TIME July 7th, 10:15pm (continuing) LOCATION The rooftop, then inside Eskobar’s den
BACKGROUND:
Sanchez had the rooftop sniper dead to rights, Raven and Ash were mopping up the ground floor, and somewhere inside, Eskobar himself was still waiting for the shooting to stop.
WHAT HAPPENED
The sniper turned, spotted Krusha, and raised his crossbow anyway.
Sanchez called out the Agents’ presence and fired – the boom of the cannon cutting clean through the rain, though the shot only grazed padded armour.
Krusha and the two rookies closed the last distance over the dividing parapet, and the badly wounded sniper surrendered rather than test four Agents at once, dropping his sword.
Below, Ash turned up a cache of food and equipment before a returning Cutter – arriving with the evening’s hired company in tow – caught her at it and went down in a hail of magic missiles as Raven pounded up the stairs.
On the roof, Krusha found the trapdoor jammed; smashing a skylight open turned up nothing but too long a drop to risk.
He and Sanchez forced the trapdoor properly instead and started down into the corridor – just as Raven, reaching the top of the stairwell from the other direction, walked straight into an ambush of two waiting Cutters.
Ash, meanwhile, was busy reassuring a startled working girl that the two rain-soaked, apparently unconscious Agents nearby were only sleeping off a spell, taking her details before letting her go find other company.
Krusha tripped some manner of alarm heading down the corridor toward the sound of incense and combat, and clipped a dagger-throwing Cutter with a mace strike that landed short of its full force.
Raven finished both ambushers in short order and rejoined the group; the two rookies were sent to secure the main door while Raven checked the second floor and Krusha helped Sanchez break down the last one.
It gave way in a burst of splintered wood, opening onto a dimly lit room lantern and candlelight, and two figures standing in front of an open window.
Eskobar himself stood there, one arm around a slender woman in dark purple robes, Shastan blood showing in her features, a single black braid down her back, a dagger and a slender wand-like stick tucked into her cummerbund.
“The dice were correct. You do smell like Agents. Put the weapons down. As you can see, I am unarmed.”
Eskobar
Sanchez demanded his surrender outright.
Krusha charged in on the warning of worse to come and was blocked by three Cutters forming a wall around their boss – he dropped one on contact while Sanchez’s cannon took down another.
Raven, hearing that the commotion overhead was more than banter, ran back upstairs to help.
Eskobar didn’t wait to find out how the fight would go – he hauled the woman bodily out of the window with him. The last Cutter traded blows with Krusha until Raven arrived and ran him through on her way in.
By the time anyone reached the window, there was no sign of Eskobar or the woman at all.
The room itself gave up disappointingly little – books, a bag of silver, straw-packed boxes, a couple of bottles, and no sign of the actual drug stash anywhere in the building beyond a handful of stray bulbs of Twitch and Bumblebee.
Back at the House, word came in of a lead on Griffiths’ whereabouts, and the Agents turned in for their scheduled appearance at the Plaza the next day – a full cordon of Agents in formation, backs to the crowd, facing the commissioner’s podium.
The commissioner’s address did little to reassure anyone – a well-worn string of reassurances about Section House diligence that barely stirred the crowd.
Lady Victoria arrived by carriage partway through and had the commissioner on the back foot within a minute of taking the stand herself.
“Commissioner, I am Lady Victoria Luger. I hear your words, but I wonder – what is actually being done about the menaces plaguing Chuza? Like my son, Martin. It is only by KemerLexi’s good grace that he is alive.”
Lady Victoria Luger
The commissioner’s suggestion that Martin perhaps shouldn’t have been out that late in that part of the city landed badly – Lady Victoria turned it straight back on him, demanding to know whether Section 18 believed some citizens simply mattered less than others.
From somewhere behind the cordon, a gravelly voice – Boosay, dressed head to toe in Agent armour so dark it seemed to swallow the light rather than reflect it – offered his own quiet commentary.
“She’s feisty, that Lady Victoria. Reckon the commissioner should probably cut his losses and flee while he can.”
Boosay
Lady Victoria didn’t let up, and the commissioner retreated to his carriage under guard rather than keep trying.
She stayed, taking names and handing out flyers to a queue of citizens the speech had left thoroughly unconvinced, her closing line – “action, not words” – already spreading through the crowd as a chant of its own.
As the midday heat finally broke the gathering up, a detonation went off at the edge of the Plaza.