Homecoming

[MWBailey]

An Idea I had.

A new RP? Maybe, if anybody's interested.

Add your own entries here if you like, or perhaps we could start a new RP, sequel, or otherwise, in a new thread. Anybody?

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Homecoming

"Follow that Damned beast!" the Duty Officer bellowed, as the kraken shot forward, spewing a cloud rarified gas and particulate, the airgoing squid's equivalent of the seaborne variety's ink that they expelled when attempting to escape danger. The noxious, clingy stuff splattered the ship's envelope, bow, and the prow of the gunboat section, befouling the bridge's bay windows until the anti-smear arms (a gifted student of the Airwise University's engineering department had invented them not a year hence) cleared the mess away. "Dimension Hopper on Standby! We don't want to miss the portal!"

"Aye, Sir!"

Blue and white actinic arcs suddenly sprouted and began to play over the entire surface of the ship. "All Hands, close exterior doors and brace for Dimensional Jump , Repeat, close exterior doors and brace for Dimensional Jump!"

"Ensign!"

"Sir?"

"Ring up the Commodore, will you? Tell him it's a big one, and she appears to be following the exrtrapolated London Proper Jump Pattern."

"Are you sure, sir? Last time -!" The ensign quavered.

"Stiff Upper Lip, Rogers! HE keeps believing, so should we!"


Jaisen Santiago Dreyfuss, former and current Commodore and commander of the Republic of Texas Airfleet's London Liaison and master and commander of the Second-class Aerial and interdimensional Man o' War RTAF St. Elmo, made his way along the corridor toward his cabin after the morning inspection of the corps of cadets. He shook his back and dislodged a couple of feathers from under the greatcoat that he wore, the doffed it and shook and popped it just to make sure no more pinions remained. "Angel did a good jonb o this thing," he muttered, "but consarn it if I don't keep moulting in it!"

The sound of the squawkbox in his cabin sounded a muffled buzzing noise through the door, and he unlocked the portal and stepped in, hooking the handset from its cradle with his left pinky.

"Dreyfuss here. Report!" He listened, and made a fist, his face coloring and his back twitching in a certain place as the import hit home. He punched the bulkhead beside the door, his fist fitting well into the dent made there in the partition's steel surface by long habit. Five years, ship time, had passed since they left London Proper; the Airwise Academy became the Airwise University as it's cadets matriculated through the classes, and a few cadets became full-fledged officers; some even married and had children, adding to the ship's complement, and making it like a flying family compound, perhaps even a city at times. Dreyfuss had given up the captain's cabin in the stern of the gunboat and moved to the new quarters in the newly-opened space in the envelope section that the adoption of Sir Charles's inventor's antigravity lofting just before departure had made possible.

Five years, first spent following energy traces that a cadet had identified, and experimentation had proven, belonged to Nadya and Irene, two former female crewfolk and persons dear to Dreyfuss' heart. A brief period of hope and longing had buoyed up The commodore's spirit at the thought of tracking down and reuniting with Nadya, but that had died as it became apparent that she knew she was being followed and had taken several devious detours that made it obvious she was not keen on the idea herself - not to mention made it impossible to follow her, without a massive recalculation of her possible future choices. Dreyfuss had given up that idea, and in a long-term fit of pique, even refused to use his Bright One's powers (which in truth were the only thing aboard that could still locate Nadya's trace) to find her.

"Taking the hint," he'd said to Jock Loughmalley, the Chief Engineer and an old friend from their days in the Marauder Mercenary Company's Air Division.

"You sure, Dreyf? Ye nivver know, mebbe she'l just show up again, like she did th' firs' toime."

"I don't think so, Jock," Dreyfuss had answered. Better see if we can just Find Irene. At least she's blood family."


But Home! Well, London, anyhow. Home. Miss Emma, Patrick, his Boheme companions. He looked to where the Boat Gun stood in the corner, an old friend that had seen him through many a scrape in the old days, and had seen him through more since, after the ship had gotten lost in the airways of Time and Space. zhe felt for teh Whitefire pistol at his hip-!

"Oh. Yeah.  Dammit..." The miraculous sidearm had disappeared from its holster in a plasma storm on the edge of the Earth's atmosphere as they chased a sprite form the top of a thunderstorm to find the portals that they caused. The air krakens of this current dimension had a peculiar ability to open portals in similar fashion to those storm sprites in that other plane, and the energies that seeped through these newest portals bore energy signatures that matched london Proper's patterns exactly, right down to the depleted Cold One taint.

"Well, old friend, one more time, eh!!" He strapped on the Boat gun, it's weathered strap laying just between his wing humps on his back, over the greatcoat. In a few moments, he swaggered in through the door in the upper bulkhead of the bridge. "Let's see if we can get home this time, people," he said jovially as the lightnings flashed and roared, a steh St. Elmo plunged headlong into the screaming corridor opened by the passage of the lightning kraken.

A blinding flash, a press of cloud and rain, and suddenly bright sunlight flooded the Bridge. There, Below, lay The Medway, Aetheric liners plying the waves and airships of all kinds swarming the air. Soone an all-too-familiar voice blasted the ears of the Bridge Crew .

ST. BLOODY ELMO! came the voice over the Aetheradio...

[The Corsair]

A cold, bone-white hand flicked the syringe.
"Now hold still..."
And the syringe, colder still, pressed against the ensign's arm track-marked. Even the good doctor had long lost the patience to properly treat the young man's injection wounds adequately. If anything, the men could wear their track-marks with pride. Except this one, of course.
"For goodness' sake calm down. You've done this enough times." the whipcrack-sharp voice came. Deep like the cracking of glacial ice, and just as unnerving. "Nurse hold him."
Restraints whipped up from where they hung from the bed rails and bound themselves together, like they had some sort of life of their own. Amusing to think so, the doctor felt, but of the many things that had life in this room the restraints were not one of them.

The needle pierced the ensign's haggard skin, just inside the elbow joint, and the doctor's steady hand sunk the plunger. Immediately the ensign went still, then slumped limp and stopped breathing. Above him, his Other Self began to build and glow.
"Thaaaat's better isn't it? We'll keep the room locked while we jump and you'll be juuust fine."

The nurse whispered in his ear, "All vitals normal Apothecary. His ghost will ride this one out just fine."
"Nastiest case of spiritual dissociation I've ever seen..." the doctor muttered back.

He looked around the room at the glowing blue almost-people floating about. Some hung close to their bodies, others drifted freely and even conversed - as much an incorporeal form could converse that is. His eyes met the ensign's ghost and he smiled.
"You're safe here with Abernathy. Always."

Then the jump came, and my was it a good one...

[MWBailey]

Colin Sunnybrook looked up from his seat on the park bench where he'd been dozing in the morning sunlight, a meteorological rarity n London Proper even now, long after the demise and defeat of the Cold Ones and the interdimensional wars that had ultimately spawned the Aether League's Aether Guards, a year after the presumed demise of the St. Elmo - and his sister, Rebecca, along with it. The front lawn of the O'Flaherty Technomagical Institute, which so many years before had been the site of a titanic battle that seemingly had presaged the coming conflict - but now bore few scars; the only such remaining were those considered to be monuments to the struggles of the Heroes of the Boheme and St. Elmo; the shell holes made by the salvo fired from the Obs deck of the Texian warship as Captain Ishmael brought her to the battle (in a timely intervention that destroyed the enemy's aerial battlewagons in a hard-fought dual-broadside artillery slugfest) had been artfully converted into sunken bowl-shaped flower gardens, and the ripped-up sod and loam where the Texian battlewagon's mooring torpedoes had had to be laboriously removed had been made into a rectangular reflecting pond, edged with more flowerbeds and a path on which sat the bench upon which Colin drowsily half sat, half reclined.

The six years since that battle and the reconfiguration of the St. Elmo into the Airwise Academy(and it's departure via the newly-refurbished D-Hopper drive) had seen Patrick's school burgeon from a small, acclaimed, yet obscure isolate institution into one with multiple campuses in most of the major cities of Europe and the Empire of Britannia, and even one in Austin, the Capital of what had become the United Commonwealth of Texas, now a powerhouse world power in her own right. Most of that was lost on Colin, however, as is often the case with supremely-gifted students. He was mainly concerned, at least for the moment, with dozing on the bench, his smith-magery text balanced precariously on his knee, and his boxed lunch being stealthily visited by one of the campus's many gray squirrels. It was with a shock that he awoke suddenly to the sound of a mighty bellow of thunder from above and in the direction, seemingly, of the Docklands harbor and aerodrome complex. It soon became apparent that it was something more than just an unexpected cloudburst when three Aether Guards corvettes streaked from three separate directions across the midmorning sky overhead, their ball-turretted guns visibly being run out of their ports, warning klaxons blaring as they formed up en echelon and roared off in the direction of the thunderclap. His callbox (a dictionary-sized device all technomagical students learned to make in their first classes of their first semesters and which all students used - somewhat excessively, according to several of the schools more conservative faculty) squawked to life.

"COLIN! YOU"LL NEVER GUESS!"

Colin sighed, fumbled the bothersome thing out of his labcoat's thigh pocket and  and thumbed open the  callbox's lid, flicked the toggle and pressed the "speak" button. "Never guess what, Roy? Another incredible dice roll that you lost our week's grocery money on?"

"Whitefire, no,  roomie! You'll never believe it!" Roy De Valera's voice squawked back. "Himself (the term the students used for Patrick O'Flaherty, the school's headmaster) just came slammin' outta his office, yellin' for wife and  Miss Angel, adn and sayin', "it's Mister Dreyfuss an' the St. Elmo!"

Colin went slack in shock. The ST. ELMO!? Rebecca? Was his sister alive after all!? He suddenly became aware that the other students scattered around the lawn were all chattering excitedly on their own devices, and then the airwaves that the boxes served quickly became jammed with traffic, until headmaster O'Flaherty's voice roared above all others on all frequencies.

"ALL STUDENTS 'N FACULTY INDOORS NOW! THIS'S 'N ORDER!"

A a huge silvery airship shape of the old school, flanked by the shapes of three more modern-seeming military-like craft, slowly hove into view overhead, as a blimp-like lighter with the particulars of Tinker's Row Airdock stenciled on her envelope's prow approached from the opposite direction, and then hove to alongside the Texian airship. The St. Elmo was finally going home to her berth-away-from-home in Tinker's Row.

AS Colin and others watched, even as Patrick and the school's faculty ushered them inside the school buildings, it became apparent that the St. Elmo had been damaged, repaired, and rebuilt, remodeled, and modified several times since her departure from London Proper. Her centrifugal ducted fans had always WHOOSHed a bit loudly, but there was now a thunderous undercurrent, as of an engine or set of engines of much more magnified power than she had originally had, or so one of the older professors, who had been around at the time of the interdimensional war, remarked. Her guns were all run in, the casemate doors tightly shut, but it was obvious, even under the paint that scores of student maintenance teams had slathered over the gunboat sections hull, that she had been damaged and that armor patches that were obviously made on board had been welded over the worst bits, and one or two casemate doors looked different from their fellows. In several places she still bore the scars of battles with krakens of the air, and it seemed that she had seen more than one  broadside fight with other warships since her departure, judging by several dents that had yet to be hammered out or patched over. 

There was also a slight doubt in Colin's mind. Something seemed odd, almost arcane or magickally mysterious; the Ship and her master and crew had always been surrounded by uncanny and (some would say) occult legends and rumors, the strange case of the ship's cabin with a haunted reputation, and commodore Dreyfuss' relation to a certain Louisianan magickal practitioner looming large among them, not to mention the strange, rumored transmutation of the commodore himself; his mystical, sometimes seemingly demonic paramour; and his allegedly deathless niece - but Something more, yet indefinable, tickled at the back of Colin's skull, as a blue arc crackled down the length of the hull from stem to stern, and then crackled to nonexistence.

-----------
"Damage control, report!" the captain's voice barked tinnily through the squawkbox network and the classroom PA system. TEh disciplined answers rangout through the same system. D-hopper mechanisms all sound and  secured. No damage to the gun deck. student, faculty and crew complement all present and accounted for. Hull sound, with no breaches. Aether reciprocators running a bit rough; Chief Engineer Loughmalley's voice nagged, not for the first or even hundredth time, that the antennaeic aetheric collection array needed recalibration with the capacitance matrix. The Bat colony seemed agitated, according to the Husbandry Detail's cadet JG lieutenant. Antigrav lofting in optimum form and trim, save for a slight juddering in the repulsory output of the port trim ballonet (why Sir Charles's engineers had persisted in calling them "ballonets" instead of stabilizers was nonsensical, Dreyfuss mused to himself.   

Hearing Patrick's voice greeting them as they broke out of the portal and into the Medway's bright, unseasonable sunshine had been a welcome sound to the Dreyfuss' ears. He wondered how Miss Emma was getting on - then turned at the report that no, two students and three air rangers had injured themselves when they failed to grab  handholds and brace during the jump.

"Joyriders, seems like," the Ship's Doctor speculated aloud. "They said they wanted to see London Proper through the 'aetheric aura,' whatever that means."

Dreyfuss and the Bridge Gang muttered various epithets about D-Hopper dime novels (a craze that had erupted the week before the ship's departure from that same London Proper five years before) and penny dreadful authors, and then the First Mate told the Doctor to treat the miscreants and send them back to duty as their treatment allowed.

[MWBailey]

Rebecca Sunnybrook swung open the porthole of the Officer's Country cabin that she and three Junior officers (formerly cadets of the RTAF St. Elmo Airwise University, now graduated and serving as full-fledged, though extremely junior, crewmembers) shared; part of what had originally been the Commodore's now extensively subdivided personal quarters, it resided against the starboard side of the galleries of the ironclad that had been integrated into the ships airframe, and thus sported the original porthole, with it's accompanying gatling cannon, that had once grimly decorated Dreyfuss' stateroom. The whole ship's like that, she mused. Despite five years of constant modification, the ship was still what it had originally been, under all the paint and classroom additions, even with the interdimensional drive and various educational and just simply decorative bric-a-brac: a frighteningly powerful battlewagon, geared toward hunting and killing national threats and piratical miscreants.

Even as an interdimensionally lost,  travelling university of the air, she and her cagey and resourceful crew, regulars and students alike, had been able to fight off numerous kraken of varying sorts,  military aggressors, machiavellian warlords bent on capturing and using her to their own ends, and fought and finagled their way through many more misadventures. The undead threats that the Old Girl and her early skeleton crews had fought through in the  years before her becoming the D-Hopper toybox battleship of the Foreign Service had not recurred, despite Morganthe's and Merovingia's vows of vengeance, but many others had persisted until the St. Elmo and her crew had been forced to make peace with them, or in some cases destroy them utterly.  

The Texians, and then Sir Charles, had been shrewd and smart, she realized, to attract and keep the "Cowboy Commodore," as the dime novels often (and tritely) called Dreyfuss. If they had not, as it was often posited in classes aboard the ship,  the St. Elmo might well have become a pirate vessel herself, and Dreyfuss the terror of the post-Cold-Ones-War skies.

She shook herself back to her duty. She scanned the skies and the ground below (as was her assignment), for threats, or just things that seemed out of the ordinary. Like many of her generation, the buildup of Aetheric energies in the ambient atmosphere of Earth due to the Cold Ones' influence had imbued Rebecca with powers beyond those of ordinary humans; firethrowing, as well as the ability, not unlike that of Dreyfuss himself, to directly touch, direct and control Whitefire energy, the Technomage's force that seemed to exist in various  strengths across all of the dimensions that the St. Elmo had visited in her quest to return home. Rebecca used trained-in aspects of those abilities now, to see things in a light that revealed the energy levels of things above and below the ship. Like many other spotters stationed around the ship, she was trained to see not only the figures below as they scurried about trying to get a look at the silver battlewagon passing overhead. She saw, felt, noted and instantaneously memorized their faces and what they seemed to be doing, noting subtle clues that might reveal their actual intent. Suddenly, however, faces she recognized came into view and scrambled her diligence: Patrick OFlaherty, the headmaster. His wife. Faculty who'd aged visibly but whose dear features still showed; and then there, in the midst of the  greensward that hid most of a certain battle's scars, the shape and face of her BROTHER!
Colin! What are you gaping at, you fuzzy-brained fool! Follow orders and get inside!

She saw with satisfaction that one of her lesser inborn talents manifested itself without effort as her brother stiffened, then swung his head over to stare directly into her eyes, and then jump and wave wildly. She schooled her face to a stern countenance, but then smiled very slightly as she reservedly waved back. Fool, she thought. "But I do love the sight of you, little brother."

Another figure managed somehow to remain unnoticed in the shadow of a building across the grounds, and chuckled to itself. A deep chuckle, the voice not unlike that of the entity that so many years before had spoken to a certain Headmaster as he bent over the mortally-wounded form of Dreyfuss' second wife, who had been taken over by the being who possessed that same voice.

"Enjoy your homecoming, Sir Jaisen - And enjoy the return of your University, O Maker," the voice said like velvety vitriol, as the figure melted into the darkness of a steaming alleyway. "Things may not long be so comforting..."

[MWBailey]

Just thought I'd "bump" this, so to speak. Just can't seem to let it die. Anybody who wants to join in, do so. Or not, your choice.

[Fairley B. Strange]

Is there a missing OOC for this one?

Spoiler: ShowHide

I'm still trying to work out if they're semi-connected vignettes or one of those clever stories told in different viewpoints.
But it's been 3 months since the last RP and I might have the time for a new game.

[MWBailey]

Is there a missing OOC for this one?

Spoiler: ShowHide

I'm still trying to work out if they're semi-connected vignettes or one of those clever stories told in different viewpoints.
But it's been 3 months since the last RP and I might have the time for a new game.

The OOC would probably be the RP  Steam London: Realms of Aether. I'm not sure if it's been purged from the site's archives or not.

I originally intended this as one of those kinds of Rps composed of, at first, different stories that would converge later into a specific storyline. Corsair's post is, I think, about the new Ship's Doctor, who as a sideline is saving or observing those who become "lost," or trapped in an interdimensional state when the ship makes an interdimensional jump (The D-hopper being a still-experimental drive in many respects, and full of bugs).

In terms of the storyline's origin, this is a continuation of the substory of Steam London: Realms of Aether that concerns the Republic of Texas Air Fleet (RTAF) St. Elmo, formerly the personal airship of one Jaisen Santiago Dreyfuss,

Spoiler: ShowHide

(a former sergeant under General Sam Houston during the Texian Revolution, and later a ship commander in  the Bayou Marauder Mercenary Company, which served as the original airfleet in charge of defending the fledgling Republic of Texas... whose courts-martial hearing after the loss of his first command, the RTAF Mad Anthony Wayne, was shot down by an Empire of Louisiana privateer airship (the SL Universe is one in which the political entities are similar to, but also largely different from,  that of the real world) left him without a job and resigned to spending his life as a noncom mercenary in one small conflict after another. That series of events is what led him to London Proper, where he encountered Emma Lighton and the crew of the APF Boheme

, formerly a crewman aboard the Associated Free Peoples (APF) Boheme, a ship and crew that figured heroically in the recent (in the universe of the storyline) War of the Cold Ones that was part of the final plot and storyline of the Steam London RP.

The St. Elmo, which had been removed from drydock, Dreyfuss' debts paid by agreement between the Republic and the British Government, and delivered to the Boheme's airdock at Tinker's Row in London by a skeleton crew (about two to three years before the Realms storyline begins),  had been serving as a "toybox" (a term I loosely define as "an experimental test bed") for projects destined ultimately for the British military and HM Secret Service as part of it's mission as a military/diplomatic Liaison ship representing, ultimately, the Republic of Texas (Said republic having been instrumental in fighting the Cold Ones on the American continents, and whose detachment of airships-of-war had figured prominently on the defenders side during the Battle of London, which marked pretty much the end of the war.

The St. Elmo is a formerly-steam-driven airship-of-war of a type that, when Dreyfuss first built her but was forced to leave her in drydock in Galveston, Texas (figuratively submerged in debt), would have been a first-rate at the time that she was built (approximately the late 1880s), but is now something close to a second-rate, somewhat unfairly due to the number and size of her guns, and the type of airship that she is (also due to the changing design and mode of aerial capital ships, somewhat similarly to our real-world naval history). After a 5-year absence, brought about by a malfunction of her D-Hopper drive, she has returned to a London Proper (the name of London in the RP) that has moved on from teh war and largely healed the scars left by it.

When the St. Elmo had departed on it's first instructional mission that fateful day, She had been newly-rechristened "RTAF St. Elmo, Aether League Airwise University," and was connected with the now-prominent Aether League academy run by Patrick O'Flannery, another Hero of the Boheme (all crew of the Boheme were knighted or similarly rewarded, as peers of the realm, following the battle and the surfacing of the facts of their case) and his wife. Shortly into the first jump, however, something went terribly wrong with the drive, and instead of jumping just once, she jumped several hundred times, into many dimensions which should not have been possible for her to detect, much less visit (the D-Hopper drive does not propel a ship forward or backward through time, but rather into neighboring dimensions. Thus, while paradoxes could still conceivably be caused, they would have nothing directly to do with the London Proper timeline except as by happenstance that her incursion affected a timeline already established between another dimension and that of London Proper). Early on, Dreyfuss became obsessed with finding his young paramour Nadya,

Spoiler: ShowHide

(in a rather one-sided sense; he chased the poor girl relentlessly, I'm afraid)

who herself had the innate ability to "world-walk," or travel between the interstices of dimensions into neighboring dimensional realities - which ability landed her aboard the St. Elmo when the ability went wrong while escaping the clutches of a pimp in another reality. She had disappeared a few days before the Airwise mission, but it all soon turned into a quest for the route home, in which they not only jumped to other Londons, but spots all over the world in hundreds of other dimensional realities.

Not to mention Dreyfuss' personal transformation over time from a "normal" human into a being from a race which was supposedly responsible for the maintenance of time, yadda yadda yadda...

...and so on. As you can see, if you're not familiar with the original Steam London storyline and that of Realms of Aether, it could be kind of hard to relate and come up with a backstory that makes it all fit in, so I was aiming for a new RP based - but not stringently so (outside of already-established norms and phenomenae, and backstories of former characters) - on the others. The period is approximately five years after the St. Elmo left on her first airwise mission, about 1895 or thereabouts; that would make the storyline's present day to be, by my reckoning, (somewhat forced, you might say, for periodicity's sake), about 1900.

By the way, Steam London, Realms of Aether, and my spinoff somewhat-serial story Between the Threads are where Dreyfuss, Morganthe and Merovingia, mentioned in that Birds of Paradise RP, originally came from)


It might be better to do your RP    ...

[MWBailey]

My personal storyline so far is mainly intended to be between students and newly-inducted-as-junior-officers, and of course my own characters from before, and former students aboard the Airwise University and at the O'Flannery Academy (at the moment, Rebecca Sunnybrook and her little brother Colin, and whichever  others come to mind or happen along).

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to follow a Japanese anime "Gakuen" type of story or something else, but it's mainly about the students and latter-day characters, rather than Patrick or Miss Emma or the others from the original RPs, mainly because so far none of their authors have shown any interest, and I'm not big on using others' characters without permission. I might refer to them or have them do something in situations in which it's unavoidable, but out of respect for the others, I will be keeping such to a minimum.

[The Corsair]

As per usual, the patients all vomited as the jump came to an end. Abernathy had tried it once, as a proof-of-concept when first finalising his cure. By his own description, it was like being hit in the testicles by another pair of your own testicles. His sympathies lay with these men as they passed out in their sick-stained bedclothes. Around them the ship lurched a few more times, and the men rolled about beneath their restraints, ragdolling as much as one could when tied to a bed. Heads lolled and a few tongues slid out of sideways mouths. The nurses set about the grim task of making sure no-one chocked on said tongues - or worse, vomit - while the patients waited on consciousness.

"Frau Hendricks," Abernathy called to one of them. She turned to look at him from where she was stood beside the bed of a man who was just now coming-to. "Would you like to complete the report for this jump?" he finished with a wry smile. Ms. Hendricks' sweet lips bloomed into a georgeous white crescent of teeth, hanging like a sideways half-moon beneath a sky of flushed cheeks.

"Oh Doctor Abernathy, I most certainly would!" she replied in her southern twang.

Abernathy smiled again, this time fuller and with warm creases at the corners of his eyes. He turned to leave, but he could still so perfectly see Ms. Hendricks' curls bouncing as she strode toward his office. It was an image he might as well have carried on him like a photograph in a locket. She was a good student, that Hendricks girl, but her enthusiasm was as off-putting as it was charming. Perhaps that was the source of his most sinful perversion. But then what use did he have for notions of sin in this Godless place?

No, that was the Devil talking to him. His thoughts about Ms Hendricks were unacceptable. Any excuse his mind might conjure up was the work of the Serpentine mastermind himself. Such was the burden for a man like he; to tamper with life meant to swear oneself to the path of Godliness more stringently than all other men, lest he accidentally lead innocent souls to the gates of Purgatory and beyond. His sin was never just his own. It would be the sin of a dozen men if he wasn't careful. For Man to love Woman was God's way, but Abernathy was not a normal man, and Hendricks was far from a woman.

He rounded the corner and passed the threshold of the bridge.

"Captain, is this the one?" he said, patience cracking like sheet-thin ice, "Do I get to share my findings with the world at last?"

All those boys, lost to time, he thought to himself, I will be their saviour yet.

[MWBailey]

Captain Ishmael turned in his seat from the image of the three Aether League ships of unfamiliar design flanking and escorting the St. Elmo depicted in the scan-tank, to face the Ship's Doctor. "It's five years on, and London seems to've changed in the time since, but yes, it appears we're home, Doctor." he reached down to the floor of the bridge from his swivel seat at the Helm Command station, and picked up a metallic-looking feather. Apparently Commodore Dreyfuss was molting. Assuming that his kind molted, anyway. He handled the shiny steel pinfeather gingerly; the outermost of such were notoriously razor sharp. I wonder  how 'e keeps from shredding his greatcoat, Ishmael mused to himself.

"Ye might want to check with the commodore before going ashore, though. Seems the Aether League's none too happy to see us, if our armed escort're any indication. Mind the trim, Leftenant!" His mild , respectful demeanor toward the Doctor changed abruptly to a barked reprimand, as the rather pretty young helmsman allowed the Airwise University to fall slightly out of formation with her escort.

"Minding trim, Aye Cap'n!" the redheaded girl smartly called back from her station at the Helm Proper, as she spun the wheel.

"They 'ave to learn, Doctor, and there's no better way than to go ahead and do things," the Captain said wryly. "Unfortunately..."

[The Corsair]

"We must trust others to tasks just as they trust us to do them, Captain." He said without so much as a lick of wit or sarcasm. "I'll speak with the Commodore then."

Dr Abernathy turned on his heel, striding through the ship to the Commodore's quarters. Feathers had begun to litter the floor inside, but then Dreyfuss had seen worse things on Abernathy's Medicum floor. No words of reprimand were exchanged between the mean, nor even a judgemental side-eye at the mess.

"Commodore, what is this I hear about London taking issue with our return?" The doctor asked once the pleasantries were done with.

[MWBailey]

Dreyfuss eyed himself in the mirror over the folding head That sat in the Personal Hygiene area of his cabin. Hardly the spacious stern cabin he had once occupied when it was just himself, Ishmael, Chief Engineer Lough-Malley and Dreyfuss' seemingly indestructible niece, Irene, the cabin was still large enough to allow him to expand his wings to full size, and flex the limbs thereof to flap loose the brass-and-steel feathers that incongruously actually grew from the avian parts of his frame. It was also conveniently close to the bow of the gunboat section of the ship, where the bridge was located. He turned at the Doctor's knock, and gestured him in.

Upon exchanging pleasantries and hearing the physician's query, Dreyfuss pursed his lips, his now-bluish brows beetling, and his silver handlebar twitching in thought.

"Weyelll," he drawled, still the Texian airshipman he'd always been, despite appearances and his experiences and exploits, "We're not just a military escort ship like we were when the Elmo was first added to the Aether League's lists, Doc," He said,  "And we have a drive system and weaponry that could be considered a substantial threat. That and the fact that they have no idea what secrets we've accumulated. They'll want to debrief us at least, before they let anything out to be published."

His manner became more thoughtful and he appeared to be disturbed or worried for some reason or other. "Not only that, but we are in fact still very much what Sir Charles called a "toybox" ship, stuffed full of Secret Service and Aether League gadgets and suchlike; in essence, we are a creature, jointly, of the Secret Service and the League."

"I know," his voice became a bit softer and more sympathetic, "That you are concerned for those poor boys you've managed to secure below. Their fate concerns me as commander just as much as it concerns you as Ship's Physician. It's unfortunate, but in order to help them, we've got to 'press the flesh' with the government types, and get them to see that the DHopper Drive needs even more redesigning and improvement than our fledgling wunderkind have been able to implement here aboard. And to do that, we first have to cooperate with the secretive Ministry boys. All in good time, doc. Just not as short a time as  I know you'd like."

He pulled on and buttoned his shirt with the odd sleeves on the back, which corresponded to the ones on his greatcoat that hung on the coat-tree in the corner. "Could i trouble ya to hand me my coat?" he asked, as he laid out his saber and the Paterson Colt in it's wear-stained holster and rig. He added, almost as if it were an afterthought, "You know that I don't look quite the same as I did when we left," he winked at his own understatement, " And neither does the Elmo, truth be told. It's just possible they'll want to study Me as well as the ship and our students."

"That might make things a bit bumpy, just so you understand. I wonder if Miss Emma is still around..." he mused.

[MWBailey]

The hall in the ancient Parliament building in London rang with the impact of the gavel of the chief Justice of the Aether League and HM Military tribunal that for several weeks had been hearing the inquiry of the St. Elmo Affair. The hall had erupted with laughter and derision as yet another of Dreyfuss' epithets answered the all-too-pointed questions of the League's counselor.

"Sir Jaisen, I crave your patience with the learned counsel," Aether Admiral Sir Professor Wayne said as the noise died down. "Some of his colleagues are greatly concerned that you did not take greater pains to study the flora and fauna of the neighboring  Londons while you were there, and I must admit that I myself am rather appalled to learn that you went ahead and took our nation's cadets into battle. Good experience, yes, but what could have been lost on the knife-edge of what would seem to be cavalier recklessness!"

"The darkest possible interpretation of th' facts at hand, Admiral," Commodore  Trevelyan of Her Majesty's Air Fleet fired across teh tribunal's bench at his colleague. "Sir Jaisen obviously knows that often the best way ter stay aloive in a bat'le is to keep advancing."

[MWBailey]

A thin line of disturbance ran up and then down in midair in a dark corner of the uppermost mezzanine gallery of the spectator  seats in the Parliamentary building (added during the brief spate of democratization that occurred during London Proper's rebuilding and refurbishment). There were almost never any spectators this high up in the spectator section; public disinterest in the workings of the government persisted now, as it always had.

Thus, it was a small matter to maintain secrecy and stealth for the sake of keeping a certain interdimensional  customs officer safe from prying eyes, as he stepped out of a maelstrom of bright and fiery glory thast showed through the rip in spacetime through which he stepped into the spectators' mezzanine. The instant of interdimensional portality showed to the courtroom floor far below as merely a seemingly fever- or stroke-related flash of incongruous light, a brief flash of golden brilliance that faded immediately. Nothing much to pay attention to, given the goings-on  playing out before the Tribunal Bench.

"Hmm. Seems Dreyfuss 's still the same as he always was." mused the figure that had thus entered and then looked on briefly, " 'S a shame that he had to go and  get turned into somethin' other'n human, though." The figure was being somewhat ironic, as evidenced by the tentacle that snaked out from under the man's trenchcoat, The tentacle held a lit match, which the figure used to light the stub of a brandy cheroot that one of his human hands placed in his teeth.

"Well, lets watch and see what "The Falling Man" falls into this time, eh?" he glibly said to an indistinct yet obviously fiery figure still hanging back in the shadows.

"Just as you say, husband," intoned the flame-shrouded female Old One quietly, from her barely-concealing shadow veil. "But see that you do not interfere more than the Strictures allow..."

[MWBailey]

"The Falling Man" was  a nickname that Dreyfuss had acquired back when his first command was literally shot out from under him by an Empire of Lousiana aerial frigate, and the pitching of the dirigible gunship MMCASMad Anthony Wayne's command deck had flung him out over and into the crystal-greenish waters of the Texian Gulf Coast.

Dreyfuss had already been having a career of basically falling, running or walking headlong into situations that thrust him occasionally into the limelight, or (more often) into the pool of sewage of whatevewr political or military brouhaha was brewing at the moment. Thus, the papers had seen a perfect chance to throw mud at teh develping phenomenon of the military airship arms race and the mercenary companies which operated many or most of the aerial behemoths, and thus seized upon the Mad Anthony Wayne Affair, as it had come to be called, and turned him into a household name, albeit one of derision rather than of accolades.

He had managed to weather that hurricane, but the wrack and flotsam of the  storm had been his commission and employment with the Bayou Marauder Mercenary Company, his reputation and all hope of military professionalism for his future. He had retired, so to speak, to Galveston and bought the envelope framework of a former  first-rate air battlecruiser, and largely by himsef ahd, over teh next several years, intehgrated it with teh hull of an old iron-hulled paddle-wheel gunboat ironclad (scrapping huge numbers of the parts of the gunboat to save on weight) and managed to flounder through the nightmare of funding for the project and end up with the ship in more or less permanent drydock in a Galveston airharbor hangar. The St.Elmo at that time languished there in that hangar while Jaisen Dreyfuss went on various mercenary jobs, usually expeditions, some in airships, some as a groundling, some as an infantryman. He had come to London for the purpose of signing on with a British unit that was rumored to be assembling, but heard halfway across the atlantic ocean that the rumor was only just that, a silly rumor.

He continued on to London Proper anyway (he had little choice; his ticket wasa simple steerage  berth on a tramp steamer out of Hampton Roads, and turning 'round and going back was not an option. He had wandered up from the Docklands into the general area of Tinker's Row, and almost literally walked into the middle of a fight beteween elements of the crew of the APF Bohme, an Aether League battlewagon berthed at the Tinker's Row Airdock, and a Cold One beast of the type known as an "Arbiter."

He literally "fell" or walked into yet another world-shaking affair, and went on to become one of the heroes of that Ship and its war against the Cold Ones. 

And now the Falling Man had fallen into yet another controversy. But things were beginning to happen, and as cadets will, many were already hatching plots to help and rescue their beloved CO. It would seem that Dreyfuss might yet again fall into something larger than expected...

[MWBailey]

 "Brian's balls, what a seedy lot," The elder Sunnybrook sibling hissed as she and her compatriots surveyed the queue of merenaries, volunteers and hangers-on who had been invited to, gotten wind of, or otherwise heard of the recruiting meeting taking place in the back storeroom of the Flying Gutbucket, a bar in the lower end of the service district that surrounded the Docklands Aerodrome in London Proper. Sir Jaisen's inquiry had stretched from the projected week into a month-long exchange of harangues and counter-harangues as the embattled Commodore fought to retain ownership and command of his beloved St. Elmo. A large contingent of the cadets of said aetherwise university had had enough, but Cadet Second Leieutenant Rebecca Sunnybrook's small-but-growing cadre of likeminded cadets and mercenary hopefuls was so far the only group actually planning anything overt.

One applicant , a young woman of Eurasian features and heritage, sat apart a little from the others, eying cadets and mercs alike with an eye that seemd to glow with both distrust, and - could it be, something unsettlingly close to hunger...? Meri kept her voluminous watch coat close about her, covering yet not completely obscuring the rather hugely long Tachi sword that she habitually carried. The black bullhide-covered scabbard was scarred with myriad scratches, cutmarks and what appeared to be old, nearly-obliterated blood stains, it's hilt and upper scabbard jutting above her head and the wide brimmed hat that concealed all but the reddish, bright eye and its hunger, along with a swatch of cheek and brow which, although obscured, did not hide the suggestion of great beauty being concealed. Her head perked up as the young cadet sergeant  standing at the table in the center of the room called out a name - hers. Her full name.

"Merovingia Harper-Chen!" Cadet-sergeant Tollchock barked in a voice not unlike his Newly-returned father's.

"Front 'n Center!"

Meri raised herself erect and not quite flung, yet not quite gently pushed back, her black watch coat and strode forward, revealing the battle-stained yet still serviceable uniform of a Shanghai Mercenary Marine corporal as the tachi swung fom the small of her back, almost bouncing agains the backs of her calves as she half-strode, half slunk to the table. She stood at a relaxed version of attention as she answered the summons, her teeth flashing in the light of the aetherlamps as the Sergeant gasped and stepped back in spite of himself. Did she actually have FANGS!? He reached involuntarily for the service dagger in his belt.

"DOWN, Cadet sergeant!  You Too, Corporal Harper-Chen, if you please," Sunnybrook barked, and continued as Meri seemed to grow larger and her eyes seemed to glow redly, "You gave your word, Corporal, and I have silver in my revolver, if you go too far. Remember your discipline or get out!"

"My debt to my sire's husband keeps me straitly bound, Cadet-leftenent," Meri said with forced patience as she fought the demon of her hunger back into it's den, the red of her eyes slowly dimming to a deep crimson pupil color as she spoke, the barely-eastern-accented voice sibilant and yet rife with the kind of steel that only comes with being used to commanding and being obeyed.

"Corporal Harper-Chen reporting for prospective employment, Sir!" She finally managed, her voice betraying none of the steely ire of a few moments before.

[MWBailey]

A few miles away and the neighborhood changes as such will in London Proper. Walk the same route as Dreyfuss did when he first encountered the Crew of the Boheme, and you'll see multiple changes on the way. Most buildings are now stone with aether collection paraphernalia tastefully arranged and decorated adorning them, but occasionally one still finds the odd brick or half-timbered relic that didn't get destroyed by the Battle of London or the fight with the mechanized zombie hordes.

Tinker's row itself, and the airdock that sits smack in the middle of it's back gardens is still much the same, and yet not. Gone are the rough-timbered berths and their attendant docks, replaced by stone-and-cement versions. There no gun emplacements for defense, as such is now provided by Aether League patrols. In fact, warships no longer dock at the airdock, save for the Boheme herself, and now the St. Elmo, returned home and steaming in place; She still retains the starter boiler and triple-expasion engines that power the startup sequence for her aether-powered engines, and she's been running trials in her commodore's absence, a skeletion crew of her cadets and graduates and old Jock O Mahoney, still the vessel's chief engineer and now instructor to allegedly genius engineering cadets, showing the works to (and chafing under the oppression of) the Blacksuits and Aether League  researchers.

Into the morning brightness and relative chaos that is a dock in trials mode, strides a slight figure in the uniform of one such engineering cadet. Submitting to the search and papers examination at the entrance to the airdock, he continues to the St. Elmo, a rather large raven sitting on his shoulder and croaking from time to time.

"There, there Max, don't mind the guard, he's just doing his job," soothed The young cadet. Milo Strident was his name, and he caressed the raven gently.

"Croak." Max said succinctly.

Milo cringed inwardly as a League leutenant glanced at him sharply. "Croak," he said, imitating his companion.

Mollified, the Lieutenant turned back to his experiment log.

Milo both hated and loved it when Max did that. It was odd enough for somebody to be walking London with a raven on one's shoulder (people always assumed Max was an escapee from the Tower, and were forever trying to take him "back there."). To have him actually say "croak," instead of croaking for real like a raven was entertaining, he supposed, but tended to draw more attention to the somewhat shy young man than he wanted. The bird's intelligence level was another problem. There was more on the thing's mind than just the next bit of raw meat or female ravens. Like Milo, for example. The bird was, Milo was certain, absolutely  convinced that he was the boy's keeper and guard. Not to mention Comrade -in-arms no matter what. If he only knew...

"Permission to come aboard?" Milo called up to the embarkation port.

"Croak?" Queried Max

Milo smiled and rolled his eyes. "would you stop that?"  he said to the raven.

"Why?" Max asked.

Milo stared into the bird's eye and tried to determine whether he was actually asking or just responding uncannily as usual; sometimes it was hard to tell. The bird had a remarkable proclivity for responding correctly to parts of conversations. Sometimes Milo could almost swear that the bird was playing a game on him and was actually as intelligent and sentient as any human. If so, however, Max was currently not letting on -
Much.

"Permission granted, and pipe down the both of ye!" Jock's voiced roared out from the port. "And you mind yer beak, Max."

"CROAK!" Max shot back

"MAX!" Jock and Milo both reoproved Max at the same time.

"croak." Damned if the bird didn't sound like he was struggling not to chuckle as he croaked softly in assent.

"Did ye get the Thing? And what's the word on the exercise?" Jock whispered as Milo clambered board.
"Everything's Go, sir," Milo whispered back. "Miss Rebecca's already recruited some new 'interim instructors.' And I've got the Item in my pocket... "

[MWBailey]

The next morning, a newspaper was published. It was a regular newspaper, nothing remarkable about it save that it was started after the reformation of the various businesses and governmental bodies that had been unhoused and smashed flat by the Second Battle of London. It's import, however was remarkable, and copies of it flooded Tinkers Row and the Airdock in the hands and lunchpails of dockwokers, cadets, crewfolk and the other sundry denizens of the district, who cried, bellowed and stammered their shock and dismay, and cried "injustice!" and more colorful things at the tops of their lungs when they saw the headline, for the first time in many cases...

"WELL now, 'at tears it," Chief Enginer O'Mahoney said. "get Colin in 'ere," he said brusquely to the young orderly who stood, as ever, at the door, ready to relay orders or messages.

"Aye Aye, Chief!" the young cadet said as she darted off nimbly through the throng of repair and maintenance folk who crowded the main engineering deck.

[MWBailey]

"MILO!" Cadet Chief Engineer Colin Spraggart yelled across teh floor of te Main Engineering deck where Milo and Max were helping the Reciprocator Expansion Array crew replace one of the aether reciprocators. A big, ugly crack had appeared in the side of the 3rd maglev cylinder, and the thing had been throwing sparks and flames ever since the last dimensional jump. Milo looked up and spied Colin above. "Yessir, Chief?"

"You and Max're wi' me," Colin bellowed. "Chief Loughmalley's office pronto!"

Milo directed his section to finish the job without him and hastened updecks to the destination thus indicated, his heart in his mouth. This could mean only one thing, he realized. The clock had been set ahead by unforeseen circumstances.

-----------------------------------
In Whitehall, a squad of Blacksuits strode down the central stairway and out the front door to the electric carriages that awaited them. "Lets be lively, gentlemen, " Sir Charles Tayle addressed them at street level. "We've a mutiny to to abet."
-----------------------------------
In an alley in the Docklands, the small army of "interim instructors," mercenaries and eldritch allies assembled and stepped into a miasmic fogbank conjured by Merovingia.

"This stuff bloody reeks," Cadet Sergeant Tollchock muttered

"Quiet, sergeant," Lt. Rebecca Sunnybrook intoned. "Corporal Harper-Chen has graciously afforded us this luxury. Or would you prefer the walk of five miles uphill back to Tinker's Row?"

"No, Miss," Tollchock said hurriedly, the reprimand bringing him back to full attention.

Meri's silky, lovely voice added, "I apologize for the smell, Sergeant Sir, but As it arises frim the magic of my own and others' blood, and its associated lifeforce, it needs must retain the scents thereof, without which it would also lack their power."

"And relax, you have nothing to fear from me. In fact You are fortunate that I rather like a man who is not afraid to pull steel on me." She added with a mirthful  edge to her words. She chuckled hungrily...

[MWBailey]

The Operation started with a whimper. Less than that, even.

After several hours of tense vigilance, the Aether League marines (ALMC) and various dignitaries  looked at their watches, acted bored, and the dignitaries began to drift away from the airdock. Apparently there had been a false alarm.

An hour of nothing, and a squad was stood down.

Another hour, two squads and a portable artillery battery were stood down.

Three hours later, all that was left was a skeleton platoon and three arc cannons on tripods.

Four hours, and a company of Texian Air Rangers assumed guard duty and the last of the Aether League's forces dribbled away into the night.

Either no one noticed, or no one cared, that the Air Rangers were the same unit that the St. Elmo had taken on just before her last mission as a Texian Liaison Air Frigate - The same unit that Dreyfuss had led at the Battle of Grey London. As the last  ALMC effectives disappeared into the inky black of a foggy London night, the commander of the Ranger company nodded at the expectant faces of a cadre located at the extreme right of their formation, and a score of armored rangers trotted off to take up a defensive formation around the St. Elmo, both on the dock proper and fanning out on the turf of the aeropark. "Softly, boys, " the commander called out quietly.

It began to get very, very dark at the far end of the airdock. It then became darkly hazy, then the dark patch became black fog. A company of Former compatriots of The Commodore, as well as a about a hundred cadets, all carrying both regular dress arms and  actual battle weapons, filed out of the miasma, led by Lt Jr. Grade Rebecca Sunnybrook.
"Take positions, she snapped in a low voice, and nodded at the Air ranger commander.

An hour later, the full complement of crew and cadets of the St. Elmo's engineering Section began the process of firing up the Aether Reciprocator expansions. This was a dangerous moment; if the Plan hit a single hitch at this point , all of them, rangers, cadets, crew, everyone, would face charges of mutiny and imprisonment and no escape from the clutches of the subverted Aether League's perverted version of justice, all because the noisy startup of the battlewagon's engines could be heard across the city in the nighttime silence

---------
On his cot in the specially- strengthened cell in Newgate prison, Dreyfuss sat and waited. He had already tried his prison for weaknesses. Even the powers of his newly - awakened Bright One form were no match for the fiendishly - clever bars and wards of the Holding Array. The only thing he hadn't yet tried were the old whitefire-throwing ability he'd been born with. With just his thoughts, Dreyfuss readied a bolt of pure whitefire, and sat and pondered it. It seemed too simple a solution; surely his captors had already thought of the whitefire and it's ability to change and morph the workings and properties of mechanisms and materials. As he thought and meditated, the bolt began to change it's nature in response to his thoughts. Mana strings of benign manipulation became forcible arcs of chaotic servoid effort. |

The fire that normally would merely start and augment the flames in a forge became chaos fire, and then outright hellfire, the very  thing that his uncle Caractacus Dreyfuss had used against the forces of evil back in the ancestral home in the Jefferson Swamps of Old Fredonia. Nothing but the mind of the wielder could withstand such a fire.

The Lens of Intent that he had researched in the Corps of Cadets library that had been installed aboard the St. Elmo became a focal emitter formed of psionic concentration. He turned his mind's eye to the door of adamant and platinum that barred his cell, and began a limited release of power. He was gratified to see that the metal that had rejected the Bright Ones' power began to glow redly and then slough away as it melted in the face of the horrific onslaught of energy.

The guards outside of the cell had been playing cards and laughing at the racket put up by the Commodore's efforts to escape. One, a young corporal who had lost several shillings to the game, began to cough as an acrid stench began to filter through the room.

"Bilby, you OK lad?" The Gaol-sergeant asked. The young fellow was a bit of a layabout, but the sergeant had taken him under his wing, and was genuinely worried that his protegee might be in some serious distress. 

"Dunno, s-Sarge," Bilby choked out.

Then came the cry as another of the card-playing guards noticed what was up with the cell door.  "AAAIIEEEEE!!" he screamed as molten platinum suddenly burst from the white-hot spot that had appeared in the outer surface of the hitherto impregnable door, and meteored through his chest, launching him backward and finally burying itself in the far wall.

"STAND TO!" The sergeant screamed, and the guards sprang to their feet, some lunging for their stacked arc-rifles, and and others struggling to drag heavy arc-pistols form their holsters as they formed a skirmish line before the rapidly-sagging, white-hot door. They began firing desperately, arcs of plasmic energy slicing through the now-molten surface.

A dark miasma suddenly erupted from the corner of the wall behind them, and out of it leaped an indistinct form seemingly made of shadow itself, which slashed past the skirmish line from the rear, and paused as the demoniacally-beautiful Eurasian Features of Corporal Harper-Chen materialized, her fangs burying themselves in the sergeant's neck.

Other, more -human figures followed the misty form of the corporal into the Gaol's front room, and the rest of the skirmish line was silenced. A few latecomers stood agape as what remained of the cell door sloughed to the floor and spread out like a glowing puddle of lava, and at the appearance of the Commodore himself, standing just beyond inside the cell.

Harper-Chen finished her short meal and turned to face the commodore, wiping her mouth delicately with a silk lace handkerchief.

" Good evening, Father," she said. Several cadets and mercenaries whirled around and gaped at her

F-FATHER!? stammered Cadet Sergeant Tollchock.

"Well," Dreyfuss drawled in a half-amazed, half-bemused voice,  "Her sire was my wife, and as her fledgling I suppose she could be called her "daughter," but I'm not sure the Filial ties extend to the foster pater familis," he said laconically. "

"Just what in the Blue Hells is going on, Meri?"

[MWBailey]

"We're here to help you break jail, sir," Meri said with a mischievous smirk, "Though it would appear we are a bit late."

Alarums had already begun to clamor all through the prison as the guards awoke to the fact that their impregnable establishment was in fact not completely impregnable after all.

"I think, if we can escape through your same method of arrival, you may prove to right on time," Dreyfuss answered with the beginnings of a roguish chuckle slicing along the edge of his own smirk. "Shall we?"

"We shall," Meri answered, just as a the sound of a host of jackbooted feet slammed it's way around the far corner of the hallway that lay just outside the door of the cellblock which had been set aside for the Commodore. Voices shouted above the din, giving orders for deployment and the readying of covering fire, as the rescue party and it's charge filed back through the swirling cloud of black vapor, which suddenly was sucked back into the Void and disappeared, just as a  portable ram in the hands of two burly guardsmen splintered the door and set its remnants flying into the room.

-------------------------------------------------

At the same moment that the rescue party's leader had made its murderous entrance outside the commodore's cell, a certain cadre of men and women in black wool three-piece suits stealthily entered the Tinker's Row airdock and insinuated themselves past the rebel guards and Air Rangers and aboard the St. Elmo with a stealth that might have seemed uncanny to a casual observer. A bare three minute later, Meri and her compatriots walked out of her black fog and onto the midships deck below the envelope of the aerial battlewagon, and scattered to their assigned places, as Dreyfuss and Meri briskly walked through the far forecastle hatch and onward to the bridge in the prow of the former gunboat hull. At a nod from the commodore, and pleasantries between himself and the newly-reinstalled Captain Ishmael, the ship shuddered and began to rise, as her lofting and her ducted fan drive pulled and launched her into the air. She quickly rose above the rooftops amid a swirling cloud of dust, debris and snagged laundry much more quickly than was strictly safe or legal, as in the near distance three tardy Aether league patrol ships struggled into the air to give chase.

"we may have to fire on our own people," Ishmael intoned.

"I think not," a voice behind Ishmael said in a decisive tone. "Commodore, stand down your guards or my people will be forced to deal with them."

"NO MERI!" Dreyfuss said, whirling about and laying a hand on the young vampire's arm. "He can blast you to dust before you can get in five foot of 'im."

Meri rocked back on her heels, a slightly fond, if feral, look on her face. So, the man does care, she mused to herself.

"Yes, Sir. Though I am so very hungry just now..."

Mr. Black, commander of the Black Suits and Sir Charles Tayle's right-hand lieutenant, stood not fourteen feet away behind the helm control panel, where Ishmael stood. Blue-white arcs began to flash their harsh auras into the expansive windshield of the bridge, as they lashed at the hull of the St Elmo. The patrol ships had begun to fire on the unresponsive air battleship. "Black!" Dreyfuss snarled," What's the meaning of this? Why's Sir Charles interfering?"

"We're trying to help you, Sir Jaisen, as per Himself's orders," The other man answered coolly.

---------------------------------------

[The Corsair]

[OOC note, I know I've long since fallen idle on this story but please don't stop posting, I've enjoyed every post. Something about this takes me back.]

[MWBailey]

[OOC note, I know I've long since fallen idle on this story but please don't stop posting, I've enjoyed every post. Something about this takes me back.]

(No worries, I plan to keep it going as long as possible. As many as possible of my own characters from various RPs are going to show up, plus some new (or "new-ish?") ones).

[MWBailey]

Mr. Black spoke aside to one of his cadre, "Miss Spode, if you please?"

The Blacksuit thus addressed pulled a box with a curled-horn mouthpiece from the depths of her coat, and said words into it to the effect that by the order of the Home Office, the Aether League patrol craft were to stand down and cease firing upon the St. Elmo. With remarkable suddenness, the arcs of energy ceased and the ships fell to the rear of Dreyfuss' ship.

"WE must speak whilst you get under way, Commodore," Mr Black said. "The situation here is complicated and a bit of a tinderbox at the moment' you and your eclectic crew may be able to help with that..."

[MWBailey]

"This has  been a rather unwelcoming homecoming," Dreyfuss muttered. What was with all those accusations at the inquest? and why  the sudden end tocross-examination? you people practically immurred me like that Russian Commodore did all those people in that mirror of his," Dreyfuss exclaimed.

"Welll..." Mr. Black stroked his chin between thumb and forefinger as he (apparently) considered his explanation. "It seems that you're nearly home, but not quite, Sir Jaisen." Black said in an enigmatic tome of voice. "Certain entities in our current regime seem to be detersmined to keep that from you, but in so doing, they are playing a very dangerous game with time and intra-temporal causality," Black continued, "Or so the Dirty Gloves would have it."

Dirty Gloves, Dreyfuss fumed to himself. The Special Branch's Scientific (though that term only loosely fit their activities) arm, the very lot who had found a way to augment the St. Elmo's D-Hopper Drive. Those augmentations made possible his Science Branch cadets' alteration of the drive to allow forward and backward dimensional shifting, in addition to the original sideways shifts - but some of the more arcane "augmentations" had caused some rather frightening accidents and discoveries, The St. Elmo's ship's doctor's therapy cases being just one aspect of those other effects.

"So, I take it the damned Dirty Gloves want me to find out exactly what kinds of problems our presence here is causing, beyond the immediately obvious?" Dreyfuss growled.