The nights had been drawing in long and long in the city. As the cold winds rushed in from the north, the rolling fog got thicker and thicker in the mornings. Winter was arriving. Lia, the caretaker manager of the slowly going bankrupt Brunel Hall hotel was rummaging through the old receipts dating back some half a decade wondering just how her cousin who had went missing 4 months ago managed to run the place at a profit.
Just as she was about to give up and dip into her own savings to keep the hotel running for another month, a large clatter followed by ringing sound echoed from below…something… or someone… was working their way up through the old abandoned sewer tunnels into the cellar. Lia picked up her old Remington three shot revolver and headed down into the now disused bar under the restaurant.
As she crept down the staircase and into the darkened hotel bar, a spark from a match lit up a cigar and casted a light onto a familiar face.
“Jeez Lia, you’ve let this place go downhill a bit!”
Lia put her gun down and started shouting at the hotel’s owner, who had just appeared out of nowhere after a long absence.
“Let it go a bit! This place has costed me thousands of tenkers or doubloons or whatever they call the currency here! You swan off for 4 months, without a goodbye or even a note and you leave no instructions as to how you run this place, or its renters, or who stocks up the bar or…”
“Liaaaaa calm down! I’m back!”
The goofy grin Mornington pulls to ease tensions wasnt working this time. Lia stormed off after screaming more obscenities at Vic. Just as she was rounding the upper staircase she screamed down at vic one last time…
“Your bar is closed cause there was no money for restocking, all your Chivas was stolen and your bathing pool has been leaking water into the sewers for the past 2 months. I’m off back to my fort to shoot at passing trader ships!”
Vic chuckled, headed out the basement entrance and walked to port. Having an unstocked bar in New Babbage is not the done thing.
“Ahhhh, ive missed this place… time for some wheeling and dealing”
((ooc… yes, i’m slowly coming back to SL again, big thanks to Lia for coasting Brunel Hall along for the past few months. I wont be taking over FTF after being away for so long so Ed and Dee are now running it, although i can fill in for them if either of them cant make it on a particular week. Sometime soon a new fortnightly party/event will be planned for Brunel Hall, but for a time which will suit UK/EU residents more… i cant do those late nights as much as i used to… im getting old and stuff :D LOL ))
Welcome back!
I’m sure once you establish some new tax, you’ll have the Brunel back to what it once was in no time. *wink*
“Hold it, Bigby,” I shouted to my idiot assistant before he could seal the institute’s armored entry portal, “I’m about to go out.”
“Didja hear?” he asked pointlessly, knowing full well that my apartment in the building’s loft was perfectly soundproof so as to ensure I hear practically nothing.
“What is it?” I asked, humoring the noxious little twerp. “Did those dreadful women from B.L.A.B.L.A.* finally relent and allow uncensored copies of Fanny Hill back into the library?”
“Mr. Mornington’s back at the hotel,” said Bigby. “I just saw him across the street.”
My spine stiffened and my blood ran cold. “Back? He’s back? HE’S BACK?!? Good God, man! Don’t just stand there like a cretinous waste of space! Raise the institute’s emergency shields! Raise the shields, man! RAISE THE SHIELDS!!”
*BLABLA = Babbage Ladies Alliance Battling Lawless Amorality
Yay! *unicorn hugs*