The Buffalo Interrogation

(This post took MUCH longer than I thought it would. Verifying it was a bitch. In the mean time I've been investigating a lead in Harrisburg.

I love your comments by the way, everyone. I just haven't had time to respond to them. I'll comment on the backlog when I can.

In any case, while I was investigating the situation in Buffalo, I ended up being pulled off the street by Green Lady and some of her friends. This is basically what I remember from the interview I had afterwards.

I was sitting in a dingy basement opposite of Green Lady, zip tied so I wasn't going anywhere, and tied to the chair. They weren't taking any chances.)

Green Lady: "Two knives, pepper spray...I'd say we were very lucky to get the drop on you. Your wallet says you are Ellen Knowles of New York. Ellen Knowles, you've been looking for information on a very narrow, and specific set of topics that very few people should be looking for. I'd like to ask you to stop."

Ellen: "You've had some practice at this. The Zip Ties are tight enough to hold, but not so tight as to cut off my circulation."

Green Lady: "Why are you asking all of these questions regarding the last year or so, anyway?"

Ellen: (In my best Godfather Impression) "They made me an offer I could not refuse."

Green Lady: "Who made you the offer?"

Ellen: "So it's you, versus a guy in a Red Mask, versus a bunch of secret agents of some kind. Some kind of shadow war over the fate of fucking Buffalo, a renowned shitstain across the panties of New York?"

Green Lady: "Do you want me to kill you?"

Ellen: "I'd like to know why. Don't cut my throat please?"

(We were quiet for a minute. I'm fairly certain she was seriously considering slitting my throat.)

Green Lady: "Well, since you ask nicely? It all comes back to a war a few years back. The Upstairs versus the Downstairs for the fate of the world. Traitors and spies and people like me in the middle trying to profit. The guys in the suits made it out ...effectively in control of the world. And nobody knew it at the time. And guys like Red Mask and the creature he represents want a piece for themselves. And I...find myself as one of the 'good guys' for the moment. The OLD good guys left some things laying around, and somebody has to keep them away from everything else."

Ellen: "Where does (Time Lord) fit into all of this?"

Green Lady: "He and his friends formed another faction in all of this. The 'old heroes, trying to stem the tides of darkness'. It's funny to think about. They don't matter any more. One way or the other their pieces are off the board. It's sad to think about, Ellen Knowles. The old heroes are gone and dead, and we all had a part in killing them. I did it out of greed, the Suits for ideology, and Red Mask out of fear."

(At this point, I noticed the glass of whiskey on the counter. Green Lady had been drinking, pretty heavily I'd say. My favorite kind of witness.)

Green Lady: "I have a brother you know. He stayed on the sidelines, except to help out this guy from Philadelphia. The War Without End and the Defiling Druid. What strange bedfellows ... how do I tell my brother that I killed his best friend?"

Ellen: "You killed him? How?"

Green Lady: "Mmm...Did a working that would completely rip reality apart, and let it loose on the hotel you visited a few hours ago. Then I dropped a ton of lava in this area without Veil. Then I reestablished the veil making everything look like it used to be as everything that was living burned to a crisp. We confirmed that (Mastermind), the slippery fucker, made it out. But The War Without End has ended. Nothing could have survived that."

(One of the unusual facets of the last of the Missing Hours posts, is that the actual amount of material covered doesn't cover more than the first five minutes of the last set of missing hours. It confused me greatly when I read it, and I'm surprised no one said anything. But to translate what she said in her above statement, Green Lady has basically said she sundered the Veil around the Hotel. Seeing as she had a thousand-odd murderous mantis with her at the time, and had dropped a whole lot of magical lava in an area that had nothing to defend against magic anymore, that basically meant that anything in that area would be burned to nothing and THEN hacked into a thousand pieces, not to mention the psychological effects of having the veil shattered in an area. There are still traces of the damage, as seen in entries like "Hotel Room." Except that NONE of this explains how Nick managed to reappear at his home, in his room, with his car, and... well, on the other hand, EVERYTHING is explained if Time Lord was nearby when the veil break occurred. The kind of power that people like Nick and Time Lord have on the other side of the veil is ridiculous. But Time Lord would have STILL needed a similar break to occur at Nick's House for any of this to make sense.

Believe me, I haven't even BEGUN to cover how insane this is. She literally shattered the veil in an area JUST to make sure that both Mastermind and Nick died. Risky, Ballsy, Dangerous, and there are a MILLION possible outcomes when you break the veil. Needless to say, I'm looking into it.)

Ellen: "...Huh."

Green Lady: "I need to go figure out how to dispose of you. I'll be back."

(After that, I got the fuck out of dodge. I'm not a smooth talker, I'm an escape artist. I'm about ninety percent certain she WOULD have killed me if I was still there when she got back. In any case, if I couldn't break a chair and slip out of the zip ties, I wouldn't have any right to have survived for this long. See you next time.)