"Oh my, how unfortunate! The lady seems to be in distress."
Examine how stuck May's foot is. If not particularly, help her pull it out. If rather a lot, try to think of a way to help her.
It doesn't look that stuck, you could probably pull it out, assuming you're not a complete and total spaz.
[str:4-1]
You can't get her foot out, but you do loosen the wall's death grip a little bit. Soon she shall be free of her wooden captor!
((My, my...even the children become pervs once in the HRMC. And I thought that the pile of perversion was bad enough.))
Keep reading and guarding the gate.
The next chapter mainly talks about ways of killing people; specifically killing them quickly, or silently or in ways that look accidental. Cuts to the throat are good; they prevent screaming but can be very messy. Choke holds and breaking the neck are effective, but harder; greater chance of just leaving them crippled or knocked out, unless you apply some sort of secondary measure to make sure they're dead. Blades to various different organs are effective as well; stab to the kidneys will put them in instant shock and bring them down quickly. Between the ribs and rupturing a lung will stop screaming too. Severing a major artery in the armpit or leg works too, though not as fast or as quietly.
He goes on to talk about guns, both mundane and strange. Guns, he says, are a simple tool. Fire a few times at their chest and it's hard not to kill someone. Radiation projectors are better though. Quiet, untraceable and immediate if you're smart about it. Even if you mess up end up killing a random chuck of cells someplace where it's not immediately fatal, it tends to be deadly soon enough.
Walk up to the door of the tavern.
Open it.
Smirk at May.
Move on, looking for more signs of discontent.
((Is it just me, or am I doing my job semi competently?))
You walk over to the door a few feet from where May is trapped. You open it, gesture at may, gesture at the door, shrug, and then walk away.
You don't see any obvious signs of discontent around here. Everyone is just lighting up the stalls or meandering about. There are small groups of people talking, standing around in front of stalls or loitering against shop fronts, the smell of fresh cooked food, the noise of a dozen criers trying to attract attention to their shop. Amongst it all you can't see anything that particularly stands out as fishy. Then again, you doubt they would be doing anything like that in broad daylight.
Get up. Enter Brothel properly. Inspect interior for illegal activities.
[str:5]
You tear your foot free from the wall and walk over to the door that Xan opened. Inside is a room of disheveled decadence, red satin curtains, great ornamental rugs, expansive, over stuffed sofas and dim lighting from crystal decked lamps and a particularly overblown chandelier. Women in various costumes and stages of undress are splayed lazily across the furniture, leaning against the walls, talking in groups of 2 or 3 and leaning against an old, mahogany looking bar in the back of the room. The people in sight who aren't young women are an extremely old women seated at one of the bar stools and the bar tender, a man of prodigious, some would say unnatural, statue and musculature. The old woman is rapping her long nails on the bar while the bartender is very carefully cleaning a glass, squinting over a heavy mustache as he holds the glass to the light and then returns to polishing it.
As soon as you step in, everyone turns to look at you. Guess it's your move.
(( *sigh*, one moment, grabbing a coin for the Fight/Flight coinflip. heads is fight, tails is flight.))
[Fight/Flight: Heads]
((... uh oh))
"Um, okay, if you want to."
Head back. Try to figure out what that was about.
You take your reluctant date back to the palace.
[intuition:2-1]
"DOPPELGANGER! What manner of demon are you?! Show me your true form, monster of the 9th realm!"
You begin trying to tear her clothes off. Somewhere far away you hear faith screaming something about "Protection" and "How she always knew your true nature".
Fight/Flight
apply the underside of the palm of my hand to the underside of Grate's chin, forcefully. step towards him and stomp on his instep. elbow him in the chest area. knee him in the groin. then leg-sweep him. finally grab his throat but don't apply more pressure than necessary to maintain my grip (don't strangle him yet) using my left hand. pin his left arm under my left knee, plant my right knee on his chest, and grab his right arm with my right hand.
"No."
((I was expecting to have to post that particular sequence for either May or Rennen btw, sry GWG.))
VERY IMPORTANT EDIT:
STOP AS SOON AS GRATE SURRENDERS
[Grate dex:4]
[Lyra dex:2]
Grate tackles Lyra to the ground and pulls off her helmet. Upon seeing that she is, in fact, not a giant iguana, he immediately turns and runs away screaming about how you were going to hit him.
Children and animals. Never work with them.
(( This should be fun! *sends the ghostly meta self to the barracks and gets the popcorn* ))
Recursive loop gate guarding. Don't forget to check the scout eye view
Everything looks good for now. Though it's becoming dark and hard to see. You can see the lights of the township flicking on and the mud puddle of a city becoming a mud puddle full of fire flies.
Drowning fireflies.