ery few Detectives (q.v.) deal with insurance fraud or arson investigation, and this probably for the best, as there’s a troubling tendency for them to be at the center of almost enough destruction to attract the attention of Michael Bay. Houses burning down, multiple car wrecks, so much glass shattering the window fitters union has to start overtime negotiations, and that’s just the Urban Fantasyland protagonists -without- access to large amounts of area damage magic.

It goes without saying that the high price for a mystery play is largely down to insurance premiums.

-Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

Around the same time as I was sitting and waiting, Laura was having her come-to-Jesus meeting with Bastienne. I found out later they’d actually played this out for the audience. Normally, our plays focus entirely on the perspective of the protagonist, so if I wasn’t there to see it, it would have just been ‘assumed’ to have happened. But the Boss thought it might be cool and gave them the go ahead.

It started with Bastienne getting a text:

Laura: We need to talk >:|

Bastienne: Is...is that a mohawk?

Laura: No, it’s angry eyebrows, you really need a newer phone. Just get over here, we’re going to have words.

Bastienne: I’m kind of busy today, you know.

Laura: Get over here now Bastienne Moran, we’re going to talk about why you seem to be getting off at the idea of fighting my bodyguard!!!

Bastienne stared at that message for a moment, and sighed. “Cromberg. Take over at site A for me. I need to take care of this.”

Laura: Well? U Coming or do I have to get mad?

Bastienne: OMW

I’m not exactly sure what the Finishing school backstory is with regards to Bastienne and Laura- my part didn’t have that elaboration, since I don’t have the face for a finishing school. But apparently the old school tie was enough for Bastienne to drop work and go to appease Laura, so it must have been pretty impressive.

Laura met her at the door and not in the sort of thing she’d be wearing if waiting for me. She was going for all the intimidation a 5 foot nothing redhead could muster when confronting a blonde with nearly a foot and a half of height on her. It must have looked like a terrier staring down an afghan hound.

Apparently it worked, though. Laura pointed. “Inside.”

Bastienne came in, looking chastened, and they moved to the solar.

Laura sat down and settled into her usual chair. Bastienne stood with her hands folded in front of her. “So.”

“It was just the sort of thing you say, you know? When you’re about to pick a fight with a guy who might be able to give you a good one and…”

Laura sighed. “It’s not the sort of thing you say to the guy you set me up with and encouraged me to go after, though. I mean, there are rules!”

Bastienne sighed, and then whined almost like a child. “I know, I know. But I just...I really want to fight this one, you should have seen him. He blinded me with some dazzle spell and then took out like 10 of my guys, without even breaking a sweat.”

Laura looked weirdly fond. “I wouldn’t say that. He definitely needed to clean up when he got back.”

Bastienne sighed. “You know what I mean. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had a real challenge?”

“And I also know how you get if you lose, and again, you just talked me into going after him, and there are rules.”

Bastienne sighed. “If Hugo hadn’t died I wouldn’t have encouraged you, I’d have kept him for myself.”

“If Hugo hadn’t died, you wouldn’t even know who he is.”

“Okay, point, but…can’t I fight him? Just a little? He’s messing with my boss’s business, it’s fine if it’s work, isn’t it?”

Laura stared her down. “Are you going to be able to keep it professional? Promise not to make it weird?”

Bastienne scratched the back of her head. “I...maybe?”

“If you promise not to get weird about it, I’ll let you fight him. And if you do get weird about it, I’ll know. Now, he needs to know where you’ll be if you’re going to get to fight him, so where’s this thing coming in that he’s looking for?”

If I were at all psychic, when that was said I should, by rights, have felt a weird shiver down my spine, but I didn’t know any of it was going on. The docks were still as dead as a very dead thing could be.

I was just tucking into the packed lunch that had been provided when Laura texted me, and I had to juggle some fried chicken, my phone, and not fall off the crane all at once.

Laura: Bastienne says it’s coming in by ship.

Me: I’m in the right place, then.

Laura: She also says that she still wants to fight you, but promises she’ll try not to make it weird.

Me: ...What’s meant by weird in this case?

Laura: If you put up a good enough fight she’ll like it more than you may be comfortable with

Me: That’s...okay, not entirely unexpected.

I started to type something else but decided it’d be better not to have phone records about my private opinion of the murder victim. I’m sure HR would appreciate my restraint in the inevitable lawsuit.

Me: So she’s coming here to meet the shipment and also to fight me because we got interrupted last time and she wasn’t happy.

Laura: That about sums it up. She’ll be there soon. Right now she’s still apologizing for falling back on her old habit of introducing me to guys she wants to fight.

Me: That’s...a really weird old habit.

Laura: Tell me about it.

Me: Just let me know when she’s on the way. It’s pretty slow here at the moment; no ship’s even come in yet.

Laura: Bastienne says there’s no ship coming.

Me: ...Didn’t she say it was coming by the docks?

Laura: Yes, but not by ship. It’s...arriving by water on its own. The smugglers are riding the serpent in.

Me: Wait, don’t tell me they’re bringing in a sea serpent. I didn’t recall anything on the list that’d match up with that.

Laura: She’s calling it a stoorworm. Some sort of well-snake that breathes poison?

That’s why I didn’t figure it’d come in by sea under its own power. The stoorworm’s a creature of fresh water, though ‘fresh’ may not be the right word there. It prefers stagnant water, like in a well where the source has dried up, or swampland. And if the water’s not stagnant enough, it blights the land around it to make it more suited for it to live in.

Maybe it was a variant species from a saltmarsh or something-- in that case, it might be able to survive the open sea. I considered whether something like that might find the local docks welcoming. Then I watched a gull skim across the water and dodge around two discarded paint buckets and a styrofoam cup, and figured the stoorworm would be right at home.

As I was watching the gull, a giant, wedge-shaped head emerged from the water and engulfed it in a single bite. As the rest of the serpent emerged along with it, I saw men and women in scuba gear hanging onto its side, apparently steering it along. Fog started to roll in as it touched the air, the poison miasma that always accompanied a well-worm like this. The scuba gear explained how they thought they could survive. I was suddenly glad of my perch, since the fog was staying on the surface. Heavier than air, then.

I wasn’t 100 percent sure how real the stoorworm was. We’ve worked with dangerous animals before, but usually the big brutes like this are illusory, but good enough to fool the cameras and the senses of the client.

On the upside, I had packed one of the probably illegal pre-loaded wands, so I might as well find out if they’d been loaded for poisonous well-dragon. From my perch on the crane, I took aim, concentrated, and let it fire.

One day, someone was going to need to have words with Clark Lawson about just what he does with his enchantments. Apparently, what this particular wand did was summon a rocket. Tailfins, exhaust, tube shaped, explosives. No one really needs a rocket launcher that fits in your coat pocket.

But it did surprise the hell out of the Wyrm. It reared back, thrashing in pain as the rocket exploded in its midsection, and it’s thrashing knocked some of the men guiding it loose; one lost his respirator and started choking in the fog.

It was hurting, but it wasn’t dead, and that’s when a truck pulled in, big enough to carry in the back and guarded by several more men in gas masks...and Bastienne. She’d come to have her fight and she apparently meant to have it, as she invoked a wind spell to blow the fog away, though more started forming. I aimed the rocket-wand at the truck.

“Drop your weapons, or you’re going to have to deal with a giant, wounded snake, and not have any way to get it back to your boss.”

Six men aimed a mix of submachine guns and pistols at me. “He’s bluffing.”

Bastienne eyed the wand. “He’s probably not, but let’s find out. Shoot him.”

I sighed, and blew up the truck.Everyone dived for cover, and I used that moment to hustle. As complex an enchantment as the rocket spell probably only had a charge or two left, and I wanted to keep it in my back pocket for later. So I dropped off the crane, into the midst of the now stunned men, and threw one, the largest one, to the stoorworm. Taking him as the source of its injuries, it attacked. The water churned and filled with blood and vaguely greenish miasma.

For the record, most of our extras, especially ones that are being put into fight scenes, are just automatons controlled by Lawson. Most of the others are trained stunt guys, and are really good at looking like they’ve just taken a fall. For a scene like this, except for Simone, it was probably all automatons, just because the insurance premiums with water work and even an illusion of a giant killer snake is too high.

Bastienne smiled. “Finally. We fight, NO ONE INTERRUPTS”, she said this to both her men and probably the invisible assassin, if he happened to be present, “and one of us wins and one of us goes down. And then things are decided, one way or the other.”

I sighed. “Fine, fine, fine. One way or the other. So how do you want to do this, then?”

She smiled. You, me, hand to hand. No interruptions. I’ve always wanted to fight…She paused, since obviously she couldn’t break character to say “A trollblood” since that wasn’t the Criss character, and finished “You that way. No tricks, no magic.”

I gave her the hairy eyeball. “No tricks? I’m a stage magician, you know.”

She snorted. “If you want to pull a quarter out of my ear or produce flowers from up your sleeve, feel free.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Nothing up my sleeve, see?” I held my arms out for inspection. She actually bent to look, and, well, that’s...when I sucker punched her. Straight from the shoulder, square to the face.

Look, it’s not that I’m particularly proud of it, but Simone’s a combat veteran, and I’m just a guy who plays the heavy in stage plays.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she was smiling through the bloody nose, wiping it clean. “Yes! Perfect. This is exactly what I wanted.”

I gave her the hairy eyeball, but kept my guard up. Her men warily focused on the snake behind us, and she tried to kick me in the face.

Simone regularly wears heels. It makes her even taller, which is damned impressive and brings her up almost to my chin, and heavily plays into how she plays her regular parts- usually she’d go with the business casual skirt set. She’d switched out to combat boots and what looked like workout clothes for our match, for which I can’t blame her- someone tried to convince her to fight in her “I am a professional woman” gear before and she made them spar with her while -they- wore the heels and business miniskirt and wiped the floor with them. (Boss was never stupid enough to suggest this, it was some AD who used to assist a fight choreographer for a film company that didn’t understand the difference between what we do and what they do.)

The kick had some magic as well as muscle behind it, since it staggered me a bit.

I eyed her, and put my hands up in guard for the next attack. “Not bad.”

She was still smiling, eyes shining, and tried to kick me again. This time I caught her foot, and swung her around by it, throwing her against the ruins of the truck.

Everyone and their brother, when talking about troll magic, thinks of the troll-wives and their curses. Our mothers and grandmothers. But most of us, like me, can’t use spells or curses of our own at all. All the magic potential winds up going to making us stronger and tougher than we look. And well, I look like Rondo Hatton’s bastard son with a carnival wrestler who inherited the looks of both of them, when they don’t have me under a glamour.

And I’m stronger than I look. So I have to pull my punches a lot, especially when working around folks who don’t have the benefit of magic filling their blood and bone. But with Simone going at me aggressively, and presumably protecting herself with spells, I could go as close to all out as I’ve ever managed.

All of this is a long-winded way of explaining why she crashed through the side of the burning truck, out the other side, and impacted the crane, which caused it to start to fall over on its side, taking out a section of the slip. The snake had already moved out of the way, unfortunately..

“Ah. Shit. Sorry!” I yelled.

Simone staggered up out of the rubble, breathing heavily. And not in a “I have been exerting myself and am tired” way.

“No, no. Do not apologize. This is what I wanted. Feel free to do it again, if you can. Harder this time.”

“This is starting to make me really uncomfortable. Please tell me if you have a safe word.”

I mean, I’d joked about some people only coming to the plays to get beat up, but this was definitely sounding like it.

Simone smirked. Behind us, the snake shrieked, spraying poison across the destroyed dock. She briefly vanished into the fog breath, then there was another strong breeze, and the cloud blew back to sea with a gust of wind from her wand.

She glared at her men. “I said no interruptions. Subdue it!” Then she turned her attention back to me, putting the wand away. She started sprinting towards me, covering ground in broken field running style to keep me from getting a line on her and throwing something heavy.

She seemed to have a plan besides just wanting to engage as quickly as possible, this time. Maybe the battle high was wearing off.

Or not. She jumped at me again, as soon as she was in range, but instead of going for a lick, she locked her legs around my arm and grabbed at my hand. A joint lock honestly wasn’t a particularly bad idea, assuming that, for example,she could disable my whole arm at once and keep me from moving my shoulder, as well as my elbow and wrist. As it was, it was just an invitation to repeatedly slam her against the nearest hard surface until she let go. She immediately rolled out of range once she did, keeping me from grabbing her in turn.

Her hair had come loose at this point from the tight updone bun, and she circled, just out of range trying to catch her breath and find a new opening. It was a little like being circled like a hungry shark. I purposely let my guard lower, and she lunged in. She’d figured out that trying to grapple was bad, so she was now focused on just getting in hits and making sure they connected. She was definitely a better technical fighter than me, and if I weren’t basically a slab of beef brought to horrible life she’d have kicked my ass. Hell, if she hadn’t insisted on giving me a handicap like her not using spells.

Unfortunately, I had reach, mass, and strength on her, and she was picking a fight in my arena over her own. I’d figured that Simone had wanted to fight me because of my grandmother’s reputation. So I couldn’t see -not- targeting me magically. Maybe she’d cut some sort of deal with Moira? In any case, I had to deal with the reality of the fight now, so I traded blows with her, and her expression just grew more and more...uncomfortable. Moira had not been at all kidding when she said that Simone was enjoying this way too much.

The worst part was I wasn’t sure how much was the character she was playing and how much was her. Well, that’s not true, it was probably mostly her. This...aspect of Bastienne hadn’t developed until after she’d learned it was me and would have no way to dodge fighting her.

Finally, she gave me the opening I was looking for, and I got a good shot in, right in the midsection. It took the wind out of her and she dropped. “G’night, Miss Moran. “

She passed out with a look of disturbing contentment, and I seriously considered having a chat with HR.

And now, it was time to deal with the snake, which, since Bastienne had passed out, meant the poison gas it surrounded itself with was coming back in because the wind she’d conjured had died away.

Her men had surrounded the thing. They had respirators, cattle prods, and numbers to face the thing down. They just didn’t have any way to transport it when it was dead. I had a rocket launcher in wand form with an unknown number of remaining charges, and all I knew is that they needed to get the stoorworm somewhere, preferably without poisoning the water by the docks for years to come, which its blood and viscera would almost certainly do if I blew it up carelessly. Thus, there was only one sensible response.

I sucker punched one of the largest of Bastienne’s crew and stole his mask and cattle prod. After fixing the former in place, I jumped onto the stoorworm’s back and jammed the prod into its eye as hard as I could

Okay, so it wasn’t actually the sensible response. But it worked. The stoorworm twitched, coiling around itself and convulsing in the water, and then threw me off. It was out cold or dead without bleeding or spreading chunks of itself all over. And I was...just barely holding on to the edge of the collapsed dock. Shit.

I looked up. Bastienne’s men surrounded me.

I smiled. “Hey guys. No hard feelings?”

And then it was my turn to get the cattleprod, and everything went black.