The Barker Street Irregulars Case 4: In Manner Of Fashion

[MWBailey]

(OOC: I took the liberty. If anyone's still interested, may we have a go?)

Ben's humming along nicely now, Marley Whippett mused to himself as he stood atop the wheelframe of the huge tower clock's main time-train in the topmost chamber, a spanner large enough to fit perfectly into a locomotive mechanic's tool arsenal resting on his left shoulder as he timed the clicks, clacks and bangs of gears both diminutive and gargantuan with the watch in his right hand. The Knight Temporal sighed in satisfaction as everything turned over perfectly once, thrice, ten times in rapid succession. Even the arcs from the temporal control train in it's secret room embedded in the tower's wall crawled in perfect unison up the jacob ladders atop the frame upon which Marley stood. All seemed right with the world and the Gyres of Londinium.

Then, the squawk of a certain young raven spoiled Marley's reverie, just as a random twisting bolt of heavenly fire shot up from the jacob ladder that indicated the activity of Gyre Seven, governed by the Crystal Dial in Pall Mall, arced over and down, and blasted a tiny pit in the banister of the ornamental brick railing that surrounded the Main Wheelframe. Marley's right eyebrow arose in irritation; he was due back at the Tower Of London in an hour.

"Cor, bleedin' wot now?" Bill said as he settled on Marley's shoulder.

"Got' any o' that cheese left?"

[walking stick]

Verity watched another group of human puppets, hoping she could rescue at least one.  She had told Beety what she knew but it wasn't enough to develop a plan of action past this.

Repeatedly ordinary people had vanished for a little over a month and returned as paragons of fashion.  They spoke in witty epigrams, they posed constantly and they showed off all sorts of skills to perfection but they were no longer themselves. Instead they were puppets.  Oblivious to damage they carried on their stylish imitation of life far past the point of exhaustion, performing their actions like clockwork automatons slowly winding down until comatose.    There was no indication of how they were controlled and there were more of them every day.  If this wasn't solved quickly people would die of perfection. 

[Stella Gaslight]

If Celia did not get out of the grounding suite below the club soon she was going to go mad. It had been two weeks since Toby had stopped her from becoming a tree and nearly distroying her city.  The roots had stopped growing wherever she touched with her naked skin but she still missed the sun.  But at this point she was unsure if that was because she was still overflowing with the wood's gift or that being stuck in dark stony rooms with only yourself for company was a very bothersome experience.  At least the magic was patched and what she could feel of dear London was chugging along.  There were some wobbles but Celia could not confirm that they were not just interference in the long distance scrying she was forced to do as to not brake the brittle balance she was trying to heal.  "Just a little more time and everything will be set right." Celia said to herself hopeing it was true.

[MWBailey]

Marley finally got the Pall Mall train in synch with the rest of the mechanism. He'd asked Bill to stall the Tower's commandant for him while he adjusted the recalcitrant assemblage of rhomboid gears and sliding-rack subescapements that reacted to and governed the moving sidewalk of the Mall,which itself served (unbeknownst to the well-heeled masses who frequented the shops and stores there) as a mainwheel for the shopping district's famed Crystal Dial clock.

He finally sighed in a mixture of satisfaction at a job well done, and irritated resignation at the fact that, all too soon, he's have to troubleshoot and readjust the mechanism yet again. Years of adjusting the Gyre clocks and diagnosing their individual and collective quirks and characteristics, as well as what they felt like, both up close and at a distance, in various stages of repair or disrepair, had gifted him with a learned sensitivity to the things that caused them to act oddly. Something wasn't quite right, and it wasn't a clock causing it, he could tell. More as if it were something moving around and affecting all of the Gyre clocks, sometimes several at a time, other times just one or two. The impression hovered on the edge of his awareness, like a sickness just developing that was not quite noticeable yet - but was there and irritating nonetheless. "Probably another lot of Tom Fools messing about with things they ought not and know precious little of," he muttered under his breath. "Damned dabblers..."

-----
Malcolm Smallpot, a figure dressed quite recently in the finest fashions money could buy, tottered out of a very chic local neighborhood public house one street over from The Club, after having quite uncharacteristically uttered a series of epigrams on the state of the Empire and the Gentry as a whole. The damned bit of it was, he couldn't remember a word he'd said. "But I Know it was absolutely flash," he said proudly, as he collapsed on the curb after waving at a hansom cab nearby. Yes, it was impressive and so very now, that was the important thing, he thought as he shoved a fivepound note at the cabbie and mumbled his way through his home address...

[Stella Gaslight]

He was Celia's son.  Toby had known this in his heart ever since she bundled him home from the goblin market but saying it in front of the wood had taken on a new level of responsibility. He could feel London worried for it's ballast and it was frightening.  Toby had been debating finding a way to call on Beety.  They were under quarantine but without his mother's guidance he could not tell if the dread that had been growing inside him was his or the city's. Hopefully the letter he sent would reach her soon. He went out to check the post box and witnessed a altercation between a drunkard and a cabbie. Toby watched from the gate wondering if he should intervene.

[MWBailey]

The cabbie was no adept, and definitely not a wizard,  but just as herbivores living in and around a certain patch of very good grass and a strong faery presence will develop certain affinities for various energies emanated daily in such a space, so the cabbie, in his long personal tradition of lurking about Barker Street and it's neighboring avenues for the rides and clientele they offered, had quite by accident through association developed a sort of sixth sense for the supernatural. Teh fellow he'd picked up on Biltmore , who'd demanmded to be delivered to Barker Street, was now leaning against the cab, declaiming that he's actually meant Baskerville Street...

[Stella Gaslight]

Toby burst out laughing as the clock maker insisted in the most flowery way that the driver must have cabbages for ears.  He regretted it as they all turned to look at him and with a sinking feeling remembered that the wards would stop most magical attacks but fists and stones weren't magic.

[MWBailey]

'ere now, Sonny Jim, wha're you laughin' at?" the cabbie demanded, taking a step toward Toby. "Ere, I knows you, you're that kid wot lives with Lady Celia, ain't you?  Di'n she teach any manners, hey?"

Smallpot glared at Toby for a moment, but then, hearingthat he was Celia's houseguest, took a closer look, or as much of a closer look as he was capable of given his level of fatigue and the amount of posh liqueur in his bloodstream. Through teh haze of alcohol he managed to recognize the boy as the one he'd seen with Sir leftenant Whippett some time ago when he'd been making a delivery to a client in the Museum district.

"Hold, there, sir Chauffeur! the young gentleman there before us is none other than the worthy young gallant M. Tobias, son of Lady V=celia and Heir to her estate, is that not correct, young master?"

Marley, flying high overhead in raven form on his way back to the Tower of London by a roundabout route (Marley having had a hankering for a bottle of the newfangled "soda pop" at the Bear and Ragged Satchel pub hard by the far end of Barker Street), overheard the loud conversation by dint of a trick of the airflow at altitude, and looked down, seeing a rather inebriated fellow he recognized as a journeyman from one of the Temporal Order's contracted clockmaker shops trying to stop a burly and rather ill-favored cabbie from advancing on Toby, whom Marley recognized even at his relatively great altitude through the raven's eyes. He hurriedly swooped down, hearing the cabbie's reply as Marley flew nearer. Damned peculiar, he thought. I recognize the clockboy, but he's dressed up like a high-fashion Dandy from the West End. "Oh, well, Toby's in trouble, so here I go!"

"I dasn' care wot or who 'e is, 'e needs a lessin' in manners so 'e don' go laughin' at people inna street -! GAAGGHH!!" the cabbie cut off and bellowed as Marley literally rammed his cap off as he leveleled out of a whooshing dive, croaking loudly as he did so.

"Stand down, sirs!" Marley bellowed as best he could through the raven's throat, earning a surprised and somewhat frightened look form both the cabbie and the clockmaker.

[Stella Gaslight]

Toby stepped back ready to run for the door if things called for it.  "Hello Marley lunch is almost ready if you are staying."  Maybe if the raven stayed for a bit this would clear up and he would not have to tell his mother about it when she came back upstairs.

[walking stick]

Beety appeared, and caught the drunken watchmaker by the arm.  "Do come in for a cup of tea, I am sure you need to catch your breath after being so unfortunate as to be driven to the wrong address." She steered him towards the door.  "Toby would be happy to allow it after your tact in telling the cabby the trouble he could have gotten into and her Ladyship would want every courtesy offered to such a thoughtful gentleman."

She smiled charmingly although Smallpot was more or less collapsing onto her,  Toby quickly took his other side.  "Mother insists on good manners."  The watchmaker blushed and almost simpered  "You know I almost thought it was the Raven that told him to stand down, till I realised it was a guest of yours.  Are there many fashionable people coming?"  He slumped unconscious. Beety and Toby got him into a parlour chair.  "Toby, he's suffering from exhaustion and I doubt if he's had any food lately, just alcohol at levels well beyond safe for days.  We need to get him to stay here, he's part of a mystery that could affect everything."  

[MWBailey]

Marley was not in a panic, exactly over his own actions or the implications of them, but he could have been said to be perturbed. He had acted in haste and without a great deal of forethought in order to rescue an employee of a firm that was vitally important in no small way to the Knights Temporal Order's arsenal of devices horological and temporal (his own "pocket marvel" as he sometimes referred to it, included components made by that firm, including the transductive and parahistoric functions; Marley knew Smallpot to be one of the five resident experts on the particular decahedroid/rhomboid prediction train that governed both functions (not to mention the Relative Dimensional field that allowed so many such hugely intricate mechanisms (on the relevant order of fifteen such per transtemporal function per timepiece) that were regular and very tightly controlled issue for all agents at Marley's level, so the journeyman's showing up drunk and brawling loudmouthed was a bit of a security issue for the Order. Unfortunately, though he could probably justify it to the Grand Master, Marley had rather thinly stretched and severely bent the rules to shut Smallpot up and prevent the cabbie from beating an unintentional spilling of the applecart from the clockboy*.

He decided to deal with the matters at hand as they came at him. First, he responded to Toby's welcome and entreaty (it sounded like that was the way the remarks had been intended) with a rather hackneyed parrotish, yet still ravenlike, "Marley's a  Good boy!" and flapped and glided in to land on Bill's customary perch atop the Bust of Pallas. He barely caught himself before he uttered a perfunctory "Nevermore!" to the room in general, then pretended to slip and nearly fall of the bust (Bill's...ahem...leavings... made that an easy task), and sqwawked, beating it out of the room through the open kitchen window, upon whose sill a berry pie was cooling. h swooped up and behind the house, then landed in the alley in back and changed back to human form. He then shook a few stray feathers form his vest, the tools therein jangling with the sudden shaking, and walked back 'round to the front door of the Club and let himself back in. He nodded at Toby and Beety, looked rather fixedly at Smallpot, and realized why the fellow'd looked so odd to Marley's ravenish eyes. He was dressed in no way like an underpaid journeyman clockmaker and repairman should be; in fact, he looked more like a coldnatured yet almost unbearably stylish bank executive, in his fur-lined topcoat and silk tophat, with scarf tied at the throat cravat-like just so, and incredibly glossy balck button-up boots worn cavalry-fashion outside of his fine wool trousers, which all by themselves must have cost three month's wages at the very least.

"How's your mother, Toby?" he asked Toby kindly.

"Will you look at this one, Mistress?" he said to Beety a bit later. "I recognize this fellow slightly, he's a clockwork repairman, if my guess is right, for a firm my Order uses quite a bit for parts for our more , harrumph, arcane devices, if you will." He looked down and gestured slightly at his workman-like shirt and bowtie, vest hung and filled with tools and implements, and rather scuffed plain black leather wellingtons. "Though I'm no fashion maven myself, I'll have to say that that getup is a trifle more gaudy than his station would justify."

[Stella Gaslight]

"Mama is still below but she may be able to come up today."  At least that was what Toby was hopeing.  "I can use the hold tight Beety.  Mama showed me how to activate most of the major wards."  Toby was currently trying to get the enchanted pot over the hearth to produce a stew but it was looking more like porrage. He wished he could remember how they fixed it last time it got stuck on breakfast.

[walking stick]

"Don't fuss" said Beety "I've a meal ready in the hamper.  I'll just put it out whilst you do the wards." Toby loved her cooking but he still felt guilty that he wasn't providing as host. 

Beety wasn't as calm as she looked.   Every one of the perfectly fashionable people she'd seen worn to exhaustion all had clothing that would cost many times their income and several of the same conversational oddities as this horologist. Another three had gone into coma last night, any of them could die all too easily.  Celia had been wounded by their last case and a thing like this would hurt her more as it affected an increasing number of the people of London.  The Barker Street Irregulars had to find the cause. 

[walking stick]

He smiled, the advertisements brought in more useful subjects at a quite workable pace.  Of course they had to be somewhat vulgar to attract attention

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Perfect.  He would make very sure of that.  Human frailty has no place in the modern world.  More than half of the latest batch were strong enough to survive another round of treatment.  Even the weaklings would be useful for research. Dull mortal clay had true perfection buried so deeply inside.  He would bring it forth, refine it and display it for the edification of the world.  His genius would benefit all mankind.