When we last saw our heroes (reluctant or otherwise), they were poised to rescue Alexis from her monster-loathing family – the Belmonts. Alexis had been placed in a meat locker/walk-in fridge, and although it was pitch dark inside, she was able to feel around the perimeter of the room after escaping from her ‘obviously faulty’ handcuffs. Along the far wall, she found the various pipes that feed into the cooling compressor, and broke off a section of pipe to use as a weapon, should someone enter the fridge. She took her place beside the door, ready to club whoever entered in the gut – of course, if the person was short, they’d have a face full of lead pipe.
While Alexis was taking position in the dark by the door, Enno was outside. He’d been shot by the sniper he had been charging, but had managed to scale up to the sniper’s tower and do a little damage of his own. When he got there, he found that the previous occupant was no longer present, but rather a nice stash of ammo he would never use and a trap door leading down.
Meanwhile, Soteria, in tiger form, while wounded, still had enough strength to sneak around inside the compound as well, and when Alexis heard scuffling outside the fridge door, she decided to try to scare whatever was outside by making a racket. Her choice was to kick the door, which she proceeded to deform enough that a little bit of light leaked inward, and an Alexis’ foot-shaped dent could barely be seen (due to lack of light, rather than lack of dent). Surprised at the shoddy materials they used during construction, she kicked the door again, her foot emerging through the opposite side upon the second assault. After she reclaimed her foot, she reached her hand through the hole and broke off the lock on the other side – a big risk to take, considering her aunt was trying to kill her and a large tiger was roaming just outside the door.
Still, she reached through the hole and broke off the lock, allowing her to escape the meat locker prison that had been holding her. Still armed with the lead pipe, she found no tiger, and was unsettled by the silence that had replaced it. She called out, but to no response. Crouching into a ready stance, she wandered a ways and into an adjacent room, when she called out again. This time her Aunt Jenny answered her, but when Alexis tried to greet her aunt in return her efforts were cut short by the sound of a little fist-sized metal lump rolling across the floor.
Hesitating a moment in the tower, taking a brief glimpse of his surroundings, Enno couldn’t help but hear the absurdly loud “boom” that rang out from another section of the hotel, caused by Jenny’s flash grenade. He allowed a few seconds for whatever crowd might be below him to start moving that way, so that he might follow them and catch them from behind, then he raised a boot from the ground and brought it down hard on the wooden trap door. It shattered away, birthing as it crumbled a spring-loaded grenade from beneath it that sailed up and into Enno’s face. Clearly it had been rigged by the sniper as he left the tower, knowing that Enno would attempt to follow.
Reflexively Enno sprung back on his heels, flipping backwards in the air and soaring right over the low wall upside-down. Reaching his hands above – or in this case below – his head, he grabbed hold of the lip of the wall and used the grip as an axis to right himself, swinging around the ledge in an arc and planting his feet on the wall vertically. It wasn’t the most graceful of maneuvers, but the timing hardly allowed for anything else. The maneuver, while a bit hard to explain, left him hanging from the side of the tower with nothing exposed to the grenade, and just in time for it to explode. His fingers were stung by some micro-shrapnel, but nothing he couldn’t deal with. He didn’t play piano, after all.
Knowing that this explosion, like the one just before it, would attract attention of its own, he dropped to the balcony below and waited behind a pillar for someone to climb the tower in investigation. Seconds later a Belmont henchman wandered into his ambush, and was promptly skewered. Searching his corpse, Enno found a radio earpiece, a large rifle he had no use for and two flash bangs. He shouldered the rifle, just to be safe, pocketed the grenades, donned the earpiece and tossed the man’s body over the side of the tower.
Rolling into cover, Alexis barely escaped the blast of the flash grenade. Her ears ringing, she rose again to find Jenny, hoping that her aunt had not been harmed. She rounded the same corner again and layed eyes upon her aunt – buried under the form of the same tiger from moments ago, who had just knocked the older woman down. Approaching the pair, she readied a swing of her stout pipe for the tiger, but as she approached the cat turned around bearing what could best be described as a toothy smile – one that seemed to greet Alexis as a friend. Thinking it merely odd, Alexis introduced that smile to her improvised weapon. The cat unconscious, Alexis turned to Jenny to find her laying in much the same state, but with a large digital timer strapped to her chest, counting down from 19 seconds. Knowing she could not disarm the bomb that munitions master Jenny had put together, Alexis acted quickly, tossing Jenny over the tiger and running with all her might out of the room.
When she ran from the room, fully expecting to at least hear, if not feel the blast of the bomb, Alexis heard nothing. Her feet carried her farther from the fridge, where she ran into Jason. “Why aren’t you in your cell?” he asked?
Alexis explained that she had heard scuffling outside of it, and kicked the door, which gave way. Her suspicions had been right, and there was indeed a tiger running about. She explained that Jenny had once again tried to kill her, and she and her father spoke for a little bit, coming to the realization that Alexis had a form of amnesia, which accounted for what had happened. Either way, Alexis was now fighting on the right side of the Monsters Vs. Mortals war. They discussed a plan of action, wherein Jason mentioned that their vehicles had all been disabled by crossbow bolts in the tires. If they stood any chance of getting out of there, they would need to acquire one of the vehicles that the monsters had arrived in.
Knowing the group that had accompanied Alexis during the kidnapping of the witch (Angelica Rodarte), she told her father there was at least one Chiro, possibly two, probably a succubus and an incubus, an illusionist, and a weretiger. After Alexis explained that she’d left Jenny on the tiger, they went to look for the other woman, and found Jenny moderately unharmed, the bomb having stopped at 4 seconds on the countdown clock. Oddly, however, the tiger was nowhere to be seen. Jason told his daughter that he would take care of Jenny, and that Alexis should go on the search for a vehicle, and when she asked if she could be equipped with weapons more suited for battle, and Jason gave her a machete. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any spare headsets. As he mentioned them, he took a look at his GPS that could track everyone with headsets, and saw that one of them was moving in a northeasterly direction.
When Jason asked why he was abandoning his post, he received no answer, and then issued the word “Betsy” – a code to which Enno obviously did not know the response. Rather than trying to B.S. a response, Enno took the headset off from his ear and left it on the floor of the desert, continuing to run in the direction of Vivian’s parked car. He had heard the two Belmonts conversing, especially the part about stealing a car from Enno’s team, and abandoned the hunt to warn Vivian.
While Enno was running, Vivian received a text message from Tina, explaining that Soteria was down, dragged into a closet, and that Alexis was on her way to find a car and attempt to take the car in her possession so her family could escape the compound. Vivian took the information, forwarded the message to Jay who was a quarter mile or so away from her position, and then received the same information from Enno when he arrived.
Enno suggested that Vivian leave, which she said she wouldn’t do, but she told Enno to try to incapacitate Alexis so she could be returned to Drake. Enno then ran off to try to intercept Alexis before she had a chance to reach the car. Vivian received a text from Jay asking what to do if he spotted Alexis, to which Vivian replied with a simple “nothing fatal” message. She then called William to ask for his input.
While Enno was running somewhat in the direction of the Casa Tranquila, he and Alexis stumbled upon each other. Enno tried to be casual and cavalier about things with a simple “Hey Alexis.” Alexis certainly seemed as though she had no clue who Enno was. After asking him for ID, he suggested that perhaps the jacket he had balled up (a jacket he had borrowed from Vivian and had wrapped around a flash-bang grenade) might remind her that they knew each other.
Alexis knew that it would be a bad idea to accept the ball and when she declined it with a simple “I’d rather not”, he threw the jacket in her direction. With her quick reaction time, she caught the jacket and threw it back at Enno, resulting in the latter being deafened. Even Enno’s enhanced speed couldn’t stop the internal timer on the grenade, and he bore the brunt of the explosion. Deafened by the explosion, Enno still managed to battle with Alexis until she finally put him in a grapple, but just as she pulled him close to her, she felt a jolt in her leg.
A crossbow bolt went through her hip and into Enno, fired with precision by Jay who was off in the distance. Even injured, both Alexis and Enno continued fighting, although eventually, they both fell, exhausted and battered.
Vivian received a text from Jay, asking her whether she wanted him to pick up the fallen pair or go back to the compound. Vivian knew that Tina and Soteria were still in Casa Tranquila, and couldn’t leave them behind, so she told Jay to pick up Enno and Alexis, secure Alexis, and bring them to Excalibur for Drake Brandt. After sending the text, Vivian called William. Though she would have been seen as calm and collected to anyone who didn’t know her, William could tell, even over the phone, that she was scared.
She asked him what she should do, because every instinct she had was to go back to look for Tina and Soteria. Vivian’s thoughts were to have Tina veil herself and Soteria until the Belmonts left. William said that Tina would do what she thought she would be able to do, rather than what Vivian told her to do. Not particularly liking that response from William, Vivian thanked him and texted Tina, asking if she felt she would be able to keep herself and Soteria concealed through the night. The response she received was a simple “see you in vegas” and that left Vivian able to head back to the city.
Back in the city, Alexis and Enno had both been dropped off at the Excalibur, but handled differently. Enno had been placed in a hospital bed, where he woke in the early afternoon, parched but mostly healed of the injuries he’d received during the battle with Alexis, left only with an oddly attractive chest scar.
Alexis didn’t fare as well. She was also in a hospital bed, but she was restrained by chains and shackles, in a cell, guarded by a camera and a nurse. When she woke, the nurse offered her some water, which she gratefully accepted. While the nurse was in the cell, the nurse noticed that Alexis was testing the restraints and told her that Drake knew she’d be able to break the restraints keeping her chained to the bed, but also informed her that she wouldn’t be able to break through the bars. She offered to leave the keys in the cell so Alexis wouldn’t have to break the chains.
With the keys on the bed, Alexis was able to free herself, and the nurse said that she brought Alexis the only sundress she could find in her room. Alexis asked that the camera be turned off so she could change from the hospital gown. The nurse didn’t think it was a good idea, so she just left the area to monitor from a distance.
During the interaction between Alexis and the nurse, Vivian had returned to the Excalibur to speak with Drake. She was escorted to the dragon’s subterranean lair, where she saw Drake staring at what were probably MRI scans. She cleared her throat, and Drake didn’t look up but asked why she was there. She told Drake that she wanted to return the bracer that had been a part of Alexis, since Alexis had also been returned.
He asked her what she wanted in return, and Vivian said that there were a few occasions that she’s returned Alexis and Enno, so it seemed that Drake owed the White Court a few favors. Drake understood that Vivian didn’t need any sort of material compensation, but he said that there must be something she wanted. Jokingly, she said that she would love if there was a way that he could keep her father from returning to Las Vegas, but when he said he could do it, she shook her head and said she could handle her own family.
On a more serious note, she explained that her goals in the city weren’t all that different than Drake’s: To keep the city intact, and as unchanged as possible. But she also mentioned that things had become a little out of control of late, with problems that have been caused by Enno and Alexis – she wasn’t blaming the dragon for lack of control, but said that it’d be nice if he could try to do something about it. He laughed and said that he owed her favors, not miracles.
As a concession, he offered Vivian the witch that he’d stripped of magical abilities. Angelica was something that Vivian couldn’t refuse, but would need some time to determine what would be done with her. Drake said she just had to let him know where to have the witch sent.
Vivian had one more question, this one about the locket that Drake had given her. She wanted to know who the people were. She said she knew her father was one of them, but wanted to know who was in the other photo. When Drake asked her who she thought, Vivian asked “Is it my mother?” When Drake told her it was, Vivian asked him, teary eyed, how he got the locket. He casually said that her mother gave it to him. Vivian could only reply with a simple “thank you” to which Drake showed no reply other than going back to his MRI images.
As Vivian left the lair, she ran into Enno, and asked how he was feeling. He replied that he was doing quite well, other than being extremely thirsty (and flexed his gills). She held in her laugh and told him she’d have offered a bottle of water if she had one. She went on to tell him that she was there to bring back Alexis’ bracer and such. Vivian also mentioned that she’d acquired a certain witch for the White Court. That piqued Enno’s curiosity, and before saying goodbye to Vivian he politely requested the opportunity to speak with Angelica again, should Vivian be so kind as to arrange a meeting. Amused, Vivian took her leave, allowing Enno to speak with Drake, who went on to ask him to keep a low profile within the city for a time. Enno agreed to the request with (oddly) no argument.
After Enno left Drake’s lair to keep a low profile, Drake proceeded to check on Alexis. When she saw him, she addressed him, and he explained about her memory loss, what she understood. She knew there were parts of her life she didn’t remember, and when Drake finally apologized to her, she asked him what the apology was for. He replied with “this” before he lifted his hand and essentially sucked the dragon fire from her, the essence spilling from her eyes, nose and mouth, leaving a vacant feeling inside of her. She couldn’t recall what it was that was missing, but she knew it was a void.
Alexis rose from the bed, but the wound in her hip caused her to fall to her feet, sprawling completely ungracefully on the floor of the cell. Drake entered and offered her his hand so she could rise. He explained that he’d taken away the powers he’d granted her, but that even without them, she was still a danger. While he didn’t go into the accorded neutral status of the Excalibur hotel, he informed her that she was essentially under house arrest. She could try to leave, but he would know about it.
Essentially, he had given her some time to think, and to decide where her loyalties reside; with him or with the Belmonts. She would be free to roam about the Excalibur and learn all about the hotel. Should she choose to return to her family, he would make it so that any ties to him would be known among the supernatural community to be broken.
At the time that Alexis was negotiating with Drake, Vivian was making her way back down to the compound to pick up Soteria and Tina. She texted Tina with no response, then put in a call to Nigel to inform him of the outcome of the previous night’s activity. She also told him that Drake had given Angelica over to the White Court, and she asked him if they had a place to keep her. Nigel told her that Joe Mercado had a location that might work, and he asked if Vivian wanted to be present through the interrogation, which she said she undoubtedly wanted to be.
She told Nigel that she was making her way to La Casa Tranquila. Nigel forbade her to go, and she explained that Soteria was still there, and that there was no response from Tina. He then explained that William might have a way of getting in touch with Tina, and the he was far better suited to go in after Soteria. The Belmonts would likely have someone in waiting for anyone to return to the compound. Vivian was concerned about William going in, but Nigel told her that his assassin would be far better equipped to go in, should trouble arise.
Vivian stopped on the side of the road after telling Nigel she wouldn’t go. He told her to go home and shower, to which she replied that he had obviously been reading her mind. Still, after she hung up the phone, she remained on the side of the road, thinking about what she should do.