<hr/><div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/ac/600full-kenneth-branagh.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Tommy Flanagan (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=200832.msg9819558#msg9819558)<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>None<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 11, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Babel's Tower, Front Stage<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Bella Capri, Spooky<br/><hr/><br/><br/>Later, Tommy would note to himself that it was one of the better musical sets he'd ever been part of. Up until the part where somebody got themselves shot. But aside from that, it was going pretty well. They were on their third number, and he was doing his best to keep up with the gracious Bella Capri who had shifted her steamwagon to a lower gear, as they say. The piano itself was a wonderful instrument, worth whatever Mr. Solomon had paid for it, and Tommy had a strong mind to creep downstairs later tonight and wrestle a few gears out of the interior for fear that the thing would render his position redundant.<br/><br/>But about that shooting. They were just reaching the chorus of the song when a series of rapid gunshots clearly sounded over the noise of the piano, the singing and the crowd. Tommy counted four shots. Call him obsessive, but counting rounds fired was a pretty good trick to cultivate under some circumstances, such as those where one wanted to keep one's hide reasonably unperforated. Tommy's mother having raised only two dummies, Tommy not among them, he eased up on the ivories and swiveled around on the piano stool, painfully aware that his only weapon was the tiny derringer concealed in his waistband. One more lesson Tommy had learned was that it was a bad idea to play piano with a gun up your sleeve. The proof, as the New York types were wont to say, was left as an exercise for the reader.<br/><br/>The atmosphere in the Babel's Tower quickly filled with the absence of piano music, and more than one patron followed Tommy's gaze to the swinging doors at the front, which had just admitted one of the scarier looking things Tommy had ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with. And he'd seen a buffalo with three bear heads and an extra kickin' leg made outta snakes.<br/><br/>This seemed like an excellent time, Tommy thought, for somebody else to say something.<br/>