Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

10th of November 2006 A.D.

The options on offer are not great, they feel so slapdash, so desperate, it's not right that murderers and fanatics should chase good and gentle souls from hearth and home. Unbidden your mind goes back to Bane upon his unmarred threshold, one member of the Ordo Lebensis you are not worried about is Helen. With Harry's help as well as Lydia, with the order backing the whole thing up like one of their ward-raisings maybe you could do it again and again. Ways to streamline the process, to improve it come unbidden to mind, power and purpose straining to let fly. Alas, practicality is like gravity, ever present. The image of tinny studio apartments above coffee houses, sublet homes and if you remember right at least two trailers invested with something like Bane is... daunting. Maybe you could wing it eventually, no, you could do it, no doubt in your mind, but if it would be done in time you are less sure. A sanctuary done too late is no more than a shrine to failure.

"I think Undertown is our best bet, between you too, the Jade Dogs, Porter, assuming he's awake that should be a force to scare off the vampires and deal with any of their 'Ant' men." That's an insult to Ant man and I don't even like those comics.

Bones knocks on the door a few minutes later, the night black-blade cradled in hand looking as on edge as you've ever seen him. It's one thing to meet a Warden in your place, among your own allies, quite another to beard the lion in his den, you know.

So you flash him a genuinely grateful smile as you hand the sword to Harry. "I want to to tell me what this does."

"Just a wild guess here, but I think it kills people," he snarks, you assume instinctively.

Leaning back into your seat, like you don't care, using the very cogent example of Mister who had made himself at home on the couch you chuckle. "See, you're on the right track already. Will that be cash, credit or synthetic diamonds?"

He reaches out to take the weapon by the hilt at once curious and conflicted. You choose to misinterpret the conflict. "Come on Harry this isn't pro bono material, even for you."

To emphasize the point you reach out to the secrets eyes and whisper: What are the secrets of its making? As the light of your soul explodes outward, those same eyes suddenly visible to all you bear witness to the forging of sword that melds craft, love and life, cruelly drained. Where once there had been a balance of Yin and Yang, not equal but the latter reinforcing the former now there was only Yin Chi, touched by the frozen night of Kakuri, forever screaming its dirge to all the world .

"It's made of loss, mourning, the jagged edge of purposeful imperfection which cuts deeper than steel. I think... I think it is a lot more recent than it looks, a lot younger than its last bearer." Those had not been clouds in stained red with the glare of the setting sun in the hour of its forging, but coal smoke.

Lost 2 Essence (Empathy and Occult Excellencies) -> Now at 11/15

The wizard of Chicago, then with the look of one who has denied who knows how many birthdays and parties he says: "Ten thousand dollars."

"Done," you say, keeping your expression carefully neutral.

All the while Bones had not been paying much attention to the sword. "Am I hearing this right you need to convince a bunch of palm readers, ghost-botherders and talismongers to come come down to the Station. You got your work cut out fer you pretty boy ain't you?"

He's not looking at Thomas, he's looking at Harry

"What'd you call me?"

The ghoul's features shift, elongate into something at once more simian and more lupine, just for a moment a flash before returning to admittedly unshaven and sallow humanity. "It's all relative ain't it?"


To those who had never heard of Undertown its a hard sell, between having to take their kids out of school, take days off from work, trudge through a sewer to get there and and effectively camp with dangerous strangers, to those who had heard of Undertown it is so much worse. They know what lurks in those entombed streets and and ruined bunkers: every sort of ghost and ghoul, every nightmare half imagined starring at the ceiling at night. To be honest if it had not been for the normally shy Abby begging, cajoling and at times outright lying through her teeth about what she had seen in their future, even though her gift does not go that far.

You are just about done talking to Liz Carter, a grey haired lady from Louisiana who co-owned an old style greasy spoon to come on down and join the others when you spy atop the apartment building across the road, behind a ragged billboard the glint of metal,

For the second time in half a year you find yourself in a sniper's sights.

What do you do?

[] Just deflect the bullets, let Harry and Thomas handle this

[] Fly up and grab the asshole, there aren't that many onlookers and you are fast

[] Write in

OOC: Yes, he does seem to be aiming at Molly, not the woman you came here to pick up or either Harry or Thomas, maybe its because she looks the most witch-y.