Jazzy woke up to a whistling sound. Someone in the trailer park where he lived raised a hue and cry to indicate law enforcement presence. He rolled out of his hammock and peered out the window to see what was up. The porch lights of the assembled double-wides showed bulky figures in a mix of uniforms and pieced together body armor with no identifying markings. It was an ICE raid.
A trio of armed and armored feds, one fat one tall one short, banged on the door of his trailer. He kept his cool. He had no obligation to answer the door or allow them entry. One of his two fraternal cousins who he shared the unit with likewise kept his cool. The third guy booked it. He ran out the back door and the three DHS goons, on hearing the sound of the door slam, ran around the manufacture home to pursue him. Which signaled to Jazzy that this was a random raid, because they didn't post up behind the building before knocking like they would if they were serving a warrant. Jazzy's cousin, a soundcloud noise artist with a studio above a martial arts dojo in the city, made it across the yard before the tall and short guy tackled him. The fat guy swaggered in after them, and in the light of the streetlight on the other side of the fence he noted the strange tattoo on the back of his neck.
Jazzy didn't want to deal with this shit, but he couldn't just let his boy get arrested. The guy was a citizen, as far as he knew, but he would undoubtedly babble and say something incriminating about drugs or somesuch. Thinking quickly, the mad bomber opened his bag of tricks and threw together a crude noisemaker that would simulate the sound of gunfire with a series of bangs. He crept outside and tossed the device to the other side of the park. It landed and went off, sending the tall and short ICE hoods diving for cover. The fat guy turned imperiously and dared the unseen shooter to fire. Either tall or short fired his weapon in the direction of the bangs and the other two followed suit, lighting up an unfortunate airstream across the aisle from Jazzy's residence. The goons left Jazzy's cousin cuffed on the ground, and didn't notice when the bombmaker crept out and rescued his wayward relative.
Thad got into work after Fonz and Ozzy left but before the rest of the Cadre. He was the only one in the restaurant when two guys came in. One with a combover and a thrift store suit that fit him, one with an expensive suit that didn't. They pretended to order food, then combover lost it and threatened Thad. He knew the store was selling tainted food as part of a satanist conspiracy, killing children for meat and dosing customers with dark sorcery. He slammed his badge on the table. Special Agent Manfred Mordigian, FBI. Partially covered by the feeb's thumb, Thad could barely read the task force Manny was assigned to: domestic terrorism fertilizer inspection unit. Good suit smiled blandly.
Thad was used to customers making insane demands and threats. He told them if they wanted to inspect the chicken they were welcome to pay for it. He filled a pail with normal meat, Nadia wasn't in and she was the one who made Special Orders for the unit. Manny demanded the food for free as evidence, the other guy restrained him. Together they took their food and went to inspect the door to the bathroom. They knew it was a portal to another world but couldn't figure out how to operate it. They left when it became too obvious what they were doing. Their Lincoln Town Car was in good shape but the paint job was hideous, a two tone tan and maroon affair.
The rest of the Cadre joined Thad at the restaurant for their shift.
- Edgar, disgraced cop and Epideromancer
- Jazzy Boulevard, ex-con and mad bomber
- Thad Albright, juvenile delinquent and Wage Slave
- Chet Albright (no relation), dishonorably discharged Air Force veteran
The group discussed and chose door three. The other stuff was important but they still had to merge all the Marias. They had one in hand and they knew where to find another. They called up Arch and told him they needed to talk to their friend again. He told them he was off duty but they should try the bowling alley on the east side. Everyone piled into the F150 Chet bought with his deployment bonus and they drove across the river into East Wenatchee.
The bowling alley was a block away from the Burger King the Court worked out of. Under the treaty between the two factions there was no law against visiting nearby businesses. At 9pm there was a giant woman at the bar and a group of teenagers at the arcade. Nobody was bowling. Thad recognized one of the kids at the Metal Slug 3 cabinet as the annoying teen who kept ordering Six Seven on his first night working for the Colonel after he rescued the kid from the Surgeonbug.
The big lady was Robin "Rob" Dogma, Chelan County Sheriff's Dept. She was even taller than last time the Cadre saw her and she was off duty. She wore a blouse that probably fit her perfectly at one point. Noble Maria sat next to her, almost concealed from view, and babbled excitedly about Rob's adventures. How she overcame adversity while training for the County tactical unit. How she accidentally tore that suspect's arm off with her super strength but nobody believed it happened because it was absurd, so she got away with it even though under eggshell skull doctrine it was still her fault the guy had a preexisting weakness to arm severing. Rob nodded and grunted affirmation and worked her way through the stack of burgers served up by the bar kitchen.
Fear Maria was in "psychiatric boarding" at the Confluence Health emergency department. Strapped to a bed until a slot opened up somewhere that could actually treat whatever problem she had. The Cadre took a multi-pronged approach to getting inside. Jazzy took Noble Maria into the emergency room, acted like he belonged there and stole an epinephrine injector from a crash cart. Chet told the lady at the urgent care desk he came to the hospital to kill himself, played it off as a joke and talked her into handing him a visitor badge. He snuck off and found Fear Maria on a gurney in a hallway, the only spot in the emergency department not crowded with patients and hospital staff. Nobody wanted to be around her. Thad and Edgar talked their way past the front desk by pretending to deliver food to Ada Kallio, their contact on the nursing staff. They didn't have any special orders but they had a sack of normal chicken. The front desk lady was irritated enough with Ada that she let them pass rather than paging her to come get her stupid food.
Ada was high on something and washing a bodily fluid splash off her arms. She was happy to see the Cadre and accept the offered meal, though she didn't have time to wolf it down before going back to work. They asked her if she could get Maria discharged. She said she didn't have that level of control over treatment decisions, but she could cover them while they snuck her out and then make it look like someone else's mistake. There was an explosion from the floor below and they rushed downstairs to see what happened, Ada stumbling only a little.
With two out of three merged, it was time to find Rage Maria. The corrupt cops were keeping her somewhere safe and hadn't told the burger warriors where. They phoned Rob, who was in the middle of an argument with someone at the bowling alley about damage to the wood. She told them she'd talk to Arch and hung up. With time to kill the Cadre went back to the KFC.
Inside the restaurant, Orlock argued with a customer. He accused the guy of stealing. He saw him put his hand in the damn register. The alleged rogue countered that he hadn't done anything and turned around to leave. The returning Cadre tried to deescalate the situation and, when that didn't work, Chet physically restrained the accused party while Edgar went over the security footage. Turns out, the guy didn't take something out of the register, he put something inside. Thad reached into the drawer and found a piece of paper stuck to the top where nobody would find it. One of those mock trillion dollar bills with a religious tract on it, the kind handed out by churchgoing types. This one had been defaced with illustrations in ballpoint pen. Jazzy recognized it as an image of Mammon, demon of greed.
Watts
Orlock, who had just barely calmed down, leaped over the counter to beat the shit out of the guy. That was an obvious hex and dropping it on the restaurant was an act of war. Dealing out physical damage was a perfectly appropriate response to a magickal assault. The Cadre restrained the shirtless ex-con and Chet used the threat of a mauling to intimidate the catspaw into giving up his employer. He didn't know anything about any hex and had never seen that bill in his life, but Edgar Vespier might know something about it. He had lots of bills and drawings and he owned every dealership in town. Another local petty tyrant like Sebastian Gentry with his orchards.
The Cadre looked through the saboteur's wallet. Abraham "Abe" Weathers, with an address in town. They wanted to hold him captive. Mick took off his drive through headset and quietly suggested a different strategy. They should turn him loose and follow him surreptitiously. This guy was an idiot and wasn't going to practice good information discipline. He was going to go straight to his boss and tell him what happened. So they let him off with a warning. Thad followed him surreptitiously but the dude realized he was being tracked and changed course, going into a dive bar on the interstate to drink. Thad decided on a simpler act of revenge. He took the cursed bill to one of the dealerships owned by Vespier, placed it under the windshield wiper of a Toyota Hilux and set the paper on fire in full view of the security camera. He blinked and realized the car had aged backwards a few model years, decreasing its sale value in the process.
All the talk of property ownership made the Cadre curious about who owned the KFC and the BK across the river. They opened the county assessor maps on their phones to check it out. The KFC was owned directly by Yum Brands, which was unusual. The Burger King parcel was owned by Surf, a company that made a suite of AI productivity software. Arch called them. He was in the skate park on the south side of town and he needed help. They got in the truck and floored it.
At the skate park an angry mob had formed. Kids and teens and grown adults and old people. All shouting insults at Arch and Rage Maria. Arch tried to calm them down, Maria shouted insults. They had cut the officer off from his car and there was a chance things turned ugly. Jazzy threw another noisemaker and the sound of gunshots dispersed the crowd, save for a couple teenage wannabe gangsters who took cover behind the concrete stairs of the skate park. Among the fleeing crowd was one of the elderly Mexican guys from the first night at the restaurant, wearing an eyepatch to cover the hole scooped out by the Surgeonbug. He appealed for calm and got knocked over. Chet went to help him up while Thad yelled at the kids in the park that the cops were coming. They broke and ran just in time to avoid being shot by Arch, tossing their handguns to avoid being caught with a weapon. Noble/Fear and Rage Maria embraced, drawn together despite Rage Maria shouting insults at her self. The flash of light terrified Thad, who lashed out and hit fully formed Maria as she sobbed. Edgar and Arch restrained the Wage Slave. Arch told them to take Maria and get the hell out of there. He could write this smart, but not if other responding units found Maria there.
Over an 11:00 PM pancake breakfast at Denny's on the opposite side of town, the Cadre went over the facts of the case with Maria. Edgar took the enchanted Del Rubio necklace off her, now sporting three diamonds. She warned him not to put it on. Maria was miserable, but grew more animated as she explained what happened. After getting kicked off the force for shooting a farm wizard that summoned statue monsters, Maria started using summoned demons to get information about the occult and about mundane criminal cases her friends still on the force needed help with. She picked up men in bars or online, took them home and tied them up for bondage play before summoning a spirit to possess their bodies. The demon revealed secret knowledge to her, usually in exchange for being sent back to the astral plane when it became apparent it couldn't escape. It was called Fancy Pants and it had probably escaped when wear IDing the Del Rubio necklace split her into three people and blew up her house. It was the spirit of some anarchist who tried to kill William McKinley and it was a surprise that nobody had heard about it causing havoc around the city. Maybe the body it was possessing (some poor middle aged slob) immediately got hit by a car and died.
Edgar offered Maria a place to stay, since her house got blown up. At 38, Maria was about twice the age of the women Chet was normally interested in. But he needed to make his ex wife jealous by acquiring a new woman, and he resented the disgraced cop for interfering with his attempt to find one at the bowling alley. So he told Maria that Edgar's house had bedbugs.
Three guys came in. They weren't in uniform but Jazzy recognized them as the ICE goons who hit the trailer park. They hadn't seen Jazzy when he threw the device and didn't recognize him. The waitstaff immediately clocked the trio as police, but the hostess gave them a seat at the counter all the same. There was a big Polynesian or Asian guy, a short White guy, and a portly Latin officer clearly in charge of the group. In the light of the diner the symbol on the back of his neck was clearly visible. Only Chet was in the right age cohort to recognize it.
...was that a fucking Homestuck tattoo?
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