There was no way I was letting these bitches get away. I knew I could track them down, it just may take a while. I put my foot down and told the guys that we were going in after them, and ordered the guys to help me drag the two downed baddies through the Hedge door. Without much grumbling they complied.
Once threw, we eventually decided to ditch the lava guy next to the doorway (inside the Hedge), as we would have enough trouble trying to drag huge fricking guy, and he was more important anyways because he was not dead and could still be interrogated. With that, we headed off down the path.
The path was narrow at first; I tracked and the guys attempted to drag the big guy. The path forked, I tracked them down the left fork. The path widened at this point and Tim came up to help me track them by scent.
After another long while, we came to a clearing with a huge oak tree and two exists (in addition to the path we entered on). Tim and I went to check each paths and determined the more northerly one was the path they had taken. So down that path we went, into something of an infinity loop.
We made one pass through the figure-eight before I realized what was going on, and so we stopped at the junction and I inspected things. It was just one of those weird-isms of the Hedge, to be honest. So, in lieu of a better plan, we woke up the big guy and demanded he tell us where their Hollow was. He gave us enough of a hint to find it, and against my wishes, the boys left him awake because they're a bunch of wimps and we all walked up to the northern part of the loop.
On the way, of course, the big guy tried to make a break for it. Tim shot his leg off practically and I braced the rope I had around his neck as a concession for letting his lame ass walk with us. We eventually beat him back unconscious, but that was a lot of pointless time wasted on something I knew was going to happen. And actually, the guy was almost dead anyway, so I did what I could to patch him up to keep him from bleeding out and we continued to drag him up the path.
Once at the northern section, I poked around in the side of the road for a while and spot it pretty quickly; a doorway. This should be their hollow. We eventually decided that Holden would turn into lava guy and try to fake them out into helping him bring the unconscious big guy in.
Well, it sorta worked, Nikki came out along with her male counterpart, Raoul, and we jumped them. Tim took on Raoul while I took on Nikki. Nikki of course had a gun, which worried me a little but, but luckily she proved to be too incompetent to use it (not that I would've been much better, but…). I got her in a headlock and started bashing her against my knee. She was a tough little rascal though, Jake and I weren't having much luck conking her out even though she was getting pretty bloody at this point.
Apparently during all of this Tim had taken care of Raoul and the old lady, apparently “Pithia”, came to stand in the door way after a big busty hot chick came running out with a knife in her hand. Holden had run out too, and he wasn't looking so good.
Actually, now that I look at Tim, he wasn't looking so good either. Of course Holden's two pursuers were now on him full force, and he was already anyways, so they were doing a number on him. I dropped Nikki right when Jake put her out, and ran over to grab the hot chick, apparently “Rebekkah”. I was able to pull her off of him and Jake ran to keep Pithia busy, as Tim seemed to be down for the count at this point.
Since I had my Elemental armor on anyway, I decided to try to attack her with it by channeling it to her. Since I already had a hold on her, it wasn't nearly as difficult to do, and I ended up taking her down for the count. At about the same time, Jake took Pithia down and so I quickly unslung the backpack I had with me and took out some medical supplies I had bought at Target a day or two ago (man, I KNEW this was going to happen).
I set to work on Tim first, who was quickly bleeding out. I managed to patch him up enough to stabilize him, and next was Rebekkah, since she was right next to him. And then Pithia. I managed to stabilize all three but I wasn't very sure that Pithia was going to make it by the time we got her back to civilization and get her to someone who can really help her, etc; she looked pretty bad.
After the three were stabilized, the rest of us drug all the bodies into the Hollow and got them ready to go while Holden went to open a doorway back to Atlanta.
To the womens' bathroom of a scuzzy mexican restaurant called “El Mar”, that is. Holden snuck out to retrieve a menu and I called Sylvan Roberts as soon as I got it from him with the address. I told him to bring a van, preferrably with no windows. And that we'd need someone proficient in healing of some sort, as we had a few people in a bit of dire need.
We looked at the pile of unconscious bodies and decided to wake the two humans up and force them to help us sneak everyone outside into the alleyway that Holden had found. They complied, and Kevin Fourpaws showed up with the Glamour Shots catering van and a smile on his face. I just shook my head and helped load everyone up.
We puttered off to Glamour Shots where we met Sylvan Roberts and Chrysanthemum Lee and some other folks. Chrysanthemum healed up Tim first, and he finally woke up and started acting like a total goober. Violet Busby complimented him for some reason, and then I exchanged words with Sylvan about what would happen to these folks.
I told him that there was one more person who was, um, not of this world any more. We had left him on the other side of a hedge door at an apartment at this location (I gave him directions), and that we'd left our rental car at the complex office and needed to pick it up. I also told him of their Hollow in the hedge and where it was located from the apartment's hedge door (if he cared), among a few other things.
After Chrysanthemum had patched everyone up sufficiently, Sylvan stepped in to talk to the four of us. He explained that our task was done and he appreciated our help, and that we basically (my paraphrase) needed to get jobs. They provided us with fake driver's licenses to allow us to function in society, but after we've run our old + new credit cards ran out ($10k total minus what I spent at Target), we're basically done living off of their kindness. But they would help us however they could to get a menial job of some sort.
Over the next week I got in touch with Ahriman Khan and was able to score a job at the place he worked at as his secretary. I also took a second job at the Georgia Aquarium on nights/weekends cleaning the tanks. The secretary job paid a lot more than the Georgia Aquarium job, but I was very personally interested in the Georgia Aquarium job. I also started going to church again, Eastern Orthodox of course.
Also, it appeared that Atlanta was not a place you could manage without a vehicle, so I bought a motorcycle (Kawasaki Ninja 250R). They are much cheaper than cars, and I could afford a new one from the money Sylvan had given me, and they have much better gas mileage to boot (well, if you're not buzzing around people all the time). I needed some form of transportation, but until I was able to get a well-paying job and didn't have to pay for school any more, this would have to suffice.
Speaking of school… I had decided that I was going back to school to finish my undergrad, but that I couldn't go back to UGA, at least, not for undergrad. So I got a room in homepark near Georgia Tech, splitting the house with 3 others, where I planned to finish my degree program. Over the next few weeks I began familiarizing myself with campus and Georgia Tech policy and their Biology program. I saved what little excess money I could to pay for my last year of school (here's to hoping that as many classes transfer as possible), eating rice and ramen and spending as little as possible. After I graduate from Georgia Tech, I hope to get a relevant job to get some actual experience for a while, before going back to UGA to get my PhD in Marine Biology.
But for now, my undergrad. Soon, soon, we needed to head over to UGA and somehow alter my student records so that I can transfer here. Jake's computer skills should come in handy here, as well as Holden's sneakiness (and wow, Holden is sneaky about not telling you he's sneaky!).