The night started immediately after the end of last game.  It is about
8 o'clock at night.  Leigh, Niccolo and Burko were getting ready to go
off to Connecticut, with their escort.  Ali was chatting with the
escort as they got their act together and Ryan was off doing more
mysterious things in his room.  Right before they are ready to leave,
Burko gets a call, leaves a note on the table and goes out to get into
the car.  The car refuses to start.  Nic tries it again.  It still
refuses to start.  He looks under the hood, mumbles at it a bit and
then announces that the car isn't going anywhere.  He goes back in to
the house to clean his guns.  Ali decides to go back to HQ and tells
the street rat surveillance dude to call her if anything happens.

Meanwhile, Leigh and Nic start to interrogate Burko about the phone
call.  It turned out that Anna Marie called and told Burko that she
wanted to see him immediately and he was to go nowhere.  Burko, having
had a charming last experience with her, decided he didn't want to see
her again.  Leigh bullies Burko into staying and Nic then goes out,
gets in the car, and leaves.  

Leigh and Burko wait.  And then Anna Marie walks in and Leigh takes an
immediate dislike to her.  She informs Burko that she is taking him to
a Time Oracle.  Now.  She then asks Leigh if she has a full length
mirror and would she go get it.  Leigh goes upstairs and unscrews the
mirror from the wall and brings it down.  Anna Marie picks it up,
slams it against the wall, and it sticks.  She then bloodies each of
the three of their hands and has each of them wipe around the edge of
the mirror with their bloodied hands.  The mirror turns grey and she
steps through.  

Back in Boston, when Ali gets back to HQ, she is informed that Agent
Smith wants to see her immediately.  She goes to his office and works
on the Giovanni files as she waits for him to be free.  After a few
minutes, a tall blond fellow leaves Smiths office and Ali is gestured
in.  As she sits, Agent Smith points out that she is three weeks past
the point of her annual review.  Ali tries not to gape at him.  He
then presents her with the review he should turn in and it recommends,
among other things, that she is getting to close to her charges and
that she should be sent for "readjustment".  Ali fails to disagree
with the document.  They then talk about being a field agent for a
bit.  Ali is tired and discouraged at this point, still struggling
with Karen and the sheer magnitude of the fires and that comes across
in the interview.  Smith then shows her the letter he is going to
submit and it does not include his misgivings, instead it recommends
her for promotion, advanced training and so on when her current
assignment is done.  She is warned to keep her objectivity and is then
told she is getting a raise.  She leaves the office feeling even more
confused and, in some respects, discouraged and insulted.  

Leigh and Burko, together with Anna Marie, meanwhile, step through the
mirror, into a 2D world and then into the shadowlands.  Leigh, who
must be similarly worn out, viscously starts attacking Anna Marie on
everything.  Anna Marie, mostly ignores her.  The three of them take a
brief trek through the shadowlands and then they find another mirror
and they step through it, through 2D land and then into a grassy
place.  They walk awhile until they come to a grove.  Anna Marie walks
to the center, finds a tree and climbs up.  Leigh follows, after a
couple of minutes.  Burko decides to try a levitation spell and he
starts floating around until he finds a monkey to play with.  

Burko and the monkey throw fruit at each other and Burko chases the
fellow through the trees.  Eventually, the monkey leads Burko to where
Anna Marie is sitting.  They talk for a bit and find out that they are
in Africa and that the whole grove is the oracle - not the monkey, the
tree or, Anna Marie.  

The monkey goes off on its own again and Burko keeps following.  It
goes up to a hole in the tree and in the hole in the tree there is a
silver ring, in there out of reach.  Burko and the monkey both try
various ways to try and grab at it but it is out of their grasp.
Eventually Burko levitates the ring free and he takes it back to Anna
Marie.  She looks at it and then back at Burko.  They talk about what
it might mean.  She says that she thinks it represents his life and
that she doesn't think she could break it if she tried.  She then runs
her finger along it and flattens it out into a mobius strip and hands
it back to him.  They climb (or in Burko's case float) down and start
to head home.  

Again, back in Boston, a couple of minutes after Ali gets out of her
meeting with Smith, she gets a call from Ryan. He wants to meet and
she suggests meeting at the Plough.  They agree to meet in half an
hour.  When she gets there, Ryan is waiting for her.  They find a
table.  Ryan orders a soda water, she orders a double scotch.  They
then exchange things.  She gives Ryan his new ID.  Ryan gives her a
map with locations of the "taint".  They talk for a bit about what the
taint is.  

Leigh, Burko and Anna Marie return home the same way they arrived.
While they are traversing the shadowlands, they encounter a malstorm
and start to run from it.  Anna Marie explains there have been three
great Malstorms of the century and they are caused by events in the
skinlands.  (The party thinks about it and decides: WW 1, WW 2 and
us.) This one is probably an eddy off the events of a few months ago.
They make a run for home and dive through the mirror just in time.  

Some where in here, it is revealed to Leigh that Anna Marie taught
Sledge at one point.  That engenders more argument. 

Once back, the mirror falls off the wall, but doesn't break.  There is
another brief, vicious argument between Leigh and Anna Marie.  Leigh
"goes to bed" but keeps listening in through Burko.  They discuss what
the ring might mean and why Anna Marie decided to do this in the first
place.  When Leigh's commentary in his mind begins to annoy Burko, he
suggests that he and Anna Marie go for a walk.  They go out, Anna
Marie offers to take Burko on her motorcycle and they head towards
Central.  Leigh follows. 

Of all the bars between Central and Harvard that they could have
picked, Anna Marie leads Burko straight into the Plough where Ali and
Ryan are still chatting.  Anna Marie comes to sit down and Burko does
to, after going to steal some lager from the bar.  Anna Marie and Ali
exchange non-pleasantries and then Leigh puts in her appearance and
Anna Marie gets up to go.  

Ryan asks Burko what he has been up to and then gets Burko to show him
the ring.  Burko reluctantly does and Ryan looks at it and then laughs
and hands it back to the boy, telling him that he is going to have to
break it, someday.  There is some discussion about Burko, temporal
anomalies, Sledge and so on.  There is also some discussion about
getting him properly trained and about the lack of Hermetics around
who he could study with.  In there, Ali gets up and goes to the
bathroom and comes back.  Burko decides that he MUST talk to Anna
Marie again, now and he goes running out of the bar after her.  He
finds her motorcycle but no her.

During this discussion, Ali decided that Burko had gone from harmless
deviant to DANGEROUS deviant.  Enlightened children are always more
dangerous than adults and in particular powerful enlightened
children.  So far, she had been willing to give him latitude, but
things had gone to far.  She decided that he was near the edge of his
sanity and a mad child deviant would be even more dangerous.  She
didn't want to see him walking the street another moment and so she
called in a strike.  Now.  

Ali had Leigh call Burko back in, on the promise that she could pull
up Anna Marie's phone number out of their databases.  (Probably true,
but mostly a diversionary tactic.)  Burko returns and Ali "makes a
call" to try and track down the number.  While they are waiting, the
MIB strike team arrives, brandishing weapons and telling everyone to
get down.  A moment later, the room is filled with pricarione darts.  

Ali gets up to direct the agents, making sure they hit Burko, Ryan and
Leigh as they are "very DANGEROUS". 

Ryan does down immediately, not fighting it aside from making sure his
brand new ID is visible.  

Burko gets nailed on the first round but before he goes unconscious,
he makes a move to rot the floor under him and he falls through the
floor before he goes unconscious.  

Leigh gets hit on the first round and manages to neutralize the
pricarione in her blood.  She plays unconscious though.  Agents come
over to hood and straight jacket her.  After that is done, she sets up
a doppleganger made of light and suggestion that she is somewhere
else.  

Ali spots an agent carrying air out of the room.  She mutters
something about damned synthetics and then orders them back to come
and get Leigh.  Leigh manages to make Ali go unconscious for a moment
and in the confusion, a person slips in and is unhooding Leigh and is
trying to get her free.  Ali wakes up, sees this and shouts at the
agents to stop her.  She WARNED them that one was dangerous.  

This time, Leigh is pincusioned with darts, but she does manage to
make Ali go back to sleep before she looses consciousness.  

And there, wisely, we broke for the night.