The Barker Street Irregulars case 2 A vision in pink

[Stella Gaslight]

"I think it had best be the entrances Abraham. Until I know what spell they are useing on the paintings I don't want a potential bad reaction."  As powerful as Celia could be she was still a civil servant and would have a lot to answer for in most of London's art was destroyed by a misplaced spell. 

[MWBailey]

"Och," said Bill, "true enough, magick's more about knowin' when to use it or not,. Not that Id know aught of it mself..."

[walking stick]

 Bill preened pretending innocence.  Beety smiled at him. "I think I'll play The Irritating Tour Guide, any Raven Speaker knows how to make a voice both carrying and harsh.  Besides it's been a while since I had a really good excuse to overact."

[Steampunk Away]

"I have been told that there are currently 4 paintings left in the V' and A' that have been left 'untouched'. We should move quickly, before these lose their main characters as well".

[MWBailey]

Bill thought a minute and said, "looks loik it's th' burglin' fer me, then. Tha's if milady Singer don't want a parrotlike raven on 'er shoulder."

He glanced around the group, then, swivelling his head in a rather un-ravenlike manner, until he came back around to Tobias, and then stared, fixated as only a raven can be on something shiny, straight at the fellow's coat.  "Say, tha's -! Tha's!" He hopped down onto a branch of a bush right beside Toby's elder double, pecked at at Tobias' uniform dress coat placket, and grasped a gold button in his beak. "Tha'tsh a prejjy bud'n yarg goarch dar... Phooey!" He let go and exclaimed.

"Dam' buttons don' come off, do they?"

[walking stick]

Verity Descry-Marvel sighed.  Her parents had dropped her off at the Victoria and Albert Museum like a piece of left luggage and now she found most of the galleries were shut.  Typical!  She'd be stuck here for hours just because her family insisted that art was a trade she must study by copying.  She had five more years of their total insensitivity to endure before reaching her majority.  Life was completely unfair.

[MWBailey]

He didn't know when he had awoken, or rather, he couldn't remember not being awake. He did remember that he was supposed to be meditating and keeping still. That was what he, Guatama, was famous for, all of his followers had said so. The strangers who had suddenly appered before him, chantuing some strange ritual, had finally given  up on trying to get him to respond, and decided to go elsewhere, thinking they had failed at something. That was what they had grumbled amongst themselves about anyway, before they slunk off and began chanting all over again at statues and pictures in the hall in the open area where he sat.

So, there he sat, just inside the great arched opening of the odd stone (at least it appeared to be stone) building in which Guatama, sometimes called the Buddha, found himself. After furtively glancing around at the hordes of people in strange costumes who walked up to, around, and past him, Guatama simply closed his eyes and kept his breathing minimal. Perhaps if he concentrated, this vision would go away as all of the others had, and he would be back home in...in... Well, that was disconcerting. Where was his hom--!"

He stopped his internal musing abruptly, as he heard the voice of a young woman, in a language he had never heard before, grumble unintellgibly but obviously disgruntledly about something. He slitted his eyes open, and looked around and down, and saw before him on the steps just outside the arch, a girl in strange garments like those of the others whom had been milling around him, standing in a most put-upon posture, obviously fuming over something. He waited, trying to keep his excitement at bay , for she was a comely wench - what he could see of her, at any rate.

[Stella Gaslight]

"I think we had better go by carriage that way if we need to get out fast."  After seeing to the fairies Celia was packing a doctor's bag with all the equipment she could fit in.  Hopefully it would hold all that they needed.  She wished she knew more about the spell to narrow things down a bit but beggars could not be choosers.

[walking stick]

The statue was breathing slowly.  The illusion was good enough for Verity to set up her stool, fold her coat into a cushion and set up her easel for some serious study.  Once she started painting she was able to shut out the outside world. She wanted to catch the flirtatiousness of the not quite closed eyes that seemed simultaneously to be pretending not to look at her and following her every move.

[MWBailey]

Cheeky, this one, Guatama thought. He remembered a girl with a very similar attitude, who drew his portrait in the sand at Sarnath whle he meditated after giving his sermon."Hmmmm..." he murmured just loud enough to be heard, while her head was turned the other way for a moment. He was surprised by his own playfulness, but continued to keep his breathing under contral and made niot a single movement beyond his lungs, a slight slow smile that very nearly did not appear - save that in fact, it did - and his eyes tracking the young woman when no one was looking. What will she do? He mused to himself...

[Steampunk Away]

Abraham started scratching his neck absent mindedly, and then paused for a second.

"We need to move now, the magic is beginning again."

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias watched everything happened with utter confusion, paper faeries... and he thought werewolfs and trolls were strange!

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia was in high spirits as she kissed Toby's forehead. She called on London and the power had flowed as easy as breathing.  Celia felt stronger and more whole.  Now she should be able to trace the spell with a bit of magic that seamed both a bit flashy and hiding hidden depths.  It should catch the eye if anyone knew how to look but not shout it from the rooftop.  "All aboard who is going aboard." Celia called pulling a bit of brush from the carriage.

[Steampunk Away]

Abraham deftly strode to the carriage and pulled himself up to the shotgun seat with astonishing fluidity. Having made himself comfortable, he informed the driver of where they would be heading, and how long it may take.

[MWBailey]

Bill croakawwed loudly and flew over and landed on the fancy brass railing that ran across the backs of teh seats. "Cor, this's a roight posh buggy, ain't it!" Come on, Dear," he called to Beety. "'s fun ta ride in, I swears."

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias followed them out, adjusted his sword then entered the coach sitting strait and rigid.

[walking stick]

Beety patted his knee and gave him a peppermint drop, it did seem to help with the dry mouth.  Tobias thought it practical for nervousness.

[MWBailey]

Woss' th' matter, lad? We're not footmen for th' queen, y' know." Bill said to Tobias. "You kin relax a bit. Enjoy th' ride an' th' pretty gel beside ye."
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Guatama finally decided to break the silence and see if this vision was more real than reality. "Tell me, little one," he whispered to the young woman at his feet in as courtly a voice as he could manage, "Where is this place, and what might be thy name?" It came out, of course, in a dialect not far removed from the Sanskrit-based language in which Guatama's teachings would be recorded in his later years; he suddenly realized that the young woman before him might not understand a single jot of it, strangely-dressed as she was...

[walking stick]

Verity squeaked and then clamped her lips shut. She would not scream in a museum, it would be too mortifying.

[CPT_J_Percell]

"I know bill, but I'm still not sure about all this, this, this freedom." Tobias said as the carriage clattered through the streets of London.
"It just looks all different to me."

[MWBailey]

Teh best waqy ter enjoty y' freedom is ta not get caged in th' fuirst place, I'd say, " Bill said somewhat archly. 'Course, I s'pose you weren't in control o' that . but at least out 'ere in th' open, you kin dodge people's pokin' at yer." Marley, he's all cooped up wi' them Tower birds, they can get downroight edgy at times.  'E  was one before, so 'at 'elps, but we're a picky-pokey-pecky lot..."

"Any'ow, 'ow're we gonna get in again, Milady?" Bill croaked to Celia.

[walking stick]

Celia nodded at Beety who produced a pocket London guide and began to read in a painfully unpleasant voice. 
"This museum is a prime example of Great British Building, it shows The Majesty of Empire, the Enlightenment Of Our Times and The Superiority Of Our Construction. You will notice the entrance embodies."
Bill launched himself at her face  "Ow stop I'll die laughin. That 'orrible voice, ain't the lecture dodge a bit old?"  "Well if we're all pointing at the ceiling with binoculars nobody is going to see you hidden in a binocular case. and we can hide quite a bit in the middle of an irritating group people want to avoid."

[CPT_J_Percell]

"Maybe I should have changed into something a bit less military and bit more informal." Tobias said adjusting his uniform which he had yet to change out of. "I may stand out a bit in a crowd or the crowed may stand away from me."
For Tobias, more ten years had passed since he had traveled these streets and yet he marvelled that for the group gathered, it had been a matter of weeks, nay days since the battle for them.

[MWBailey]

Beety probably knows, Bill thought to himself. She's got ways the rest of us can't begin ta fathom.

Bill had nodded to a shape in the evening sky overhead, and shifted his stance, then made what sounded to humans like an insignificant animistic croak in the shape's dirction. The starling, flitting through the coal-smoke reek of the city streets,, realizing that it was being given a mission by a (more or less) eldritch being, darted off in the direction of the Tower.
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It was not long before the little male had relayed Bill's message to Mama Stella (Bill's mother), who passed it along to the rest of the flock in general, and Marley in particular.

"Artwork coming to life, is it?" Marley croaked to himself, shifting the trimmed wing a bit. He hated the way it felt, in the way that only a winged species can hate alteration to just one wing (the balance thus being thrown off, and said imbalance requiring adjustment and adaptation to regain the air).

OI!, Jimbo quorked, I knew it 'ad ta be bigger'n just us! Th' lion wedge on the Moat Gun said it 'eard the spell from outsoide th' Outer List, you 'member?"

Theodore, the Alpha Male of teh Tower ravens, opined, "I canna say I trust th' word've a cast-iron lion what gots a trough where 'is backbone oughter be, but yeah, that's a point, it is."

"What I don't understand is why I'd need to be there; it's not like I'm able to fly a straight line without flopping over upside down every third wingbeat."

It was something of a wonder to the ravens and the yeomen alike that Marley had figured out how to do that particular trick, but it was as odd to watch as it was uncomfortably vertiginous for Marley; it began to get difficult to tell where he was, whether up, down, or veering off one way or the other, after spinning around that way for more than a few hundred feet. He was improving at it, but he was dubious as to whether he could manage to get to the V&A by the prescribed time.

"Well, but there's nothing for it," Marley finally decided. "Bill want's me there, and he's seemed to have adopted me." Bonds of family, even family just recently gained by adoption, ran strong in Ravendom. "It's a chance to test out Ling Wa's Inner Needle Of Heaven, I suppose."

"Wing Ding's Noodle o' WHAT?!" Theodore exclaimed. "You Clock Knoights gets up ta some weird loowater, so ya do." He fumed a moment. "Alroight, ye gots me permission, call it a three-day pass, but you're ta come stright back 'ere at th' end of it, ya hear? I'll square it wi' th' Commandant roight after ye leaves." If a raven could smirk and crack a sardonic smile, Marley was sure old Theodore would be doing so just then.

So it was, that a Tower raven spun like a rifle ball up over the ramparts of the Tower to the bemuseent of the Wall Patrol, and into the night sky over London, headed in the general direction (in an odd, drunken kind of zig-zag*) of the Victoria and Albert Museum...


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*In other words, a "straight line" only in a manner of speaking.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias sucked on the peppermint drop and watched as the dirty streets of London clattered by. The clatter of horses hoves mixed with the calls from street traders and fought with horseless carriages as it travelled down the road towards its destination rocking from side to side on the uneven cobblestone roads. His eyes started to close and he felt him self relax against the carriages seat back. For a moment he was at peace and a long forgotten memory of his past life surfaced reminding him of travelling around in carriages surrounded by armed guards on horses.