue eyes, and was a bit on the toothy side. His accent hailed from the lower side of town, but that wasn't too surprising given the type of side-business in which he was involved. Typically, though, people of this nature had a more legit day job, and talking with him for a few minutes I was able to deduce he worked at some sort of property-oriented barrister's office. I had to admit, it was a good day-job to have in order to know what the actual property laws were so that one could more easily get around them. Heh.

After sitting down with a cup of tea and some pastries and exchanging pleasantries for a few minutes, I told him that I had been referred to him by a mutual associate by name of Juan Herrera, and that I needed my recently acquired car (I pointed out the window to it parked on the curb) to be sanitized. Arthur, in typical british fashion, cheerfully gave me the name and directions to a local shop as if he were commenting on a theatrical production he had recently seen that he had liked very much. Amusing.

After taking down the information, I then told him I needed him to arrange me some transportation for the vehicle home to America two days after Chester's party. He grinned and told me that it was not a problem, that he would get it arranged immediately. I thanked Arthur profusely for his help, and then we headed off to the bank to make a transaction to pay for his assistance.

Once that was done, I hopped back into my Citroen, dropped Arthur off, and headed over to the local chop shop. I explained to the guys there that I needed the car sanitized, and that I wanted it painted red, suped-up a little more, and that I needed legit papers for driving it around in London for the next week or two without being harrassed by the police. I used my charm to get them to do an exceptionally good job on it, and to get it done as quickly as possible. And they did, well, mostly because I let them all nail me in turn, back in the manager's office. Mmmmm dirty British grease monkies, so much fun.

Two days later, I had my new, shiny, fast, fun, sexy-red Citroen C4.

In the meantime, Gail, I think, must've gone off to research the property where Chester hosted his parties, because about mid-week she came by my room and asked me to help her get ahold of some sealed records from a particular construction contracting company that had done some renovation work on the Banfield estate (Chester's country home). I returned to the construction contractor's office with her and basically fooled the guy she'd been working with into thinking I was a government agent with the equivalent of a warrant. As he corrected himself saying, “oh yes, yes, I remember seeing your credentials now…,” I explained to him that it would be right good of him to hurry off to get us the information we needed so that we could minimize the time spent interrupting his oh so very important work.

When he returned with the papers we needed, I sat back and filed my nails while Gail flipped through the paperwork methodically. Once she was done, I thanked the man profusely and we headed back out to the hotel.

Ahren, of course during this week, had spun us up some fabulous costumes. Mine was pixie themed with lots of oranges and reds, perhaps a fire sprite. The mask that came with it was extremely ornate and very beautiful; a work of art. My, Ahren had such talent! I couldn't wait to wear it at the party!

Luckily for me, the party was only a couple days later. I could hardly contain my excitement!

On the big day, we all sat in Ahren's limo riding along a rustic road up to an estate house for just a touch over an hour. We pulled over just outside of it so that Jack could climb out and crawl underneath, riding in that way, so that he could go off do his break-and-enter thing while the rest of us had fun at the party. As soon as the car stopped, some footmen dressed as satyrs approached and opened the doors of the limo for us. We all piled out one by one, and then headed up to the house. Jack stole away just after the satyr men turned and headed back up the steps behind us, where we were finally asked for the password. “Ophelia,” Gail stated matter-of-factly, and the butler nodded and stood aside, allowing us entrance.

We were still at touch early, so Chester had not made his grand appearance yet. In the meantime, I mingled, speaking to people and guaging the kind of folks who had been invited to such a party. I tried to kind of stay away from the others I had come with; I wanted to disassociate myself from them in case something dumb happened. After a few minutes of wandering, I found Baron von Unterbite among the crowd, wearing the costume Ahren had made for him. He looked great I noted, and seemed to be enjoying himself already, a glass of wine in one hand and a 30-something woman in the other.

I continued chatting with people for the good part of an hour before some official-like folks came in and ushered everyone out on the back deck.

Once we had all convened there, Chester appeared on a platform in the middle of this incredibly large hedge maze, and announced to the gathered crowd that everyone should head into the maze and then the party will get underway at the structure on the exit side of it. Sounds good to me!

As soon as he finished speaking, the lights shining onto the maze went out, and we were all left to our own devices.

Not everyone headed into the maze, but I sure did. I wanted to see what was on the other side! The walls were higher than I was tall, but luck must've been with me, because I apparently had no problems navigating it. I strode calmly through it, listening and glancing around at the things going on around me. At one point a little goblin thing came up to me, exclaimed loudly, and ran away. He seemed perturbed by my divine heritage. Oh well, I simply shrugged and kept going.

As I got deeper into the maze, or perhaps closer to the end was a better way to put it, I began to see increasing amounts of clothing laying upon the path, and heard the sounds of people having a “good time” all around me. Indeed, indeed. I stayed away from other people for now, and of course, kept my clothes in place. Emphasis on “for now.”

After not too long, I emerged from the hedges only to find myself staring into the mouth of a cave from where “fun” sounds were eminating. People emerged from the hedges all around me and strode right down into the cave, laughing and drinking and having a good time. I stood there for a few moments wondering where I would find Chester, when my phone rang. It was George, saying that Jack hadn't found the document but had in fact gotten into some trouble and was about to start some shit. Presently, Gail emerged next to me, also holding her phone to her ear. Hmm, I guess we needed find Chester and extract from him the location of the document sooner rather than later.

Well, this was as good as any place to find him. Gail and I headed down into the cave and as luck would have it, we both at the same time spied Chester down in the middle of the goings-on, chatting with some other dude about some topic or other. Both still had their clothes on and wine glasses in their hands. I looked at Gail and she looked at me, I nodded to Chester and she nodded affirmatively. Alright, we would tag-team him. Sounded good to me. Gail would handle the nerding part of the discussion and I would be the adoring fan. That would work quite nicely, I thought.

As we approached, we heard the two men discussing formula one racing. Snore! But we weaseled into their conversation and began working to take control of the conversation and lead it where we wanted. It was surprising to me how difficult it was getting Chester talking about his document restoration business, given how much of a fetish it was for him. After a few minutes, Gail started interjecting comments, implying that she often handled delicate documents herself, and wanted to know about some of his techniques. At first he was like pssssh, whatevs, but after she demonstrated that she actually knew a thing or two about it, he became quite a bit more interested. So, between the two of us, we were finally able to steer the conversation over to the “oldest printed document” which was of course, the Diamond Sutra.

We got it out of him that he was working on it, which was a good second step (after the first step of getting him talking about his document restoration business at all). The next step was to either get it out of him where he was keeping it, or get him to show it to us himself. After a little more talking, we did discover a few things about its fragility: namely that it had to be in the pressure and air controlled chamber or else it would disentigrate, and that he had a fancy gadgetish suitcase that could be used to transport it for short amounts of time. This implied it had to be in the estate house grounds somewhere, but probably not within arm's reach. It simply *had* to be in the underground bunker in somewhere. Jack must have simply failed to notice it.

After pressing him further, and adding in the implication of some really good sex, he was finally sufficiently motivated to actually get up and take us to see it.

We headed out of the cave and back up through the hedge maze (very quickly, he obviously had a personal shortcut). We walked up the back porch and past Jack sitting at a table outside, playing some game with a cute pixie girl. The pixie girl stood and came to talk to Chester for a few minutes about Jack, him telling her that she should contact the authorities and that they should come haul him off. She nodded to him, and then once again we were on our way.

Down into the secret cupboard we went, through a cipherlock, then through an airless pressure descent. Then we dressed ourselves into some hazmat suits or something like that, and then he lead us into the pressurized, climate-controlled storage facility. Over to a non-descript wall we walked and he reached forward and opened a hidden compartment, withdrawing the document carefully. Gail and I leaned forward, peering down at it with interest.

It was mostly intact, not at all like I had been imagining. Still in a lot of pieces, but definitely cohesive and legible, especially to someone like me, who could read it without effort. I didn't touch it, I didn't want to touch it. Gail and I oohed and aahed over for a minute, and then I stepped in to hold his attention fully while she excused herself to go to the “restroom.”

Gail didn't ever reappear, not that I figured she would. That was fine, I could handle Chester from here on out. After a few more minutes of oohing and aahing at the document, I implied that it was time to get down to business, and that these hazmat suits were far too much clothing for that. He smirked down at me before returning the document to its hiding place, and then we headed back up the stairs and out of the bunker area, into the main part of the house to go see about having some fun.

[ Fun Time at the Party ] – This is really really NSFW, and probably NSFS(anity) either.

The next day, Niko came to pick me up in my Citroen and, after a small detour, drove me back to the hotel to change and clean up. Then, we hopped back in to the Citroen to meet up with the others who'd already headed off to the Museum to meet with Lars. It wasn't awkward at all!

What Lars had to tell us was that basically the poem was a linguistic virus that was trying to spread itself. It was trying to get itself into the media so that it could spread to as many people as possible all over the world. As Scions, we had some ability to resist it. Humans, however, were very weak to it.

So, we needed to find out what it would do once it had spread to enough people, how many people were enough, and perhaps who had started it.

I was not much of a brainiac so I figured that I'd let Gail and the others figure it out as I finally started spinning down from my meth-and-orgy high.