Private - Hallowed Be Thy Name | Page 2

"Even putting your problematic choice of words aside, you're going to wind up arrested one of these days Senpai." Kepler said rolling her eyes. She was currently spreading her arms to shield Lady Aida with her body. Apparently, interest from the offending party or no, protecting her charge's dignity still fell within the purview of being a bodyguard. Kepler scowled at her partner, half for being difficult and half for making her own life difficult. She then sighed as she tossed an apologetic glance over her shoulder.

"---Of course I'm thinking about taking it, I think about everything, like a good human should. And I'll give ample consideration before I accept, too. I am a genius after all, and on that same hand, I'm also a remedial student who nearly failed the commander's test, you know~?"

Kepler smirked.

"Call me a rebel if you want, but If someone says an eighteen year old girl doesn't have worries, I'll say think again."

Zipping up Lady Aida's dress, Kepler gave her a glance over before nodding and giving a thumbs up.

Looks good. It's almost as though this closed room mystery countermurder I'm covering up never happened. Though whether or not that's a good thing...

"Hey Senpai? It's time. Putting any future jobs aside, we still need to wrap this one up, right? I'm going to escort Lady Aida back to the party. Say---was there anything in the Witch Ops manual concerning the disposal of dead bodies? I mean, we've got the uncle here to deal with as well as the likely now true dead zombie puppet that I detained just down the hall. If you have any way to take care of that, it'd be a huge help..."

Shaking her head, Kepler let out a long sigh.

"Are you ready Ms. Aida?"

Shepherding the young woman through the door Ivan had originally entered though, the fake maid escorted her lady back returned to the party to make her speech...

***

Later...

Having retrieved her formal wear and once again struggling to dress herself in a dark closet, Kepler once again went to find Ivan. Sure enough, he was by the buffet as promised. Glancing at his plate, Kepler took her fork and stole one of his tiny fancy cakes and plopped it in her mouth.

Payback for my sandwich~!

Wiping her mouth with a napkin, Kepler nodded. It was back to business.

"Well Senpai, after hearing her full story I gotta say----I'm leaning toward accepting the job. Even if we ignored it, I can't help but think that a necromatic cult trying to raise influential people as body puppets while masquerading in a village in order to conduct cruel experiments on human trafficking victims would wind up becoming our problem sooner or later. Since you've so graciously given me executive privileges, I went ahead and negotiated for Lady Aida giving Witch Ops a generous anonymous donation should we agree to investigate. The keyword is donation, because I've also requested free reign to operate independently. In this capacity Lady Aida would merely be a concerned informant and we, our organization, would be able to independently take care of things as we please. Frankly, I think it's win-win so long as we ignore all the legwork we'll have to do to make this happen..."

Kepler sighed. The long night was clearly wearing the self-proclaimed genius down.

"I know that Lady Aida would be a great contact for a shadow ops organization like ours, and she already owes us a great deal... but on the other hand, I can't really say that playing politics is my thing... Frankly this is giving me a major headache. This is why I typically don't do field ops..."

Kepler gave Ivan a pained smile.

"Well? What do you say Senpai...? ----Think I could lean on your expert opinion...?"

Her voice was wavering as it trailed off in uncertainty. Looking down, she glanced down at her empty plate---The one she was gripping just a little too tightly with the fingers from both her hands.

 

Iván was completely at a loss for what @Kepler meant by winding up arrested. He wasn't committing a crime. He was invited to the party and would very much like to do as what one does when invited to a party: Eat until his stomach exploded, to his heart's content. Dying after that encounter with Titanius, the Ancient Dissonance, did not only lock him from his user interface, it also made him extremely hungry whenever the sun set. It was a weird curse, but something somewhat manageable. At the very least, he didn't have an eye on his chest or something.

As Kepler and Lady Aida continued yakking, Iván found himself thinking about food. Not just curry, mind you, which was a travesty since he was supposed to be loyalty to all the worlds' greatest dish, but also cake and pastries and that roast pig in the middle of that table and some sort of noodle dish and more pork and some beef and those chicken fingers, not actual fingers since chickens did not have fingers, and finally some good old-fashioned delicious piping hot soup. Ah, that would surely hit the spot. What spot? His spot, of course.

"Oh," Iván deadpanned, having almost forgotten about the corpse of Lady Aida's murderous uncle, Lord Byron. There was nothing about disposing bodies in the Witch Ops manual, at least not anything he could remember--- Wait, they had a Witch Ops manual?! Man, the Grand Witch Majolica must've really pulled nothing short of everything for the second generation Witch Ops. He and Corvella and Haru and the others didn't have anything like that. Or maybe it was just him? "Don't worry about it. I got it. You two go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Iván waited for the two girls to get the heck out of that room, portraying an aura of cool and disinterest while they were still there, before he closed the door behind them and immediately ran to the other door to close it and the other doors. Once he was left alone, in that room, a grin formed across his face. No need to worry about any bodies, any corpses. He had just the stomach to take care of it. Hehehe... HAHAHA!!!

For some reason, after all was said and done, both Kepler and Lady Aida were nowhere to be found in the main hall. Or maybe Iván wasn't just trying that hard to look for them. After all, he needed to satiate his hunger first. He really needed to do something about whatever the heck it was. He can't just keep eating everything after the sun sets. Thank Absolver for his pretty efficient metabolism.

Ah, finally. Get in mah tummy you yummy--- Before he could finish gloating against his tiny fancy cakes, Kepler appeared from out of nowhere and stole one of them, quickly plopping it inside her mouth. Iván spent a few seconds, minutes, just staring at where the tiny fancy cake had been, and then where it was now, and finally right in Kepler's eyes. You have made a powerful enemy, you fiend! My name is Iván Carl. You ate one of my tiny fancy cakes. Prepare to die.

"What?" Iván was distracted with plotting Kepler's murder to actually really listen to what she had said. All in all, he got "accepting the job," "cruel experiments," "generous anonymous donation," and finally and maybe most importantly, "free reign to operate independently." Could he afford to stay a few more days away from his Curry House? "Hmm, maybe by the time I get back, Jasper would've probably bought a shirt, I'm in."

Iván turned his body slightly away from Kepler, mostly to keep her from taking more of his food, and quickly, voraciously, consumed everything on his plate like he had eaten for days. Darn that curse. It was so powerful, and he always felt so hungry. He wondered if that town had many food he could eat. Maybe he'll just eat Kepler.

"Oh, uhh, it is the Witch Ops duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves...and stuff," he waved his hands in the air, disinterest obvious on his face. "I guess it's within the Witch Ops doctrine, anyway, so why not?"

You are still going to pay for eating my fancy tiny cake hehehe

 

Kepler sighed, but it was one of those sighs that showed that her mood was improving. Mild, good-humored, exasperation maybe? Regardless Kepler was feeling a little better.

"Frankly, I don't know how you can be so cool about things, but I envy that quality of yours----just a bit. That's that then, we're going cult busting."

Kepler nodded while wondering who Jasper was.

"So all that's left is to get our money's worth out of this feast, then huh~? After that like, I dunno, we can find some sort of safe passage over there, maybe~? In the meantime, think I'm gonna nab as many of those tiny cakes as I can and keep them in a 'cool-bag' for the road. Is there anything you want Senpai~?"

Glancing over at the spread, Kepler was attempting to calculate how many tiny cakes she could pilfer before she made a scene. 5...? 10...?

Without really realizing it, as the party began to wind down, Kepler began to get her second wind. If the girl had a tail, a devil's one or otherwise, it might be sashaying to and fro-----A hint of the artificer's growing air of contentment.

 

INVESTIGATION

Hidden: theme

​

As a tinkerer himself, Iván knew how useful it was, having a tinkerer in the party... Group? Partnership? It was just the two of them, after all, Leonardo da Goblin and Bound Prince, both figuratively flying the banner of the Witch Ops, both tinkerers, both having accepted some sort of quest, added baggage really, after they already succeeded with another. Calling themselves a party felt a little weird for him, group weirder, but partnership could suffice. Maybe. Obviously a group needed more than two people, and going by the idea of the party, the two of them was more like a date than an actual party. Who celebrates anything with just himself and another friend? That's just sad. What a sad party that would make.

Iván turned to his sidekick, his ward, his junior, @Kepler, who was technically, and to be more honest, smarter than him. At least as far as he could tell. She was new to the Witch Ops but she seemed the smartest of the bunch, especially since she had that idea about grabbing food from the heiress' party and bringing it all with them in that cool-bag of hers, whatever that was. Yes, just for that, Iván was going to remember Kepler as the smartest of Witch Ops Gen 2. He made a mental note to keep a mental note of that.

Because of his most recent death, the one at the hands, tentacles, of Titanius, the Ancient Dissonance, Iván developed an insatiable hunger that only came out after dark. Most people had other things that come out after dark, like weird hobbies and obsessions, but now Iván himself had all the munchies. He was thankful for that smart idea, initiative, from Kepler, though he probably won't admit it. Maybe after some time. That depends, really, if she won't weight him down. How much did she weigh anyway? She was tiny.

"Hmm," Iván deadpanned, eyes forward, as he reined in Snowy the Snow-Quilled Guardian, his magical familiar that had taken on the form of the Inverted Spire's Snow-Quilled Guardian, the creature their failed expedition massacred just so they could take its hot springs home as a welcomed respite from all the hellish creatures and circumstances that they were subjected to, the same creature whose face Iván had taken for his mask, the mask he wasn't wearing and had kept hidden on his person. They weren't going to need to fight right away, anyway. They still needed to collect some intel first. "Looks like we're here."

They stayed on a hilltop overlooking the town. It was sad and pathetic, dark and gloomy. There were a few buildings here and there, old ones, most decrepit, the biggest of which seemed to be the town hall, and there was also a pretty depressing graveyard right beside the also decrepit church. Iván sighed. The town looked like most towns under the "care" of apathetic nobles. Perhaps Astor's decision to turn Astorea into a republic, a democracy, would truly be for the best. At the very least, it would offer such towns new hope.

"So what's the plan, clockwork?"

 

"Thanks for the ride Senpai~ And Snowy too of course~<3"

Sliding off the beast's back from her position behind Ivan, Kepler surveyed their surroundings. The village looked empty---dead even... ...Though I'm not sure that that pun's in good taste.

"Firebomb everything-----Is what I'd like to say but...."

Kepler shook her head.

"They may have prisoners that we need to extract. You know~ I really hate to say this, but we may just have to play it by ear..."

Almost as if on cue, a chilling wind blew. Nodding to herself Kepler drew her weapon, The Moonraker. It looked like a sci-fi zappy gun but in reality it was just a focus she used to aim her arcanamancy which was composed more or less composed entirely of beams.

"Say Senpai~~~ Have you ever played Resident Evil 4...? It's an old, old game... but at the very start well.... it was a lot like this, okay? Let's just say I....wasn't a fan....."

Glancing down the hill Kepler tested her footing to see if it'd be walkable.

"Maybe you could cloak us with your illusions and we could just poke around? I have this awful feeling like it won't take us long to step in something. With that in mind, what would you say to circling the perimeter of the town and swirling in bit by bit? On one hand it'll greatly reduce our chances of getting surrounded, but on the other, It's probably the slowest way to handle this.... Option B would be to just storm the town hall. I mean, if we're being honest, it's kinda screaming 'check the basement' isn't it~? ---Considering that this world, that Terrasphere, was apparently made by human hands... In some ways our knowledge of the tropes might just work out to our advantage. But if we lean too hard on them... well... we might be in for a nasty surprised, you know~? I can't say that I like our situation very much at all..."

Trailing off, Kepler ended her vocalized train of thought. She wouldn't really call it a bad habit, but from what she was coming to learn of her partner's sensibilities, Ivan seemed very much a cut and dry sort of person. It was this little hiccup in her programming, Kepler figured, which put the efficiency of their teamwork in the greatest danger.

...In the heat of battle, I probably won't have the luxury of considering every angle like this, it'll likely become a question of adaptability on the touch and go. Maybe that's why I was assigned to him. Even if it wasn't anything like that, even if it was just an arbitrary decision, there's still a lot of good to be gained from studying up on Commodore Curry...

Kepler's eyes sharpened against the darkness as she looked up at where her mentor was perched upon a big bird.

"---Sorry you asked me for a plan didn't you? My recommendation is that we quietly approach and break into the first sturdy house we see in order to establish a base. If we can fortify a position and secure our exit from the area, then we should be safe to storm The Townhall without the fear of being surrounded. If there's locals, all the better, we gently restrain and question them. If we can bring them to our side, all the better. What's your opinion Senpai? Think that could work?"

 

Iván simply nodded at @Kepler's expression of gratitude. Riding Snowy the Snow-Quilled Guardian, his magical familiar that had taken on the form of the Inverted Spire's Snow-Quilled Guardian through the combination of the stinky red mask he had taken back as a souvenir from that failed expedition, which was actually that Snow-Quilled Guardian's face, and his own memories, was their fastest and most efficient method of getting to that town.

The alternative would have been to let Kepler walk on her own while Iván and Snowy rode on ahead, the familiar imbued with aeromancy to make it faster than normal, but although it would've been hilarious for the illusionist, it would've also forced him to wait for the tinkerer who wanted to do this quest in the first place. Iván was in no rush to finish the quest but he wasn't exactly into the idea of spending more time around these parts. The place secretly gave him the creeps.

"Resident Evil 4?" Iván couldn't remember. Was that the game where you built towns and cities and simulated people doing every day people stuff? Or was that a medical game where you played as a snarky resident, able to stop time to think through whatever it was that was happening to you and along the way irritate your fellow residents and one of the equally snarky doctors? Come to think of it, that second one was probably more of a show. Suits? "I don't know what that is."

Iván eyed Kepler as she did her thing, stealing glances of that thing she had with her, that weapon. He had never seen anything like it. At least nothing that actually worked. There was something like it in one of Lightning Ironworks' glass cases, and if he remembered correctly, one of the nerds from that place was working on one. Or more precisely, failing on working on one. Did that make sense? This world's technology was way behind that of his other world, but this place was more fun and less annoying. He didn't die here, too, which was cool.

"What I do know, though, is that cloaking without knowing who we're cloaking against, if they actually have ways to see through illusions, might backfire on us," Iván thought it was a good idea, to be fair, but he wasn't that confident it could work, considering what they learned from the heiress about this town. Besides, it would just be him expending too much of his energy, copious amounts even, to create that moving illusionary field, which could leave him weakened if the bad guys did have ways to see through illusions. But maybe Kepler was on to something. "Although... You look normal. Maybe you should just walk into the town hall and I'll stay back to provide cover for you."

Iván gave Kepler a thumbs up, which he meant to be reassuring, but that grin he bore might've just made her feel suspicious about his so-called plan. Did Iván think Kepler looked normal? Yep. At least more normal than him. Did Iván think Kepler could just walk into the town hall in one piece without getting massacred by a surprise ambush or something? Probably. Who would hurt a cute little girl anyway? Only a monster would, that's who, which made his plan perfect for also flushing out the evil that was supposed to be hiding out in this shitstain of a town. ...Kepler was cute, wasn't she? It was hard to tell.

 

"So I'm bait then~? Well, not that I mind. Let's just get this over with, okay~?"

Stretching her arms, Kepler began walking down the hill and towards the town.

So far so good...

Risking the cliche, Kepler thought it was a little too quiet. All that there was, was the wind. And the wind did blow---in regular foreboding gusts. No signs of wildlife.... no birds...

Nearing the village's edge, Kepler tested her communicator.

"Okay Senpai, I'm in position, say... if we happen to lose communication, be sure to give me some kind of sign, okay? That sort of thing's paramount, yup, the utmost importance. Well, I'm going to try out this door..."

I've actually always wanted to try this...

Kepler was currently standing in front of a smallish two-story village townhouse on the very outskirts of town. It looked like something like an old house from the southern United States. Maybe Georgia. Switching armaments, Kepler brought out something that looked like a retro-futuristic cylinder. Almost like a hilt, even...

*[copyrighted sound]*

Pressing the button on the device, a blue beam extended illuminating her face, it was an arcane sword. But at the moment it was going to serve as a lock-pick from planet overkill. Kepler slowly pressed the beam into the lock of the townhouse's door. And, in a few sparking seconds, the door slowly swung open with a long creak. Kepler reached out to stop it, but she only manged to brush the handle of the run-away door...

Kepler unignited the blade of her weapon and jumped back outside and crouched down against the outside wall. Nobody stirred.

Well, that's weird, is it abandoned then-----?

----As if to answer her question, the Townhall's bell tolled loudly. What was the common idiom? A sound that could...

...Wake the dead.

Kepler bit her lip, she realized she was spooking herself. Only, from where she was crouched Kepler saw people emerge from the open doorway. They seemed to be in a trance. I mean, usually someone would care that their door was thrown open in the middle of the night, right?

Kepler tried to make herself even smaller, but the residents of the house did not notice her, and following their movements with her eyes, Kepler realized that all of the houses that she could see were vacating their residents, as they marched rank and file towards the center of town. No torches, no lights, no noise but the shuffling of feet. Men, Women, Children, All walks of life...

The time was 1:00 am.

"Uhm, Senpai...? I hate to say it, but I should probably follow them right...? Either way, we have our base now if you want to investigate this house right here in the meantime. Maybe... I dunno, find a way to seal the door..."

 

“Hmm?” Iván raised an eyebrow, for a second forgetting he had some sort of communicator on. Realizing he needed to conserve his energy, either to help rescue @Kepler once manure inevitably hit the giant ceiling fan or to get the heck out of there, the illusionist had elected to un-summon Snowy, sending her back to wherever she came from. Maintaining a familiar in this world took its toll on one’s energy, mana, magic, so to occupy himself in the absence of his favorite creature in the world, and while he waited for his bait to get eaten by the necro-fish, he got himself a stick, a twig, and began drawing on the ground in front of him, in front of where he sat. “Oh, yeah, sure, of course, whatever, over and out, Roger.”

From where he was hiding, drawing, Iván faintly heard that bell. It was so quiet where he was, he could’ve even heard his heartbeat. Or was that his pocket watch? He had been working on something from scratch, to celebrate his revival, his survival, and to practice his skills as a tinkerer. A pocket watch, something simple but purple god-awful intricate, should do the trick, and it did, wonderfully so, surprising the strange illusionist and self-proclaimed king of the curry. “Yeah, okay, just make sure to blend in. Don’t look conspicuous.”

Iván stood up, rose, after talking to Kepler. He sighed as he turned to where he believed the source of the bell was, taking out some sort of looking glass, a portable telescope, from within his coat. He was right. Thankfully. The bell was still swinging as he found it, saw it, through that looking glass. That has to be the town hall, right? There was only one way to find out.

Using his aeromancy and his illusion magic, he was able to sneak in the town hall meeting. He didn’t need to spend a lot of his energy. Just a quick boost here and there got himself to that meeting fast, some dust in some nosy neighbors’ eyes got himself ignored, and a mole here and there, a familiar set of teeth, made him very inconspicuous to the rest of the gossipers. It wasn’t easy, or appropriate, but he was there to get some information. He wasn’t there to be Kepler’s nanny. The sooner this was done, the better it was going to be for him.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming to this impromptu meeting,” a silver-haired woman started speaking on the stage as everyone else started settling in, grabbing Iván’s attention and distracting him from his efforts to find Kepler. “You already know who I am…”

Iván gently poked the woman next to him, “Who’s that?” When the woman he poked just stared at him with a raised eyebrow, Iván sighed. Why did these NPCs have to be so suspicious? Was this part of their programming? Or are the developers just hateful of their Players? “I know who she is… I just can’t remember her name. I have that thing… Forgetful… That.”

“Oh,” the woman Iván poked switched from hostile to caring, her features softening. It helped that Iván wasn’t wearing his mask, so his inherent charm easily influenced her single, no-boyfriend-since-birth mind. “Why didn’t you just say so? That right there is Olivia, the mayor’s daughter. She’s nice and beautiful and all the men like her. She’s a b---”

Iván interrupted her with a finger to her lips, noticing how he wasn’t hearing what Olivia was saying because of this NPC’s distraction. The NPC was just an NPC. She was more or less not going to be useful to Iván. If he needed information, he would have to get it from someone of a higher status. The mayor’s daughter sounded like a higher status. What could be higher than that?

“…terrified. To shed better light on the matter, please welcome my father, Mayor Olyphant,” Olivia gestured towards her father who had been waiting to one side of the stage, giving way for him, giving him the spotlight, as soon as he carefully, softly, made a move to take his spot.

No one clapped, though, which made Iván narrow his eyes at the old guy. Either he wasn’t popular or what he was going to talk about isn’t something these folks wanted to hear. Iván began looking around for Kepler once more, She better not be dead. This is her quest.

 

"If you're looking for me Senpai, I'm in the crowd... Though I'm not exactly sure where... Just seeing a lot of chests and backs if I'm being honest... I can barely hear what the lady's saying too. Guh~Looks like my end's totally a bust... Actually... I'm kinda stuck here too..."

Kepler sighed after she finished muttering into the communicator. Her height though not totally diminutive, was enough to be a dire disadvantage. Lost in the crowd, Kepler only knew she was somewhere off to the right of the center of the congreation. She was totally surrounded, but she hadn't been trampled yet.

"...So how're things on your end? Can you see what's going on? If you're making a move be sure to let me know. I'll provide what support I can."

Even standing on her tip-toes, Kepler was more or less out of the loop of what was going on which irked her. Kepler could be patient, but she would've preferred to multi-task in the meantime, otherwise she was just wasting time----at least in her mind.

 

Iván was busy, getting bored out of his wits by the mayor’s speech, when, all of a sudden, from out of nowhere, @Kepler ’s voice interrupted his imagined fight between a mutated spinach and an also mutated oregano. While his eyes had been on the stage, and his ears on the mayor, his mind was actually playing a possible fight between two mutated vegetables… herbs? …in the middle of good old Stokbon. He was a little miffed at the interruption, sighing, “What? Oh, right, yes, I’ve been looking for you.”

Chests? Bust? If Iván wasn’t Iván he’d have thought Kepler was making references to certain body parts, body parts that she didn’t have much of, which was fine, since Iván wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. Was Kepler, though? Iván didn’t know and he certainly did not care. They had more important stuff to attend to than body parts.

“...body parts…” the old man’s voice invaded Iván’s ears as if it was an unwelcomed guest, knocking loudly at his door, hoping to sell him a Bible or two. Even in this world, people were annoying.

“What?” The words came out of his mouth before he could think them through, which only served to make the annoying woman beside Iván more curious. Curiouser? That wasn’t a word, was it? Blondes in dresses were not Iván’s favorite people, though he did have a special place in his heart for crazy red-headed men with top hats and an unhealthy obsession for tea. They were, to say the least, quite interesting. He scrambled to speak to the communicator, noticing the annoying woman, the one he poked, eyeing him like Bradwynne did during their expedition down in the Inverted Spire, “Ditto.”

“What?” The annoying woman beside Iván, the one he had poked earlier, something he was quick to regret, made her curiosity known. “Who are you talking to?”

At that moment, Iván considered telling the woman the truth, that he was a member of the Witch Ops, the mysterious but cute Bound Prince; that he was sent on a mission, a quest, to protect the heiress that lorded over this place; that he was dragged into this new mission, this new quest, by his partner; that he was going to save the day and rescue this town from the darkness that was plaguing it. One stolen glimpse at the mayor’s daughter, however, made him realize that there was only a couple of people that needed to know those things.

“I, uhh, I have this imaginary friend… I like talking to myself. Don’t talk to me,” Iván waved off the annoying woman he had poked earlier, leaving her to begin walking to the back of the room, far away from her prying eyes and ears. Quickly, he spoke into his communicator once again, discreetly, keeping his eyes on anyone who might overhear, “Buxom Control, wait for this town hall meeting to be over. Rendezvous behind closed doors with the mayor and his daughter. Over under Steve Roger.”

Now he’d wait.

 

"---Whatever, Bound Weenie~ I may not have much in that department, but I think that factor only contributes to my considerable charm~ thank you very much~ But yes, I copy, I'll see what I can do----Wakanda Forever, over and out."

Well we're not going to be shooting our way in, I suppose, but I'm getting a preeety bad feeling that we might be shooting our way out maybe? -----Yeesh.

"Excuse me, restroom, sorry, excuse me! Yes, down here, coming through, sorry~!"

At times shuffling, at times veritably swimming, Kepler made her way out of the crowd in order to buy some prep-time before the speech ended. During this time, Kepler borrowed a brown sheet from someone's clothesline, left a silver coin, and made use of it as a cloak. She'd need to look like an agent for this to work...


Whoop---looks like it's time.


The crowd was dispersing, and thanks to a bit of scouting, Kepler had found a back door to the town hall. Waiting about 5 minutes more...


Well, here goes nothing~


Kepler proceeded to approach and knock on the door.


"Who goes?"

----A gruff yet hauntingly culty voice called out, a pair of eyes was peering through the slit in the heavily wooden door and out into the distant night.

"I come bearing news."

Gruff for gruff, little Kepler answered. Beneath her sheet, only the sides of her hair which framed her grinning mouth were visible. Reaching onto her person, Kepler produced a pin.

I hope this is as significant as it looked...

It had come from uncle deadguy.

The eyes narrowed like the mooks from the opening of the batman animated series and after a heavy latch was pulled... the door opened.

"We've been expecting you."

Here goes nothing Senpai...

And with that, Kepler entered the townhall for a meeting that she could only somewhat guess was about. For the sake of leaving a breadcrumb trail, Kepler had left on her communicator so it could pick up and inform Ivan of the ambient dialogue. Other than that, Kepler did not dare to raise suspicion by speaking into the corsage beneath her cloak.

 

Iván had no idea what @Kepler meant by the whole Bound Weenie department thing, so he could only shrug at her comment. The girl was weird, but so was he, and also most of the tinkerers he knew, so maybe that came with the mastery? Weird.

The unmasked illusionist had to contend with more boring crap from the town hall meeting, barely staying awake throughout it, but when all was said and done, the mayor and his daughter scurrying to the back of the room and the rest of the town either caught in idle chatter or scurrying themselves out of there, Iván headed for the two NPCs that were clearly, compared to the others, more important, importanter, more importanter? Whatever.

Like some trout going against the flow of a mighty stream on a midsummer afternoon, Iván found resistance, mostly unintentional, from the other meeting-goers, townsfolk who didn’t even care about his identity. He was thankful for the sheep, for these NPCs who cared little to verify someone’s identity, though that might have just been because they were programmed that way. To be fair, however, in the other world, where Iván had come from, most people were like this anyway. Why go to such lengths, risking your own safety, when you pay men to do that for you?

“Who the hell are you?” As if on cue, one of those men, the ones the townsfolk apparently pay to keep the rest of them safe, stood before Iván, becoming a giant wall obstacle he needed to overcome if he wanted to follow the father and daughter tandem that ruled this tiny, crappy town. From the corner of his eyes, he saw them disappear into a door. Hopefully, it wasn’t a door leading outside, which, Iván judged from the looks of the building itself, it wasn’t. Hope.

Iván stared at the overgrown musclehead who scowled at him, scowling back, eyes narrowed, as if asserting his dominance despite his height disadvantage. The man, the bouncer, was huge, massive, ginormous. Compared to Iván, he was a man, not like the dude that stood opposing him. “Do you really want to know who I am? I don’t think you want to know who I am,” Iván grinned, confident for some reason.

“Then why the hell would I have asked you who you were if I didn’t want to know, you stupid duh-duh-head?!” the man’s voice was gravelly, scary, but his uneducated-ness, his illiteracy was obvious. Not that it helped Iván who found himself bested in logic by this dumb-dumb. That would make him more dumb-dumb, right? Iván groaned at that very realization, succumbing to a major blow at his intellect’s self-esteem. The man didn’t notice, or at least he didn’t care to notice, and instead continued his assault of Iván’s ego by going further and pushing him off his butt. “Answer my question, dumb-dumb! Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you here?”

Iván just stood there, barely in the moment. He was at a loss for words, and sense, regarding what wa happening. He wasn’t the smartest man in the room, in any room, but he wasn’t dumber than a dumb-dumb was he? Oh, no. What if he was? Such questions flooded the dumb illusionist’s mind, causing in him some sort of debilitating doubt, paralyzing paranoia. Why was he so confident going into this? He’s died more times than necessary. He could die again, and this time, drag the flat-chested little girl with him to her early grave.

“Are you redundant, small fry? Or are you just unsmart like me? Can’t you hear me? Are you one of his disgusting things?” The man spat on the ground, right of where he stood, which made Iván wince, as if getting spat on was the worst that could happen to him in this dark and dreary town. Frozen in time, in place, Iván was left to the man’s devices, fancies, and he started by grabbing the tiny dumb-dumb with both hands, by the coat, forcing his face close to his own, torturing Iván with the smell of his gross goblin breath hehehe. “You don’t look like one of his things, but you could be working for him. Where is he? Who is he? TELL ME!”

“Mister Macca, can you not?” Olivia, the mayor’s daughter, was suddenly standing next to the human-looking ogre, one dainty hand on his bulging shoulder. As if under a spell, the gross giant of a human slowly, carefully, let Iván go, turning to Olivia who nodded back at him. Mister Macca nodded in response and, after one final scowl towards Iván, moved to give him and Olivia space to, well, move. “Follow me, cousin.”

Olivia gestured for Iván to walk beside her but only got him to narrow his eyes in response. An audible grunt from Mister Macca, however, did the trick, and the unmasked fragile boi quickly grabbed Olivia’s arm and let her lead him out of there. He didn’t want to spend another minute with that gross man, huge and smelly, rude and dumb. As soon as they were far enough from Mister Macca who stayed in his position, though still a few more steps from the door Olivia and her father had disappeared to, Iván asked her the question she had been waiting to hear, “We’re not really cousins, are we?”

“Of course not,” Olivia chuckled under her breath, putting one hand on Iván’s arm as a gesture of reassurance. “But Mister Macca doesn’t know that.”

“He doesn’t know a lot of things,” Iván muttered under his breath, scowling. They were already inches from the door, with Olivia opening it for him, when he realized something that seemed strange, was strange. “Wait, why did you come out and…drag me here?”

Olivia, still smiling, ushered him through that door, into that room, the unmasked summoner with no other option but to attack her, which he didn’t really want to do, didn’t even consider, “Don’t worry, Mr. Carl. We’re on the same side here. She told us you were coming.”

As Olivia closed the door behind them, Iván’s beautiful eyes revealed who were in that room with him, only two other people, both of whom he already knew: the mayor himself and a disguised tinkerer. The heck are you wearing, Leonardo da Goblin?

 

Oyo~ I'm just piling on the lies here.... but well, that's what they say right~? To get into just about anywhere, you just need to act like you have business there and that you belong----

As the door opened, Kepler saw her partner alongside the other person of interest, Olivia The Mayor's Daughter.

And now I just... kind of turn and tilt my head to the person in charge, The Mayor, and then wait... that's how it works right...? The mysterious agent thing?

Kepler did just that, and sure enough...

"---You do not need to worry, my daughter is well informed of our operations here."

Okay! Now I nod... and... Kepler took a deep breath.

"I appreciate you bringing my partner here. It would appear that this iteration of his personality is not yet perfect. I apologize for any trouble he has caused you."

"But still, my lady, I must say he is a most impressive thrall. Nearly undetectable. If I could trouble your master for but a few days of your time, I would love to discuss your methods."

Kepler smiled.

"Ah, but an apprentice is ever busy, I'm afraid. I confess it would be nice to take the time to fully review the operations here for my own education, but even with the success concerning Lady Hilton's retirement, there still remains the work of animating her. My Lord Byron will undoutably want me by his side---He sends his regards by the way. He had mentioned you were both collegemates from the same year?"

The Mayor nodded.

"Roommates actually, Ah~Scholomance, the years really do fly by..."

"Yes indeed, I think I will miss it upon graduation."

"Then you must make time to visit! Often too, before you become overburdened by your trade and family obligations."

"Aye, I could see that, but fortunately----or perhaps----unfortunately enough, I have little to my name. In fact, if not for Lord Byron's sponsorship I likely would've been forced to become a prostitute---or worse yet, a nun."

Kepler grinned wickedly as The Mayor loudly laughed. Olivia in the meanwhile, merely gripped her right arm with her left hand, looking a tad uncomfortable the whole time.

"----I don't know if it was the formal education, but Lord Byron has always been just a little in the lead! Mercy! I could never catch up to that old sly cat no matter how many years I've spent chasing after him! When I found Olivia she was already employed you see! ----And let me say my dear, speaking from a first hand account, she was already a master of her craft before I ever found her! And at such a young age too! What a find----I simply could not help but privatize her, you see. And so, I made her my daughter---and my apprentice besides. Not at Scholomance no, I could hardly bare for my daughter to be away for too long. Say, does my good friend Lord Byron treat you well?"

Kepler did her best to hide her flinch. She did not dare look at Olivia, Kepler felt that if she did, her cover would break.

When we stormed into Lady Aida's room to rescue her the other night, was that really an assassination or... Kepler quickly banished that thought from her mind.

"He treats me excellently Sir."

"I'm glad my friend has found some measure of happiness after that bitch of a niece spurned his gracious advances and dared try to to dilute the family line."

"----a tragedy indeed, but one that has been rectified..."

"What kind of face did she make when she died? Did she come to realize her inner ugliness? That her vain hubris had nearly sunk the house of Byron?"

"It was a quick thing, Sir. Lord Byron asked for me to make it painless, in the end, I believe he forgave her for her crimes."

"Then he is a better man than I."

The Mayor spat.

"Ah... but can you keep a secret? I'm afraid I've played a bit of mischief."

"And that being?"

"I confess that when I did her in----I had that puppet of mine do it, I wanted her to know her harlotry by having a stranger break her (neck) from behind."

Kepler smiled a rueful smile, it was purely directed at The Mayor, but the story disguised it. Kepler was merely the necromatically skilled jealous lover-apprentice-daughter of one Lord Byron. A girl serving an internship of sorts before she graduated Scholomance. That was what she had to be. For now. As The Mayor could scarcely contain his choking laughter, Kepler quietly rose from her seat.

"I believe I could discuss this all day, but unfortunately Sir, I believe I must inspect your operations. My Master, your friend, Lord Byron, as always has the upmost faith in his investments in your business, but just the same I must make my audit in order to better learn and manage the trade on his behalf. Please forgive one foolish apprentice's lack of knowledge. I confess, with my background, my business sense is quite behind a mercantalist such as yourself."

"Fret not my dear, Scholomance knows no class divisons, verily we all have our parts to play in the coming age."

Looking at Ivan, Kepler nodded and waited for him to open the door for them.

This place is vile. But what may be even worse... is what's done with the products---where they ship them. I don't want to think of what uses a market could find for freshly lobotomized flesh puppets...

And so, against her wishes, Kepler remembered something Lady Aida had told her. Something Kepler had mentioned to Ivan along the way of their journey.

"There was a time before adventurers, before each of your times, long before I was born. We, The Byron Family, faced many more hardships in that day. The greatest crisis, however, was in the years of the famine, when those tilling our fields under our protection, had nothing to eat-----when we faced financial ruin because our fields would not grow. That was until one day, my ancestor, The Prodigal Lord Derrick Byron came up with the 'greatest' solution. It was simple economics. If we could not use the people to harvest the land, then all The Byron family simply had to do, was harvest the people. And so, the head of our family located and made his first entreaties with Scholomance, a hellish college of black magics..."


As the Mayor took the lead of the tour with Kepler beside him, the young artificer steeled herself. This was not going to be a pleasant experience, but still, she had to gather as much intelligence as she could. There might still be kidnapped or missing people here that she could save...

 

Iteration of personality? What the heck are you talking about, Kep? At first, Iván was just plain confused. But as @Kepler and the mayor started discussing things, everything seemed to fall into place. Somehow, she had gotten his trust and infiltrated this operation, this necro-conspiracy, by making the mayor think she was allied with Lord Byron Hilton, that Iván was her thrall, and more importantly, that the heiress gross’ uncle was still alive and not beheaded. That last part would’ve been hard to pull off, if Lord Byron’s decapitation hadn’t occurred just a few hours ago. News hadn’t broken out, it seemed, and maybe Lady Aida had done a great job sweeping his corpse under the rug. Gross.

Iván listened intently as Kepler, who was now running the show, thank purple god, made minced meat of the mayor’s brain. She was doing really well with this whole lying thing, Iván should probably be careful around her. That kind of smarts, genius, cunning, was useful in situations such as this, quests, missions, but that might not be a good thing in other situations. Was her name really Kepler? Was she really… Wait, no, she never told him her age. Was she a real person? So many questions invaded Iván’s mind now that he stood witness to Kepler’s ability to lie. He was going to need to keep an eye on this one. Probably. If he remembers to.

The whole Scholomance thing, Iván had virtually no idea what that was all about. His knowledge in the dark arts, black magic and necromancy, was limited. He’s only seen someone else, one other person, a necromancer, be good with it and all, and she ended up technically betraying him and the rest of their party, leading to the failure of his first Aristocracy mission that also saw the death of their employer, the Bandit King. Iván still felt a little bitterness as to how that whole thing ended, but he couldn’t really blame anyone, not when he wasn’t still in the know of what was truly happening back then. Politics was and will always be annoying.

Iván turned to Olivia when Kepler mentioned something about being a prostitute. Almost immediately after considering the possibility that Kepler had been a prostitute, or not, the possibility that Olivia was someone else, something else, entered his mind and, well, gave him weird feelings as well. She seemed so confident earlier. What’s with this version of her? Still, all those things were guesses, to put them mildly, and the only conclusion he’d ended up with was that both the mayor and Lord Byron were disgusting men. Gross. The grossest.

He could’ve killed them, truth be told, the mayor especially. Olivia would’ve probably put up a fight, maybe, but an elbow to the face could’ve stopped her for a moment or two. Iván could’ve ended it all right then and there, expending copious amounts of energy all to put the mayor, and if necessary Olivia, under the worst of nightmares he could think of. Maybe he’d drag him down into the Inverted Spire, have its creatures consume him, break him down bit by bit, limb from limb, slowly, carefully, so he could savor his pain and offer him to his purple god.

But Kepler’s look made him realize that they, as the gross old man put it himself, still have their parts to play. And so Iván begrudgingly opened the door, his hand tight on the knob. If he had enough strength, heroic might, he might’ve crushed it to dust. But he didn’t, and he was thankful he didn’t.

The tour went along without a hitch, at least nothing from Iván, and truth be told, he wanted so bad to cause a hitch, something that would end up killing the mayor, maybe turn him into a vegetable, as the illusionist toyed with his mind, consumed his spirit eternally. Or some shit like that. But parts to play and all that, so he waited, he endured.

Iván walked beside Olivia as the mayor walked next to Kepler, leading them to gross places like storage rooms where body parts were kept in jars and some sort of laboratory with a huge pyre and unmoving bodies, essentially corpses, on cold steel slabs. Down in that basement, the last room was some sort of cell with kids, young boys and girls, what Iván could only assume were orphans, street rats. That was enough to make his blood boil. It was the last straw.

Clenching his fists, he made a move towards the mayor who was still speaking to Kepler, his voice inaudible now that Iván’s mind was consumed by rage. Before he could do anything though, he felt a hand grab his arm. He turned and was surprised to see Olivia shake her head, eyes on his. She mouthed two words at him, not yet, that made him realize there truly was more to her than met the eye. But the rage… He turned to Kepler who was listening to the mayor as he continued to speak. The rage could not wait, but it had to. This was her job, her mission, her quest. He promised to see it through. He would. But afterwards, the mayor was going to regret being a part of this.

"And so we end here. I hope everything is up to your standards, my dear?"

The mayor proceeded to lead them back out into the town hall’s second floor where a table of food and refreshments was prepared. Iván raised an eyebrow, concerned at the preparation that had been done. Then he remembered someone did tell them they were coming. Perhaps, while he was busy getting distracted by the bouncer from before, the mayor and Olivia had told someone else to prepare the food, the second floor. Whatever. That wasn’t as important to Iván as pushing the mayor off the railing and into his death at this point.

He was still talking to Kepler, the blabbermouth, but stopped to stare at Iván, which caught the illusionist surprised. Did he realize what he was thinking, what he wanted to do? Was the jig up? Apparently, it was not. The mayor wasn’t staring at Iván. Rather, he was staring at Iván’s direction, specifically behind him, where a priest was now standing.

"Ah, Father Joy! To what do I owe this pleasure?"