As anticipated, Cardoso was not willing to end our arrangement, and made this fact vehemently clear to me.



In order to prevent an incident, I immediately offered to continue to supply him the Thunderbolt Iron through the Raven's Nest. This relieved tensions to a degree, but he insisted on an immediate inspection of the facility. As he had his retinue of bodyguards with him at the time, I again decided that the best course of action would be to comply with his demands.



I took him through the Way to the London office and then led him to the shop. I did, of course, message them ahead of time, letting them know that we were on our way, and to remove any Thunderbolt charms from view. Raven complied promptly, but unfortunately, Cardoso's assessment of the shop was more thorough then she had anticipated and he found the charms.



Somewhat surprisingly, he did not become violent or even all that angry. He seemed to have expected us to double-cross him. He simply announced that he would be taking all the inventory we had on hand as recompense for our breach of contract, and that his men would be checking in unannounced from now on to ensure we kept our end in the future.



I personally would have been willing to let it go at that. Raven, however, being a very devout Witch and feminist, wasn't impressed with his macho posturing. She made it very clear that her business was independent from Marshall, Carter and Dark, and thus she owed him nothing and he would be leaving with nothing.



Again, Cardoso was not immediately unreasonable. He still insisted the Thunderbolt Iron was rightfully his, but acknowledged that Raven was not personally at fault. He tried to talk me into compensating her, but she was adamant that she wouldn't willingly assist an - in her own words - Earth rapist.



When it was clear she wasn't amendable to negotiations, Cardoso pulled his gun and ordered his men to just take the iron and anything else that looked valuable. Raven responded with a summoning spell. It was mostly for show; the lights dimmed, the room got cold and her eyes went white, and her spirit familiar started brushing past Cardoso and his men.



His men got spooked and ran, but Cardoso remained persistent. He fired off his gun, but in the poor light couldn't get a clean shot at either of us. Raven's familiar was able to knock the gun out his hand, and then Raven grabbed her athame - it's a Wiccan ritualistic knife - and castrated him with one swipe. He bled out pretty quickly, and she told me to call for a cleanup crew, which I did.



As a result of this, Cardoso Industria is no longer a client of ours, and we no longer have a major client for Thunderbolt Iron. I will leave it up to Mr. Carter if Raven - or, possibly myself - should be disciplined for this turn of events.

