After staying neutral and listening for over an hour while the two sides went at each other, I finally cast my vote … in favor of going out. Strangely enough, my reasons aligned most closely with those of Bunny and Markie: while I was more than a little afraid of going out and being a moving target, I was ever more afraid of being cooped up inside with my own team while they got progressively more nervous and short-tempered with each other.
No sooner was that resolved than a new argument erupted, this time over who was going along. Obviously, everyone wanted to do. Just as obviously, if everybody did, we would look like exactly what we were: a strike force looking for trouble. I somehow didn’t think this would assist our efforts to preserve my reputation.
After another hour of name-calling, we came up with a compromise. We would all go. For discretion as well as strategic advantage, however, it was decided that part of the team would go in disguise. That is, in addition to making our party look smaller than it really was, it would also allow our teammates to watch from a short distance and, more important, listen to what was being said around us in the Bazaar. Aahz, Tananda, Chumley, Massha, and Nunzio would serve as our scouts and reserve, while Markie, Bunny, Guido, and I would act as the bait … a role I liked less the more I thought about it.
Thus it was that we finally set out on our morning stroll… early in the afternoon.
On the surface the Bazaar was unchanged, but it didn’t take long before I began to notice some subtle differences. I had gotten so used to maintaining disguise spells that I could keep our five colleagues incognito without it eating into my concentration . . . which was just as well, because there was a lot to concentrate on.