Quixotica (Open!)

[Litharriel]

A moment later, there is a soft sound, little more than a breath, and Tempest and Moonbeard feel a slight sting in their necks. As the darts laced with elephant tranquilizer take effect and the world goes dark, they may notice a familiar triad of elves coming out from behind the chimneys and approaching them...

*************

Waif leads Neeron up a narrow flight of stairs and stops at another door. The sounds of a violin can be heard playing faintly from the other side, a sad gypsy tune. Waif knocks and the music stops. A tall, slender man answers the door. He is dressed in patched black slacks and a white button-down shirt, his slightly-tousled blond hair reaching nearly to his shoulders. The paleness of his skin, the androgynous beauty of his face, the distinctive shape to his warm brown eyes indicated elven heritage somewhere in his background. His eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise as he recognized one of the visitors. "Waif!" he said in a melodious voice. "We haven't seen you in some time. Please, come in!"

He moves aside to allow the androgyne and the demon to enter. The apartment atop the bar was not a terribly spacious one, but what it lacked in footage it made up for with a disorganized sort of coziness. The main room in which they found themselves boasted a threadbare but comfortable couch, stacks upon stacks of books, and a stone fireplace. The violin that had been playing resided in a place of honour on the mantle.

"You'll be wanting to stay for supper, I expect?" said the man.

Waif looked up at him through wide eyes and chewed the tip of a finger. "If Maggie wouldn't mind..."

"I'm sure she wouldn't. I believe she's making shepherd's pie, so there should be plenty."

With a delighted squeak, Waif ran down a hallway and disappeared toward what could only be the kitchen.

The man smiled down at Neeron and held out a long-fingered hand. "Welcome. My name is Jospeh Fiddler. And you are?"

*************

Jasna had been too busy staring at Moonbeard's handiwork in horror to move, and so had completely missed the men's exit. "Fools, fools!" she cursed them, when she could finally find words. "Idiot!" she cursed herself for bringing them. Quickly she ran down the walkway, stumbling half of the way in a most un-catlike manner. At the door, she took a moment to calm herself, knowing that like all doors in the Sphinx's palace, it tended to be random if you weren't firm with it. After a moment of concentration, she tore it open to the hallway through which they'd originally come.

Regis, who'd been leaning against it waiting for their return, nearly fell over. Jasna caught the halfling and nearly lifted him off the floor in her panic. "Regis! Tell her it wasn't me! When she wakes up, tell her it wasn't me!"

"What?" said the halfling?

Shoving him aside, the Cheshire Cat darted down the hallway, out of the building, and made her way back to her flat. A steady stream of curses ran from her mouth as she threw a few essentials into a duffle bag and made her way back down to the streets. The terrible thing about living in the Crossroads was that when you needed to leave town--and she very badly needed to leave town--you couldn't. The good thing about living in the Crossroads was that when you needed to hide--and she very badly needed to hide--there was no end of dark, remote places in which to do so.

Legends did not die. But when they came back from being frozen and pounded into a fine powder, the could certainly be murderous. The Sphinx was a legend if ever there was one, and a powerful one, with many powerful friends--or at least powerful people who owed her favours.

What Jasna needed, she concluded, as she hurried through the back alleys of the Crossroads, was a drink. A very stiff drink.

*************

When they wake up, Moonbeard and Tempest find themselves bound tightly back to back, hanging from their ankles. They had been strip-searched prior to this, and their clothing lies in a pile in the hallway outside of the dark stone room in which they find themselves.

The elf called Elrohir stands before them. "Arafinwë Súrion," he said by way of greeting. "We were able to forgive your trespassing once, especially since you were traveling with Jasna. She is a most useful ally to have, and a good friend to those who treat her well. But she is not here, now, and we owe you nothing. We shall have to think of what to do with you." He retreated to a doorway and pulled it open. "The rope is enchanted, of course, and so will not break, and the knots only come loose with a password. The motorcycle you brought with you onto our roof is a most fascinating contraption. It has been dismantled so that we may understand how to craft more of our own. Such technology is rare, here."

And with that he was gone.  

[Litharriel]

As Moonbeard begins to reassemble the chopper, he notices that several key components are missing, having been taken to craftspeople througout the Crossroads to be duplicated for the Guild's uses. Even if he does manage to put it back together, it won't run without them.

Outside of the room, the alarm had quickly been raised. N'chakk, captian of the guard, stood at the center of a swarm of assassins, recieving reports of what had gone on. In a place as diverse as the Crossroads, the Guild was comprised of far more races than elves. As Jasna had stated before: here there be dragons. N'chakk, in fact, was an Ippanryu--a half-dragon. "Send for the Rake, Asherah , Pyrrhus, and Thorn." his deep voice rumbled, softly.

He was able to scent out the escapees with little trouble, keen nose leading him quickly to the door they hid behind, with the smell of burnt paper, wolf, the fresh-welded metal of the door. By that time the soldiers he had called for had arrived.

"We can take down the door easily enough." said N'Chakk quietly to his lieutenants. "But first I can smell how they like to play with fire. Pyrrhus, let us see how they handle your ardor."

The ifrit gave his red smile.

A moment later, Tempest and Moonbeard notice that the walls and ceiling of their room are beginning to let off an unsettling amount of heat, a faint, reddish glow suffusing the stone, and it's speading to the floor...  

[Ed-Bakuhatsu]

Lynnit landed face first on the soft floor of the forest. He lay there, very still, for a few moments, then got up and looked around. "What is this place?" he asked himself. First Heaven, then Hell, now this... Suddenly a tiny glowing creature floated in front of his face. "Neverland?!" he muttered.

Tinkerbell hovered close to him and reached out a dainty hand, pressing on his forehead with much more strength than he would think her capable of. Lynnit fell backward into a shrubbery and against all expectation kept falling until he fell into a great deal of cold water.

Lynnit looked up, moving his wet hair out of his eyes. Looking up, he realized vaguely that the round walls rising up some distance above him meant he was somehow down at the bottom of a well. A woman was looking down at him. She was quite beautiful. Pale, with dark hair, a serene face. As suddenly as she'd been there, just as suddenly she was gone. A second later, a bucket landed on his head.

The one upside of this was that there was a rope tied to the handle. Grasping it, the fallen angel begins to hoist himself up. Halfway up, the rope broke, sending him plummeting down into the water once more.

It was at this point that he gave himself over to a silent but very violent tantrum, beating at the walls and the water with his fists. After he had control of himself again: "Well..." He smoothed his hair and straitened his clothes and heaved a deep sigh. "It's up the hard way, then."

Once he'd managed to clamber his way to the top, he lay half draped over the side a moment, panting. Looking up, he noticed that he was in the middle of the strangest city he'd ever seen. In front of him was what appeared to be a pub. "The Taunting Renchman? What?... Oh, wait, Frenchman.... " He blinked. "Still, what??"

Hauling himself the rest of the way out of the well, he made his way inside.  

[Litharriel]

(OOC: and good riddance to a couple of would-be usurpers who couldn't handle the fight they picked. Ed, Toxic, on with the story! biggrin )

*************

"Any friend of Waif's is a friend of ours." Joseph replied. "The poor child needs all of the friends it can find. We're continually amazed that it survives living in the streets as it does." He ushered the demon inside and offered her a seat on the couch. "Few immigrants understand exactly how they end up here, and fewer still arrive a'purpose. Our barkeeper, for instance, was shipwrecked off the coast of a place called Normandy and washed up in the city harbor. Maggie and I, and Waif, on the other hand, were born here." The violinist folded his lanky frame into a chair and looked to Neeron with interest. "Where did you arrive here from?"

*************

Taking an erratic route through the labyrinthine backstreets of the city added a good half hour to the trip from Jasna's flat to the Frenchman, but the Cheshire Cat preferred to err on the side of caution, even pausing about halfway there to duck into an alleyway and change her trademark burgundy velvet for a long dark coat with a hood that shrouded her face in shadows.

Slipping through the door to the pub, she passed by a decidedly pretty and equally damp young man (or so he appeared to be--you never could be too sure, in the Crossroads...) and made a beeline for the bar, sliding onto a stool and propping her duffle beside her feet. "Virasian Firewhiskey." she said tersly to the barkeep for whom the establishment was named.

"In fine spirits, tonight, Jasna." quipped the man, sliding a shot of the potent drink the Cheshire Cat's way.

"I'm in no mood, Bertrand." growled Jasna, catching the tiny glass and slamming it back. "Another."  

[Ed-Bakuhatsu]

Lynnit went to the bar, thinking of asking for a towel.

"I just mopped the floor, you horrid-damp-thing!" Bertrand sniped.

"Well excuse you for being kinda f*cking French." the angel replied.

"French and proud, you panty-waisted prettyboy! I fart in your general direction!"

"Well you may do that, but it won't clean the floor." Lynnit said sweetly.

"That is not the point--you must bring me a shrubbery!"

"I fell in one of those on my way here and ended up in your lovely well. Which is why all of this mud and water is all over your floor... Let's not start all that again."

"Who do you think is going to clean up that mess? Not me, you drippy pansy-arsed ninny!"

Lynnit stomped back to the front door of the bar. Thinking the fight won, the Frenchman turned back to his business at the bar. Lynnit leaned out, and scooped up a handful of mud. Turning, he chucked it to land with a loud splat on the Frenchman's, erm, posterior. "At least I don't still need diapers." Lynnit snarked. "And, by the way, you smell funny." Nose in the air, he turned his attention to the hooded woman sitting a short distance away. "I'm rather damp... You wouldn't happen to have a towel?"  

[Litharriel]

In the Spninx's throne room, a whirlwind roared. Particles of frozen dust hissed and gathered at the center of the dais, taking the form of the Sphinx by the sheer force of a terrible will that had lived in the consciousness of man for millennia. "RRRREEEEEGGGGGIIIIIISSSSSS!" the creature shrieked with the voice of the wind.

The halfling, who had been cowering outside of the door where Jasna had left him, pushed the portal open a crack. "Y-y-y-y-y-yes, Lady?" Gritting his teeth, he entered the room, and then stared stupified at the sight that greeted him.

In agitation, the creature formed and reformed, the particles unable to bond back together in their frozen state.. "MMMOOOVE!" the wind roared, "BRRIIIINNNGGG MMME FFFFIRE!"

*************

Jasna (who had been snickering quietly into her second drink throughout the exchange) blinked at the pretty (and dripping) man. "No, no I don't." she said, sipping the last drops of her firewhiskey down. "But I do know some people who might." Her quick eyes caught Bertrand moving into the kitchen, and she knew there was trouble on the way. Slipping off the barstool, she shouldered her duffle and put a coaxing hand on Lynnit's shoulder. "And I suspect we'd best be off to see them before Bertrand starts throwing livestock."

No sooner had she spoken than there was a loud squawk and a rather surprised chicken sailed out into the bar proper, nearly clipping the Cheshire Cat on the side of the head.

Quickly she steered herself and her new companion through another door in the back of the bar, and up a flight of stairs...

*************

"All the better that you're here in the warm, then." Joseph replied to Neeron.

There was a clatter, and Waif charged back into the room with two large plates, the scent of garlic, rosemary, oregano, lamb and vegetables filling the air. Following behind it came a tall, willow-thin, olive-skinned woman, also bearing two plates. Her purple-streaked hair was a black waterfall down her back, and the graceful skirts of her dress were slighly-hampered by an apron printed with multi-coloured winged wolves.

With a grin, the child handed a plate to Neeron, plopped down beside her on the couch and tucked into its own. The woman handed Joseph a plate as well, and pulled up a chair beside him. "And who is our other guest?" asked the woman in a rich, slighly-accented voice, giving Neeron a dusky smile.

The violinist motioned to the demon. "Maggie, this is Neeron, a demon of Blize. Neeron, this is my wife and partner, Magdalin Cree."

There was a knock on the door, and from below came a crash and the lowing of a dismayed cow.

The violinist rose and opened the door to reveal a cloaked woman and a bedraggled young man. The woman pushed back the hood of her cloak to reveal coppery hair caught up in a braid, her eyes obscured by round, yellow-tinted shades. "Bertrand's on the war path." she said, matter-of-factly. "And we were wondering if you had a towel."

"Jasna!" said the man, grinning. "Of course you'd bring trouble."

There was another crash, this time accompanied a goat's terrified bleat.

The proprietors of the Taunting Frenchman exchanged a look, and Maggie nodded. "You take care of our guests. I'll see to Bertrand." She slipped past the new arrivals and disappeared down the stairs in a russle of skirts.

"Won't you come in?" said Joseph calmly, as though things like this happened every day. He noted the puddle spreading under the young man's feet. "Ah. Towel. Yes." He disappeared into another room, after the needful thing.

Jasna was quick to make herself at home, leaning against a wall and dropping her duffle on the floor. She sniffed the aroma of food and eyed their hosts' abandoned plates of shepherd's pie speculatively--then was nearly knocked over as Waif streaked across the room and leapt at Lynnit. "Hi!" creid the child, throwing it's arms around the fallen angel.

Raising an eyebrow, the Cheshire Cat slid into the child's vacated place on the couch and casually took up its abandoned plate. "Hi." she echoed, only to Neeron as she took up the likewise-dropped fork and speared a bit of carrot. "I'm Jasna. Is the kid always that friendly...?"  

[Ed-Bakuhatsu]

"...... You look somewhat familiar......" Lynnit muttered to the small thing clinging to his waist. "Oh, look your getting wet now.... I think you better let go...." He added pressing a finger to its forehead trying to push it away, but the
effort was wasted, the child's grip was too tight.

The child looked up at him with wide eyes, the light falling on its androgynous features for the first time.

"Ah! I remember! You look like Raphael..... yeah that's it! why do you look like him I wonder..."