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Marc's apartment was a mess. It wasn't unclean, as such... just a mess. Unironed clothes festooned chair-backs, table-edges, the floor... a tee-shirt ambushed him from the ceiling-fan as he passed. The pantry seemed to have developed a gastric bug, and had disgorged some of its contents out onto the kitchen floor. Pulling a face, he bent down and picked up an arm-load of dog-food cans, with a sigh. He didn't have a dog. The dog-food was just part of his latest hopeless bid to alleviate the discomfort of his monthly... 'episodes'. He always woke up the morning after feeling sick, exhausted, and like he had been starved for several weeks. While they were not really meant to take anything in to the BSPA cells, he couldn't really imagine them denying him a flimsy plastic dog-bowl. Strictly, he didn't even need to go into the cells: he was classified as having enough control as a wolf to be left to his own devices, but Marc didn't trust himself. At all.

Cans and cereal boxes returned to their rightful place, he proceeded to the freezer. It had been a fairly dull day at work, a lot of sitting around, a few reports to write up, nothing more. Being bored always made him hungry. Two packaged meals were evacuated from the freezer, and placed in the microwave in a bid to cure their hypothermia.

As the magical white radiation-box hummed away to itself, Marc picked his way through the mess to the window. He could catch a glance from his apartment through the buildings of the sky, and this is what he stared out at now, watching as the last dregs of the sunset splashed the sky with blood.

After a few minutes, the microwave chimed that it had done what it was told to do, and the rest was up to him. He only got half-way to the kitchen, before his mobile phone rang.

"Marc? You busy?" Even if he hadn't recognised the voice, it was obviously work.

"No, not really," he sighed, running a hand through his ragged-cut grey mane.

"Right. We need a team down at--" the voice rattled off and address, and a fastest route there. It was another apartment block, and apparently under attack of some shape or form.

"Liberation?"

"We don't know yet. All we know so far is that it's ugly."

"Yeah, well, that's not unusual."

"You will meet the rest of the team there in ten minutes."

"Yep, sure."

And he hung up. He grabbed one of the packaged meals out of the microwave, and wolfed it down with his hands as he looked around for his gear, his gun. On the floor, by the door. He dropped the mostly-finished food into the sink, and wiped his hands and face off on the handtowel, which also went into the sink. Mess was natural. Unclean mess was not.

In a flurry of grey hair and black trenchcoat, he swept out the door. He briefly contemplated his keys, but decided -- as usual -- that it would be quicker for him to run.

Within seven minutes he was at the rendezvous point, across the road from the apartment block.

The resident Fae had arrived before him, which didn't disturb Marc in the slightest. He'd much rather not see the fair gentleman simply pop, unheralded, into existence ever again. Just as lycanthropic transformations made a lot of people extremely uncomfortable, the sight of instantaneous teleportation made Marc decidedly queasy.

Marduk was currently masquerading as a miniature human, which basically meant that he was generally human-shaped, and was hiding his wings under his tee-shirt. Marc mused briefly as he approached that, really, if another Fae was substitued for Marduk, he'd probably never know.

"Ah," beamed Marduk -- beamed probably being a ggood description, as he was glowing like a chistmas lantern -- when Marc reached him. "There you are, my wolfie child."

The curious turns of phrase of the Fae had disturbed Marc at first, but he'd worked with Marduk for long enough that it simply seemed normal, now. What he hadn't gotten over yet, though, was the weird feeling when he was dealing with Marduk that he really should have a tail. He hadn't ever been able to figure that one out. Maybe it was something about the wings.

"Good evening, Marduk," he smiled back. "Did they tell you who else was coming?"

"Oh dear..." He had never meant to cause the large, smoking hole in the wall of the apartment complex he currently found himself in. After all, when one is expecting to enter an idyllic meadow and instead finds themselves in a dark, enclosed space full of coats, one would probably panic just the same as he had! And now people were shouting at him, all sorts of vulgar things, screaming, and such.

Attempting to leave the accursed building, he ran into two rather oddly-dressed gentlemen, (and wasn't everyone so oddly dressed here?) standing on the street corner and discussing something. Almost on reflex, he froze, sending their minds the message that he did not exist, so please continue on with their business, and don't mind the non-existent thing in the corner.

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Marduk quicly forgot about the weapon, sensing magic probing at his own. Quickly he squelched it for himself. Trying to use Magic on a being of Pure magic hardly every worked, but it was a pain to get beaten with a fly swatter as he comon;y did back at the 'office' as the mortals called it. If he flew around to many desks or landed on to man pen tips he got whacked. It wasn't fun.

But this situation could be. Marduk recognized the clothing almost right away. "Halt, child. We don't mean you harm. Stop your use of magic and tell this mortal what the last thing you remember is. I shall go and deal with the other raving mortals." Marduk explained in an almost fatherly commanding voice. Like if your father were to sternl tell you to do the dishes.

He didn't even wait for a response. His talents were indeed needed. The tenants of the apartment complex had to be influenced, the scene had the be repaired and the on sight emergency crews that were arriving due to the fire alarm had to be sent away.

The first step was the shouting tenants. They had to be silenced, the ruckus they were making was drawing far to much attention. With a quick chants and a gesture of his hand their voices were all stripped from them as a spell of silence fell over them.

The Next step was the emergency crews. With a great deal of haste and another chant and gesuture, marduk threw up the illusion of the building being whole. He told one of the firemen that a malfunction had occured within the fire alarm system and it was quickly being taken care of. They seemed satisfied with that answer and were more then happy to go back to eating their lunches or whatever they were doing at the time.

The final step he took was to set about the task of Repairing the damage to the building by magically spawning new walls and clothes and other melted or otherwise damaged items into existance while comepetly destroying the old ones. It was going to take quite a while but he kept an ear out for what was going on as well. Or tried to anyways. This kind of clean up work was so very very boring. It was the same thing over and over again, even though he knew it was invaluable to the rest of them, it was still a thankless job.

So much for Marduk saying we don't mean any harm, Marc thought wryly to himself as the odd one let rip with a blast of magic at the fae. Probably not a very useful decision.

While the other's attention was on Marduk, Marc took the opportunity to take a calculated and powerful swing at the back of his head with his pistol-butt. The man-- the not-actually-a-man, he corrected himself -- looked to thin and fragile that he would surely crumple like a doll if the blow connected.

Ears twitching as he heard the other gentleman sneak up on him, he whirled around, blocking the pistol with his arm. This was not a good move. Letting out an inhuman shriek as the iron of the gun connected with his arm, he fell to the ground. The smell of burnt flesh wafted hideously into the air, and as he clutched at his arm it was obvious that the cold metal had somehow burned straight through his fancy suit.

"W-why did you do that?" His odd black eyes were brimming with tears as he spoke, seeming to be truly shocked at the other man for attacking him. He had already completely forgotten the lout who had called him 'child', so in his mind there was no motive for such an assault.

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Marduk already had them under a non-detection spell so anyone walking by would not notice them. What really caught his interest was when the iron burned the man/creature. There weren't to many things with that weakness. Marduk ran through the list in his head and his eyes got wide.

"Marc Look out! It's A Lesser Fae!" He warned Marc and Hopefully marc would jump off. Meanwhile he was making mulitple hand gestures and chanting after he spoke to summon up a cage of Iron from the element of Metal to lock the being in place so they could speak in peace without attacks.