Case File: Amber Heart (part 3 of 3)
Cut to Lucky. Lucky and Roger are a little bent out of shape at this point. Roger has never encountered anything that could do what the Tooth Man could. Lucky has experienced some odd things, having faced down a ghoul in the past. Roger has not put down his KABAR knife, which attracts the attention of a police officer patrolling the street. He flashes his lights and pulls over. He approaches with his hand on his gun, indicating that Roger should drop the knife and back away. Lucky is worried that the cop may smell the blood from the alley behind them which would open up a whole new world of complications. Another cop shows up and Roger and Lucky are seperated. Having dealt with the police before on the street, Roger and Lucky worked up a quick plan with Roger having found the KABAR a few blocks away and was showing it to Lucky. After some fantastic deceit rolls, they pass this off. The cops take the knife with the caveat that Roger can pick it back up after they have verified it was not used in a recent crime. Syrena arrives and watches the cops leave before walking over to Lucky on her phone with Frank Warr. She was really close to the last location they picked Tommy up at.
Syrena knows Lucky from Nanking Kitchen as Shen Lo often feeds him in exchange for performing odd jobs. Lucky sees Syrena and has to warn her to be extremely careful, that something evil is around. Syrena talks Lucky into bringing her to the alley to show her where the attack happened. In the alley they find lots of blood, but not body. A trail of blood leads up the wall. Syrena jumps into overdrive mode while Roger and Lucky just want to get away. She rushes around the back of the building, looking for a way up. After a declaration roll, she finds a ladder. Lucky decides to join her with the spooked Roger staying behing incase cops show up. On the roof Lucky and Syrena find the girl's body. She appears to be missing a heart (neither of them are medical experts, but *something* is missing). Lucky gives the girl last rights as Syrena looks for a trail. She is not 100% sure this is her actual mission, but she sometimes has to move in this ambiguous territory. She follows the blood trail off the roof and over a fence into a residential neighborhood. Lucky and Roger follow her reluctantly, not able to talk her out of the chase, so offering to back her up.
As they follow the blood trail, they hear a car alarm a few blocks over. Syrena remembers that Tommy is pretty adept at boosting cars, so she pours on the speed leaving Lucky and Roger in the dust. She gets to the block just in time to see a white truck turning the corner a block away. As Roger and Lucky catch up, they see Syrena pass them heading in the opposite direction, back towards where they started their trek. Syrena jumps in the car and calls Frank while waiting on Lucky and Roger to catch up. Tommy was indeed moving up Lamar street. Syrena gets on the road, following Tommy at a quick pace, running red lights. She doesn't have to worry about cops getting on her tail because they were already on Tommy's as he is similarly blowing through red lights and around slower cars.
Tommy gets on hwy 35 to head to FM 620 heading out to Lake Travis. The cops attempt to set up a road block to stop the speeding truck. The truck's tires blow out and the truck does some fairly impressive flips towards stopped incoming traffic. As the cops move in to apprehend what must now be a dead drive, the front windshield blows out and a dark shape runs for the woods. Syrena does a little offroading in her car to get around the cops and back on the road. She suspects that Tommy is heading out to Alvarez's house and she tries to beat him there, calling Frank warr to warn him.
She gets there as Carlos' hired muscle are loading weapons. Syrena rushes inside, leaving Lucky and Roger in the back of the car. After a few minutes Lucky begins to feel a darkness moving quickly towards him. He ducks down in the backseat as something uses the roof of the car to launch an attack at the guards. At this point I took a bit of license with the fight. Roger and Lucky heard shots fired and people screaming before hearing the front door get torn off it's henges. Lucky peeks up and sees the guards torn limb from limb. Roger grabs one of the dropped rifles as Lucky walks up the stairs.
Syrena is inside Carlos' office preparing to protect her boss. She has moved some heavy furniture infront of the door and Carlos and Frank are readying weapons off to the side. They hear the door downstairs explode and then heavy footsteps up the stairs. Syrena stands ready to prepare for the worse. Tommy the Tooth Man begins punching holes through the walls so he can peer through. He also begins taunting Syrena.
Lucky feels drawn to the conflict. He knows that touching this guy was able to hurt him in the past and he's not sure what Syrena is going to be able to do, if anything. When Tommy pulls away from Carlos' office, Syrena moves to one of the holes to hear Tommy calling Lucky out. Lucky calmly walks up the stairs, fully expecting to die taking Tommy with him. When Syrena hears this, she bursts through the wall and sees Tommy lunge for Lucky. As Lucky and Tommy grapple, Lucky calls upon his faith to burn Tommy. Tommy throws Lucky to the bottom of the stairs, knocking him unconcious as Syrena drop kicks Tommy off of the stair case. Syrena then uses this chance to grab a weapon (she used a declaration to state that Carlos would be the type of person to have display weapons. Even if they are not sharp, they could still be useful). She runs down the stairs and decapitates Tommy before he can recover.
Carlos and Frank appear after Syrena signals the all clear. Frank starts working with newly arrived associates to clear up the bodies outside, while Carlos calls in a favor with doctor he has used in the past to tend to Lucky's wounds. Syrena gets angry with Carlos about how Tommy could have gotten ahold of the stone and Carlos (mostly in shock) explains that Tommy had been a guinea pig for an artifact known as the Heart of Amber. He wasn't going to survive much past the point that Carlos could verify the process worked. Syrena, Lucky, and Roger are all paid by Carlos to keep this quiet. He has already lost enough people and can't afford to lose more.
In the aftermath, Lucky has a concussion and Syrena is only really scratched. They get him fixed up on the quiet and they are driven away. The cops know of gun shots in the area, but haven't been able to locate the cause as each of the estates looking over Lake Travis are large. Syrena finds out later that Carlos has been removed as Boss by Pilar Sosa (for reasons unknown to them at the time... it very well could just be his bungling of the entire situation, or it could be because he was attempting to turn himself into an Amber Court vampire). Frank Warr is now the boss.
Note: This concluded our first casefile Amber Heart. We started into the next case, Spiritual Awakening, a few weeks later. I'll start writing that one up when I get some more time.
