There used to be a chantry there

Ambrose sends a letter to Doc Eon's action sidekicks. Rey and Mark protest that mail is too normal for such a job. Ambrose tells them about Alexis Hastings' experiments with telepathic snail telegraphs. Even the fae think that's bizarre, though Faris points out that the Grail armor is said to be guarded by telepathic snails.

Ambrose informs them that he sent the message the old-fashioned way because the old fellows are comfortable with regular mail...and anyway, it's nice to get letters sometimes.

Jared gives the key and the werecat to High King David. Rey has his first novel, Doc Quantum and the Ether Paths, published--the first of a new pulp series.

RF gets a memory-vision about a reservation in New Mexico, where he sees an abandoned caern with some kind of big machine sitting on top harvesting Gnosis from it. He has the impression that it's happening either now, or soon.

Since only eight of them can go to the Circus anyway, they split up.

RF takes Ambrose, Rey, Olesya, and Caleb to the caern. Sonya goes to the Midnight Circus with Jared, Mark, Jonas and Aila.

In the desert, RF hunts up some locals to learn about the site. They say some surveyors went there recently from Endron. RF is sure the rig is Ambrose's sort of thing, but Ambrose says he needs a closer look to get an idea of who might've built it. So they plan to sneak out to the location under cover of night.

In Chicago, the rest of the group get on with their thing till the Circus arrives. Aila notes a kid at the arcade who's older than he's pretending, and warns her friends away from the Circus...but that just makes this kid interested. He likes to play the original Gauntlet, and introduces himself as Max. Says his family is from New York.

"This is way boring compared to New York," he comments in a disaffected tone.

"Yeah, last time I was there, there was a lot going on," Aila agrees cheekily.

Max says his parents work for some corporation--he doesn't know what. But he's been lots of places: London, Hong Kong...he says he likes Italy.

The rig on the New Mexico caern is Von Allman's work again, and it's not drilling for something so mundane as spiritual energy. They're drilling for caern history. Pondering what sort of information he could want so badly, RF tries to "remember" what knowledge this caern contained. Information on pathways to the Mokole homelands...information on a ritual regarding Eater of Souls.

"Why's he got such a hard on for it?" Rey grumbles.

"well, it's the ultimate death ray, if he could harness it," Ambrose poins out.

Olesya spots Nazi guards--ape-men in SS uniforms, led by an Etherite in a Victorian waist coat. He's a young guy; Ambrose doesn't know him. Rey and RF spot the Progenitor Nephandus further up the hillside, also skulking. "What's that?" Rey asks.

"I think it's a cravat," Ambrose replies absently, eying the Etherite.

"No, that."

"Oh, snap."

In the Circus, Devyn meets them at the entrance. Aila greets him cheerfully. "You realize," he warns, "that you can't interfere with me in any way while you're here, or you'll break your little pact." Jonas mocks him about selling evil candy apples to children, which Devyn thinks is asinine. But he does point out that under the terms of the contract, they can see barbs and taint.

Jonas and Aila pick on his Snidely Whiplash moustache. "You know, you won't be under this deal forever," Devyn growls.

Jared breaks off and heads to Astarte's court, where he presents the Autumn Queen with a ring made of metal from the Arcadia key, and gathers two more songs.

Aila spots some kids from the arcade, including Max...and the werecat! Jared catches a glimpse and says she's not really Danielle, but a chimerical copy. But...where'd it come from? She's helping set up acts in the big top. "This one looks smarter than the real one," Aila notes.

Danielle hits her hand with a hammer.

"She still looks smarter," Sonya comments.

Back in New Mexico, Rey makes the Progenitor smell like bananas so the Nazi Apes chase him. The anonymous Etherite, annoyed and confused, zaps some of them with an electric prod. The Progenitor hides. With their path cleared, the group sneaks in.

Ambrose casts around till he finds the console. It's being hacked. He tries to pump false information through the intrusive connection, but it's too late; they've already got access to the data.

"Smash that," Ambrose tells the Garou, stepping back. RF rips out the hard drive before the hacker can finish copying the data. It's only a copy, Ambrose warns them. The data is still stored in the caern. He cuts off their replies: "Let's clear out before the apemen get here." But it's too late! They turn to leave and see the Etherite and some of his ape-men standing in the entrance. The exasperated Etherite closes his eyes and sighs.

Ambrose shoots him. "Make him smell like bananas!"

"No. I've done that already today."

"Ape musk," Olesya suggests.

Rey gets an evil expression on his face. That's too good to turn down.

"What're you doing?!" the Etherite shouts at his ape, while the others dart past.

Outside, they see the Progenitor and his Akashic ally fighting more ape-men. "Why do you smell like bananas?!" the Akashic snaps at his companion. "Really poor choice in the circumstances!" The group dodges past that cluster and flees.

The group in the Circus meets with Cara's fortune-teller representative to cut their deal. Protection from the Circus's illusions and immunity from being held by it for up to twelve people, in return for expanding Cara's influence in Texas (she tells them about a purification ritual to draw off the Wyrm's influence). She warns that this does not defend them from the actions of the Circus's personnel as individuals. Devyn may well move against them personally.

They kidnap the chimerical werecat on the way out, tossing her into a sack in her trailer. Decarabas is at her door as they leave, grumbling about her and her show. "Have you talked to her?" Sonya asks him out of clinical curiosity. His eyes widen and he seems to suffer a sudden attack of the vapors. He wanders off, pausing to set her trailer on fire.

They bail out past Devyn, who's at the exit with a pair of Freaks from the show. Aila swings at one with the sack o' werecat, they leap over Devyn and take off running toward Dreamsoft.

Once there, they send Chimerical Danielle to Tara.

Meanwhile, Ambrose and Co. get back to Chicago. Ambrose snags Joe the VA to help him study the hard drive...but when they hook it up, the Nephandic IX girl leaks out, forming out of a black ooze. She system-havocs the room, knocking out Joe (and melting his PC to his crotch, poor bastard.

Ambrose shouts for help, and tries to hold her till reinforcements get there. But she's tough, so he takes the better part of valor, snagging the hard drive with his grappler and throwing himself backward over the bannister into the first floor lobby, absorbing the impact with a neat roll and armored jacket. This at least attracts attention from lounging magi. He throws the hard drive into one of the extra-dimensional vaults set up in the chantry.

Seeing her target put out of her reach, the girl huffs and turns to run. He knocks her down in the doorway. He flings him off over her head into the street, and as Ambrose rolls to his feet, Mark gives her the people's elbow from the other side.

A cop car pulls up on a report of a girl being held captive in the building. At a loss, Mark knocks the policeman out.

And then the Chorister Nephandus crashes through the front of the chantry in a stolen car, stunning everybody by screaming through a megaphone. Ambrose, behind her and thus out of the worst of the sound, wraps the sound waves back around her. "Ohhh yeah. Ohhh, that hurts," she moans, apparently liking it.

Ambrose spins and manages to knock out the IX girl, who's disoriented. Then the Progenitor turns up, coming down the street with zombies. And Ambrose again realizes he's about to be attacked from behind by an Akashic Nephandus. "You're almost as bad as that ninja!" he snipes, just barely managing to dodge.

"How so?" asks the Akashic, looking like he might be offended.

"Well...the ninja was faster," Ambrose needles.

The Akashic begins some kind of move that's so fast he's dopplering...and Jared takes him in a flying leap from the car Rey hits Robert the Progenitor Nephandus with--prompting the line, "Was that a flying fairy?"

"Nice time watch," the IX girl says, suddenly at Ambrose's side, trying to steal it.

Outside, the Garou arrive. Aila flying-kicks a zombie while the others head into the building, except for Sonya, who pauses to exorcise the zombies.

Mark is taking on the crazy Chorister woman. Ambrose shouts a warning to all and sundry about the Dreamspeaker and the chantry vaults. He can get to the hard drive! Mark darts past to grab the hard drive, and then throws himself backward from a tanned hand reaching for his face. "He's in the Umbra!"

Outside, Sonya sees a tall native man, who looks at her, blinks, and suddenly has serpent's eyes. The tainted Mokole. Two homeless fellows who'd been huddled in a nook on the street suddenly...change, and their eyes flash red. HITMarks assigned to watch the chantry! They head for the chantry. The IX girl dodges over, grabs, them, and their eyes turn black as she takes control of them.

The Mokole begins to shift...oh. He's got wings. But then a net launcher drops on him, shot by NWO agents on the roofs. "I was having a moment here!" the Mokole shouts.

"We've got possessed HITMarks!" Ambrose shouts from the front lounge, which now affords a commanding view of the action on the street. Mark curses. Aila grabs the Dreamspeaker's hand as it reached out toward Mark again, hauling him fully out of the Umbra.

Mages hesitate as Paradox crackles through reality like the leading shockwave of a bomb blast. "GET DOWN!" Ambrose shouts. "He's gonna blow!"

...And then time freezes. Ambrose, the only one not affected, sees a teenager (Aila would recognize him as Max step through the hole in the front wall and push the Dreamspeaker out of reality. Time returns as the NWO agents lob the Mokole through the front wall (taking out whatever was left of it) at where the Dreamspeaker was an instant ago. It goes crashing through the rest of the first floor and out the back.

When the dust clears, the rest of the Nephandi are gone. The MiBs gun down the rogue HITMarks. One of them looks at Ambrose and says breathlessly, "We'll call." They take off.

Aaaaand then the chantry head, the chantry's Akashic, and a few other mages return from their grocery run. Ambrose gives them the grin of somebody who knows there's no hope at all of explaining, and chirps, "Well, that'll teach them to mess with us!" Then he starts snagging Etherites to help put up pillars to support the building, since the Mokole took out some of the load-bearing walls.

"...What the hell happened here?!" the chantry head demands belatedly, finally finding his voice.

Ambrose starts to ramble a disjointed explanation. He remembers to point out the poor unconscious cop. "Great, yeah, I'll take care of that," the poor chantry head grumbles.

"No need," Sonya says. "I've got it."

"I just went to get frozen pizza!" the chantry head laments.

"We might need a new stove...," Ambrose considers.

The chantry head takes charge. "Everyone, start cleaning up. All the Etherites but Ambrose, fix the kitchen. Ambrose, write me the report."

Sonya and the pack take over the issue of the hard drive. They'll get some Glass Walkers to help with it. They might have a safer angle to work from. Ambrose asks around, but nobody else saw the boy. He's confused, because the kid didn't just stop time, he paused the Paradox.

Aila meets Max again the next day. She takes him to Dreamsoft since he's disappointed about what he perceives as the death of good arcades.

As it happens, Ambrose is there to meet Rey before they head off to visit Joe "Lucky Skunk" Ross, one of Doc Eon's guys. He spots Max, and recognizes him as the kid who intervened with the Dreamspeaker yesterday. He stops to thank him for saving everybody's bacon, but Max just acts confused. Aila thinks Ambrose is being weird again.

Doc Eon's boys teach him more about using the time watch--he shows Ambrose how to set it so that nobody else can use it--and they spend some time talking about Van Allman. All agree that Doc Eon's around someplace, probably laying low.

Rey asks copyright permission to use Doc and the rest. "Hey, you got the watch," Joe shrugs. Rey gets stuff autographed.

When they return to Dreamsoft, Ambrose decides he's curious about Max and decides to check him out. "Going to hide and take some special pictures?" Faris ribs him.

"Yeah," Ambrose answers distractedly. "I think...oh, that's disgusting!" But scans aren't conclusive. Max does look more like a mage than anything else, but there's something odd about it, and his timeline runs backward.

When they get back to the chantry, the head drops by to tell Ambrose he won't be charged for damages...then, glancing at his desk, asks what he's doing with photos of a boy. Ambrose explains.

"What, like Merlin?" the man asks incredulously.

Ambrose is amused. "Yeah, that's what I said."

They talk a bit, the chantry head catching up on Ambrose's crazy life--and kind of curious about werewolves. "What do you call space...Umbra...around werewolves? Squmbra?"

"It makes them happy to use their words," Ambrose says dismissively.

"Wow. Those're the words I use too. Way to be condescending about us 'primitives,' Ambrose."

The chantry head muses that Ambrose leads a strange life to be able to be believed when he says that this kid is the same...whatever that froze time as an explanation for how he's not stalking children.

After a couple of very, very long days, it's time to hit the hay. Ambrose is awakened at 3 am to the sound of the time watch beeping. "Temporal disturbance. Sir Broderick Quinn, Wales," it tells him.

He calls Faris, who gives him a hard time about the kid again. Ambrose interrupts. "Would you know Merlin if you saw him?" Faris allows that he might, if he watched for the narrative flows. "Try that next time you see Max!" Ambrose hangs up on Faris, then his phone rings again.

"AMBROSE! It begins!" booms Tillingtast's stentorian voice, then he hangs up. Ambrose stares at the phone in horror.

Then he gets up, heads to Mark's room and knocks till Mark grumpily answers. "Tillingtast just called," Ambrose tells him groggily.

"To Wales?" Mark asks him.

"_{To Wales}," Ambrose affirms dejectedly. "Oh! You know that kid?"

"Yeah...?"

"I think he might be Merlin." Ambrose turns to shuffle back to his room.

Mark chases him. "Wait, what?"

Ambrose calls Faris back, who calls Rey and Jared. Jared also gets a mysterious call from someone who tells him, "Take the Pendragon horn."

Ambrose calls Aila, the least scary Garou. "Tillingtast called. There's a temporal disturbance in Wales. Meet us at Dreamsoft. And I think Max might be Merlin. Or Doc Eon." He hangs up.

Aila wonders if he's drunk.

Ambrose's phone rings again. "Dr. Quintrell, are you ready to talk about what happened earlier this week?"

"I'm really busy right now," Ambrose demurs.

"Too busy for us?" the MiB asks in a tone halfway between amusement and menace.

"There's a temporal disturbance in Wales. I have to save the future."

Thus everybody congregates at Dreamsoft. Jonas and Aila act weird. Mark tells them about Ambrose's "I have to save the future comment," which Rey just adores. Sonya stares at the horn Jared's carrying--"Why do you have that?"--so Jared tells them about his own mysterious phone call. Nobody recognizes the number.

"Did it sound like a teenager?" Ambrose asks. Actually, when Jared thinks about it...yeah.