Description: The third step of the journey brings us to an office suite in a skyscraper in Southtown. Here where many meetings were conducted comes the last in the name of Blackjack. Where Elle Belmounte once stood, our journey recounts the sequence before her fall and mysterious disappearance. Where last she walked and spoke amongst us. Aeternum vale.
Night time, in one of the commercial sky scrapers of Southtown. Many of these floors were leased to different companies and this particular floor was no different, seemingly entirely unimportant. Currently leased by a financial company, there might be a million reasons for someone to find this place interesting, the sort of records someone could steal here could be useful for identity theft. There might be baking information here, there might even be money in the forms of bonds, it was anybody's guess what a financial company like SouthWestern Mutual kept, a fledging group just trying to make a stake in a fairly down economy.
It was dark now and the office lights were all off. While the building employed some security, they weren't very serious about patrolling every office suite, especially not the ones on the fourteenth floor, of course it skipped a floor after twelve in the numbering, as many buildings did. It was here in this darkened office that our story continues.
Lights danced in the windows, through the shadows of the office, over the furniture and into the darkened corners. It was here that a window was opened and one particular intruder made her way in. She was not dressed to be a thief, but she didn't have to be. No one looked up windows that high at night, they were rarely even locked since scaling the side of a building that far was generally out, how this intruder got in was a matter of small confusion, having climbed a rope down from the roof, but accessing the building roof was no easy step. To do that she had to enter the hotel across the street, and somehow managed to zip from the rooftop of that to the one of this building, using the oddest of implements: a simple broom stick.
Yes, this was the place, though the furnishings were different, more positive minded and colorful, the space was the same. Fixing her black shades in the night, the strange intruder kept her flashlight trained on the doors until she found what she was looking for, the conference room.
As Naerose steps into the conference room, she finds a man sitting up against a wall there, with a little glass pipe he's smoking out of, holding a lighter to a burning white rock that bubbles and sizzles. He exhales as he lowers the pipe, peering at Naerose with bleary eyes. "Jes what in the /Hell/ do yew want?" he asks with a hint of irritation, having decided to squat in the building for the night. "Yew wanna hit this?" he asks after several awkward moments, offering Naerose his crack pipe.
"What? Whose there?" Naerose insists and totally has to fix her shades before she can see Bred. Why does she wear shades in doors at night? Feeling a little more secure when she's offered a puff from the pipe, the red clad woman steps farther into the conference room, "Huh," she replies to the offer and then steps farther in and shakes her head, politely casting her beam of light elsewhere, "Nah, I'm totally here for something else."
Walking toward one of the shelves, the red witch pulls out from under her hat a small key, sure enough the shelf is locked, but it was a cheap lock and it hadn't been changed, because her key worked. "I used to work here, ya know?" Of course he doesn't know. Wasting no time, Naerose begins to pull the projector out and hook up the plugs and wires until it looks like it might actually do something. For the final piece Naerose pulls a small thumb drive out of her floppy red hat and then plugs it into the device.
"I just need to do a little presentation here, if you don't mind, you can sit in, but I don't have any punch or pie."
What a pity. Taking a seat at the head of the table, Naerose pulls one more thing from her hat, a folder. Flipping on the screen display and having to wait a few moments as the projector heats up, the witch finishes her preparation by tying a black tie around her neck, which looks ridiculously silly considering her red clad witches outfit.
"Today's presentation, Heartless Efficiency, the fall of Elle of Blackjack."
Bred shakily climbs up to his feet as Naerose makes herself at home, blinking about the odd situation he's suddenly found himself in. "Huh...What pie?" he asks, before hitting his pipe again, puffing on it and sucking in those sweet, sweet fumes. He peers at the projector, and then back at Naerose. "Elle?"
"Yes please be seated," Naerose says, while trying to make this seem serious and professional. In a way it might be a very bizarre scene, but if you were high on a drug, one can only imagine. A witch giving a conference in the middle of the night in a office building she likely broke into. Setting her broom on the table to lean next to her, the witch begins,
"It was in this very office building that building from the success of the Jinchuu tournement, or more specifically the contracts that occurred during and before the tournament. Elle was widely hated, widely regarded as a villian and widely sought to punish for everyone that she had betrayed in the past. Virtually every organization Blackjack ever touched later found a dagger in it's back, that is with the exception of one of her most trusted." Naerose slides a photo graph down the table of a youngish looking woman, with a statuesque look on her face, "Aislinn. We may never know whom she worked for, but it was not Blackjack. But regardless, it was in this room that the last contract Elle was ever to take was given out to her minions." The projector changes pictures to a small island Banana republic. "We do not know much about the contractor, and perhaps the history of betrayal finally caught up to Elle, but her last assignment was to overthrow a government on this island." Two more pictures, one a very low quality cell phone shot of an immaculately beautiful woman and a punky looking young girl. "Ayame and Marise." Naerose states.
Bred sinks into a seat, confused, and wondering if this is a weird dream. Please let it be a sex dream! He turns to look at the projector, his jaw hanging slackly. "Ayame...And Marise? What now? Yew jes slow down there, lady, why would anyone wanna overthrow the government there?" He sets his crack pipe down, and pulls a large plastic bag out of his vest, filled with beef jerky.
"Excellent question," Naerose states and then flips the slide, the next one is a vague financial graph. It displayed the gross profit for the Blackjack organization, each quarter showed significant jumps until the last one where it dropped off the planet to zero. Naerose stands up and uses her broom as a pointer to show various parts of this slide, "You see here, the profits of the blackjack organization grow with every quarter, what these quarters also have in common is this next graph," Naerose gestures to the right where another graph is drawn, this one displays contracts, "As you can see as the quarters go on, the number of contracts grow and you can only assume they were filled as the Blackjack organization experienced explosive growth. Until the last contract with the island which was incomplete and thus unpaid. As to why? Blackjack didn't care. They were a group of mercenaries whom were brought together for the common interest of money. This group could get a great deal done and profited well for providing outsourced labor, expertise and specialization to companies that needed their help. In a word they were mercenaries. Past associates included the Southtown Syndicate, the Mad Gear gang, the group responsible for the insurrection at Thailand and countless secret organizations whom are yet unknown." Naerose flips the slide to the next one. "Thiis was an assassination plot paid for by a group whom had some special interest in this island, but this was also the last contract ever accepted by Blackjack and more specifically Elle Belmounte" The next slide is a picture of a rocker girl with a very serious look and an eyepatch, the caption states 'Elle Belmounte.'
Bred begins chewing on some beef (?) jerky, as he watches the movie through bloodshot eyes. "Uh-huh...Th' island eh...Hey, maybe I know some of these people, yew know...I'm Mad Gear myself...O' course, they don't tell me nothin'!" He eats more jerky, chewing on it robustly. "Yew want some jerky?"
Does Naerose want some Jerky? YES. The witch totally smiles and holds out her hand while giving Bred the nod, yep she wants Jerky. But she doesn't stop her presentation, even after getting said jerky and putting it into her mouth, Naerose continues on this aside.
"While the dealing with Mad Gear had gone sour because of daggers in back, as I mentioned before, they had continued to keep some members of Blackjack on their contractual payroll, one Naerose Delphine was seen to have worked with Mad Gear for several assignments since," A moment of fiddling with the projector and there is a picture of Naerose's own big smiling mug on the projector. "But by this point Blackjack began to fragment, " she skips back a few and shows the group with cracks through the picture, it contains the one eyed rocker, the other three women previously shown, a rather serious looking man, the witch herself and another woman with a care free look to her. This picture itself looks oddly more like a mish-mash of different shots as the photo quality is not uniform across all of the people in the faked group shot. Cracks can be shown across the group of them.
"Members of Blackjack had grown tired from the long and difficult Jinchuu assignement and the interest in the individual members was low for the latest contract, but by far the biggest blow, was the disappearance of Elle Belmounte, sudden and unannounced."
All of this is said while Naerose has a piece of jerky in her mouth.
Bred continues to blink at the information, chewing on his jerky. "Wha? Elle disappeared? Oh no! Why did she disappear, Naerose?! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO BLACKJACK?!?" he cries, getting far too concerned with this story. Maybe it's the drugs - or maybe it's his inherent stupidity.
"That is the ultimate question, we will be looking into now. The backstory is written and all the cards set, Elle had climbed very high and stepped on the backs and bodies of many to get there. Her empire was built around her with the security of strong arms, but the weakness of weak relationships. When her contract came to over throw this island, she thought it business as usual. Elle was busy, they all were, she needed to speak to her team but finding the time was almost impossible. The mission was not glamorous, but few were, they were at best exciting. It was here, while the new head quarters, The Capitol Seven Casino, was under way, here the last meeting was made, Elle's last big stand."
Naerose gestures around to make it evidently clear why she had chosen this location for a bizarre presentation to seemingly just herself. It is possible.. That Naerose had broken into this building night after night, just awaiting a janitor, or someone, maybe even a mouse, to listen to her give this.
"Only three showed to this meeting and none of them accomplished their missions, Marise and Ayame went off to the Casino and did their own thing, Aislinn vanished like a flame following Elle, disappointed with the disappearance of her team, or unable to keep the high intensity, perhaps unable to escape the hatred of the masses, or perhaps simply lonely. After this meeting she vanished, no one knows where, and thus began the decline of Blackjack, on the eave of their continued rise, their climax passed, the mountain crumpled, just like that."
Bred begins sobbing. "Oh God, Elle is gone! After she won all our hearts, she disappears, just like Amelia Airheart! Likely a victim of alien abduction or Nazi experimentation! Oh woe, woe is me! WOE IS ME!" He suddenly begins choking on jerky. "Urgh...OH GOD..."
"Hey, stop that, " Naerose grumbles and starts hitting Bred on the back a few times to save him because after all, if he died here, she'd totally have to start over with the next person she found in the conference room in the middle of the night. That would be so not cool.
"Ahh, yes, so Elle left and no one knows where or why." Naerose eyes Bred for a moment to make sure he isn't dying. "But let us not consider, what is it that brought Blackjack so high? They say the higher you climb the harder you fall, Elle fell, to find this out, we must return to the sunken remains, to Jinchuu. Thank you , thank you, that is my presentation. " Naerose turns the projector off, the room falls into blackness.
Bred hacks up the jerky, spitting it out. "Yeah, we gotta go to Jinchuu!" He stands up, tucking his jerky away and pulling out a knife. "I'll go mahself! Professor Peffernin, prepare the flying machine!" He goes running out of the room, and is heard running down the hall.
Jinchuu... Naerose knew the location of the ship, all she needed to do was get on a boat her own. She had scuba gear, though usually it was mixed in with a fish monster suit, she had everything she needed. Who knew whom she might run into back tracking the path that Blackjack took. Leaving everything just the way it is, Naerose turns and walks out of the office, opens the window she came in from, looks down, and decides to take the stairs.
Log created on 14:15:11 11/18/2008 by Naerose, and last modified on 18:52:55 04/11/2009.