AN: I didn't actually intend for this to come out as Shadowrun as it did... hmm.

Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor

(Worm/Nanoha)
by P.H. Wise

Interlude 2X: Gregor

Disclaimer: The following is a fanfic. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise is owned by various corporate entities. Please support the official release.

Thanks to Cailin for beta-ing!

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Welcome to ShadowENE
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WARNING: Anything you share here can be seen by everyone connected to this network. Anonymity is your first line of defense. If you can't afford to share something, don't post it. Keep things on topic. This board is here to serve as a resource for the mercenary community. Don't make me ban you. - Netcat

Threads you are following:
- Topic: Medhall Conspiracy Theories; OP: TheManWithAPlan
- Topic: Jewel Seeds; OP: BigBadBob
- Topic: The Brockton Bay Cape Scene; OP: Faultline
- Topic: Aliens? Alien Tinkers? Dragon? You decide!; OP: Plan9
- Topic: Case 53 Theories; OP: Terra
- Topic: Merc Job Horror Stories; OP: LargeMarge
- Topic: Case 53 Rule 34; OP: RangerRick

Topic: The Brockton Bay Cape Scene
re: The Brockton Bay Cape Scene
Faultline
Replied at 0900 on August 24, 2010:
Empire Eighty Eight
First, the elephant in the room: these guys are white supremacists. If that bothers you, good; you've still got a shred of basic human decency. I'm not sure how you managed it, but good on you. If you're in a position to be picky about who you work for, even better. The rest of us aren't always so lucky. Remember, folks: in this line of work, being able to look at yourself in the mirror can be a luxury.

Standard extremist group reminders apply. Keep it professional. Extremist groups can be dangerous employers for a lot of reasons. If you're not inherently incompatible with their cause, they'll probably try to convert you. If they can't do that? Being great at rationalizing murder is part of what makes them extremists; they'll pay well while you're useful, but once you're not? Well, you're probably just another of the unclean that they need to burn in their grand crusade, right? The biggest reason that they're dangerous, though, is that extremist groups believe in things. They value, above all else, something that isn't money. God, these people make me sick.

Anyways, working for the E88 isn't as bad as you think. I mean, it's bad, and you know they're using your efforts to accomplish some pretty heinous shit, but they're not going to have you line up and shoot a bunch of non-white people or anything. They've got plenty of muscle, parahuman and otherwise; if that's your skillset, you're probably better off looking somewhere else for work. But they pay well for data acquisition, surveillance, cleaning services, information control, that sort of thing.

LargeMarge
Replied at 1000 on August 24, 2010
Can't say I'd ever be comfortable working for a group like this. I mean, I get that everyone needs to bring in a paycheck, but Jesus Christ, working for Nazis?

Faultline
Replied at 1023 on August 24, 2010
Like I said, being able to look at yourself in the mirror can be a luxury in this line of work.

Plan9
Replied at 1127 on August 24, 2010:
What, no mention at all of the Medhall Connection?

Snopes
Replied at 1130 on August 24, 2010:
There's no evidence of any relationship between the E88 and Medhall, Plan9. Just because you see insane conspiracy theories at every turn doesn't make it so.

Plan9
Replied at 1140 on August 24, 2010
And don't you find that lack of evidence just a little bit suspicious? Think about this logically, Snopes. Nobody's that squeaky clean. I'm telling you, something stinks here.

Snopes
Replied at 1145 on August 24, 2010
Logic does not work that way.

Netcat (Moderator)
Replied at 1147 on August 24: 2010
This is off topic, Plan9. There's already a thread for this. Take it there, and stop derailing other people's threads.

Gregor looked over his post for ShadowENE and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. No, that wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all.

Gregor the Snail was not a handsome man, and the few who found his altered form to be appealing tended to have... peculiarities. In truth, he had no idea if he had ever been handsome. What he had looked like before his transformation he could not say, and whatever genetics had done for him had been undone by the changes brought about by his parahuman powers. He was bald and morbidly obese with pale, translucent skin that showed a shadow of his skeleton and internal organs as well as numerous small, hardened spiral growths all over his body. His skin had a little more give to it than most people's; it could compress just a little more. He didn't bother with a mask; it was like that with a lot of Case 53s - the so called 'Monstrous Capes' - and he was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt over black jeans and a navy blue shirt.

He was working on a writeup of the Empire Eighty Eight's capes for Faultline's 'Brockton Bay Cape Scene' post, and what he had written was a detailed breakdown of their known powers and associated threat levels which, while useful, wasn't quite what he had been going for. Frustrating, but not unfixable. Perhaps he had time to address it before the client's representative arrived.

Before he could get very far into his editing process, a woman entered the club, and he felt a very slight chill go up and down his spine. The New Year's Eve party was in full swing, the club full with people, and he could just make out the faint smells of alcohol and sweat, cologne and perfume rising from the crowd below. Gregor looked up from his laptop, lifting broad hands with ruined, rotten brown fingernails from the keyboard as he considered the new arrival. He was seated at a table on the balcony overlooking Palanquin's main room, and he was not the only one to take notice.

The woman was beautiful, and though he certainly appreciated that fact, her beauty was not what caught his eye in that moment; what caught his eye were the red furred - really more of a coppery burnt-orange - white-tipped animal ears and tail which she openly displayed. She looked twenty-something, her long hair was the same shade of coppery burnt-orange as the fur on her ears and tail, and a red, oval shaped gem rested on the center of her forehead, directly beneath the part of her hair. She wore a long, black, gold-buttoned coat over closed-toed flats, slacks and an off-white blouse, and she carried a deerskin briefcase in her left hand.

There was something in the way she moved that made Gregor shift uncomfortably. It is often said of people that they move like predators, but this is hyperbole in the vast majority of cases; for this woman, it wasn't. She moved like a predator, and the crowd parted around her as she went, like a school of fish parting to avoid the passage of a shark.

Her destination was inevitable: she went to the stairs that led up to the balcony. Gregor could just barely hear her tell the bouncer, "I believe I am expected."

The noise of the club muted the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. As she came into view, her eyes flicked across the balcony, taking in the sight of the dozen or so people - mostly young women - who lay sprawled on couches and in booths throughout the balcony, none of them close enough to be able to overhear the conversation to come. Newter had gone into the back rooms ten minutes prior, but most of these would be insensate for at least another half hour. The look in the woman's eye as she considered the prone and slumped forms was not judgment nor distaste. It was something else. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

As she drew closer, he saw that the ears and tail were real: actual parts of her biology, and not props. 'Case 53?' he wondered. If so, she was a very mild case. If Gregor himself could have gotten away with physical changes no more severe than the addition of animal ears and a tail, he would have done it gladly.

He rose to his feet as the woman approached, pulling out a chair for her to sit across from him. "Ms. Johnson, I presume?"

Her eyes were very blue, and when she smiled - really more of a smirk - she revealed a set of flawlessly white teeth with sharp, slightly elongated canines. "That's me," she said. "You must be Gregor."

"Indeed I am," he replied, moving to retake his seat once she had taken hers. "Tell me, Ms. Johnson, what brings you to the Palanquin this evening?"

"Is Faultline going to be here?" Ms. Johnson asked.

"I am her representative in this," Gregor said, slightly annoyed at the question.

"My mistake," she said. "I'm here on business. My boss wants to hire your group for an ongoing job."

"Oh?" Gregor asked.

The woman opened up her briefcase and withdrew a series of photographs. A giant kitten in downtown Boston. A truly massive, rhizomatic tree at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A human-sized figure with chitinous skin black as night save for the white and silver highlights giving definition to its features and to the bladed edges of its armored sections. Its eyes were pale, its jagged teeth silver-white, and something glowed in the middle of its forehead, giving off a light that was simultaneously bright blue and a blue so dark it was almost black.

She set down one last photo. The object depicted on it was a blue, glowing crystal seed: bright towards the edges, darker towards the core.

"Tell me, Gregor," she said, "What do you know about Jewel Seeds?"