Changeling: Session 12

When last we met, our heroes dealt with the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, and had their lives invaded by a frightful figure known as the Handmade Man.

In his lair beneath the city, Goom takes a defensive position after taking something from his knitting bag, as large bandaged hands begin bending his door back.  More and more hands appear, forcing the heavy door, as the beam across it cracks and the door bursts open.  The tunnel beyond is filled with thousands of the city’s homeless, shoulder to shoulder, as far back as Goom can see, some sitting atop the shoulders of others, all holding improvised weapons – pieces of rebar, broken 2x4s, rusty pipes.  Every eye is black, a gleaming star sparkling within.  Goom grabs his gun and the communication radio and bolts out the back way. 

The man at the front of the group, speaking with the voice of Goom’s old drill sergeant, shouts, “STITCH HIM UP!”  The horde roars and charges, the intensity of their footfalls shaking things off shelves.  They chase him through the winding tunnels, the din of screaming all around.  Turning a corner, they crash over each other like rushing water, not one stopping, as bodies are blindly crushed under the flow.  Taking advantage of the few extra moments this buys him, Goom scurries into a small service tunnel, which leads him to a sewer causeway.  The mad horde obliterates all light behind him as they crush into the small tunnel, a wet crunching noise following him as he exits to the street.

Goom finds himself about two blocks from his usual exit.  With the city still at the mercy of the snow and ice, there are not many people on the street.  He heads towards the group’s original church meeting place and radios to Morgan that he is fine and indicates his destination.  She informs the others and Morgan, Gareth, Alex, and Drake convene upon the church with him.  Alia joins them as well, her face wrapped in a scarf to hide the gashes (now stitched up at an emergency clinic) she received from the man at the pizza parlour.  There are many homeless at the church, though none of them bear any resemblance to the attackers beneath the city.  They are taking advantage of the food and space heaters that have been provided, again, by Luthor Grant.  Feeling relatively safe here, Goom launches into the tale of his morning, and at the mention of the Handmade Man, Alia and Gareth relate their alarming tales of him as well.

As they discuss, their attention is drawn outside by the ringing of a bicycle bell.  Looking out the door, they see a tandem bike going by on the sidewalk, ridden by two enormous goldfish with human limbs.  The piscine cyclists make a hard left, riding right into – and through – the brick wall of the church, disappearing from view.  They all stare dumbly, trying to ascertain if the others saw what just happened.  All of them agree, though it seems that no one else in the church noticed.  Curious, Gareth dashes down and presses his hand against the wall where the fish disappeared.  It feels solid, though it resonates, brick but not brick.  He knocks on it three times.  On the first two strikes, his fist leaves indentations as though the wall were putty.  By the third it is solid brick again, though it bears the impression of his knuckles, as though the brick had been melted.

Unnerved, Alia wonders if the Handmade Man can take over anything in the form of a human, printed images, television, sculptures, and realising that they’re standing in a church with several statues of Mary, Jesus, and other biblical figures, panics.  They decide to leave and head to a coffee shop, Goom being careful to conceal his large firearm under his coat.

Wally is in the lab of his new apartment, scared and weeping, when the hair stands up on the back of his neck – there is someone else in the apartment, walking around his living room.  Arming himself with a substantial piece of glassware, he steps out.  There is a woman, her back to him, wearing a red dress, black pumps, her dirty-blonde hair in a short coiffure.  Wally asks if he can help her, and she turns, revealing her… face?

Le Viol (The Rape) by René Magritte, 1935

Where her face should be is a woman’s naked torso.  She casually sits on his couch and starts smoking.  Out of her vagina mouth.  She reaches toward the coffee table and a crude ashtray appears, looking like a child’s art project.  When she doesn’t do anything beyond that, Wally returns to the lab to make sure he hasn’t accidentally ingested some awful substance.  When he returns to the living room, her head is lolled back and she is twitching.  Again, Wally tries to address her, and again she does not reply.  Giving up and figuring he’s hallucinating, Wally goes to take a shower. 

A couple of minutes later, the door opens.  He’d locked it.  The woman walks in and begins to undress.  Wally steps out of the shower (which isn’t difficult, as the bathroom has one of those walk in deals with no doors) grabs the lid off the toilet tank, and swings.  His arms reverberating with the impact, she falls forward, and Wally is treated to the sight of a woman’s face on her lower back.  She starts yelling at him, from her back face, berating him, and calling him Kenny.  Wally, wanting nothing further to do with any of this, grabs his clothes and exits the bathroom, using a chair to jam the door shut from outside.  The door rattles and the woman’s voice keeps going, soon joined by a man’s voice, and they have a heated discussion that leads Wally to believe that Kenny is this woman’s son and that he’d hurt or killed her.  Wally dresses, and catches sight of the ash tray which bears the crude inscription “To Mom ❤ Kenny”.  Wally calls Gareth.

While the group is walking to the coffee shop, Gareth and Wally discuss what is going on in the new apartment.  Realising that they are not far away, the church and Wally’s new building are both on 21^st street, the group decides to visit Wally instead of Starbucks.  Drake gets a cab for himself, Alex, Alia, and Morgan.  Gareth, still fuming from their argument, opts to walk the ten blocks, and Goom joins him.

When they arrive, first the cab group, followed a few minutes later by Gareth and Goom, they are greeted by the building’s doorman and shown up to the 23^rd floor.  While they wait for the walkers, Alia turns on the news.  The leading stories are:

- Konstantyne has disappeared and the police are looking for him.  EMTs on the stage saw a corpse, assumed to be a stunt man, and that body is also missing.  Police are questioning Konstantyne’s manager, Lanny Dorkin.  There are rumors that the illusionist fled the scene in a limo, but later ditched the ride and has been MIA ever since.  There are pending civil and criminal charges, involuntary manslaughter, for the audience deaths, the death of the assumed stuntman, and the ensuing cover up.

- Luthor Grant continues to hand out emergency supplies to the city’s poor.  He is joined for a photo op by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, shaking hands.  The mayor-elect has joined Grant in his humanitarian efforts and has nothing but praise for the man.

- Local gas companies are looking for the source of an assumed leak as people in a significant portion of the city are reporting hallucinations. 

At this last story, when an outline of the effected area is shown, Wally goes pale.  The area is centered on his old building, which until now was Hank’s centre of operations, and pretty much aligns with Hank’s area of distribution.  Wally’s new building and the church are within the effected radius.

Once everyone has arrived, they bring each other up to speed, discussing their hallucinations (which Gareth and Drake both recognise as being tied to surrealist artworks) and the threat of the Handmade Man.  Gareth suggests that the Man might be one of the Vanishers, and they all agree that Madame Butterfly might know something about it.  Drake gives her a call.

It turns out she is very familiar with the Handmade Man, although she’s horrified at the mention, as in the 1970s she had assembled another group similar to theirs, and they brought him out of his realm and killed him down in the subway beneath the city.  As she’d mentioned before, these creatures are sensitive to iron, and the group in the 70s had pinned the Man to the train tracks using a giant iron lance.  What was left of his body would have been in the area of the gas leak, and though it has been quiet for the last 30 years or so, Yuri-ko suggests that they check down there.  She also offers that if any of the group wish it, they can shelter in her “cage”, designed to keep out the Vanishers.

Armed with this bit of knowledge, the group tries to figure out what to do next.  Wally is convinced that the remains of the Handmade Man lie beneath his old building, and that the drug “Sand” which had excited Hank so much is connected to the influence of this powerful entity.  Goom sticks around Wally’s new place, as Goom has nowhere safe to stay at the moment, and Alex decides to pause there as well for a time.  When the others leave, Wally goes out to buy food for the new apartment and to check out his old apartment, to see what can be salvaged.

Drake invites Alia back to the Waldorf, giving her the opportunity to pick up a higher set of clientele, businessmen stranded in Manhattan by the storm.  Drake returns to his room and begins making calls.

Gareth returns to his apartment and removes any artworks that could be conduits for the Handmade Man, stashing them in a closet.  He then goes out around the city to dumpster dive, hoping to find scraps of iron that can be used to arm the group against their new foe.

Morgan similarly goes home, removing knick-knacks and art that seem risky.  She lies down and naps.  While she sleeps, Morgan dreams that she is riding the Ellis Island ferry.  She is doing a Tarot spread for another passenger, a man, who looks as though he is out of time, his attire suggesting someone living during the turn of the 20^th century.  She flips over a card, the Inverted Handmade Man.  This is not a good sign, she tells her customer.  Suddenly there is screaming at the bow of the boat.  The cause is not hard to miss.  Standing in the river, water rushing into its gaping mouth, is the Statue of Liberty.  A voice bellows from her, “I AM A HANDMADE MAN”

You know, close enough and just as horrifying.

Changeling: Session 11

When last we met, our heroes fractured some relationships, braced for the "winter storm of the century", which plunged the city into a powerless frozen standstill, and Alex learnt why it was called the "Christmas Massacre".

In the stampede following Konstantyne’s suicide, Alex takes a few unintentional blows to his face as he moves against the crowd to the stage.  When the crowd clears, he can see a few dozen bodies on the ground, some seriously injured, others not moving at all.  On the stage, there is a group of EMTs around Konstantyne’s body, and there is another group of people to the side hysterically crying.  Moving in the shadows, Alex is able to breach the security perimeter and ascend the stage without attracting attention.  Cautiously, he approaches his daughter.  She’s still crouched down, and she appears to have vomited on herself, she looks just awful.  He reaches out to her and tries to get her away from the bloody scene.  She looks at him with shock and anger.

Just then there’s a voice behind him and an arm around his shoulder, and a greasy man in a white suit and wraparound shades is ushering the both of them back stage.  They are soon joined by a large man who acts as a body guard, and Alex and his daughter are placed inside a limousine.  As they walk, there’s chatter about “What went wrong? What’s the delay?  It’s the goddamned POWER in this city!”  His daughter starts vomiting again, and the smarmy guy in sunglasses stops his tirade to dangle a baggie full of white powder and a syringe in her face, promising her that she’ll get it in the car.  Once Alex and his daughter are shoved into the limo, the baggie is tossed at her, but Alex catches it and keeps it away from her.  The car zooms away.

His daughter glares at him, asking, “Who the fuck are you?” 

“Your father.”

“Bullshit.”

Around 12:30 in the morning, there is a pounding at the apartment door which awaken Gareth from under his pile of blankets.  Grumbling, he answers the door.  It is an incredibly handsome black man and a small seedy guy offering him bags of food, blankets, and a space heater and generator with plenty of fuel.  The handsome man introduces himself as Luthor Grant and says he’s helping out people in the cold with no power.  In the hallway, Gareth can see a small army of others knocking on his neighbours’ doors and offering similar items.  Pissed off that he was woken in the middle of the night (couldn’t they have waited till morning?) Gareth thanks them, takes the items, and goes back to bed.

That same night, Wally and Alexis are hanging out together, having their small Christmas celebration.  Now that gifts have been exchanged, they’re just huddling under blankets.  Alexis comments that it is very cold tonight, and Wally is quite warm, and she thought, well, that maybe it would be nice if he slept over tonight, because he is very warm, and that way they could be warm together and not die?  Wally mostly nods, but agrees.  Alexis goes to get changed, and Wally returns briefly to his apartment to grab the warmest sleeping attire he can find.  He has no idea what’s about to happen, but he’s rolling with it anyway.  When he returns, he finds they’re both attired similarly – mismatched tops and bottoms with long sleeves, hoodies or jumpers, socks, mittens, the works.  There’s some awkwardness over who gets which side of her bed, but soon they lie down to sleep, Alexis scooting over into a cuddle.

“You’re not my fucking father!”  Alex’s daughter screams at him as she chucks a bottle of whiskey at him from the limo’s wet bar.  Alex dodges, and begins fumbling at the console of buttons until he finds one that allows him to speak to the driver, and he asks him to stop the car.  Alex gets out, and the driver immediately starts protesting, as he’s supposed to get “Konstantyne” back to… wherever it is that Konstantyne goes.  Alex ignores him, writing down his phone number and handing it to his daughter and says he’s leaving.  She again accuses him of not being her father. 

“Okay,” he says.  “This isn’t my life.”  His daughter and the limo driver stand dumbstruck as he walks towards the nearest subway.  After a few moments, he hears them get back in the car and drive away.

Drake has been watching the whole Konstantyne affair on television.  They’ve cut away from the show footage and are now showing interviews with people who were there, people connected to the show.  Lenny Dorkin, the greasy guy in sunglasses and Konstantyne’s manager, is yelling about how it is the city’s fault this happened, because the power cut out, resulting in the stampede – these people are dead because of the city’s piss-poor infrastructure.  Had the show gone on, he says, it would have been revealed to all have been a hoax, of course Konstantyne isn’t really dead.  At that, an image of Alex and his daughter getting into the limo is flashed on screen, as proof.  Lenny says the Konstantyne camp is suing New York City.  Just then, Alex sends a text to everyone saying, “I think I fucked up.”  Drake replies that he saw Alex on TV, and did his daughter come with him?  The reply is “No :(”

Alia wakes up and she is freezing.  Following her nightmare about the Handmade Man, she finds that she’s sweated the entire night and is damp and dehydrated.  She gets dressed, knowing she’s still expected to go out and make money.  Whores don’t get a snow day.  She checks on the other girls, and though they’re miserable, everyone seems well enough, with many of them shacking up together in various arrangements.  Tensions are high and everyone is upset.  Out the window, Alia sees a fleet of delivery trucks and men carrying blankets, food, and generators.  Since she’s dressed, Alia runs out to meet them.  One man declares that this is all on behalf of Luthor Grant.  Alia comments, “Well, he’s got my vote!”  The man replies, “Oh no, ma’am, he’s not running for anything, he just thinks it’s time for New Yorkers to come together.”  Alia takes her bundle of emergency provisions and returns to her apartment.  The other girls have started to spill out of the building and are flirting with the delivery guys, hoping to score a John.  The guys are interested, but on business themselves.  Some of them may return later.

Back in her apartment, Alia sees something out of place in her room.  One of the girls across the hall is… not right in the head.  She carries around doll babies, makes clothes for them, and generally infantilizes everything.  That girl isn’t around right now, likely outside, but one of her dolls is in Alia’s bedroom.  It is easily the creepiest of the collection, looking like a large Troll doll, but with articulated limbs, and with one glass eye missing.  It is standing at the foot of Alia’s bed, seeming to stare at her pillow. 

“Damn it, Cherry!  I told you not to leave your shit around!”  Alia yells as she flings it back into the girl’s room.  She proceeds to go out to see what business she can scrounge up.  She manages to score on a block that’s got power.  Inside a pizza parlour, there’s a young man working, even though he hasn’t had any customers yet with the choking snow.  While she watches him work, Alia notices that his left arm never moves and stays close to his torso, she figures it must be injured or fake.  She says nothing.  He says he’ll give her $400 if he can fuck her bareback, and they get down to business.  While they’re screwing against one of the metal counters in the kitchen, his left arm rests on her back.  After a bit, there is a clattering sound as the prosthetic arm slides off and onto the floor.  He freezes, and Alia tries to sooth him so that he’ll keep going.  He starts muttering, “I’m not a fucking cripple.”  She again tries to reassure him, but he grabs a fist full of her hair and shouts “I’m not a fucking cripple!  I’m a Hand Made Man!”  as he slams her head into the counter, leaving a bloody gash in her forehead and likely breaking her nose.

Alia wheels away from him, sacrificing the chunk of hair that was still in his grasp.  Calling on her shadow self, she lashes out at him with her claws, giving him a Chelsea grin and three other deep gashes across his face.  The cuts are deep, almost to the bone, and blood is just pouring down his face as he screams in rage.  Swinging wildly, he manages to clock her in the jaw.  Alia runs.  Outside, she washes her bloody hand off in a snow drift.  She hears him coming for her and she dashes down the street.  Once she’s about a block away, she turns back, just in time to see him pitch face first into a pile of snow.  He doesn’t move.  She keeps running.

On her way back to the projects building she lives in, she passes a young boy and his grandmother outside a high rise apartment building.  The grandma is trying to console the boy over some action figure that he has thrown out into the snow.  “But sweetie, you always wanted that doll!”  The little boy is distraught and yells back, “It’s not him, it’s a Handmade Man!”  He sounds very scared.  Alia can see the doll in the snow, and to her horror watches as its head turns to look at the boy.  Against her better judgment, she stops and asks the boy what a Handmade Man is.  The grandmother starts pulling the boy inside.

“He came last night!”

“Did he come in your dream, honey?”  She asks.

“Yeah.  He was… he’s coming.  For all of us.”  And the boy is inside.

Alia pops the head off the doll and walks home.

Elsewhere in the city, both Drake and Morgan are in areas that are fortunate enough to have power and television service, he in the Waldorf, she in an apartment complex that is just on the right side of the poverty line.  There are three stories of note being played that morning:

The botched spectacle from the night before at Konstantyne’s show.  There have been four reported dead and dozens more are injured.  No one can find Konstantyne.  He had been seen last night after the show, but has since disappeared.

A local New York small business owner, Luthor Grant, has been making the rounds in poor communities, handing out emergency rations, warm blankets and clothing, and hundreds of generators with space heaters.  In an interview, Luthor himself insists that he isn’t running for anything, although he’s frankly embarrassed at the way the Bloomberg administration has failed the city twice, first in Sandy, now this, and he’s glad there’s going to be a new man in the mayor’s seat come the new year.  In his hotel room, Drake nods with approval – their plan has started without a hitch.

And lastly, there is a story covering the death of a local restaurant owner who was the victim of a bizarre attack…

Now properly rested and awake, Gareth decides to plug in his space heater so that he can get some work done on his new sculptures.  As he approaches the one that most closely resembles him, being based from the plaster cast he and Kali had made, he notices something is wrong.  It is turned so that it is facing his sleeping area.  No, not completely turned, just the head, with the neck of the sculpture appearing stretched, as though it had turned its head itself.  Decidedly not the way Gareth left it at all.  Not daring to take his eyes from hit, he grabs for his camera on his work bench.  The room is silent as he takes a picture of it, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when the floor of the apartment above him creaks.  “What’s wrong with you,” he asks his sculpture as he backs away to investigate the supplies that Luthor had brought in the night.  Plaster dust starts to fall from the sculpture, as a line forms across the mouth.  It creaks open as the sculpture begins speaking, agonizingly slow. 

“I… am… a hand… made… maaaaan…”  Gareth chucks a can at it, caving in the top of the head.  The jaw keeps going, “I am a handmade man,” repeating it again and again.  Gareth replies, “Yeah, I know, I fucking made you,” as he grabs a hammer from his workbench, wrecking the remainder of the sculpture’s head.  A blast of sound, almost like a low tuba note, emanates from the neck for a few seconds before stopping.  “Let that be a lesson to you,” Gareth says, and goes about making breakfast for himself.

Wally awakens next to a very cheerful Alexis.  Cheerful until she realises the time and that she’s got to get to work.  She asks if Wally can come back tonight, and he agrees.  She starts to get ready for work, and so he takes his leave, but not before they kiss goodbye.  Outside his apartment is a beefy looking guy, someone Wally associates as one of Hank’s goons.  The guy makes a big deal over Wally coming out of Alexis’ apartment, making lewd comments.  As Wally goes into his own apartment, the guy tells him that Hank needs to see him immediately.  After getting dressed, Wally goes to Hank’s office, where Hank asks him to go for a walk.  They bundle up and head outside.

Hank asks if there’s anything that Wally needs, to which he replies no.  Hank asks if they can drive up production if he were to get Wally a better facility, better materials, and Wally says he supposes they could.  Hank needs more stuff, because whatever Wally’s been making has been selling through the roof.  People are calling it “Sand” and Hank is making a killing, although the demand is more than he can keep up with.  The long and short of it, Hank is going to set Wally up in a new place, more worthy of a man of his talents.  And he knows about Wally and Alexis, and says that he will make sure that Alexis is taken care of and treated well, because he wants Wally to stay happy.  Wally is ineffectual at protesting any of this. 

Circling back around the front of their building, Wally sees a town car idling at the curb.  Hank informs him that this is his is his car.  The big guy from outside the apartment steps out and opens the door for Wally.  Hank informs him “This is the man.”  Wally is placed in the car, and the big guy drives him to a much nicer part of town, to an apartment building so posh it has a doorman.  Once introductions are made (“Excuse me sir, residents only.”  “Well, I’m the man, apparently.”  “This is Mr. Edward Han, he’s moving in today.”) Wally and the goon are shown inside. 

A very bubbly hotel manager greets him and shows him up to what is apparently his new apartment all the way up on the 23^rd floor.  It is plush beyond reason – thick carpeting, big windows overlooking the city, all brand new state-of the art kitchen appliances, the bathroom even has a bidet.  Overwhelmed and confused, Wally vomits.  The woman takes it in stride, as much as she can.  One of the bedrooms she shows him, because this place has multiple bedrooms, has been set up as a chemistry lab, with vent hoods, brand new glassware, the works.  The woman is confused, but Wally tells her that he’s a research scientist, and she buys it.  She hands him the keys and takes her leave.  Wally just stands there.  It is going to be really difficult to get to his job at CVS across town.

Down in his lair, Goom is awoken by the sound of pipes above his head reverberating repeatedly.  He can tell roughly where it is coming from, an area of the tunnels that he does not frequent often.  The pipes reverberate then pause, reverberate then pause, with the pauses between getting shorter and shorter.  Deliberate.  Intentional.  Goom retaliates by striking a pipe himself.  He expects the pipe to reverberate again, on rhythm, but it is silent.  Suddenly there is a series of rapid strikes, and behind it, the rising sound of voices, as though a stadium crowd is approaching his home, chanting various phrases that Goom can’t quite make out.

Goom gets into position with his M16 rifle and a plethora of other ammunition, in an area of his lair that has apparently been set up specifically for this defensive purpose.  Knowing his alternate escape route us clear, he pulls out his walkie-talkie, raising Morgan on their usual frequency.  After she answers, he leaves his channel open so that she can hear everything. The chanting and banging gets louder and louder.  Some voices chanting “He rises he rises he rises he rises,” others saying “A stitch in time saves nine a stitch in time saves nine.”  And over it all is the voice of Goom’s old drill instructor screaming, “PRIIIIIIII-VATE GOOOOOM!” over and over and over. 

Above Goom’s head, a hot water pipe bursts, and the chanters, whatever they are, have reached his door and he can see and hear it rattling.  Suddenly it stops, only one voice remaining.

“Private Goom!  He wants to talk to you!  Present, maggot!  I know you’re in there, Goom!  Smell you.  Hear you.  In our thoughts.  In our minds.  The Handmade man wants YOU!”

On the other end, Morgan is trying to talk to Goom, but he of course cannot hear her. She begins frantically texting, saying what she is hearing on the other end of the radio.  At the mention of the Handmade Man, Gareth is in, and Alex also agrees to come help.  They will all meet up at the street entrance down to Goom’s lair.

Down in the lair, the heavy metal door of Goom’s home is pried open.  Four large bandaged fingers wrap around the door and a voice booms, “IT’S TIME FOR STITCHES.”

Changeling: Session 10

When last we met, our heroes got into a nasty situation at their regular group meeting, and Gareth and Drake started a major falling out.

The morning after the incident at the book store, Morgan meets two detectives, Det. Hernandez and Det. Paolo, at her apartment to discuss what happened.  Detective Hernandez, a woman, leads most of the questioning, while Detective Paolo, a man dressed in a grey suit and trench coat, casually looks around the apartment.  Morgan runs through the events, and gives what little description she can of the man who assaulted them (“Honestly, he looked kind of homeless”).  Hernandez shows her a mug shot of someone who could conceivably be the guy, and tells her that the guy is a known quantity, with a history of mental illness and multiple arrests.  Det. Paolo asks if he can use Morgan’s restroom, and disappears for the next several minutes. 

Hernandez also asks Morgan about the two “heroes”, of which Morgan has no knowledge of, because she honestly wasn’t around for that part.  But as they don’t use last names, Morgan can’t really help.  Hernandez starts to pull out pictures, surveillance shots by the look of them, and asks if Morgan can ID any of them.  One is a photo of Charles Drake III, Drake’s double, and Morgan says he looks familiar, possibly from the news.  The next picture is of Meagan, though not a picture Morgan had seen, and she identifies her.  The next pictures are of a handsome African-American man, Diggles, and an older woman with too much makeup.  Morgan (who has seen the handsome man while out drinking with Drake) admits he looks familiar-ish, and outright denies knowing Diggles or the woman, who she has genuinely never seen.   Then Hernandez offers another picture – this one is of Drake, as he looks currently.  Again, Morgan says he looks familiar, but offers nothing more.

Paolo returns from the bathroom after ten minutes and no notable flushing.  They thank her and leave.  Detective Hernandez seems about to say something, but thinks better of it.

Earlier that morning, around 4:30, Gareth and Kali caught a cab to the closest E.R. They sit for about 90 minutes in one of the partitioned off “rooms”, even though Gareth insists to the triage nurse that Kali is in bad shape, but since she looks fine (thanks to Gareth’s revival) the nurse waves them away.  They chat for a bit, Kali commenting that Gareth looked so different when he came into her apartment, sort of sparkly, and very much like he knows his shadow self to appear.  He waffles, lies, brushes her off, saying that she’d taken a lot of shit, and besides of course he looked haggard, it had been a long night.  She admits that harming herself has been a long time coming, and again stresses that she feels the company Gareth keeps is not good for him.  Finally a doctor comes in, and once noting that Gareth is not family, asks him to leave.  Before he goes, Gareth offers Kali assistance with anything, watching her apartment, feeding cats (she has none), and to please just call him.  She smiles and thanks him, and after shuffling around the waiting room for a while, just in case, he makes his way back to his apartment to wait for Drake.

Drake, after leaving Gareth’s the night before, went to one of his local haunts to drink.  While there, he’s called into the back room by his associate, Luthor (who happens to be the handsome man in one of the pictures Morgan was shown).  Luthor is there with a Guido in an ill fitting suit, a man introduced as Tony.  Tony launches into a thing, about how though NYC just had a mayoral election, people will still be looking for new blood, and Luthor wants to move up in the world, and how can they do that?  He pulls out a copy of tomorrow’s paper, with the headline “MOTHER OF ALL STORMS HEADED FOR NEW YORK” and says that this is going to be bad.  Like, worse than Hurricane Sandy bad, and how can they leverage that to their advantage?  A storm like that will knock out power, make life real terrible in lots of projects, lots of people without homes.  Luthor wants to start sowing seeds of discontent against the mayor among the projects. When Drake suggests a carefully aimed “car wreck” to knock out a main transformer to the lower half of Manhattan, Tony and Luthor are beside themselves.  Drake’s the new campaign manger, they gloat, and Drake takes it all in stride.  Tony promises that he’ll get everything – new bank accounts, whatever – set up since Drake’s “off the books”, if Drake will just manage things.  After congratulating each other at their treachery, Drake leaves out the front.

Sitting in a corner booth is his on-again/off-again girlfriend – currently off - Angie (the older woman in another photo Morgan saw).  She’s rough, chain smoking, and looks scared but relieved to see him.  After learning about how his apartment got shot up, they decide to go to a cheap motel to spend the night.  Drake ends up waking early, and heading back to Gareth’s to collect his things.

Gareth finally gets home around 8:30, and starts cleaning his apartment.  He’s not at it very long when Drake walks in.  Without hesitation, he lays into Drake, telling him he’s got five minutes, five fucking minutes, to get out you asshole.  While packing, Drake explains himself; he’d apparently taken a little bit of piss-taking Kali’d dished out very personally, and thought she should get as good as she gave and then some.  Gareth lambastes him for being such an egotistical twat, and Drake asks if Kali just couldn’t take it.  Gareth says that she tried to kill herself, which Drake just brushes off.  They both go silent, Gareth building to another outburst, while Drake loudly packs.

Just then, Morgan walks in, eager to share what went down with the police.  Sensing the tension but deciding not to comment, Morgan goes into the story of her morning, especially the part about them having pictures of Drake and some other people.  When she describes them, Drake confirms that the two people she didn’t know are associates of his, Luthor and Angie.  Finally, Morgan acknowledges the tension, at which Drake replies that he’s leaving, which opens the dam for Gareth to lay on again.  During his explanation to Morgan, Drake takes his leave, telling him he’ll be in touch in the new year.  Gareth says he’s done with what their powers have done to them, but that he won’t bow out now with whatever insanity (wyrd or meteorological) is heading their way.  Morgan offers him help, and he says he’ll also be in touch, just needs some time.  She accepts this and goes.

On Christmas Eve, a winter superstorm brings New York City to a grinding halt.  Much like when Hurricane Sandy hit the year prior, but worse – the storm brings ice, coastal parts of the city, warehouses, apartments, are washed away by the frigid storm surge.  Property damage is in the billions.  Power loss results in fatalities.  The highs for the foreseeable future will only be a degree or two above freezing.  With the exception of Drake, who has cash to burn and puts himself up in the Waldorf, the rest of the group are among the city’s disadvantaged poor who are without power or heat.  

Goom, who lives subterranean, is not poorly off, and so goes out to help the homeless of the city, making blankets for them.  He notes that there are significantly fewer people on the streets than he’s used to, realising that many of them likely have frozen to death.  Goom also visits Gareth with a bundle of blankets, and when Gareth says that he might not see the group any time soon, Goom tells him to hand them out to whoever needs them.  Gareth says he will, but until then, they’re staying right on his bed where they’ll be very useful indeed.

Among the insanity of the storm, Detective Hernandez manages to visit Morgan again, this time to inquire more about Meagan.  Morgan tells the officer what she knows, which is admittedly not much.

Wally still manages to cook drugs for his landlord Hank, although with the storm the demand is low.  He and his neighbour Alexis have a small Christmas together.  She’s knit him a Christmas sweater, which he loves if only for it being an extra layer against the cold.  Just before the storm hit, he’d bought her a copy of a Woody Allen movie, as she’d taken interest in a local film festival of his some weeks before.

Four days into the mayhem, Kali calls Gareth, saying that she’s really thinking of taking dire action against herself, because the hospital has electricity heat, and really, wouldn’t he do the same in her shoes?  She sounds so much better, and is joking of course, and she promises that she’ll make something for Gareth in her art-therapy group at the hospital. 

Drake spends his time with electricity, heat, and internet access to begin seeking out people to help with Luthor’s campaign.

Alia stays in her apartment, reading Harry Potter, and getting together with the other girls she works with to stay warm.  A woman in her community (though not one of the working girls) approaches her to ask for her assistance in finding her son, Barron, who had gone missing just before the storm.  Alia doesn’t know him, but says she’ll be on the lookout.  One night she has a dream that she’s walking around a place that looks like a faire ground.  There is snow melting on the ground and adverts everywhere advertising “The Hand-Made Man”.  As she wanders, circling a large circus tent, the adverts change.  “The Hand Made Man is Coming!”   “The Hand-Made Man is Coming For You!”  “The Hand-Made Man is Coming For All of You!”  All of the posters have a similar design, which changes with the text – a spotlight with a girl’s silhouette, then the silhouette with a figure looming behind her, and finally the girl is replaced by the abductees’ group, on their backs and screaming with the Hand Made Man, a figure made of burlap with a doll’s head with one eye melted standing over them, staring out at Alia.  She makes her way to the front of the faire and peers into the tent.  It is pitch black, but she can hear the sound of hundreds of voices chanting.  Alia says, “Fuck this,” and walks away.  The dream fades.

On Christmas day, Alex takes his ticket and goes to Times Square for the Konstantyne extravaganza, figuring if nothing else, the teeming masses will be warm.  Power has of course been restored to all of the main touristy parts of the city, and Times Square looks as it always does.  All of the lights in the area are synchronized, and the crowd is chanting Konstantyne’s name.  It is a bombastic show.  A massive screen shows a helicopter shot overhead, and they hear the aircraft zooming in above them.  Konstantyne is in the chopper, holding the camera on himself and the crowd, before affixing it to a helmet and leaping from the helicopter.  He falls easily 500 feet, but never deploys a parachute, landing heavily on the stage with a burst of flames and a roar of guitars.  As the crowd goes nuts, he goes into some spiel about the birth of Christ, there’s stigmata, there’s a big black cross, all in all a very impressive display of heretical douchery.  He does a few tricks, some of which Alex recalls from his early days. 

He finally starts to draw the show to a close, saying that he couldn’t be here without his wife and daughter.  Alex recalls from his research that his wife, according to Wikipedia, is dead, and yet there she stands on stage, or at least a very convincing stand in, smiling robotically.  And then there’s his daughter, right there, just a few hundred feet in front of him, looking for all the world as though she’d rather be anywhere else. 

As the finale crests, a platform rises up from the stage with a shotgun on it.  A chair is brought out.  Konstantyne takes a seat, removing his right boot and setting the butt of the shotgun in it.  He opens his mouth, swallowing the end of the gun, and proceeds to blow his head off. 

The crowd goes fucking nuts, cheering and screaming as a chunky red spray rains down on the stage and Konstantyne’s body slumps forward.  His wife is still up there smiling and waving, never flinching.  His daughter, though, is covering her mouth, likely screaming, and crumpling to her knees.  Alex tries to fight his way up to her as figures rush onto the stage, when the Jumbotron cuts off and the lights go down.  Something is wrong.

Then the screaming starts.  People realising that this is not an illusion.  Panic sets in.  Alex is about 90 feet out from the stage when the stampede begins.

Changeling: Session 9

When last we met, our heroes finally met the elusive Madame Butterfly, who told them of their true natures.  They begin meeting with her regularly, as she trains them on how to recognise and use their new-found abilities.

The next two weeks are spent mostly with Madame Butterfly.  During that time, some in the group are able to discern from her commentary that she harbours some bitterness, though is not overtly hostile, to the Vanishers, although her interest far exceeds simple curiosity.  Putting things together, they think that her office is built specifically to keep Them out, or if the situation arose, to act as a cage to contain one of Them.

When not training, the group continues on their normal routines.  Tickets have gone on sale for Konstantyne’s “Christmas Day Massacre” show at $500 a pop.  Drake asks Alex if he’d be interested, but Alex declines the offer.  Alex does, however, wander down to Times Square to see the preparations that are being made for the show.  Still a couple of weeks away, there isn’t much yet, although framing is being erected for a large stage to be elevated high above the street, although nothing strikes him as being too unusual.  Gareth, struck with sudden inspiration, begins fervently working on a series of new art progress, and requests a collaboration with Goom, providing him with a few hundred yards of Kevlar yarn, asking him to simply knit whatever strikes his fancy. 

One night, sometime into their training, Alia is given a call and given specific instructions to open the loading dock of her building.  When she does so, she is met with a delivery-style van, sans markings, that disgorges a group of individuals clothed in pale blue full-body clean room suits, each of them carrying some manner of supplies for setting up an impromptu clean room – heavy plastic sheeting, black vinyl bags, and so on.  They set to work in Mia’s apartment, stapling the plastic sheeting to her walls, setting up lamps and a gurney, preparing a sterile space.  Just before the room is sealed off, they walk in a large cooler. 

After three hours have passed, they start breaking down and bring everything back to their van.  Alia sees that her friend is receiving a final round of blood transfusions.  Alia is cautioned to stick to a regimen of medications that will keep Mia healthy.  Although she’s just been through an intensive medical procedure, Alia can’t help but notice that Mia looks so much better than she’s ever looked.  Alia stays with her for three days, until the pills run out.

The evening of December 14^th, Gareth gets together with Kali, another artist who lives in Gareth’s building.  She’s a slight, quiet young woman, who recently left an abusive marriage to pursue her art in New York, and she and Gareth, with their shared artistic pursuits and damaged pasts, have struck up a casual but close friendship.  They have one mission that night – to plaster cast Gareth’s entire body to create a base for a series of sculptures.  Once Gareth has stripped down and Kali begins applying the plaster strips to his body, Drake decides to take his leave of the apartment, heading anywhere else. 

Kali and Gareth banter a bit while she plasters his lower extremities, although she soon opens up about something she’s noticed the past few weeks.  Namely, what’s up with all the weird people Gareth’s been having in and out of his apartment?  Not that she objects, in fact she’s really glad that he seems to have finally gotten some sort of a life, and she totally encourages him in his friend-making pursuits.  It just seems as though they’ve come out of nowhere, very suddenly.  Gareth gives her vague answers, saying they’re from a support group he’s been attending for several months, and that some of them (Wally and Drake) have run into bizarre circumstances that have displaced them from their homes, and Gareth offered up his couch.  Kali expresses some concern that perhaps, with all their issues, these aren’t the best people for Gareth to hang out with. 

They’re interrupted by Goom, who walks into the apartment mid-casting to deliver his Kevlar work to Gareth.  He’s made a strange sort of web-like creation, which he says is a hammock.  Kali, a fibre artist herself, takes a gander and is intrigued.  Not wanting to stick around too long, Goom takes his leave.  As Gareth stands and dries, Kali wanders around the loft, poking about the place and ribbing Gareth on any number of subjects, as any one would when faced with a friend in such an amusingly compromised state.  After she’s cut him out of the cast and he’s gotten dressed, they make plans to get together later that week for an evening of wine and music, as they haven’t hung out much of late.  Just as she’s leaving, she seems about to say something, but thinks better of it and says goodbye.

As Kali is leaving, Drake returns to the apartment.  He and Gareth discuss that they seem to have been learning some of the same things from Yuri-ko, in that they are both able to read into and manipulate the desires of others.  Drake also lets on that he’s been regularly using one of his abilities on Gareth – a rejuvenation effect of sorts, which makes the subject feel as though they’ve had a full night’s rest, a hearty meal, and are bright and alert.  This explains why Gareth’s been making such great progress on his projects on comparatively little sleep.  Gareth asks if he can return the favour, as he’s gotten quite adept at fixing things, but Drake declines the offer.

That Thursday, the group meets again at the little Christian book store for their regular meeting, the first official meeting Alia will attend.  Drake surprises Alex with a ticket to the Konstantyne show, which Alex accepts with much hesitation.  They’re just getting started, tucked away in a back alcove of children’s books, when they hear the door chime and the teenage girl at front tells someone, “Oh, the people you’re looking for are in the back.”  There is a tense moment as a large person of indeterminate gender shuffles back – they’re dressed like a street person, with greasy matted hair, large boils, and Goom distinctly smells mildew and overall grossness.  Goom asks if they can help, and the guy (for it is actually a man) asks if this is the abductees group, which Goom confirms.

The guy starts frantically muttering, “Don’t wanna go back.  Not gonna go back.” As he reaches into his threadbare coat and pulls out a bottle of brownish liquid with a rag sticking out of the top, and a Zippo lighter.  The group immediately springs into action, although they are largely ineffectual at disarming the man, until Goom whips out his knitting needles, striking the bum across the knuckles so that he drops the lighter, which Morgan hurriedly scoops up.  Drake, turning on his charm, tries to calm the guy down, saying that they are here to help, no one is going to come for him, and so forth.  Alia, able to read and feed off of the regrets of others, determines that the man came back into the world about two years prior and has been utterly abandoned since.  All seems as though it is going to wind down until Goom, still keyed up and in battle-ready mode, lunges again at the stranger, growing slightly larger as he strikes him with his fist.  That’s when the bottle of gasoline shatters, drenching Goom and the bum and showering the rest of them with the noxious liquid.  Everyone bolts, some out the back fire exit (setting off the alarm) others out the front, including the girl at the front desk. 

After a minute, the inside of the store illuminates, windows blowing out in a blast of heat and fire, and the bum runs into the street, completely engulfed in flame.  Most of the group has fled, but Goom and Alex have stayed behind and are able to make it to the apartments above the book store, rousing everyone and getting them out before the building goes up.  By the time the fire department and paramedics arrive, they’ve managed to evacuate almost everyone, and the authorities insist they cease action to get medical attention.  Both Alex and Goom manage to slip away into shadows just as the television news crews start arriving.

Local news coverage that night is nothing but the fire and the daring rescue by two unknown heroes.  Interviews with people rescued from the inferno are full of nothing but praise (and a few good descriptions) of the two brave men.  Even Mayor Bloomberg speaks out, asking for any information about the two, as they have shown the true spirit of New York, and he wants to give them keys to the city.  In the middle of the night, Morgan, who as the organiser of the support group meetings would have left her name and information with the book store, is contacted by a Lieutenant Donegal, who asks if she was at the book store and if they can meet tomorrow to discuss exactly what happened.

The following night, Kali once again comes down to Gareth’s apartment, to enjoy a quiet evening, drinking wine, listening to music.  Recalling that Kali had wanted to say something earlier in the week, Gareth calls upon his abilies – the first he’s tried them outside of training with Madame Butterfly – to see what is going on with Kali.  He’s hit with an onslaught of desires:  Her lingering dismay at the dissolution of her marriage, but the keen need to move on; she’s desperate for a rebound.  Not just a one night fling, but a relationship, any relationship, even if it is not right at all.  She just needs.

Not wanting to let on that he’s just read her so clearly, Gareth opts instead to just embrace her, support her.  The pent up emotion in side her mixed with wine soon has Kali sobbing, bemoaning that the best male relationship she’s had since moving to NYC has been with Gareth, and fuck all if he’s gay.  When are things going to look up for her, when will she get what she needs?  Gareth is mostly quiet but commiserates with her, reassures her that she’s beautiful and worthy, offering a shoulder to cry on, and wine, more wine!  After a bit she calms down and they start talking about other things, projects they’re working on, life in the city.

That’s when Drake comes home.  Drake also reads Kali, getting all the same information Gareth had received.  Drake, however, decides that this is apparently Mortal Play Time.  He starts flirting with Kali, brazenly, turning on his charm although not going into full glamour.  Gareth immediately realises what is going on, that Drake is playing her, and although he tries to butt in, to get Kali to change the subject, leave the apartment, go back to her place, anything. But he’s helpless – Drake’s got her, and she’s gone all dreamy-eyed.  Then Drake’s cell phone rings, cutting him off mid-sentence. 

“Oh, sorry,” He says. “Gotta go.  It’s my girlfriend.”  And leaves.  Kali is in shock.  Gareth gently reaches out to her, and she agrees that they should go back up to her apartment.  A loom, yes, she’d wanted to show him a new loom project.

When they get up to her apartment, Kali’s completely expressionless.  She seems on the verge of tears, but is holding it together… barely.  She tells Gareth she’s changed her mind, she just wants to go to sleep now, but she’ll see him later.  Unsure exactly what to do, Gareth quietly agrees, but asks her to please call him if she needs anything, and maybe they can get together again sometime soon, though this time at her place.  She nods and shows him out.

Seething in anger, Gareth calls Drake.  It rings and rings before going to voice mail.  Gareth hangs up and calls again.  Straight to voice mail – Drake has turned off his phone.  More pissed than he can remember being lately, Gareth stays up, working on his projects.  He loses track of time until his phone reminds him, when it rings at 4:00 in the morning.  It is Kali.  She sounds terrible.

“Hey.  Can you come here?  I think I did something stupid.”  And the line goes dead.  Gareth is out the door before she stops talking, though, sprinting up two flights of stairs to her floor.  Her door is unlocked, though she’s nowhere to be seen in the apartment.  Calling her name, Gareth heads back to the bathroom, and there she is.  On the floor, crouched by the toilet, mostly empty bottle of vodka and an opened bottle of prescription pills at her side.  She’s pale, clammy, glassy-eyed.  Her lips have turned blue and there’s a bit of foamy spittle at the corners of her mouth.

As Gareth drops to the floor beside her, gathering her up in his arms, images come flooding back to him – Sam, or another friend, people he knew when, nearly catatonic from a heroin binge; Sam, pale and shaky, firmly in the grips of the disease that would kill him, wanting to die before the sickness took him itself; Gareth, always Gareth, sober or otherwise, always nursing them, bringing them back from the brink... until he couldn’t.  Unable to bear another loss, Gareth reaches for the only tool he’s got.

Squeezing her tight, Gareth revives Kali, as Drake had been doing to him, not knowing what will happen.  She’s blinking, colour rushing back into her face, lips no longer blue.  She’s confused.  Didn’t she just try to kill herself? That was a lot of vodka, a lot of pills, what happened?  Gareth says that maybe the pills were expired, or something.  She’s still a little shaken, but gets up.  Gareth knows there’s still all that crap in her system, and magic or no magic, she probably needs to get to an emergency room.  That first.  He’ll deal with Drake later.

If music be the food of PCs, play on

I picked up a really fantastic trick from art school which has served me exceedingly well in crafting characters for tabletop campaigns:  Mix tapes. 

Well, playlists, since we're in the future now.  I have made playlists for probably a good half dozen or more characters who I feel the driving need to bring to as much of a fulfilled realisation as I can manage.  As I think I've mentioned before, when crafting a character, I cannot just sit idly by and allow them to be a vessel for stats.  No, I craft my characters as extensions of myself, as fully-formed beings with loves, hates, desires, and deep histories whenever possible.  Pretentious and over thinking?  You bet, but that's my bag, baby.

When I am getting ready to sit down to roll some dice, I bust out that character's mix and listen to it.  Sometimes just a quick spin through the list, sometimes I'll bring it to work and listen all day.  I'll spend hours at my computer combing through my ever-growing collection of MP3s, sourcing anything I don't already have from M'Colleague or from reputable sellers of music, throwing everything and anything that has potential into one massive list, and then listening to each song to pare down a tight core of songs that evoke whatever it is about that character that I'm trying to maintain.

I find that the list length itself often speaks to the character as well.  Ruby from the late great Deadlands game maybe had 6 songs and could be listened to just on my commute home/to game - though she had depth, her defining characteristic for me was Woman Scorned, and I could accomplish that in just a few pieces.  Gareth's got an "album length" mix which takes me to and from work without repeats.  I tell his story through his mix, and am often left a bit emotionally fragile once finished.  Perfect for the dark game that our Story-Teller has given us.

Then there's Bosabrieln.  Bosabrieln is this ridiculous Half-Elf Virtue of Cunning Bard character that I play in the 4E campaign that M'Colleague has been running for almost three years (having Grown-up Lives means we end up a few months at a time between sessions sometimes).  Bosie, as he's known, was fashioned after Oscar Wilde's lover and famously awful person Alfred "Bosie" Douglas.  He's vain, beautiful, talented as fuck, and Oh So Misunderstood.  He's alarmingly androgynous (think Andrej Pejic or Anatoly Elgert) and not fickle at all about who shares his bed, or in what quantity.  Bosabrieln's play list takes up two CDs when burned.  Prick.

We're playing today!  This has been one of those long hiatus breaks, as life was taken over by work insanity (all the PCs are my coworkers) and by wedding planning.  Over the intervening months, I've discovered some "new" music for him and so I'm currently going through and switching out old songs for better ones.  Most notable among the new selections are RHCP's "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", Britney's "Work Bitch" and, naturally, Lady Gaga's "Applause".  To be honest, I could listen to "Applause" for hours on repeat and be ready to go with Bosie, but I like to try to keep what depth I can.

They say music soothes the savage beast, and they couldn't be more right.  I started my morning in a bit of a downtrodden rut, but now I'm overcome by feeling overwhelmingly FIERCE.  Bring it, Mr. DM, the bitch is back!

Changeling: Session 8

When last we met, our heroes did some investigating, and mostly tried to carry on with their lives.

It is Thursday, 28^th November, Thanksgiving, and everyone is headed to Gareth’s for a holiday meal which doubles as their regular support group meeting.  Everyone brings a little something to share, and Morgan has invited Alia along.

Though no one speaks to it, this is the best Thanksgiving any of them have had in a while.  Though things are awkward at first (what do you expect with a house full of jaded and wounded souls?) once the alcohol starts flowing, things loosen up.  Pretty soon they’re laughing and telling stories, until someone mentions Meagan, and the room falls back to silence.  But then Diggles comes up, and there they go again.  Gareth tells of some truly ridiculous and embarrassing things Diggles would do back in the 90s when Gareth and his partner, Sam, would buy from Diggles in clubs (without divulging any of the more intimate details of his erstwhile relationship).  That’s when Alia puts it all together and realises that these people are the cause of all of Diggles’ recent rash of bad luck – word does tend to get around the seedy underbelly of the city.

It is Gareth who notices the lacquered butterfly box that Wally brought in, and calls it out.  Wally explains what happened to him after leaving Gareth’s apartment the last week, after his encounter with a taxi, and the creepy limo that followed him around.  He passes around the invitations, which detail the time and place of the meeting, which is the following afternoon at the Chrysler Building. 

While deciding what to do about the invite, those who weren’t around earlier are brought up to speed on Drake’s conspiracy theory about his doppelganger’s devious plot, and the possibility that Alex’s doppel, Konstantyne, is involved in some way with his upcoming “Christmas Day Massacre”.  Adding to the connections, Morgan reveals that her doppel is known as "The Oracle”, a woman who has an uncanny knack for reading and playing the stock market, and who has made billions off of this skill, making her one of the top investors in the world. 

The following day, everyone meets at the Chrysler Building at the appointed time.  They are taken up a series of elevators to the 75^th floor, which houses a triumvirate of related corporations:  Harajuku  Importers (which Wally recognises as his friend Alexis’ place of business), Harajuku Limited, and Shinjuku Exporters.  The lobby is very plush, with laquered wood, crystal clear glass doors, and a very nice reception area.  They are greeted by a very pretty young lady named Harmony , who offers them drinks, which some accept, and they wait around for a few minutes before Harmony  leads them through an expansive office space, to yet another elevator in the back of the building.  She activates it through a series of biometric scans, which verify her through her handprint and eyes.  She rides with them to the very top floor, where she smiles at them and leaves. 

They are left in a hall with mirrored walls, cherry wood, marble floors, with two bronze pillars in the centre, holding a Japanese scroll suspended in protective glass.  It is a poem, and a podium in front of it provides a translation:

As the cherry blossoms fall
At the height of their glory
So, too, must I fall
That men may call me
A flower of Yamato,
Though my bones lie scattered
In the bleak wilderness
Of strange and distant lands.

Before they continue on, Drake turns on his glamour, making him seem in an instant as though he’s beautiful beyond comprehension.  From a door at the end of the hall steps a bald Caucasian man who greets them and motions for them to follow him back through the doors from which he came.  They squeeze into a small corridor with air vents that blow up, down, and in from all sides, as though creating a curtain of air to keep something from passing through.  When they emerge on the other side, they see what is being contained. 

The room they step into his huge, easily 100 feet by 300, with artificial branches covering the ceiling, coming up from the floor, creating an enchanted woodland space at the top of the skyscraper.  And fluttering about are hundreds, thousands, of butterflies.  The view out the windows is magnificent, a treat to see New York’s skyline the way so few can.  Turning around, they see a large ornate desk in the room’s centre, and – at the very farthest corners – two huge tigers chained to the floor. 

The man wheels in a frail female figure wearing over-largedark sunglasses dressed in white and with limbs bound with gauze, almost like an Egyptian mummy, leaving her sitting at the desk where she begins to unwind the coverings around her hands, revealing the paper thin skin of the truly ancient.  She is easily in her 90s, if not older, and of Asian descent, some of her hair still black.  When she removes her glasses, her face passes in and out of shadow, showing this visage to be an illusion, much like when Wally and Alex saw each other looking strange.  Her other self only appears to be about 70 years old, a difference of at least 20 years.

It is then that they all realise, as they’re standing mostly in shadow, that they’ve all taken on an Other appearance:

            Alex looks featureless and pale, as he’d seen in his reflection at the school.

            Wally, similarly, appears corpselike, as Alex had described him.

            Goom is ogre-like, with one eye, but still very much like himself

            Alia looks bestial, partly human, partly catlike, partly something else entirely

            Drake, even accounting for his glamour looks stunningly gorgeous, beyond human.

            Morgan’s hair and clothes move on their own accord, as though rustled by an ever-present breeze.

            Gareth looks gaunt, as though he’d lost at least 50 pounds from his already thin frame.

Drake approaches the woman, and she greets them, introducing herself as Madam Butterfly, though invites them to call her by her given name, Yuri-ko.  She calls them each by their actual first names and offers to answer questions.  She is one of them and has been for some time.  She had been in contact with Meagan, assisting her before her disappearance, but claims she doesn’t know where she is.  Morgan senses she’s not being entirely truthful.

Wheeling herself out from behind the desk, she drops a bomb – she’d always thought, as the group has, that she’d been taken and replace by something Else, but she and we are wrong.  We, it seems, are the doubles, the inhuman ones.  At this declaration, she flips a switch to illuminate an aquarium below their feet.  In it swim fish of various types, but in its own spot bobs the head of a younger Japanese woman.  Madam Butterfly claims that this is herself, her supposed “double”.  She’d had her executed in the 1950s, but not before she did some tests on both of them, the results of which convinced her that she herself was not human, but this other woman was.  After she killed herself, Yuri-ko took over her other self’s life, expanding her business to the empire that is represented in part here in the Chrysler.

She speaks of others like them who she has encountered before, others who could not handle what they really were, who succumbed to the strange power that comes with their state, and who ultimately went mad and disappeared underground.  That is why she cautioned Meagan (and cautions the others now) not to go under ground, for the closer one gets to the centre of the Earth, the thinner the boundaries between our world and that of the Vanishers become.  She turns to Goom, saying that she fears for him the most, as he seems the one most likely to succumb, especially given where he lives.  The assembled group all has gifts, she explains, but they couldn’t start to realise their own powers until placed under great stress, and that’s why she’s been toying with them for the past few weeks.  It was she who placed the strange phone calls to Alex and Wally, she who planted the note on Wally during the bust, she who had suspicious persons watching Morgan’s workplace, and so on.  She who blew up the #7 bus outside their old meeting place.

The others, the “doubles” who have been living stolen lives (or not?) have no memory of their taking.  The group, as constructs made by the Vanishers, have connections to human dreams, can manipulate people through dreams, and that includes their other selves.  But that is a dangerous undertaking, as once the doubles are aware of their Other, they can use that dream connection to inflict suffering upon that individual.

Madam Butterfly reached out to this group of misfits because she needs them – there is much she wishes to accomplish before she dies, and she does seem to have a queer fixation with death.  She has spent decades searching for those she claims created them.  Why do these Other beings exist?  She needs to have some understanding before she passes on.  She has a group of six other Others also working for her, although they don’t have the same social support and strength that this group has formed.  These others had been assigned to keep an eye on Meagan, but after a certain time, they were no longer able to locate her.  She still claims she doesn’t know exactly what happened to Meagan.

She offers to train them.  Those who advance to be adept in their abilities without succumbing to madness are rare, their minds usually tend to fall apart.  There are spaces where the wall between this world and the Vanishers is thin, and they happen to be standing atop one of those spaces, which she has harnessed here.  She mentions that iron reduces the energy from the other side and is detrimental to the creatures that come from it.

When Gareth calls her out on not having done anything to affect him, she brushes him off, saying that she put in a good word for him at The Box, which is, unsurprisingly, another one of her properties, and a gate to the Vanishers’ world. 

She speaks of a blood test that can be performed to show us that we truly are unhuman.  Recalling that Wally is something of a chemist, she pulls a folder of lab results from her desk, handing it to him.  What he reads shows a chart, blood panels, of an unnamed individual.  The levels of various neurochemicals in the blood show that this person should be both experiencing serious bouts of psychosis, but also that they should be unconscious.  Overall the numbers seem to be way off, but they are consistent with a human sleeping and in an active dream state.  She insists that any one of the group, if tested, would give the same results, even when awake.

They agree to her training, which will take place over the next few weeks, sometimes as a group, sometimes individually.  To seal the deal, and for their mutual protection, she offers a peace pact – she and the group will be bound by blood, and for the duration of the pact, none of them can willfully inflict ill against another in the bond.  The bond will last until 1^st January, although they are free to enter into it again at any time.  She takes out a knife and cuts her hand, asking each of them to do the same.  They do, with Alex and Gareth hesitating and going last (Gareth has a thing about mixing blood).  Again, she calls them each by their real first names – Gareth, Alex, Wallace, Alia, Thaddeus (Goom), Muriel (Morgan), and Charles (Drake).

As a show of good faith, Yuri-ko offers them any services they might need, as she has a great deal of cash and influence at her disposal.  Alia steps up and inquires if there are doctors available, as she has a friend (Mia) who needs a procedure done.  Though they speak only in the vaguest terms, Madam Butterfly does agree to provide a doctor to perform the abortion, provided that Alia makes good on the promise to train with the others on their new found abilities.  Alia concedes, and arrangements are made.

Goom does some quick medic work on those who want it, to help their hands heal quicker, and after a short time they all leave, returning to their lives for a brief while before entering into an intensive two week period of training with Madam Butterfly.