DBD, Rachel and Reba (accompanied by Scooby the Unspeakable Servant) got to the No Blood For Sex at about 8:30, half an hour before the New Maks' band Cannon Song went on.
Arthanari and Ramachandran were outside the venue, talking with the metal toothed woman the Bao Down crew had seen following Sin Woo-Jin around a day or two ago. That was Alice the ustrinaturge. She offered Reba a cigar, biting the end off with her steel dentures and lighting it with a minor charge.
No Blood For Sex was a basement club decked out with jeweled, gilded skeletons. There was a metal cage enclosing the stage, probably to shield the teenage band from thrown objects (less likely) and underage drinking (likely). Rachel and DBD sneaked backstage to parlay with the band. In attendance were Dandy Hirsch the Empty Vessel on bass guitar, Scrawny Davy the Vestimancer on guitar/vocals, and Brent on drums. Also the drug dealer and sound guy Bobby Smiles, helping them set up their amp. Rachel had some harsh words for Smiles, warning him not to sell any mystery stones to the New Maks. He assured her that he had no interest in messing up his meal ticket, but that if she wanted to tangle he'd back his family over her shoggoth any day of the week. DBD tried to persuade Dandy that she should become a capsicinaturge. The pitch was too conceptual and abstract for her. She thought he was talking about drugs. Which she was into, but which didn't communicate what he actually wanted.
Outside on the club floor, Ramachandran bought drinks for Reba and Ardhanari. He congratulated Reba for skillfully playing the other factions against each other. One of the CSC shooters was dead at the hands of the police, and now the Coterie was sending their top hitter to strike back at the cop who did it. He showed Reba a couple videos on CHEAP MEAT - Dispatches From the Burger Wars: tightly edited daredevil assassinations by a woman in rollerskates, who used drive by magick to set up her targets for gruesome fatal accidents.
The band played their first song. DBD went to look for some drugs. In the bathroom he scored a water bottle spiked with X, but noticed that a gateway to the pool rooms had opened in the end bathroom stall. Out on the dance floor, Reba noticed the Orthodox Jewish couple from the McDonald's parking lot earlier that day. The man was carrying the creepy child like a ventriloquist dummy. Rachel approached the lady and apologized for Tal magicking the child's head off during their initial encounter. The woman didn't know what she was talking about. Rachel suspected she was drugged or something. The couple was clearly armed, short shotguns under their heavy clothing. DBD cannoned out of the restroom, stumbling into the man as he made a beeline for the stage with the kid. He dropped the child and pulled out his scattergun, as did his wife.
Rachel dove on top of the child, pinning him in a headlock in the guise of protecting him from the upcoming gunfight. DBD tried to splash the man in the face with his bottle of club drugs, but ended up splashing himself again. Reba pushed through the crowd and pulled the fire alarm. Shotgun guy fired at DBD, who he comically missed somehow, sending a fistful of buckshot into the ceiling and dropping a tile on the swarthy mage's head. Reba wrestled the weapon away from him, DBD grabbed it and fired across the rapidly emptying dance floor at the other shotgunner, who was trying to work her way backstage. He got a good shoulder hit in, but failed to incapacitate her. The pinned child popped his head off to escape Rachel's grip and crawled away. Rachel got after him and shoved the crushed remnants of his mannequin head down his neck hole. This immobilized the child's body, but also began melting Rachel's arm off. The woman got backstage with the shotgun, but was tackled by Shoggos, who had been waiting in the green room for such an occasion. DBD tackled the disarmed man and got him subdued.
The headless pinned body of the mannequin child dissolved, along with Rachel's arm. A cloud of green fog came billowing out and shot up the vent. Rachel fought through the shock of losing a limb and used the Mancymancy ability she picked up from Art to duplicate the anti-unnatural creature field that she observed at Trinity Herbs. A sizzling, popping sound came from the vent, along with a dribble of sweaty pale green slime. The two Black Hats immediately stopped fighting and started freaking the fuck out, like they'd just woken from a nightmare. The cabal easily subdued them.
The band finished their set. Between the loud music and the stage lights pointed at them, they didn't hear the fire alarm and shotgun blasts, or see the fight break out. Rachel stumbled onto the stage, missing an arm, and told them they were safe now.
Bobby smiles crept out of the kitchen and hastily crossed the dance floor to the men's room. Rachel told Scooby the Shoggos Boy to follow him. Satisfied that the shooters were no longer a threat, DBD and Reba followed Shoggos. Rachel waited on the dance floor for the police to arrive. She'd been grinding the Dirty Cop identity she bought from Officer Walker, and she knew exactly how to spin this. Police investigators formed assumptions about a case at the beginning, accepting evidence that fit the assumption and rejecting anything that contradicted it. All she had to do was put in their head that Bobby Smiles was the shooter, and the mind controlled Hebrews would probably escape punishment for shooting up the club. It might not put the fat man behind bars, but it would inconvenience him and shield everyone else. Plus the wife actually had shotgun wounds to prove she was in the line of fire.
Down in the pool rooms, Shoggos followed Smiles through a warren of partially flooded tunnels. The fat man went into a large room with stairs leading down to a lower level, completely submerged. A group of six silvery blue figures danced and gyrated in a circle, locked in an echopraxic ant mill. When they noticed him they began to imitate his movements, following him down the stairs into the unknown depths below. Shoggos was able to follow the fat man, but Reba and DBD couldn't breathe underwater.
DBD had an idea. He used random magick and spent a sig charge to make the chlorinated water of the flooded chamber below as spicy as the pepper he shoveled into his mouth. Bobby Smiles doubled over in pain, incapacitated by intense heat infiltrating every water filled membrane of his body. Shoggos grabbed him and hauled him back to the surface. The six poolmen came with him, mimicking Shoggos carrying him. Shoggos and Reba hauled him back to the surface entrance while DBD tried to make contact with the poolmen. They mimicked him perfectly, displaying not a spark of intelligence. He was disappointed that they didn't understand him, but then he had an idea. He splashed hot sauce on one, spent a significant charge and drank the whole thing. It filled him with a rush of energy, and he hurried back.
Back in the club, the police had arrived. They bought Rachel's story at face value. Several ambulances arrived expecting a mass casualty event, but only had to content with Rachel's missing arm and the shotgun wound in the Orthodox woman's back. Rachel learned that the black hats, Maria and Harlan, were friends of Judith.
Bringing up the rear of the column sloshing home from the Pool Rooms, Reba heard something moving in the darkness behind her, which stopped every time she stopped. She shined her phone light into the tunnel. A half formed silvery mimic-Reba stared back. Caught in the act, the poolmimic melted into the water and swam away dejected. The journey back to the surface was uneventful.
DBD and Reba emerged from the bathroom with Bobby Smiles in tow, and told the police they had chased him in there and captured him. The police were a little suspicious since they had cleared the bathroom and nobody was in there, but they couldn't deny that it was where the three had just come from. And Rachel had already put the idea in their heads that Smiles was the culprit. DBD came down from his poolwine high and began vomiting a blue substance. Reba noticed a small blue stone in the slime, which she retrieved and pocketed as the medics took DBD away along with the other injured occultists. Scooby the Shoggos Boy dissolved and snuck out the window well to the bathroom, too small for a full grown human but large enough for a slime creature that could change its shape and disassemble the mannequin it used as a false skeleton.
Rachel, DBD, and Maria (along with her husband Harlan) were taken to the hospital. The police took statements from the New Maks and then delivered them to their parents. Bobby Smiles was arrested. The Kentucky Fed Cops, which the Bao Down crew had beef with, were nowhere to be found. The Cabal was left battered, but closer to several of their objectives. Rachel had the sigs she needed to pay off Granny Ethel for the moon magick, and the group had eliminated a threat to the New Maks.
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