The story picks back up at the diner with the eight Scions gathered. Agreeing to not all eight live together, Randal and his band showed Erik and his LA Scions where the warehouse was located in case of emergencies, exchanged numbers and went their own ways.

Back at the Warehouse, it was a quiet evening. Randal approached Thurston, stating that while he couldn’t remember a lot of what happened to him when he was under the dark sway of the taint, he did remember a few things he’d said and done. Apologizing profusely to Thurston, he handed an envelope to him with a smile, saying that while it wasn’t practical, it was still a fun bit of intelligence the Danny’s Boys had managed to procure.

Opening the envelope, Thurston discovered a photo of Ivan Ivanovich, his Russian rival, using spirit gum to apply his proud, full, ‘natural’ mustache.

The next morning, Felicity went off to what she called her ‘new dayjob’ of haunting the poor zoning man’s office, while Takashi fielded a call from the Yakuza, requesting a meeting. Going to the Chinatown district of Chicago, he found it teeming with carts, stands, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants with colorful banners. Making his way to the restaurant that was appointed as a meeting place, he felt a brush at his pockets, turning to find a child pickpocket. The kid, surprised he’d been caught, was then made victim to Takashi giving the child a stern talk on ethics and the possibilities of prison in the future if he kept up with his current path. Finally setting the child free (to possibly pick more pockets), he located the restaurant and awaited his contact.

An older, well-dressed Japanese man greeted him, and speaking entirely in Japanese, the man congratulated him on his swift work for the Yakuza. He told Takashi that his grandparents had been released, and were even given a hefty allowance for their troubles. With it, they would be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Thanking the man, Takashi made as if to leave, but was stopped. There was something else. Apparently, the Cold Blood Killers had somehow managed to get one of their men high up into the Yakuza, and had found files on Takashi useful to them. They now knew everything about Takashi that the Yakuza did. Warning him to watch his back, the old businessman stood to leave.

Thurston, that night, had a show which Randal, Takashi, and Felicity attended, the flamboyant Thurston in his element.

The next day, Randal gathered his friends together in the warehouse and frantically showed them some news footage of Lake Michigan’s docks. Apparently, a giant kracken had surfaced there, and their attention was needed immediately.

Rushing out, they made their way to the docks only to be met there by Noel Backwater, the Scion of Frigg with the fantastic harp crafted from wood of the World Tree. Asking if he wanted to join up and take care of the little problem, Noel flushed and said that the kracken was already dead. In awe, the Scions instead went out for lunch, where Noel informed them of some small things he’d found out about the Flame of Jehovah cult that had been causing problems around town. He’d seen the dogs, and the light orbs, and planned on trying to find a way to gain more information. After declining their offer to join up, they went their separate ways, and afterwards, Felicity had a phone call.

It was from her FBI contact, who already knew of her success in getting the man out of the office earlier that day. (She had let him get comfortable for about an hour, until she grabbed the end of his desk and violently shook it, causing the last bit of his self-control to snap and cause him to run out of the office screaming about how they’d taken the land from its true owners, Indian graveyards and the like.)

He already had a case file on her father, commenting on how strange it was that there wasn’t huge press surrounding this the moment he was caught. He told Felicity that her father was at the Indiana State Prison, not more than an hour and a half away from Chicago. Giving her the cell number, she hung up, going to the guys. Takashi decided to hang back, since his nature simply screamed against helping in this particular case, so Thurston and Randal went her in the van, convincing Randal that they had to go quickly. Felicity, before even meeting the three of them, used her powers of prophecy to see that her Father stood a very high chance of being kidnapped by the Titans straight from his prison cell.

Getting to the prison late at night, Thurston and Felicity argued for a bit about the best way to keep things quiet and get it done, until it was decided that it was best for her to just go in alone.

Creeping in, invisible, she snuck to a computer to find out how the prison was laid out. Locating a map and finding the correct way, she made her way there. Approaching the cell, she had to bite back a snarl of rage at finding it empty. Taking it out on the guard on duty, she quietly slammed him into a corner, a dark spot in the camera’s views, and held her gun to his back demanding to know where the prisoner in 3C was. He managed to stammer out that they were ordered to keep that cell empty, and she tasered him. Going back to the computer before going back to the guys hidden outside, she found out that the FBI were the ones who had ordered that. Angrily, she went back to the van and determined that she’d simply have to bring the Feds into Chicago.

While the three of them were in Indiana, Takashi got a phone call from an old flame, Cynthia, during which he decided to meet her in Chinatown the next day. Upon Thurston, Randal, and Felicity’s return, he was gone, out and having a long walk to clear his mind.

((DETAILS OF CONVERSATION/TAKASHI ONLY?))

The following day, Takashi went to the place he was to meet Cynthia, and was there hours early. Waiting patiently, she didn’t show on time, and finally he called her office. Being told that she had taken a personal day, he called her phone. It rung a few times until finally it picked up. An unfamiliar voice at the other end said, “Cynthia can’t come to the phone right now.”

Demanding to know who he was speaking to, the voice said that Takashi had been causing too much trouble in Chicago, and in order for Cynthia to live, he had to leave town immediately.

Going back to the warehouse, Randal let them know that the LA gang of Scions had just called, and was on the line with them. Apparently they had just come into some information on the Cold Blood Killer’s hideout location. Carefully guarding himself, Takashi let them know that he had an old friend taken by them just today, and needed to get her away from them. Going to Felicity, he asked her to extract her, thinking that possibly the best way would be through her stealth. Also playing with the idea of actually leaving town until Cynthia could be grabbed by them safely, Randal stated that he wanted to get this strike done, and quickly. Tonight, if possible, and the LA scions were all four in agreement, saying that they’d be careful since there was a personal prisoner involved.

Talking it out, it was agreed that Felicity would scout for a couple of hours before nightfall, Takashi suggesting that a couple of the Danny’s Boys go with her for protection, which Randal readily agreed to.

Going to the compound’s location, she noticed it was heavily fortified, barbed wire solid fence, keycode entry, barely any windows on the place to speak of. Knowing what she knew of Rafiq, however, she decided to scout through the surrounding sewer system, finding a path that looked like it would take her right inside of the compound. Coming up to a solid iron grate barring any further progress, and unable to command the Danny’s Boys to fog up and reappear on the other side, she had to go back. Letting the other seven assembled of the defenses, they split into two teams depending on their needs.

Erik went with Randal, Takashi, and Felicity through the sewer entrance, and serving as a distraction for the sewer team would be Thurston, Howard, Samantha, and Frederick coming in the front way.

((THURSTON ONLY SECTION))

Quietly heading through the sewers, Felicity led them back to the heavy iron bars that had stopped her progress earlier, Randal reaching out and making short work of bending them open enough for them all to get through. Slipping in, they located a manhole heading upwards, Felicity going first to look for danger. They were in a box-filled storage room, so they moved ahead. Using her new relic to totally silence her gun, she fired it at a camera in the following hallway, finally emerging into a giant central room just as Thurston, Samantha, Howard, and Frederick all came in through another door.

The doors began to shut as a blue gas was pumped into the room. Randal rushed to a door and desperately tried to hold it open, but the hydraulics on the door slammed it shut on his fingers, pulling them free with a howl.

Everybody tried to hold their breath, but as Samantha, then Erik, then everybody else began dropping, they realized that it was a skin contact poison as well as breathed. Only Randal and Takashi remained standing, only to be confronted by two teams of four men in hazmat suits coming in through the hydraulic doors, holding dart guns. Takashi managed to kill one and wound another before succumbing to the darts, and Randal managed to harm one before falling to the poison himself.

Everybody began to wake up one by one, alone in a room some hours later, each tied to a chair. Takashi, unable to free himself from his bindings, noticed the camera trained on him over the door in front of him, and began to tell the camera the entire story of his life, starting of course, at the beginning.

Thurston managed to use his experience as a magician to successfully worm his way out of his own bindings, finding that since their enemies couldn’t figure out what his Relics were, they simply took off everything from him that could possibly be a Relic, including his shoes, though they missed his sash. Managing to open the cabinet behind his chair, he gathered up his things to work his way out of the door.

Felicity wiggled free of her bindings fairly easily, and went to pick the lock at the cabinet, having to dodge a frantic Bubastis rocketing out at her face. Soothing her feline, she replaced her relics and said to her camera, “It was a mistake to let me live, Rafiq.”
Walking out, she noticed two guards, one on each end of the hall, and fired on them both just as Thurston emerged from his own room. She killed the first one and nearly finished off the second, which Thurston dispatched with a knife. Going into the other rooms, Felicity freed Frederick and Thurston freed Takashi, finally taking the door out to freedom.

The four of them saw absolute carnage. Bodies were lying everywhere, and Randal was standing in the midst of it, crushing the life out of one last man, and Samantha was on the ground, crying her eyes out over someone. Frederick pushed past the three of them to go to her, recognizing the body she was weeping over. It was Erik, and Howard lay nearby, both dead. With a jolt, they realized that Samantha and Erik had to have been more than just friends. She was inconsolable, and couldn’t be moved, either. Randal explained that they had woken first, and had dealt with all of the guards. In the crush of battle, Howard had gotten separated from the group and Erik went back for him, but it had ultimately proven their ends. Frederick, enraged and sad, said for them to go finish it, which they quickly promised to do.

Making their way down another ladder and into a secret system of underground sewer rooms, they came into a room filled to the brim with bloating corpses of varying age and ethnicities, though Mediterranean, Latino, Asian, and other familiar heritages jumped out at them from these faces. Realizing that Rafiq had been killing other Scions that remained living after Chance’s End, they moved on to a large, circular room with a platform in the middle.

Emerging from the shadows, Rafiq appeared with a stunned silent Cynthia with a machete at her neck. Felicity opened the conversation, stating it had been awhile. Rafiq sneered at her openly, saying that he had wanted to kill her immediately, but his new employers had required his attention at that exact moment. He scoffed at her mercy during their first meeting, saying that he was now killing Scions to quell the nexus of Chaos that surrounded them all for the good of the world as a whole.
Raising an eyebrow, Felicity asked when the last time it was that he’d spoken to his father, the God Sobek. Avoiding the question, Rafiq said that his father lacked the vision to go forwards with something as ambitious as he did. Further goading him on with their previous confrontation, and with Takashi adding his own quietly enraged voice to it, they got him to charge them both in rage, dropping Cynthia safe to the side.

Felicity immediately jumped off the tip of Takashi’s proffered sword, getting height on Rafiq’s charge and firing down onto him, harming him considerably. Rafiq’s giant crocodile, Big Bob, slid out of the water, and Randal jumped onto it, engaging it with his bare hands. Thurston slid in the way of Cynthia, protecting her while throwing knives in Rafiq’s direction. Rafiq stunned the lot of them, and Bubastis broke the freezing control on Felicity by tackling her before Rafiq could slash her. Thurston tried to stun Rafiq with a strange strike to the backside, and Takashi slashed repeatedly at Rafiq’s armored skin. Rafiq’s need to kill the spry Felicity first, however, proved his downfall as it allowed Takashi an opening to strike the killing blow to the Son of Sobek, his anger evident in some vehement choice words as he drove the blade into his enemy. “You know WHY Sobek’s crocodiles ate Osiris’ genitalia those years ago? Because he was a cock-sucker.”

Upon Rafiq’s death, Big Bob dematerialized, and the fight was over.

Cynthia, stunned but unharmed, was picked up by Takashi, and the triumphant group set fire to the warehouse and left.