The Search for Vanessa Hawthorne: The Inferno

Reginald not only arranged a car for them, he took on the role of chauffeur personally, driving them to The Inferno in an ordinary-looking red sedan. It was the opposite of what John had been expecting. Based on the Brighton’s displays of wealth, he’d assumed they drove limousines or something equally expensive. This actually made a hell of a lot more sense for a ‘secret’ organization. However, it highlighted a different problem: both John and Erica were dressed in their Ashcroft uniforms, which would undoubtedly cause them to be carded at the entrance.

Fortunately, it was an issue he might be able to do something about. John pulled his wallet out of his inventory and sifted through the cards inside it. He didn’t have a driver’s license yet, but anything of the same size with a photo image would probably work for a good base. Ashcroft’s student ID card would do.

“What’cha doing?” Erica leaned in towards him curiously.

John focused on a mental image of his mom’s driver’s license and tried to use Glamour to apply the same general structure to his ID. Irritatingly, nothing happened.

Damnit. Why didn’t that work?

Checking the spell’s description revealed the issue: ‘Minorly alter the appearance of your body or clothing.’ His ID didn’t count as clothing, so that was a bust. At least it’d been worth a try. Well, next was getting rid of the uniforms.

What do people wear to clubs anyway? Probably just normal stuff, with… bands or something? Aren’t glowsticks a thing?

“Dude. Hey, dude? Earth to John?”

John ran a hand over his chest, as if pulling an invisible cloth over his body, Glamour rewriting the appearance of his uniform into a simple grey shirt with black text saying ‘Music Band’ with a lightning bolt separating the words. The sleeves were just a bit too long, reaching his elbows and for some reason a turtleneck had wrapped around his throat.

The berserker beside him snorted and then broke into laughter, “What is that?”

“A disguise?”

“You look like a fifty-year-old trying to pass as a teenager, who taught you how to do that?” despite the mockery, there was a hint of admiration in Erica’s words.

John sighed, “Adorabelle. She was a lot better at it.” He concentrated specifically on the sleeves and managed to shorten them with a second cast, at the cost of a dozen pockets popping up all over his clothes. Frustrated, he tore at them without any mental image other than just getting rid of the defects, fingers sparking with spontaneous magic.

Spell Empowered: Glamour ~ 1 ⇾ 2
Effectiveness improved from ‘minor’ to ‘passable’. Illusions may now be applied to a willing ally.

To both his and Erica’s surprise, John tore off a shimmering layer of silken magic, revealing his uniform below. It lasted a couple seconds before dissolving into the air. A handful of sparkles landed on his arm and pants, vanishing into his body as his mana recovered slightly. They both blinked in silence.

“Dude,” Erica stared at him, “that was awesome. Can you do it again?”

Glancing back at the popup, John mentally underlined the words ‘willing ally’, then looked back at his companion. “Yeah, you want me to do you this time?” No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than John regretted his choice of phrasing. His cheeks burned slightly as Erica gave him a bemused grin, “Come on, that’s not what I meant!”

“Tell that one to Sigmund Freud,” she replied. “Well? You going to ‘do me’ or not?"

For the remainder of the ride, John steadily burned out his mana while practicing his illusions, trying to shape both their outfits into something that’d pass for normal. Whenever anything was too unusual, he’d tear away the magic in another pretty lightshow of collapsing magic; he expected it to get kind of old after the first time, but the scattering of mana was different each time… and he couldn’t quite suppress the mental image he was ripping off Erica’s actual clothes every time he did it to her outfit.

Perhaps that’s why her skirt had been particularly troublesome, as the spell seemed nigh-unwilling to work properly whenever he attempted to illusion it. The first pass had resulted in a black and pink mini-skirt combined with mesh leggings that looked simply ridiculous on her and had earned him a bemused look. He’d quickly recast Glamour only to end up with a skirt riding so low that the sides of a pair of string panties were visible. Fortunately, Erica had been more entertained than upset with his botched attempts to alter things and put up with his failings until John managed a simple black skirt that was probably an inch too short with black leggings underneath.

The end result was a pair of outfits that would pass for normal if nobody looked too closely at the random button at the bottom of his t-shirt or the way Erica’s shoes were a messy hybrid between flats and heels.

Reginald stopped at the corner of 7th and Carson, just at the edge of the Ruby Road, and pointed down the street at a club several doors down. The Inferno wasn’t exactly subtle. Even in a street of nightclubs, bars and what was almost undoubtedly a brothel, the place stood out. A huge neon sign hung above the pair of double-doors at the front entrance, emblazoned with the club’s name against a set of roaring fires and being sensually stroked by a woman with horns and a tail. It was probably an impressive sight when the sign was turned on, but in the middle of the day, things were quiet and the street was mostly empty, save a pair of people smoking by one of the alleyways.

“The Inferno, notorious den of debauchery and villains; do take care, Lady Carpenter,” the butler said.

Erica rolled her eyes at John, “We’ll be fine.”

As they both waited for a green light to cross the street, John threw out a question he’d been holding onto, “Ok, so what are we walking into here? You said the guy who runs this place was important and had rules we’d need to follow… what are they?”

His companion nodded as the light changed, “No weapons is a big one. We should be fine as long as neither of us pull out our gear in public. Of course, that also means no unsanctioned ****, **** and definitely no offensive magic.”

“Unsanctioned?” John asked.

“The laws followed in The Inferno aren’t the GRO’s or Springfield’s; if you’ve got Dante’s backing, you could stab someone and nobody would stop you. The same goes for other… practices. Abyssals can’t freely prey on humans, or vice versa, but if you brought a **** onto the premises, nobody would bat an eye. Or five.”

John’s stomach turned over at that. The mere word ‘****’ made him deeply, painfully uncomfortable.

Erica took a breath and continued as they approached the club, “I don’t like it any more than you do, but we pick the fights we can win. Anything that happens outside the club isn’t Dante’s or our business, and as long as nobody breaks the rules inside, then things are fine.”

“Is that the Order’s opinion, or yours?”

“Mine,” the berserker looked directly at him, and John saw a certainty in her eyes. “If the Order could, they’d shut it down in a heartbeat and kill every non-human they could find, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. The Inferno might seem lawless, but I respect Dante and he keeps things stable. You can’t just kill your way out of every situation, and sometimes you have to compromise.”

John wasn’t sure what to say to that. Some things were just… wrong, but at the same time he couldn’t deny his partner’s logic. Regardless, he trusted Erica. If she put faith in something, he’d at least give it a chance.

The front doors to the club were devoid of customers, not much of a surprise considering the time of day, but when he tried to push one open, a hand emerged and grabbed the door frame. “No minors,” growled the voice of its owner, a burly man dressed in a cheap black suit.

So much for trying to disguise us… maybe he’d take a bribe?

“We’re not here for the music. We’re a pair of sinners looking for salvation,” Erica said from behind him.

John stared at her in incomprehensibility, only realizing after a moment that the phrase had been a code word. The bouncer pulled back his hand and stood aside to let them both in, replying, “Salvation ain’t free.”

Erica nudged John, who shuffled in awkwardly past the gorilla of a man and then paused to take in the club. The dance floor was big, spanning almost half the open space between them and the stage where a few instruments and microphone awaited a band. Huge towers of speakers on either side of the stage looked primed to blow out the eardrums of anyone within range, which they probably did nightly. Taking up the rest of the space was a bar and seating area, complete with very comfortable looking couches. It was cozier than his tavern but far less effective at serving a lot of guests.

To his surprise, the bar wasn’t empty. A girl with blazing red hair that couldn’t be much older than he was sat at it, talking to a slightly older guy standing behind it with the craziest sideburns that John had ever seen. The man wasn’t dressed like a bartender, and the way he stood behind the bar was subtly different from Bearnard, but he definitely knew his way around bottles of booze. That much was evident when the girl finished off her drink and gestured at some of the fancy blue liquor on the shelves, her companion refilling the glass… and adding something in from one of the several hip flasks hanging from his belt.

A tip from health class suddenly popped into his head, one of the few things he’d paid attention to in it because his phone had been dead at the time. The teacher had been very specific about ‘keeping an eye on your drinks’, especially for the female students.

“Hang on a second,” he told Erica, who was heading for one of the back rooms, then John approached the bar. As he approached and got both their attention, he grabbed the glass the moment it left the bartender’s hand. “What’d you put in this?”

“What do you mean, boyo?” replied the man, who seemed genuinely confused.

What is it with people and the nicknames? Seriously!

“Dude, what’s going on?” asked his partner as she slid in on the other side of the confused looking girl at the bar.

“The drink!” John glared at the guy, ‘Keith Rutherford’, according to his nameplate. “I saw him put some of that in it.” He pointed down at the flask emphatically, “Whatever that stuff even is, probably some kind of ****.”

Erica leaned over the bar with a look on her face that John hadn’t ever seen and was glad had never been directed at him, “Did he now?” Her voice dropped into the register of ‘dangerously quiet’, and in the dim light John wasn’t sure if he hallucinated the way her eyes tinged slightly.

Keith raised both hands cautiously, “Whoa there, lass. This is just a misunderstanding; I don’t want any kind of fight. Jenny’ll tell ya it’s fine. Right?”

Whatever response the bartender might’ve been hoping for, it wasn’t the girl he’d been serving slamming her hands onto the bar and then slapping him loudly across the face.

“Jenny?” Keith asked, astounded.

“How could you! I trusted you!” the enraged girl followed up her words with another slap and continued to rant, “You bring me to a bar, offer me a nice drink and try to **** me, without even using the good stuff? What kind of sexual predator are you?”

Wait, what?

John glanced over at Erica, who looked back at him with the same confused expression. Their earlier outrage stifled as Jenny started to laugh at them, Keith and the entire situation.

“The looks on your faces! It’s fine, jeeze.” Before either of them could stop her, Jenny grabbed the drink and downed it in one go, holding up a finger as she chugged the mix before slamming the glass back down on the table. “See?”

John looked back to Keith, who returned his apologetic wince with an eye-roll.

“Could’a just told them, Jenny.”

Jenny waved her hand dismissively, “That’d be boring, and I’d hate to deprive my ‘heroes’ of a chance to look big and manly.” She turned to look at John and then suddenly slapped him hard across the cheek. “That’s for being a white knight.”

While he was massaging his sore jaw, with a sympathetic look from Keith, his attacker whirled around to smack Erica. Her attempt was much less effective than with John; the berserker almost instinctively catching her hand before it could land. Without missing a beat, Jenny yanked her closer and caught Erica in a momentary kiss.

“That’s for caring,” she said, before shoving her stunned ‘hero’ back and giving her a hard slap across the face. Justice delivered, Jenny got up from her seat and gave John a smile as she walked past him and towards a hallway marked ‘Private’. “Let’s go, Keith, I don’t want to miss the show.”

“Don’t I get an apology?” asked her abandoned companion, grabbing Jenny’s glass and leaving it unceremoniously on a drying rack beside him.

“Nope!”

Keith glanced between John and Erica, who were both still stunned by the turnabout they’d just witnessed. His eyes settled on John, and he raised an eyebrow. “Don’t mind her, ya did the right thing, in theory. Name’s Keith, look me up sometime. Gotta go.” He left a card on the bar and slipped out to follow Jenny.

Only once he’d left did it dawn on John he hadn’t used Observe on either of the strange duo, which might’ve been a good thing to start with... he picked up the card and looked it over.

‘Ales and Ailments
Potions of all kinds and compositions, available direct and via the Auction.
Use code HERO at checkout for 10% off.’

The promotional letters flickered with gold, and John had few doubts they’d been added magically for his ‘benefit’. Any remaining doubts he had about Keith and Jenny being normal were thrown out the window, which explained a lot why they’d been around in the first place. In retrospect, it was pretty stupid he hadn’t even bothered to ask that question.

He pocketed the card and turned to Erica, who had pulled herself back together, giving her a shrug as the only gesture he could manage to try and convey his feelings towards what’d happened.

“So… what do we do now?” he asked.

The berserker pointed towards the hallway that Keith and Jenny had taken, “Follow them.”

A couple feet into the passageway, John felt something press against his skin, as if he were walking through an invisible wall of cobwebs. It tingled, and he tried to brush the unpleasant sensation off. He was so caught up in it, in fact, that he didn’t notice the figure seated in a chair with their nose in a book until he almost ran into them.

Just past the strange feeling was a sudden end to a hallway that had seemed to be much longer when he’d looked down it earlier. Set into the wall was a large metal ring of interwoven gold and silver that reached all the way up to the ceiling, inscribed with runes and all sorts of arcane symbols. Sitting in a chair, closing his book and looking up at the two of them with a bored expression was a young man that John immediately cast Observe on.

Rory MacFergus
Level 16 Fateweaver
Relationship: 0
[Agent]

“More?” he asked with a bored, vaguely Scottish tone. “It’s 12 grand for two, no refunds, don’t break the rules, blah, blah, just fork over the cash and I can stop the spiel.” He looked from John to Erica and seemed slightly more interested. “Oh, it’s you, Carpenter. Is this Order business or personal?”

Erica stiffened, clearly trying to figure out which answer would be less problematic, settling on, “Private. It might be related to an ongoing investigation, but we don’t know yet.”

“Hm. Well, not my problem either way. Just don’t bring that hammer-happy Warden of yours in and we’re good. Probably. I don’t really give a fuck.” Rory stuck out his hand, “12k. Cash.”

John glanced at Erica, who gave him a nod, and then pulled the money out of his inventory, dropping a thick wad of hundreds into the man’s outstretched hand. They waited as Rory flicked through the cash and counted it, until the ‘Fateweaver’ gave them both a nod. He snapped his fingers, and the sigils all over the ring behind him lit up. The space within it flickered and flowed like a liquid coating of iridescent colors until it settled on a silvery grey, like mercury.

“Remember the rules. No unsanctioned weapons, magic, business, or any of your ‘Lady’s judgement’ bullshit. Take it to Dante if you want his permission to drag someone out.”

Erica looked at John with a hint of exasperation, and he returned the look. Then, one after another, they stepped through the portal…