[Cyril Darkcloud]

Joseph

There he goes again! Run, run, run. Always in a hurry. Don’t seem this kid does anything without being in panic mode. He sighs audibly. “Slow down, kid, the big guy’ll need a minute to pick up the dame and running around upset ain’t no sensible way to get anything done.” He stands and with a sweep of his arm resumes speaking, “Hell, take our buddy Echo here. You don’t see him getting all worked up. But then, again, it ain’t his job to get all worked up. Ain’t that right, pal? You see it seems to me that we got us a bit a of confusion here about your status. Larry here thinks he made you and you seem to have this killer rep as some kinda representative of this shadow guy what built this joint.” He stops a moment for effect and then continues.

“Now, I admit I ain’t the sharpest guy in the world, but I just don’t see it that way. You see fellas, what we got here ain’t no powerful spirit. What we got here is a security system.” He now speaks with a confident fluidity about his words that allows for no interruption. “A state of the art security device, to be sure, and a guy like me knows a thing or two about security systems let me tell ya, but a security device all the same. You see mages are funny folks but they tend to realize that stuff like exploding runes and dangerous enchanted monsters ain’t much good for killing guys like us who just happen to wander through their towers if there ain’t no way to activate the runes or to let the monsters know that lunch is being catered. That’s where our buddy Echo comes in, right, pal? Sometimes a guy can break into a joint like this and what he runs into are things called shriekers, those guys go all the way back to the old 1e Monster Manual, which are like great big mushrooms. But these things react to light and sound and motion and start making with ear-splitting screams when something bothers them. Of course, shriekers are strictly amateur stuff. Other guys what want to fine tune the alarm system a bit use a special version of the old spell Magic Mouth – you know that one where a mouth suddenly appears on a door or a wall or an autographed picture of some extra-planar celebrity and makes with a bit of speakin’ or a bit of yellin’. Hell, I even seen one of those mouths spit fire on ‘ol Jimmy Lightfingers during a job a while back. Sad what happened to Jimmy..... but hey, life’s full of tough breaks, right?”

“Echo here,” he says with a flourish of his arm, “is a lot like the old Magic Mouth spell. Fancier maybe, but not all that different.” From his pockets he pulls out a slender metal rod, hooked at the end, which resembles a lockpick. He tosses it into the air, withdraws what seems to be a skeleton key and tosses that upward also. He then produces three balls which he likewise tosses upward and with a graceful series of movements begins to juggle the items. “In my line of work you learn a thing or two about alarm systems. Sometimes you try and disarm ‘em. Sometimes you just let them go off, kinda like we done here with our buddy Echo. And that’s because why the guy using the alarm thinks it works in his favor, sometimes a decent alarm system is a thief’s best friend.” His arms and hands move with a grace that even the most nimble of elves would be hard put to duplicate and he begins to bounce the balls one by one while still juggling the other items. “Things like these take a minute to warm up and, call me strange, but I like to juggle a bit while I wait. As the balls bounce a few times mouths begin to form on them. “There! Ain’t these things great! Cost me a fortune they did, but they do come in handy when a guy’s in a fix like this.” Pocketing the key and the pick, he resumes juggling the balls which begin to form sounds. “Of course, the down side to being an echo is that echoes ain’t able to think all that much for themselves, hell they can only speak what the one they’re echoing says for them. Stop acting according to the plan, and well you got a bit of confusion. And," he addresses Echo, "guys like Larry and the big guy here, well they ain’t nothing if not masters of what the smart folks call improvisation. I bet you even believed the kid really was worried there.” With a series of swift movements he tosses the balls which begin bouncing wildly about the room and out into the corridors reproducing snatches of Larry’s and Echo’s conversation. With each bounce, the sounds multiply.

Turning to Larry he says, “Well what are we waiting for?”

[ 11-07-2005, 04:25 PM: Message edited by: Cyril Darkcloud ]