[5/9/2001 12:33:27 PM | Jared Edwards] Vacuumboy was treated to nothing except a bird's eye view of a gorgeous waitress handing a typical drink ticket to a typical bartender at a typical bar...except that the bartender looked awfully familiar... "Here you go, Brenton," said the redheaded member of the wait staff. "Thank you, Brooke. Are these for our regulars?" asked the bartender now known as Brenton. "Yeah," said Brooke, "they're so cute. Too bad the shirtless one is just drinking coke tonight." "Ah, just Coke...we'll see," said Brenton as Brooke walked off to tend to another set of budding alcoholics. [5/14/2001 7:51:41 PM | stAllio! nGsta] vacuumboy wandered off to explore the kitchen, which looked remarkably like any standard restaurant kitchen, with trash cans full of sugar, a disorganized but disappointingly commonplace grill area, a walk-in freezer that was stocked with only recognizable cuts of meat... in other words, nothing in the least bit suspicious. disappointed, vb floated back toward the bar. once there, he saw brenton the bartender once more, mixing drinks with an obvious speed & skill. this guy was good, performing tom-cruise-in-cocktail-style feats of mixology without even an audience to cheer him on. there was still something strangely familiar about him, but vb couldn't place what that might be. another waitress, not quite as cute as brooke but still clearly hired at least in part for her cleavage, appeared with another drink ticket. brenton glanced at it. "oh, i'm going to have to run to the back to grab some more creme de menthe," he told the waitress. vacuumboy followed the bartender toward the bar's stockroom. as he did, he began to notice what felt like a gentle wind blowing against him, coming from the direction they were headed. he suspected that some back entrance must be open, letting a breeze in, but he did not see brenton's clothes or indeed anything else being rustled by the air movement. the further they went, the stronger the wind became. brenton seemed totally unfazed by it, but vacuumboy was now experiencing noticeable resistance. it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to move forward. he was even beginning to feel, somewhere inside him, that he should not move forward. he should just turn around & leave. he resisted this temptation, but kept moving forward, despite the fact that it was becoming increasingly more difficult to do so. his attempts to follow brenton down the hallway were now becoming a struggle. then, down at the end of the hall, vacuumboy could see the door to the stockroom. it was closed, so there was no way an open window or door could be to blame for the wind. besides, brenton was having no trouble, his clothes not being blown around at all. it was now almost impossible for vb to move forward even a few inches without being pushed backward & losing ground. he could just barely make out some kind of graffiti on the door at the end of the hall. it looked almost like a gang symbol except that it didn't represent any gang that he'd battled against (& having been the town's preeminent superhero since the team's breakup, he'd battled against many a gangbanger). still, it seemed familiar to him on some level he could only feel in his stomach, not register in his brain. brenton opened the door & closed it behind him. vacuumboy could not follow. even trying to move any closer to the door was now giving him an enormous headache, & he found that he had even lost a few feet in distance while he'd thought he was moving foward. something was seriously wrong. he raced back to the dining area to tell the others what he'd discovered, but wasn't prepared for what he found there. his teammates were all clearly drunk. murray had somehow acquired the waitress brooke's nametag, & was taunting the girl to try to take it back. progger was tinkering with one of the trivia machines, boasting how he was going to enable it to run all the best drinking games. quiet girl had found some random male townie & was pouring out her life's story to him, now seemingly unashamed of her ultra-deep voice (the townie appeared slightly turned off by it, but apparently not enough to stop hitting on her). even the hunter, who only minutes ago had proclaimed that he would not drink tonight, was swaying significantly as he grabbed a full ashtray from a nearby table & dumped it on his head, mumbling something about his "purple battle helmet". vacuumboy had no idea what to do. [5/26/2001 8:47:16 PM | Jared Edwards] Meanwhile, back in the stockroom, Brenton had shifted aside a few crates to reveal a rift that was black, sparkling with blue lightning. It was a time rift. Through it, he watched, at last, the demise of Uht. He had seen the fall of Villainous Punch and the development/ destruction of E.V.I.L. Soon, he would know how the Hunter had returned from being comsumed. Then, he would know what he needed to do. They would all pay for having left him at the mercy of those druids... [5/27/2001 6:46:34 PM | Jared Edwards] Gwar was relatively unconcerned about most of his adversaries. Only two of them posed any type of real threat to his revenge. It seemed that his plan to get rid of Stallio first had been successful. Now, if he could only figure out what to do about Vacuumboy. It wasn't as if any dimension, much less a vacuum dimension, could hold him at bay with his rift powers intact, but he wasn't exactly sure how to deal with a transdimensional ghost, either. Meanwhile, in the land of the Fae... [5/30/2001 10:29:09 PM | stAllio! nGsta] "chet? chet?" a voice drifted in from somewhere. "can you hear me?" "my name... isn't... chet..." "you've been a lot of help to us, chet. we've managed to locate the potion. it's only a matter of time before they have the antidote, & simultaneously a different team is working on scrying the source, wherever this came from." "...i feel..." "yes, i'm afraid we're going to have to keep you under observation for while or two, to make sure any side effects are under control. so far you're doing pretty well." another voice, a voice that rang of authority, of importance, now spoke. "what is it? what does the potion do?" the original voice replied, "it's a basic mass enamoration potion, fundamentally. but there's a catch; it's spiked. humans who consume it are charmed, but those of seelie blood are struck ill. this is no first-level mage stuff; it was masked incredibly well. i'm even tempted to say it was designed specifically to take stAllio! out of commission while his friends could be brainwashed." "...not only his friends, but perhaps the entire town..." the authoritative voice trailed off.