"Well, please don't think I did this on purpose ma'am, I'm just trying to make a living is all... Please don't look at the stapled pages, they're extrafilthy..." Halesey warns the Prioress as he hands her a generous helping of gentlemen's literature. She opens it up and looks it through. Her expression softens a little.
"Well. This is most definitely filth, I would say," she eventually says.
"But that's not all there is to it, yes?" Sister Greer asks enthusiastically.
"... I would say so, yes," the Prioress answers.
"Let me see another one."She takes another magazine and begins perusing that, nodding along with interest.
"Do they all depict gods?" she asks of Halesey with genuine curiosity.
* * * * *
John tries to bust Trey on his shameless lies.
"A valiant effort, but I can totally see that you're lying your ass off. Now enough of your childish games and just spit out the truth already. You are wasting both of our time. Honestly, what reason could you have to fall back on the 'my daddy hurt me and was a creep' story? That shit is so cliché, dude."Trey scowls, then shrugs.
"Hey, it was the best I could think of at the moment.""He is kind of right, though. The fruit was a little too low-hanging to be plausible.""Everyone's a critic. Okay, I'll give you our reasons. There's this girl, Joanie. She knows where we can find this thing called a leyline - it's basically what magic is made of. The source of all power. And I do mean all the power in the world.""Not power like what we've got right now, either. What we've got right now is just this goofy-ass shit.""See, Joanie never told us where the leyline was. But Luz can kinda tell by herself.""Kinda.""And so we were planning out this little scheme on how we would get in there. And I was spending a lot of time in Luz's place, and her dad kind of got the wrong idea about the whole deal.""Well, not entirely the wrong idea," Luz smiles.
"He really is some kind of paranoid OCD asshole, you know. Didn't lie about that. So, one night, me and Luz are sort of brainstorming-""Or we were until somebody decided he had a better idea on what we could do.""-and her dad walks in through the door, shotgun in hand. He's kind of old-fashioned that way.""It wasn't loaded, Trey.""I didn't know that! So I was, like, startled and shit.""You shrieked, Trey. Like a little girl.""That was deliberate. People don't expect a dude to do that, you know? So, this kind of sets off Luz, and she accidentally fires off this spell.""Inconceivable Cactus Shield. That one used to be such a barrel of laughs.""Needless to say, the old man didn't expect that. Practically fell on his ass. Can't blame him - you don't know what real mystery is until you've stared at an inconceivable cactus.""And then you ran like a little girl.""Like a professional. Before he could, I dunno, shoot me or whatever.""So he left me there, and I had a whole lot of questions to answer. And I did. Told him about the books, the leylines, all that shit. Showed him what I could do, explained what needed to be done and what I was doing in my room.""And you know what that motherfucker did? He went, no, ran to Mr. Lee. Pretty accurate instinct, but still. Guy narced on his own daughter, just like that.""Told me to stay inside the house, and not to leave under any circumstances. No visitors, obviously. And boy, was he ready to enforce that rule.""Yeah, you can bet your ass he was keeping that shotgun loaded from there on in.""And then he took me to Mr. Lee's shop, where the old geezer himself started asking me all sorts of questions. Really specific questions. Guy knew his magic shit, let me tell you. But I didn't tell him a goddamn thing.""Yeah, that asshole's got his nose into everything already. Even the fucking magic. Especially the fucking magic.""So I couldn't stay there. Either Mr. Lee was gonna try and stop me from using magic, which I'm never gonna do...""... or he was gonna make her run his fucking errands, like Joanie tried to with us. So, what do you think? That a good enough yarn for you, or do we have to fight it out now?""We ain't going back, that's for sure!"They seem to have worked up quite the bit of rage through the recounting of their tale, John notices.
* * * * *
It was all so very obvious. Who else could it have been but the marketing director of LindisPharm Inc.? A mysterious man of wealth and great genius, or so went the rumors, which really did not go too well with his name - Kermit Q. Pilton. In fact, the name Kermit Q. Pilton was exactly the sort of name you wouldn't associate with a criminal genius who drenched a good portion of the city in shampoo not two days ago. But once one got past that obstacle, everything made sense. It was all a great conspiracy perpetrated by the marketing department of LindisPharm!
Of course,
Dave has yet to figure out how dinosaurs figured into this scheme - a bit of shock and awe to put the populace into a suggestible state? There are indeed many possibilities, but the fact is, he knows who is behind it all, and so does his unlikely partner in this endeavor, Mr.
Myles Terrell. And here they are, at fabulous Chez Ronardo's, the fanciest place in town you can conceivably get into without a reservation, where they knew the elusive Mr. Pilton to often be at evenings. And, right as rain, there he is, looking just about ready to order food with his blind date, a rather tiny woman who the two men had determined beforehand (through the very reliable sleuthing method of questioning Mr. Pilton's notoriously unreliable secretary) was named Ms.
Henrietta Black.
The question was, how will they corner him and expose his schemes? They have very solid guesses, but no solid proof he is involved. But the time feels right! Surely he cannot expect somebody to have figured it all out so quickly! They have an extraordinary opportunity here to catch him in a moment of weakness!
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Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 267267 times)