damncompass | October 31, 2012: Warehouse Hallowe'en Party

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October 31, 2012: Warehouse Hallowe'en Party

Welcome to Leena's Bed and Breakfast. It's a homey-looking place with a well-loved lived-in feel. Once you come in the front door, you're faced with a hallway. To the left is a large living room, with a sunroom off of the side, and a dining room off of the back. Straight ahead is a kitchen, with a private wing behind it and a bathroom. To the right is a stairway upstairs with a ribbon tied across the banister. Go under the ribbon to your own peril.

Joshua, Helena, and Claudia are milling around.

Have fun, and please don't trash anything too badly!

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He raises his hands defensively, recognising a weapon even if not exactly what it is.

"All right. There was nothing stopping me, I didn't mean any harm."

"Sorry, reflex. What, did someone untie the ribbon? I swear Joshua put something across the stairwell."
She had to duck under it to come up, so...

"I didn't see one. Maybe somebody had a little wander up here before me."

Claudia shrugs. "More likely one of us forgot to put it back when we came back down."

"That would also make sense." He's speaking English, for once, but still heavily accented. "I'm Gavroche."

"Claudia. Good to meetcha. Sorry again about the Tesla, it's just - you know, not who I was expecting."
And in this job? Better safe than sorry.

"Already forgiven", he says easily. "It's your home, I was where I'm not supposed to be... but what is a Tesla?"

"What I stuck in your face. It's a ray gun, basically."

"Then I'm glad your instincts didn't carry you as far as firing it."

Claudia shrugs. "Eh, you would've been back up in a minute or two. No lasting harm done."

"It doesn't kill?"

He's not really familiar with the concept of stun guns.

"Nope. We go no-kill as much as possible - I'd have to crank it up to full power and basically fire it while it was touching you for it to be lethal, and I pretty much never turn it up that high."

"Good to know." He tilts his head curiously. "What do you use them for?"

"Stopping people. Including each other, if necessary."
If someone's following them too closely, if someone's whammied... whichever.

"Your work is... sensitive, then?" He pauses. "And liable to cause a need to stop each other?"

"Short version, we retrieve dangerous objects. Long version... were you around when everyone ended up with theme tunes, about six months back?"
If he was, that'll make it an easier explanation.

"I missed that one, but somebody did mention it when we were all turned into children."

Claudia nods. "The kid-ifying wasn't one of ours, but the music was. John Phillip Sousa's baton. Apparently if it'd gone on much longer we would've had some serious crazypants on our hands, but a lot of the lag time was because I wasn't sure if it was an Artifact or just bar-weird."

"I don't know Sousa... a conductor? And what happened to his baton to make it an... Artifact?"

"Conductor, yeah. Wrote a lot of marches while he was at it. As for what happened?"
Claudia shrugs. "Person, object, powerful emotion. Who knows what it actually was, just that after a while it was driving people at Marquette completely nuts with the theme songs following them around and getting louder."