Sister Janice patted her belt, where her warhammer hung, and said "Mostly we're just trying to hide the more obvious strangenesses from the mundanes."

  "It's still kind of nebulous, I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as an anti-magic field.  I know I could pick and choose who I effect, but what I can and cant effect doesn't have a clear line, the line moves.  I don't think I would prevent Meg from using her Magneto powers, so much as set the laws of physics she plays with in 'read only'."

  Matt Shrugs,  "Pretty sure I can't harm somebody with my influence alone, but Bill could be taken out by a drunken hobo with a brick if my influence took a dislike to him.  On the other hand, I could decapitate somebody and they wouldn't die or being in pain unless I let them."  He stops for a moment.  "How the flying *censored noise* do I know this?"

  He sighs ""Mental effects and possession at the very least, I have a wholesale coverage on.  I'm mostly running on instinct, but thankfully my instinct seems to lean towards protecting others."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:00, Mon 10 Dec 2012.

Ozzy smiled and said, "Yeah, hiding from the mundanes is a good idea generally. Granted, they seem to be pretty cool with me in my big form, most of them. At least once they talk to me. But, still, there are the knee-jerk-reactors who see something strange and start screaming 'burn the witch'."

  Sister Janice led them into the hospital, and down to the morgue.  There were several gurneys there, and she indicated the ones in a group off to one side.  She said softly "These souls were stolen, and it killed these people."  Some of them were only teenagers.

The body's had no obvious markings save one or two that had ropemarks on their wrists. They aged from teenagers to early twenties though that seemed to be all they had in common. There were 6 bodies 4 males two female. The mages in the group could detect that the se people had all had their souls violently ripped out, qnd not by the same person. There were three distinct magical signatures each emanating from two bodies.

Ozzy shuddered slightly at first, but said, "Interesting. Well, I wonder... are they a cabal? Or do we have three independent soul-thieves in the city? I think the first one is more likely. Something like this would take a lot of magic, and having three people working together, with one as the primary caster and thus 'recipient' of the power gained from such an act might be likely."

With that, Ozzy tried to look a little deeper, to see if the corpses had any traces of all three magical 'signatures', or if they only had one signature each.

Ozzy found one signature was pn every body. But it was fainter than the other, this one could be the conduit or he could just be the expert on soul-thievery.

  Clarissa said "I think you guys have a cabal on your hands.  That blows."

  'Go to Church, say your prayers, go to Hell or worse anyways.  Matt held some respect for the employees, but the guy in charge not so much.

  "Would a cabal be better, or worse than three of them in a competition?"

Ozzy shrugged and replied, "It has its ups and downs. They'll be easier to find that way, usually, but they'll be more likely to watch each other's backs, too."

"We need  to start searching for them, immediately. Will you help us find and stop them? Your magicks will be most useful."

Ozzy shrugged, "I dunno about how much help I'll be finding them, magically speaking, but I can sure as hell help stop them. I'm sure Grandpa would be more help actually FINDING them, but I can get him on the phone."

He then turned to Clarissa and grinned, "Unless you've got a few tricks from Loki up your sexy little sleeves that I don't know about just yet."

  "I'm more about seeing what's really there it seems.  Tracking them would need a trail in my case I think."

  She arched an eyebrow at him, and said "Weeeeellll . . . maaaaaaybe.  Give me a minute to sort through the miscellany."  She closed her eyes, thinking hard.  Then se made a funny little shruggy-shiver, and said "Gotta love the weird crap a God of Mischief leaves in one's head.  I can locate them, but it means that we're going to freak the normies out . . . "

Ozzy chuckled and said, "Hey, so long as freaking the normies gets something done, I've got no problems with it. If the rest of you wanna shadow us as we follow the trail, that's cool. But us? Secret identities aren't really much of a thing for us any more. Spending a while as a twelve foot tall green demon-looking mutant will do that. Still, I think half of Weston's seen me in that form and knows who I am by now, so we shouldn't be freaking the normies too bad."

"I will follow, I can remain unseen." Brother Joshua replied as he took Janice's hand bringing it up to his mouth to kiss it. "Will you get the others in the van dear? I'll contact you when we find them?"

Ozzy grinned and gave the others a thumbs up, saying, "Awesomesauce. Sounds like we've got ourselves a plan, then! Let's rock and roll! The sooner we take down these soulsuckers, the better."

  Clarissa closed her eyes, and shifted her hand, letting her claws be visible.  She poked Ozzy, and said "Need a puddle of paint here, unless you'd rather I used blood.  Runes."

Ozzy smiled and nodded, letting a puddle of paint pool in the palm of his hand before offering it to Clarissa, saying, "Here you go, babe. Cast away!"

  Clarissa dipped her clawtip in the runes, and painted, one by one, on each of the bodies, several Norse runes.  They were definitely ancient Norse though.  And when she finished them, the bodies shuddered, and MOVED.  Rising to their feet, Y incisions and all, and heading, butt naked, for the door.  She winced, and said "Oooops.  I forgot they'd be NAKED.  They'll seek their own souls out."

Ozzy blinked, then quickly created some paint golems to go after the bodies, hopefully catching them before the corpses got out the door. If so, the goles would 'absorb' the bodies and act like armor, letting the bodies move freely, but still preserving their modesty.

Ozzy then chuckled and grinned, "Well well well! I didn't take my lovely little wifey for a necromancer. Heh, Loki sure left a mishmash of weird shit in your head, didn't he?"

  She blushed, and said "More like, he left a royal MESS.  It's not necromancy, as I'm not trapping their souls, I'm using MY mana pool to make their bodies seek what was stolen from them.  Sort of a 'find your missing parts' command to the matter, and it will seek the souls."  She was all blushes though, and shifted her hand back as she asked "We following in the air, or in the van or what?"

Ozzy smiled and replied, "I'm thinking via air. That way we can keep them from wandering into traffic and causing accidents. Freaking the normies is fine, causing problems not so much."

  She smiled, and asked softly "Shall I put my fur on, or no?  I'll keep the cuddled to your chest part any time."

  "I really hope their next of kin doesn't see this, that would be super awkward to say the least."  No, it's cool.  We're only borrowing them to find their stolen soul... why are you crying harder now?

  "I can go with Joshua, unless you think my walking along would be a better idea.