[@POOHEAD189]

Lightning crashed outside and the lights flickered, momentarily plunging the room into a darkness illuminated only by the whites of the newcomers' eyes. Power surged back on and the old cathode ray sputtered to life. It painted a grainy vision of Tolkien’s bag end with Sir Ian Mcellan’s face darkening. 

“BILBO BAGGINS DO NOT TAKE ME FOR SOME CONJURER OF CHEAP TRICKS!”

The temperature dropped ten degrees and the smell of packed snow was suddenly heavy on the air. There was another deafening crash with no time at all between the report and the flash. Painful blue light etched the interior of the room with radiance so pure it made the mundane surroundings seem tawdry and washed out. The woman’s skin seemed to shine a dark blue and for a fleeting moment the maternal eyes were gone, replaced by something wild and feral. A long pointed tongue protruded from jet black lips and quested from side to side like a serpent. Almost like an x-ray exposure her form seemed revealed through her clothes and somehow she seemed to have four arms, one of them seemed to be clutching something but before it could be identified the electrical light faded. The strange woman smiled as the tv fizzled into static and died with a pop.


From outside there came a squealing of tires and a roar of engines. Powerful headlights flickered through the windows casting a yellow light that seemed ugly compared to the purity of the lightning. A trio of expensive sport cars in gold and white pulled up. Doors slid open and hatched up as tall figures stepped out. They were beautiful beings, fair skinned with piercing feline eyes. Their limbs were long and graceful and they moved with an unearthly grace. Each wore a suit of half plate, exquisitely wrought and inlaid with gold and glittering jewels. Scabbarded swords hung at their belts but were somewhat undercut by desert pattern H&K automatics they lifted from their cars. The six fae lords arranged themselves in a line and lifted their weapons.

“Oh dear,” the Indian woman said in the same tone she might have used if she spilled her tea. She lifted a cup of milk to her mouth and sipped from it. There was an oddly queasy feeling as the cup touched her lips. Somehow it seemed that the milk drank her form rather than the other way round and within a second she had vanished, the empty cup falling to the ground and bouncing on the carpet.


[hider=Synopsis]
the mystery woman vanishes as a posse of pissed off faires arrive
[/hider]

_________
[@Ducksworth]

The rain stung like a shower of BB pellets as the muscular bikes raced through the rain. Towards the center of town the sky glowed with a combination of fires and the reflected light of hundreds of emergency vehicles. It was a good thing that the police were otherwise occupied because the score of roaring bikes obeyed no speed limit nor traffic rule. Several of the werewolves had produced sawed off shot guns which they fired at street lights, more or less for the joy of seeing them shatter. The bikers were howling, almost as loud as their metal steeds and the smell of hormones and wet dog was detectable even over the stink of exhaust.  The passing of the iron processing caused several fender benders as they ran red lights and ignored stop signs. A few drivers leaped out of their vehicles but any objections or threats died on their lips as they observed the cause of increase in their insurance premiums.


Within minutes they reached the rusted gate, which already hung open, swinging in the storm driven winds to bang against its jam and rebound. The bikes slowed, not due to any sense of caution but by the similar necessity of following the spiraling road up the hillside towards the lowering form of the observatory dome, a black semicircle against the storm wracked sky. Oaks and ash trees lined the road, though the scrub beyond was more like a wild forest than a manicured park, long overgrown and neglected.

Jack slowed further as the reached the top where a gravel parkinglot spread out before the observatory. The structure itself was half ruined, its windows shattered and its lower story marked with graffiti. Trash blew in the wind as the storm scoured chip packets and candy wrappers abandoned by teens who had invaded the space for their innocent indulgences in drugs or sexuality. Three vans were parked before the door, noses pointed out like a phalanx. The words Corvus Bay Natural History Museum were stenciled on their side along with a logo that combined a crow with a knapped arrowhead. The bikers slowed and came to a stop and the werewolves leaped from their metal steeds, boots crunching in the gravel.

“Who is this?” O’kane demanded, glowing at the young wizard. “If this is some trick…” Further speculation was interrupted as a figure emerged from between the vans. It was a portly woman in early middle age dressed in a heavy yellow raincoat, the kind used by sailors rather than something domestic, she carried a powerful flashlight which she played across them without apparent concern.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asked in a clear musical voice.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jack demanded, gripping Emrys and hauling him before him.

“My name is Rebecca,” the woman said with a pleasant white smile. She opened her coat to reveal a name tag that read: Hello, My Name is Rebe-ka. It was marked with the insignia of the natural history museum.
“What are you doing here?” Jack demanded, clearly non-plused by the lack of concern the woman was showing at being confronted by twenty thuggish looking males, several of whom were obviously armed.

“Working,” the woman replied sunnily. “I’m afraid we aren’t open to the public, perhaps in a few months we will be ready for visitors?”


[hider=Synopsis]
You reach the observatory and find that there are several vans from the museum of natural history already there.
[/hider]

_________
[@Fetzen]

Fire flared out from Balthazar, hotter and fiercer than anything he had conjured before. It seemed wild somehow, hungry, infused with malice and hatred. Both policemen erupted in fire. The shotgun went off with a twitch and buckshot ripped bloody streaks across his left arm, the dark blood sizzling as the flames touched it. The second officer didn’t manage even that, the magazine of his pistol bursting open as the ammunition gangfired, filling the air with a crazed spray of bullet fragments that shattered several windows. The tires of the police car and the scooter burst in stinking clouds of burning rubber a moment before the metal in the body panels caught, paint curling away in smoke before the metal itself ignited and burned in gorgeous greens and reds. There was a dull whump as the fuel tanks caught in low order combustions which belched fireballs skyward and the windshield blasted outwards spraying glittering prisms of shattered glass in all directions. As abruptly as it kindled the fire flickered and vanished, leaving the vehicles blazing wrecks. The two policemen were little more than charred bones, one of the skulls crumbling to shed teeth like the petals of a dying flower. The asphalt itself glistened and ran in a sticky river into which the bones and detritus partially submerged. The road itself seemed to shudder as if wounded, a ripple passing up and down the street, cracking concrete for several hundred meters.


A stillness descended as the fire died away leaving the burned out frame of the scooter and the police cruiser guttering as the fire lost the temperature needed to burn the metals. The result were metal skeletons that shared more than was comfortable with the ruined human corpses, shimmering and twisted with heat.  The air was rank with the smell of burned pork, burning asphalt, and the greasy reek of sublimated metal. Car alarms and anti burglary systems from the shop fronts wailed in protest. A few passers by stood in abject shock, not yet marshalling the willpower to produce phones and start recording or calling the overwhelmed emergency services.


There was a chuckle in the back of Balthazar’s mind, alien and other. It seemed to emanate from the orb he had so casually taken from the scene of the bombing. It was still in Balthazar’s coat, a coat which miraculously remained unburned by the flames that had just made steel body plates run like wax under a blow torch.


[hider=Synopsis]
your fire seems to run out of control, obliterating your enemies, it seems it was given extra strength by something unknown. You are slightly wounded but the fire seems to have deliberately cauterized your wounds. Your scooter is destroyed, as is the squad car.
[/hider]