Karmakaze is on a roll with persuasive arguments. Guns, cops and weird spirit-things were definitely not on his agenda for tonight and while he might have some minor cyber he certainly moves more slowly than Karmakaze does.

"""Look, we just opened the window, so ka? All they told us was dump the box in there and we'd get paid. We wasn't even goin' in there. C'mon, it's a window, and we're not burning nothin' down. So just let us go. You can have the box, it ain't no good to us."""

While Chiphead tries to bargain his ostensible malfeasance down to minor vandalism, Blue gets a good view of the little snaky things coiling and slithering over the big egg-looking thing in the middle of the box. Apparently four vestigial limbs each, and a pattern that - come to think of it, looks nothing whatsoever like the pattern of that big snake in the front of Petsonal Petsonalities's offices.

Karma shoves Chip hard onto the hood and lets him feel the barrel of her gun in his lower back.

"""Don't fraggin drek me, Chiphead. You may be ignorant of the plan, but you know this isn't a small deal. You are dealing with para-animals, you idiot. Now if you don't know anything more about what you were carrying, or why you were dropping it off, you had better know someone who does."""

"""I dunno! I swear, chiptruth, I don't know, it's all his biz, I was just along for tonight!""" Chiphead points at his buddy up against the wire, who visibly rolls his eyes and mouths a curse. Chiphead looks wildly over his shoulder at Karmakaze, and says: """C'mon, I gotta get home, I can't go to jail!"""

His buddy appears to have had enough, because he pushes off the fence with a rattle of chainlink, and sets off running down the alleyway right at Blue's spirit. And he runs like a gazelle.

"""Put your ID and com on the hood. Give me your pass code and your buddy's name as it is in your link, then you can rabbit."""

Karmakaze put her faith in the spirit to at least slow down the runner.

"""Don't take my link, it was from my mom! I'll tell you where to find him, no problem, just don't take my link!""" Chiphead is begging now.

Down the alley, the spirit moves to intercept, but the running man jinks left, and keeps going.

"""Keep talkin!"""

Down the alley, the runner spins around and hits the spirit with his fist. It howls, and lurches around.

Bent over the car, Chiphead is babbling. He appears to be aware that he's being deserted, and this induces a talkative frame of mind. The first thing he babbles is a name for his collaborator: Jimmy Gerahty.

+++ Huh. Not as low-life as we thought. But shoulda run. +++

Blue drops his mental connection with Karmakaze. He foregoes spell defense. This is going to take a full blast. He draws a bead on the runner and tries his best to bring him down.

Blue feels the hard resistance of the target's will against his spell stand tough for a moment - and then fold and dissipate. He stumbles as he moves, and then Jimmy Gerahty ragdolls onto the ground as a shadow like a swooping owl flows from Blue's hands and flickers through the air, and through Jimmy.

Well, he'll feel it. When he wakes up. If he does.

The spirit takes a position over Jimmy, but doesn't further molest him rather than glaring back down the alleyway.

Chiphead stops babbling. He gasps: """Oh sweet crystal!""" and Karmakaze smells the unmistakable smell of bowels releasing.

Blue chuckles at the mook's reaction. To Karmakaze, """ I'll check out Jimmy to see what I can learn about him. Maybe you want to ... sniff out some more info from your new friend? """

He walks over to the fallen Jimmy. To the spirit, ::: Sorry you got hurt, friend. I thought he would do the smart thing and just keep running away. :::

Blue opens to the astral and assenses fallen Jimmy. Probably the easiest way to answer a number of questions. Is Jimmy still alive, as is likely? Is he magically active, maybe as an Adept? A successful punch on the spirit would suggest so, but maybe he is well cybered. If so, where? Are there any foci on him?

Jimmy is slumped on the ground - still alive, but completely unconscious. Blue's practiced eye scans him slowly, and can see that Jimmy took a nasty tumble on his way down; but Jimmy will live although the roadrash from a tumble at a couple of dozen klicks per hour will leave some scars. He is completely free of cyberware, which isn't too surprising given that he is in fact Awakened. Blue doesn't think there's anything wrong with Jimmy's essence, although he seems less well attuned to magic in general. An apprentice of sorts, then, or a lesser talent, without any fetishes or foci on him.

He either needs a strong mentor to put him on the straight and narrow, or he needs a set of magecuffs. Which, is anybody's guess.

""" Good. Jimmy is still alive. While you continue over there, I'll take a look through the opening these guys made. Who knows, maybe the thing inside is hungry. """ +++ Heh. That should get a rise. +++

Blue wanders over to the opened window, still astrally aware. He certainly won't stick his head in to see, but if that tendril thingy is still around, he will try to Assense it.

Chiphead's face is scrunched up, and he half-sobs that some lady from Polidemos hired them for a job to clean up a contamination in Petsonal Petsonalities, and he was just along for the ride, it's his buddy who has all the awakened powers and was going to put those things in to clean the contaminated spiritual powers within, they weren't going to do any harm, he swears! Of course, this is a precis of a stammering, hiccoughing, rambling wordvomit. Karmakaze can see that a huge, dark, wet patch is spreading down his legs while he babbles.

On Blue's end of the action, the tendril is still there, as if it were groping for air. Or ways to grow. Or things to eat, or ... who really knows? It's a clearly spiritual entity, and ostensibly plant-like, but the edges of those leaves look awfully toothy. Then again, that doesn't actually prove much. It's purely spiritual, not even manifested at all.

""" I'll take a look at the box of little guys they were going to throw in. """ Blue highly doubts that the reptilians would be able to clean anything astral or spiritual, but who knows? He goes over to the box containing them and, still astrally aware, he takes a look at the little things to see if they have any presence on the astral, or ... whatever.

"""Calm down, Chiphead. I am not going to shoot you if you don't resist. If your information is good, I will even let you go. Maybe you can be a CI. Maybe you have this polidemos lady's contact information."""

Avoiding the chemical spill area, Karma frisks the perp for weapons as she tries to bleed him for more information.

Karmakaze does get Chiphead a little calmer, if not exactly delighted. Her quick search turns up a 'link strapped to the inside of his left wrist, a sheathknife in a tool pocket on his right thigh and a bottle of water soluble clear glue in his back pocket. While she frisks him, he says: """Holly! Her name was Holly and she's human, like, blonde but with blue streak dyejob, and she said she was the secretary of the south Ballard office."""

Blue inspects the box and discovers that the serpents in question are all dual-natured. This of course doesn't necessarily imply that they'd clean anything whatsoever, but it does mean that whoever lined this little gig up was willing to throw some potentially very valuable stuff at it.

But the big egg thing in the middle appears to be substantially mundane.

She pockets the knife, then handing the link Karmakaze says, in an almost friendly tone, """Okay Chiphead, give me Holly's number."""

Blue communicates, """ The lizard things in the box are dual-natured. Not the egg-like thing. Somebody was willing to spend a lot on this escapade. Heh. And we now have some valuable merchandise in our possession. This could turn out to be a profitable job. They look kind of familiar. Let me think a moment."""

Chiphead protests: """I don't have it! Jimmy had the meet, I just came along to help. Check his drek, now you've killed him. It was all his plan!"""

The spirit just stands impassively over Jimmy's prone form.

""" He's not dead, Chiphead. Just knocked out. And maybe bruised a bit.

""" These things in the box. They sort of look like the things at the core of the issue between Polidemos and Petsonal. But why would they be dumping a bunch of babies back into the facility? I can't make sense of it. Looks like we will have to interrogate Jimmy, once he is able to speak. I can't do anything to speed up the process, so he might take hours to come around.

""" What I can do is see if there is anything on him that could answer some questions. """

Blue returns his awareness fully to the material plane and searches the unconscious Jimmy for anything useful. Removing weapons from his possession, of course.

To the spirit, he communicates, ::: I am sorry you were injured. I hope the requirement to stay here won't last much longer, and I can release you to go home and heal. Is there a name which I can understand by which I could call you?:::

:::You might know me as Acidsalt Dieselsmog. I am born of the city, and dwell therein.::: Its voice rumbles and hisses to Blue's spiritual ear.

Jimmy has, or had, a Beretta 101, fully loaded. Nice pistol, but in somewhat rough shape, cosmetically. There's also a pretty nice-looking 'link, branded Waldbau (but looking like a Saeder-Krupp knockoff). Other than that, a packet of breath mints and a trio of credsticks. One shows NY129, the other two show no balance.

::: Thank you for sharing your name. I am known as Blue. :::

Blue pockets the Beretta and the link, after powering it down. He leaves the breath mints and the credsticks. Hey, if Jimmy lives through this, he's going to have to get a ride home.

""" Nope. Oh, wait. """ He powers up the 'link and sees if he can find anything ... recent calls, contact list, whatever.

"""What time did polidemos call you guys, when and where did you pick up that box of horrors?"""

"""Drek! I dunno, maybe an hour ago? And we picked it up on the corner of Leary and 49th. I told you, they called Jimmy, I'm just the ride-along!"""

While Karmakaze engages in her intellectual exchange with Jimmy, she sees at least one corroborating piece of evidence: Chiphead's 'link is engraved on the back plate with: "To my Carl, with all Mom's love" and below that a further inscription: "Knowledge is a vehicle for Wisdom". The engraving appears to have been inlaid with some iridescent preparation.

For his part, Blue runs into the problem that Jimmy cares in some measure about security. It's locked. Probably crackable, but locked for now.

""" Yeah, """ Blue mutters, """ Jimmy's locked his commlink, so it'll have to be cracked, or Jimmy convinced to open it up. Either way will take some time. My buddy, the one you know about, could probably open it up, but for reasons you know, it might be risky to make that contact. """

Blue makes another attempt at Petsonal's communications, hoping to find an emergency number. Surely customers of this kind of product would on occasion need that kind of help, he figures.

Blue finds no additional contact for Petsonal, but they do have helpful contact information for animal control for the Seattle Enclave. They'd probably just kill the critters and have done; something that Blue could do as easily, if not more so.

In any case, for now beyond a few questing heads, the critters show no real interest in escaping the box, and rather more in coiling and clustering around the big egg-thing.

Jimmy's oozing roadrash gets a slow, slightly acidic rinse by the rain.

It suddenly dawns on the book-smart but street-slow Blue that, while he can't do anything about the spell damage to Jimmy's mind, he can do something about the physical damage from the fall.

""" Well, Jimmy is going to be asleep for a while, but maybe I can clean up some of the wounds he got from the fall. I'll do that while we think about what to do next. The little critters seem OK for now. Petsonal doesn't have a help line, just a link to Seattle animal control. Bad idea, that. """

::: Acidsalt Dieselsmog let me know if you think what I am about to do to heal some of this person's damage might work on you ... I think the man hurt you a bit, didn't he? :::

Blue performs a Heal spell on the fallen thug.

The spell does its work, and the grazes close and knit. While Blue does his work, Acidsalt Dieselsmog watches, and allows that it might work, as long as it is materialised.

While this is going on, Karmakaze notices a car slow down, and pull into the Petsonal Petsonalities fenced parking lot. Nice car, looks through the wire and leaves as if it might have cost three times what an Americar does.

Karmakaze attempts to get a picture of the cars plate, while relaying the information to Blue.

"""Maybe that was Poli-D checking up on their handiwork."""

"""Did that car look familiar, Carl? Give me your link number, then you can go. I may have some honest work for you boys."""

Carl gives a sort of constrained nod from his position, and says: """Yeah. Guess that's her."""

He gives a number, while the car stops in a parking spot near the building. There's a brief delay before the driver's door opens.

Blue watches the vehicle and its goings on. """This looks interesting."""

He keeps his standard spell defense on himself, Karmakaze and his spirit, but spreads it to cover the two mooks and the box of lizard thingies as well.

He keeps the Powerbolt 'spell-on-a-stick' to hand, hidden in a pocket.

Someone gets out of the car. This person appears to be roughly human to judge by height, but could possibly be a tall, slender dwarf. It's hard to see, besides the cover of the fence and plant growth, because of the thick, puffy coat and hood. Not much of the face can be seen, except for some hefty (but fashionable) goggles.

Whoever it is looks intently at the building for a while.

Blue asks Karmakaze, """I can't see much of that person. Do you have a better view?"""

Karmakaze can not really see more; the plant matter and fence are just as much in her way, and of course she's dealing with Carl the Chiphead.

"""Not much. I am sending Chiphead on his way. He is not very helpful, but maybe he can earn a few yen later."""

She dials the number Chip gave her to see if his link rings, vibrates or makes any other acknowledgment.

Either Carl the Chiphead is too stupid to think of a lie on his feet, or too smart to lie about something so easily checked.

His link vibrates in Karmakaze's hand.

The person in the puffy coat sighs, to judge by a cloud of breath in the cool, humid air, and settles back down in the vehicle. The vehicle doesn't go anywhere.

Well, seeing as nothing critical seems to be happening at the moment, Blue tries out his idea about healing the spirit. Assuming of course the damage is actually physical.

:::Here goes, Acidsalt Dieselsmog. Let's see if I can heal the damage you took. :::

Blue reaches out and touches what looks like a solid part of the spirit. Hopefully no burn will result from that touch!

The spirit seems strengthened, with the glint of its eyes intensifying and the depth of its smoke thickening.

:::You have my thanks, Owl's worker.:::

There's no sign of any reaction from the direction of the newly arrived vehicle, and Carl is too occupied with his own miseries to applaud Blue's success.

::: You are welcome, friend. ::: Blue has learned something important today. +++ That is very interesting, and useful. Yet another reason to think of them as allies, rather than tools. +++

Keeping an eye on the visitor's vehicle, he calls over to the still-standing mook. """Hey, Carl. You two probably came in a vehicle. His, """ He jerks a thumb towards Comatose Jimmy, """ or yours? """

Carl mumbles a response against the skin of Karmakaze's car. """We walked."""

Blue can't hear it, but Karmakaze could.

"""Okay, Carl. We will make sure Jimmy G is treated, and released once he gives up the information on this poli contact. Keep your link on. He may need a ride in a bit. Beat it."""

With that she releases the grip on the back of his shirt, and steps back, gun still ready, but aimed at Chiphead's legs, rather than face.

Blue extrapolates. """"OK, then. No ride here, I guess. Looks like Jimmy is our cargo as well as the box of lizardlings. I don't see what else we can do here right now. Shall we load up our possessions here and go have a chat with the mystery vehicle? That could be fun. """

"""It looks like they are waiting on us. I think I might go have a word with them."""

""" Trust me, I want the same. Ostensibly, I am the one they hired to see if Petsonal was screwing them, and here we see Polidemos doing the screwing. Help me load Jimmy and the babies into your car, and we can go talk to them together. Along with our buddy over there, whose name, by the way, is Acidsalt Dieselsmog."""

Blue picks up the box of babies and heads to Karmakaze's car. He turns to his spirit for a moment. ::: Please pick up the unconscious one and carry him to our vehicle. :::

Acidsalt Dieselsmog raises the unconscious Jimmy and conveys him to Karmakaze's car alongside Blue and the box.

While this goes on, Carl takes his link back, and shuffles off at an awkward walk. There is nothing in evidence in his demeanour other than a clear desire to put this whole episode behind him as fast as possible.

As soon as the various captives, human and reptilian, are stuffed into the car, Karmakaze could drive it out of the alleyway and to the gate of the heavily fenced Petsonal Petsonalities building, should she wish to.

Blue signals to Acidsalt Dieselsmog, ::: We are going over to that vehicle, ::: he points to the black car, ::: to converse with the occupant. Stay close, but feel free to travel there astrally if you prefer. :::

As he enters Karmakaze's car, he asks her, """ Shall we connect mentally so we can communicate securely? """

Acidsalt Dieselsmog appears to dissipate into a cloud of smoke in the humid air as it dematerialises. By the time that they're in the vehicle, Carl the Chiphead is already out of sight. He didn't linger.

"""Yes,""" Karma agrees to Blue's magic, almost too quickly.

She pulls the car around to the front lot where the black car is idling.

Blue notes the quick response. +++ This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Not like that last one. +++

He calls up the memorized formula, a mental scene replete with images of owl and forest and wind blending all into one till he is seeing through the owl's eyes, feeling its focus on its prey. To complete the spell, he reaches over and touches Karmakaze on the shoulder.

Karmakaze pulls around, and as she enters the lot through the gate in the high fence, the fancy Rover Senatorial sits there, in plain view, roughly in the middle of the lot, a couple of dozen metres back from the building itself.

From this perspective, nothing looks particularly interesting about the building. There's no hint from here that a window in the alleyway was broken open.