Mahmod was dragging his tired bones through the old city, past ruined men sleeping in the gutters and working girls putting on a fake smile for strangers. The night had been the strangest in centuries for the known Alchemist. Not only did Tut, the resident talking head and one of the first founders die, but Memnon went to the grave with him. Jack was prowling the streets, now unchained by the burden of keeping appearnces as a high-society surgeon in Victoria Britain - now he only had to do his work, and his work was brutal. He would freely go on to cutting and killing innocents, and no immortal would be brace or stupid enough to confront him with his twisted knife from another era.
He pushed past the front, ignoring other Immortals who greeted him and asked for his health. They were lying, of course, all they wanted was just another fix. Shenshen was up there, preaching and begging for help, announcing the Ripper had escaped his prison. He was responsible for those dangerous deathless beasts, and so he proceeded to leave the stage and search for him through the city.
Utna's eyes lit up with recognition as he caught a glimpse of Mahmod falling on one of the chairs and closing his eyes to relax and possibly sleep for a little while. The noice around him was unbearable, yet he ignored everything around him expertly. It took Utna to shaking the already shaken Alchemist to get his attention, and suddenly his ears popped at the sound of Utna's shouts.
'Where is Memnon?', he inquired eagerly, a complacent smile on his face.
'Dead', Mahmod whispered and slouched back in his chair. 'The King is Dead'.
At that moment Cadeyrn walked up to the pair, his clothing dishevelled and holding a bloodied bandage to his arm. He had seen the note that Shenshen left and was anxious to find out what was happening, his heart sank though when he heard Mahmod's words. He had seen what he'd thought he'd seen back in the museum, Memnon was dead.
"Stabbed by the Ripper.." Ali added with her solemn voice that was usually cheerful or inquisitive. She rose from her fetal position on the couch to look at the exhausted Mahmod. If she remembered correctly, he was one of the first to see Memnom die. The fresh memory flashed into her mind again and she winced.
"Yeah," Cadeyrn added, "He stabbed
me in the arm with the knife too!" He showed the group the small cut in his arm in the manner one would display a war wound, "It just won't heal like it usually should, it's not a normal knife,"
Ali looked at Caderyn's wound with curiosity, seeing what a wound could do to them although she had already seen what a fatal wound had done.
"My poor Caderyn..." Ali sighed. "How did you get out?"
"Screecher and Shanna and Shenshen all helped me escape," Cadeyrn admitted after an embarrassed pause, he briefly considered making up an escape story but knowing the owl woman she'd be telling everyone the actual tale for years to come, "Shenshen shot at Jack and he ran away. He said he was going to eat my kidneys!" he instinctively reached down to touch his waist, as if checking his vital organs were still there.
There was a silence, and the world around stood still. Utna was staring wide-eyed at Mahmod, his mouth twitching to a frown. The veins on his temple buldged, and sweat dripped down his face. His hands shook with anticipation, but all he was hoping for never came true. As was the rest of his life, nothing played it the way he had planned it. Nothing except for this diabolical plan.
'Dead...', he muttered psychotically, his mouth tritching again and curving upwards to a terrible grin. 'Dead...', he said again louder, his breaths growing shorter with every second. 'Dead...', he spoke as if he couldn't believe what was coming out of his mouth. Utna laughed, a sick, demented laughter of the condemned before they were hanged, a stiff and forced laughter of a man facing his last hour. 'DEAD!', he echoed again, this time alerting the others around him. His head snapped to the sides, looking suspiciously around him. Too many know his secret. Too many.
He leaned forward and grabbed Mahmod by the collar, raised him up and snatched him away. He was reeling away like a drunk, refusing to even stand on his own feet. Utna heard the others around him speak as if they just had another adventure like the countless they had before. This was no adventure. This was the end.
'Where is it... Where is the blade?', he asked Mahmod, his hands curling around his neck, his feet dangling under him.
Shanna?s trip into the museum had been a short one. They had seen the Ripper get away, wounded, but not for long. Screecher and Caderyn had then absconded, with Shanna trailing and generally trying to process what they had seen. The Ripper?s freedom was troubling enough, let alone the details that Caderyn mentioned. All in all, Shanna? night had not gone as planned. Back at the theatre they dropped out of their reverie and right into the middle of Utna having a fit.
?Woah there buddy calm down,? Shanna said, placing a hand on Utna?s shoulder.
"We already said," Cadeyrn sighed in exasperation as Utna lifted Mahmod off the ground, seemingly ignoring everyone-else, "Jack the Ripper has the special knife, he ran off with it after Shenshen chased him away,"
Ali jumped as Utna grabbed Mahmod all of a sudden. She was a bit frightened at Utna's display but mostly it was from the day's experience and the loss of two immortals in one night.
"Put him down, Utna!" Ali said as her nerves began to run short. "Its not like Mahmod wanted the Ripper to have the blade.
"Just put him down and stop freaking out about it," Shanna said, placing more pressure on Utna's shoulder. "We can sort this out as long as we don't go around making unnecessary trouble"
They were all around him, the little birds chirping at his ears. His display of insanity began to draw attention from the rest of the crowd. He loosed his grip on the Alchemist and looked behind his shoulder. Shanna was pressing hard against him, but he shrugged off the feeling as if a fly had decided to drink his blood.
'Jack the Ripper. The mad Surgeon. This is wrong...too wrong...', he mumbled again, fumbling at the words, not doing any effort to let himself be heard. Mahmod slumped back to the chair and sighed, trying to sleep at last.
'You... All of you... Who else was there? This can't be known.', his eyes darted between all of the Immortals in front of him. 'After me', he ordered, walking away from the group and to the back of the theatre, to where their journey began with Tut's recruitment. Utna didn't bother with the Alchemist. He knew the young fool wouldn't do a thing to challenge him. All he cared about was narcotics, and that was no business of his.
"Where are you..." Ali trailed off as she got up from her couch in a sudden surge of energy to know what exactly Utna was going off about.
Cadeyrn had no idea what Utna was talking about but he was curious for answers so he trailed behind the man with a whilst replacing the bandage on his arm, wincing as the bloodied fabric made contact with his exposed flesh.
"How can this happen?" he asked Utna in a quiet voice, "If the knife can break through all the magic which makes us not die it must be really,
really strong, more strong than even the Faerie Queen's magic," he pondered this, hadn't he been searching for someone or something with that sort of power all this time?
The witnesses followed Utna to the backstage, a small room next to empty barrels of czech beer stacked on each other. He couldn't calm himself, nor could he speak again in his mellow tone. He was so near the finish line he couldn't bear to contain himself, but he had to sit and wait. He waited thousands of years, he could surely wait some more.
Cadeyrn raised his voice, again speaking of his damned Faes and legendary nonsense. They were all different, yet Utna couldn't ever accept half of what his fellow immortals told him. He knew the truth, and the real powers behind the scenes, yet all of the rest insisted on different legends and tales.
'Jack can't have the knife', he announced adamantly, 'It was mine to take, not his'. He raised his voice, his heart pumping at its human limit, then surpassing it easily. 'Tut gave his word, we made a deal-', he eyed the others around him suspiciously. Could they have taken the knife and lied to him?
'Do you know how it feels like, to live for so long? Do you? My first love, my first wife, I can't remember how she looked like - I can't remember her name, I... Everything crashes into each other, everything is just like the other, nothing is new, nothing is original... I've been here before, and I've done that a million times. Man is not built to last this long!', he lashed out at the Immortals in front of him, suddenlt realizing what he made himself appear to be. 'Yet... I did not want this to happen... The Ripper could do as he pleases with that in his hands'.
'At least I know it works. There's a way out'.
"So that's the story?" Naditabirus' voice echoed through the club as she swung the doors open. "You all hire a mad-man to do your dirty work so death can come knocking?" Naditabirus looked at Utna, though she was wearing sunglasses and continued. "Unfortunately, this has proven that your group is no longer capable of holding onto such a knife. Imagine what would happen if someone worse than Jack got the knife? It could happen, you know?"
Naditabirus reached for a cigarette, but then remembered she didn't have any. This was getting old, she should have gotten smokes before coming. "I am going to kill the Ripper, take the knife and study it. Once I am done, it will be destroyed. This is the only way to ensure we don't get more of this nonsense. If I find a way to replicate the effects, I will toss you a death-pill, you can be sure of that."
'He didn't say a word about setting Jack loose, Damn it!', he lashed out at Nadi, anger flaring in his eyes. 'He killed Memnon, and he will kill again!', he walked up to her, arms hanging by his sides, fists clenched tight. 'He gave me his word, told me there was a way out and I fucking believed him!', Utna came face to face with Nadi, staring down at the immortal, 'Now he got the final rest and I'm stuck here with the lot of you'.
'There will be no such thing, I forbid you! He is not after us, he is after his wicked desires. The knife is there to scare us away', Utna was ready to come on top of Nadi, his breath licking at her face, then he snapped back and turned to the others. 'They can't know about this, they can't... I will pay, just keep your mouths shut!'.
"Do you know how many dead guards I found in that museum?" Nadi snapped back. "At least ten people died and that was before Tut even got to his damned coffin and you guys got the knife!" Naditabirus removed her sunglasses and placed them in her petticoat. "I didn't join on the mission because I don't like wasting time, but now I can see that you all have zero idea what kind of consequences we can stir up. People died, people who did not want to die, are dead. And it is your fault, Utna. Yours and Tut's. So yeah, now you are stuck with me, and I am not happy about this. Maybe you belong at the bottom of a boulder too."
"Not after us?" Cadeyrn intoned incredulously upon hearing Utna's claim, he pointed to the bleeding wound on his arm, "He was about to cut me up, and said he'd come back for me when Shen drove him off. I bet he'd cut all of us up if he got the chance!"
'Shen is Marco's lapdog, he'll come running at him and die, and so be it!', Utna barked at the boy. 'It was he in the first place who put his there, I reckon there's a score to settle between the two'. He turned away from Cadeyrn and back to Nadi as she was delivering her harsh words.
The fist flashed past her, too fast for her to even notice. Years of training coupled with the blessing of the gods bestowed upon Utnapishtim incredible powers of coersion, and he was putting them to good use. It cracked the side of her skull, dislodging her jaw and sending her reeling back to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
'You insolent *****! Who do you think you are?', he bellowed at her in rage, 'Do you think I care about these petty mortals? Their lives and dreams? I piss on the lot of them-', he continued with a frenzy, watching her face realign back to its regular form. 'Do you think I find your attempts to make us public funny? We have rules to follow, and
you should have been put under a boulder all those years ago - Do you think I don't know? Do you think I haven't known of what you did in the Americas?'.
Wincing as the hard blow lands on Nadi's face Jack steps forward from where he had been watching and grabs Utna's forearm firmly and look at him. "Calm down Utna. Raining blows on another immortal, even one as annoying and selfcentered as her, wont fix anything. Explain where the knife came from."
Cadeyrn leapt back in alarm as Utna suddenly laid into Nadi and cowered with his arms over his face, while he'd usually be up for a scrap he'd had quite enough fights for that day. He peeked out through his fingers to see Jack stepping in.
"Yeah, we need to know who made the knife," he squeaked, maybe whoever created the blade could help him?
Naditabirus got up and sighed. "You know, that actually kind of hurt." She said before whipping out her Smith & Weston revolver. "Name calling is one thing, but hitting me is something I just can't abide by. So here is the new deal." Nadi had the gun pointed directly at Utna's heart, one move and he would be down on the ground for a bit. Enough to continue her point.
"So, Mr. I piss on the mortal's dreams. You don't know anything useful, you let the Ripper out and now he has a dangerous weapon, and you just keep crying about how you can't die. Well I guess that just sucks then, because I don?t think I will be helping you in that endeavor. I'm also not going under any boulder, nor will I be dying any time soon. I don't care if you think what I do is funny, it's not supposed to be. I do what I do because I find mortal lives more important than your little circle jerk sessions."
Looking over and glaring at Nadi one she pulls out her gun Jack twists and pulls the sword from his cane in a practiced motion and gently sets the tip against the gun and moving it away. "Put it down Nadi. Whatever you wish doesn't amount to much right away. We have an immortal thing out there with the most dangerous weapon I or any of us have heard of. Put It Down."
"Hate to tell you this Jack, but this gun hurts a lot more than that sword. I also don't really feel like getting hit again, in case you can't tell and this little peacekeeper is the best way to ensure it. If you want me to show you how much it hurts, you can keep pushing me." Naditabirus pulled back the hammer of the gun, it would be much faster on the trigger now. "I also find this guy much more dangerous to me than some lunatic with a knife who doesn't know my face."
Shaking his head Jack uses the tip of the sword to move the gun to the side slightly so its not pointing at either him or Utna. Looking into Nadi's eyes. "This is not made to hurt. If you don't feel like getting hit than don't do things to make others want to hit you. I agree with him to a degree, mortals lives are so short and so full of dangers that can kill them that death a few decades sooner or later doesn't really affect them."
"Wait, stop!" Cadeyrn cried, jumping between Nadi and Jack, a desperate look on his face, "We can't fight each other, the Ripper is still out there, this is what he'd want!" he glanced between the two immortals, "You're just wasting your time when we should be talking about how to stop the only person who can actually hurt us,"
Utna backed away from the scene, his back pressed against the wall. He scanned the room again, his senses returning to him at last. It wasn't like him to hit a fellow immortal. It wasn't like him to do any of what he did before. His desires overtook him, and in his desperation he lashed out.
'Shenshen will go after Jack... I pray he succeeds.'
?Krr?Krr?.?, the sound of static suddenly broke the tension in the room, and all attention was placed at the radio transmitter in the corner of the room. ?Krr? Do you copy? This is Isaac, we are on pursuit after the Ripper. We need assistance, I repeat, we need assistance?.
