Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 2.3.1
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Alchemist frowned in consternation as he looked at the 'Warehouse' that Mikael had led them to.
It wasn't 'A' warehouse. It was a large, brick building that housed a club called 'The Warehouse'. Situated next to a shipyard and across the street from a few storefronts like a restaurant called 'Fulbari' which was next to the House of Secrets which was adjacent to another restaurant called 'Ravintola Ani'.
The mage tapped the thumb of one hand against his thigh in irritation as Jinx told her thrall to go home and enjoy his alcohol until he couldn't remember the conversation.
He'd been expecting something isolated, something hidden out beyond where people would normally go. Not something loud and obvious, just up the road from an apartment building.
"So, what are you thinking?" Jinx asked him once she got done watching her new 'friend' amble off, inordinately pleased with himself after being chatted up by a pretty girl.
"I'm thinking that size-altering transmutation magic will be really helpful in fabricating that micromail that you were asking about," Alchemist told her.
It wasn't relevant to the topic at hand but it did prove to be an interesting thought exercise and it had kept intrusively invading his thoughts ever since Jinx brought it up earlier.
"I meant... Okay." Jinx sidled up next to him and began to do what he was doing, looking at the various doorways and windows of the club. "How were you thinking of mixing magic and fabrication for this?"
"Well, first thing I'm thinking is we'll need to make a model of you that's a size category larger. We can do that pretty easily with a simulacrum and an enlargement spell," Alchemist explained as they watched people queue up to enter the building. "Then we're going to have to fudge around with a few other spells. I was thinking of enlarging our materials- I initially thought about making this in lead or gold to start with before I realized both of those would collapse under their own weight unless we built this in space so we're going to have to start with adamantine or darksteel- before shrinking us and a wire puller down a stage. This way, when we run the metal through the puller, it'll come out incredibly fine and that's before the magic wears off and it shrinks back down to its 'normal' size."
"That sounds... complicated," Jinx admitted to him as the bouncer of the club got called in to handle something.
"That's just the start," Alchemist told her before he tapped her shoulder and pointed down towards a window at the street level. A flicker of light had rippled out of it, as though a heavy curtain had just been moved. "I'm not sure how long it would normally take to make a unitard or romper out of metal links but whatever it is, we could add a zero if we were doing it by hand."
"What?" Jinx asked as her head turned slowly, taking in the rest of the unlit brick building. It actually extended all the way down the road, converting into something like an industrial building with a trio of large garage doors. All of which were closed. "Why?"
"Because we're going to put this thing together while we're still tiny on top of the simulacrum which is still large. It'll create the thinnest, densest possible mesh when the material is returned to its actual size." Honestly, Alchemist was fairly sure that they would need to do more than multiply the time factor by ten. Twenty may have been a bit more fair of an estimate and he was fairly sure it still came up short. "If we didn't have magic to skip the manufacturing process, I'd honestly suggest we figure something else out."
"That's a bit more involved than I thought it would be," Jinx admitted, bringing one hand up to cup her chin.
She, like Alchemist, had a disguise active. While he'd shifted his features into those of a tall, blond man with a square chin and brown eyes she had gone with something similar but slightly different.
Jinx's hair was blond and short, spiked up as though she'd used half a bottle of hair gel. Like him, she'd gone with a fairly square jaw, opposite to her more pointed features and swapped her eye color to blue and her skin color to pale caucasian.
Anyone looking at her would think she'd just come from Sweden whilst Alchemist gave off a more mixed look.
"So, we know they're operating a club," Jinx began, voicing her analysis. "Or at least using it to hide their own operations. The windows for at least half of the building are probably covered in black out curtains and the vampires likely have access to the garages which could hold just about anything. We don't know their numbers, we don't know what force they might be able to employ and we do know that they have no shortage of potential hostages. This looks pretty bad."
"Yep. Kind of kills the plan I'd started with, too," Alchemist's lips formed a thin line as he looked over the front of the building. "I was thinking of trying an idea I had with a fogger and some holy water but god alone knows how good the ventilation is in that place."
"I don't think it would have good enough coverage, anyway," Jinx said, offering a valid opinion. "Any other ideas?"
"A few," Alchemist told her, cupping his chin with one hand as the other arm was crossed over his midriff. "I'm pretty sure our stealth is good enough that we could sneak in, even if they are vampires. Might add in a... hang on."
Alchemist immediately opened the Game Shop and ran a search for one of the most worthless items in Final Fantasy Eleven.
The Deoderizer.
He extracted his purchases and handed six small vials filled with red, oily liquid over to Jinx.
"That stuff has the power to erase almost any scent. Just smear a whole bottle over your clothes and they won't be able to smell you for a few minutes." Alchemist set the bottles throughout his various jacket pockets, making sure they wouldn't clink together as he walked. "I'm thinking we go in, look around and figure out what the overall situation is."
"And if something happens?" Jinx asked, holding up one bottle to examine the contents against the scant light of the crescent moon.
"Hit your attacker with Cure magic, it'll kill a vampire but it won't harm a normal human. Otherwise, cause a distraction and get to safety." Alchemist inhaled slowly and stood up straight, his eyes narrowing as he got ready to dive into the enemy's stronghold. "You ready?"
"Yep."
"Great."
The first order of business was just getting inside the building. The bouncer was letting people in, yes, but primarily women and never in large groups.
Alchemist didn't really feel like waiting to get rejected. Instead he kept a careful eye on the door behind the tall, muscular man and waited until he opened the door to let in a new group. The second he did so, Alchemist placed a hand on Jinx's shoulder and simply teleported the two of them as far into the building as he could clearly see.
This first thing that hit the duo was the noise.
The second thing was the smell.
Third was a drunk girl knocking into Alchemist and falling back on her ass.
"Woah," the lady slurred, her dress riding up as her straps were falling down. "You're a big one, aren't you? You wanna buy Mami a drink, huh big guy?"
Alchemist leaned down as Jinx stepped away from him and disappeared into the crowd.
"Sure thing," he told the woman as he helped pull her back to her feet. "Why don't you show me to the bar?"
"Yeah!" Mami crowed before she turned around. "Let's go, I'm gonna get so-"
Alchemist stepped to the side as the inebriated woman grabbed the arm of the nearest man and began to pull him off to the bar. The wizard wasn't interested in whatever game of cat and mouse the girl was likely pulling.
Instead he made a beeline for a door that led east, into the rest of the building that was marked with an 'Employees Only' sign. Trying the doorknob, he found it wasn't even locked.
It led to a dark corridor, only lit on the floor by the occasional light that crept out from underneath of another door. The mage was quick to use Wish to cast Greater Invisibility on himself before he got to work.
He knew what he was looking for wouldn't be lit up. The vampires barely needed light, their senses attuned to finding prey in the dark.
No, he was looking for the stairs that led down. Whoever was in charge of this operation, they were going to notice that their little 'hunting party' wouldn't be returning and Alchemist did not want to give them an opportunity to regain the initiative.
-----
Jinx silently stepped around a few men that were working diligently in the kitchen at the back of the club.
They were working with loaves of bread, cheese, smoked fish and sliced meats. Nothing too interesting, basic finger food.
That wasn't what caught her attention.
Sticking to the blindspots, even under the illusionary effects that hid her, Jinx quietly made her way to a large, industrial sink that had a number of large, heavy knives soaking in one of the three tubs.
Cleavers, boning knives, filleting knives... And the water was pink.
Blood.
Except that Jinx noted that the chefs weren't working with anything so fresh. Even the burgers they were making came pre-cooked and simply needed to be reheated.
"Matias!" someone shouted into the kitchen. "The girls at table six, they want cucumber sandwiches! Fresh!"
"Painu hevon vittuun!" one of the two chefs shouted, slamming his fist on to the table he was working at. "We have not finished the food for table four! Edvin, take over!"
Jinx placed a thumb over the button of the Stopwatch in her pocket and watched the chef storm over to the walk in freezer.
An oddity that stuck out considering the majority of the party-goers were drinking rather than eating. Jinx imagined that the group would probably be fine if they just used a handful of chest freezers.
Once the man slammed the door open, Jinx pushed the button and then casually walked around the frozen people to look into the freezer herself.
What she saw was more chilling than the bitter cold.
In the back of the freezer, hanging by their feet, were people. Or, well, the corpses of people. They'd been stripped naked, hanged by their feet and their throats were slit. Each one hung over a bucket that was full of cold, congealed blood.
Of the two dozen victims, most of them were men. There were only six women and Jinx noted that they had papers taped to their navels with the words 'Special Delivery' written on them.
Those were the fresh corpses.
Along one side wall, stacked on wire shelves, were styrofoam packages of meat, freshly butchered. Most of them were labeled for transport to Bavaria or Austria but there was one shelf that was loaded with packages of the same cut, an organ...
The spleen, Jinx realized after several moments of trying to remember the anatomy from her health classes.
The spleens were all earmarked to be sent off to Romania.
Jinx had no idea what that was about, but...
At least she knew she was on the right track.
-----
Alchemist silently crept through the darkness of the basement, his feet coming down softly in tempo with the music blasting over head.
Maya Hee- Three steps.
Maya Hoo- Three steps.
Maya Haa- Three steps.
Maya HaHa- Four steps.
There were lightbulbs in the blackened hallways, though Alchemist didn't feel inclined to turn them on. Between True Sight and his own Blind Sight, he was well enough aware of his surroundings.
Besides, there was one door that had light seeping around the gaps and different music coming from within that was only just barely audible. Classical music.
Not what he was expecting but he'd take it.
The wizard pressed himself against the wall as a lanky, oily man stepped by him. Whoever they were, the bat-like individual wore a cloak that flapped behind him and stormed right by Alchemist without so much as a second glance.
Instead the mage kept creeping closer to the door at the end of the hall. He slowly tested the doorknob and found it opened with an unpleasantly loud thunk-
"Ah, I'd wondered when the rat that was creeping through my demesne would find his way to me," a voice called from within the room. Whoever they were, their voice was heavily accented with German.
Alchemist debated for an instant as to whether or not he should keep up the pretense of sneaking and just decided to give it up. Instead he stood up fully and pushed the door open.
He found himself stepping into an apartment that could be reasonably called 'Nostalgic'. On the wall next to the door was an old rotary phone, Alchemist could see an old, green refrigerator with a pull handle and no separate freezer compartment. There were several paintings along the walls, mostly landscapes but one thing in particular did stand out.
A sealed case within which a number of medals were proudly presented.
A black cross where the ends of the cross flared out, basically forming a square with what might have been a golden oak leaf on top. A round silver or pewter badge on a red cloth with a black strip down the middle that had an eagle embossed on it. Another iron cross with a pair of sword running through it. They stood out predominantly among a number of other medals and awards of service.
And they all had swastikas on them.
"Ah, you like?" the owner of the war medals asked as he stepped into the room properly. He was a tall man with flaxen hair and dark eyes behind small, rectangular glasses with sharp features. His every motion was akin to that of a coiled serpent, ready to strike. And his hands were wet, freshly washed. "It is good, yes? To remember our merits in life."
Alchemist had honestly found something worse than a vampire.
He'd found a nazi.
"You're certainly well decorated," Alchemist commented as he looked around the small apartment he'd found. There was a smell in the room, deep and foul that Alchemist found unpleasantly familiar. "What did you do to earn this?"
The way the nazi vampire smiled did a fantastic job revealing his fangs.
"Do you mean my youth eternal, stranger? Or do you mean to ask what acts of valor I'd accomplished in service to mine country?" The vampire slowly tried to circle around Alchemist, the mage could see the light reflecting off of the vampire's glasses-
Likely unnecessary, assuming vampiric regeneration could fix those defects.
"The medals," Alchemist answered, walking deeper into the beasts lair as though he was wholly unconcerned by the predator in the room. "Vampirism isn't really a mystery, now is it?"
In the kitchen, Alchemist found the source of the smell. A woman lay on the table, vivisected.
"Ah, this one must apologize, stranger." The vampire's voice was incredibly insincere. Honestly he sounded amused by the byplay instead of threatened. "I had just enjoyed a late night snack and I'd yet to begin cleaning up."
Alchemist tilted his head slightly as he thought on that. Clearly there was more to the 'snack' than just blood, given the state of the corpse.
"My name is Hans Brunner, stranger," Hans offered, his tone jovial and light. "And who is my guest for this evening?"
Alchemist's gaze slid over to the sink, stained crimson, where a thick tube of red tissue hung over the edge. When it slid over the edge and into the basin of the sink, when whatever was inside began mewling and crying in hunger...
"...Ah." Alchemist had just figured out what the snack was. "I was going to say 'I'm just a guy on vacation' but..."
His eyes slid back to the butchered woman, to the folds of skin that were peeled back to expose the organs. Specifically to what was missing.
Alchemist could have done without Hans chuckling darkly behind him.
"Nope," Alchemist declared before turning around. Hans lunged at him, his fingers outstretched as his nails extended into claws but found himself held fast by the neck as Alchemist ignored Hans's efforts to harm him and instead slammed the nazi vampire into a wall. "Not doing this. Not playing this game. Not dealing with vampires. Not dealing with nazis. Not dealing with whatever major you work under who's gone and turned himself into a robot."
"What?" Hans gurgled through his crushed throat. "The major- How do you know about-?!"
"No. Nyet. Nein," Alchemist repeated himself as he focused on the vampire in his grip. As he charged a spell, as he twisted a spell with one of his rarely used spellboost effects.
Entanglement.
Possibly one of the most limited of his spellboost perks, Entanglement had the slowest growth out of all of them. Until a spell was mastered, it could only propagate to one level of connection. At a spells mastery, that limit would spread to two. With Limit Break, that had grown to three levels of connection.
Until it interacted with Alchemist's other perks and equipment.
Between Archmage and the various other boosting perks, his effective spell power was doubled and so too was the reach of Entanglement, offering any spell at its secondary cap a potential spread of six layers out. With Alchemist's equipment further enhancing spells for a higher cost, that number grew again by half, up to nine levels of propagation.
"I am not doing this sidequest!" Alchemist declared, Mega-All ensuring that his spell would travel up and down Hans's family tree at full strength. "I refuse!"
"What- What are you-?!" Hans did not get to finish asking his question as Alchemist cast Heal, empowered by the metamagic effect Maximize and the spellboost effect Entanglement, on him.
And his sire.
And his grand sire.
All the way up his family tree nine times, all the way down to his countless children and through them their own children as well. And his sire's children, and that sire's children and on and on and on.
Alchemist dusted his hands off on his pants, leaving behind some very ugly ash stains, and shook his head as he turned to leave.
A vampire.
A nazi vampire.
A baby-eating nazi vampire.
"I don't care if I just lost out on finding the Lance of Longinus, or ten tons of nazi gold or some new secret to immortality devised by Babbage!" Alchemist cursed as he opened his menu to send a message to Jinx. "This is supposed to be a goddamned vacation! Seriously! What the ever loving hell is wrong with this world?! Did I walk into Hellblazer by accident? What the ever-loving- I swear, if I have to sacrifice Constantine's pale, pretty ass to the altar of good taste, I'll bloody-"
The mage was forced into silence as he finally stepped around the cooling corpse on the kitchen table to look into the sink. He was disgusted but unsurprised to see a small pile of ashes floating on top of a thick smear of blood. A part of him wondered how many times Hans had done that, turned a fetus. A part of him wondered why the hell the vampire would do such a thing at all.
A bigger part of him wanted absolutely nothing to do with that knowledge.
Alchemist needed to steal a phone and call the local police. He needed to-
He took a deep inhale, the rancid offal filling the room left him gagging.
Alchemist needed to steal a phone, call the police and, most importantly, he needed to not be here!
Alchemist teleported back to the hotel.
He was done with Finland. Completely.
He'd go straight to Japan in the morning.
AN/ Got this one done throughout the course of a single day so I thought I'd offer up an extra before I head to work
Edit: Added a few lines to help explain a few things better.
