< Session Three | Home Page | The Sing Of Fire >

Mi Tao suddenly faces having to spend many Hero Points ... er, searching the room. She finds ... in an amazing, turning-point sort of event ... Cyrus, it turns out, kept a diary. A digital setup, and cracked the password fairly quickly, even as she downloads it to take with her. Lots of stuff about Fix ten years ago, but another cluster about another year ago, back when they last visited. Most recent reference was in two files from seven months ago -- a couple of people had come by to ask about him over a couple of days. A male and a female, on different visits. This was a month or two before Fix's death.

The early references, from his visits, indicates some non-mechanical, covert abilities that Fix was not known -- to use -- for.

She leaves, with a note that she'd been there and had tried to care for him.

Lui Kwon, meantime, is heading over with his wife to meet with the captain, to get the stuff over to the ship. The captain is not pleased to see her. "What ... is that prairie harpie doing here?" He indicates that she's his backup, and gives her a knife to demonstrate it. He claims she's a changed woman and will be helpful.

So, Hera does this thing with her tongue ... to distract the crowd whilst the goods are being moved ... And Chen Li Heinz does not appreciate Hera's distraction, which is to use her tongue to whip the crowd into a lynching frenzy.

The offended party arrives, comes up on stage. She has hasty, angry words with her dad, then comes to Chen. "Sasha?"

"I'm really sorry abut this." Then smacks the hell out of him. The crowd cheers. Chen takes it. "I want to talk to this man alone ..." she says, and they go back into a room behind the orchestra shell.

"Hi." "Hi." "This is embarrassing." "Really? Because ..."

It turns out she'd kind of complained about it all to her friend, having had a bad week, and her friend had written a song, and then folks had heard it ... and it had kind of snowballed.

He suggests that she just insist on his exile, but she thinks the crowd is beyond that. Perhaps they ought to get married? Chen opines that probably wouldn't be a good idea, and then, when she looks a bit disappointed, hastens to point out that it's him, not her.

Well, then, she suggests, they need a new song, to counter the folk song. Even though neither of them are particularly good singers, or, for that matter, songwriters.

The captain and Lui slip by while the crowd is clustered by the band shell. But criminal elements are at the edge of the crowd, watching the mob, but also watching the ship, and some of them start moseying down toward the ship, behind the captain on the mule. Lui radios the captain, to warn her, even as the shuttle with Mi Tao and Baz Wu is arriving.

Bethany Belle starts organizing an ambush just inside the ship, as Lui slips into the general store to try and make himself look like a Reaver. He starts his cunning plan by shouting from inside the store about Reavers, then charging into the crowd, as Hera, his wife, begins to scream like a harridan.

Even as Chen and Sasha are coming back on stage to sing their song ...

"REAVERS!" screams someone, and the crowd is in an instant frenzy.

The ship takes off, dumps the ambushed bandits out the back at a 45-degree angle, then swoops down with harnesses trailing. Lui jumps onto one, Chen (grabbing onto Sasha, as he still thinks Reavers are attacking) taking hold of the other, and they off ...

Sasha and Chen have an awkward few moments, as she declines the unvoiced suggestion she come along, and he declines to force the issue, but he suggests he might want to visit again and she suggests he might want to send her a message on occasion, too. The ship drops her off.

At least the crew gets paid off for this gig, which is nice.

logged by Dave Hill