Games, all sorts

It was fortunate that Reese had tracked down the Sanguine Empress's peoples' hand-off point in Nexus. Now all we had to do was formulate a plan to get Maedros “captured”.

Reese's earlier explorations of the warehouse on the harbor had revealed a single Abyssal Dragonblood responsible for the handoff. So how would we do this without getting Maedros into too much danger?

We discussed it heatedly for an evening, and finally, Hani made a suggestion. Maedros was skeptical. I was embarrassed. Reese just shrugged. Hani assured us that he could pull it off.

It was about as good as anything else that had been suggested, and involved a lot less overt fighting, so eventually Maedros's skepticism was overruled by the rest of us.

And so, Hani dispatched some servants to the market in Nexus to retrieve a couple of costumes, one for him and one for me.

This was all so embarrassing. But Hani assured me he'd do the brunt of the work. Even still, I was rather nervous. But I would play the part. I still had my sword at hand, if it became necessary. I was hoping it wouldn't, though.

-+-

A knock at the door to the warehouse on the waterfront. A man answered. Hani explained that he and I were sent here by Pelleps as a reward for all the good business they were getting from the Sanguine Empress's men. Hani made it sound like it was supposed to be a surprise, with a conspiratorial “ssssh” and a knowing nod.

The guy was skeptical at first I think, but he eventually let us in and took us to the Sanguine Empress's guy's room. Apparently he was out on business at the moment, but we were allowed to wait in his room on the ship docked in the warehouse that would eventually be used to transport the package to Jades.

I became rather nervous. I tugged at what little clothing I had on. This was so embarrassing. Did I even look good in this thing?

Eventually the door swung open and in the doorway stood a man, dark jade armor and daiklave on his person, staring at what was sitting here in his room waiting for him. He seemed suspicious at first, his hand going to his sword, but Hani stood to speak to him, and eventually set him at ease.

As Hani pushed him to his bed and began removing his armor and clothing, the man commented that so-and-so must be punished for his breech of protocol. But later, after he had a little fun, of course.

Luckily, the guy didn't seem too adverse to being… *cough*blush* uh, serviced by another man. While Hani was distracting him, I snuck some of the drug we had used to sedate Linaria during her transformation into my mouth, then leaned down to kiss the man.

At this point, he was on to us, but the drug affected him, slowing him down, making him a bit dilerious and sluggish. Unfortunately it didn't knock him out like I had hoped, but this would have to be enough.

I pretended to cower in the corner as he became aggressive, and Hani, in a rather surprising burst of offensiveness, pounded the guy into unconsciousness. I was rather surprised by this, and it took me a moment to recover my wits. But, we quickly got our things together and worked on sneaking the guy out of the waterfront warehouse.

Reese was lurking nearby in the warehouse in order to keep the other “employees” of this place from interfering in our plot and escape. We decided it would be easiest to sneak him out through the harbor doors than trying to head back through the building.

And so we did just that, and managed to get out without too many complications.

-+-

Hani took dogshit back to Yu Shan, and subsequently returned with Linaria.

Now it was time for part two of our costume party.

Hani, Reese and I dressed up as Abyssal Dragonbloods (and given the amount of armor and weapons we had of theirs at this point, it wasn't a huge problem). Hani and I wore helmets the whole time to hide our appearances from those who would recognize us in the warehouse.

The three of us acted in a supporting role to Linaria, who strutted right in there and barked them all into submission, telling them she had been sent to take over the transport of the package from the guy, who was named something-something dogshit, and that dogshit had been reassigned. I tried to act as menacing as possible, but I can only imagine how ridiculous I probably looked.

We were informed that the package had not yet been picked up, but that they were hoping it would be delivered tomorrow. Linaria acted irritated and impatient, saying that their timetable had been moved up and that they needed the package as soon as possible. She was doing a great job in her role; I don't think I could ever be that forceful.

A messenger was subsequently dispatched to hurry the process along.

I was worried. We could only hope that they would go for him tonight. The longer we were in this risky position the more things that could go wrong.

The next day we were informed that they had picked up the package, and that it would be delivered around noon. Unfortunately, just after they brought Maedros in, one of the Sanguine Empress's ships dispatched a group of Abyssal Dragonbloods to inquire about our change in command.

Linaria was able to convince them well enough to get them out of our hair for a bit, but they were simply returning to their warship to confirm our story. Which, we obviously knew could NOT be confirmed. So we set the sailors in the warehouse into high-gear. They got that ship ready to sail in half an hour.

And so, we set out into the water. The Sanguine Empress's envoy was on its return trip at the time, and as soon as they saw us pull out into the water without waiting for their return, they knew for sure that something was up.

We had the time that it took for the envoy boat to return to the war ship plus the time to get the giant warship ready to sail for us to gain distance on them, but it wasn't much. The warship was much faster than our small boat.

As a last desperate act, they fired on us with their essense cannons four or five times, before we were finally out of their reach. Luckily they missed us every time. I was sweating bullets at this. This was the first time I was able to see essense cannons in action, and it was very… neat! But scary, to be on the receiving end.

We managed to gain about an hour on them before they started catching up. So, I headed down below to wake Maedros, who set his elementals out to slow the ship down significantly.

It helped a good deal, but eventually the elementals were destroyed, and the ship began closing the distance again.

We decided it would be prudent to disembark and gate back to Yu Shan before the warship caught up to our small boat. And so, we instructed the captain to pull over, and headed out into woods a good distance. I used my spell to prevent us from being tracked, and we walked about an hour into the forest before summoning the gate back to Yu Shan.

Now it is time to interrogate Mr. 2nd Lieutennant of Rubber Dogshit. Who we affectionately refer to as “Dogshit”. Hopefully, he will have some very useful information for us.