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Chapter 2: Arrival

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The voyage to Paris lasted far too long for Henry Jekyll's liking. It wasn't that he disliked traveling in Captain Nemo's fantastic, atom-powered submersible ship; as a man of science himself, he took every opportunity to study and marvel at the genius behind it.

What made this trip so nerve-wracking, though, was its object: the man who had originally assembled the League, used it for his own twisted ends, then very nearly killed them all. Sawyer shot him. Both he and Allan said they saw him die. So how could he possibly be the one behind this kidnapping?

Who cares? Came the coarse, familiar mental voice of his darker half. We'll hunt him down in the streets, then pay him back for trying to double-cross us. I'll tear his pasty little face off. I'll feed it to the cats. I'll rip his guts out…

Henry felt his stomach flip over; seasickness and Edward Hyde's revenge schemes were a miserable combination. Edward, you do realize that these mental images of yours are tumbling about in my head as well, don't you?

You think I give a damn about your upset bowels? Take a swig of the potion if you feel out of sorts; you know I can handle a little tossing about.

"That's not going to happen, and you know it," Edward muttered through clenched teeth.

"What's not going to happen?" a female voice asked innocently from nearby.

Startled, Henry spun about. Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw was standing behind him, a concerned look on her face. "Doctor Jekyll, are you quite all right?"

"M-more or less," Henry stammered. "Just a bit of nerves. Nothing too serious." He tried to give the lady a smile, but what resulted was a bit more crooked and nervous than reassuring.

Lady Shaw gave him an odd look. "Well, I do hope you come through all right. Now, what were you saying?"

"I was just, ah, thinking out loud," Henry replied. "I only meant that the man who kidnapped your husband will never get away with it."

You bet your scrawny arse he won't! I'll—

Not now, Edward. Please! Don't make me vomit in front of this poor woman – she's been through enough without seeing that!

Up and down and up and down and up and down ….

"Mmp!" Henry cried, clapping a hand over his mouth. Green as a cucumber, Dr. Jekyll ran off, looking for somewhere to eject his lunch without offending anyone else's sight.

Charlotte watched the unfortunate Doctor retreat down the hall, disappearing around a corner. That poor young man, she thought. He seems so terribly frail. Hardly suited to this difficult kind of work….

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Half an hour later, the Nautilus was safely anchored near the Île de la Cité, in the heart of Paris, and the British Empire's most extraordinary band of adventurers set foot on dry land at last.

"I shall have to put her in dry dock when we return to London," Nemo groused, "and scour her hull thoroughly. Man has made a dumping-ground of this river."

"Really?" Henry asked. "You never complain this much about the Thames, Nemo."

"No, I do not. One does not see horrors such as that floating about freely on London's principal waterway." Nemo aimed a disgusted look at something in the river. Henry followed his gaze … then instantly felt the urge to vomit again. "Ah, I think you're right, Captain," he said, quickly retreating out of sight of the brown water. There were some things that even an industrial society ought not to tolerate….

"Aha! There you are!" From amid the crowd of Parisians gawking at the Nautilus, a diminutive elderly fellow emerged. The gentleman was clad in a light brown suit and sported a small green felt hat over his bald head, a white mustache covering his upper lip. "It is good to see you again, Monsieur Quatermain, Madamoiselle Harker."

Mina bowed respectfully at the little old man. "Inspector Dupin. The honor is ours."

As the Inspector approached, Henry felt a lump form in his throat. The Frenchman's clear blue eyes locked on his, his all-searching gaze seeming to bore back into the Doctor's shared skull. "Monsieur Jekyll. I trust you shall be on your best behavior this visit, yes?"

"Of course," Henry replied, tugging nervously at his ear. "Ah, no hard feelings about last time, eh?"

The little old man gave him a distrustful squint. "I have forgiven, Doctor. But C. Auguste Dupin does not forget."

Neither do I, a deep voice growled in the back of Henry's mind.

"F-fair enough," said Henry, trying to hide his alter ego's wrath behind a half-hearted, semi-pleasant smile.

Dupin gave him a hard look, then turned to address the rest of the League. "I shall escort you to Department headquarters." Turning about, the elderly Inspector made his way through the throng of gawkers, parting them rather like Moses through a human Red Sea. Henry and the others followed him through the streets of Paris, trying to look as inconspicuous as an armed adventurer, an Indian submariner, a grease-painted albino, a vampiress and a sickly doctor could.

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A/N: For those who haven't read the graphic novel, shame on you! You're probably confused as to how Mina, Allan and Henry know Inspector Dupin. For those who have, you already know that he helped the League to track down Hyde/Jekyll in the first issue (and shot off part of Hyde's ear in the process).

Since I'm posting this in the Movies section, however (the Comics section for LXG only has seven stories), I've had to take a few liberties. Let's just say that in the movieverse, Dupin helped Allan, Mina and Sawyer to dig through the Paris police records and figure out Hyde's location, and that director Stephen Norrington et al accidentally left the scene on the cutting-room floor.

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