team 7's path 8
In the streets of Outpost B, the party observed Romance Star and his likely assassin associate down beers, though it was mostly the latter downing the beers. The party went unnoticed thanks to Declan Idrys’s state as an orangutan changeling.
A club promoter for the poofing club was unable to persuade the party to give poofing a try. Across the street, two gambling children seized a third gambling child and one of the first two, holding the third’s collar in his fist, threatened to take the child’s face so that he could never use it again. None of the bar patrons or passersby seemed to notice or care, and the party decided they had other, more pressing business than the child’s life.
The archivist was able to determine, by tracking down the child’s mother, that the child’s name was Artemis Mackennon. He was studying pre-pre-med and had never gambled before; he had only gone out to play some dice because his father, who until that night had been paying Artemis’s tuition, accidentally left receipts on the kitchen table proving he had been selling the back end of his own lifespan to witch doctors in order to make the payments. When he learned his father’s life was down to just forty years, not even enough time for him to see Artemis graduate, Artemis memorized odds tables every night for a month, then took his bag of dice out to the street.
Artemis’s death meant nothing to the party.
Squints broke away from the group to explore a ground-level retail space with a bear pelt for a door. Inside there were boulders with flattened bottoms to rest on the hardwood, a fireplace, and a preternaturally large, obese, shirtless man in a greasy loincloth. The man’s quadriceps were so tight he suffered substantial anterior pelvic tilt.
“I hope I can interest you in my new social club,” the tight-thighed man said. “I believe that with productive discussion, we will, as a people of Pangolune, be able to solve the problems plaguing our northwestern countrymen.”
“Yeah, that sounds wonderful, just what I was looking for, just what I was thinking of,” Squints said. “Wow, nice rocks here. Very nice. I’m going to bring some of my friends back here.”
He stepped out into the street again, but not before sneaking another five-finger pinch of subordinate powder.
“With respect to poofing,” said the poofing club promoter in the feline hat to the other party members outside, “if I could just get y’all to come inside…”
“You know, I gotta be honest with you,” Omeb said, “we came because we wanted to learn more about poofing, and we were going to get a premium membership, but those two guys at the table over there have been non-stop shit-talking poofing, and you specifically. They don’t like your hat.”
“Well,” said the promoter, now leaning into Sansan’s personal space, “your opinion, young lady, I’m very interested to know it.”
“Why are you asking me, sir?” said Sansan.
“Because I know how many of your type there are. Should I learn to persuade you, the possibilities for our customer base expand who knows how widely? Consider the return on investment.”
“Whoa, what do you mean, people of my type?”
“Well, people of your exact genetic makeup.”
Omeb interrupted, pointed at Romance Star and the probable bounty hunter a table over. “If you can take them out, we’ll all sign up to poof.”
“Oh, them over there?”
“I’ll consider it,” the promoter said. “But first, what about you, Sheriff?” He turned to Squints, who had returned from the fledgling social club.
Squints was stretching his jaw, slacking it left and right. His legs had once again assumed their hypertrophied orangutan form.
“He’s a drug addict, you know,” Omeb added helpfully.
The promoter shrugged. “Alright, I’ll go talk to these naysayers who know nothing of hats.”
Across the street, the gambling children dragged away Artemis’s body for organ harvesting.
“Just so it’s clear,” Omeb said, watching the body being dragged along, “we’re still mad positive in terms of saving children. Like we saved so many.”
The assassin, startled by the poofing promoter’s approach, turned, with his crossbow out, and the crossbow caught the promoter’s feathery sequined coat. In a tangle they fell onto the stone street. The assassin pulled the promoter in close to his face, so close they shared breath, and said, “I’m already a member.”
Squints slipped away into the smithy where Declan had earlier purchased his trumpet knuckles. The shopkeeper, a wrinkly but sturdy man, bearded in white and wearing a button-up plaid vest, said, “You can just stand right there, in the doorway, and tell me what it is you’re lookin’ to purchase.”
“I’m from the west,” Squints said.
“I can see that,” said the smith. “You got a handle on that tweak of yours, son?”
“I don’t think so. It’s got a handle on me.”
“So you need an axe? Your wife’s boyfriend payin’ the bills and tarnishin’ your masculinity? What seems to be at issue?”
Outside, now that the assassin had fallen out of his seat and no longer blocked his view, Romance Star could see straight ahead. He saw Declan, who in his orangutan form was walking toward the smithy, intending to follow Squints in. “That’s the one!” he said, thinking he had recognized Chichi.
Romance Star raised his staff (he still couldn’t stand on account of having been run over by that horse) and tapped into the magic weather (flattering lubricant) to transform all the water erupting from the public fountain into expanding lubricant oil, which colonized the street surface. Almost everyone on the street slipped, fell, and sloshed about.
On the freshly lubricated surface, Romance Star propelled himself on the wooden wheels of his cheap wheelchair at projectile speed toward Sansan.
Sansan climbed onto an anvil outside the smithy for safety. Meanwhile, Declan launched into a tackle, aiming accurately to intercept Romance Star on his trajectory toward Sansan. Or it would have been accurate, if Omeb had not at the same time exercised his new wood bender power to transform the wheels of Romance Star’s chair into sharp-pointed triangles, which halted the chair and launched Romance Star into the air.
Romance Star’s path into the air sent him perfectly into the loop of Squints’s lasso (Squints had thrown his lasso from the doorway of the smithy, which due to its one-inch elevation above the street had not been lubricated and still provided stable lassoing ground). It was by the lasso that Squints stopped Romance Star from slamming his head into the interior wall of the smithy after he zoomed through the doorway over Squints’s head (his orangutan legs bowed a bit and thus reduced his height).
To stop Romance Star from choking to death, the smithy owner hopped over the counter and loosened the knot. Romance Star wheezed in some oxygen. It was at this moment, curious about the lasso, that the blacksmith noticed Squints’s sheriff badge.
“Well shit, I didn’t know you were a sheriff. I assume you want this here suspect to face justice?”
“If he tries to move…” Squints began.
“Don’t you worry. We support law enforcement in this here smithy.”
Outside, the assassin had slid across the street to try and capture Chichi, but after so much tussle in the oil, Chichi’s oily fur defied all attempts to grasp him.
Nearby, the big loincloth wearer slid over, out of his social club, and said, “Hey y’all I’d love to have y’all all in my social club. With a competent group we can solve the problems that afflict the northwest.”
The assassin’s beard came loose in the oil. Sansan and Omeb noticed that the assassin looked identical to Sansan. He (or she) asked Sansan under what task did she leave the caves, which Sansan didn’t understand. The mere mention of the topic sent Omeb into violence. Omeb rubbed sand and blepharitis flakes into the assassin’s eyes, then subordinate powder in their mouth.
Meanwhile, in order to clear the oil off the street, Squints and Declan worked together to activate the faucet on the roof over the smithy, which according to the loincloth wearer was equipped with a pressure washer for exactly scenarios such as this. Declan threw Squints high into the air, and once up there, Squints saw three labeled levers. Having to make a split-second decision, he flipped the lever he read as “water”, and out poured a pink gas.
Once the assassin’s jaw stopped spasming from their first dose of subordinate powder, they asked Sansan, “Were you among those who left into the woods with Mother? Did the Old Man ever visit you?”
With the gas pouring down, everyone on the street slid as fast as they could over to the entrance to the poofing club. Squints, who had climbed on top of the large loincloth wearer in a gassed daze, saw in the distance a parade of horse-drawn sleds led by a Red Priest, apparently responding to the release of the gas, which Omeb, with his back-alley alchemy knowledge, identified as heavy nitrous oxide, otherwise known as orphan-grade laughing gas because of its sufficient potency to sedate the opiate-tolerant war orphans the city deploys it against.
Behind the Red Priest followed a posse of war orangutans. These orangutans were much better trained than the ones the party had seen in Obadiah’s distillery. They wore vests and did not twitch. One climbed up above the smithy to turn off the gas faucet, and another inquired with gestures and pointing about the man lassoed inside of the smithy. The blacksmith loudly declared that the man was a criminal, and this sparse explanation was sufficient for the orangutans to gather around the lassoed Romance Star and pull him onto a sled.
As thanks for helping control the commotion and arresting Romance Star, the Red Priest offered Squints and his companions passage anywhere in the city on their sleds, or passage anywhere on the mainland of Pangolune by an obelisk. After some deliberation and some lobbying from the loincloth wearer, who revealed his name to be Earl, the party decided to go with the Red Priest and bring both Earl and the assassin (whom Omeb had knocked unconscious, to keep them from talking to Sansan, for undisclosed reasons) to the tallest tower in Outpost B, where they had several unfinished errands, including collecting their reward from Tom of the Bureau and visiting Xena.