The tourists and tour guide don't notice you, especially not when Lucella starts asking pointed questions of the Tour Guide to cover your retreat.  You hear her flirtatious voice behind you making the perfect quip and sending the perfect message to you that you're clear, go.  The musician promptly suggest that the tour take a small break while he play for them, a beautiful tune that seems to entrance them even further.

In the meantime, you sneak between the bushes and take note of the field.  You are on a slight hill near the field and can look directly upon it and you see this area has three large holes, spaced perfectly apart in the shape of a triangle.  At the center of the triangle is a flourishing lavender bush.  You can feel the energy pulsing through the leaves, the green is too green, the violet too violet. The plant is the linchpin.  The farmhands are tilling the field around the holes, and a barn sits on the other side of the field from where you are standing.

Right pulls out the burner for the second time today. He awaits an answer, and then speaks, "I found the linchpin. It's guarded, but doable. Come quickly, and come cold. I have a bad feeling about this, but it's too late to turn around."

Lucella doesn't even bother to respond, hanging up and moving stealthily, you see her and then she disappears into the lavender.  Soon enough she is sitting next to you by the bushes you had chosen.  "Where's Mr. Truth?" You hear her whisper. But there was no point in her question, soon enough you see him, being led across the field by the smartphone man, the one with the curly hair. Two farmhands hold a pitchfork to his back and another to his side.  He doesn't even struggle, his face is stoic and reserved, even as they push him straight into one of the holes in the field.  It is only then that you hear a screech of pain and then nothing.  The plant seems to glow a little brighter and you can feel aether burning deeply from the field, a constant hum like nothing you have heard before.  It is coming from the pit where Mr. Truth was thrown in, and the aether expenditure is intense and impossible.

Lucella puts a hand to her lips. She then closes her eyes; you can feel the aether burning off her like heat wicks off a candle.  In that moment, so close to her, you can almost hear it, the voice of the world interconnected from all the distant points of the universe to coalesce in the point beside you, in Lucella.  Her eyes flick open and she whispers, "It's a processing plant. For turning Aether into Essence. This is unheard of. And we would be it's capacitor. We need to stop it. Burn the linchpin, or pull it out of the ground.  The wires are connected into Mr. Truth now, without pulling out the linchpin, he'll die." Slowly she removes her leather coat and lays it on the ground, gingerly kneeling on it. Strapped to her back is a sniper rifle which she delicately pulls out and begins to assemble.  She smiles at you, smile #642.  "Do you have a plan? Because you sure as hell have backup. And here, for good luck." She hands you a penny, or what was once a quarter, now it has been elongated and flattened; she must have done it in the gift shop. Printed across the top of the penny is an imprint of lavender and the words "Port Angeles" written along the bottom.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:50, Mon 21 July 2014.

Quietly enraged by what he's witnessed, Right's tone, diction, and body language all change at once, as if he's a different person inhabiting the same body, "Can you figure out what his bane is? If not, shoot the fucking phone."

His humanoid form, he is suddenly reminded, is weak, frail and constrained. As his body stands rigid, he shakes a thousand angry limbs he no longer possesses. Instead, he pulls out the knife he's been gripping half the evening, and begins wiping the edge against his arm, either apparently pretending to sharpen or dry it.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 02:00, Mon 21 July 2014.

Lucella closes her eyes again and focuses. The next time she opens them it is with yet another of her famous grins, "Good guess. We nix the phone and he discorporates. For four hours at least. You said he seems to have a way to duplicate, I'm not sure it would affect them, but definitely the one in front of us.  His bane? I don't know, Right. I got a strange response: Tetrahedrons. What does that even mean? I'm afraid even the voice is hard to understand most of the time."

"Then that's the plan. You shoot the phone, and perform overwatch for any other clones. If you're good, and have a shot, take out any drones who interfere. Otherwise, I'm going to walk up and pull out the plant. A tetrahedron, by the way, is a pyramid composed of four equilateral triangles. You may have some in the form of dice," he helpfully points out.

With that, he holds the knife stiffly in one hand and marches directly towards the central plant.

Lucella aims her sniper rifle expertly, pointed out of a lavender bush it seems to fit her... somehow: Beautiful violence, or violent beauty. She takes aim and fires across the field and straight at the Angel's smartphone.

Lucella rolled 2 successes using 5d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s ((9,7,3,3,10(+4)))

It shatters into pieces in his hands.  For the first time in possibly forever, he looks up from his cellphone and you realize he has no eyes, only inky dark holes where his eyes would have been stare at you with intensity.  Of which emotion you know not what, fear of failure? anger at being defied? Either way, you do not get to wonder long as he melts before your eyes, disappearing in a complex pattern of pyramids and silver triangles that break apart and dissipate into thin air.  As he disappears, you hear his name whispered, as if written in the very universe itself with numina: Quorum. The farm hands look confused for a moment, each of their tattoo's fading to a light blue and wander away from the field back to the main complex.

Unopposed by the farmhands now, Right strolls over to the Infrastructure plant and digs it up by the roots. Continuing to hold it in one hand, he walks over to the hole where Truth is buried and looks down at him to see if the roots have stopped siphoning his aether. He looks down, and assuming he's alive and relatively intact, he informs him, "And you now owe me one, too."

You pull the lavender tree up from the ground, it's roots are long and thin, and before too long the plant tendrils begin to flicker, in their place appearing thin silver wires curling out of the plant and buzzing with electricity.  The plant's humming continues for a few moments and then it suddenly grows silent.

Mr. Truth pulls himself out of the hole, a mess of wires pulling from the back of his neck and falling back into the hole, leaving a large bloody wound.  He looks stunned for a moment and then says, "The heat, the intense heat. It was using me... my body... as a machine... I was... I recycled Aether. Dear almighty. What have they discovered?" His face betrays no horror but you can hear it in his voice.

Mr. Right failed (no successes) using 5d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 3,3,3,5,4. Perception? Wits + comp -1 .

A scream is heard from across the field and then a shot. Two farm hands are headed towards you with pitchforks, and behind them, directly behind them, Lucella, her hair pulled tight by Quorum, the brown-haired version of Quorum, forcing her into a crouch at his side.  Looking down at his cellphone you hear his orders, "Incapacitate." And Lucella's panicked voice fills the air, "RIGHT, I'M NOT READY!"

"Then pull a fucking pistol!" he suggests as he pulls himself back up. No use. If he knows her, he probably searched her pockets. Damn it.

"It's your lucky day, I'm cashing in. Help us out," he tells Truth.

He charges at the nearest pitchfork wielding farmhand and lunges viciously with the knife straight into his center of mass. Unfortunately, the farm hand quickly dodges.

23:27, Today: Mr. Right failed (no successes) using 2d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s. Knifing Farmhand str + weap.

The musician suddenly crouches down into the ground, flaring his long brown cloak around him. You hear him singing to the earth, coaxing something out of the ground.

23:38, Sun 20 July 2014: Mr. Truth rolled 2 successes using 8d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s ((2,10(+2),9,3,2,5,4,5)).

23:43, Sun 20 July 2014: Mr. Truth rolled 2 successes using 7d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s ((1,3,8,7,3,1,9)). (Compromise)

The sound of insects suddenly bursts to life around you as a swarm and flies at one of the farmhands and attacks him viciously. The farmhand screams in agony.

Even as Quorum has her by the hair, Lucella takes on a look of utter calm.  She looks at you, across the 50 feet, black hair blazing in the sunlight and then it is like suddenly you are standing near one another, face to face, mere millimeters apart, her blue eyes swirling with a chasm of questions and answers and numbers beyond ones and zeros.  She smiles, #721 you can almost hear her say, Tragic bittersweet parting.  Then suddenly she is yanked backwards, away from you and out of that reality, instead pulled into herself like a blackhole bursting, out of the seams of her existence a set of bejeweled wings spread out from her back, each one a dagger more beautiful than the last, made of gold, pearls, rubies and diamonds sparkling in the sunlight.  With a twist of her neck she pulls herself around and the daggers pierce into Quorum with a sickening crunch. Quorum says to her as his body peels back to reveal melting copper quickly turning green with rust: "Welcome back, Grace of the Final Oblivion"  She slumps forward over his body, her wings entangled in his form, disoriented for a moment and then she looks up at you. Run, she says with her human face, with every bit of emotion she can muster. "RUN." She screams at the top of her lungs.

Right bristles with rage as he once again succumbs to his protective instincts. This is the shit that will kill him. He runs over to Lucella, and scans the perimeter. He stands poised to strike until she manages to extricate herself from the bio-mechanical corpse, and until Truth manages to choose an escape route and start making progress along it.

First man in, last man out. Just like the old days.

Mr. Truth heeds her words and high tails it straight out of the fields.  You hear him singing a song as he leaves, the notes leaving an imprint in your mind, a message built just for you, the location of a dead drop, 3 days time.

Lucella appears to be struggling against the body of Quorum. She looks up at you, eyes pleading, but then they go silent. Then she speaks, but it isn't Lucella.  Her voice has changed, replaced by something far more digital, it isn't any one person's voice, it's a cacophony of signals and relays, radio broadcasts from the 1950's, television shows from the 70's and 80's, the best movies from the 90's, you hear it all in different voices and tones: "Don't leave us." The voices plead, "Why have you forsaken us? What has fallen may rise again." Sparkling blue tears bleed from Lucella's eyes.  Then she blinks and the voices are gone, and she is once more tearing herself from the corpse of the angel.  The world shimmers around her as her wings disappear.  With a semblance of calm, she picks up her coat from her feet and puts it on, slinging the sniper rifle over her shoulder and taking off at a run without another word.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:07, Mon 21 July 2014.

Right tears off right behind her. Splitting up makes more sense from a tradecraft standpoint, but at the moment, military tactics are more appropriate. Never leave your backup.

He looks over his should constantly as they run. Two Quorums down doesn't meant that there are none left. In fact, he wagers that there are at least two more. He hopes somewhat self-interestedly that truth escaped unharmed.

It's a good day today. There's one less piece of infrastructure in the world than there was yesterday. He was drawn into a trap, but he survived it so far. Another Matrix has been disrupted. It's a good day, but the day isn't over yet.

So he keeps running with one eye over his shoulder.

"We need to make it to Port Angeles. Gordon's there. He can get us home quickly. The boat is just too slow. And they'll be watching it now." Lucella whispers tersely back at you. In view of the tourists at the farm, she's slowed to a mild jog.  The only time she's stopped was to pull apart her sniper rifle efficiently and holster it back in place. You notice the way her jacket has been built, with stiff wings on each shoulder to mask the bulk.  For a brief second she bends down and tears a piece of lavender off and tucks it behind her ear, but then she's off again. "Can you drive?" She's headed towards the parking lot now, no one seems to be coming for you, no one is following. Are you safe?  Lucella seems unsure and is hellbent on getting out of there.

"I can now." Right says as he pulls from thin air and radio waves knowledge of how to evade pursuit in civilian vehicles, "Can you get us a car?"

He continues to scan the perimeter as she chooses a getaway car. Angels are first priority, but he wouldn't mind spotting Truth either. He puts the knife away to avoid drawing undue suspicion, but keeps it handy. He hasn't shed blood today, he notes, due to no lack of trying.

The storm clouds on the horizon are threatening, the sweet scent of the flowers are intensifying in the humidity and there's a heaviness in the air.  The storm will sweep in soon, you realize.  The parking lot is starting to fill with tourists wanting to leave before the storm, and farmhands are coming and going preparing the farm for the onslaught. You notice the tattoos on many of them, but no tattoo seems to be glowing, you'd have noticed by now.

Lucella makes her way to a white shuttle van parked with a handful of others, a set of keys tinkling in her hand, she opens the car door and throws the keys in your direction. She heads to the back of the van, positioning herself at the back door, a .44 emerging from her clutch. "In the center of town, Gordon has a bolthole. I don't know how to get in, but I know how he'll notice us.  We need to head to the public library." She gives you rough directions so you can get started, and then takes up her position once more.

"Ever hit a phone at 50 feet while doing 80 down a country road?" Right asks deadpan as he slides into the driver's seat and starts the van. For whatever reason, he finds that jokes are a lot funnier when nobody else knows they're supposed to laugh.

The tattooed men make him uncomfortable, and he's happy to leave the farm far, far behind. He would have preferred to burn the whole thing to the ground, but once angels are involved and alerted, you can't be too particular about the plan. He follows Lucella's directions to the letter and hopes that they end up in a library before they end up in an angelic prison cell somewhere.

You head to the library, per her directions.  Neither of you are speaking much, which is a definite change for Lucella. She's focused on her task, no emotion showing on her face.  The only reminder of the Lucella you saw on the boat, or in prior meetings, is tucked behind her ear.

Port Angeles is a beautiful seaside city, with a sprawling boardwalk, and little cafes.  You ditch the car by one of these boardwalks, and make your way through the city proper.  The library is an antique looking grey stone building, ironically with a pair of Angels on either side of the door reading books.  She leads you inside and straight to the front desk.  "Do you happen to know where the section on the 1960's would be? Historical non fiction." She smiles politely at the librarian. "Sure, uh, left and back, second row on the right." She follows his instructions and returns with a book, a treatise on Volkswagen beetles.  "I'd like to borrow this one then." The librarian scans the book and hands it back to her.  Finally, she leads you away from the desk, slipping the back right back into the return slot on her way to the reading room.  She takes a seat at one of the desks and flashes you a smile, and then waits.

A mere 6 minutes later, a youngish looking man, maybe early 20's, walks over to both of you.  He's wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt, bright green and orange with a skull and roses, and faded blue jeans.  "Nice to see you Ms. Grace. Mr. Reardon isn't here.  Travel?" He shrugs as if he already knows the answer.

"Yes, please, Trip." She stands, smoothing out her jacket, hesitating for a moment. "Well, Right. It was a pleasure, as always.  I'll be in touch. Trip here will help you get back to Seattle." She opens her clutch and pulls out a business card, written upon it is the name of a Chinese restaurant, Golden Garden. "Order the Mongolian beef and ask them to hold the carrots."
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:58, Mon 21 July 2014.

Right is still throughout the entire exchange. As Lucella's about to leave, he jots down a website on a sheet of a notepad and tears it off, handing it to her. He keeps writing as he talks in Swahili, "If you need to contact me, use the usual method. If it's urgent, place an order for a translator on this site, request Urdu to Navajo, and encode the meet location in the middle letter of every word containing an odd number of letters. After you've encrypted the location using this one time pad, that is."

He holds up the the notepad for a moment and there are randomly placed arbitrary letters covering the entire page with large gaps between them with no uniformity, "Got it? he asks, and if he gets an answer in the affirmative, he then fills in the rest of the gaps with additional letters, rips up the paper, and puts the scraps in his jacket pocket. "I think you'll find it's a much more elegant system."

Trip waits patiently for the exchange, clearly used to this type of thing. Lucella nods softly, "Got it." She says in French again. "I'm not sure about elegant though, clunky perhaps, but at least it sounds fairly secure. We'll see." She curtsies gracefully and walks out of the reading room without another look back.

Trip says, "This way." And leads you out through an employees only door, and through to the library sorting room and yet another room attached to that.  The room smells dusty and looks disused, old filing cabinets, cardboard boxes and accordion folders are stacked at odd angles and configurations.  You feel as though you can almost see a pattern but it's quickly lost again each time.  Trip pulls a leather cord from around his neck with a set of about 12 keys hanging from them.  He peels off one of the keys and hand its to you. "When I leave, I'll close the door. You just unlock the door with this and you're good." He nods as if you've seen this kind of thing before as well, waits momentarily for any questions and then leaves back out from where he came, closing the door behind him.  The only light is an old, flickering bulb hanging form a wire above you.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:21, Mon 21 July 2014.

Right acts if the instructions make perfect sense. Being around demons a lot means trusting that a lot of nonsense actually isn't. He makes sure that his knife as is hidden as it needs to be in polite company and then examines the key briefly. After a moment, he puts it in the lock, and turns it, waiting to see what happens. He opens the door and looks out into who knows where.