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How disappointing. With Gail driving and the Chinese army on our back, Niko still chose to sit this one out. I almost got up and jumped out of the car myself, but Gail put her hand on my arm and said firmly, “NO.”

Harrumphf.

So we drove somewhere that had a coast, over to some kinda factory district on the water. I guess we were supposed to secure this area or something for when Jack and Tommy arrived. Really, the Chinese military were following them, not us anyway.

“What does 'secure the area' mean, anyway?” I asked. I heard Jack mutter to himself over the com. Just about then, a couple of cops drove up and stopped their cars nearby. They didn't see us, instead they headed down to the beach area with flashlights. I looked at Niko. Niko looked at me. Gail looked at a train that was rolling slowly down the tracks.

“You take care of the first two, and I'll take care of the other two,” I told Niko. He nodded, and we exited the vehicle and walked quietly in opposite directions, each toward our two targets.

[…]

I had the two cops drop me off at Tommy's cousin's house, where he was hiding out until things calmed down. Jack contacted us about fifteen minutes after I arrived and said there was a train coming to get us. A train? Weird. A few minutes later we headed down to the tracks and watched as half-mile-long train slowly made its way toward us. As the engine came up to us, we each, in turn, ran and jumped onto the car to join everyone else.

A debate was had about what to do with the train. Eventually it was decided that we leave and let it crash into another train that was apparently approaching. Such an event would easily cover the rest of our escape from the Chinese military. Gail seemed reluctant to leave the train to its fate. WEIRD.

We eventually got her to leave, then headed out to jack a car and head back to town.

We dropped Tommy off on the way and headed back to the hotel to watch the news, eat a tub of ice cream, and giggle. Would've been better if Niko had massacred the remaining forces! Oh well, though. Maybe next time.

-+-

So apparently Nadine has a daughter. A 12 year old daughter in a crazy-person facility. Rich, crazy-person facility. Her name is Wong Wing. Apparently Guan Yu had forbade Nadine to have children, and obviously didn't know about this one. So, leverage. Tommy had given Jack the name of the facility and such, but we thought we'd see how this business with the Hindu pantheon worked out first. We could keep this leverage in our back pocket for some other time of need.

So, we headed back to Burma to pick up Than, and then headed off to India to wade around in a shit-and-garbage-filled river called the Ganges.

I stood on the banks talking to people, seeing if I could determine from the local populace where perhaps the most holy spot might be while the others waded around in the shitwater, searching on the riverbed.

I had only been talking to people for about 10 minutes before Niko and a gigantic crocodile came flying out of the water. The humans in the river and on the banks started going apeshit while I just stood there watching momentarily, thinking this was pretty much the most ridiculous thing I had seen in at least a couple of hours. I pulled out my hand-cannon, and tried to convince the humans nearby to get involved, but everyone shied away, thinking this crocodile was some kind of holy thing. Eyeroll.

Mostly it was like watching a retard slapping contest. The croc kept missing Niko, and Niko kept hitting it but his blows bouncing off its tough hide. I held up my Glock and fired off as many shots at the thing as I could sequentially, hoping to distract it enough to get Niko an in to actually damage the darn thing.

Finally, he gave up this futile course of action and instead grabbed the thing's tail, slung it around in a circle, and sent it off flying through the air and into the trees. Apparently the thing'd had enough, and slunk off to a different part of the river. Meanwhile, Gail was standing next to me saying calmly that Jack had found something on the river bed. Into the muck-water we went!

We swam down to some stone, charged some of our godly power into it, and moments later we all stood in the overworld of the Hindu clan. Some dude who apparently was the owner of the three, I am hearing now, crocodiles greeted us, and took us off to talk to Ganesha. He seemed like an ok sort, and wasn't too angry about Niko pummeling his pals. Or, apparently, Gail possessing one and having it beat up another under the surface while Niko was wrestling the first. Huh.

Eventually we were brought before Ganesha, and we gave him our offer and presented Than. Apparently Ganesha knew Padah-Lin, and so he gave us some kinda magical box thing to take back to Padah-Lin that Niko really, REALLY wanted to open even though Ganesha specifically told us NOT to because we “were not yet ready”. Jack whisked the box away and hid it somewhere on his person and Niko harrumphed quietly about that.

And, well, just like that, apparently it was more-or-less a done-deal. We headed back down to Earth, and back to Burma and presented the box to Padah-Lin. I saw Niko attempt to look over Padah-Lin's shoulder when he opened the box, but it didn't look like he got much of an angle.

As the box opened, even we could feel power surge back into Padah-Lin as he stood there before us.

He told us that this would do nicely, and with that he opened the door to his overworld.

Well, I would definitely say this overworld hasn't been occupied by a full-fledged pantheon for a while. It was hot, humid, gross, and way overgrown. Even the Aztec overworld that we visited to talk to Xochipilli was much, much nicer, even though similar in climate.

Gail sent her ghost dude up to try to figure out which way to go. He returned and said there was some out-of-place, white marbley, columny building in one direction. Well, that's probably where we needed to go then. So, we started walking.

Gail, Niko and I walked as a group, while Jack zipped around doing his scouting thing and Gail's ghost floated around doing his own version of scouting.

After a little while, they both reported back saying: we were being followed/stalked by blue tigers, and there were also Maenads lurking about, although none of them seemed to be concerned with us. The tigers seemed to be natives of the Overworld's original pantheon, part of Padah-Lin's original and historical heyday. Maybe the Maenads were looking to snack on some tigers or something. EH. Drunk naked chicks were what Calliope picked to guard her? I guess it might work on Niko!

We pressed on, walking forever it seemed like. The building started to come into view eventually, perhaps after a day of walking. It inched ever closer. Soon, soon we would arrive, soon we would talk to Calliope…