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Seminars
| When: | 16 January 2005 |
| Who: | Bronwen, Tyrr |
| What: | Two old friends are on the hunt for both an object and a person... but only one target is found. |
Tombstone Arms
In one of the worst areas of the city there is a derelict warehouse building that has resisted all attempts to refurbish it thus far by the local residents. In the cellar/upper level of the building there are crates upon crates of different weapons.
Where this was once run by Semaiah, a Habbalite of the War, he lost the building in a massive battle that has since linked it as a tether to Michael. The place has been rebuilt and is fully stocked with both ranged and melee weapons of all sorts thanks to the work of the Seneschal, a Cherub of War named Vaniel.
Toward the far corner from the door on the first floor, there's a single person rummaging through all the crap that's been put into crates here. Tyrr seems intent on finding something he /knows/ is here, but can't quite find. He's going to have a nice long chat with the Seneschal, Vaniel, when he gets back from the Groves.
Bronwen wanders into the building and out of the chilly wind. Her gaze automatically sweeps the floor and she takes note of who is currently visiting the fresh Tether, as well as looking for its seneschal.
There's a loud string of cursing now, as Tyrr just outright lifts up a three hundred pound crate and launches it across the room. The thing shatters upon hitting the ground in the middle of the room (the only really open area here), scattering several Glock 17s about. Good thing they weren't armed. "I swear, I'm going to break Vaniel in TWO!"
"Seneschals are not that easy to come by, you know," Bronwen remarks as she steps around the fresh debris on the ground. "Unless *you* wanted to ask Michael to be trained as one and be tied to the Tethers. It would be a bit difficult to have fun time unless the demons were imbecilic enough to actually rush a Tether of War... what are you looking for, anyhow?"
"They're easy enough to replace when one is incompetent enough not to organize the damn place in any sensible manner." Tyrr's not too thrilled with the fact the layout is as crappy as it was when Semaiah had the place. It's made even worse in the fact that Tyrr's had something shipped here for himself. "It'll be in a crate about two feet cubed. It has something for myself and a few friends in it."
"Two feet? Have you searched the area closest to the entrance and the larger boxes with open surfaces on top for this box?" Bronwen asks as she starts to poke around the shattered crate of guns. "Does Vaniel know this was coming for you? Perhaps he took it to a safer place where it wouldn't get lost."
Tyrr nods, "I've searched about two thirds of this floor and the office upstairs and most of the open area there." Tyrr glowers as he pushes more boxes out of the way as he digs his way back out to the main area. "I /need/ this damn package." He begins to rummage around in the area directly across from the door.
Bronwen moves to the opposite side of the door and shifts a pair of larger boxes out of the way. "What does this box of yours look like? A banker's style box that seem popular right now or a shipping box? Brown paper or no paper?"
Snapping open a box that has a recent date on it, Tyrr growls slightly as he digs around more. "Non-paper, standard crate shipping wood." Tyrr shakes his head, "What did you come down here for anyways yourself?"
"I was in the area and decided to stop in for a bit," Bronwen replies as she moves one other box before reaching in for presumably yet another crate. "This wouldn't happen to be it, would it?" she asks, turning to display her find.
Tyrr slams the box down that he just went through, obviously he's been at this awhile tonight that he's pretty damned frustrated. He turns, and is about to dismiss the box when he sees the specific 'brand' stamped on every side of the box. The symbol of the Tsayadim. "Ah, that's it! Excellent!" He walks over, reaching out to take it from Bron.
Bronwen readily offers the box to her old friend to avoid getting her corporeal fingers taken off. "Did you ever think to take a break and reset your mind to change your strategy?" she asks, tilting her head slightly to one side. "After a while all of these crates look the same."
Tyrr takes the box very carefully, giving the contents a lot of respect obviously. Moving over to a pile of boxes, he sets it down and pries open the top. With a shrug to her comment, "I shouldn't have had to dug so much for it. Anyways, come here, I've something for you." With that, he begins to pull out the opaque bubble wrap off one of the three items within.
"I'm almost glad that I was the one to find this box... I don't want to imagine what your reaction had been if you'd accidentally thrown this crate in frustration," Bronwen comments as she moves closer to perch on one of the large storage bins.
A barely amused smile crosses Tyrr's face, "Oh, I think the items would have been safe." He unwraps one of the three items, to reveal an intricately carved dagger. The blade is eight and a half inches, with symbols that appear to be vaguely Celtic with some hints of early Hindu glyphs. The handle is an ornate silver and gold mixture with finger grips carved into it. "This is one of four daggers, Bron, that I receieved long ago. The script is from the original Indo-European culture that has direct connections to the Hindu and Gaelic cultures of the last thousand years." He holds the blade so the handle is toward her. "This one, is now yours."
Bronwen leans slightly to the side to get a look at the symbol stamped on the crate's side. "Now there's something I haven't seen in centuries," she murmurs as she spots the Tsayadim mark. "What is this for?" The question is asked as she reaches for the dagger to inspect it. "It's quite gorgeous."
Handing the one dagger over, Tyrr begins to unwrap another of the three daggers. "Nothing special, and not from Michael, this is from me. I've only ever given one of these out before, long ago..." His face goes dark and somewhat slack for a moment before he moves on, "I've trusted you since the moment we changed. And this," he twists the dagger he's holding around in his hand to look it over, "is a token of that. It's nearly three thosuand years old almost... and still as strong as the day it was forged and folded."
"I'm starting to wonder if the art of forging is going by the wayside for the moment," the female Malakite muses, turning the dagger in a number of ways to look at it from varying angles. "There are so few masters in this populated plane. Might I be so bold as to ask who was fool enough to betray you?"
Reaching underneath the bubble wrap, Tyrr pulls out two of the scabbards that were packed in peanuts and hands one over to Bronwen. "The art is mostly lost, yes. They prefer to do 'die' pouring, which has none of the strength of folding the metal a thousand times." Tyrr squints some as Bronwen asks the question, teetering on the edge of pretending she didn't ask. "An Elohite of Laurence by the name of Inarin. Needless to say, he's no longer an Elohite."
Bronwen nods as she fits the dagger into its scabbard after giving it one last look. "Precisely," she agrees, leaning slightly forward to tuck her new weapon into the small of her back. "With these modern times, there are so many job types available that the dilution has caused other skills to suffer for it." Bronwen shifts slightly on her crate-seat to get used to the feel of the scabbard. "Inarin... the name sounds familiar."
"The bastard is now a Habbalite of Baal. Convinced he's still an angel despite the way he fell." Tyrr clenches his fist along the blade, actually causing a slight bit of blood to spill onto the blade as his left hand is near the tip of the blade.
Bronwen frowns slightly as she notices the reddish tint the blade is getting. "There's no need to harm yourself further," she murmurs quietly. "Even if the memories are painful."
Looking down at the blade, Tyrr sees what she's referring too and shakes his head just a bit more. "There's something about being betrayed by someone you worked with for centuries, when we were both serving Purity, that's aggrivating. Here we were, the Servitors of the best of causes, and he fell so far. It just reminds me that everyone can fall to their Fate." There's something dark in Tyrr's eyes that tells you he's been thinking a lot about Fate and Destiny lately.
"And everyone can rise to their Destiny," Bronwen counters, resting her hands on the edge of the crate and leaning forward again slightly. "There is equal potential for both, and rather dependent on a being's choices and actions."
Tyrr's face contorts into a vision of hatred for a moment, "Yes, and his Destiny is me cutting out his heart and dragging his celestial form to Heaven to burn in the light of God now." If Tyrr's got that much revenge built up around him over Inarin, you can just imagine what Tyrr thinks Inarin's /fate/ is.
Bronwen watches her friend quietly for a few moments. "While I can understand the want for revenge to make this balance equal, don't let it consume you to the point of being oblivious to all else."
There's a shift in Tyrr's eyes as he looks over to you. "It doesn't consume me. If it did, I'd be out hunting him down. If he shows up in the city however, I'll be waiting till I hold the Eighth Virtue in this city, before making my presence known to him. In Malakite Gang Bang Glory."
"If you can keep your presence contained, considering you're the owner of one of Austin's most popular restaurants," Bronwen replies, although she perks up at the mention of the Eighth Virtue. "Remind me to not get on your bad side. Would Inarin even survive the experience of a Malakite Gang for more than a few minutes? Unless, of course, it's going to be a hunt."
"There are other Tyrrs, and so long as he doesn't see me, I'll be fine. Having this pesky vessel for several thousand years without loosing it tends to make me easy to spot." Tyrr takes the blade and uses the inside of his jacket to clean the blood off... better to ruin a jacket than let that stain the blade. "There is nothing special about the blade... well save the fact that there have been maybe a handful of such blades made with such quality since then."
Bronwen gives the other Malakite a look of disbelief with a small shake of her head. "There are not *that* many other Tyrrs around, and somehow I can't see there being a concentration of them in this single city. Perhaps if we were in the green isle that would hold true, but here in Texas?" The small of her back gets a light tap, as if she was fixing herself on the object. "'Special' or not, I can only offer it the best of my abilities."
"Either way, if he knows about me or not... if he shows up, we will form a hunt the night of the Eighth Virtue, and not even the Morningstar could stop us." Tyrr's determined alright. He unrolls the final blade and puts it in it's scabbard before hooking each blade to a harness, one under each arm under his coat. He looks around at the mess, most of which was already like this, "Vaniel is going to get a boot up his ass next time I see him."
"Like he's going to appreciate the new mess of guns strewn about the middle of the floor," Bronwen comments dryly. "You might be getting a boot back, just to be equal."
Tyrr looks it over, "Yes, because adding two boxes shatter to this disaster zone is such a burden. I lay down a 7th century axe that he's not even going to /notice/ the additional mess." Tyrr shrugs, "Come on, lets get out of here."
Bronwen chuckles softly as she hops off the crate to follow Tyrr outside. "I should offer Vaniel a hand next time I'm in the area," she comments.
Tyrr walks out the door, "Too bad I know of no demons easily accessible. I'd say lets go on a small hunt. Let's walk around the city though and see what we can find, eh?"
East - Austin
There are 'problem areas,' and then there are 'urban wastelands.' Much of he East Side of Austin fits into the latter category. It runs from the Capitol all the way to the eastern city limits, walled in by the University and the Colorado River in the south and an invisible line known only to the street-smart in the north. A reasonably comfortable buffer zone in the east-central and around the highways keeps the worst part of the city from mingling with the best and most important, and it is there that Austin has its most ambitious revitalization projects. The further east one goes, however, the faster the city seems to take an ungraceful dive into vice and decay. The exact opposite of the West Side, much of the East is a true barrio. The streets are unabashedly dirty, littered with both material trash and people, sitting or standing or walking aimlessly by the wayside.
"Oh my," Bronwen remarks at the thought of a small hunt. "If demons could read thoughts or intentions right now, we'd likely have a rush of infernals moving away from our location."
Tyrr begins to walk down the street in the general direction of Downtown, looking over toward Bronwen for only a second with a preverse smile. "Good."
Bronwen simply shakes her head with a smile across her features. Whether she's smiling at Tyrr's decision or the idea of the hunt itself isn't entirely clear... this smile could be quite dangerous.
Tyrr suddenly stops, recalling something that's been on his to-do list for awhile. "Actually, let's turn around. We need to investigate a rumour I heard about a place around here. Some type of Junkyard."
Bronwen blinks and halts a few steps afterwards. "A junkyard?" she asks, turning back towards Tyrr. "Some of the city's population might consider most of the East Side a junkyard of sorts. Crime rate is pretty high in this area."
"I can imagine, especially given some of the gang elements being fed weapons by Semaiah. Hopefully Vaniel will use Tombstone as a means against it and get his Servitors to kick some of the worst elements out of the city." Tyrr puts his hands in his pockets as he walks away from the center of the city. "But the Junkyard I think is called Nelson's. Rumour has it, one of the people who run it is a Hellsworn."
"Well, that would make the hunt a short one if we're right in the neighbourhood," the female Malakite comments. "Is it another one of Baal's servitors, or perhaps one of the Prince of Drugs." Some of the nearby homeless might try to follow this particular conversation but it mustn't be very easy to do so...
"Does it really matter either way? If it's a Hellsworn, we'll drag it back to Tombstone Arms and let Vaniel and his group interrogate it for anything useful. If it's not, then well... we find something else." Tyrr's obviously been pining for a fight lately, too long has he went without actively hunting something down. "Unless you've got a better target in mind?"
Bronwen shrugs a shoulder. "It doesn't really matter, but it could give an indication as to what sort of fight we can expect. Unless they spot us for what we are and attempt to hide."
Tyrr looks around as the sun begins to set in Austin, just enough to make the sky a very deep and dark blue. "Well, I don't think he or she will. The rumours I've heard is that it's a Hellsworn who has tried to redeem their checkered past. I got asked to check it out non-violently first, to see if that's valid. And if it is, to turn 'em over to our side."
"It's worth checking into, at the very least," Bronwen replies. "Were any of the redemption attempts successful, either on the small or grand scale?"
"That's just it. No one has tried to redeem or cause the person to fall back to their old tendancies. We just got the tip from another Soldier who thought he saw some funny things happening there," Tyrr says as he stops for a moment and asks a rather jovial homeless bag lady for directions.
Bronwen waits for the lady to reply before speaking again. "So they're in a sort of limbo with their intentions?"
Nelson's Junkyard
A wonderland to be explored by the local children, Nelson's Junkyard is run by a good natured older couple, James and Sophie Nelson. On the outskirts of Austin, and sprawling out over a massive plot of land, Nelson's Junkyard is the come-to place for people looking for people looking for odds and ends or to see if there's anything that's still useful. Everything's done by trade here or cash only, as the Nelson's don't really consider this a business but more of a public service. Strangely enough, both Sophie and James are renegade soldiers from different sides of the war, Hell and Heaven respectively.
Tyrr shrugs, "Well, we're here, so we're about to find out."
Bronwen glances around the junkyard. "Is it a homeless person? As in, are we going to have to search behind each pile for a person on the move, or do they work here and are fairly stationary?" she asks, rolling her shoulders within her jacket.
Tyrr walks through the gates after slamming his fist (with brass knuckles on) into the lock and shattering it. "They're one of the owners apparently." Pulling the chain from around the fence, Tyrr lets the two into the yard proper.
Bronwen glances towards her old friend. "We're doing this in a non-violent manner, you say?" the detective asks in a wry tone before quietly closing the gates behind them once again. Or as quietly as possible.
"Non-violent... so long as they don't try and get uppity." 'Uppity' being one of Tyrr's favorite words. Afterall, when demons get uppity, he gets the chance to put them right back down. He looks around and points toward a house not that far from the wall surrounding the junkyard. "The lights are on."
"Calm, collected, and if it stays that way we can find another Hellsworn later to send back down," Bronwen comments with a nod, having also seen the house.
Tyrr takes off the brass knuckles and drops them into his coat pocket. "So how do you want to approach this? Just walk up and knock on the door and go 'boo'?"
"You're the one who the informant tapped," Bronwen replies. "We could try the direct route, which could be the easiest considering they live here. What's the worst that could happen?"
Tyrr smiles grimly, "I hope you really don't expect an answer to that." Walking up the three steps onto the porch, Tyrr raps his knuckles on the door given there's no door bell.
"If it isn't a Demon Prince, I think two Virtues can survive a demon encounter and the worst case for that is waking up in the Glade," Bronwen answers herself as she moves to stand slightly behind Tyrr. "'Course getting a new vessel established is a right pain in the ass."
Knocking again, this time a tad bit harder, Tyrr looks over his shoulder at Bronwen. "I keep forgetting, we really need to get you a body bag and an extra vessel to store." Looking back at the door, he moves to look through the small diamond shaped window toward the top. "Though you'll excuse me if I refuse to lose this vessel. It's over a milennia old, longest running streak yet without losing one."
Bronwen idly shoves her hands in her jacket pockets, shaking her head. "I'd love to know how you managed to move around for a millenium and not have humans notice that you never actually died of old age. Or are you your own great-grandson to the umpteenth grand?"
Tyrr pauses for a moment, as if to respond, but instead slams his fist into the door a few times. Quite accidently, he leaves a noticable imprint in the wood door, with a crack forming from the imprint to the top of the door. "I usually don't stay around for long... but in the places that I do, I just get someone with Entropy to do a bit of doctoring to the vessel to age it every once in awhile..." And then in a very flat tone, that belies the only way Tyrr jokes, he adds, "besides... I age well."
Bronwen visually inspects the lovely new door texture recently added. "Remind me to ask you about your definition of 'non-violent' sometime, okay?" she says as she steps towards the door and knocks on it a few times loudly as well as raising her voice. "Hello, is anybody home? This is the Austin Police Department." Glancing over her shoulder, Bronwen comments in her normal voice, "We could try it this way."
Stepping to the side and allowing Bronwen access as she knocks and yells, Tyrr moves along the porch to see if he can see inside the window. "No lights are on, I'm wondering if they're even home." Tyrr considers, and pulls out his brass knuckles, "And it's non-violent only when there's another living being on the other end of my axe..." A short pause, "I think I'll set Kurgan to keep an eye on the place, since he lives nearby, for any activity and let us know."
Bronwen groans softly at the definition. "Non-violent is not using any type of force against another being or object. Axe, brass knuckles, knife, fists... they can all be considered violent depending on the intent. At the rate you're going, you might want to offer him a raise or he might start thinking that he's becoming a regular errand boy."
"Kurgan's like any other Soldier or Servitor serving Michael. He does his duty." Tyrr's a bit indignant obviously at the implication that Kurgan needs to be paid for anything outside of Fado's. "Either way, they're not here, and I don't feel like causing a disturbance through breaking in and rummaging around. We'll come back." He steps down off the porch.
"Soldier or not, he's also a mortal," Bronwen responds. "Are you going to fix the broken gate, or leave it as a calling card along with the cracked front door?" Her questions aren't asked with a smartass type of tone although the words may seem to indicate it.
Tyrr says, "He's a mortal who has a job at Fado's and gets paid for that. We don't sit there and pay all of our Soldiers, Bronwen. Heaven couldn't afford how many Michael has...let alone his Saints." Tyrr looks back, "Leave 'em as is. They'll probably just think it was a bunch of hoods.""
Bronwen snorts softly. "The entire concept of paying a Soldier or employee is a bit beyond me. You'll recall that it's been some time since I've had a Soldier underfoot. Besides, currency only holds as much value as societies put on it. Remember when it all used to be barter and trade?"
Tyrr shakes his head as he begins walking back toward Fado's. "Bartering...and before that just simply hitting each other over the top of the head with clubs." Tyrr looks around, if one didn't know any better, you'd almost think he was a misanthrope.
"Oh yes. They've come such a long way," Bronwen replies dryly, thinking of the mound of paperwork she has waiting for her next shift to start up. She trails after her friend through the darkening evening.
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