5614/Haunted House of the Wealthy

Haunted House of the Wealthy
Date of Scene:	20 October 2018
Location:	New York City
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Black Queen, Black Cat

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Black Queen has posed:
There's a house in New York City, in a very good neighborhood. It looks like an old apartment complex in size, about 4 stories tall and clearly big enough to fit multiple families of people. And yet, it's the house of a woman who, by all accounts, inherited her wealth when her husband died. Selene Gallio.

If you did any digging about this woman and her home you'd realize the greatest fact. Most of her wealth is tied up in things that can be buglarized. Antiques, paintings, jewelry, antique jewelry, fancy one of a kind outfits, rare furs, that kind of stuff. She very publically buys these things at auctions, and sports them as if they are every day affairs. The wealthy women of this world, so posh and no respect for dollar signs in their bank accounts.

There's no guards, no hired folks, and there's only one light on in this rather large home. The locks and doors are old, just like the building, and there's not even any elctronic security... just mechanical. There's even a roof entrance, since at one point, this building WAS an apartment.

Black Cat has posed:
    Have you ever heard the phrase, too good to be true? Felicia Hardy has, and yet, this burglar doesn't take it to heart. No if she sees something too good to be true, her first thought is along the lines of, cha-ching.

    This is why the Black Cat is hunched over on top of the Gallio estate, her fingers delicately undoing the lock on the hatch on the roof of the complex. A smile creeps upon her face as a pun rattles through the blonde's min as the hatch is opened and she carefully goes down the ladder.

Black Queen has posed:
It could be very good. This Selene Gallio is always out at parties, she inherited her wealth. Maybe she doesn't know about modern security? Or the reason she lives in a wealthy neighborhood with cops, and who cares if stuff gets stolen she could always buy more? Right? Great insurance, or just loads of cash. Youngish socialites are always stupid.

As Felicia opens the roof entrance, there's a small ladder that starts to extend immediately into the top floor, but with quick reactions she can easily catch it and allow it to lower soundlessly into the house.

There's some minimal amount of light coming into the house from the open windows and the street lights outside, but other than that the one room that could be seen with a light, is off in one of the corners. There's the sound of some soft classical music playing from that room, Mozart perhaps, and the smell of scented candles. It must be bath night, but it's just beginning since the music just started to play.

There's plenty of things all around. Hallways of it, filled with artwork, some of it very old. If Felicia has the eye for it, they are all originals. Antiques, that are easily old, but a good eye might put them as Eqyptian, and some even babylonian in origins. She has an entire walkway between a few other bedroom areas that have spanish muskets from Cortes' invasion of the Aztecs in Mexico. There's even a pedastal in that hallway with a saber styled weapon sitting on it, could it be from that era as well? The main dressing room which is just a few doors down from where the scented candles and bath is happening, also has clothing and some locked jewelry drawers.

Black Cat has posed:
    "Oh!" Felicia mews to herself abruptly as she spots the falling ladder and she snaps her hand out to catch it with a sigh to herself as she holds the ladder with ease. Stupid Felicia, stupid. She raises it back up and hooks it back into place before she lowers herself down into the hallway and stands at her full height as she looks around. Rookie burglars would go for the paintings or things like that, no, Felicia's moving on to things that are much easier to get away with. Though something small, something that could go missing for some time before anyone might notice it's gone.

    The thief walks away from the noisy lit room as she is wanting to find a jewelry room at this point. Some vault of riches and gems that she feels in her bones must be somewhere.

Black Queen has posed:
As Felicia starts to wander around the upper floor, there's a distinctive nature to this floor. It's more glitz and dress, and lived in. It's the space that Selene probably uses for her own living, prized possessions, things that have meaning. As Felicia gets to the end of one hallway there's a spiral staircase downward. Although the house is 4 stories tall, there's been tons of rennovations to the place and in the middle of the main section of the house it looks much more like a throne room in how spacious and tall the ceiling is. Sure there's rooms off to the side, and probably a few layers of space, but most of the bottom three floors are just one big open space with lots of fancy work done about the house. Marble inverted arches in the corners to still give structural support even without full on pillars in the place. The floor is solid wood, some kind of wood that most wouldn't recognize, but it's a timber from the amazonian rainforest if she would be able to identify.

It's down on this area that one of the doors draws the keen eye of Felicia. It's heavy, some kind of solid metal, and has more of a bank vault's worth of security on the outside preventing it from being easily unlocked. This is at the very back of this area, and instead of being in the wall, it's in the ground. A door, like a bank would have, under an expensive rug, going down...

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia steps over the rug and the change beneath her flats sends almost a shudder through her spine. That's different. Different for a reason. Felicia stoops down and moves the rug, her tongue snaking out to help her focus as well as add to her charm. She carefully and quickly rolls up the rug to allow her to see the vault, and she stands over the doorway for a brief moment to determine what kind of door it is and how best to get in.

    After about twenty seconds she smirks and hunches over really low, and starts to work on opening the locks. Humming a song in her head, she punches into work.

Black Queen has posed:
The front panel is flat, and seems almost completely smooth but there's a small line around it where it was set into the door nearly perfectly. With the tools that the Black Cat has, and her steady hands, she's able to slowly pull that panel out. Wires run down into a motherboard that contains a processor on it. One flaw to these kinds of systems is if you can pluck out the processing chip it goes into a 15 second reset. Which even still someone has to be fast to be able to get in there and work the wires.

Crossing one with another, it turns the panel's settings from locked to unlocked. A second layer of security is a small tumbler with more than a few dozen layers to it. With more traditional lock picking tools it takes a bit of time, but again defeated.

The door lets out a soft hydraulic hissing sound as it slowly raises from being flat to something of an opening. Down below is another set of stairs and some darkness. At these angles light does not show. The walls near the top glisten a little like they are smoothed marble, or they were freshly painted.

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia smirks at herself as the subtle hissing sound, and she peeks into the darkness with a smile. No lights coming on, Felicia decides to cheat a little bit and with two fingers she taps at the side of her head, the lenses she wears enhancing her vision to work with the low lights and her smiles grows to show teeth. This is going to be great.

    Slowly and carefully she lowers her foot onto the first step and using her hands on the floor above, she lowers herself down into the vault and carefully takes a peek around the peculiar basement.

Black Queen has posed:
As Felicia goes down into the basement, she's keeping herself well balanced, and her low-light goggles seem to be helping out quite a bit. There's not enough light for human eyes down here, but thankfully night goggles down run off of stuff like surrounding light.

Going down into the basement takes a moment, as this kind of tight passage goes down some and then turns about, like a spiral stair case. Assuming Felicia continues down, the door above doesn't shut or anything on her, but there's really only enough room for one person to walk down these stairs and there's no hand rails, but there's a wall very close at hand to balance with if she so chooses.

Once into the main room down here there's a peculiar sight. An open room, a steel table that has restraints for wrists and what look to be foot restraints up on stirrups that have a range of motion. Above is a light that is currently turned off, and there's a small table next to the larger table that has what can best be described as horrible nightmarish surgical tools. With a look around, the walls look to have... bars inlaid into them. Spaced out, but it looks like there's small little cells down here. No jewelry or paintings at all look to be present.

Black Cat has posed:
    "Holy-" Felicia can't help but whisper to herself as she comes across the ... chamber. There's no better word for it in her mind. This place is creepy to the nth degree. A quick look around because the cat is curious, but there's a part of her brain that's begun the fight or flight preparations. If there's any noise that she's not comfortable with, she's going to high tail it out of here.

Black Queen has posed:
No noises yet, but Felicia feels her gloves's fingers lightly sticking to one another. If she were to look down and move her fingers about, it's hard to tell in the off color light that the night vision provides, but there's a sticky goopy mess that is sticking between her fingers. It might take a moment, but what had looked like paint on the walls, is a thick layer of blood. A little old and cold from being in the basement making it more viscous than normal. The ceiling is covered in it, the walls, the floor... the cells, the bars on the cells. Everything is covered... the stairs... all but the shiny, medically clean table and instruments. They are meticulously spotless.

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia lifts her fingers to her face and takes a quick smell. "oh. Oh god." She whispers to herself as she decides it's nope time. The girl turns around and starts to head towards the staircase she came down. This place is sick and she's going to get the hell out of here before she gets caught up in something no one could save her from. Not even herself. No nononono.

Black Queen has posed:
Up the stairs Felicia goes, and as she gets back out into the main room. That place that was so open, giantly so... she finds herself in an old lobby looking place. There's a counter facing towards what appear to be doors to leave. There's seats and a fireplace that has a fire lightly flickering off in the corner. And there's candles lit up all over the place. And there's now stairs to going up, in a more traditional fashion than a spiral staircase. The entire floor has changed.

Off in the distance, Felicia can hear a slight whisper. It seems to travel past her like a breeze more than directly into her ears. There's a few words, a woman's voice whispering past, "Here kiiitty kitty... heeeeere kitty kitty." There appears to be no one in this area, and the doors are... right... there.

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia hears the words, feels the words, and swallows hard, pushing the lump in her throat down into her stomach. Her breath is rapid, and her heart is racing. She's felt fear, and anger, but this, this was something on an acute level the woman has never experienced in her life.

    She looks over her shoulder and her mouth dropping open to breath more easily as she spots the doors and quickly reaches for them, turning to try and run.

Black Queen has posed:
The doors are... locked? Somehow. There's no key, no chain wrapping around them. They give, just enough to rattle with the tug, but they don't open. There's people walking along outside just passing by in their normal day to day. A person walks up to the door and then raises their hand to their hair and sort of brushes it to the side and about. Then shakes it a little. He smiles at himself, it what is clearly a reflective surface. He neither reacts to the shaking of the doors, nor the sound of the rattling.

There's a soft cold feeling that runs along Felicia's back, as if an ice cube were being trailed slowly upwards. If she turns to look, there's no one there, her back is dry... it was just... cold, very very cold. "No one... is coming to save... you..." A breathy version of the voice before, almost a seductive type tone speaks out. And then with soft laughter it says, "Upstairs... there's a window... if... you can make it..."

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia lifts her hands while looking at the hopeless doorway and taps her lenses to shut off the night vision and she looks over her shoulder slowly. Before she whips around, turning the opposite way and lifts her hands, fingers spread wide but curled like she was holding a ball in each hand. Her claws are extended and she's snarling. "I don't need anyone to save me." Felicia says defiantly before she looks over at the stairs.

    She doesn't trust them, or the voice so she does what she thinks might be unexpected. She turns back in a single motion towards the door behind her, her fingers curling all the way into a tight fist and smashing into the door with as much strength as she can muster. She's going to blow her way into safety if she has to. It might back fire, but her body and mind and soul are all sreaming for the girl to get out of this building as soon as possible.

Black Queen has posed:
There's no response to the turned snarling. There's nothing, just the lobby completely unchanged, nothing moving, except the fire inside of the fireplace to the side. The lobby certainly looks old-timey, like something out of the 20s. The way the lamps look, the lobby design, the fire even, and the kinds of decor. All of it... a flash to the past.

When Felicia turns and smashes into the door, there's a sudden change to the door's material structur. The glass forms these very sharp spikes at the last moment. Nothing that would be enough to sever a hand, or even a finger, but long thin sharp needle like materials, meant to cause terrible pain on anything that hits into them.

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia pulls her hand back as soon as she hits the door and has blood oozing out of her leather gloves where she was punctured. "FUCK!" She screams loudly, clutching at her wrist, her fingers held open and up while pulling the pained limb to her hand in a violent shriek.

    Fine, she'll do what the voice says as The Black Cat quickly makes her way towards the stairs, an odd gait in her step due to the intense burning pain from her fingers and hand.

Black Queen has posed:
The door stays the way it got shaped. Blood dripping from that needle shaped glass, and then Felicia turns her back to the doors and starts heading toward the stairs. The stairs are fine, they look nice and normal. There's nothing about them that would scream out that they were going to be horrible, or bad, they are safe. Perfectly safe. The voice comes back, and it's strong enough that you can feel strands of your hair moving as it speaks like someone were right there next to your ear, whispering in that feminine voice, "Good kitty... good. Up the stairs now... hurry... you wouldn't want to miss all the fun..."

Black Cat has posed:
    "What fun?" Felicia says between gritted teeth and frowns with her red painted lips. She climbs the stairs but is suddenly fearful for the first time in a long LONG time. She can't stand it, and just has to get out and yet the throbbing pain in her hand tells her that she's going to do what this voice says until she can get to safety.

Black Queen has posed:
There's just one flight of stairs. It goes up one direction, then there's a flat space as it turns right, and there's the remainder. At the top there's a hallway. Getting t othe last few steps, the voice gets a little more villainous, almost angry. "You did not go... fast enough..." And the stairs change shape, suddenly tipping and becoming a flat surface. That would be fine with grippy shoes, you could probably stay standing, more the floor starts to bleed from the very top of the stairs. You are close, just about 4 or 5 more steps were above you, there's also the handrail still to the sides one on the left and one on the right side. Must make a choice fast, else the blood will slicken the ground beneath your feet. Jump, grab, or slide...

Black Cat has posed:
    Should be simple enough, as the stairs start to turn into an incline, Felicia uses the leverage remaining to vault her way up the last few steps. Not too hard for the average person to jump five steps, it's a cake walk for this thief, even with her bleeding injured hand. Felicia considers arguing with this voice, but she's a trespasser and she knows she's caught in something. It was only a matter of time before she was, but this is beyond scary for the thief. She's doing everything she can to keep her mental faculties intact and it's a losing battle at the moment.

Black Queen has posed:
Jumping up into the hallway gets her there, and down below as soon as the blood hits the flooring below it opens and there's blades spinning back and forth. Counter crossing, like some kind of Indian Jones movie trap meets Freddy Cougar nightmares. And along the banisters of the stair wells you can see from here now that there are little wires running along them, to shock you if you were to touch them. You chose wisely. And now you are on the second floor, and at the end of the hallway there's an open window... it's about 30-40 feet away from where you now stand. On each side of the hallway are doors that are shut. There's also more stairs going up, but there's a dark shadow, something even your goggles can't seem to pierce around teh corner and it seems to ebb and flow a little bit at just right around the corner. The voice is silent.

Black Cat has posed:
    Open window, good enough for her. She starts moving towards it, and after a couple of steps she starts jogging, and quickly she's in a full on sprint. She's fast. She's beyond humanly fast. Felicia is using everything she can to get out of her before something even worse happens. She snaps her good hand out, the wire grappling system hidden in the fur on her wrist shoots out and out the open window to the building on the other side and pulls her towards it.

Black Queen has posed:
Everything seems to be working just fine. Felicia is running down the hallway, going very fast, and it's such a short distance. Plus she is adding to that her grapple system to pull her along even faster. And the doors near the end of the hallways fling open, and these gnarled, decayed fleshed human looking things burst out as if there were too many of them in a room, and they are clawing and grabbing at Felicia. Tearing at skin and clothes, pulling on hair and limbs, whatever they can get ahold of to try and pull her into one of the rooms, or both by tearing her apart. They are scrambling, not very sentient beings. Just... working off of an instinctual hunger, and crowding the very space before you and it's just a few more meters to get to the window... so... close!

Black Cat has posed:
    Felicia is screaming, her suit is getting torn apart, her skin is getting rips and split and she's practically crying from the pain, and fear. She is being dragged through this hell hall no longer propelled by her feet, but by the recall function on her costume, pulling the wire back in and with it anchored across the way, pulling her towards the far wall. "LET. ME. GO!" She demands trying to kick and fight her way out.

Black Queen has posed:
She's moving along through the sentient corpses. There's a lot going on, hands, and nails, digging in, monsters trying to eat what they are getting. The grapple seems to be straining, but it has a good grip and it's pulling you through the zombies in the hallway, exaggerating the tearing. You pull yourself through to the end of the hallway though, and the zombies are converging, backing you up towards the wall, and you notice now... that you couldn't of told before... or maybe in this scary funhouse... it's changed. It's just a picture on the wall... as those clawed undead hands are reaching out for you... this could be it... there looks to be no where to go.

Black Cat has posed:
    Bleeding, throbbing, ripped, and humiliated, Felicia stands at the end of the hall defeated, her suit is in tatters and the winch in her arm is smoking. She did not know it could even do that, and here she is, at the end of all things Felicia, and the girl stands. "Not again." She says, her hand with a hole in it held up and wrapped around her chest, resting on the opposite shoulder. She growls and the claws on her fingertips extend again and she steps towards the hoard and starts slashing and cutting, mauling and evicerating everything she can get her hands on to fight and escape even though she feels more hopeless than her darkest moment.

Black Queen has posed:
The zombies come, and there's more of them. Felicia is giving far better than she's getting, tearing off limbs, heads of zombies. Ripping her fingers through gooey soft skulls long since weakened by their decay. And gore just starts filling the hallway up. But after a while, even though she's made it a foot back down the hallway, even though she could keep fighting if she just had the energy. Slowly blood loss begins to win over the woman's incredible stamina.

The fight is going away, those claws covered in blood, everything... covered in blood, and goop, and her shoes sticky with it. Fingernails start to grab ahold, hands start to pull her down, and eventually she's on the ground when the zombies all converge. Like sharks. The result is a few moments of horrible pain the likes of which are only imagined from watching a zombie flick as the main star is taken down.

You wake up in your bed. In your home. It's morning, like any other morning. The night time is gone, the wounds... gone... the feelings only shadows of what had happened to you. And on the pillow next to you is a single gold coin and a note. It reads, "Thanks for playing." The ink is dark red, soaked into the paper and still very wet as if it had just been written. The coin looks to be solid gold, and it's heavy if you dare to pick it up. Something near the 400 AD mark if you are guessing, a Roman coin, Caesar's head on it.