Sessions Worlds and Stuff

-you looked to hobbes, you'd let her decide how much she wanted to tell this new troll about what was going on. Then exiting into the hall, you go and wait over by the door to the interrogation room for hobbes, figuring it best to enter together-

"makes sense....and hmmm Swaije here might even be able to help, she has experiences with ghosts. She might be able to read you to find out something or the like"

"I'm sorry, I don't think we've been introduced," Hobbes answered Swaije, looking behind her for a second. It was taking a minute for the computer to get through the security measures on the husktop.

"My name's Swaije," she answered. "Valorn and, um, Daxton is it? helped me get out of a sticky situation with those purplebloods. And they promised me safe passage home, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you don't like Maxele and Vinent and them either? And if that is the case, I want to help. Not sure how much I can do for Lyrica..." she added to Valorn. "Since I got done with all that Hasche stuff, I'm not eager to get back involved with ghosts and the undead and all that junk... but I do know some things about those trolls," she said, gesturing at the screen.

In the kitchen, a timer went off.

-valorn looked a little dissapointed but stayed quiet to let her talk-

"pleasure"

"hobbes, your case, your call on this one. I'll follow your lead"
-daxton replied leaning back on the wall to wait, checking a security feed in his shades of the interrogation room to see how their prisoner was doing while he did so-

Hobbes nodded at Daxton, appreciating all his support on this.

"Anything helps," she said, pulling up documents and skimming them quickly when the computer got done cracking the husktop. "If you don't mind waiting a few more minutes, I've got someone I've got to tend to, but maybe we can talk about it after dinner. Would you be willing to go on record, when it comes to that?"

"Yeah, anything to make those bastards pay," Swaije answered.

"Great," Hobbes smiled at her. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. There's food done on the stove if you and Valorn are interested; this shouldn't take long."

With that, Hobbes went and joined Daxton at the interrogation room, ready to get some answers out of Maxele.

The purpleblooded troll had managed to get her destroyed hand out of the binding, while they had been busy. Not that it was helping her much. The bones had been all but liquefied, which made it easy to slip out, but completely useless in every other way. Her other hand was in better condition, but she was working hard at trying to slip it through the bindings. Which was tearing up her thumb badly. The skin was ripped and torn, dripping purple down both sides of the chair, but she was desperate to get out. Maxele understood exactly what kind of position she was in.

Lyrica tried to pat Valorn on the shoulder. Unfortunately, her hand just went through. But the attempt was made. "It's ok. Hobbes dug up lots and lots to go on, and I'm sure we'll figure it out. You know I have a bumbleshark as a lusus?" She was still thrilled that they'd found anything at all.

"resourceful" *daxton commented, in other times she might have made a half decent enforcer...sans all the purple blooded religious bullshit. Once again, he stood nearby but let hobbes take center stage, this was their show, he was just here as a reminder at the moment*

"true...wonder if it's still alive..."

*then he turned to Swajie again*

"so now that mr grumpy is out of the room again, wanna give me that better explanation on why you were down there you promised me?"

"I was trying to set things right," Swaije sighed. "After you took care of Hasche, Nietve and I skipped town. He figured we'd start over, and leave all that stuff behind. And I tried, I really did. But I saw one of the trolls involved in that whole mess, Maxele, and it was pretty obvious that if it wasn't Hasche, she was stirring up trouble somewhere else, so I followed her. And she led me right to that carnival. Except at the time, it seemed pretty busy, and too dangerous. So decided to wait, and come back later. Except I got caught, and, well, you know the rest." She paused for a second. "I just couldn't let things end the way they were, you know? A lot of trolls were gonna get hurt, and at first I thought that the ends were gonna justify the means... at first I didn't know the highbloods were gonna be involved at all. And even then, I almost never had to deal with them. Nietve handled that end of it. But it doesn't change the fact that they /used/ me, and that isn't something I'm just going to let go." She paused for a second. "Are you gonna do anything about that?" she asked about the wound on his arm.

"It's about motherfucking time," Maxele said when they came in. "Here I was beginning to think you were never going to find that grub, even /with/ my oh so generous instructions. Tell me, were you dumb enough to blow up the computer yet?"

"No, not quite," Hobbes answered. "In fact, that's something I've been puzzling over. It's a very advanced encryption, I have to admit. So, I've been spending some time thinking of how we're going to get through it. Now, we could just take our chances, let the Enforcer decryption software take a crack at it, kill you, and dump the body. Or, we could take it to a very good hacker friend of mine, kill you, and dump the body. But, I figured, hey, why don't we give Maxele a chance to make herself useful?" Hobbes grinned at her a very sharp toothed smile. "Give me the password, and we'll skip finding out whether or not you're allergic to bullets."

*valorn was quiet as he listened to his story, then took a look back down at his arm*

"I was gonna have a doctor friend of mine look at it, but if you have the mind for it your welcome to take a crack. We might wanna grab that food out of the oven before it burns down the ship though, since hobbes seems occupied"

*valorn replied entering the kitchen to do so, commenting on her tale while he got things out*

"gotta say, you've come a long way kid. What you did was brave, dangerous, but brave and I gotta say I kinda respect that. If your telling the truth, which I'm getting the vibe you are, you've done me kinda proud for sparring you two back then" *valorn smiled, a bit and set the food aside offering her a hand to shake* "so this time, let me introduce myself as an equal. Call me Valorn, and no I don't intend to stab you or put you in a doll"

"like your partner was to my scalpel"

*daxton replied, turning on a monitor with stills from his playtime with zasten. Complete with the scenes of flaying bits of his skin and breaking his fingers, as well as cutting off his bulge and choking him to death with it*

"he was....uncooperative, so I figured he didn't need his breath if he wasn't going to use it for something useful...I'm beginning to wonder the same thing with you"

Maxele's face turned a few shades paler, and she looked away from the pictures. "If you kill me, you're never going to get what you want. I am your /only/ chance, and I'm not dumb enough to throw out my only chance to get out of here alive without guarantees that I'm not going to die."

"I think we both know that's not going to happen," Hobbes told her. "Even if you don't talk, /and/ somehow manage to get out of here unscathed, you'll have bigger problems to deal with. We have your laptop, the game grub, and the little black book. How do you think your bosses are going to feel about the fact that /you/ lost them?

"Now, there are a couple of ways this can play out. The first one is, you refuse to talk, and we do to you what we did to him until we get answers. And trust me, we will get answers. And then you die. Or, you could make a deal with us, the passcode for your life. We drop you off somewhere, but I'm sure you can imagine what happens then. Yvicke will catch up with you sooner or later. He will hunt you down, and peel the skin from your bones. You will die drowning in your own blood because you betrayed him. Or, you could cooperate. You tell us what we want to know, and then we shoot you. No pain, just a couple of bullets, quick and easy."

Maxele hesitated, obviously thinking this over. There really was no way out of this... "You make this quick, and painless, alright?"

Swaije accepted his handshake. "Good to know we're finally on good terms. So what's the deal with your ghost?" she asked, looking over at Lyrica. "She seems nice." She made herself up a plate of what Hobbes had made. It smelled spicy, like curry and cumin and tumeric, with vegetables and meat and rice on the side. Actually, it was amazingly similar to what Dhioni liked to cook, on the occasions that she did.

Lyrica was looking at one of the guns she had found in Daxton's kitchen, a little baffled by its presence.

-Daxton stayed silent, letting hobbes handle this part of the dealing...because honestly, on some level situations like these made even him a bit sick. The lack of fire in total defeat.....he prefered his opponents with a fighting chance, but this wasn't his show to run. This was hobbes, and she knew the stakes here best-

"yeah...she's a curious case. A regular casper from the old grub shows, as harmless as you can get. No memory of her life though. She hasn't seemed to have wanted to hurt anyone...so I couldn't just erase her, didn't seem right"

"So for the moment, I'm trying to help her figure stuff out about when she was alive and how she died, figure that might either help her move on or at least give her some modicum of peace till we can figure something else out"

*""such as a new body, like my other friends"" Valorn quietly thought to himself, it would be nice to give lyrica a gift like that, even if he wasnt sure how yet. It seemed to him lyrica had died young given how she acted, and it seemed a crime she hadn't really gotten to live her life. However, he didn't quite feel like sharing these thoughts with swaije yet*

Hobbes nodded, and Maxele told them the password. As soon as the words left her mouth, she closed her eyes, and flinched. But that didn't last long. As promised, Hobbes made it very quick. She twisted Maxele's head harshly to the side, and the purpleblood went limp.

Hobbes leaned on the chair and rubbed her bandages lightly for a second before speaking. "I think I need a break before we go any further with this."

"That's pretty noble of you," Swaije said. "Have you tried doing a seance? Usually they're just for summoning spirits from the other side... but it seems like she's got one foot here and one foot there, so it might strengthen her connection to this side for a while or something."

Lyrica peeked up in interest.

"I never looked much into seance's, what can you tell me about them?"

-Valorn replied eatting a little himself to keep up his strength, checking his arm wound again as he did-

"maybe we should have made sure the password worked first before offing her"

*daxton replied, walking over to help her, rewrapping one of her bandages with a clean set he got out of his syladex*

"Get me a needle and thread, and I'll patch that up for you," Swaije said, taking a bite of her own food. "It's just communicating with the dead. Most of the time when you hear about it, it's really fake, but generally speaking it's simple. You light some candles, make sure the room is clean of dark magic, there are some words you chant while you think of the person you're trying to summon as clearly as you can. Generally speaking, it takes two people; one in touch with magic, and one who knew the deceased so you can focus on channeling energy right while the other one communicates. All you gotta be careful about is if some other ghost answers the call."

"..." Hobbes winced, but bit her lip about complaining. "Yeah, you're right. Guess I wasn't thinking too clearly about that... but someone who resigned herself to death has no reason to lie, right?"

"no reason to strictly tell the truth either, but it's the best shot we got now"

*Daxton replied, finishing rewrapping her*

*Valorn took a needle that was sticking into one of his voodoo dolls, and placed it on the table. Then got a brace of forest green thread from his syladex in the same doll as well, passing both to her*

"hmmm I didn't know her in life, and I don't know anyone that does either...but I know her now. Would that work in those conditions? I can already communicate with her too, so what would it do to strengthen her?"