Ultimate Ultimatum

Ryla saw the girl's movements, her posture, and her energy spell out illness. There was just sickness that stunk like the stench of skunk in the air. It hung there torpid and pestilent. She'd almost become used to the stink of the weak. The muscle meat was still casually set against the wall arms crossed and grin smirking. By this time the sliding patio door was rigged with a protection to keep the bag of meat from taking a quick exit. Gracie had dropped the short drop to circle round to the hotel door to set an identical trap. With the jug head trapped within one of the two exits, he will be forced to freeze and will lose all movement and all power. The trick was getting him to think he had just been found out and that a quick exit is the best way out of his predicament. Not many used the means she was to detain a muse. The rogues were especially nasty because they felt it unnecessary to follow any protocol that the everyday muse lived by. You don't leech off the humans that you were divinely ordered to protect and guide and charge with divine energy. If the jug head found her plan out and moved quick enough, he could drain everyone in the room. He could suck the will from each of them. He could replace their wills with despair and the illness that Ryla had smelled leaking from the girl, except in lethal doses. This wasn't the ideal situation, especially for the family. But Ryla had little choice most of the time. Bait meant the trusting rogue gave far more attention to the charge and if he or she wasn't paying attention bagging them was actually far easier. The cleaner the better. The more they believed it, the more they trusted they were safe and sound. So to cover the believability factor, Ryla actually performed interventions. The emotions were genuine, the air charged with love, pain, fear, doubt, and hope. They were enough to cover her own emotions of fear, exhilaration, and calculated planning. She had a callous edge to her emotional energy. A tough love image that bode well for her interventionist role as a "all or nothing" "life or death" dealer. She was the one to provide and enforce the ultimate ultimatum. She provided the addict with an ultimatum, though it is somewhat of a rouse considering once the rogue was gone recovery was highly likely. But to keep things genuine, there really had to be a role where the addict chose to overcome her leeching rogue, where she chose to live, and where she chose to recognize her illness. When she guessed her illness as addiction it wasn't completely true. She had a culprit and it wasn't entirely herself, though Ryla had to convince the girl that she actually was responsible. The healing that came afterward was just as healthy because the addict held all accountability and therefore held all to power to recover.

Recovery started with the intervention, then separation, then medical detox, and education. Typical rehab would include much more therapy and rehabilitation during the last phase. Education was essential though to the recruitment. Get them educated before they were worked up and started asking questions. It wasn't a point of deception. It was meant to clear away the cobwebs, shine in some healthy light, and giving the room a good sweep. If that person were confused or felt attacked they would clam up and a whirl wind of a dust storm would pick up. Defuse the electricity in the air before it starts up. It would seem obvious the intervention is the ultimatum but the real decision comes ninety days later after all the education and training is over. Take the tools you learned, leave with them,and protect yourself? Or use them to protect others and reveal the truth to those who can fight?

The fight isn't a physical brawl. Well, not always but it honestly sometimes happens. The blow outs just don't hurt as much and for as long as the real battle fought in the pull and push and the drain of power. There wasn't a metaphysical understanding to what transpired between muses. It was emotional to some. It was electric to others. It was the flow and ebb of water. It was the power of winds or the eye of a hurricaine. For Ryla and most of her muse friends they felt electricity. It was a unique feel to the power they hold. In fact it was entirely unique to Lacy's guild. The other guild sisters were yet to know the taste of their charge. Lacy had not communed with any of the nine for nearly two hundred years. For muses who could slip in and out of time like a needle in a taught tapestry this was an irrelevant number. It meant there was a camp of warriors brewing on each side as the saddled and spied and even killed to know the next move. Not all would be fighting each other and most actually could unite in the last fight, but for the time being the guilds had disintegrated into gangs rather than kingdoms. The Guild Inc. was a guild organized in the fashion of a large corporation with the hierachy of a business. Business was cold but it was also efficient. It was egalitarian and it was also all about money and power. This wasn't much different from the guild of the South, the Hardliners. They were a gun toting rough group more like a biker gang or a rock and roll bar crowd. They were rowdy but they lived by the law of loyalty. They were a passionate people that lived more like a family with the women supporting and nurturing the men to become great fighters and patriach leaders. The act of betrayal was the most unforgivable offense and it was punished harshly. It was a crime punished almost as harshly as it was in the Renoldi guild which most resembled a crime mob syndicate. Though similar to the Hardliners in so many ways, they were bound by a moral code that respected a name, an old family, and a tradition without fault. There was a patriarch but he was less likely to go to the heroic ends to save your ass as the Hardliner leader would. The twist that didn't seem to explain everything upfront but once revealed made sense: the nine sister, eight were the original of the nine, were still the highest up on the ladder. If you hit the high mousia you've made it to the top. So seldomly seen by the worker bees, she became a thing of myths for her own people in those three clan guilds. They were wholly adapted to American ways of life but it was easier to blend in that way. They were territorial, hostile, and held ideas about the other that were entirely false. There were also terrifying facts that melded with the lies, but how would anyone really know when the guilds were entirely segregated and totally isolated from one another. Communication was along lines between the sisters and even then their means of communicating were out of territories and out of time.

When the saved charge heard the options they were given the day to leave and think over their decision. It was a quit day for the trainer when the recruit was gone out of reach of their influence. The recruits who return by night fall are given the gift to see the muses as all times. Those who are driven to have normal happy human lives never return but are looked in on frequently. Though they may think they would be avoiding the same fate the muse world faced, it was likely they would eventually even in the last moments of a terrible battle join to bolster the ranks of the good guys.