As soon as the new day dawned, Cliodhna put on her mask and stalked over to the salesman's shop. She burst in the door, and suddenly he seemed quite small and intimidated. She asked him if he remembered her, and lifted her mask for a moment. He nodded in fear that he did, and she asked why he tried to cheat a centurian. He stuttered that he hadn't tried to cheat her, and she said she'd been asking around, and that he'd charged her triple what he should have, not to mention that he had a reputation for making faulty fetters. He started stammering his apologies, and quickly handed back all her money. She also demanded to see the contract she'd signed for paying him back, and he gave that to her and she destroyed it. On her way out she told the salesman that if the fetter turned out to be bad, she'd have him soulforged into her own personal bootscraper. The salesman looked terrified, and as the door swung shut she heard him repeating over and over that the fetter was of the best quality.
Cliodhna grinned under her mask as she joined up with the group. It was starting out to be a great day! Her group's assignment was to patrol the docks and the surrounding area. As they marched past the docks, an argument started to break out between Aaron and Ray, so she had to separate them. While she was distracted with this, Brianna and one of the others noticed a huge form walking past a window on the top floor of a high-rise in front of them. Cliodhna turned and looked at where they were pointing-- suddenly sprouted huge eagle's wings out of her back-- and flew up to look into the window. When she got close enough to peer in, a huge claw suddenly shot through the window and tried to swipe at her chest. She was able to dodge enough that the claw didn't hit her, but it was so close that she heard it whistle as it cut through the air. She grabbed her Mac-10 and started firing into the building.
The rest of the group had been running after her up into the building, and after her round of shots, they burst into the room. There was nothing there but a large nihil swirling on the floor by the wall between the windows. Cliodhna came through the wall to stand with the group. She and Brianna searched the ground, and Brianna found pieces of a bellwatcher's mask, and Cliodhna found a crystal used to power soul-forced guns. Brianna took all the found items and used Fatalism to discover what had happened here. She saw the large spectre come through the nihil and kill the bellwatcher who had been assigned to watch the nihil, and kill the bellwatcher's two companions as they ran for the door.
Cliodhna knew she better report this immediately, but as she flew out of the window again, a huge tempest-ship came hurtling into port. Just when everyone thought it would crash, it miraculously came to rest in an empty dock without smashing into anything. Eerily, there was no crew to be seen on the decks. Cliodhna came to rest next to the harbormaster while the rest of the group caught up. She found someone nearby who agreed to go get an officer who she could report the nihil and ship to. The harbormaster looked the new ship over and said that it was called the Lassiter and was 2 days late. Cliodhna flew all the way around the ship. She didn't see a single soul, but saw that the back of the ship had a huge hole in it. She flew back and told the harbormaster and group about it. The group decided to go on board and check things out.
The bottom decks were filled with crates. They broke one open and saw that it was filled with obeli (soulforged money). Cliodhna ordered that no one take a single one, and ushered everyone up to the next deck. No one was there, so they went up to the next deck and found the forge. There were cages all around the room filled with drones (a mindless Wraith)...all but one cage, which was empty and looked as though it had been burst out of. And when they looked at the forge, they saw a cauldron filled with molten fire and half of the smith sticking out. The group figured that the captain must have caught a spectre, but where was the captain and rest of the crew?
The group warily made their way to the captain's room. When they opened the door, they had to force themselves to go in. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in splattered Wraithly gore-- disembodied parts flung everywhere...it must be the captain and crew. Written in the gore on the walls was Latin words. Cliodhna was kicking herself for turning her mother down when she offered to teach Cliodhna what she knew of Latin! Cliodhna realized that she'd never been interested in cultivating her Roman-half, and pondered that for a few seconds. Dr. Steele was able to use his medical Latin to translate some of the words-- something about finding the boy...then a sacrifice...and a date about 2 weeks from now. The group decided they better get this thing translated, copied the words down, and left the ship.
There was an officer on the docks waiting for them. Cliodhna reported both the nihil and what they'd found on board the Lassiter to him. He told the group that they'd done a good job, and ordered them to report to Daniel, the head of the Grim Legion, for further orders. They immediately went to Daniel, and he told them that he was assigning them the job of finding out what happened to the ship. He suggested that they go to Librarian to have him translate the Latin, so they next went to Librarian who translated the words. They said, to the effect, that the boy (Matthew) had been found, and that the Blighted Sun (Markova's followers) would sacrifice him two weeks from now in order to wake Markova up. The group conferred quickly, and decided that Angelo and William needed to be warned immediately.
Cliodhna suddenly got an idea, and using the library's resources, she found the phone number for Jack and Marie-Claire-- they were living in Canada! Cliodhna explained to the group that Jack was an Immortal, and Marie was a highly-skilled Garou warrior-- what better people to protect Matthew? She told them that they were dear friends of the family who she'd grown up calling Uncle Jack and Aunt Marie. The group went to the nearest phone booth outside where Ray took over the body of a female bum and made her call the number. Jack answered, and Cliodhna told Ray what to say. Jack was excited to hear from "little Cliodhna," and with the last strength Ray had, he delivered the massage that Jack and Marie had to come to the Met in New York City immediately to help Amon's father or all would be lost. Jack agreed to come, and the connection broke.
As the group was making their way to Matthew's house, Cliodhna told Brianna that she'd noticed Brianna's special feelings for Matthew, and was wondering what that was about. Brianna blushed, and then explained that Matthew was the Ahuru Atepa, and that the two of them had been destined by fate to be together-- that they were in love. At this news, Cliodhna got very excited and clarified, "Atepa? You mean Amon's father?" and started going off about how her mother knew them, and how much she admired Amon. Brianna stopped her in confusion-- she didn't know that Amon was Atepa's son! She told Cliodhna that she only knew about Atepa's daughter, who was the Ahura that the group had met earlier. While she was letting that soak in, she asked Cliodhna to tell her everything she'd heard about Atepa. Cliodhna would start talking about Atepa, and then quickly go into more about Amon, and Brianna would have to stop her and remind her that she just wanted to hear about Atepa. Cliodhna told her everything she knew about him, and most importantly, that he had told Cliodhna's mother to have her because she would play an important role in the fight against Markova, so she owed Atepa her life. Brianna seemed satisfied by this information, and they finally reached Matthew's house, and Angelo greeted them.
They warned Angelo about the message in Latin, and told him that they had two allies-- Jack and Marie-- who were coming to help protect Matthew. Cliodhna also pulled Angelo aside and told him how she'd confronted the fetter-salesman about his dishonesty, and gave Angelo double his money back. He was very pleased by this, but told her to keep it for him until he could use it as a Wraith again. During all the chit-chat, several peoples' Shadows started doing their dirty work, and soon Cliodhna and Ray were convinced that maybe what they needed to do was to kill Matthew now so Ahuru could be reborn and the sacrifice would never happen. They started trying to pursuade Brianna and the others that this was the right thing to do. They were so convincing that everyone started getting confused as to what should happen, until Cliodhna finally suggested in a very firm way to Brianna that she should go to Matthew in order to stir Ahuru's spirit within him, and then ask Ahuru what they should do. Brianna agreed to this reluctantly, and the group peeked into the house to see where the family members were-- they needed to avoid Thomas.
It was Matthew's birthday. There were adults and children in the living room for a party, but it was sadly obvious that the kids had been forced to go to the party, wanted to go home, and that Matthew was well aware of this and not having a good time, either. Cliodhna remembered her own childhood of not feeling like she fit in with the Garou children, and suddenly wanted to use her Wraithly powers to teach the kids a lesson. Her companions had to talk her out of it, and suddenly Thomas walked around the house because he sensed their presenses. Brianna and Cliodhna threw themselves into the house just in time while Dr. Steele, Jonny, and Ray hid somewhere else, but Thomas caught Aaron and ordered him off his property with threats of exorcism. Aaron gave him a hard time, but finally left.
Meanwhile, Brianna and Cliodhna snuck into Matthew's room and hid in his closet. They were quickly joined by Dr. Steel, Jonny, and Ray, and the closet suddenly got crowded. They waited until Matthew had been tucked into bed and was sleeping, and then Brianna crept over to his side and communicated with Ahuru's spirit. She was told that if Matthew was killed before the fated time, Ahuru would not be in his full powers, and the fate that was prophisied to happen wouldn't happen. Cliodhna came to Brianna's side, and while Brianna was explaining the message she'd received, Brianna saw Matthew turn over, and it was Scar-- the man who had been her abusive boyfriend in life, who had turned into a Spectre in death, and who Brianna had killed. Brianna gave a little scream and started in fear, but then the vision dissappeared and she calmed herself. It was just her Shadow playing tricks on her again.
The group returned to the Lassiter and asked the harbormaster to tell them everything about it. It was a ship that made regular rounds through the tempest to harvest drones to forge into obeli. That was it. Cliodhna led the group to the Ulysses and respectfully ordered the captain to take them on the Lassiter's route so they could look around. All they found were broken boards floating in the water. They arrived back at the harbor, and Brianna went up to the Lassiter, placed her hands on it, and received a vision about what had happend to it. While it was sailing, a ship carrying hundreds of spectres approached it. The spectre-captain ordered his "men" to ram the Lassiter, but as they were approaching to ram it, he noticed that it was the wrong ship. Even so, his ship still came on and rammed the Lassiter while the spectres on board took up the chant, "wrong ship! wrong ship!" They boarded the Lassiter, did their dirty work, and that's all Brianna was shown in the vision.
Cliodhna asked the harbormaster about the other ships that were sailing that day, and which ones the Lassiter could have been mistaken for. The only ship that could fit that description, he said, was an Amenti embassy ship. It was headed back for the Amenti kingdom, so they had no further information on its whereabouts. Brianna suggested that the group go back to the Met to speak with Ahura about this ship, so it was to there that they went next.
When they arrived, they noticed that the building was much more heavily guarded now. Cliodhna asked one of the guards what was going on, and why there were so many more guards stationed there, but the guard didn't move. Cliodhna stepped a step closer and ordered the guard to answer her, as she was a centurion of the Hierarchy. The guard's head turned to face her, and he opened his mouth and music came out. Suddenly all the guards turned to face her and opened their mouths and music filled the air. Cliodhna looked at Brianna in confusion, and Brianna said they were speaking in Amenti, and then hurried the group into the building. The lady at the front desk said that Ahura would see no one. Cliodhna asked why the building was so heavily guarded, and the lady said something to the effect that the Amenti didn't trust the Hierarchy any longer, and were guarding themselves against Hierarchy assault. Cliodhna was very confused, but Brianna ordered the lady to ask for an audience with Ahura in the name of the Lady of Fate, and luckily, an audience was granted.
They entered Ahura's chambers and approached her. Ahura looked very upset, and fixed her gaze on each of them. Cliodhna-- remembering that Brianna had revealed that Ahura was Atepa's daughter-- excitedly bowed low before Ahura and greeted her, "Ahura, daughter of great Atepa!" Ahura narrowed her eyes, and the group saw the marks of fatalism swirling on her skin. She was reading Cliodhna's marks of fate...finding out everything about her. Suddenly she jumped to her feet and advanced angrily on Cliodhna. "You! Get out of this building!" Cliodhna took a step back in surprise. The rest of the group buzzed in confusion. "Why? What's wrong?" Cliodhna stammered. Ahura started going off about Cliodhna being the daughter of evil, and commanded her to get out of the building again. Suddenly Cliodhna snapped and stepped forward, getting into Ahura's face. "Don't ye DARE talk about my mother that way!" she said in a calm and deadly voice. Suddenly Ahura's guards started advancing on Cliodhna. Cliodhna told them not to touch her-- that she would leave. Calling Ahura a few choice words and spitting at her feet, she left the room. Once she was behind the doors, she quickly went invisible using Argos, and listened in on what happened in the room next.
Brianna asked Ahura what that was all about, and Ahura told her to read Cliodhna's marks of fate and find out for herself. Brianna said that they needed help-- that an Amenti ship might be in danger-- but Ahura coldly told the group to leave and never come back. She chastised Brianna for letting the "daughter of evil" in, and for allying with her. The group was ushered out of the building-- Cliodhna following behind-- and once they were outside, Cliodhna went visible again. She and Aaron began stalking back and forth uttering the most hair-curling obscenities they could think of, when suddenly Cliodhna noticed Jack and Marie-Claire standing in front of the building, scanning the crowd of the living as if looking for someone!
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Cliodhna couldn't appear to the living yet-- she could only whisper to them-- but Brianna could. She appeared before Jack and Marie and explained that Cliodhna was there, but they wouldn't be able to see her...because she was dead. Jack was very upset by this, but listened carefully for Cliodhna's voice. When she first whispered to them, they were very unnerved, but finally calmed themselves and listened to her message. She told them that she and her mother were dead, and asked if Marie would help her with communicating with Turtle to find out what had happened to her mother...she didn't trust that Ahura-whore's words anymore. Marie was very sad to hear about Amber's death, and enthusiastically agreed to help Cliodhna with contacting her. Jack was impatient to hear about what he had to do. Cliodhna asked if he remembered Amon's father Atepa, and Jack said he did. She told him about how his spirit was in the boy Matthew's body, "ripening," as it were, until 2 weeks from today when fate decreed that Matthew would die and Atepa, or Ahuru, would enter the Wraith-world again. She also told him about the message in the boat, the Blighted Sun, and Markova, and said that Jack and Marie had been sent for to help Angelo and William protect Matthew until his appointed death.
Jack and Marie knew all about protecting a target until it was supposed to die and then making sure that it died the right way, so Cliodhna didn't have to explain anything more. She gave them the directions to Matthew's house and how to recognize Angelo, and the couple quickly left for the house. During all this time, Brianna had been watching Cliodhna. She finally sighed and concentrated her eyes to read the marks of fate all over Cliodhna's body. Her eyes widened, she took a step back, and let out a gasp...
