Kasumi takes a cautious step forward. "His control is already fading. I know you can feel it." She looks over to Yukio. "Did Adler say anything about the poison wearing off?"
Yukio slowly nods. "He said it would wear off by itself, but he did not specify."
"See?" Kasumi says, taking another cautious step after the informant does not react to her first. "What you're feeling is the beginning of the loosening of his yoke around your neck. Take ahold of that feeling. Put down the sword."

If you want a picture of how Aiko and Toshiba deal with their situation, imagine a boot stamping on Adler's face - forever.

Well, long enough to knock him into next Thursday and give him a nice concussion to go with it. Possibly once more for good measure. Toshiba finds a certain glee in making damn sure Adler's not conscious for that next part.

With Adler knocked out, Aiko and Toshiba begin the process of dragging him up the stairs. It is, to put it mildly, an ordeal. The sinking feeling comes in when, after a few turns of the spiral stairs, you realize that you have gone up beyond the ground level, with the staircase showing no sign of ending any time soon. But you can't pull an exit out of thin air, so you continue going up. Along the way, you start wheezing, Adler takes a few more knocks on the head for good measure, and your knees begin to absolutely and truly hate you.

---

(Kagemaru's Attack: 1d20+8 = 26 Kagemaru's Damage: 3d6+12+1d6 = 28 equals a DC of 24 on the damage save. Thief 6's Save: 1d20+3 = 7 FAIL!)

Thief Six whips around, determined to at least punch Kagemaru if he can't shoot him - which takes him straight into Kagemaru's next kick. CRACK! There goes the bridge of his nose and his consciousness.

Can nothing stop Kagemaru?

(Thief 4's Attack: 1d20+5-4 = 2 ERROR! Thief 5's Attack: 1d20+5-4 = 2 ERROR! What the fuck.)

---

"I'm -" the informant wheezes - "I need to sit down."

And with that, he drops Aiko's sword and plunks himself into a corner. Yukio quickly gathers up the blade and lowers her own, though she does not sheathe it quite yet.

Remember when I said the hut was small and sparse? It really is. The sword was the most valuable thing in there, leaving aside a small bindle of clothes and other travel essentials. Kasumi does, however, catch a glimpse of something mounted to the wall in the bedroom - a painting? She'd have to leave Yukio's side to inspect it in detail, though.

"What kind of temple is this?" Toshiba wheezes. "Also, what's the plan now, Aiko? As far as I'm concerned, Adler's just about outlived his usefulness save for a possible messy public execution."

"The god the Hanse pray to is a distant and solitary one," Aiko grunts stoically. "Their holymen speak and write in a strange tongue that I do not understand. Nor, I believe, do any but the most learned of their society. It is like our high and common tongues, only more and vastly unhelpfully so."

She spares a look at Adler. "And I'm well aware how closely our current situation resembles my suggested course of action." A pant. "But I believe Kasumi wants to question him further about his master."

She sighs, the sound lost in another grunt. "The explosion you stopped us setting off was meant to end this whole sorry affair and let us do with him as necessary."

"I do beg your humble pardon for not mastering the lost arts of reading minds," Toshiba quips. "But I was operating under the assumption that underground detonations were to be avoided." He lets that one sit for a moment, still plodding along up the steps. "Too many more flights, however, and I will seriously entertain arranging Adler's tragic death by slipping on a staircase and breaking his neck while escaping the law."

Kasumi takes a knee in front of the informant. "I'm going to search you, make sure there's nothing in here that Adler's commands can make you use to harm yourself, okay?" She turns up the energy on her smile. "We want you walking back out of here."
"Ja," the informant replies. Kasumi pats him down carefully, but besides the clothes on his back, a pouch of silver and a small dagger, he's got nothin with him. Kasumi hands the dagger to Yukio, who puts it in her belt.
"All right." Kasumi stands back up. "I'm going to just check to make sure there's no one and nothing else here, and then we'll head back, okay?" She waits for the informant to indicate his agreement, then moves into the bedroom for a closer look around.

The informant nods.

---

The painting, it turns out, is not actually a landscape, as Kasumi suspected at first glance. Instead, it is a canvas fitted with innumerable small notes in peculiar shorthand, small sketches of people glued into place and even a few strings strung between them. In the middle of the canvas stands a large singular sketch of a serious-looking Imperial noble.
"Someone's decided to take revenge up as a hobby," Kasumi mutters to herself.

(Kasumi's Knowledge Check: 1d20+6 = 8 + 2 AD 1d6.open = 4, 1d6.open = 4 = 16 versus DC 15 SUCCESS)

[color=red:9917a219c3][TWO AD SPENT, SEE OOC][/color]

Kasumi's brow furrows as she tries to place the man. He looks noble...but he is not among the 77, or the Dragon's Wing, or any other assemblage of major lords. Hm, major lords - wait, didn't Koto Uratamata volountarily step down from being the Dragon's Claw? That looks to be him, at any rate. Kasumi doesn't know much about him because she wrote him off as a mark early in her research; he was known as a dour, careful man who kept exact count of his coin and had his servants watched at all times by his retainers - and there were rumors that he entirely shunned the company of women. The entire point further became moot when he was found murdered in his garden, with his neck cut open and part of his hair removed with the bloody blade. The assailant was never found, and having neither children nor wife, Uramata's court quickly scattered into the winds. A tragic end, sure, but not exactly a great dynasty, either. Adler did say that Aiko wants to avenge the murderer of her lord, so it's not a stretch to figure that these are her notes.

"Hmm," Kasumi mutters to herself, then returns to the front room. She smiles and offers her hand to the informant. "You ready to go?"
"Go where?" the informant asks. He seems exhausted. "We have nowhere left to run. We should turn ourselves in to the guard."
"Then let's do that," Kasumi says, keeping her hand extended. "I talked to Holger, they're taking care of you and your friends."
The informant rises, but spurns her hand. "I will go with you, then." Yukio shoots Kasumi a worried glance, but finally sees fit to sheathe her sword.
"Then let's go," she says. Kasumi walks to the front, and Yukio naturally falls into the rear, keeping the informant between the two of them.

admiralducksauce wrote:

"I do beg your humble pardon for not mastering the lost arts of reading minds," Toshiba quips. "But I was operating under the assumption that underground detonations were to be avoided." He lets that one sit for a moment, still plodding along up the steps. "Too many more flights, however, and I will seriously entertain arranging Adler's tragic death by slipping on a staircase and breaking his neck while escaping the law."

"You are destroying my illusions about ninja," Aiko answers the mock apology with affable snark of her own. "And fortunately for Herr Adler's neck and Kasumi's good humour, I believe we're almost there."

Toshiba belts out an honest laugh. "Were I a ninja, I suppose I would be."

Turns out that "almost there" is still fifty steps away from "there". Seriously, who built this staircase? On top, you finally get some fresh air, possibly more than you wanted: there's a strong westward wind up there. A stone walkway/balcony surrounds the tip of the tower. A small equipment stash turns out to hold a few survival essentials, some Imperial coins, and - three folded scaffolds with tarp strung between them. Toshiba recognizes them as the gliders that Blue Oni's men used to attack the War Academy.

Hello, exit strategy.

Thief 4 swings a wild haymaker at Kagemaru with his right fist while Thief 5 tries for a kick to the shins. What neither thief has realized is that they're opposite each other, a flaw that Kagemaru easily exploits. He ducks under the wild swing, but not before reeling his garotte out of his sleeve and catching the thief's wrist in it. In the same downward motion, he shoots out his leg, deflecting Thief 5's kick onto Thief 4's kneecap. Thief 5 's shock is enough of an opening for Kagemaru to throw a cross at his midsection; the thief jumps back, but only realizes too late that Kagemaru still has his partner's wrist caught, and with a downward pull, he forces the momentarily slack Thief 4 to roll over his back and deliver an inadvertent spinning kick with his pain-clenched leg, hitting Thief 5 across the face. Thief 5 goes down seeing stars and Thief 4 fails to break his landing, making an audible "Oof!" as the impact knocks the air from his lungs.

It is at this point that the still-blinded Thief 2 just chances it and fires his gonne. The shot isn't even close to hitting anything, and to judge from Thief 2's facial expression, he just realized that

a) he still can't see anything,
b) he just blew his chance of shooting someone and
c) said someone just beat up five of his friends without breaking a sweat.

Let us not linger on his fate, kind reader, but be assured that his defeat at the hands of Kagemaru was swift and he was, indeed, knocked the fuck out.

Aiko, seeing her companion recognises the strange constructs, waits for an explanation as she surveys the city from their impressive vantage point.

"I was counting on a strategically placed haycart," Toshiba says when he spots Aiko looking at him, "but these will probably work better. The ninja who attacked the Academy used these to glide down from the bluffs, bypassing the fortress walls."

He sets about attempting to open one up and strap Adler into the device. "I figure Adler won't be able to steer, so we send him first and then try to land close to his location. Or we get some rope and tie him to one of our gliders. Either that or one of us tries to carry him and glide at the same time, although these don't look sturdy enough for that. Birds are light, fragile creatures for their size. I would imagine these things are similar."

Coming to grips with the idea of manned flight, Aiko's analytical mind quickly works out that the spire is high enough and close enough that just pushing the glider with Adler strapped into it would be enough for it to make it over the city wall.

"The question is, should we? As far as I know, the others will be following Adler's man out of the city to his fallback position, though your sudden appearance makes me start to wonder if that even worked. Of course, I'd also planned for Herr Adler to be conscious and leading me there himself. So the chances that anything is actually going to plan look about as small as the people down there. Fuck. It's times like these I wish ninja could read minds."

(Rolling for Aiko because she has the better Knowledge check bonus. Aiko's Knowledge Roll, rolled on phone because work blocks the dice roller: 1d20+10 = 20+10 = 30 versus DC 15 DAMN, SON!)

Aiko's knowledge of knot tying comes into its own when she quickly works out how to use her silk rope to lash the three gliders together. With the added size of the resulting contraption, the glider's flight should be much more stable and therefore easier to keep under control, and there's no chance anyone's getting lost on the way. Now you just need to - pun intended - take the plunge.

(Aiko's Notice: 1d20+12 = 17+12 = 29 versus DC 25 EAGLE-EYED!)

Down below on the streets, Aiko's eagle eyes take note of a pair of colorful clothes moving through the sea of drab that is Hanse haute couture: Kasumi and Yukio, hurrying back to the hideout with the informant.

Aiko points out the other members of the party to her companion. "What are the odds they're going where we want them to be going?" she asks with a sigh.

"Let's just land in front of them. Come on, I know you'd love to see Kasumi honestly surprised for once," Toshiba smiles.

Aiko smiles back ruefully. "Aye, that is a pleasing thought. However, I'd rather that surprise wasn't Van Synt's men descending on us: these gliding contraptions of Herr Adler's are bound to be noticed the moment we leave the lee of this temple. Let's see where they're heading first."

Toshiba nods and cranes to watch his companions below.

"On the other hand, Adler will be awake sooner or later. Perhaps getting him out of the city now, while we have the means, would be better. Then we'll get the fallback position from him."

"We could just hit him again. It seems both effective and cathartic."