Jack the Ripper in Brooklyn

[Kasim Chionesu]

WARNING: This thread will exceed the PG-13 Rating at certain points.

Timeframe: Evening
Date: May 16th
Place: Troll Market
Status: Open to Any and All

The Troll Market always seemed to be damp whenever Kasim had entered it in the past, and with the torrential downpour happening in the streets above, a fine mist hung in the air as Kasim Chionesu entered. His bald scalp shone in the dim light and water droplets clung to his goatee. Over his usual pressed black suit, he wore a coat with the BPRD Symbol on the shoulder and his name on his chest -- Formal suits weren't exactly water repellent. He had found himself in the Troll Market several times before to run errands for those at the Bureau, but this was different -- this time he was on a mission.

Some thing had been killing the occupants of the Troll Market, butchering them and taking their organs as trophies. This was upsetting the balance between the world above and the world below since a gun had been used to deal the killing blow, and the creatures of the Troll Market preferred weapons that were far less human. The Bureau had sent Kasim in to try and find who had been doing it and either take them back to the Bureau or make sure they would never harm another creature again. Kasim had his com in his ear, the standard issued BPRD belt with his glock and a small Sig as his secondary in the pocket of his Bureau coat, and he was ready to track down the cold trail.

It was just his luck, however, that the cold trail was about to turn red hot. In the Troll Market, a shriek broke out and then the babbling of an unknown language. Trolls, faeries, and other fantasy folk fled towards the sound, Kasim with them, and even though Kasim had been briefed on the situation, he was not ready for what he was about to see. He slipped through the crowd that surrounded a small alcove and covered his mouth with his hand as the scene was laid out before him. A Troll had been shot twice in the head, its chest cavity opened, and all the organs removed. Splashes of blood puddled and were beginning to coagulate all around the scene and some shrieks came from the crowd. Some hid their eyes, others turned and left, but some turned accusing glances onto Kasim and he realized just how foolish it was to be a human in the Troll Market. A hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him onto the ground, pinning him there. "Wait a minute!" Kasim declared, his lips pushed against the flagstones.

"Troll killed by human weapon. Human right here." A gruff voice growled.

"No, I'm here to help!" Kasim tried to twist from under the grip of the creature that held him, but it was iron strong and his com wasn't on.

"We end killings now!" The voice declared. There were murmurs of assent, and Kasim wasn't sure how he was going to get out of this...

[lucybishop]

With all this news of killings going on in the Troll Market, Lucy had been hoping to avoid the place entirely until the drama died down. It wasn’t that she was worried, but she was attached to most of her organs. Now sometimes her and her liver disagreed about how much wine she drank in Rome or the shots of Vodka in Moscow, and her left kidney was kind of an asshole, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hand either of them over. Of course, that was all before she realized she was out her Fae-made chalk, and unless she wanted to get caught somewhere without a door and have to use lipstick or her own blood (again...ugh) she was going to have to make the trip to the market.

So here she was, hands stuck deep into the pockets of her leather bomber jacket, a scarf of vibrant colors and intricate weaving around her neck, as she strolled out from door she had just opened. The door was located off the beaten path of the main streets of the market, and she could come and go through it as she pleased without attracting too much attention. Unfortunately, with the weather outside, the market was damp, chilled, and still misting and she was already regretting making the trip. She removed her hands only long enough to pull up the lined collar and thank the gods that she had had that old witch from Salem put that waterproof spell on her jacket all those years back. Might have been the most useful spell she’d ever had done. However, that spell did not apply to her hair, that was loose around her shoulders and was now collecting droplets of moisture.

Making a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat, Lucy was momentarily distracted by her own misfortune by a sudden commotion taking place further in the market. She silently followed the crowd of non-humans and magical beings as they thronged towards whatever was causing the havoc. She shouldn’t be, but she was still surprised when the metallic twang of freshly spilt blood attacks her senses. Lucy couldn’t see where it is originating from, but she surmised pretty quickly that the evidence of another attack lay just outside her field of vision, hidden by the closely packed bodies. Pushing forward, using her small, nimble body to duck under elbows and slip through cracks, Lucy made her way to the front of the crowd. Her lip curled in disgust at the sight she was met with. What was once the body of a Troll, one she was in fact familiar with, if not particularly close to, lay sprawled out across the cobblestones. The blood that pooled around him was beginning to coagulate, but her eyes, now dark with repulsion and unanswered questions, skirted over the liquid to the chest cavity of the poor brute.

Empty.

Every single organ missing.

Trolls were often stupid, lumbering oafs, but she would never wish this kind of death on any of them. She happened to quite like a far few of them, and the scene before her made her stomach roll. The evidence that the Troll had been shot by a gun, instead of a weapon more commonly used down in the market made her quirk an eyebrow though. So when what appeared to be a BPRD agent got pulled out of the crowd and accused of the crime, she wasn’t surprised- a little suspicious maybe....and more than a little dubious, but not surprised. The human agent would have to be an idiot to commit a crime of this magnitude and then hang around afterward sticking out like a sore thumb. Not that BPRD agents couldn’t be idiots, but they seemed to be picking relatively smart people recently, so she questioned his involvement in the act.

As a human (somewhat), Lucy should have had the same fear of being accused of this murder, but she didn’t. Lucy had been coming to the Troll market since before she wore a training bra, knew most, if not all, of the vendors and customers of the Market, and they her. She had long ago earned her honorary acceptance into such a place, and it was why when the creatures of the market noticed her presence, accusations didn't fly her way. Lucy rarely considered herself human nowadays anyway; she hadn’t been raised as a human, her closest friends weren’t humans, in fact, besides her mortality and physical appearance, there was very little that was human about her.

She watched stoically as the man was physically lifted off his feet and slammed into the ground by the far stronger Troll, accusations about his involvement working through the crowd. Reaching down into one of the pouches on the belt at her hips she pulled out a necklace woven of handmade blue beads. They were Aggry beads, and were capable of telling if a person was lying. Someone needed to get to the bottom of this before an agent was killed and the market was crawling with the rest of BPRD.

"We end killings now!"

“Now, now,” she called out, stepping out from the crowd, only the click of the heels of her boots against the stones could be heard as the mutterings and shoutings had stopped as soon her voice was raised,
“ At the very least, we should make sure he is guilty, before we just start killing anyone willy-nilly. We wouldn’t want to be accused of being a murderer ourself, now would we?” She stared pointedly at the Troll pinning the man at the last sentence. He grumbled angrily, but having caught sight of the beads in her hand, and recognized them for what they were, seemed to let up on his death grip of the agent, even if just slightly. She crouched down in front of the man, cocking her head to left to get a better view of him, her brown eyes dark, and her face serious as she held his gaze,

“Do you agree to be tested to prove your innocence? If you are guilty the beads will burn your flesh and all will know of your misdeeds. If you are innocent, well....we’ll just have to wait to see how this goes won’t we?” She paused, letting her words set in, before she ended with a kicker,
“If you disagree to being tested, BPRD or not, I will let him kill you.”

[Kasim Chionesu]

“Now, now. At the very least, we should make sure he is guilty, before we just start killing anyone willy-nilly. We wouldn’t want to be accused of being a murderer ourself, now would we?”

From the dark depths of the Troll Market, which fit Kasim's present situation quite well in his opinion, emerged another human (or at least she looked human). With one cheek squished against the ground, Kasim peered up at her -- could she be a Savior? Was there some way she could help him out of this situation?

“Do you agree to be tested to prove your innocence? If you are guilty the beads will burn your flesh and all will know of your misdeeds. If you are innocent, well....we’ll just have to wait to see how this goes won’t we? If you disagree to being tested, BPRD or not, I will let him kill you.”

"The beads of Aggry!" One of the Trolls sighed at the jewelry in her hands.

Well, whatever relief he may have felt quickly fled. He wasn't guilty. that wasn't the reason the relief left him -- it was the way she promised to allow him to be killed if he didn't do what he wanted. His cheeks smooshing up and blocking his right eye, he moved slightly and said. "Myes, of course I will. I do." The Troll picked the FBI agent back up and held him before Lucy. Kasim did his best to look calm, besides the fact that his goatee was mussed and some mud was smeared on his cheek. "I'm ready to answer whatever questions you may have."

[lucybishop]

There were whispers and hushed awe amongst the gathered crowds of Trolls and assorted magic folk at her revealing of the Aggry beads. Polygraph tests and interrogations were practically unheard of among the supernatural...too many ways to cheat and lie. The beads of Aggry were impossible to cheat, which was why Lucy always carried a string of them with her, and why they instilled this kind of reaction among the crowd. They could of course be tricked, if the questions asked weren’t specific enough, but with yes or no questions, no creature would be able lie with them on. It wasn’t often that she used them for interrogations in the case of crazed, loose murderers in the Troll Market, but they were one of the magical artifacts that she always carried on her person, and it seemed to today they were going to prove why they had earned a permanent position on her belt of tricks.

While Lucy’s final words had been harsh, they were very true. Even if she didn’t believe the agent had anything to do with the murders, and she very much doubted he did, if a human, especially a BPRD agent, wasn’t willing to prove his innocence, he was, at least in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Troll Market, claiming he was guilty. After that, there would be nothing Lucy could do to help him....the crowd would have destroyed him.

Giving a smile of thanks to the Troll who easily lifted the agent back up to his feet, Lucy took a step forward, the string of blue beads stretched out between her hands as if she were about to start a game of cat’s cradle,
“Now originally, a single Aggry bead had to be swallowed and then the guilty questioned. If, after a day, they died, they were guilty, if they lived, then of course, they were innocent,”
She began to explain, one of her hands picking up his arm and pushing back his sleeve to expose skin, where she began to wrap the beads around it,
“Since we obviously don’t have that kind of time, and to be honest, waiting till you convulse, spasm, foam at the mouth and die isn’t my idea of a good way to spend the afternoon, these beads have been modified,”
She looked up at him with a grim smile, “Tell the truth and this’ll be over before you know it, say a lie and....the beads will burn through your skin faster than sulfuric acid.”

Taking a step back, she put her hands back into the pockets of her jacket, as she stared down the rumpled agent, his feet barely touching the ground as the Troll held him aloft.

“Well, let’s start with the question everyone’s dying to know. Did you murder that Troll?”

[Kasim Chionesu]

Kasim was not a magic man. He honestly didn't know much about the subject. He was at the BPRD to guard and shoot things. That was about as far as his expertise went in the realm of the supernatural. However, he had heard of and seen some pretty messed up and painful-looking things done through the hands of magic. So, even though he knew he wasn't guilty, he wasn't looking forward to whatever the beads would do.

As Lucy described how the beads had been used in the past, Kasim swallowed hard. Convulsing and then dying didn't sound enjoyable, even though he didn't plan to do any of it. He laughed nervously as Lucy said it wasn't her favorite way to spend her day, and he shifted nervously from foot to foot. The troll holding him tightened his grip and Kasim was still again. Why, oh why had he not asked for someone to accompany him?

When the beads wrapped around his skin, Kasim thought it strange that they were so cool, almost relieving, to the touch. He swallowed again, imagining how it would hurt if something went wrong and they burned him anyway, and how they were wrapped around his dominant hand. He involuntarily shuddered and looked to Lucy as she asked the question. "No." He said quietly, albeit firmly. "I did not." There... there wasn't much else to say, so he simply waited to see if the beads would exact vengeance on him for his truth anyway, or if there were more questions coming.

[lucybishop]

Lucy wasn’t exactly shocked when Kasim answered her question to the negative. Her eyes flicked down quickly to the beads on his wrist, though since he wasn’t writhing in agony by now, it was obvious that he had not been lying. There was a collective sigh from the crowd at his answer and the resulting non-burning, whether the sigh was in anguish, relief, or anger...it was hard to say. The desire to find the one responsible is at the front of their minds, and while the creatures of this world were not often known to be forgiving to humans, they were also not mindless beasts, and did not wish to kill what did not deserve it (or at least most did not wish to).

She gave a sympathetic smile to the large, rather disgruntled Troll and gave a shrug of her shoulders. He made a disgusted noise in his throat before dropping the agent, rather gracelessly, to the ground, though he did not move from his ominous position behind him, and seemed content to crack his knuckles and growl deep in his throat. Lucy moved forward, seemingly intent on the man that had just been dropped on his ass in front of her, but her mind was elsewhere, and her eyes flicked across the crowd.

With the agent now proven of his innocence, there was now the very serious question of who was responsible for the murders in the first place. It wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility that the murderer was, in fact, amongst the crowd, reveling in the chaos that he(she?) had caused. Of course, there was the even more serious question of whether she would stick around to solve this Nancy Drew mystery.

“Well now that that’s out of the way.....let’s move on to our regularly scheduled programming! Can I get ‘What the hell is a BPRD agent doing in the Troll Market all alone for 200,’ Alec? ”

[Kasim Chionesu]

The same sigh released by the crowd was exhaled by Kasim, albeit with more relief than the spectators. Magic could make him nervous even if he had nothing to fear from it, but especially when it could maim the appendage that made his hard-earned marksmanship achievable. Even though he wanted to twitch the corners of his mouth up in a smile, he didn't. Kasim had a feeling that a smile wouldn't look as innocent as it was.

Any smile that might have wanted to escape its confines was quickly forgotten as the Troll released its hold on Kasim and he tumbled to the ground, cushioned by the proper appendage to do so. A cracking noise behind him informed the FBI agent that the Troll had not left as he scrambled back to his feet, pulling his BPRD coat to straighten it. The woman was still there, and drew closer. This wasn't over yet.

In another situation, Kasim would have laughed and laughed heartily at the woman's humor. However, this was neither the time nor the place for joy with the torn remains of a Troll resting only a few yards away. Water beaded down Kasim's glistening head and gathered at his goatee as he opened his mouth to answer. "They sent me here to find who did do it." He replied. Forget being confidential, maybe the Trolls would be more friendly and less physically abusive if they knew he was only there to help. "If I can detain the killer, I will, if not, I'm supposed to stop them. The BPRD doesn't want a killer loose in the Troll Market any more than the occupants of this place do."

[Yves Castel]

A small, seedy hotel. What a typical place for a hit.

Yves ran into the motel and out of the driving rain in the street. The motel manager, a small fat man whose hair was making itself scarce, looked up at him with a face as flat as a slab of concrete and asked him in an equally bored voice:

“Need a room, kid?”

“-Yes”, replied Yves with a smile. He looked quite unremarkable with his anorak and jeans; just a normal young man, who maybe had just arrived in town, looking for a place to stay the night. “Well, actually, I’m looking for a certain William Partridge. He told me to meet him in his room.”

“-Partridge, Partridge…oh, room 7, first floor”, said the hotel owner before adding, with a slightly more suspicious tone: “…why are you meeting him?”

“-Business”, said Yves with a smile before taking out a small, pistol crossbow from inside his coat and sending a bolt into the manager’s forehead. The bolt punched through his skull and killed him instantly, although even if he had survived somehow, the cyanide on the tip of the bolt would have finished him off. With great rapidity, Yves jumped over the counter and dragged the manager off his chair, hiding him in the small backroom. Yves then searched the key rack, quickly finding a small key conveniently labelled “motel door”, and used it to lock the motel’s entrance. Now that nobody would walk in on him, he headed to the stairs, reaching for a small radio as he did so.

“J’ai buté le proprio, je vais rendre visite au contact”(I bumped off the owner, I’m going to visit the target now.”

“-Bien. Souviens toi: si y’a un témoin, tu le zigouille”(Good. Remember, if there’s a witness, kill him).

Yves put the radio away as he reached the top of the stairs. This job was his first outside of France and was part of his “company’s” efforts to branch out abroad. Six days ago, they had been contacted by an “ancient art dealer” who wanted a supplier of his “taken care of”. The dealer had not specified what kind of art he dealt in, and had only sent them a picture of their target: a skinny man with glasses and a surprisingly nerdy and fragile appearance for someone involved in what Yves assumed was illegal art dealing and smuggling. The target’s location had been given to them: the Phoenix Hotel, Brooklyn. Yves had at first though it was going to be a luxurious hotel, fitting for an international art smuggler, but the truth had quickly been revealed when he saw “Brooklyn” affixed to it. A cover story had quickly been made for Yves: a two week language course in New York. A perfect reason not to go to university for a couple of weeks, especially in Yves’ range of studies.

The only trouble was that the hit was meant to take place soon after Yves arrived in New York, and Yves was still jet-lagged. This made it quite hard to concentrate on the task at hand, but Yves wasn’t too worried about any possible risk: the victim had been described as being always alone when checking into the hotel, without any bodyguards. Maybe the target would have a handgun for self defence, but Yves suspected that the target had no idea someone was coming to kill him.

As Yves made it to the first floor, went down the corridor and rounded the bend, his heart sank: there were two people standing at the door to room number 7, and this could only mean one thing: the target had bodyguards.

Putain de merde, thought Yves as he stopped at door number 4 and pretended to be looking for his keys. As he did so, he stole a few stealthy sideways glances at the two bodyguards. They were probably armed and would put up a fight. What could Yves do now? Giving up was out of the question. He had already killed one person, and had gone too far to declare the job a failure. The situation had not gotten out of hand yet either, which made it impossible for him to quit.

Might as well use surprise, thought Yves as he reached into his coat, grabbing hold of the handgrip of his Beretta 93R machine-pistol. The bodyguards looked at him threateningly, but did not seem to suspect him of anything, and in a flash, Yves whipped out his gun and shot the first one in the head. The second bodyguard reached for his weapon as his colleague dropped to the floor, but was quickly downed by a burst of gunfire to the chest. Yves flicked the small handgrip on the front of his Beretta out, took hold of it, and kicked the door of the room in. The gunshots and commotion would have obviously alerted the occupants of the room and they might even have had time to escape. As Yves entered the room he was almost shot by another bodyguard standing on the fire escape ladder outside the window. Yves dropped to the ground and rolled behind the bed, bullets hitting the floor and the mattress as he went. Yves waited for the shooting to stop before emerging again and firing a burst at the bodyguard, who had not taken cover. The three bullets all found their mark, slamming into his chest and sending him falling backwards, coughing up blood and clutching his chest. Yves headed to the window and clambered out, putting a bullet in the head of the dying bodyguard before storming down the fire escape. Glancing below him he saw two people jump down from the fire escape and into the small street below. Yves took aim at one of the fleeing individuals and fired two bursts, causing his target to stumble briefly before getting back up, limping badly.

The job was not going well, and was quickly spiralling out of Yves’ control as he could already hear police sirens. He suspected his target and his mysterious companion had called them to make his job more difficult, but Yves was not a man who gave up easily. His heart hammering away in his chest, and adrenaline already pumping through his bloodstream in strong doses, Yves quickly made his way down the fire escape and into the street before dashing after his target. If the target made it to the main street, the hit would be a disaster.

Yves slowed down in order to take aim again, but to his abysmal horror, the target was already far too close to the main street. Yves hesitated briefly. To continue the chase or to vanish? He quickly made his mind up and raced on after the two fleeing men, leaving the deserted street and taking the chase into the slightly more populated street beyond. People swore and shouted at them as they got roughly shoved out of the way, and Yves had to avoid getting hit by an old lady who swung her purse at him while yelling: “HOOLIGAN! THIEF!”

Yves quickly managed to close the distance separating him from his target, who did not seem to be very good at running, probably due to the fact he had been injured earlier. This caused the second man to spin around and point a large handgun at Yves, a Desert Eagle to be exact. The loud shot echoed through the street and plunged it into a panic as people ran for cover. Yves ducked into a doorway, barely avoiding two more shots that would probably have reduced him to jelly. After waiting for a few seconds, Yves emerged from cover and opened fire at his opponent, making full use of the Beretta’s three shot burst fire mode. Two bullets whizzed past him, and he felt a very painful sting on his shoulder. Not even bothering to look down, Yves fired his last two bullets, hitting the bodyguard squarely in the chest.

The bodyguard stumbled and dropped his gun, and Yves briefly glanced down at his shoulder: his coat’s sleeve was ripped as one of the bodyguard’s bullets had brushed his shoulder. Wincing, Yves took off in the direction he had seen his target go, a small side street only a few blocks away from Brooklyn Bridge. As Yves made it into the street, he saw his target disappear behind a large metal door of sorts. Putting a fresh magasine into his Beretta, Yves headed after the target but with more caution this time…who knew what lay in wait beyond that door.

As Yves went inside, he saw that he was inside some kind of butcher shop judging from the carcasses hanging from the ceilings and walls. There was no sign of the target, but a fresh trail of blood lead to another door in the back of the room. Yves followed the trail, which lead into a long and rather dirty concrete corridor. The trail was visible there too, and he could hear laboured breathing from down the corridor, echoing off the walls. Yves, like a predator sensing that its prey was weak and vulnerable, ran down the corridor, gun at the ready. As he arrived at the end of it, he saw his victim go through what appeared to be a large and very odd mechanical door.

“Get away from me!”, yelled his victim as he stumbled through the door. There was an ominous grinding noise as the door began to close, forcing Yves to act. The French hitman dove through the closing door, landing heavily on the wet floor beyond. Panting and swearing in French, Yves got back to his feet and saw that his victim was very close and desperately trying to escape.

With a tired sigh, Yves raised his Beretta and fired, hitting the man in the back and dropping him instantly. Yves slowly approached his target to see if he was dead, and dead he was. The job was done.

But where the hell was he? Yves went back to the mechanical door he had chased the target through and tried to figure out how to open it, with no success. Panic briefly welled up in Yves’ mind, but was quickly crushed. There had to be another way out, as they were probably in some odd part of the NY sewer system. Not the nicest place to be, but not all bad. Yves turned away from the door and walked further into this strange place…there seemed to be some kind of commotion up ahead…

And what a commotion it was. Yves was literally gobsmacked at what he saw: it was a subterranean city. But this wasn’t the best part. The streets were teeming with hundreds of incredible creatures. Some were huge and lumbering, and others would barely be able to reach up to Yves’ knee. As he slowly made his way down the steps leading into this hallucinatory realm, his appearance seemed to attract the attention of several creatures, and not in a good way.

“Oi! It’s a Human!”

Another creature, whose size seemed to convey it could easily flatten Yves with its fist, pointed at the gun he was still holding in his hand and growled something absolutely incomprehensible. The same creature who had pointed out the fact Yves was a Homo Sapiens piped up again in its high-pitched voice.

“GET ‘IM! EE’S THE KILLER!”

The creatures burst forward, and Yves only saw one option: to run like hell. He dodged the creatures who were after him and dashed off down the street, terror and incomprehension building up within him with every passing nanosecond. Where was he? What were these things? Was he dead and in Hell? Was he hallucinating? All rational thought was quickly lost as other creatures he ran past saw the chase and joined in on it. The going became increasingly hard as the streets became increasingly crowded with all kinds of nightmarish creatures.

The chase soon came to and end when a creature similar to the one who had pointed at Yves’ gun saw him coming and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him up into the air and laughing raucously. The creatures cheered as if the beast had caught the world’s worst mass murderer, and Yves started to suffocate in the creature’s unbelievably strong grip.

“Put…me…down…”, he gasped pitifully, “you…have the…wrong…guy…”

Three things that could only be fairies buzzed around Yves’ head almost mockingly. Somebody shouted in broken English: "We got the killer!”

Yves struggled uselessly in the…thing’s grip. This seemed to be the end of the road for him: lynched by a bunch of fairytale creatures that wouldn’t even belong in a Disney flick.

[garret]

OOC: I haven't the faintest clue what the currency used in the troll market is, so I'm just going to assume it's some kind of precious metal.

"I no accept other than 5 piece! Highest quality!"

Garret's head shot up, taken out of his reverie while browsing through the selection of pure metals and alloys on the faerie's stall. The tiny creature was demanding an exorbitant price for whichever one he was currently looking at, no doubt because she didn't think that a human knew his way around the Troll market.

She was wrong.

Garret visited the Troll market no less than a few times a month to replenish his metals, along with the need to get out of the somewhat-stuffy confines of BPRD headquarters, something that his usual sojourns out to a human city didn't quite cure. He went here to replenish his metals, because, if he burned a metal that wasn't "pure", he would get extremely sick and he didn't trust normal human vendors to have the right ones. Steel and Pewter, especially were difficult as alloys, they had to have the exact right percentage of metals in them. However, in the troll market pure metals were often used in witchcraft and different types of sorcery, making it a prime place to buy guaranteed-safe metals.

"Now listen, I know that this amount couldn't possibly be worth more than two, if you're that intent on driving away potential customers, the least you could do is hang up a sign." Garret made a careless gesture at the front of the stall, no doubt indicating where he thought said sign should be placed. The faerie took a close look at him and started to chuckle.

"You wise to ways of the people! Most humans just take for any price!" Her voice hushed considerably, and the faerie spoke next in a conspiratorial tone. "Not safe for humans here now, killing happening and many blame your people." She handed him his chosen metal in a small linen sack in exchange for two slightly-rounded hunks of silver, one of the many accepted forms of currency in the market.

Garret bowed slightly and thanked the shop owner for her time, placing his hat back on his head in the process. He whistled tunelessly as he walked to the beat of an imaginary song; he had his metals, they were going to resolve the Elven throne dispute tomorrow, and he was walking through his favorite place in the area. Life couldn't get much better for him than it was right then. However, fate is a fickle mistress, and as he was walking out, he heard a commotion.

“GET ‘IM! EE’S THE KILLER!”

Garret whirled around to see a veritable tidal wave of storybook material frothing around what seemed to be a very frightened-looking human with a gun. The faerie did tell him that there have been some killings around here of late, but he doubted that this wide-eyed struggling example of humanity was it. He was probably just another human who stumbled upon this area by accident, the protection around the market was in no way perfect, allowing in a few random humans every once in a while. The man was caught in the grips of an extremely large example of fairytale, struggling uselessly against his bonds. The crowd quieted down as the impending execution loomed.

Garret used this quiet to his advantage. A dropped penny and a steelpush was all that was needed to reach a high-standing balcony on one of the surrounding buildings. A few of the fairytale folk looked up, surprised to see a "flying" human. Garret held out his hands in the universal sign for 'Hey, I'm not holding a big gun.' and began to speak, guilty or not, he didn't want a fellow human killed without the benefit of a fair trial, though justice in the troll market was often as harsh as it was swift.

"My good fair folk! Human though he may be, and also possessing of a weapon, you have no proof that this man killed any of your own! I demand that he has his right to speak as a free creature, same as any of you!" His voice took on a joking tone. "However, take away his weapons, there's no telling what crazy thing us humans will do next." For good measure, Garret winked at the man being held, it would do him a measure of good, for him to think that Garret knew what he was doing.

It really wouldn't do for the man to know that Garret was winging it.

[Yves Castel]

Yves was pretty much on the verge of passing out when the grip around his neck relaxed and he heard a voice from above.

"My good fair folk! Human though he may be, and also possessing of a weapon, you have no proof that this man killed any of your own! I demand that he has his right to speak as a free creature, same as any of you!"

Yves looked up at who was speaking, and saw a reassuringly human-looking person standing on top of a balcony. The man winked at Yves, and the hitman felt a rush of hope. Maybe he would be able to get out of this alive. There was a low murmur among the crowd of fairy tale creatures. What the stranger said next discouraged Yves a little.

"However, take away his weapons, there's no telling what crazy thing us humans will do next."

Yves was fond of his Beretta 93R, and wasn’t very keen on giving it up. But if he had to choose between death at the hands of a troll, and abandoning his machine-pistol and living, he preferred the second option. The grip around his neck suddenly relaxed and let go of him entirely, letting him drop down to the ground where he collapsed disgracefully. Yves lay there gathering his breath for a moment before standing up groggily, rubbing his arm and neck.

“-Well…errr, what can I say? I have no idea where I am. I just arrived here by accident…”

“-How you come here?”, growled a short, stocky and very ugly creature in an accusatory tone. Yves hesitated and felt his heart and stomach somersault within him. How would he explain that? Did those creatures know about people like him and would they kill him for it?

“-Well…I was chasing someone.”

“-Chasing who? Why?”

“-He was a very bad person. He ran into your world, and I chased him here and I…well…shot him.”

The creatures looked at each other uncertainly. A few jabbered away in whatever language they spoke in this hellhole while others simply growled incomprehensibly and made gestures that Yves perceived as being accusations.

“-Why you shoot him?”, asked the same stocky creature as before.

“-He was an evil man”, said Yves, nodding slowly. “He stole things from your world to sell them in our world.”

Yves was of course making everything up from that point. He had no idea if the “art dealer” he had shot earlier was in fact stealing anything from this place, but the man had obviously been involved in something shady or illegal, and the fact he could access this place seemed to imply he was involved in illegal activities down here.

Whatever and wherever this place was.

The creatures seemed mollified by this explanation, although many others still seemed suspicious of Yves. One of them gestured at Yves’ Beretta and said:

“-Give me gun, I destroy it!”

Yves reluctantly handed the creature his machine-pistol and watched it get smashed to bits as the creature trampled it. He’d have to get another one if he ever made it out of this place, and 93R machine-pistols were quite dear when it came to their price. The creatures seemed jubilant at the destruction of his pistol however, and a few left, their interest seemingly gone. The creatures did not seem interested in searching Yves for any other weaponry, and he did have two more weapons concealed on his person: a crossbow with cyanide-tipped bolts and a switchblade. He also had a piano cord he used for a task which was pretty obvious if one saw the two small wooden handles at each end. The creature that had destroyed his Beretta then pointed a finger at Yves and said, in a threatening tone:

“You no do funny business here, human, or we kill you!”

“-Merci pour l’info”(thanks for the info), said Yves faintly. The creature turned and walked away, and most of the others followed. Now that Yves’ life wasn’t really in danger anymore, how would he get out of this place?

[lucybishop]

Lucy’s head snapped to the right at the sound of shouting and more accusations of a found human killer, just out of her line of sight. Having Kasim’s innocence proven, the mob surrounding them seemed more than content to follow this new crowd and accuse someone else of the murders. Their interest in Kasim was now yesterday’s news.

Well wasn’t this just fan-freaking-tastic.

Rolling her eyes at the incredible fickleness of the ‘people’ of the market, she stepped forward taking hold of the string of beads still on Kasim’s arm. With a flick of her wrist the beads dislodged and she was re- wrapping them together before placing them back into the pouch on her belt. Flicking her gaze back up to Kasim, she regarded him seriously, mulling over his previous words. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that the BPRD were privy to the series of murders that were occurring, what was a surprise was that the BPRD would try and help solve it. The murders, thus far, had been only inhabitants of the Market, as in specifically non-human. There had been no cross-over into the human world above and into more of the BPRD area. While it was nice(?) that the Bureau was trying to help, it wasn’t really their normal way of procedure- helping non-humans, when no humans were actually at risk. Well....maybe they weren’t really that emotionally invested in the problems of the creatures of the market if they had only sent one agent down, and one totally magically stunted. If her ‘spidey senses’ were any clue, this agent had about magic in him as a toaster.

More shouts and rumblings from the crowd momentarily distracted her once more, as she turned her head again to try and catch what was being said, and made a face when they only thing she could make out was grumblings and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Well, she didn’t really have anything better to do today, she didn’t have another job until tomorrow, so might as well go see what this new disturbance was. Turning on her heel, she began to stroll over to the noise, a hand over her shoulder signaling for the agent to follow her, the ‘suggestion’ enforced by the Troll who still stood behind Kasim, growling, and gave him a ‘helpful’ shove in Lucy’s direction before following himself.

“Come on secret agent man, let’s go lead a life of danger.”

Whistling the tune now stuck in her head, she slipped casually through the crowd, flitting through spaces opening for only a moment, avoiding elbows, tusks and horns with practiced ease. She came to the front of the ‘new’ mob and had to roll her eyes(again) at the similar scene before her. It was rare that she ran into other humans while in the Market, but it seemed today, the one freaking day they should have all avoided the place, they had decided to start crawling all over the place.
Ugh.

“Either of these yours secret agent man?” She questioned Kasim without turning her head to look, and gesturing to the two humans that seemed to be the center of the crowd. If her new and lovely Troll friend had followed her, and she knew he had, by the large amounts of pushing, growling and shoving that had occurred behind her, Kasim was now standing beside her, whether he wanted to or not.

[Kasim Chionesu]

There was other commotion, other voices through the Troll Market, and interest seemed to be quickly lost in Kasim by some of the crowd. He looked warily to Lucy, thinking better of turning his head to look to see if the Troll serving as intimidating muscle was still behind him. Instead of relieving Kasim, his stomach clenched in turmoil and suspicion. What was supposed to have been a subtle investigation was getting blown wide open and getting way out of hand. He wondered why he had been sent alone once more.

The beads were removed from his wrist and he sighed, partially from relief, partially from the anxiety of dealing with whatever now awaited in the new surge. He had the suspicion that whatever it was wasn't really relevant to the murder -- Crowds didn't have the best judgment, but it seemed that he was going to find out as the Troll gave him a push to follow the woman.

te ]
Re: Jack the Ripper in Brooklyn
« Reply #10 on Aug 16, 2010, 2:34pm » Quote
Lucy’s head snapped to the right at the sound of shouting and more accusations of a found human killer, just out of her line of sight. Having Kasim’s innocence proven, the mob surrounding them seemed more than content to follow this new crowd and accuse someone else of the murders. Their interest in Kasim was now yesterday’s news.

Well wasn’t this just fan-freaking-tastic.

Rolling her eyes at the incredible fickleness of the ‘people’ of the market, she stepped forward taking hold of the string of beads still on Kasim’s arm. With a flick of her wrist the beads dislodged and she was re- wrapping them together before placing them back into the pouch on her belt. Flicking her gaze back up to Kasim, she regarded him seriously, mulling over his previous words. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that the BPRD were privy to the series of murders that were occurring, what was a surprise was that the BPRD would try and help solve it. The murders, thus far, had been only inhabitants of the Market, as in specifically non-human. There had been no cross-over into the human world above and into more of the BPRD area. While it was nice(?) that the Bureau was trying to help, it wasn’t really their normal way of procedure- helping non-humans, when no humans were actually at risk. Well....maybe they weren’t really that emotionally invested in the problems of the creatures of the market if they had only sent one agent down, and one totally magically stunted. If her ‘spidey senses’ were any clue, this agent had about magic in him as a toaster.

More shouts and rumblings from the crowd momentarily distracted her once more, as she turned her head again to try and catch what was being said, and made a face when they only thing she could make out was grumblings and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Well, she didn’t really have anything better to do today, she didn’t have another job until tomorrow, so might as well go see what this new disturbance was. Turning on her heel, she began to stroll over to the noise, a hand over her shoulder signaling for the agent to follow her, the ‘suggestion’ enforced by the Troll who still stood behind Kasim, growling, and gave him a ‘helpful’ shove in Lucy’s direction before following himself.

“Come on secret agent man, let’s go lead a life of danger.”

"Heh. Yeah..." Kasim said and then hummed a few notes of the song just as Lucy began whistling. He caught himself and let a nervous smile break through. He was cleared, that was good, but now he just had to make sure he got through the Troll Market alive -- whether the perpetrator was caught or not.

He followed closely behind Lucy through the crowd, though he was much more broad shouldered than she and he had to squeeze in certain places where she easily squeezed through. As they came to a halt, he raised his head and looked to see... "Garret? What are you doing here?" Kasim spouted, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“Either of these yours secret agent man?”

"Yeah, the guy with the... hat. He's one of our agents." Kasim said. "But I didn't know they sent anyone else here." The other guy, though, was someone foreign to him. He'd never seen him in his life. And the fact that he was handing over a handgun didn't inspire much confidence in his character.

[garen]

OOC: Sorry, I seem to have double posted >_> Not sure how that happened but I deleted the first, inferior post.

[garen]

Johnny despised the rain. It wasn't even that he couldn't use his powers in it, well it was partly because he couldn't use his powers but mostly Johnny just didn't feel himself when he was in the rain. The light mist in the troll market was no exception, and it threw Johnny off his game, if even just a little. Even in his uneasiness, Johnny wandered the Troll market in search of... anything interesting really. What else was he to do on his free time? Dance?

Needless to say, Johnny staggered through the market, weaving through the thick crowds with great attention to detail. A lot of the stuff sold here just seemed like glorified slime to Johnny. In fact, it almost looked like one of the merchants was peddling that very product, which was obviously intended for consumption as noted by the creature that shoved the disgusting slop into its toothy maw. Johnny shuddered at the thought of eating something so grotesque as the creature slid the foul "delicacy" down its slimy gullet.

Soon enough, Johnny grew bored of wandering and reverted back to his old habit of juggling a small ball of electricty between his fingertips. His powers always amused him... but between that and the fact that he was not his usual self, the small ball of electricity soon grew into a basketball-sized bolt of static charge, which Johnny was tossing up into the air and performing minor tricks while still walking through the streets. Many of the creatures avoided coming even close to Johnny as he was absorbed into his own hypnotizing abilities, so as soon as he rounded the corner, he ran into someone and his electricity dissipated.

"Oh, I must not have been paying attention to where I was walk- Kasim? Interesting that I would meet you here."

[Yves Castel]

Yves dusted himself slightly, as his clothes had gotten quite dirty when he was dropped to the ground earlier on. He still had no idea how he’d be able to leave this place…what was this place anyway? Was it all a crazy dream, or was it a real place? Yves couldn’t tell, since everything here was pretty much unbelievable and seemed to have come straight from some old medieval legend. He turned towards two rather human-looking people who had arrived earlier, one seemed to be of African descent, and the other was a woman who seemed to blend in perfectly with the things walking around this insane subterranean realm.

The black man seemed to know the man who had saved Yves’ life, but it also seemed pretty clear that he didn’t trust Yves…and with good reason too. Those people did seem to know there way around though, and Yves quickly saw his ticket out of the place.

“Hello”, he said shyly, “I’m Bernard, and I have absolutely no idea what this place is or how to get out…could you explain what’s going on and how you can return to the normal world?”