Her name was Jakaranda and she was a necromancer and a Tiefling. What she had been trying to call a spirit back into the mortal realm for was a moot point. She had forgotten a key element of the ritual - the vessel in which the soul was meant to reside. It could be anything. A golem of clay, bone, wood or flesh. I corpse fresh in the grave. A doll for the spirit to haunt. Anything at all, as long as parts of it could move and it was vaguely human-shaped.

Her name was Jakaranda, and she gave Magic Brian a door from the Astral Plane. An opportunity that he didn’t hesitate to grasp at with both currently ephemeral hands. Without a vessel, there was only one thing to possess.

Her name was Jakaranda. It’s Brian, now.

He looked at the lavender skin and the pink hair and the very tall horns care of the bathroom mirror. “Not exactly my first choize, darlink, but I guess ve can’t be ze choosers vhen ve are ze beggars, ja?”

The fading remnants of Jakaranda, trapped in the back of her brain, said, No, no, no, I didn’t want this…

“Too late,” said Brian. “Ve can’t alvays get vhat ve vant. But I… am gettink revenge…”

He could remember. Even in a living body. Interesting. The remnants of Jakaranda heard static when he said things like ‘Bureau of Balance’, but he could hear a subtle little hiss under the words that came through just fine.

Excellent. He went through Jakaranda’s wardrobe and threw together something nice and devastating. Next up, cruising some popular cities for some members of the Bureau who were so new that they wouldn’t remember him. Or, failing that, some of the consults. Yes. Being allowed around the base without a tracer bracer would be most beneficial.

*

It was almost a joke. An Elf, a Dragonborn, and an Orc walk into a bookshop/cafe…

Two of the three were wearing Bureau bracers, but the Beach Elf wasn’t. She looked like she was suffering an immense loss, and perhaps an equally high stress. She looked ready to snap, an impression not helped by her whip-thin physique.

Target acquired.

Brian had a few variations on the standard Bureau tailing technique, so that even a Bureau member wouldn’t catch on that he was following after the Beach Elf. She spent random moments crying. She’d lost someone. Recently.

Brian arranged to be in the aisle next to where she was sniffling and picked any old book so he could peek through. “Oh,” he said, “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she lied.

“You look very upset, zough. Are you in trouble? Are zose ozzer two menacing you? I can help.”

“No, they’re fine. They’re helping me, I… I’m not from around here and I’m just trying to get home. My little girl needs me.” Tears sprang forth again.

Brian had an ‘in’. He reached through the gap in the bookshelf and said, “It’s goink to be okay. I vant to help.” A touch to her cheek, and the magic words. “I just vant to be Friends.” He cast Friends on her, and she, unsuspecting, went under the spells influence.

“Of course we’re friends,” she said. “My name’s Sno. What’s yours?”

“Call me Jakaranda,” Brian cooed. “Tell me about gettink home…”

She really wasn’t from around here. She’d come from an entirely different reality where some adults here were still children, and Madame Director was a tiny three-and-a-half-year-old child named Lucretia.

Just imagining Madame Director as a tiny child almost blew his borrowed brain.

Nevertheless… “The other Lucretia, she has somesink interesting, ja? Somesing… special…”

“Of course. She has a really magic staff. It’s magic as hell.”

“If you could borrow it,” wheedled Brian, “and bring it to me… I could help you. I could send you home.”

“I want to go home.”

“Zhen you vant to help me. Find a vay to bring me ze staff…”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 5]

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