Ingenium

As nighttime slowly begins to creep around Haven, a sleek silver helicopter abruptly flies into Ingenium's skies, heading for the rooftop helipad on top of one of the many brightly lit properties dotting the area.

------

Up on the building's rooftop, meanwhile, a handful of men and women suddenly appear from a door leading downstairs, waiting for the helicopter to land so they may greet and escort the people inside it.

Upon touching down on the helipad, the vehicle's doors automatically open and two intimidating gentlemen with various bits and pieces of metal surgically attached to their faces step out, one of them in particular carrying a large steel suitcase. They quickly move out of the way as a third person exits the helicopter shortly afterwards, a tapping noise echoing against the concrete as the individual strolls into view, gripping a cane and looking quite... unique, with his technological suit made to resemble age-old plague doctors. Said suit, which covers him entirely, happens to have a number of cords running around the body, both under the man's trench coat and around his bird mask; perhaps a means of supplying the man with clear oxygen.

"Good evening, everyone," the suited man said, his voice a bit of a muffled wheeze behind the mask, before tipping his hat at the assembled crowd. The majority of them murmur an enthusiastic "good evening" in response.

"Master Jebediah; welcome back, sir," one of the people in the group spoke up, a man with a fair English accent sporting both a butler's outfit and neatly combed gray hair.

"Thank you, Cedric," said the suited man, apparently called Jebediah. "It feels good to be home again. I trust everyone is feeling well? Have you had dinner yet?"

"As well as can be during these terrifying times, sir, although you've no doubt heard about everything already. Regarding dinner, though; we figured it best to wait for your arrival first before we began serving," Cedric replied.

"Come now, that's not necessary!" laughed Jebediah. "I appreciate the gesture, but there's no reason to starve yourselves waiting for me. Go on, go on; we can't let everyone's mood sour, and you all look like you could use a good night's sleep."

Pocketing his cane, Jebediah quickly walks past the small crowd and towards the door leading off the rooftop, motioning for them to follow him. They do so, with the bodyguards that were accompanying Jebediah in the helicopter being the last ones to enter; locking the door behind them as they head downstairs.

Ramses continues to investigate the scene, looking for any evidence of where Dr. Y might have gone, as one of Haven's greatest inventors continues work in an otherwise unassuming warehouse. Inside the warehouse, though, are computers that line the walls, many of which are connected to other, larger computers, and several inactive machines being assembled by code in those computers. In the middle of it all is essentially a brain in a jar, attached to a wheeled device with several tendrils coming out of it and interacting with the world.

Oh, by the way, that's Prokhor Zhivago. One of Haven's greatest inventors and stuff like that. Yeah, he's a brain in a jar.

With the uneventful feast over with and his business associates having gone home, Jebediah meanwhile has relocated himself to an empty living room, reclining in a random chair with the steel suitcase from before propped up on the table in front of him, drinking from a cup of coffee as he patiently waits for the sun to rise.

How the liquid actually makes it to his mouth past the giant steampunk bird mask is anyone's guess.

Anyway, the only other source of audible noise besides the occasional sipping is coming from a large television sitting across the room, which is currently displaying the news channel. Or a handful of broadcasted reruns that is, considering the late hour.

----

Under the cover of darkness, a pair of sickly yellow eyes silently peer out from underneath a manhole cover, watching as Ramses does his investigating..

How does he get liquid past the mask? Carefully.

---

Ramses' scouter/visor has several uses, but doesn't do a whole lot for his peripheral vision. He doesn't notice the eyes peering out at him.

"The blasts haven't had a whole lot of time to fade," thought Ramses. "Which makes sense, if the news is right about the timing of Dr. Y's attack. If the airship crashed and he wasn't spotted surfacing at Haven, either he's at the bottom of the ocean, or he swam away. The only way he could get away from Ingenium was by swimming west, and without any support, he'd be at... Arsenal Cove."

While Ramses thinks to himself, the manhole cover in question is moved out of the way as something that looks like it might have previously been a humanoid creature - drenched in a tar substance and sporting several bulbous yellow eyes just about everywhere - crawls out onto the surface and starts to slowly shamble towards him. ...Followed by a second, and then a third.

Pretty soon there's about four or five of the things awkwardly shuffling towards him.

Ramses' hearing, though, is just fine, and a manhole cover moving isn't exactly the stealthiest thing, especially on the hard metal streets of Haven. He turns around and sees the five tar creatures moving towards him.

"Toxic sludge creatures?" asked Ramses. "Reminds me of back home."

Ramses activates his jetpack and flies a few yards into the air before pulling out his rifle and aiming it at the creatures.

"No one's gonna miss you," said Ramses, opening fire.

The creatures suddenly scatter and try their best to evade, but three of the five are successfully hit by Ramses' shots; the bolts of energy searing through their tarry flesh and leaving sizeable holes in them.. while at the same time causing the live parts that remain to somehow burst into roaring flames.

Shrieking in agony, the burning creatures end up going absolutely mad, spitting flaming balls of sludge in all directions; a few of which inadvertently get sent flying towards Ramses. As this goes on, meanwhile, the two other tar creatures leap onto some nearby buildings and begin crawling up their walls in pursuit of the bounty hunter, avoiding whatever fireballs as they fly by.

Ramses is surprised by the burning tar sludge balls being thrown all around and does his best to fly out of the way of most of them. This has the side effect of leaving him not focused enough to open fire on the two non-burning tar creatures.

The two tar creatures jump off their respective buildings and lunge towards Ramses, trying to swipe at him or at the very least grab onto something so they don't plummet to their death. The other three on the ground, meanwhile, stop throwing burning sludge balls everywhere when they collapse to the ground, unmoving, and start melting into large puddles of oil.

Ramses spots one of them and dodges to the side... right into the path of the other one. His jetpack isn't made to hold more than one person and slowly begins falling back down to the ground as the bounty hunter struggles to toss the tar monster off.

The first tar monster ends up hitting the ground with an audible splat as the second begins to wrestle with Ramses, giving him and his jetpack a few small scrapes here and there (thankfully nothing serious) as it tries to keep from losing its grip. Which doesn't last very long. Seeing as the creature's flesh is made of a rather slippery substance, Ramses' struggling quickly wins out; the tar monster falling off and getting impaled on a random streetlight.

It's still alive, sure, but it isn't going to be doing much of anything now, other than gurgle loudly and wiggle its various limbs.

Ramses takes a few moments to catch his breath before holstering his rifle and sweeping some tar off of him.

"Serves you right," said Ramses.

He checked the late hour and realized he'd been awake since at least that incident with the bell tower. If the doctor was indeed at Arsenal Cove, attacking him now wouldn't be such a great idea, since Ramses was half-asleep. He descended to the ground, walked past the remains of the tar monsters, and headed for the nearest hotel to get himself a room and turn in for the night.

As day breaks for Ingenium, the various remains of the tar creatures are suddenly engulfed in a bright light, quickly disappearing along with any evidence of their short-lived hunt from last night.

As this goes on, a random woman draped in some sort of green ceremonial cloak and holding onto a familiar steel suitcase walks into a nearby alleyway, seemingly melding with the flickering shadows and disappearing from sight just as various people begin to exit their homes for the new day.

----

Over in the Magnus residence, meanwhile, Jebediah makes his way back to the living room, his seventh cup of coffee in the last few hours sitting in his gloved hands. Cedric and the others always did say he had a problem with the drink, but he'd be damned if he didn't get a suitable helping of caffeine, he thought to himself. Besides, who needed sleep these days?

Entering the room and nodding to a nearby maid whom is busy dusting one of the lamp tables, Jebediah walks over and reclines in a chair, turning the television back on just in time to catch up with the news. He has yet to notice that the large steel suitcase he previously had on the table is missing, incidentally.