Nick's Weekend Gets Ruined

[renferret]

 

Ring, ring, ring. It's another call. Same unfamiliar number.

 

Brings-the-Pack happens to be taking a nap on the futon inside. An ear twitches in irritation on the first ring. He lifts his head up blearily by the second ring. And on the third ring a paw extends over the side of the mattress to touch the Kindle Fire's interface. He waits for whoever is on the other end of the line to speak first, like a self-important douchebag--or a cat.

 

The voice that comes through the fire's speakers is male, a calm, easy tenor. Twenties, thirties? "Hello, Nick Dalton." The briefest of pauses. "Your first instinct is going to be to hang up on me. It's very important that you don't do that."

 

The cabin/sanctum is a magic-friendly place for Nick. He looks to the small bit of fire--fire borrowed from the caern's fire pit--hissing and popping in the fireplace, and he borrows a small portion of the heat energy to convert into sound. There's an uncomfortable is-there-anyone-on-the-other-end? pause that is broken by a voice that sounds reasonably like Nick's. The cat's mouth never moves. "You're not a telemarketer, so that's a plus. Who is this?"

 

"My identity isn't important just now, but I'll be happy to let you know soon," the voice replies. There are other sounds in the background. A car. Intentionally muffled voices. "I need you to pass along a message, Mr. Dalton. Maybe exercise those old detective skills just a little. I'm afraid it might spoil your weekend. But we're on a bit of a schedule." Probably late twenties. He sounds northeastern. Not Jersey. New York? Maybe. Upstate, possibly.

 

Brings-the-Pack peers over to make a note of the number. He gazes at it a little, as if about to do more than just look, before he looks elsewhere. "What is the message, who is it for, and why are you not contacting them yourself? I'm not a receptionist."

 

The voice responds, "Let me make a few suggestions first. First of all, you're thinking about trying something clever right now. Look, but don't touch, Nick. You're going to want to hang up again. You're going to want to run. While I'm certain that we'd never catch up with you even if that was a priority, it will likely end very very badly for a large number of other, innocent people. I suspect you'd be upset about that. Now..." Another beat. "We don't want you. I'm contacting you because you're smart, Mr. Dalton. You listen and think before acting, and right now I need you to listen very carefully to everything I say. I want you to pass something along to your boss, to your fuzzy little friends." More background noises. Laughter? Someone else shushes it. "Do we understand each other?"

 

Brings-the-Pack shifts position on the futon so that he's sitting on it instead of laying down. This is certainly an unusual phone call. He's silent for a bit as he processes what all has been said. The options he has. The angles he could take. His answer is finally given. "Yes."

 

"Good," says the voice on the other end of the call. "They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Look at the one I'm sending you, please." Within a second or so, a picture message in fact arrives.

 

Brings-the-Pack cants his head slightly to one side, looking at the screen. "Nothing yet." He says as the image arrives. "Ah. Here we go. One second."

 

It's not the greatest of pictures, but it doesn't have to be. What shows up on the Kindle Fire is quite clearly a close-up of a pipe bomb, complete with a digital clock timer. There have to be at least three, probably four individual pipes to it. The timer reads roughly five hours. Dangling down in front of the numbers, but not enough to obscure them, is a dead mouse, tied to the bomb by its tail. Almost nothing of the bomb's location can be seen. Somewhere dark, though there's a bright light being shown on the bomb itself.

 

Brings-the-Pack spends a moment looking at the picture, as if attempting to make sense of it, though he's probably already gotten the basic premise. "Hold on a second." He attempts to reach out over the phone with Correspondence and Mind magicks, hoping to pick at the caller's thoughts. "What am I looking at here? The image is pretty damn dark." Perhaps his question will prompt to person on the other end of the phone to think about where the picture was taken.

 

The caller has a sort of forced calm about his thoughts, but underneath they are startlingly tense and locked down, which makes it strangely difficult to pick out the information that Nick wants. Difficult, but not remotely impossible. He gets an address and an impression of a dingy street in south St. Claire, the basement of a run-down tenement that's nevertheless full of occupants. Not /the/ tenement, thankfully. "You know exactly what--!" comes a snarling voice, also male, but definitely not the calm speaker. There's a dull thud, another, quieter snarl, and a third voice, female, which says, just barely audible through the speakers, "Shut the fuck up." Then the calm voice again. "Sorry, my friends are a little anxious right now. What you're looking at is a message, Mr. Dalton. It's also a freebie. I'm going to tell you where it is, and with it are further instructions that will need to get into the right hands. I don't expect you to go walking in there, of course, but you're resourceful. You'll figure out what to do. Just a warning. Don't call the cops. Our message isn't for them, unless you force it to be."

 

"Okay," come Nick's voice out of thin air. The cougar's mouth isn't even moving one bit as the mage, in his sanctum, leans heavily on vulgar magicks to make it sound like he's just another human. And oh-so-compliant. "Give me a second to find a pencil and some paper." A paw reaches down and jostles the tablet from the side, simulating the noise of a phone being put down--and hopefully buying Nick a little more time. No need to skim the location of the bomb from the guy's head if the guy is going to give it to him. Instead, Nick flicks off the Mind aspect of the magical effect and leans on the Correspondence, attempting to get a look at the vehicle's occupants or any distinctive things in or about the vehicle itself.

 

"Of course," says the calm voice. This attempt is much easier; with the line open, and the others in such close proximity, it's like Nick simply opens up a window in his head and glances through. Four people are sitting in an extremely junky Ford sedan that looks as though it may fall apart at any time, though the engine itself is purring along. The man with the phone is clean shaven, white, blond, wearing nice slacks and a white polo t-shirt, along with a men's watch which he's glancing at. Around his neck is something that looks like...no, it is. It's an animal's ear, a wolf's, but far too large, brown with a strange, unnatural white pattern on the fur, as if it had been painted on. Next to him is another man, the driver, dark haired, several inches taller. His clothing is decidedly less well kept, with several rips and in severe need of laundering. He's eyeing the calm voiced man very, very carefully. In the back seat are two others, a Native American woman with a great big scar gouged into one cheek and her lips, and a hulking...it's presumably a man from the shape and size, but his face is entirely obscured by a ski mask and goggles, without even the usual slit for the mouth.

 

Brings-the-Pack stalls for time, making notes of all the individuals and trying to establish where they're calling from. Better still? An anchoring point he can latch onto for when the phone goes dead. When he feels he's pushed for as much time as he's likely to get, a paw reaches down to bump the phone and scrape it an inch across the floor, simulating it being picked up again. "Okay. Ready." He takes a moment to eye the car's trunk's contents.

 

They don't appear to be very far away from the bomb's location. Two blocks at most, parked and idling at the curb. They all seem armed, but there's something very very familiar about the gun that the calm man has tucked into his waistband. .45 glock pistol. The trunk is, of all things, full of suitcases, which in turn seem to contain mostly clothes, one for each occupant of the car. The calm man rattles off the address--the same one Nick's already gleaned from him. "Now, here's the catch. That one's a freebie, but the next one won't be. In order to get the location of that one, a few of your fuzzy friends are going to have to meet with us. So make sure to follow the instructions you find with this one, and make sure that you tell people who are actually going to care about a bunch of humans being blown to pieces." He pauses. "In fact, tell this to your boss. Tell him exactly this. Tell him: 'it's a bad day'."

 

Brings-the-Pack repeats the address, pretending to be concerned that he has it correct. He follows it up with a single, incisive question. "So you're worried about being forced to drink the black Kool-Aid, huh?"

 

"...Sorry?" Nick seems to have succeeded in throwing the calm man off, at least for a moment. He does sound genuinely confused. A fourth voice now, presumably the driver, as it's quite close, "Get on with it." "Mm," says the calm man. "Do you have everything?"

 

In the cabin, far away, the cougar's lips pull back in an approximation of a human grin. It's patently disturbing. The Cheshire Cat would probably lose control over his bowels. The mage transmutated heat from the fireplace into sound once again. "Yes." And with a tap of his paw, the cougar-mage hangs up on the Spirals.

 

<OOC> Sheogorath hah!

<OOC> Brings-the-Pack: Aaaan keeps scrying!

<OOC> Sheogorath: Okay!

<OOC> Brings-the-Pack: If he can.

 

The calm man looks at the phone and arches both eyebrows. "He hung up," he tells the occupants of the car, seemingly nonplussed. The woman rolls her eyes. The driver is still eyeing the calm man. "This is a giant waste of time. If you don't deliver, I'm going to feed /you/ to him." The calm man tucks the phone away. He's not smiling--he hasn't been smiling since Nick started looking in--but he doesn't seem terribly bothered by the threat. "Trust me." "HAAH!" comes the loud, snarling, snorting voice from the ski-masked man. The driver puts the car into gear and starts to pull out. The calm man glances back to ski-mask, and then frontwards. "I didn't get Oracle by not knowing what I was doing." "Seriously?" says the woman. "Shut up about that already."

 

Brings-the-Pack attempts to continue monitoring the group while looking about the car for clues as to where they might be staying or loose electronics. An unattended phone would be awesome, for instance.

 

Several of the group has them, including the woman and her masked partner. The calm man stuffs his into a pocket. They continue driving, pulling onto ever busier streets. Bridge, now. It looks like they're going to cross over the Columbia with the rest of the traffic heading out of town.

 

After the initial poking about, Nick focuses exclusively onsimply maintaining contact with the vehicle and its location. He's hoping they go back to their hideout, and the sooner the better, as his focus won't hold forever.

 

It's draining, because they don't seem to be in a terribly big hurry, even when they complete the drive from St. Claire to Kent's Crossing. The driver slows down considerably, and at several stoplights he idles a little longer than he should while leering out the window at various passersby. By this point ski-mask seems to be napping, the calm man is looking out the opposite window, seemingly bored, and the woman doesn't seem terribly capable of holding still. After one too many slow starts due to leering, she snaps at the driver, "/Really/? Come on." The calm man glances over. Ski-mask remains immobile. The driver scowls into the rear-view mirror and accelerates forward. "I'm just looking for something to pass the time." They turn a corner, and then pull into the parking lot of a very cheap motel.

 

Brings-the-Pack strains to focus, having grown tired from tracking the car so long already. Room number. Or numbers. That's what he's looking for. That and any booby traps rigged up inside once they're in.

 

Numbers he gets. They're on the third floor, near one of the stairways, in two rooms; ski-mask and the woman in one, the driver and calm man in the other, though there's a door that connects the two rooms inside as well. There's a fair number of weapons in here, but especially ammunition, silver included. Wire. Empty metal pipes. He doesn't find any booby traps, but they've got plenty of materials to make one if they decide to do so.

 

Brings-the-Pack scries a bit longer, and then he drops the effect when it turns to the inevitable bathroom breaks after having been in the car a while. No need to see /that/. He takes a few minutes to rest and compose himself, and then he delivers a single lick to his right paw, deactivating his talisman and returning to his (naked) human form. "First: Deactivate the pipe bomb by turning the explosive to an inert compound. Second: Make some phone calls." He dwells on a nagging thought: how they got his number and who might have given it to them. "Hope you know what you're doing here, Mouse," he speculates as he goes to put his jedi knight bathrobe on and close the window he used as a cougar to come and go without dealing with doorknobs.

 

He gets no answer from the empty air, of course. Nor does he get any more unpleasant calls, at least for the moment.

 

Brings-the-Pack spends a moment collecting himself, which seems to involve mostly sitting down and centering himself for a bit. He then reaches out with Correspondence magic in search of the pipe bomb placed by the Spirals.

 

With both the impression from calm man's mind and being outright given the address and location, he finds this the easiest of all today's magical activities. It's in the basement of the building, set against a central support beam not far from a neglected utility closet. The clock has ticked down considerably since the picture was taken, but there's still several hours to go. Next to the bomb has been set a cheap, cheap cell phone wrapped in paper (there's definitely writing on the paper itself). As he saw in the picture, a dead mouse dangles from the digital clock display, but the angle of the picture didn't let him see what he can see now, which is that the mouse, apart from being dead, is also missing an ear for some reason. It looks as though it was cleanly, recently sliced off, but probably post mortem; no real bleeding or blood around the injury.

 

Brings-the-Pack examines the device briefly, and then he brings in some Matter magick to alter the detonator's composition into one that's merely non-volatile in nature. Provided that that works, and to be extra safe, he also attempts to convert the explosive into a silicone-like dirt. No need to be taking chances.

 

It's well made, and fairly simple in structure. When the countdown completes, a charge is sent from the battery into the caps on all four pipes. There's only one problem, and Nick catches this as he's about to set to work transmuting the matter; the wire that's supposed to carry that charge from the battery to the pipes has been twisted off at the end. There's a few millimeters of space between battery and wire...which means no charge from the battery is going to reach the actual explosive materials, even when the countdown runs out.

Brings-the-Pack opts to disable just the detonator, rendering the improperly made bomb inactive unless someone does something stupid with it. He then begins a scan of the building with Correspondence magick coupled with Forces--seeking out a potential second bomb that the first bomb was supposed to be distracting the garou from finding.

 

He scans and scans, but finds no second bomb, no potential explosion waiting for the determined moment, even when he goes apartment by ratty apartment. There are all sorts in this building, all poor. Most of them are minorities of one stripe or another, often single parents, sometimes lone adults or young struggling couples. There's a fair number of petty criminals--Nick skims past more than one drug buy in his scrying--all in all the same collection of human desperation that one might expect from any of these buildings, but no other bombs.

 

<OOC> Brings-the-Pack: Not missing anything obvious here, am I? As Nick's about to start making phone calls.

<OOC> Brings-the-Pack: But this is for Monday night, yes?

<OOC> Sheogorath: Newp, not missing anything obvious. And yes, /but/, if IC happens and they decide to move before then, I can always have something else on Monday. Oh wait, there's writing on the paper around the cell phone. "Keep this with you & turned on for time & location. No more than 3 for the meeting, or BOOM.'