ic A Small Problem

[Supercape]

A Small Problem

 

August 28th, 2024

Freedom City

 

King Cole the Third, aka Renee King, was preparing for Claremont. Exciting!

 

As was the prospect of potion manufacture. Magic Potions! Double Exciting!

 

But what was triple exciting?

 

A letter!

 

Not your fancy e mail or other electronic conversation, no no. This was a hand written letter, in fine caligraphy, inviting Renee King, granddaughter of the original King Cole, too a mysterious and mystical problem! Someone, it seems, was intent on cursing the ghastly fluids and matter of Freedom City Sewers, and the young Renee, master of the mystical arts (of potions) was just the person to concoct the solution. 

 

And the author of this fine handwriting, a Professor Armitage, expert in occultism, history and - it seemed (from a quick internet search) - pretty much everything that wasn't modern (although he was no slouch in modern sociology, psychology, and so on, from all accounts). Based in Freedom City, and whilst somewhat "Stiff" and "Hard" according to students, a very knowledgable man indeed, with an excellent style in tweed jackets and the occasional pipe of tobacco (not indoors, of course)...

 

 

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

Panic. 

 

Sheer absolute panic. Terror and fear and terror and fear. She wanted to scream and hide under her bed. How did someone figure it out!? She knew it wasn't exactly the best kept secret, but she couldn't help what her parents named her! What was she going to do!? She had to move. Go down to the trainyard, hop on a railway car, go out into the wild states; ride the rails to Emerald City, come up with a fake name, hide for the rest of her life. She had to escape, to get away, to run away.

 

But she caught her reflection in the mirror near her bed, and frowned.

 

"Come now, this is no way for a King to be acting." Spoke her reflection. "A King properly responds to summons from petitioners. If your Court Magician needs your audience, then your job is to appear before them and assauge their worries, and fix their problems if you have to."

 

"That seems hard!"

 

"If it was easy then everyone would do it! Not everyone has the ability to be a King, and we're one of them. How else are we gonna make people realize Grandpa was the best?" her reflection reminded her, and Renee whined but relented. 

 

"Okay, okay. But you have to come out and handle it." she said, grabbing one of the various concoctions that she kept hidden in her closet and downing it to swap places with King Cole.

 

King Cole did not dress in her full costume to go wandering Freedom City to meet with the Professor, instead she stayed dressed mostly as Renee, but with her back straight and a confident walk, she might as well have been a completely different person as she rode the bus and subway and walked the streets to go meet this 'Professor'. She had her backpack with her, filled with her potions that were mostly tested and mostly completed, alongside her collapsing staff and her costume hidden in it. She was ready!

[Supercape]

GM

 

The professos home was elegant both inside and outside, medium sized, well built, probably a hundred years old by the looks of it (if one had an eye for architecture)

 

The door creaked open as soon as Renee reached it. Inside, was the Professor himself (according to an internet search of his image). He held the door stiffly, and his back stiffer. The man was probably seventy, trim, on the tall side. A trimmed grey beard and hair, tweed suit and waistcoat, and dark yet sparkling eyes. A man of intelligence, clearly. 

 

"Good afternoon," he said in a steely voice. "It took me considerable efforts to track you down. Considerable indeed, even for a man of my resources. You can be assured I would not have done so if it 'twas not important."

 

He coughed into his hand. "But do excuse me. Manners, manners. I am Professor Armitage. This is my home. Please, come in. Tea?"

 

Despite the look of an Englishman (perhaps with a touch of semitic blood), his accent was mid atlantic. 

[Poncho]

The purple eyed King looked suspiciously at Armitage, a growl on her lips that was not very Royal at all.

 

"It better have taken considerable efforts, and your apology is quite accepted, as otherwise you would be the test for my rat potion." she said, still maintaining some level of regal purpose. "If you have burdened the King Cole with something important, I'll certainly forgive you though; one must always look out for their subjects after all, even the ones that don't know they are subjects. So if they are in danger, then I'll obviously step up to help them. But in the future perhaps we should set up a drop box instead. Or a Whats App." she said as she followed him inside.

 

"And tea is good. Two sugars."

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Prof inhaled through his nose. "Two sugars? Sugar is bad for your teeth. But, I suppose a punch in the mouth is, too, so I shall defer. You youngsters all know karate and suchlike."

 

He beckoned in. The house interior teetered betwixt organised and chaotic. Relics, artifacts, antiquities lined the walls and most surfaces. A shrunken head, a unicorn horn, a whip made of suspicious boiled skin. Maybe some of them were fakes - but not all, surely. 

 

The professor would surely have known the difference, for papers and books of all types had been stuffed into a multitude of shelves. 

 

The tea was Earl Grey, well made, and yes, Renee did get two sugars. 

 

"Drop Box, Whatsapp. Not really my style," said the Professor. "But I can move with times if need be."

 

He sat down on a battered leather chair, took a solitary sip of tea, and placed it on a side table where it gently cooled. 

 

"I understand you are the best potion maker in Freedom City. Quite the talent you have, there. And a needed talent, I fear." 

 

With a frown, he continued, absorbed in his own tale. "Someone - or something - is organising a mass movement of cursed items into the America's. From the old world to the new world. I do not know why, but it is happening, and not by chance. The latest irritant to pop onto my radar? A rotten egg."

 

He paused, bit his lip. "A rotten egg of some foul creature. Petrified, now, of course. It is undetermined ages old. But said egg poisons the waters around it. Maybe a weapon of mass detruction in ancient wars? And it has found itself in Freedom City. We need to find it, before it turns half of Freedom City into Gibbering Babboons, and the other half into something worse. I presume you can whip up some magical antitdote to any toxin?"

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

"Earl Grey is fine. Very Regal. Appropriate for me, the King." she said sternly as she followed her inviter inside. She did pause to look at all his collected mystic trinkets, but she did not touch them- she wasn't that foolish-. She just examined them for a while before moving on. 

 

"No, a drop box. Like a little mailbox or secret hideaway I check every couple of days. You leave something and I'll see it when I go look. All analog, no digital paper trail, burn the recipts." she explained, sitting down. 

 

"The best potion maker in the city?" She wasn't sure about that, but she WAS King Cole III. "I definitely do agree I am one of a kind, or perhaps two of a kind, given I am a successor. If there's a magical problem, I am a magical solution, all things considered!" she declared, grinning smugly. 

 

"If there's some kind of sneaky smuggling operation coming into my fair city, under my crown, I can greatly assure you it is worth me handling! That is the job of a King, after all!" Said the girl who could not even have a driver's lisence, proclaiming herself queen of a city that had a mayor and a hundred Superheroes who were all much more potent than the twig of a teenage crimefighter was. "So give me the details and I'll sort it out! Especially this rotten egg, that's a bad thing to be leaving around, petrified or not, those great beasts can be the sources of many magical regents and are not something that should just be lying around. Did you know the shell of a Basalisk Egg can be used to craft a poison that is nigh-untracable? Or that the feathers of a Griffin can cure many diseases when properly processed? It's very important not to misuse or misplace such powerful artifacts. I believe given the proper information and materials, I can create an appropriate antidote, yes." 

 

If those creatures were even real or not or were just something she'd read about in one of her grandfather's note books of fancy, it was hard to know. If they were real, it wasn't her relying on first hand information, at the least.

 

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Ah yes, the King. Very Regal, very... ah... pompous... of you. But I appreciate pompous. Over confident? Perhaps, but better than paralysed by fear. I see to little of the former, too much of the former. Always everyone else's problem. The world needs people like us to bite at problems before they become too big for our teeth to chew, in my opinion."

 

"There is a run down area in one of the slums. An old apothecary by all accounts - I have the accounts, as it happens. Shut down over a hundred years ago. Condemned building, with the sewers and the..." his face squirmed in disgust "...sewage running right below. The first step, I think, is to purify the system. Then track the source. 

 

"I am coming with you, of course. I am old man and I trust you can beat off any vagrants who might wish to try their luck. A nice stick you have there..." he pointed at the sceptre. 

 

"And I would strongly advise waterproof footwear. I will be wearing wellington boots, I can assure you!"

[Poncho]

"Well, I will get into costume when we're ready to go. I have some preparation for stomping around in dirty grime, but you know that's really against my royal style!" she complained a little, drinking her tea politely after her small complaint. "I may have to leave my mantle behind, it would be hard to clean the fur if it gets all dirty, and what is a King without a mantle. But it's to protect the city, so I will make do." she said sternly before getting up.

 

"Once I get changed we'll be ready to go, and don't you worry about Vagrants, they'll see the glory of the Third King Cole if they try anything. So we'll head to this apothecary and fish out what's needed for a fix and I'll brew something together! But of course you'll need to come with me; you clearly have a lot of knowledge here, and I'd be foolish to ignore the words of my advisors!" she said, laughing haughtily!

[Supercape]

GM

 

And so...

 

The professor did indeed where wellington boots, and changed into somewhat cheaper clothes (tweed would not do), although he still sported a waistcoat and carried an elegant (and expensive, no doubt) umbrella. 

 

The building was a mess of cracked bricks  just by the old and rusted railways of Freedom City. A forgotten place from a forgotten time. A few vagrants noted their passing. Maybe one, or two, contemplated trying their luck with either begging or mugging, but there was something in the stiffness of the Professors walk, the sterness of his gaze, that stopped them. Or maybe it was his young and regal companion. 

 

The old apothecary was in danger of collapsing on their hands. A thousand holes seemed to provide passage for a thousand rats. Opening the rotten wooden door was difficult, for it seemed to fall apart rather than open. In any case, access was easy. 

 

The place was dust and cobwebs, and rat excrement. And yet despite that the smell of old chemicals prevailed. Intact and broken bottles lined rotten shelves, and scattered the floor. Strange colourful fluids had dried on every surface. 

 

And in the centre was what appeared to be a rusty grill that lead downwards. A most awful stench bubbled forth....

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

King Cole III did not do 'Cheap'. Her outfits were always ridiculously overwrought and fanciful, even if a close inspection would reveal it was mostly costume jewelry and fake silk. She did leave her mantle behind, but not her crown, which she wore very proudly through the streets of Freedom City alongside the Professor. What was he even a Professor of? She should have looked that up. Did he work at one of the universities? She wasn't sure. But she followed alongside him with her staff in her hands, at times doing cartwheels or flips to alay her boredom while walking with Armitage. She had to keep herself busy, after all. Finally, they reached the the Apothecary and she let out a whistle.

 

"This place should be condemned and rebuilt! There is more use in this location than the rusted hulk of rat nests!" she wasn't really yelling, but she was *loud*; the King, it seemed, only issued proclamations, not regular sentences. When the door looked unsanitary, she banged it open into splinters with her staff instead, and the nasty dust and air that piled up made her fan the air away from her. "Disgusting! This is disgusting Professor! I will be writing a stern letter to the City Council and the mayor that they should be engaging in a renovation and recreation project of this poor building post-haste! The Culture of Freedom City does not deserve such a rotten, moldy building when it could be relishing in it's pride and accomplishments! If this building is 100 years old, then it should be given that respect!" She stomped her foot then looked down at the floor.

 

"....And you are paying for my dry cleaning after we finish this, it will not do for the King to have dirty boots!" she added. Then she stopped and sniffed. "And that smell is quite foul, and coming from that grate. Which I assume you are expecting me to drop down and fumble around in."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"I am no fan of the Rattus Rattus," said the Professor, wrinkling his nose. "Lamentably, it comes with the job. Professor of history, and so on."

 

"So, we must swallow our disgust, hmm? Swallow it right down in to the pits of one stomach, and proceed. Also..."

 

He pulled out, from his waistcoat, a small tin of snuff, placed a few sprinkles on the crease in his hand, and sniffed it up both nostrils. "I come prepared. Want some?"

 

He offered the tin to the young King. 

 

"As for your dry cleaning, if, mayhap, your clothes are indeed regal rather than the inferior fabrics which they appear to be - yes, my interests include textiles - then I will of course pay for a new set. And perhaps, if as I suspect they are cheap knock offs, I will outfit you with something more suitable. I confess I am not known for my generous nature, but there is something rather fascinating about you. I think I appreciate the brazen narcissism. Yes, consider me your benefactor for a new set of clothes. Purple, of course. I am a man of reasonable means."

 

His eyes cast down to the grate. 

 

"I think this is the portal to the cursed sewers. How we proceed? I think this is where we must think on our feet, young child. Can you concoct a sufficient potion from this position, or must we go deeper into the pits of hell?"

 

 

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

"Blech." King Cole said simply. "Blech and Blah and Blurgh!" She said, slightly more complicated.

 

"While I find this smell repulsive, I will not be using such things as snuff. I have a different idea." she said, in a much more complicated statement, moving over to a dusty table and giving it a haphazard wipe before tossing her backpack on it. 

 

"As for a new Uniform...well...Consider it part of your taxes to your King that I will allow you to pay them in providing me with an outfit appropriate for a true crime fighter and icon!" she said, but her huffy nature couldn't hide her excitement at the idea of getting a real costume.

 

The Jansport was quickly turned inside out; a variety of regents and liquids in sealed containers of glass and plastic tumbled out as the New King of Supers organized them in little stands and in groups. After a little fiddling she produced a simple mask for her nose and mouth and pulled it over her face and tied it, muffling her voice but protecting her nose from the nasty smell; somewhat at least.

 

The next thing she did was go to take a look at the bottles lining the walls; the unbroken ones in particular, looking for ingredients that were still good to add to her own collection. "Oh, I needed this plant extract recently...this refined liquid is really hard to get these days...okay this place isn't half bad." she decided to herself. Once the table she had commandeered as a work station had been filled with whatever regents she could find at the building and whatever ones she had brought with her, she pulled out the old, leathery book her grandpa had written all his magic notes in and started reading it, peeking down into the gutter- still grimacing at the smell-.

 

"Let me see what I'm dealing with and I'll tell you if we can avoid going down there. What do you know about the petrified egg? What was the creature in it, that sort of stuff? If you don't know that, well, we're probably going to have to descend into the bowels of this metropolis." The way she said it, though, she didn't sound like she liked the chances of not having to go down into the pit.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"The petrified egg? My notes are not complete..." said the Professor, hands in lapels, nose upturned, voice cracking slightly. "By which I mean, with vexatious honesty, I am not sure. Despite my extensive research and experience, I do not know the full details. In truth, I have been rather busy of late. Dozens of cursed artifacts turned up in North and South America over the last few months. Even a... Ninentendo!"

 

He shuddered. 

 

"The Egg, I think, is Egyptian in origin. Or at least, has been in Egypt for centuries, if not longer. Myths circulate, a crocodile? a snake? Some mythological beast of the Nile. And then, if we go back even further, the myths are even more obscure. Atlantis? Mu? Perhaps the true origin of the egg was not Egypt, but some sunken island, some prehuman civilisation. I cannot be sure. The further back you go, the more obscure the source material..."

 

He sighed. 

 

"But it is undoubtedly cursed. Toxic, one might say. The Egyptian myths and legends talk of its pestilence on the Nile...."

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

"...Egypt!?" King Cole said in bafflement. "Court Librarian, I am the teller of tales and weaver of stories and king of fables of the European and Scandinavian areas! Things beyond those areas stretch my capabilities hard and far!" She complained, stomping her foot.

 

"If you have no idea, and I have no idea, then there is only one thing to do, and that is that we are having to go down there and figure out the egg ourselves!" She said. This was not her being disheartened or angry, she just TALKED LOUD all the time. "There's nothing to do but to do it, Court Librarian Armitage. You can either stay here, or come with me as I investigate to find this egg. Nothing to do about it!" she moved over to the grate, poking at it. Could she fit inside it? Was she going to need a different entrance? She was prepared for going into the muck, even if she was gonna whine about it later.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Professor rolled his eyes. King Cole could hear him mutter under his breath. 

 

"Dear Gods, is she actually insane?"

 

He pulled his eyes back to King Cole and forced a steely calm to his voice. "Court Librarian? Well, I suppose I have been called worse. It is not a bad position, so let us play along. Yes, I fear we must - in the name of certainty - venture into the sewers. An unpleasant, nay revolting task, but such is the duty of any civic minded person. And yes, I will join you..."

 

He took off his tweed jacket, his tweed waistcoat, but kept his tweed pants on. 

 

"Come then, how to proceed?"
 

The rusted grill looked like it would crumble if one breathed on it too hard, but it might be a bit of a squeeze for either of them. They were, however, both of thin build so it was entirely feasible. The bigger was the toxic smell, the toxic liquid seeping and bubbling from the grill...

 

And what might be below, in ancient and forgotted (and no doubt filthy) sewers?

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

King Cole huffed under her breath as well.

 

"Insane? No no...mad as a Hatter maybe." She responded under her breath to his under his breath statement; that's what a Royal would do, after all! But she picked up her staff and gave the grate a whack, splitting it open.

 

"Going down there will smell as bad as the stables, probably leave us as foul as a muckraker, and soil our finery. But of course, Professor, you know of Noblesse Oblige? As the privledged, as the highest of us, we must act with generosity and take care of those under our care. And if that means trapsing through the sludge and mock and grime, then we must do that!" She said. "So when you're ready for us to drop, you get ready and we're going down!"

[Supercape]

GM

 

The grate cracked and splintered into dust at the gentlest of taps. It did not improve the smell at all. The metal rust seemed to sizzle in the toxic waste. 

 

"Noblesse Oblige..." sighed the Professor. "Whoever came out with that crap didn't have to swim in crap, I wager..."

 

Nevertheless he stiffened his spine, stiffened his lips, and lowered himself through the mud, excrement, and toxic fumes. It was enough to make ones nose pull itself off ones face, slither up the face, and make a leap for freedom. 

 

It was dark, and liquid, and stinky. 

 

The professor brought out a torch, turned it on. It flickered until he gave it a tap. A beam of light swept across the fetid liquid they stood on (up to knee high) that slowly flowed in one direction. The masonry was crumbling. 

 

"19th Century sewer architecture, I think..." said the Professor, his historical fascination overcoming the stench for a moment. "Forgotten, abandoned. Quite the hazard, I think..."

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

As soon as Renee sunk into the muck, she realized she'd made a mistake.

 

The mask didn't help. Or if it did, it didn't help enough. The smell overpowered her. She turned as green as her outfit was purple, her eyes bulging and watering. She tried to fight it down, but there was no way, it was coming up from the foul, terrible smell and what she was standing in.

 

She retched up her lunch into the toxic sludge, letting out a yowl.

 

"THIS IS HORRIBLE! THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA! I HAVE MADE THE WORST DECISION OF MY ENTIRE LIFE SO FAR!" she screamed. Then she realized that was only going to make it worse and she clamped her hands over her face.

"We should hurry. As soon as possible. This is not good at all. I can not stay here for long." She was already dreading how she would ever get this out of her clothes. Probably with fire. But how was she ever going to get it out of her skin? out of her nose!? She was going to be smelling this forever and she was not happy about it.

 

Her grandfather never had to do this she bet! He did fun things like steal gold from Fort Knox and turn the Freedom League into animals! She was in a SEWER, SHE WAS IN A FILTHY SEWER!

 

She glared at Armitage. "...I'm also cutting your salary." she said, to the man she was not paying, who she had no idea what he did for a living, and all that stuff.

[Supercape]

GM

 

"A Salary? I was not aware I was being paid. And, as I understand it, you are bereft of sufficient capital to pay me. Other than in royal platitudes, which I rather suspect you are full of. Platitudes, that is..."

 

He cast the torch down to the turgid waters. "Although by the end of this escape I imagine we will both be full of it. Full of something else entirely. And not, I daresay, in a good way..."

 

He shone the light at King Cole. 

 

"Well, your highness, is your alchemical prowess ready to deal with this? We still have an egg to find... and a goodly network of putrid waters to detoxify!"

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

With all the grace and dignity if a royal, the great dignity and bearing of a King, King Cole III huffed like a petulant teenage girl at Professor Armitage.

 

"...Yeah okay fine I don't have enough allowance to pay you. But the treasury is only temporarily empty!" She said with an excuse. "It will be refilled soon enough." She said as she started stomping through the sewage. 

 

"I can fix it." She said with absolute confidence that she didn't have. "Once we find the egg that's causing this, I'll be the pig in a house of bricks, instead of the pig in the house of..."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Quite. There is no reason to resort to profanity, your highness. Not... regal, is it?"

 

The Professor wrinkled his nose. 

 

"Then it appears we follow the smell. Unless you have an egg-detection potion, or spell. Or perhaps some other mystical apparatus that might decipher the location of the... wait... did you hear that?"

 

As it happened, King Cole III did hear something. For all the atrocious fermenting smells that hang heavy in the air, sound was travelling very well, thanks to the echo that ran down the sewer corridor....

 

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

"HAIL, AND HALT, GOOD STRANGER!" Her voice echoed off the stone as loud as she could make it, which was as loud as a drama student projecting their voice for the climactic solo, if they were in a stuffy, echo-y sewer. "APPROACH CAREFULLY, FOR YOU ARE NEARING THE VIEW OF THE INDOMITABLE KING COLE!" Then she stepped forward a bit more herself. She might have been trudging around in sewage, but her black and purple costume- the parts that weren't dirty-, plus her wavy blonde hair pinned under a crown and her purple eyes were fairly striking in the sewer; she did walk and talk like a royal, and mostly looked like one if not for being in the middle of the sewer.

 

"Okay, show yourself. I have a civilian with me as well, so do not try any funny business, this is not the sort of place for us to be fighting." she warned. "But you may have an audience with me, King Cole Three."

[Nerdzul]

What? Admittedly Luke was caught off-guard, he certainly didn't expect to meet anyone strolling in the sewers, well, at least anyone that was not of the monstrous lizard variety. 

 

The Indomitable King Cole... Alright.. 

 

The name did sound somewhat familiar, but the young man couldn't be sure, at least the newcomer had been graceful enough to inform him that they were in the company of civilians, meaning that, he would have to change into his superhero identity before getting in sight, just in case.

 

Should have done that sooner... Better late than never... I guess..

 

Luke closed his eyes for a split second as he underwent a partial transformation, a trick he had only recently picked up, assuming the form of a black-scaled humanoid dragon, one that at least obscured his features. This came at the cost of his shirt that was turned to shred by the transformation, but then again, given that he had been diving in sewer muck for a while, it was likely he would have to throw it into the trash it anyway.

 

"It's not the sort of place for a stroll either and yet... Here we are..." He replied as he closed the distance between himself and the source of the voice.

 

"Nigthscale here..." He introduced himself. "Your Majesty..." He continued, playfully bowing his head. 

 

"What kind business does a King have in the freakin' sewers?"

 

"Ah and by the way, did you happen to catch some kind of giant reptile on the way there?" He asked. "I mean another one, a part from me..."

[Poncho]

(King Cole III)

 

"A Dragon! A true Dragon! Librarian write this down! We've found a dragon in the sewers!" King Cole yells at Armitage as she splashes around. "And it's a pretty Dragon too!" she struck the walls with her staff excitedly. She didn't look much better than he did, up to her howevers in muck, wearing her purple and black queen's uniform and her crown.

 

"You, Dragon! Nightscale! You have been drafted as my newest Knight. A...Dragon Knight, as you will. We are here to fix the sewer issue, as is the proper response to any King who finds out that some sort of corrupting, terrible, and stinky force is occupying the undersides of our dominions. We, personally, are looking for an egg, according to my Court Librarian here, Armitage. But if you are looking for a giant reptile and we are looking for an egg, well, Do reptiles not happen to hatch from eggs!?" she declared.

 

"It's time for us to team up and take this creature down and find the egg."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"A Dragon, hmmm? Yes, I have heard of this fellow through my... ah... sources. A spy called eyeball. Apparently you are quite the fellow..."

 

Professor Armitage gave a little nod of his head. 

 

"I am Professor Armitage. Apparently, I am a librarian too, which is news to me, and seems to be a compulsory employment with no pay and several responsibilities, none of them particularly enticing. But my regal friend is quite correct, we are looking for a cursed egg, which seems to be poisoning the forgotten sewers, and if we are not careful the whole of Freedom City. It would not do if these toxic waters leaked into something overground, where people live. Most inconvenient."